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Writ on Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3959 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Fourteen—Intelligence in the Trap



            “There’s no way that we can know what she’s going to do next.”

            Draco rolled his eyes at Harry’s back and stood up with a slow stretch. He still felt as though he could have done with another twelve hours of sleep, but one night was the most he was going to get while they still had someone like Nancy to hunt. He moved up behind Harry’s desk and bent over it. “We have to think about what we know of her as Jourdemayne, then,” he said. “We know that she feared me, that she knew she would change in Malfoy Manor. Do you think she might go back there and ambush my parents?”

            Harry turned around and raised his eyebrows. “Would you be sorry?”

            Draco simply cocked his head and looked Harry in the eye. It felt better than he wanted to admit to have those green eyes look at him with recognition, but he wouldn’t let that pleasure dictate his next actions. “They’re still my parents, Harry.”

            “Of course they are.” Harry passed his hand through the air in silent apology and glanced back at the notes in front of him. “I wonder if a trap at Jourdemayne’s old house might not be better. And we can look around for any clues she might have missed when she was cleaning up her potions lab, too.”

            Draco thought through the implications of that, but had to admit that he really didn’t have a better plan. “Let’s hope that she doesn’t come in. I don’t know what would happen if she wounded one of us while we couldn’t see her, but I’m not sure we would survive it.”

            “I may be able to work on something that would prevent that.”

            Draco turned his head and gave Harry a lightning stare that ought to have made him confess at once, or else boiled him alive. “You’ll tell me what you mean by that,” he said, when Harry just looked back at him innocently. “Or suffer.”

            “The perils of being in love with a Slytherin,” Harry said, and went on before Draco could respond to either the insult or the compliment in his words. “I don’t want to talk about it too much yet, but Estillo was able to open my memories of you with the Imperius Curse. What if I could break through the barriers in my mind that hide the memories of Nancy the same way?”

            Draco shuddered despite himself. “I don’t want to cast the Imperius Curse on you,” he hissed. “And you’d need the help of a Mind-Healer. We don’t have the time for it.”

            “If we went to catch Nancy, we may have to make the time,” Harry said, but held up a hand when Draco started to lean insistently forwards. “Don’t worry, Draco. We’ll do it out of the Ministry, if we do it, in order to prevent you from being charged with an Unforgivable Curse. And I promise that I won’t try to cast it on myself. For one thing, I would only resist it, and for another, I’m not eager to give them the chance to sack me, either.”

            Draco hesitated, but decided that promise was the best one he would get out of Harry. And it was true that Harry trying to cast the curse on himself would come to nothing, with his internal resistance. “Then I think we should go to Jourdemayne’s house now. The longer we delay, the longer we give her to take away everything of importance.”

            Harry nodded and stood, gathering up a sheaf of notes in his own handwriting. Draco tried to catch a glimpse of them, but Harry smiled charmingly at him and slid the notes into his robe pocket, patting them. “Are you ready to go?”

            In the end, Draco had little choice but to follow. He did watch Harry’s back thoughtfully as they walked, though, wondering if Harry had gone back to risking his life for Draco the way he had during the first case, when the memories of his dead partner Lionel were still strong for him.

            If he intends that, then he’ll have to learn better. That’s all.

*

            Harry tried not to touch the notes as they Apparated outside Jourdemayne’s wards and moved closer to the house. He knew that they would worry Draco if he caught sight of them.

            But he didn’t need to worry. Harry was making several speculations based on what they knew of Nancy and what he “remembered” of his encounters with her flaw, but he was confident his plan would work.

            But he had just got Draco back. The thought of losing him again so soon, even of risking him in battle with Nancy, which would probably happen, flooded his mouth with a sharp metallic taste and made him feel as if he was about to faint. He would let Draco fight at his side, he wouldn’t consciously set up a situation where he had to step in front of Draco to take a curse, but he was going to protect him, all the same.

            Draco opened Jourdemayne’s front door with a hex that made the door crash back against the wall. Harry blinked at him, and Draco stared back with a stain of pink on his cheeks and muttered, “Well, someone could have been hiding behind it.”

            Harry reckoned that was true, but it still made him shake his head as he stepped into the house. He felt the difference at once. There was no reasoning presence here—or at least none they could detect—and the wards had begun to fade. When he listened, he couldn’t make out the hum of magic from the lab and the room where they had spoken to Jourdemayne the other times they’d been here, either.

            He took a step into that front room, and gaped.

            The portraits and photographs that Jourdemayne had used to try and prove that she was a pure-blood (Harry was willing to trust Draco when he said that was their purpose) were gone. Bare wall hung in their place, and a large morning star made of dust was in the middle of the floor. Harry cast a Preserving Charm on it and then moved forwards, half-expecting to see ashes in the fireplace or the pictures piled in a corner. But they were gone.

