Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- 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—Jared Thacker

            “You mean you actually have something? I thought you wouldn’t, since you can’t search the Ministry archives.”

            Harry hid a wince. Draco was leaning against him still, a little weak from the spell Harry had performed the day before yesterday, but that was no excuse for not noticing the irritated expression that slipped over Athright’s face. They’d contacted Jenkins with Jared Thacker’s name, and she had written back to say that Athright had something and would meet them at the same spot on the cliffs outside Cuthbert’s Corner that she had before.

            “I have contacts and friends, who are sometimes of even more use than are Ministry archives,” Athright said, and shook herself a little, as though desperately soothing ruffled feathers. She ended up taking a breath deep enough to flutter her hair, and turning to Harry. “You trust my information?”

            Harry nodded. He wanted to say that they didn’t have much choice, since they knew nothing about Jared Thacker, and wouldn’t know if Athright came up with wrong information. But in some things he was wiser than Draco, so he wouldn’t say that.

            “Good,” Athright said. “As it happens, I’d heard of him before, in the context of a magical experimenter and researcher, though certainly nothing that would associate him with Dark wizards.” She took a file that resembled a Ministry one from her robes and held it out to Harry. “Here’s the notes on what I could remember, along with the owls from my contacts who could get back to me in this short amount of time. I’ll have more for you tomorrow, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back so soon. I’ll send them through Jenkins.”

            Harry took the file and nodded. “Thank you. That was remarkably quick.” It was remarkable that they had information on Thacker now, and Athright had also accepted, easily, the idea that she couldn’t owl them directly. She didn’t seem to mind that they didn’t trust her that much.

            “Good,” Athright said. “Because I have a favor to ask of you.”

            Draco tried to straighten up again, but ended up leaning on Harry too obviously instead, in a way that Harry knew he probably hated. Harry rolled his eyes and said nothing. He wouldn’t get through to the stubborn git anyway. “What favor can we do you when we’re on the run and the Ministry hates us more than it hates you?” Draco asked flatly. “Don’t ask for what we can’t promise.”

            Athright turned to Harry, so calm and polite that Harry was a little surprised. Only the pursing of her lips showed that she might have a different opinion behind that polished exterior. “Is he always this impetuous, before he even knows what favor someone might ask of him?” she asked.

            Harry bit his tongue so that he wouldn’t laugh. To think that someone thought Draco was the impetuous one of the pair of them made Draco stare, and Harry thought that was the only reason he was able to get a word in edgewise before his partner did. “Sometimes,” he said. “But it’s true that we might or might not be able to do you the favor, hunted as we are. What is it?”

            “At least you ask.” Athright folded her arms and shot Draco a hard glance. He had the sense to stay silent this time, although Harry could sense how hard it was for him in the tight grip on his arm. Athright nodded. “What I want you to do is make sure that I stay involved in this investigation until the end.”

            Harry blinked. “Sorry? Surely that’s more a matter for you to decide than for us?”

            Athright leaned forwards, her eyes so bright that they looked like a leopard’s. “I was an Auror, Potter. I know how it is. You get caught up in the thrill of the chase, and you don’t want to spare the time to call anyone to your side. Sometimes, not even a partner.”

            Harry flushed and tried not to look at Draco. “And you want us to make sure that we call you?”

            Athright nodded. “When you get ready to have this final confrontation at the Ministry that Simone has more than hinted you’ll have. Send me an owl. I might not get there in time, I might or might not be able to leave what I’m doing, but in that case, that would be my fault and not yours. That is the price I ask for my aid.”

            “It was a favor a minute ago,” Draco muttered.

            Harry pinched his arm and nodded at Athright. “We don’t have regular access to owls except when one brings us a message. We thought it was too dangerous. But I can send a Patronus to you, can’t I?”

            Athright smiled. “Of course. You may not expect one in return, since I was never particularly adept at that branch of magic. But I will certainly be able to hear your news wherever I am when it comes.”

            “Good,” Harry said, and waited until she gave them a salute and Apparated away before he nudged Draco in the ribs. Draco was still staring, almost pouting, at where Athright had been. “Draco? Come on. It’s late, and you should be in bed.”

            “I want to review in the information in that file.” Draco nodded impatiently at the folder Harry clutched. “I told you, I want to know every nuance of what happened here, whether Thacker really turned Ernhardt into a twisted or not.” He sounded as if he was choking.

            “Why does it matter so much if Ernhardt was born a twisted or infected into being one?” Harry asked quietly, his hand on Draco’s arm so that Draco couldn’t break away from him and try to walk to the house on his own. “I don’t think it excuses what he did, either way. He was still sane enough to try and kill people to keep them from being threats to him, and that’s sane enough to count as responsible in my book.”

