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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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fourteen—Ministry Chase

            “We have to get out of here.”

            Draco had said the same thing three times now. Harry looked up at him in irritation from the floor, where he was busy trying to gather all the sensitive things that the Ministry might find in his house and declare Dark. Some of that included things as harmless as spoons that he had used to stir experimental potions. Hermione had warned him once that the Ministry technically classified most experiments as Dark, because it had no idea what they would do.

            “We do,” Harry snapped. “But they aren’t coming for us yet. That gives us some time to pack and run.”

            “How do you know that they aren’t on the way?” Draco spun round, glaring at him. His hair flew around him, and his face was so pale that Harry felt sorry for him. It couldn’t be easy to be told that the Ministry was bent on finding some way to drag you to Azkaban, when you had barely avoided that fate in the past.

            “I don’t,” Harry said calmly, standing up and casting the box he’d tucked those Dark objects into beneath the floorboard. When he cast another spell, it sealed the hole down, tucking Notice-Me-Not Charms into place over that single board. Let the Unspeakables or someone else come searching, and this part of the room would seem like the most uninteresting one ever invented. “But they aren’t here yet, and we can only react with what we already know.”

            Draco took a few gulping breaths and ran his hands through his hair. “Why are you so bloody calm?” he muttered.

            Harry shrugged. “Because I grew used to being told that I was an embarrassment and an encumbrance to the Ministry from an early age?” he offered. “Fudge didn’t like me, and neither did Scrimgeour. This is nothing new.”

            Draco sneered at him. “It has to be more than that.”

            Note for the future, don’t try to help him when he’s in this mood, Harry thought, and turned towards his bedroom, flicking his hand as he summoned the robes he wanted to wear if they did have to hide for a while—ordinary ones, not Auror robes—and the photographs he would always want to save, and his father’s Invisibility Cloak from beneath his bed. “Do you want to go to your place and get your things?” he asked over his shoulder.

            “They’ve probably surrounded it already.”

            Harry shrugged. He had only been to Draco’s place once or twice, and didn’t know how much sentimental value the objects there had to him. Or maybe he thought it was mostly objects that the Ministry wouldn’t disturb, like the portrait. He stuffed the robes and the photographs into the satchel that hung from his shoulder. “Then we should go—”

            There was a harsh sound from the front door, the lock hissing.

            Harry moved without thought, looping the Cloak over Draco’s head and pulling Draco against him the way he would with Ron or Hermione if they were hiding from enemies. Draco kicked and struggled and opened his mouth to explode.

            It was true that the Cloak wasn’t as convenient for two adults as it was for three children, but that couldn’t be helped. Draco seemed to get it after a few minutes and stopped struggling, although his breath was still coming fast. Harry wrapped his arms around Draco’s chest and held him still, bowing his head so that their hair mingled and he could breathe gently into Draco’s face. Draco shuddered once.

            The door scraped open.

            Harry peered through the starlight material of the Cloak and saw two Aurors step into the room. Well, they looked like Aurors, sort of. Harry wondered if it was the material of the Cloak that made their robes look ash-colored, instead of the scarlet that he would have expected.

            They moved like Aurors, anyway. He could say that much. They spread out and looked carefully from side to side, their hands on their wands, which they hadn’t drawn fully yet. The one on the left nodded to the one on the right and moved towards the kitchen. The one on the right began to move around the drawing room of the flat, his wand waving gently back and forth in front of him, as gently as a lion’s tail.

            Harry followed the circle that his pacing would take him on, mindful of the fact that he and Draco would need to move out of the way, and cursed when he realized that the man would walk past the mantle of his fireplace. The mantle where his journal sat out, shrouded in locks and locking spells but still a temptation. Already, the man’s head had lifted and Harry thought he could see interest firing his gaze.

            There were secrets in there that the Ministry could arrest him over, and never mind what they eventually decided about the Bainbridge case.

