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A Reign of Silence	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3889 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Fourteen—Notes and Rituals

            Harry woke sharply, in the way he had learned to wake after Auror training. Or maybe that was a combination of Auror training and the Horcrux hunt, he thought, rolling over in his bed and reaching quietly for his wand.

            His eyes fell on Draco, still asleep in his chair beside the bed, and then on the door of the room. He had wondered for a moment if Ernhardt was in hospital, or one of the Aurors who was particularly hostile to him, but he had to smile—grimly—when he saw a Healer in the doorway, staring at him.

            “I didn’t know you would wake up like that,” the Healer said, stepping back. He had dark eyes and hair, and Harry thought he looked older than the Healer who had treated him. Harry had sometimes caught glimpses of that one as he surfaced from having his magical core healed. “Was it something I did?”

            “I wake up when someone hostile is near me,” Harry said, and didn’t elaborate. This man wanted him dead. He wouldn’t have woken up otherwise.

            Lionel hadn’t believed in that ability, although it had saved his life twice when he and Harry were sleeping outside somewhere, waiting for their prey to emerge. But Harry no longer obsessed over his failures with Lionel, and that meant he could concentrate on the here and now. He watched as the Healer edged into the room. He cast one nervous glance at Draco, and fixed a far more nervous one on Harry.

            “I don’t feel hostile towards you,” he said.

            Harry smiled, and said nothing. Let the man believe he had soothed Harry. The instincts that had saved Harry’s life more than once, and his partners’, were still more worthy of trust.

            The Healer lifted his wand. Harry mimicked the movement at once, and the man paused and sighed. “I was only going to cast some diagnostic charms,” he said, his teeth snapping. “Surely you know that we can’t be sure of what’s wrong with you, or whether your core has healed completely, until we try those.”

            “Then cast the charms aloud,” Harry said. “I don’t feel inclined to trust nonverbal spells from Healers right now.”

            “You’re in hospital,” the man said, loudly enough that Draco stirred in his chair and Harry’s new hatred rose a few quiet levels. “I wouldn’t—you can’t go around suspecting everyone of constantly getting ready to kill you.”

            “I know what I felt, and I know how most Healers feel about me, considering you banned me from St. Mungo’s, and only dire necessity forced you to accept me back,” Harry said. “Go ahead and cast them aloud. I know you can do that, and the spells might be even more powerful that way.” Many wizards never mastered the basics of nonverbal charms, or at least never used them after Hogwarts.

            The Healer did some more affronted glaring. Then he began to cast, sniffing along the way and muttering things under his breath about some people who didn’t understand the sacrifices their caretakers made for them. Harry watched, and only nodded in greeting when Draco put a hand on his arm.

            “Do you have to keep the wand out?” Draco murmured from the side of his mouth, his words well-masked by the loud spells.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “He woke me when he came into the room, and I woke up with my heart pounding, which is something that only happens when there’s danger near.”

            Draco shifted, and for a second, Harry thought he might dispute Harry’s claim, the way Lionel had. But instead, he clasped Harry’s shoulder and leaned into the position that he might need to cast his own spells on the Healer. Harry tilted his head towards him and silently rejoiced in having a partner so perfectly matched to him.

            The Healer finally finished his spells and stepped back from the bed, including them both impartially in the glare. “Your magical core is fully healed, Mr. Potter, although you shouldn’t attempt spells of comparable power to the ones that landed you here for at least two days,” he said. “You can go whenever you like.” He snapped his head down and marched towards the door.

            “We will,” Draco said, his voice gentle, but nonetheless lethal for all that. “And sooner than otherwise, since we are in a place that does not welcome us.”

            The Healer turned back, said, “I have not harmed you,” and walked out, apparently not interested in the arguments to the contrary that Harry and his instincts could have given.

            Draco watched the Healer go, then snorted and faced Harry. “How do you feel?” he asked, taking Harry’s hands and kissing the back of the left one, then the right. “You sound better, and I assume that you wouldn’t have tried to pick up the wand if your core wasn’t functioning, but…”

            Harry blinked, startled, at his own wand. He had picked it up without thinking about whether the Healers had really repaired his core, simply because there was danger near and picking up a wand was what he did. But now he could feel the humming beneath the surface of his skin, the quiet readiness to strike or lunge, and he nodded. “I have my magic back, and I think we can leave whenever we want.”

            “Good.” Draco stood up and leaned over to put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, murmuring into his ear. “Jenkins took Elder somewhere to find out what she could about his assignment to the Socrates Corps. Warren left to find her and help her, I think. I don’t know why neither of them have come to fetch us in the hours since then, but I don’t think it can be good.”

            Harry swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “Or maybe whoever was behind Elder being hired delayed them. We should go and find them.” He hopped out of bed, not pleased when he staggered, but pleased when he managed to stand on his own after only a few seconds of Draco’s support.

            “Ministry first?” suggested Draco, steering them towards the door.

            Harry nodded. “I don’t see where else we can go, if Warren hasn’t come back or firecalled you or anything of the sort.”

            Draco paused for a second when they came out of the door into the corridor, but when Harry peered about, it seemed to be more because of the general presence of Healers than anything else. He glanced over his shoulder to Harry and nodded once, silently, impressively, before they got moving. Harry felt his lips quivering, although he clamped them firmly shut so he didn’t do anything stupid like start laughing. If Draco didn’t have his theatrics, then he wouldn’t be Draco.

            They halted so abruptly in the middle of the corridor leading to the stairs that Harry winced as he slammed into Draco’s back. Draco lifted his wand and hissed, a barely noticeable sound that made Harry try to interpret Parseltongue sounds in it for a second before he shook his head and leaned around Draco.

            “What?” he demanded, when he could see nothing but more corridor, and Draco standing there and staring at nothing.

            “Someone used Dark magic here, and recently,” Draco said. He rubbed his left arm for a moment, then glanced back at Harry. “I’m unwilling to walk into a trap, but—you haven’t had a vision since you woke up?”

            “Not since the clearing,” Harry said, gentling his voice a little when he saw how tightly Draco’s lips were pinched. “No, Draco. I’m positive. I don’t know what was used here. We might be walking into a trap. But neither of us is going to die in the next few seconds.”

            Draco stood there long enough that Harry thought he might make them go back, but then he shook his head and proceeded. Harry scanned the walls while Draco looked ahead, and that was why Harry saw the small square of parchment pinned to the wall. He called Draco’s attention to it, and Draco used his wand to float it free of the Sticking Charm that appeared to hold it there.

            We have forgotten.

            Draco’s hand trembled as he held the parchment. Harry glanced quickly between it and his face. “What does it mean?” he asked. The words didn’t sound familiar as a signature, and he couldn’t remember a time that Ernhardt had used “we” in his messages.

            “The handwriting is my mother’s,” Draco whispered.

            Harry took the lead after that, though Draco made a few ineffectual attempts to get Harry to stay behind him. At this point, Harry simply didn’t care. He was the more powerful one, and the one better able to handle murder attempts when Draco was shaking like a leaf and staring at the note in his hand.

            But no one so much as glanced at them as they made their way down the stairs and out the front of the hospital. Perhaps the Healers had suggested to each other that they ignore their unwelcome guests, Harry thought. Draco had already told him about the ruse that he and Warren had used to make the Healers treat Harry. If no one was responsible for Harry getting injured while in hospital, then they must think they wouldn’t be responsible for making him leave, either.

            The note remained on his mind, but Harry tried not to let Draco to see him thinking about it as they made their way into the street, and to an Apparition point that they could use to return to the Ministry. So his parents had forgotten about Draco. They had tried to forget about Draco, of course; that was the point of that absurd letter declaring they were separating themselves from him forever.

            Which meant someone else had had to write the letter, or at least leave it, if Narcissa Malfoy had written it before she underwent the memory modification. Someone who wouldn’t alarm the Healers, someone who could use Dark magic without alerting the people around him. Harry doubted even they would have felt it if not for the sensitivity of Draco’s flaw.

            No matter how he turned it around in his mind, Harry couldn’t come up with a way to make Draco’s parents relent and accept him back as their son. He had to come up with a means to solve the problem, though. Draco wanted to stay a Malfoy. And what Draco wanted, Harry would dedicate his life to providing.

            When he felt Draco’s hand on his shoulder, though, he remembered that they had another problem—that of Elder and a Ministry that distrusted them—that was almost more intractable than the Malfoys. He turned around, folded close in Draco’s arms, and let Draco Apparate them the way he insisted without making a murmur of protest. The more magic he saved now, the bigger a threat he could be to their enemies in the near future.

*

            The pointed stares and the whispers that pursued them as they moved through the corridors of the Ministry were so usual that Draco ignored them with more aplomb than he could often muster. No one seemed to know about Rudie’s disappearance, or that they had let Ernhardt escape. There would be accusing looks among the stares, open laughter rather than snickers, if that was the case.

            They reached the Socrates office and found Warren seated at her desk, arms folded before her and head pillowed on them, asleep. But she sat up and reached for her wand quickly enough when they stepped inside. She eyed them coolly, seemed to read and accept their presence for some reason known only to herself, and put away her wand with a light little snort.

            “You didn’t have any success?” Harry asked.

            “That depends on what you mean by success,” Warren said. “We didn’t manage to find out who had assigned Elder to the Corps. The minute Simone returned with him, several of the senior Aurors from Lucretius Corps called her in and started to interrogate her about what had happened. They told her someone would take charge of Elder. But when she finally escaped from them, Elder had vanished. No one seemed to know who she meant when she asked after him.” Warren spread her hands. “At least he won’t be working with us again.”

            Draco nodded, although from the glance he exchanged with Harry, he knew he wasn’t the only one to feel uneasy about where Elder had gone and what he had done now. An unknown faction in the Ministry had assigned him to the Socrates Corps; it was only natural that the same unknown faction would protect him when he got in trouble.

            Maybe it was an improvement, though. If they could track down Ernhardt and Rudie, there was the chance that Elder wouldn’t be right there to mess up the capture and make sure Ernhardt escaped them again.

            “Have you heard any news about Rudie?” Draco asked, since Harry was silent as though still thinking over the implications and their own interrogation seemed to be up to him.

            Warren shook her head. “Simone had to sleep off her magical and physical exhaustion, but she said that she knew a spell that might be able to give us a hint.” She hesitated, then added, “It would involve a sacrifice.”

            “Anyone we know?” Draco asked, purely for the way the question made Harry move protestingly at his side. The sharp smile that crossed Warren’s face was an unexpected benefit, but well worth it.

            “Luckily,” Warren said, reaching into her desk, “it requires a sacrifice of objects, physical possessions, and not life. But we will need to shed blood, and you will need to choose something that matters to you.”

            Draco grimaced. He could think of a few possessions with the Malfoy crest that he’d been able to bring with him when he was kicked out of the house, and that was the logical choice. If his parents had their wish, he would never have the chance to use them again anyway. “I assume that we need a special place for this ritual, as well.”

            Warren nodded. “A protected place. Simone has a sanctuary added to her house, a room where she planned to retreat in case the Ministry ever became—unreasonable.”

            “Decided to hunt her down as twisted,” Draco knew, was the meaning that lay between the lines. The Ministry’s definitions were arbitrary enough that they might easily be wrenched around to accommodate members of Socrates Corps, especially if anyone learned as much about their flaws as they knew.

            “I still have to think about what to sacrifice,” Harry muttered. Draco looked at him in time to see him rolling his wand between his fingers.

            Draco reached out and stilled his hands. “Well, not your wand, anyway,” he said. “You still need magic to hunt Ernhardt down.”

            Harry looked up and smiled at him, his hands uncurling. “That’s true. I have—there are some photographs of Lionel that might suit. Not all of them, but a few.”

            Draco had to smile despite himself. If Harry had chosen the objects to appease Draco as well as for their emotional content, then he couldn’t have picked better. He nodded. “Significant enough, I’d think,” he said, and turned to Warren.

            Warren was cradling a rather battered black leather book between her hands. “This is a diary that I kept during the first years I was in the Aurors,” she explained, holding it up. “I kept a record of the cases I solved, the fights I had with my partners, and how many times I expected promotions and the Ministry denied me. I stopped keeping it when I joined Socrates Corps. I discovered that no one rises up from here, that this is the cellar.” She smiled faintly at the diary. “And I found the best partner I’m ever going to have. Our rows aren’t the sorts of things I’d like to write down anyway.”

            Draco wondered idly at the fact that all the items they’d chosen came from their pasts, before they joined Socrates Corps—not that anyone else would have noticed the coincidence yet, since he hadn’t mentioned what he was going to contribute. “Then is there any reason to stay here?” he asked Warren.

            Warren shook her head. “I’ll have to Apparate you, because I’m the only one Simone trusts with the coordinates.”

            “That’s fine,” Draco murmured, a little stunned by how much he had come to trust Warren and Jenkins in the few days they’d been working together. But Warren had helped him get Harry into hospital when he would have died without Healers’ treatment. He owed her something for that, and it might as well be trust.

            Warren raised her eyebrows as though she had heard his thought and had her own doubts about it, and left the office with a sweep of her cloak. Draco hastened after her. Harry kept close at his side, turning his head as though he wanted a last glimpse of the office.

            Not that it will be the last, Draco assured himself firmly. If his parents had rejected him, then his future lay with the Aurors more firmly than ever. He would come back. He wouldn’t let the Ministry, or Elder, or their lack of success on this case, drive him out of the place he had earned.

            Harry’s hand fell on his shoulder as though he’d heard the thoughts. Draco smiled down at him.

            Or drive me away from Harry, either. If there’s another place I’ve earned, that’s the one, at his side.

*

            After quick stops at each of their homes so that Harry could retrieve his photographs of Lionel and Draco could pick up a small bundle stamped with the Malfoy crest, they made the last Side-Along Apparition and arrived at a half-buried cottage in a gloomy, dripping pine forest. Harry blinked up and around, then shook his head.

            “Something wrong?” Draco murmured to him as he pushed Harry busily along in front of him, towards the door of the cottage.

            “It’s not the sort of place I pictured Jenkins living,” Harry saw no reason not to admit. The roof of the cottage was tiled and tilted, and water sang softly all around them as it gurgled off the eaves and onto the ground.

            “Not Dark enough?” Warren smiled briefly at them as she took a key out of her pocket and held it up. Harry started to object they were too far from the door for the key to work, but there was a flash and click in the air, as if the key was entering a lock. Warren dropped it into her pocket a moment later, and gestured for them to walk ahead.

            “Not dangerous enough,” Harry said.

            Warren raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know as much about my partner as you think you do,” she said, and stepped up to the door in a few quick movements, knocking on it and calling softly. Jenkins opened it immediately, and she and Warren were soon talking, too softly for Harry to make out what they were saying.

            “I wonder how much we ought to trust them,” Harry murmured, leaning back to speak into Draco’s ear. “They just happen to know a ritual that might allow us to find Rudie and Ernhardt? Why didn’t they use it before?”

            “They probably didn’t want to use it.” Draco looked at the package in his hand, then back at Harry. “It’s not going to be easy for me to sacrifice the things I brought from the Manor, and I imagine it wouldn’t be easy for you to give up those photographs, whatever you’re pretending.”

            “Then don’t give up what you value,” Harry said softly, reaching out and closing his hand over Draco’s fingers. “No one said that we all had to participate in the ritual. Keep these things.”

            “Are you ready?”

            That was Jenkins. She was leaning out the door of her house, giving them a glance that seemed to see through their bodies to their hearts. Harry stood up straight just as Draco closed his hand over Harry’s shoulder and gave it a little shake.

            “I told you to stop being such a martyr about things,” Draco muttered into his ear. “Yes, I’m sure that I want to do this. I always was. We’re fine,” he added, raising his voice so Warren and Jenkins could hear him. “As long as you’re sure that these wards on your hidden room will be strong enough to protect us from the notice of the Ministry.”

            “I’m sure.” Jenkins held what looked like a ring on a silver chain, swinging it idly back and forth. “And when the ritual is complete, we should be carried swiftly enough to the place that Ernhardt and Rudie currently are.” She smiled slightly, raising her eyebrows. “Think about what spells you’ll use when that happens. Always best to be prepared.”

            Draco’s hand tightened on Harry’s shoulder again. Harry nodded his thanks for the warning, but as they swept through the door into Jenkins’s dark little house and she herded them towards an even smaller and darker door at the back, he didn’t think he really needed it.

*

            Draco had never seen a room exactly like Jenkins’s sanctuary. It was darker than he had thought it would be, and Darker, with wards around it that made his Mark sting. But the most interesting thing about it was the circles.

            There was a circle set in the middle of the floor, one that glowed like fire, although Draco suspected it was mostly made of copper. There was a circle around the edges of the ceiling, touching all four corners, so that no matter where you walked in the room, you were inside it. There was a circle around the outside of the one in the middle of the floor, and smaller circles patterned on single stones in the walls.

            Draco wondered what kinds of forces Jenkins needed to keep from bursting out of control, and then dismissed the idea. He didn’t think he wanted to know. They weren’t here to investigate Jenkins’s secrets, anyway. Draco trusted her enough to conduct this ritual that would take them to Ernhardt and Rudie, and that was all he needed.

            Jenkins took a position on the west side of the central circle in the middle of the floor. With nods, she directed Warren to the eastern side, opposite her, Harry to the north, and Draco to the south.

            Draco restrained the impulse to say that he should be in the north, because Harry was more fiery of spirit than he was and belonged in the south. For all he knew, that wasn’t the symbolism Jenkins was using. He did his best to relax his shoulders, standing still until Jenkins motioned for him to open the bundle that contained his Malfoy possessions: a stamped diary with the seal that his father had given him for his tenth birthday, a signet ring, and a wand sheath marked with the Malfoy crest from one of the storage rooms that he used to gaze at and touch for hours, since it had supposedly belonged to his grandfather Abraxas.

            “You don’t need to sacrifice all that,” Jenkins said abruptly, eyeing Draco’s bundle. “Just the ring will do.”

            To complement Jenkins’s ring, Draco thought, and laid the rest of his bundle aside with a small sigh. The sheath and the diary were dearer to him than the ring.

            Jenkins studied them all for a moment, and then said, “We can’t stop once the ritual begins. The circle seals itself, and we can’t escape it. Do you understand?”

            Harry nodded. Draco made sure of that before he nodded himself. Warren, of course, was already waiting, watching her partner with perfect trust.

            “Good,” Jenkins said, and the ritual began.

*

            SP777: I like the Cloak and Dagger series as a whole; I don’t always like the individual stories. Coming up with mystery plots is probably the hardest genre to write, for me.

            You mean the next story in the Cloak and Dagger series? When I finish this one. Sorry if that’s maddening.

            Diana: Here you are.

            delia cerrano: They do, at that.
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A Reign of Silence