            “I don’t want to pity him.”

            Harry concealed a sigh, although with difficulty. Draco had been saying the same thing since he woke up from his coma. And all right, Harry could see why he didn’t want to be forced to think of Ernhardt kindly in any way, or to regret hunting him down and killing him.

            But it was highly likely that Narcissa had been born a twisted, too. At least, Harry didn’t see any way that she could have drunk infected blood and turned into one that way. It was probably studying Dark Arts in her case. Did it really matter how one particular twisted turned into one? What mattered most, Harry thought, was twisted as a group, so that they could show how the Ministry had been busy setting up definitions that tried to lump together different cases as one and exploiting people with flaws for their own use while denying that anyone who had a flaw could be any use.

            “I want to look at the file,” Draco repeated, although he’d already said that, and stumbled a little. Maybe now that Athright was gone, he didn’t feel that he needed to keep up his façade of strength all the time, Harry thought.

            “We’ll do that as soon as we get inside,” Harry promised, and they carried on limping towards Cuthbert’s Corner.

*

            Hard as it was to admit, even to himself, Draco almost preferred to have Kreacher fussing over him to Harry, right now.

            Harry tried. He got Draco anything he asked for, and he fetched food for him and plumped his pillows and let Draco see the book that the spell had come out of, although he hesitated beforehand, as if he thought that might damage Draco in some way. But Draco still remembered the way he had chanted the spell when Draco begged him to stop.

            It had been necessary, Draco supposed. Grudgingly. The thing inside him evidently had been killing him and needed to be pulled out. But through the fever and the way it clouded his memories, Draco could still remember how Harry had hurt him.

            It had made it far harder to trust Harry than it used to be.

             Taking his anger out on Harry was useless, though. He had been doing what he thought he had to to save Draco's life, which meant he would do it again if he thought he had to. So Draco was determined to use that anger in a different way, to find the one person he could still be angry at in the form of Ernhardt and cling to the rage. Then there was the chance that he might do something productive with it.

             But to know whether he had the right to hate Ernhardt, he needed to see that file.

             "Harry," he said finally, when Harry had tried to give him a third cup of tea and a second slice of toast. "Enough. You said that we would look at the file as soon as we got back inside the house, and that was over an hour ago." He put down his teacup and fixed Harry with a gaze as cool and commanding as he could make it. "Unless you have some reason to keep me from looking at it?"

            Harry took in his breath and held it. He was staring at the file. Draco went on staring at him in response, until Harry sighed, bowed his head, and gave in.

              "I just don't want you to be disappointed in case the information you want isn't in here," he muttered, and reached for the file.

            "I have to see it to find out whether it is or not," Draco snapped, and took the file from Harry's hands with a speed that he knew stung. "Thank you."

            Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and picked up his teacup, sitting with his legs crossed as though that would help him concentrate.

             Draco turned to the top page of the file.

             The first piece of evidence was the kind of simple record that the Ministry put together for all their employees, listing name and birthdate and schooling, appearance and surviving family. Still, remembering what Athright had said about Thacker's supposedly spotless reputation, Draco doubted it was the Aurors who had assembled this file.

            Draco scanned the information intently. It looked as though Thacker, if he was still alive, would be in his late sixties. Perhaps early seventies, as the birthdate had a question mark by it. No death date listed, Draco noted, but then, it didn’t sound as though any of Athright’s sources were any too sure about Thacker.

            All the more reason for not trusting her.

            But Draco had already gone down that road, and he could admit that he had no real reason not to trust Athright. He studied the list of known strengths instead, noting in passing that the man had, or was believed to have, no relatives left living.

            Known to have studied Dark Arts, ritual magic, human Transfiguration, Potions brewing—area of specialty: Blood-Replenishing Potions—and defensive shields. Little proficiency noted in Occlumency/Legilimency. Passable proficiency noted in Astronomy, Compulsion, basic Arithmancy. Rumored to be skilled in animal capture and dissection.

            Draco swallowed. It wasn’t proof, but it was a few more slender straws in the building of the bridge that Harry wanted to raise. Thacker might have known enough compulsion magic to force Ernhardt past any hesitations he might have had, and he had expertise in at least one tricky potion involving blood. And there was the animal dissection bit. Had he practiced on animals, on compelling them to hold still and extracting their blood, before he had poured the blood down Ernhardt’s throat?

            But even then, Ernhardt might have come to him and drunk infected blood on his own, at his own insistence, the way that other people they knew had. Ernhardt was certainly crying in the vision Draco had taken from the bones, but it could have been from the unexpected pain.

            Draco closed his eyes and curled his fingers in the page of the file. If Harry murmured a warning about crinkling or bending the paper, Draco didn’t hear him.