            Harry took a deep breath. He only knew one thing that would work in a situation like this, and while he didn’t think Draco would have any objections, there were qualms from his own conscience.

            He reminded himself that the Ministry could have handled this situation in any number of ways. They could have called him and Draco in and scolded them the way they would any other pair of Aurors who had failed. They could have assigned more Socrates Aurors to the case and put Harry and Draco under the observation of Warren and Jenkins, the two most senior Aurors in the Corps. Any number of things.

            They had chosen this way, instead.

            He touched Draco’s shoulder, and looked over his own. The second Auror had vanished into the bedroom. Well enough. Harry knew that he would have to confront them both, but there was no sense in hurrying the inevitable.

            “Stay here,” he mouthed, when he saw Draco looking at him. “I have to stop them.”

            And he moved in a way that flung the Cloak to the ground over Draco but kept him completely draped, stepping out into the open to hit the Auror reaching towards the mantle with a curse just as his hand descended on the book.

            The man jerked and cried out. Harry had enough time to make out that his beard was black, his eyes blue, and his robes, indeed, that odd ashen color that wasn’t Auror but wasn’t Unspeakable or Hit Wizard, either, before he whirled around and lifted his wand to aim at Harry. Harry smiled grimly into his eyes—the curse had been to stun and weaken the muscles, so that he couldn’t fire back quickly—and unleashed his only option.

            “Obliviate,” he whispered.

            The man’s face changed again, sense and memory drifting away from him like clouds across a bright sky. Then Harry heard the sounds from behind him, and dropped smoothly to his knees, so that the hex aimed for his back went over him and hit the first intruder instead.

            His body jerked and began to change, flesh melting from the limbs like wax. Harry didn’t stay to watch more, but he turned around with his heart pounding and his conscience silenced. If that was the kind of magic they were empowered to use against him, then he felt not the least bit guilty about his Memory Charms.

            He Obliviated the second man as well, cast a quick Finite to stop the curse on the first man, and then scooped up his diary and tucked it away into the satchel hanging from his shoulder just as Draco tore his way out of the Cloak, scowling at him. Harry shook his head. “Not a word,” he said. “I should have packed this away from the beginning, yeah, but I didn’t, and this is what I had to do instead.” He turned around, positioned himself so that he was halfway between the two men, and said in a slow, clear voice, “Harry Potter isn’t here. He had already fled by the time that you came in.”

            The men nodded, still staring at him, entranced. Harry nodded smartly and held out his arm to Draco. “Time to go.”

*

            Draco let Harry herd him out of his home, his mind quiet but brewing, in the way that Draught of Peace looked all flat on the surface; the real activity was beneath. Did Harry always use Memory Charms with that same facility?

            “You don’t need to worry that I would use them on you,” Harry murmured, as if he thought that was the reason Draco was keeping so silent as he followed him.

            Draco shook his head, but exhaled once, in a long, noiseless sigh. He eyed Harry. Harry was walking with his hips rolling, his head tossed back, his spine so straight that he would have made some of Draco’s Auror instructors salute.

            “That doesn’t bother me,” Draco said at last. “And you must know that I think using Memory Charms on our enemies only a matter of reality.”

            Harry glanced back at him with his eyebrows raised. “Then why do you look as though you swallowed an earwax-flavored Every Flavor Bean?”

            Draco scowled. He was sure that he looked better than that, more serious than that. “You can do that, and you can use Dark magic, and I’ve seen you kill in defense of me,” he said. “More than once. I know that you used Unforgivables during the war, too. Why can you do all that but not want to hunt down the twisted that you know are dangerous?”

            Harry’s parade pace faltered. He continued on his way looking more normal, his shoulders a little hunched and his head bowed against the wind. Draco followed him in silence still, but did come up beside him and brush his hand across Harry’s shoulder, so Harry would realize that he didn’t hate him.

