Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 12
- 13
- 14
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirteen—Bring Down the Skull

            Bainbridge stretched his hand out before him. His fingers were wrinkled—like, Draco thought, the root they had spent some time hiding behind before they saw Bainbridge approach the house. His face was shining, his teeth bared like the teeth of a skull left underground for years.

            And his hand was aimed at Macgeorge, not Draco, the way Draco had been sure it would be. Harry was far too famous for Bainbridge to use his magic on, but he might have changed his mind about Draco, who no longer shared his family’s prestige.

            The hunger, though, was all directed at Macgeorge, and from the tips of Bainbridge’s fingers came a twisting black torrent, forked all through with lightning, ringing with thunder. Bainbridge’s fingers curled up and then down, moving completely independent of the hand that bore them in a way that caused Draco’s mouth to dry up, and then he snapped his hands together in a sharp clap.

            Macgeorge halted in her pacing towards them. Her jaw opened wider and wider, and she uttered a short, shrill scream that was almost more horrible than the way Bainbridge’s hand moved.

            Darkness rose around her, flowed around her, in answer. Bones poured out of the leaves at her feet and assembled themselves in front of her—the skeletons of mice left by owls, squirrels killed by foxes, the hundred and one tiny debris of hundreds of corpses seized and eaten and left to lie. They stood on trembling paws and looked at Bainbridge with empty eyes, and then leaped into the path of that torrent.

            Bainbridge’s magic knocked the bones aside, cracking them, crisping them, and ripping back the outer casing of white on them. Draco thought it was all he could do to flay victims that didn’t have skin.

            Macgeorge chanted something and then clapped her hands together. The bones began to flow, assembling an animal much larger than the ones that they had belonged to, a skull composed of skulls on top of a spine composed of a dozen separate kinds of vertebrae, all of them bobbing gently in the air, connected with invisible string. Draco stared.

            He had never heard of any necromancer who could do this, or anything more complicated than sometimes talking to the dead, and he wondered what books Macgeorge had found, and how she had managed to avoid coming to the attention of the Ministry.

            Macgeorge gestured with both hands, and the creature began to stomp forwards. Bainbridge stood to meet it with his fists lashing, his magic bobbing up and down in chains from his wrists and reaching out, and Draco suspected that he could crack the bones open and suck the marrow out, or otherwise destroy Macgeorge’s defense, as easily as he had cracked the first set of them.

            “Draco!”

            Harry’s hand was on his arm, and Harry was all but shouting into his face. Draco jerked and flinched back, then realized that Harry was dragging him back towards the broken house, and that it probably would be a good idea to get under shelter, instead of sitting there like an idiot and waiting for Macgeorge to kill him.

            Or Bainbridge. Although he might disdain to flay famous victims alive and write the truth in blood on their skins, Draco doubted that Bainbridge would hesitate to kill them if they got in his way, either.

            He nodded and leaped behind one of the sagging walls, tracing a few shields in front of him with his wand. Harry grunted and went the opposite direction. Draco heard him scuffling in the dirt, setting up some of the same spells.

            Draco peered out. If there was any way that they could capture Bainbridge and take him in, then they should. The whole point of this trap, of this case, was to capture Smoke and Mirrors, and retreating made sense only because they understood neither kind of magic that was flying around in this combat and it was important not to die.

            At the moment, though, Draco had to admit that he was savoring the chance to watch two people with flaws fight. If he had to use his own flaw in battle, it might give him some advice he needed.

            And for the moment, they were evenly matched. Bainbridge’s dark power continued to twist and flow towards Macgeorge, but she continued to call more bones. Small skeletons pelted through the air, fastening themselves to the “creature’s” spine. Its feet grew heavier, making whole paws into its talons. And when it whipped a tail made of vertebrae and charged, the ground shook beneath it.

            Bainbridge didn’t try to stand his ground in the face of that charge. He rolled off to the side, burying himself in leaves for a moment, and then leaped to his feet. He was chanting something now, touching his wand to the coil of what looked like whirling smoke that hung from his wrist.

            Draco hissed and grabbed his left arm. There was that pain again, the sensation of dipping his Mark in boiling tar and acid both at once. It seemed that it happened when Bainbridge used Dark magic in conjunction with his flaw, not his flaw alone.

            Not that Draco had the slightest idea of what the fuck Bainbridge was doing.

            Macgeorge didn’t, either, but she pulled her creature up and set it to stomping and rocking in place instead. The ground beneath Bainbridge’s feet trembled, and he lost track of his place in a chant. Draco felt the pressure on his Mark ease slightly. Bainbridge lifted his head and hissed at Macgeorge in return.

            Draco backed away before he could stop himself, even though he was under shelter and some protective magic and there was no sign that Bainbridge was about to stop his battle to notice and finish them. Bainbridge’s face had gone smooth, and the dark magic that had concealed him when he was Smoke and Mirrors had started to slide over it. Draco didn’t know exactly what it was, whether his flaw was adapted to that or it was a protective spell that would return when he called it, but it was something Draco preferred not to face.

            Bainbridge moved one step forwards. Macgeorge called her creature back towards her, and then touched its spine and whispered something else.

            The spine exploded. Creatures rose into the air on delicate wings, assembling heads out of skulls and fangs out of parts of small animal bodies that Draco preferred not to contemplate. Now looking like large bats, they soared towards Bainbridge, and he turned and lifted his arms to meet them, the dark magic sliding and flowing and lashing.

            Draco leaned out as far as he could when he heard a hiss that definitely wasn’t either of the mad people they were watching. Harry was leaning out as far as he could, gesturing to Macgeorge. Draco wanted to beat his brains out against the side of the house at his partner’s stupidity, but that would only give Bainbridge an unfair advantage.

            Macgeorge gave no sign of hearing Harry, even when he softly called her first name. She was totally occupied in the battle, turning her hands back and forth to change the diving angles of the bats, snatching up any bits of bone when Bainbridge struck at them or destroyed them and assembling them into new creatures.

            “Nicolette,” Harry said again, loudly enough that Draco started to incant a Silencing Charm, even though he didn’t know if he could get it around all the shields and wards that both of them had in the way.

            Macgeorge’s head turned. Her eyes weren’t blue, but Draco still found them hard to meet, with the intense madness in them.

            And then Bainbridge said something that lit the bone-bats on fire, and Macgeorge fell to her knees, shrieking, and Harry charged out of his hiding place, and Draco followed him, wondering why in the world he had to be the only sensible one.

*

            Harry knew that attracting Bainbridge’s attention right now might not be the smartest thing he’d ever done, but Macgeorge was still a Socrates Auror like them, and someone who had only come into this case because he and Draco had asked her to help, and someone Rudie would miss and Harry would feel sorry for if she died.

            So he went out after her, while the flames danced on the bones and Bainbridge took a step towards her with his hand extended, his fingers curving down, as if he intended to pull her skin off starting at the level of her throat.

            Harry didn’t know what he was going to do, only that he would know when he got there. He kept his head bowed and his legs grimly churning along in front of him. His wand was in his hand, but his spells hovered behind his teeth, not verbalized as yet, not conscious, not chosen.

            “Stupefy.”

            Draco, from behind him, cast the Stunner neatly, slipping it over Harry’s shoulder and into Bainbridge’s back. Harry shook his head, waking from his daze, and admitting, if only to himself, that he should have done something like that before.

            Bainbridge staggered, but didn’t go down, probably because of the magic seething all over his body. Harry had never seen someone try Stunning a twisted cloaked by their flaw like that before. He did turn around, and his face was more skull-like than Macgeorge’s, some of the skin seeming to pull itself off and flow into the air to become more magic.

            Harry flung another Stunner at his feet, where less of the flaw seemed to be. Bainbridge hissed and staggered again, but maintained his feet and stepped closer.

            Macgeorge looked up and made a gesture with her hand that Harry had never seen before, one that seemed to twist through more dimensions than the human body had, and which left his eyes watering and his own steps faltering.

            Bainbridge screamed, once. Strips of skin were peeling off his legs, his arms, his hands, making them look more and more like the paperweight Macgeorge had once kept on her desk. Harry jerked to a stop, both because he didn’t want to get too close to whatever kind of necromancy Macgeorge was using and because his stomach was rebelling, leaping, churning, as he watched her do it.

            Draco’s hand closed on his arm. Harry leaned against him. At the moment, he was happy for Draco to do whatever he wanted in the name of keeping Harry safe. Harry had seen plenty of disgusting things on cases with Ron and Lionel, but never, precisely, this.

            Sometimes new things could still be as horrifying.

            Macgeorge snapped her fingers the way she had when she was summoning some of the creatures, but this time it was skin and not bones that flew to her. The skin she had torn from Bainbridge twined around her fingers, and Harry’s stomach twitched again. Was this the way that Bainbridge flayed his victims? Was it possible for Macgeorge to inflict the punishment with her necromancy because she was drawing on his flaw somehow?

            If so, then it didn’t last much longer. Bainbridge threw his head back and uttered an agonized screech, one that seemed to come from the back of his throat and made Harry throw his hands over his ears. Then he vanished.

            Macgeorge stood there for a few seconds with the tatters of magic still waving around her hands, the smoke that had come from Bainbridge and his flaw and the wavering swarm of bee-like hard objects that seemed to mark her necromancy. Then she wavered herself and fell forwards into the leaves, clutching her head and whimpering.

            Harry started towards her.

            Draco’s arm was back, slamming into his chest like the bar of a gate. Then Draco aimed his wand at Macgeorge and whispered a few words of a spell that Harry wasn’t familiar with, which made Macgeorge glow with a silver aura.

            “What are you doing?” Harry asked quietly. He would have yelled the words, at one time, but he had come to trust Draco enough not to do that.

            “Checking to make sure that she’s not possessed,” Draco said. “With one of the spells from the books that we’ve barely looked at.”

            Harry twitched his head a little. “We had other things to do, like setting the trap, and we could be sure that Smoke and Mirrors wasn’t possessed,” he muttered, but he laid his hand on Draco’s arm by way of apology. Draco nodded at him a little, which Harry thought was acceptance.

            “She’s not,” Draco said, when the silver glow had died. “But we should still approach her carefully. She’s used a lot of magic and not been in contact with her partner for days. Even if she likes Rudie less than Rudie likes her, that’s not a good sign.”

            Harry grunted and knelt down in front of Macgeorge where he stood, not moving closer. Draco sounded like the one who had been worried about Macgeorge from the beginning, the one who had absorbed Rudie’s memory, when that was really Harry and he was the one who should be more concerned. “Nicolette?”

            Her shoulders tightened, but she didn’t look up.

            Harry hesitated. She hadn’t really responded to her last name, either, when he was trying to get her attention earlier. Maybe something else would do. “Auror Macgeorge,” he said, imitating as best he could the crisp snap that the Deputy Head Auror would put into his voice, “Socrates Corps.”

            Macgeorge jerked her head up and stared around. Then she saw Harry and Draco, and visibly swallowed.

            “I thought Okazes was here,” she said, and climbed to her feet with a strained smile. She was still wearing her Auror robes, Harry saw, but they were as tattered as they would have been if she had spent a lot of time outside. “You—you haven’t seen him?”

            “We’re the only ones here.” Draco stood with his arms folded and his stare directly on her. He wasn’t touching Harry any longer, but Harry told himself he shouldn’t mind that, since he could feel the sturdy heat pouring towards him from the way that Draco stood at his side. “Did you think he would follow you for some reason?”

            Macgeorge shook her head and then took it in her hands. Harry stood up, but didn’t go near her when Draco gave him an impatient glance. All right, he could live with that prohibition.

            “It’s like a dream,” Macgeorge whispered. “I know that I came out to hunt the twisted, I know that I followed the blood, but I don’t remember anything beyond that.”