            Or it could be exactly as it seems, which is certainly the more likely and logical explanation. Why am I so set on deciding that Ernhardt wasn’t originally a victim anyway? Like Harry says, we can hate him for all the crimes he committed later, crimes for which I’ll never believe that he wasn’t responsible.

            There was no reason for him to try and pursue this theory so strongly but his own emotions. Even when he’d learned from the bones with the spell wasn’t enough evidence to make necromancy worthwhile. He would be furious if he’d learned that Harry had performed that spell or one like it on the small chance of learning more about an enemy.

            But he was the one who had found the parchment with Thacker’s name, too, and that at least entitled him to the look at the evidence that other people had brought him. He opened his eyes and looked.

            The next piece of parchment below the top one was a letter that Athright had apparently received from someone who knew Thacker. Draco settled down to read it, handing the rest of the folder to Harry. He didn’t think he’d imagined Harry’s tiny sigh of relief.

            Draco ignored it for now. He might be able to admit that he was—well, probably was—wrong about Ernhardt, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten what Harry had done, the pain he’d caused Draco, in the attempt to cure him.

            The letter began with a salutation to “Diana,” rather than Diane, Athright, an inconsistency that Draco silently noted. Then it launched straight into a description of Thacker, ink letters as slanted and blobbed as though the person had written them on the run.

            Thacker is a subtle mind, but an obsessed one. When he became interested in something, he studied it to the outer boundary, until he had learned all that there was to know. He would not halt because of legal limits or practical ones.

            He thought blood of particular importance and interest, certainly worth more than the interest that wizarding society has often accorded it. He researched how to restore blood to bodies, and how to remove it. He often experimented on animals, but he was wont to say that there was nothing like wizarding blood for sheer power. He was fascinated by ancient theories that power was literally transmitted in the blood, and especially that as long as someone was a direct descendant of a powerful wizard, one could do everything that ancestor had done. One might even do great deeds if one was not a direct descendant, as long as the relationship was not too far distant (Thacker considered great-nephews and great-nieces, and cousins in the second degree, the outer limits to make such a claim reasonable).

            I do not know the family that Thacker came from, but I knew the family he claimed to be a part of. It is my opinion that he used a Memory Charm to make the family think they had raised him. They grew vague when asked for details about his childhood, and seemed to be in fear or awe of him more than they were proud of him. Such a contention does not equal proof, but it was convincing to me on the rare occasions that I saw him interact with his supposed parents and sister.

            These supposed parents were Henry and Grace Thacker, both Muggles, of the county of Surrey. His sister—or half-sister; there was speculation in the family that Henry was not her father—was Gwendolen Arlow, a witch of such little talent that she was not invited to Hogwarts. She married a Squib named Edgar Appleton.

            I have not seen Thacker in years. I do not know where he is now, or if he is still alive. In truth, it would surprise me; he pressed so hard on the borders of Dark magic, and with so little caution, that I think such magic might have consumed him long since.

            Please do not contact me with questions about him again. I have no other knowledge of him, or if he is still among the living. I have given you all the names I know, and I do not know where his sister and her husband are, whether they live, or whether they would have anything to add to what I have said.

            The letter wasn’t signed.

            Draco exhaled hard. He would have liked to question Athright’s contact himself, but he supposed there was a good reason for the lack of signature and the utter lack of any identifying detail beyond the handwriting of the letter (which was probably disguised in and of itself). At least the letter gave them something they hadn’t had before.

            Although…

            Draco ran the crease of the letter thoughtfully down his finger. A Memory Charm used on Muggles when one wasn’t a Ministry-designated Obliviator was usually cause for serious investigation. Draco had always thought it was because of the fear that someone would start claiming to be an Obliviator and stain the Ministry’s reputation rather than from any true ethical concerns, but it was still a legitimate point.

            Either the letter-writer was wrong about Thacker having convinced this Muggle-and-Squib family that he was one of their own through the use of Memory Charms, or he had never mentioned his suspicions to the Ministry.

            Or perhaps the Ministry knew?

            Draco narrowed his eyes a little and stared down at the letter again. That was a possibility, wasn’t it? Always a possibility. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Ministry had allowed someone with questionable taste in and practice of magic to exist because that person had offered the right amount of bribery, or been useful in some way.

            Athright hadn’t known about Thacker’s involvement in other kinds of magic, but then, Athright had been an extremely straightforward Auror, not the sort of person someone would expect to know about things like this.

            Draco sighed. And everything leads back to the Ministry. Can we learn anything without asking Warren and Jenkins, or trying to find someone we can bribe to help a pair of famous fugitives?

            “Draco?”