            “I suppose,” Harry said at last, his voice muffled, “because I react to the danger that’s in front of me. But I hate the thought of the Obliviators, and how easy it is for them to destroy innocent Muggle minds, because a wizard was careless and said or did something in front of them. It’s—I don’t like general applications of principle, Draco.”

            Draco snorted. Nothing in the world could have made him hold it in, not if they were still in Harry’s drawing room with the not-quite-Aurors hunting them. “What are you trying to do with the twisted, but that?”

            Harry glared at him. “It’s to counter the Ministry’s abstract principle that says all twisted should be condemned. And you know very well that if you go by their description, then you wouldn’t even condemn all the twisted we’ve hunted, some of the ones who are missing those five descriptive traits that they supposedly have.”

            “What makes a twisted, as far as I’m concerned, is a flaw, insanity, and devotion to hurting us,” Draco said. “And if you don’t want to make those general applications of principle, then I’m more than willing to do it for you, Harry. We’ve talked about this. No making decisions that endanger our lives without talking to me first.”

            Harry gave a little motion as though pulling against a pair of reins. “Do you think what I did to those men endangered us?”

            “No,” Draco said, and slid his hand over Harry’s neck, down onto his shoulder. “I’m just trying to understand. You’re willing to run from the Ministry and use a Memory Charm on people like that, but you don’t want to hurt people trying to kill us?”

            Harry spent a moment looking a bit lost. Then he said, “I want to hurt people who are trying to hurt you. I know that I want to defend my own life. I know that you think sometimes I don’t, but I have something to live for since I met you, in a way that I otherwise didn’t since Lionel.” He stopped.

            Draco let the moment lengthen and stretch as they paused in front of the Apparition point. Harry turned to face him, and his hands rose and settled on Draco’s shoulders, his thumbs running back and forth as though he was trying to convince Draco and himself both at once. Draco laid his hands back on Harry’s and met his eyes, saying nothing. What Harry needed to say next, Draco thought he would need to say for himself.

            “But I also want to help people,” Harry whispered. “That’s why I can react when the twisted are trying to hunt you, or with these men, who were doing—whatever they were doing on behalf of the Ministry. It’s much harder to think about hurting people who might become enemies, and maybe not, depending on the way that they think and act.”

            Draco gave a single, fragile nod. “You didn’t recognize their robes, either.”

            Harry relaxed, and the smile he gave Draco was both brilliant and heartfelt. He was as relieved that they were dodging the questions as anything else, Draco thought, and for a moment discovered a deep weariness in himself. It just meant they had to address the questions later, as Harry would realize if he thought about it for once.

            But Draco had chosen to change the subject, so he would have to put up with the consequences if he didn’t like them.

            “No,” Harry said. He began walking again, and reached the Apparition point, drawing Draco snugly against him so that they both stood on it. Draco leaned his head against Harry’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Harry had held him like that under the Cloak, too. Strange to think he had a protector to rely on. “I thought they were Unspeakables at first, but their cloaks aren’t as dark as that.”

            “Another thing to think about and reason out,” Draco said.

            “You’ll do that,” Harry said simply. “You’re good at that.”

            Before Draco could open his mouth to object, the world faded around them into the blackness of Apparition. Draco clung to Harry’s body, the one solid and warm object in that cold darkness, and thought about whether he should demand that Harry drop his self-deprecation, too.

            Not now. Not yet. He didn’t question where they were going, either. He leaned back and let Harry take charge.

*

            Harry came out of the Apparition and glanced around. There was no one there—there was almost never anyone here, in this isolated street in the outskirts of Muggle London—but Harry had wanted to make sure. He sighed in relief and started tugging Draco along over dirty stones, wincing as he scraped on something. He really ought to get a decent pair of boots, or at least repair the one he had.

            “Where are we?” Draco lifted his head and frowned at the rows of close, dark flats around them, then stared at Harry. “I assumed we were going to a Weasley’s house or at least to your Black property.” He said nothing more than that, but instead gave another stare at the flats which communicated his feelings to Harry more clearly than words could have.

            “The Ministry knows about all those places,” Harry pointed out calmly, counting doors in front of them with taps of his boots. Fifth door down from the place he usually Apparated, right. The problem with using the thick wards he’d chosen was that they could blur even the recollections of the owner. “At least, if they don’t know about Grimmauld Place right now, they could check the records and discover I owned it.” He reached into the satchel and took out the thick iron key that had been concealed in the photograph album Hagrid had given him.

            “So, this place.” Draco stared at the door again, which was set with equally thick iron nails and made of a dark wood that Harry had never bothered to learn the name of. Draco’s silence settled over him, thicker still. Harry tried to chuckle as he slid the key into the lock, and the wards, on the verge of coiling to strike, felt him and dissipated, but it didn’t sound convincing.

            “It’s a secure place I created,” Harry said, and leaned against the door to make sure that it hit the wall instead of one of them. “To be safe from the Ministry, from my friends, from anyone who might come hunting me when I wanted to be alone.” He stepped in and flipped on the Muggle light, nodding when he heard the hum of appliances. It hadn’t been easy, at first, to convince the landlady to take money with no Muggle identity, but there was so much money. They’d come to an agreement.

            “Your friends?”

            Harry glanced back. Draco was leaning against the wall of the kitchen and staring at the refrigerator and the stove as if he had never seen things like that before.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “Sometimes I wanted to be alone, especially after Ron left for the joke shop, and that wasn’t something they always understood.” He turned around and opened the refrigerator. There was bread, mustard, some cheese, a little outdated but not by much. Kreacher did the shopping for this flat, under Harry’s strict orders. “Are you hungry?”

            “We never got a chance to eat breakfast, so yes.”

            Harry winced a little from the acidic tone in Draco’s voice, but kept right on taking things out and piling them up on the counter, avoiding the beer. Draco probably wouldn’t want it so early in the morning, and Harry couldn’t drink it without him. “All right, then,” he said with forced lightness. “I’ll toast some of the bread, and we can have—oh, I don’t know. How are you at conjuring butter?”

            Draco took a single step forwards. Harry turned around. It was surreal, seeing Draco in the middle of that cheap little kitchen with its lights that always seemed dim no matter how often Harry replaced them and the walls that were the color beige became when it died. Harry didn’t even think of this place often, let alone in the same breath as Draco.

            “I want you to tell me whether you have any other secrets waiting,” Draco said.

            Harry tried a smile out. It didn’t work. Harry sighed and plugged in the toaster, then dropped a few slices of toast into it. “None this big,” he admitted. “And I didn’t really keep this form you on purpose. I just don’t need to use it often, and since we became—real partners, I sort of forgot about it.”

*

            A whole second home? You forgot about it?

            Not that Draco couldn’t see, with the way it looked, why it wouldn’t be forgettable. Harry’s other home was much more comfortable. This one didn’t have more than one chair at the table, and the table had numerous scratches and cracks. Draco thought it probably didn’t have a fireplace hooked up to the Floo network, either. And house-elf service would be non-existent unless Harry called in his.

            But he had never once thought that Harry was capable of this sort of thing. It was the competence that Harry had been keeping secret more than anything else, the foresight about what the Ministry might do to him, the wariness.

            Draco had thought he would have to be the wary one for the both of them, and he didn’t mind that, much.

            Now he had to change things. And especially he had to change his conception of Harry, yet again.

            Harry was softly cursing the toaster. Draco stepped around him and made several small, neat motions of his wand. Two other pieces of bread lifted and started toasting, flipping over and over as they browned.

            Harry gaped at him, then shook his head. “I just don’t think about using magic when I’m here,” he muttered, and looked dubiously at the bread the machine had just popped up. “It seems easier to do things the Muggle way in Muggle surroundings.”