            “Moxon’s blood was screaming for justice?” Draco asked. Harry had never heard that phrase before, but then, he didn’t know anything about necromancy. He had done his part in coaxing Macgeorge back to awareness, so for now he remained quiet and listened, keeping one eye on her.

            “Yes.” Macgeorge looked at Draco for a moment as though wondering how he knew about it, but then turned back to Harry, who she seemed to have decided was her primary audience. “I can follow the trail of the killer if I enter the blood enough, if I ask the secrets of the dead. If.” She frowned and stopped, pushing her haggard face into her hands again. “If I become the dead, make my memories their own and live through their deaths. The ones they have the strongest connection to in this world, once they’re gone, are their killers.”

            Harry experienced a queasy moment of wondering if that had been true of his parents and Voldemort, and then pushed the thought away. At least they were at peace now, with Voldemort dead. “When did you decide to do that?”

            “After what happened to me in the Socrates office happened.” Macgeorge shuddered. “I thought Blue Eyes wouldn’t be able to corrupt my mind if I’d already buried it within the mind of someone else.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “A good idea, but not an effective prevention against other problems in this case. Do you remember firecalling Rudie?”

            “Isla?” A hard line formed between Macgeorge’s eyebrows. “She called me.”

            “She insists it was the other way around,” Harry said, before Draco could stop him. “Which makes sense, because she didn’t know where you were and marched into the Socrates office yesterday demanding to know.”

            Macgeorge licked her lips. Then she said, “I didn’t mean to cause that kind of problem. I was only following the blood.”

            “Why are you so interested in this case?” Harry had to ask. “Because we asked you to investigate?” It seemed odd to him that Macgeorge would have been experimenting with her necromancy for months but only lost control now. He wondered if the blue-eyed twisted had frightened her so badly as to push her over an edge she’d been walking.

            And what are we going to do if she really does lose control of her flaw?

            Macgeorge nodded. “Yes. And I grew curious, I have to admit. I’ve thought of doing something like this before, but this is the first time where I had the opportunity and what seemed like a perfect motive to do so. Exercising my own curiosity wasn’t enough of a motive.”

            Draco nodded as if that was perfectly reasonable, though Harry didn’t think so, and then said, “Bainbridge fled, however. We will have to account this night’s plan a failure.”

            “Bainbridge?” Macgeorge stood up now, her robes swaying around her. “What was his first name? I can do much with a name.”

            “Wallace,” Draco said. “I think the first name is less likely to be a lie, but nothing he says can be fully trusted.” He eyed Macgeorge. “And before you do any more following of trails, in blood or otherwise, I think you should return to the Socrates offices, or your own home, and get cleaned up, and rest.”

            Harry nodded emphatically, just in case Macgeorge would look at him for a different opinion. “Call Rudie when you feel better,” he said. “I think she would feel the best for knowing that you’ve returned and that your magic hasn’t consumed you.”

            Macgeorge laughed at him. The sound was rasping like a bone used on iron, and made Draco narrow his eyes, Harry was glad to see. “Now you’re listening to what the Ministry says,” she whispered. “Necromancy does not consume. Necromancy gifts, and frees, and teaches me how to see the world.”

            “And increases the chances that you’ll die of exposure and starvation,” Harry said, gesturing at her. “Then you can’t follow the truth anymore, except from the other side. Do you want to go there, so early in your life?”

            Macgeorge said nothing for some moments. Then she said, “I—I have studied necromancy more than anyone else has in years. It’s my gift. I think I can know what I can handle better than someone who’s never opened a book on the subject in my life.”

            “I have,” Harry said. He wondered for a second why Draco wasn’t speaking up, since he knew more about it, but then again, perhaps it was just as well to have Macgeorge distracted and her wrath spread out. “I did it for means of a case, and I never want to do it again. Maybe I don’t have the gift for it that you do, but even I can recognize when someone is on their last legs.” He stepped forwards and waved his wand, conjuring a mirror in his free hand.

            Macgeorge stared at her reflection. Her hand went once to her eyes, and then she dropped it and gave a large sniff that didn’t convince Harry at all that she wasn’t concerned. “You are not my partner.”

            “You shoved the last one you had away,” Harry said. “And you’ve exhausted yourself in pursuing our case, when you probably have your own waiting. I can thank you for your service, and tell you to go home and sleep.”

            “Only think,” Draco intervened smoothly at that point, “you can do better, absorb more information and learn more truths, when you have rested. The human brain does not work well when one does not give it that time to rest.”

            Macgeorge paused once more. Then she nodded and said, “I will return home. But that does not mean that I’m giving up on the necromancy.” She glanced at Harry, eyes narrowed as if she really thought that he wanted her to give up. “You should think about whether you want to oppose me on this.”

            She Apparated. Harry stood there for a few seconds, shaking his head, and then turned to Draco. “Did I say something about wanting her to give up the necromancy that I don’t remember?” he demanded.

            Draco, damn it, was looking as though he wanted to laugh. He shrugged a moment later. “She is a pure-blood, and we’ve always been on better terms because of that. Perhaps that’s the reason she paid attention to my suggestion.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “What a load of bollocks. You’ve been insufferable around her ever since you discovered that she used to fancy me.”

            Draco seemed as if he would say something for a moment, and then sighed. “We should consider what we’re going to do, ourselves,” he said. “We’ve lost Bainbridge, and a widely-publicized trap—the nature of the publicity, at least, if not the nature of the trap—means that the Ministry is free to come down on us for wasting time and resources.”

            Harry shrugged. “They do that anyway. For now, let’s go back and start combing through the birth records.”

            “In the morning,” Draco said, with a glance at the stars and the moon that invited Harry to notice them too, and what time it was.

            Harry smiled at him. “Of course.” He held out his hand, and after a few seconds, as though waiting for some kind of trap, Draco took it.

*

            Draco woke so suddenly that his heart jarred his chest. He lay there with his head turning from side to side, his body telling him that Harry still lay warm in the bed beside him, his hand finding his wand despite that.

            A chime. That was what it had been. A chime from Harry’s Floo. Draco rose quietly and left the bedroom. He was hoping it was Weasley, so that he would have a chance to ask her in private about what exactly those flowers were doing in her garden.

            He reached the Floo and activated it, but stood off to the side and cast a small glamour. Done properly, it would force the other person to ignore his presence, while also still feeling certain that someone was on the other side of the Floo for them to talk to. Draco considered it only a proper precaution, considering some of the people, like Weasleys, who might use Harry’s Floo and react badly to seeing him there.

            The fire flared, settled into a small, smoldering green ember, and Isla Rudie’s face appeared. She had her hands clutching something in front of her, which might have been a wand or might have been the back of a chair.

            Draco narrowed his eyes, starting to wonder how she knew Harry’s Floo address—was that the sort of information distributed at the induction of a new Auror into the Socrates Corps, and why had it not been given to them?—but Rudie’s words wiped that out of his brain.

            “I seem to owe you for telling Nicolette to firecall me,” Rudie snapped. “And I’m going to pay the debt back. The Ministry is hunting for your blood. Someone else saw that your trap failed. This is the Ministry’s excuse to witch-hunt you for a lot of the other things you’ve pissed them off for.” She paused, panting, and then added, “It’s going to be a lot worse than a scolding. I thought you should know, at least.”

            The Floo shut down, and Draco heard Harry’s sleepy call from inside the bedroom.

            But he wasn’t able to move to answer him for at least another minute, his shocked gaze locked on the flames.

*

            SP777: Glad you enjoyed that last chapter! Well, most of it.

            And the problem with chasing Blue Eyes is that he can leap from body to body, so they would have to take real care that they had the right person before they started beating him up!

            Seiren: Thank you!

            Macgeorge hasn’t gone quite that far, but it isn’t good.
- 12
- 13
- 14
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Library of Hades