            Draco looked up. Harry was frowning slightly and holding out the top sheet of parchment. Draco accepted it back and glanced from it to Harry’s face, wondering what about the relatively bland information there could make Harry look like that.

            “Is there any chance,” Harry began slowly, “that Thacker’s bones might be down in that Potions lab, do you think?”

            The jolt that passed through Draco seemed to start under his breastbone and speed through his body to his legs. He sat up in the bed. “What?” he drawled. “Necromancy is somehow acceptable when you do it?”

            “Nothing like that,” Harry said, and held up a hand as though he could shield himself from the weight of Draco’s gaze that way. “I just wondered—do you think it’s likely Ernhardt killed him? Or did he die from some other aspect of Dark magic that he was playing around with? Maybe he even Transfigured himself and couldn’t change back. I’ve heard of people doing that when they’re trying to become Animagi and end up trapped as animals without their wands. He might have lived out the rest of his life as a—a slug or something, with the mind of a slug.”

            Draco had to smile. “A slug would suit him,” he agreed. “But even if some of the bones in the lab are his, I don’t see how we could tell without going through them and casting those spells on every one.”

            Harry licked his lips. “You think the bones that showed you that vision might be his? They sure as hell weren’t Ernhardt’s.”

            “Yes, I did think that,” Draco said, sitting up more, and wincing when he realized that he was almost shouting. His throat still hurt. He dimly remembered Harry pulling the Dark magic out of him through his neck. But he didn’t want to think about that, so he shuttled his mind away from it and continued. “But you were so against the spell that I thought I was misremembering, and we didn’t obtain any useful information from it after all.”

*

            Here we go again.

            Harry stiffened himself for this battle, though. He had let Draco have his own way for too long, because he felt guilty about the spell he’d had to cast.

            But without it, Draco would have died. The pain he’d suffered as a result was horrible, yes, but Harry remained firm in his conviction that death was worse.

            “We obtained a single vision,” he said, and held Draco’s eyes despite the way he wanted to squirm. A moment later, seeing the stubbornness take light in Draco’s eyes, he lost even the impulse to squirm. He clasped his hands together and held them that way as he flung the words at Draco. “The person in the vision was probably Thacker, but all we can really see is his height and a little bit of his face—not even enough to identify him. And Athright sent us some photographs, so we don’t need that. We got everything we needed from the parchment that you found. You did find something valuable, Draco. It just wasn’t in that spell.”

            “You have a prejudice against necromancy.” Draco’s eyes were still too bright, and Harry didn’t think it was with the lingering remnants of fever.

            “I have a prejudice against any magic that seems to kill the vast majority of the people who work with it, yeah,” Harry snapped.

            Draco blinked. “Macgeorge is still alive,” he said at last.

            “Because she was lucky and because she hadn’t been using it that long, yeah,” Harry said starkly. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to be very happy when you want to do something using it.”

            Draco’s head went back and his eyes were so pale and hot that Harry winced. “You can take risks, but I can’t,” Draco whispered bitterly. “Isn’t that always the way it is?”

            “No,” Harry said, leaning forwards and taking Draco’s hand, although Draco tugged fretfully at his hold as though he didn’t believe Harry meant it. “I just—I’ve been trying to reduce the risks lately, Draco, since I got captured in front of the Manor. That’s why I confronted the Montgomerys with threats instead of trying to battle them. And I wouldn’t use that spell, either. I don’t want any necromancy. I was asking—I want to know what happened to Ernhardt, who Thacker was. But I would walk away and ask you to come to Italy or Egypt or Australia with me if I thought necromancy was the only way we could ever obtain the truth. I value you more than I value my Auror job or getting back in the good graces of the Ministry.”

            “Or even changing the definition of twisted so that innocent people aren’t killed anymore?” Draco whispered.

            Harry nodded slowly. He hadn’t wanted to think of it that way, but of course it was inevitable that Draco would. “Yes. I want the killing to stop, I want innocent people who aren’t full twisted left unpunished for it, but I want you alive and with me more.”

            Draco closed his eyes. Maybe no other reassurance would have comforted him, Harry thought, but this one did the trick. A few tears leaked down from his eyes, but he made no move to wipe them away or stifle them.

            Harry looked away, to let him do what he needed to do in privacy nonetheless, and when he looked back, Draco’s eyes were open and soft and shining again.

            “All right,” Draco agreed. “We’ll learn what else we need to know through other means than necromancy. We haven’t even looked through the whole file yet.” He turned back to the folder in front of them.

            Harry thought about letting go of Draco’s hand so that Draco wouldn’t notice how limp with relief he’d become, but when he tried, Draco’s hand just tightened.

            And who has the right to know it, if he doesn’t?

*

            SP777: Not that Kreacher or Harry or Draco knows of.
- 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

Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity