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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirteen—Cold Magic
            “I would have appreciated more warning,” said Draco, stepping back from the doorway of the bedroom and turning around with his arms folded.
            Potter winced, but kept gazing steadily at Draco, although one hand clenched down at his side as if he was also bothered. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But the Ministry decided that they couldn’t learn anything more about how your father died from his bedroom. So they told us that we could—that we could have the funeral for him tomorrow.”
            Draco nodded, his eyes distant. He doubted Potter had formal mourning-robes, and he and Narcissa hadn’t ordered them from Madam Royal, either. They weren’t the sort of thing you bought on a whim. “Where is the funeral going to be held?” Because of course it would be in some hasty manner, in some Ministry-chosen place, to try and make sure the Bard couldn’t attack.
            Potter didn’t respond, so Draco turned impatiently towards him, wondering what he was thinking. He was thinking of Draco with compassion, from the way that he abruptly moved out of the doorway and reached out with one hand to touch Draco’s cheek. Draco stiffened a little and eyed him sideways, only for Potter to make a kind of meaningless, soothing hssh that sounded like he was trying to calm a horse down.
            “The Ministry is going to let you choose the place and the manner in which the funeral takes place,” Potter murmured. “Whatever arrangements he left in your will or told you and your mum will be followed.”
            Draco swallowed. “And the Bard?”
            “There will be Auror guards all over the funeral.” Potter dropped his hand and stood there looking at Draco, still much closer than he had come before except when he was letting Draco use Legilimency on him. “That’s the one part you don’t get a choice in. It could actually be a way of infuriating the Bard, because after all, people shouldn’t be mourning a Death Eater.” Potter rolled his eyes. “Or that’s what we’re hoping he’ll think, anyway. If he doesn’t attack in broad daylight with all the Aurors around, then he might have decided not to risk it.”
            “You’re hoping he does,” Draco said, although he couldn’t summon up much heat in his voice. “You’re hoping he comes after us.”
            “After me,” Potter corrected. “I’ll be wearing a glamour that makes me appear to be you.”
            Draco drew back and stared at him. “So the funeral is going to be exactly like my father wanted it to be except that someone else takes the place of his chief mourner?” was the first thing that it occurred to him to ask.
            Potter winced. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” he said, and that went some way towards soothing Draco’s irritation, even if it would never make up for everything. “But the Ministry thinks that we have to trick the Bard somehow, that we’ll never catch him simply by running after him and trying to clean up his messes. And what Dennis said about the Bard having a reverence for me actually makes it harder for me to catch him—as myself. My boss suggested this disguise as a means of luring the Bard close and hitting him with everything I have.”
            Draco digested that. Then he asked, as quietly as he could even though there were no other Aurors in the house right now, “And you don’t think your boss is on the Bard’s side? At all? There’s no chance of this leaking out?”
            Potter blinked very fast for a moment. Draco added, “Only you told me that he was against the arrest of Dennis Creevey, who at the time was the best lead you had.”
            “He was against the arrest for a different crime, before I got assigned to the Bard case, for political reasons,” said Potter, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think that he sympathizes enough with the Bard to try and hand me over to him. Kingsley loves the Aurors above all else, and our reputation would be shot to hell if the Bard isn’t caught.”
            “All right,” said Draco reluctantly. He hated this feeling that he had to distrust everyone and everything, that anyone who walked into the room and smiled at him might be secretly in league with the Bard, that half the wizarding world hated him and his mum enough to help a murderer get away with it. But if this was the sort of precaution they needed to take, then he’d take it.
            Potter smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Now…” He drew his wand and turned to face the mirror in the bathroom. “What do you think of this?”
            His wand traced back and forth, trailing magic. Draco leaned forwards in spite of himself. He didn’t often get the chance to be this close to another wizard’s magic for a lengthy period of time. Most often, curses and the like were cast and over before he could react to them, and he knew only his parents’ magic well.
            Potter’s magic felt as if it was a stream, a chattering stream flowing over rocks, cold and musical. Draco wanted to drench himself in it, even if he would drown. He wanted to touch Potter and feel the power thrumming through his veins and his wand at the same time.
            But he managed to restrain himself, and instead simply watched as Potter’s hair grew shorter and lighter, his face lengthening and turning pale. Draco had to snort, though, when he realized how pointy Potter had made his chin and cheeks.
            “I haven’t looked like that in a long time, Potter,” he chided. “Now who’s letting their childhood memories get in the way?”
            “That’s not an accusation I ever made to you,” Potter retorted, his ordinary voice bizarre coming from his changed face, and turned around to look at Draco. “And that’s what comes when I try Transfiguration without a model. I’ll need to look at you instead of your reflection while I work. Quiet, now.”
            Draco fell silent, not so much in obedience as in awe and wonder at having Potter this close. Yes, there was no doubt that was his magic, singing constantly away to itself as he leaned in and stared into Draco’s eyes. Draco felt almost as though Potter was the one practicing Legilimency on him.
            The fact that he would have let Potter do that, if asked, occurred to him, and he gaped. Potter raised an eyebrow.
            “I don’t need to copy your tonsils, Malfoy,” he said, and Draco hastily shut his mouth. “No, a little further open. Your teeth are useful. Yes, thanks.”
            Draco let his lips part a little, and looked sternly back at Potter, wondering if it was true that he was the only one affected by this closeness. Maybe Potter Transfigured into other people all the time. Maybe he let them use Legilimency on him all the time, for that matter. It would explain his unusual willingness to go along with Draco when he suggested it.
            No. No, I know that I’m special, and Potter thinks so. Draco thought of the way they’d maneuvered around each other yesterday, touched each other, when Lowell was here. That wasn’t a closeness he would have felt with just anyone.
            “Almost done,” Potter said soothingly.
            Draco realized he was shifting around, and Potter seemed to have mistaken his restlessness for boredom. He went still again, and Potter murmured his approbation as he flicked his wand a final time and stepped back, head cocked.
            “There. What do you think?”
            “You’ll have to do something about your voice,” Draco murmured, but his eyes were on Potter’s transformed features. Potter had done a really good job, he had to admit, and there were only a few minor changes to the hair color on the underside, near the nape of the neck, where it was harder to see, that he’d need. “And I thought you were going to be wearing a glamour.”
            “The Bard can get through magic as simple as that,” Potter said. “Transfiguration is much harder to detect. I don’t plan to talk much, anyway. Just keep near your mother with my head down.”
            Draco nodded. Lucius’s will hadn’t called for much in the way of speeches and so on. But he did have to make sure that if Potter was going to take this bloody risk in the first place, that he didn’t ruin it through a simple act of not being able to mimic Draco’s face as a perfect mirror. “Hold still anyway. There are a few pieces of hair that you didn’t manage to get.”
            Potter muttered something that sounded like, “Of course it’s the hair,” but Draco didn’t need to understand it, and so he didn’t really try. He stepped behind Potter instead, and carefully lifted his hair from the nape of his neck, letting his fingertips brush a little against Potter’s bare skin, just to see what would happen.
            Potter stood utterly still, the stream of his magic ceasing its chatter, and his breath coming a little faster.
            Ah.
            Draco didn’t even know what exactly he would do with this information, but he was gratified to see that he wasn’t the only one affected. Eyes on Potter, he murmured a simple charm, and the hairs that he’d noticed—not exactly dark, more a wavering color between chestnut and blond—turned pale to match the rest of Potter’s hair. Draco nodded and moved away. “Finished.”
            Potter turned around again and smiled at him. Draco snorted. “You still can’t smile like me, even with all the muscles in your face changed.”
            “Expressions are harder to master,” said Potter, and shrugged. “I never got top marks in Stealth and Tracking, anyway.”
            “What about Disguise?” Draco didn’t mean the words to come out as a whisper, it just sort of happened that way, and Potter tilted his head back to him. Draco watched him, fascinated. Potter wore his skin, but Draco had no trouble in seeing beneath it, and the stream of his magic had begun to chatter again, which was just an extra guarantee.
            “I had to work a long time to get good at it,” Potter said. “But I had a lot of motivation.” He tapped the center of his forehead where his scar—wasn’t, currently. “I hate staring. Having a new way to conceal myself from the people who stared every time I left the Ministry was a pretty good motivation.”
            “You hate what I’m doing right now?” Because Draco knew it was staring.
            A crimson flush flooded Potter’s assumed face, and for all that Draco knew it was his own face at the moment and Potter would probably blush like he did, it still seemed different. The way his expression had when he didn’t smile with all the right muscles, Draco thought, and leaned nearer to brush his hand one time through Potter’s changed hair.
            “What are you doing?” Potter’s voice was low and soft.
            “Something I want to,” Draco replied, and stepped back. “Something I haven’t had much of a chance to do in the past few days.” He winked once at Potter and turned his back to face the door. “You should cast the glamour on your voice. I’ll be busy preparing my mourning robes.” Those weren’t the traditional robes left behind at Malfoy Manor, in case the Bard had somehow got access to them. It was a loss. Draco had to admit it was a loss. But he was good with Transfiguration, too.
            And it didn’t seem like as much of a loss when he knew that he had left Potter staring at his back, baffled, behind him.
*
            It’s probably just that Malfoy’s so vain, he wanted a chance to look at himself when it wouldn’t be a reflection in a mirror. That has to be it.
            Harry wasn’t proud of the thoughts running through his head as he paraded at the head of a small collection of Aurors, Ministry officials, and former Slytherins through the gardens of Malfoy Manor, Narcissa Malfoy on his arm. Not far behind him walked Malfoy himself, in a hooded robe. Since he wasn’t the only one here hiding his face—Harry more than suspected that a few former Death Eaters who had fled the country had dared to come back—no one had noticed.
            Harry’s back itched at the thought of criminals walking around freely, but he had more important things to do right now than jeopardize his mission by trying to arrest them. For now, he took notice of the voices that murmured condolences to him, and tried to watch for scars and other distinguishing marks on the backs of hands that shook his, and watched mannerisms as people walked away from him.
            Lucius had wanted to be laid to rest in a large white building that Harry would actually have thought was a cool place to sit in the summer, not a tomb. It had an open, pillared portico all the way around it, and it was made of white marble and had some chairs here and there in front of the doors. When Harry got closer, though, he could see the inscriptions about death and peace and long rest in the stone.
            Narcissa’s fingers tightened on his arm for a second, the signal that he should step back and let her take the lead. Harry did that very willingly. He knew he would mess something up if he tried to pretend to be Malfoy in intimate circumstances, and he didn’t want to mess this up for the real Malfoys.
            Narcissa stood there with her head turning back and forth, sweeping over the crowd but not looking directly at anyone, until the procession quieted. Then she turned and laid her hand, for the first time, on the floating coffin beside her that contained nothing except bedsheets. Harry felt an unexpected pang, seeing that, if only because Narcissa’s face was so quiet. He knew she would probably only let herself mourn in private.
            “My husband was the victim of a killer who has taken numerous other lives,” Narcissa said, and her voice sounded tired. “He had served his sentence in Azkaban for his crimes and returned to his family. It is—a grief that he should not have had the chance to live out his life with us.” For a second, her hand tightened on the coffin.
            Harry nodded. That was the main reason he wanted to catch the Bard. He pretended to justice while feeling no sense of it. He killed people who had served their sentences and run away from the Aurors and were still being investigated alike. He thought he was justice, and the arrogance of it made Harry want to boil over.
            “But I know that he would want my son and I to continue on, and the world that he wanted to be part of to do so as well.” Narcissa looked up, and met Harry’s eyes for exactly twice as long as she met the eyes of her concealed son. Harry found himself counting heartbeats, and then telling himself that was ridiculous. But he had done it anyway. Then Narcissa was facing the coffin again, and she took a white flower out of her pocket and laid it top of the wood. “May he rest in comfort.”
            The flower was a narcissus, Harry thought. He moved forwards and deposited his own handful of soft earth from the gardens on top of the coffins. No one could see it, but Malfoy held another handful concealed in his own fist, which he added after waiting for several other guests to come forwards with flowers, or chips of stone, or in the case of one Ministry flunkey, a golden bird that jerked and sang a little.
            I think that they would expect me to look away about now, Harry thought, and he turned and scanned the gardens as if looking at the coffin any longer would overwhelm him. His eyes passed over bowed heads and blowing hair, hoods and averted faces, and then locked onto a shimmer at the far edge of the crowd.
            It could have been someone using a Disillusionment Charm, but Harry didn’t think so. It looked, sort of, like the shine of the ice that had been left in Lucius’s bedroom. Harry moved politely out of the way of another guest coming up to the coffin and faced the shimmer with his wand in his hand.
            The shimmer paused, eddied back and forth, and then suddenly breezed forwards and dived at him.
            To the other guests, it must have looked like a blowing haze, or a heat shimmer. But Harry was in the middle of that magic so suddenly that he had no time to raise a Shield Charm, and he was choking. Ice particles blew into his lungs. Hands grabbed him, but he couldn’t see them. Harry turned to the side and flung himself backwards, sharply, in a motion that should break the grasp of anyone under an Invisibility Cloak.
            But it didn’t. The grip moved with him instead, and something like a pair of lips locked onto his, exhaling the ice harder and harder into his chest.
            Dementor, really strange spell, someone who has Auror training, Harry’s brain chattered, even as his body started panicking because he couldn’t breathe and he heard distant screaming. He jerked his way free, and for a moment the lips moved with him, for a moment Harry thought he even caught a glimpse of the edge of a cheek—
            Then it was gone, and the force was gone, and Harry had a lot of screaming to listen to and a lot of questions to answer.
            But he was sure of one thing, now. The Bard hadn’t left on his own. He had probably sensed that he wasn’t targeting the right Malfoy, and broken off the attack for the same reasons that he had before.
            Either the Bard is incredibly clever at Transfiguration and able to see beneath it, Harry thought, as he nodded and gasped and played the part of a scared Malfoy well enough to pass muster until Narcissa was able to intervene and tell them he needed air.
            From beneath her shielding arm, his eyes scanned the crowd again.
            Or we have a traitor on our hands.
*
Severus1snape: Thanks!
Kain: No problem! I’ve been pretty busy, too.
If the Bard can see through defenses like Harry’s, chances for attacks on Aurors become even lower—but not necessarily for good reasons.
I’m pleased with the way Draco is coming along.
I promise that a lot more about the Bard is revealed in the next chapter. Harry has enough clues now that he’d probably start putting them together anyway.
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Bard of Morning's Hope