            “Draco?” he called. “Why would she have done this?”

            Draco stepped into the room behind him, and Harry heard his breath come out sharply. “I didn’t expect that,” he murmured. “I thought she would have left them up and simply fled a house where she knew we would look for clues. But perhaps those portraits meant more to her than I thought.” He fell silent, and Harry could feel his mind racing.

            Harry left him to it, and began to look in the drawers. One was stuffed full of the notes that had tormented Jourdemayne, and Harry smiled at them sadly. Only now did he understand. Nancy probably had written them, but Nancy was Jourdemayne, and their handwriting didn’t look substantially different.

            He found a small notebook that he pulled out and began to look through idly. On the first page was a family tree that looked fairly accurate, as far as he could remember from the notes he had studied before they took this case. It listed Jourdemayne and her sister who had become a twisted as the only children of their recent generation. Her parents had died years ago.

            The second page of the notebook, though, made Harry’s lips dry out, because it showed the same general family line—a father with three siblings who hadn’t married, a mother who was an only child, two sisters as the most recent children—but with different names. And with a different family name, for that matter. Morningstar.

            “Draco,” he whispered, and turned around and held out the notebook. Draco came and took it, staring at it for a moment before he flipped back and forth between the two pages, and a dark spark came to life in his eyes.

            “I didn’t think about that,” he murmured. “I assumed the morning star was simply Nancy’s symbol as a twisted, but of course, she could have called herself that, and no one would have been around to dispute her.” He slammed the notebook down on the desk, and his hands trembled. “She could see the future. She was constructing a fantasy of an ideal life.”

            “Or else she went further into the future than we knew, and those things did happen to her,” Harry said, although it sounded like nonsense even as he said it. “Being captured by the blue-eyed twisted. Being hurt somehow by your family.”

            Draco sneered at him. “There’s a limit to how much we should trust our memory of what she said,” he snapped. “Remember that she’s insane? And I don’t care how far into the future she went, she wouldn’t manage to resurrect her sister, who’s a twisted and dead.”

            Harry nodded. After all, if Nancy really did have the ability to go far enough into the future to experience something like multiple days of captivity by the blue-eyed twisted, they probably didn’t have a hope of capturing her. “Should we look at the Potions lab?” he asked. “If there’s something that’s going to help you, it might be there.”

            “I know that,” Draco snapped again, and moved through the rest of the tattered room like a shadow. Harry followed him, trying to keep an eye on every corner and every broken and mislaid object left behind. Perhaps they couldn’t see Nancy before she attacked, but they might see what effect she had on the world around her.

*

            The Potions lab was even more bereft of materials and ingredients than before. Draco stood looking around from the door, then cast another charm that would keep a thin layer of air between his skin and anything on the floor or anything else he touched and ventured towards the shelves on the far back wall, which still contained full vials. Harry hovered behind him; he was far less confident in Potions labs.

            That’s a Snape-induced phobia that he’ll have to get over sooner or later, Draco thought idly as he bent down to examine one of the vials on the shelves. The next instant, he stepped back and cast a charm that brought most of the air rushing out of his lungs.

            “Draco?” Harry had stepped towards him, from the sound, his feet scraping sharply along the floor.

            “It’s all right,” Draco said, although it wasn’t really, keeping his gaze on the flask of volatile poison that he’d just found. When he looked up and down the shelves, he could see that most of them were poisons, of the kind that would kill in a few minutes. There was pure cobra and krait venom, mixtures containing nightshade and foxglove, and what looked, over and over again, like a purple-black, failed Draught of Peace. Someone without Professor Snape’s training might not have recognized it. One started out with the Draught of Peace and ended up with a potion that would rot out the stomach of the one who consumed it, while sliding them into a serene state of shock that would keep most observers from realizing what had happened until it was too late.

            “Why poisons?” Harry asked. He had come up beside Draco and had probably recognized at least one of the labels.

            Draco shook his head for a moment. “I don’t know. If she wanted to die, then you’d think that she could have swallowed any of these at any time and simply committed suicide that way.”

            “Could she?” Harry asked, his voice falling into a softer tone that reminded Draco of the way that werewolves growled before they charged. “I wonder. If she saw the future and the way she would change, doesn’t that mean that she also had the ability to foresee how she was going to die?”

            Draco blinked. Then he said, “I’ve never heard of a Seer on record who could See that. Their brains shut down from the trauma and they only know when it’s near because they can’t See a certain event that they should be able to.”

            “She’s hardly normal,” Harry said. “A Seer and a twisted who could travel in time, and she was one while she was the other. I don’t know why she brewed all these poisons, but maybe it was kind of an exercise? She was hoping that she could escape her fate while she was certain that she wouldn’t be able to?”