            Draco said nothing, but continued toasting the bread. Harry ran them glasses of water and didn’t take the beer out of the fridge, making Draco grateful that he hadn’t suggested they drink it. Draco didn’t think he could have refused gracefully right now.

            They sat down and crunched their way through their breakfast of, literally, bread and water. Harry said nothing. Draco found his mind going back to not only the men who had invaded Harry’s home that morning but to his own flat, the portrait of his Great-Aunt Gaia on the wall, the carpets he had chosen himself as soon as he could afford them, the bed that he sometimes slept in with Harry and sometimes sprawled in alone.

            Would the Ministry destroy all that? Or seize his property as evidence? He had thought they wouldn’t, but they might, if they were angry enough at their escape this morning, or found out what Harry had done with the Memory Charms.

            Draco closed his eyes, and shook his head. He had dedicated seven years of his life to the Aurors, in one way or another. He had chosen to walk away from his family to pursue this fucking career. He wasn’t going to back down now, and he wasn’t going to let the Ministry have it all their own way.

            “We can stay here as long as we need to,” Harry said, his words not so much scattering as accenting Draco’s thoughts. “Like I said, no one has any idea that this place is here. You can—I don’t know, write letters to anyone you think might be worried. I can write letters to my friends. And I can send Kreacher to get the Prophet. I think we should know what the Ministry’s saying about us.”

            “Those are all good suggestions,” Draco said, and smiled in a way that made Harry lean away from him. “But why aren’t you suggesting contacting Rita Skeeter? Getting the news out there, making them pay attention to us?”

            “You want us to take the proactive part.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “Of course. Were you really planning to just hide here until the Ministry did something outrageous enough to push you into action?”

            Harry blushed and scratched the back of his neck. “I just don’t see what else I can do,” he admitted. “The Ministry has this long grudge against me. I think Okazes has been preparing for this day for a long time. We have to wait until the worst starts coming out because we don’t know what the worst is, what they can accuse me of, until they start saying it.”

            “You keep talking about yourself,” Draco said, and reached across the table. Despite looking as wary as though he expected a scorpion sting, Harry stretched out his hand, too, and Draco took it with a frenetically firm grip. “But you have a partner now, and I can think of better things to do than just sit here.”

            Harry blinked at him, and licked his lips. Draco restrained the immediate urge he had to bite them. “So. What’s your plan, then?”

            “We start moving before the Ministry can put anything coherent together on us, of course,” Draco said flatly. “We contact Skeeter. We contact your friends. We contact anyone in the Ministry who still owes us favors, or would be pleased to help us for future favors. We contact the other Socrates Aurors. We’re not giving up.”

            Harry bristled. “I didn’t plan to,” he began.

            “We did nothing wrong,” Draco continued fiercely. “We are famous and respected by at least some people. The thing to do now is show the Ministry that they can’t fuck with us. Bainbridge is still out there, waiting to be caught. And the blue-eyed twisted. The Ministry cares more about punishing us than catching them? Well, won’t that make an interesting story for someone like Skeeter.”

            Harry blinked, once, twice. Then he said, “I’m good at the conventional kind of battle. Not the political one.”

            Draco smiled, and felt fairly sure that the lights in the kitchen were gleaming off his incisors. “I am.”

            Harry took both his hands now. “I remember that when you’ve reminded me. That’s why it’s good to have a partner.”

            Draco gave him another, different kind of smile, and ripped to his feet. “Where do you keep your ink and parchment around here?”

*

            SP777: They don’t know enough about the way that Blue Eyes or his flaw work yet to come up with something like that. Yet.

            Thank you!

            No, Macgeorge did tell Draco that she did used to fancy Harry. Even though she’s emphasized that it’s over, Draco is still paranoid.

            The Ministry is taking advantage of the immediate chaos to do something they’ve wanted to do for a long time.

            Seiren: Thank you!

            unneeded: This is the part where Bainbridge’s insanity comes in, definitely.

            And no, the Ministry did something a little stupid.
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The Library of Hades