            Draco felt a chill creep into his stomach as the edges of that lonely vision touched him. Continually brewing, continually watching the levels of poison in the vials rise, and knowing all the while that one wouldn’t be able to make use of them.

            “Perhaps,” he said. “But we’re still speculating, and we don’t have much to go on, yet. For all we know, she’s watching us from some corner of the house and laughing at our futile efforts to trap her.”

            “I don’t remember her,” Harry said, even more softly, “but from what I wrote down and what you know, I don’t think she has much of a sense of humor. Jourdemayne didn’t.”

            “Then where do you think she is?” Draco asked, exasperated, turning around and retreating from the shelf of poisons. He didn’t like to think of Harry too close to it, even if he would probably be perfectly safe. “You understand her so well, you think you know, where is she?”

*

            Harry took a slow, deep breath. This trod too close to the edges of his plan that he didn’t want to tell Draco yet, but he knew that it was more important that they capture Nancy than that he get to execute his plan just as he liked.

            “I think she’s in Grimmauld Place,” he said. “I felt a tugging to go there before this case began, the kind of magic that tries to tell me when someone is violating the ancestral wards and heirlooms, and it led me to the family tapestry. I think she erased my memory of someone from it, and of course I never noticed because I no longer remembered that person and we didn’t know anything about Nancy.”

            Draco made an impatient noise, eyes fastened on Harry’s face. “I think you said something about that once before,” he muttered.

            Harry nodded. “But I also wondered why she chose that place. She might have affected my mind simply to see if she could, because she knew I was one of the Aurors who’d be chasing her soon. But why someone from the tapestry? She must have gone there at least once, to look for the appropriate victim.”

            “And you think she’s there now?” Draco cocked his head to the side, then shrugged. “I reckon it’s no more impossible than her being here and hiding in a corner somewhere, snickering at us.”

            “No more impossible,” Harry said. “And I think appropriate, in a lot of ways. The house is connected to your mother, who played a part in forcing her through the change she made. Connected to me, one of the Aurors who was hunting her. A secret, Dark, magical place, which probably contains a lot of the same kinds of artifacts that a twisted could value, or which perhaps could change someone into a twisted.”

            Draco stared at him. “Exactly what is in that house, and why haven’t you cleaned it out?”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself. “I don’t know, and that’s why I haven’t cleaned it out. Do you want to go to Grimmauld Place and look, or not?”

*

            Strange as the idea was, it was still the best lead that either of them had. Draco just made sure that he was keeping an eye on Harry’s hands and wand as they Apparated. He had a plan of some sort, and not knowing what it was only made Draco twitchy.

            The entrance hall that the door of the house swung open on was darker than Draco had thought it would be. When he reached out with his magical senses, he could feel that it was also Darker. He felt the thrum of blood curses, the hum of wards that had been sustained with sacrifice. That made him stay all the closer to Harry as they stepped into the house.

            What he couldn’t sense was any trace of Nancy. But they had always known that would be a disadvantage in this hunt.

            Harry spent a moment looking up and down the entrance hall, and then nodded and put his mouth close to Draco’s ear. Draco stifled the urge to laugh. They were working on the theory that Nancy was waiting for them here because she had foreseen that they would come after her, and they still cared that she might overhear them?

            But instincts died hard, and so Draco listened to Harry when he whispered, “The family tapestry is upstairs. Keep your eyes on my back. I’ll lead the way, and try to signal anything I see that’s out of place, all right?”

            “If you can even notice anything out of place,” Draco whispered back. “You’re hardly going to see footprints in the dust or a torn curtain if she doesn’t want you to see it, are you?”

            Harry grimaced, but stepped back and turned up the stairs without saying anything. Draco followed, watching the way his fingers fumbled in his pocket. He had taken a page of notes with him out of the office. If his plan was so complicated that he needed those notes to remember it, Draco thought, he more than likely wouldn’t get a chance to put it into operation.

            They rose slowly up the stairs. The steps creaked under them, of course, and dust came sifting down. Draco kept his eyes on the floor, trying to see if someone had made this journey before them, but of course he noticed nothing.

            The stink of Dark magic grew worse as they stepped out into the upper corridor. Draco grimaced and shifted his shoulders. He badly wanted to take the chance to stop and cast a few protection charms, but he knew they probably wouldn’t do anything about Nancy or any traps she might have set.

            Harry halted in front of him and tilted his head like a hunting dog. Draco shuddered, his senses prickling and his mind telling him that they wouldn’t get a glimpse of Nancy before she attacked no matter how cautious they were.

            “This is close enough, I think,” Harry said, and then turned around and held out his wand to Draco. Draco took it, but looked back and forth enough from his wand to his face to make it clear that he’d like an explanation.

            “I want you to use that to cast Impierus on me,” Harry said.

            Which wasn’t enough of an explanation, or was too much of one, Draco didn’t know and didn’t care. “No,” he said savagely, and tried to thrust the wand back at Harry. He didn’t take it, actually folding his hands behind his back and smiling at Draco. “Are you mad? I would still get in trouble for it, no matter whose wand it was, and you would resist it anyway.”

            Harry shook his head. He had the most maddening smile on his face, and Draco made a mental note to Stun him the next time he started smiling like that, instead of following him obediently along. “It’s going to be my wand,” he said. “And Hermione’s told me that the wards on this house are some of the most powerful ones in England. No one’s going to sense you casting an Unforgivable Curse behind them.”

            “You’re still mad,” Draco said, and tapped the wand against Harry’s shoulder. When Harry refused to take it, he opened his hand and dropped it to the floor. “Why should I? What would it accomplish?”

            “I need to reach the memories that Nancy’s hiding,” Harry said quietly, his voice charged. “The memories of the Black on the tapestry I forgot, whoever that is, and the memories of Nancy herself. I can’t cast the Curse on myself without resisting it instinctively.”

            “Then the same problem applies to me—”

            “No,” Harry said softly. “Because I trust you more than I trust myself, and if the magic’s not coming from my own core but from my own wand, I think I can relax enough to let you through.” He bowed his head and waited.

            Draco hesitated. Then he bent down and picked up the wand. “And you think that my ordering you to break through the barriers that guard your memories is all it’s going to take to knock them down?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “When someone accepts the Imperius Curse or doesn’t have a choice about it, then someone can order them to do something that defies all accepted common sense and all their beliefs. There have been records of wizards performing extraordinary spells and feats of strength under it.”

            “Those were the files that you were looking at this morning,” Draco muttered.

            Harry nodded, and then focused his shining eyes on Draco and waited. The moment stretched out between them, the loudest thing Draco’s breathing and the thrum of the Dark magic under his skin.

            Then Draco cursed and lifted the wand. “Imperio,” he whispered, the spell rolling off his tongue and striking Harry as though he was born to cast it, as though Harry was born to be under it.

*

            Harry closed his eyes and subdued his immediate impulse as the curse rolled across him, which was to wave his hands and shout for help. He breathed deeply instead, letting the magic settle into his mind and grab and warp what it found there. He wanted to fight, because that was what he had done all his life, but with some effort, he managed to relax his muscles and tell himself it was all right, that he trusted the person doing this with his life.

            And when he opened his eyes, Draco had realigned himself as the center of the universe.

            He shone with a subtle light. Harry found himself staring, and knew that he wouldn’t be able to look away unless Draco specifically told him to do it, because no order from someone who looked like this could be wrong. There was sunshine behind his eyes, and moonlight on his hands, and his fingers were pale and strong and Harry would have stood there while Draco strangled him.

            “Can you hear me?” Draco asked, and his voice had echoes that Harry would never stop wanting to chase down the sounds of. But for now, Draco had asked him a question, and it was important to answer. He nodded, and kept nodding until Draco held out one hand.

            “You can stop that,” he said, and smiled. Harry obeyed because he must, and because he wanted to, and because he wanted to see that smile better.

            For a long moment, Draco looked at him with sad eyes, as though he thought something was wrong with the order of the universe that said he was better than Harry and the one giving orders to him. Then he shook his head.

            “I want you to break the barriers of time and remember what Nancy ordered you to forget,” he said, his voice blurring with delicious accents along the sides. But Harry listened to them for only a moment before the order took hold.

            He closed his eyes. He could feel the walls bursting in his head, flying apart, and the shards of memories came rushing back to him, and he nearly forgot Draco for a moment, swaying in the wake of what hit him.

            Regulus, he remembered Regulus, how could he have forgotten him? Although Draco was so much more important right now, Harry still felt ashamed of having forgotten Regulus, because Draco had wanted him to remember, and he must have known about this long before Harry did.

            And there was Nancy, the stringy long black hair and the expression of abject determination on her face…

            And she did look like Jourdemayne, and Harry opened his eyes, determined to tell Draco, at least as determined as Nancy had been to tell him that ridiculous story about the blue-eyed twisted.

            She stood in the doorway of the tapestry room, her hands out as though she needed the doorway to hold herself up. She opened her mouth when she saw him, but Harry never knew what she would have said.

            He wrenched himself out of the Imperius Curse with a jar so hurtful it made him wail weakly, snatched his wand from Draco, and sprang directly at her.

            If he could see her and Draco couldn’t, at least he could make sure that he was the one squarely in harm’s way.

*

            unneeded: She doesn’t have companions of any kind they know of. But Harry was right that she had foreseen her end, and felt as trapped by her gifts as any of them.

            SP777: Thank you!

            Jourdemayne’s name came from the name of a character in a book I was reading at the time I started the story.

            I do have some original stories, but haven’t written any for a long time.
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