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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.

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Chapter Fourteen—Written on the Skin

            “I don’t know if we’ll find anything else by looking through the lab. I think we should go back to Grimmauld Place and decide what to do with the Montgomerys.”

            Draco, still looking through the file on Jared Thacker, didn’t seem to have heard him at first. Harry had just opened his mouth to repeat himself when Draco slammed the folder down on the table that Kreacher had cleaned and brought to them, and turned around to stare at Harry.

            “So you would recommend just giving up,” he said, so flatly that Harry winced. “Before we know anything more than a single name. Before we’ve examined the cellar and the other corners of the house for information on Ernhardt.”

            “Before we go crazy!” Harry snapped. “Do you really think that you would have thought it was a good idea to use the necromancy spell if we were still in Grimmauld Place?”

            “Unless you have a secret room full of all the bones of your failed experiments, then no,” Draco said, and cocked his head, and smiled winsomely. “I wouldn’t have thought it a good idea to use the spell in a place where there’s nothing it can do.”

            “I don’t like this house,” Harry continued, doggedly. “Neither does Kreacher. It’s true that it hasn’t influenced us much so far, but the longer we stay here, the worse it’ll get.”

            Draco turned and began adjusting the papers inside the folder, making sure that every piece of parchment squared exactly right with the piece beneath it. “You don’t know that for sure,” he said. “You don’t know that it’s had any effect on us so far. And wasn’t this the best refuge that Jenkins could come up with? And the Aurors know that Grimmauld Place is yours and are ready to stake it out if we come back there again. And we can’t learn everything about Ernhardt there that we can here. And it’s convenient to the cliffs, which is the only place that Athright knows how to meet us.” He turned around in his chair and lowered his voice. “Not to mention that Jenkins is supposed to be coming with more information on Thacker tonight.”

            “We could Apparate back here and pick up the folder or whatever she has for us if we needed to.” Harry felt like snapping again, but he kept his voice low and clear instead. He didn’t want Draco having any excuse to ignore him. “I want to get out of this place because it makes me feel low and depressed, no matter how safe it is.”

            He paused, but Draco was studying the file and once again doing his ignoring act. Harry brought a weapon into play that he hadn’t wanted to. “You ought to understand. Malfoy Manor probably felt like that to you when you went back in there.”

*

            Draco felt the stiffness starting in his shoulders and working its way across his neck and up to his head, as though he was turning to stone. He wanted to leap up and snarl at Harry, and he wanted to remain here, silent as a gravestone, and never look at him again.

            How could Harry bring his parents up right now?

            Draco wanted to leave Cuthbert’s Corner, yes. But he didn’t want to do it until they had some concrete information on Ernhardt in hand, some way to show that he had indeed committed the crimes that he’d been accused of and it had been the Ministry’s fault for not investigating their Head Auror more closely, not Harry and Draco’s for investigating that Head Auror.

            They had no chance to find that kind of evidence in Grimmauld Place. He had explained this again and again, and Harry still didn’t seem to understand.

            Well, he would just have to turn around and explain it again.

            Draco turned, a patient smile on his lips that froze as he saw Kreacher pop into the room and wave his hands frantically at them.

            “Masters is being leaving!” he squeaked. “Masters is being fleeing!” He began to hop up and down and tear at his ears. Draco winced as he watched Kreacher ripping what looked like handfuls of hair out.

            “What?” Harry was on his feet, reaching around Draco’s shoulders and the bed as if he thought that he could calm Kreacher down somehow. “What do you mean? Why do we need to go?”

            Kreacher abruptly turned towards the door and hunched over. Draco would have thought that it meant he was down and defeated, but he heard the rumble in the back of Kreacher’s throat, and suspected he was bracing himself the way a warrior would before the charge of an enemy.

            “Because the bloody letters is being coming,” he whispered.

            Draco heard another sound then, one like rushing water. He drew his wand, even as Harry caught his arm in a hard grip and began backing towards the door that led into the bathroom. He already had his wand drawn, Draco saw with an ache of envy. Sometimes it seemed like he would never be as quick and as skilled and as dangerous as Harry.

            “We can’t Apparate from inside here,” Harry said quietly into Draco’s ear. “And from the way Kreacher’s facing, it’s blocking the only doorway out.”

            “I already knew that,” Draco said, although he shook the envy away and clenched Harry’s arm in turn when Harry stiffened as if he would withdraw from touching Draco. “What I think matters is whether we can face this, or whether we’re better off lifting shields and trying to resist it that way.”

            Harry relaxed and leaned around Draco to speak to Kreacher. It was strange, Draco thought, watching him, that Harry had been a leader most of his life, but he was happiest when he could follow orders instead of having to lead himself. “What do you think, Kreacher? Can we hold this back with shields?”

            Kreacher turned around. His eyes were so large and watery that Draco could see his reflection in them. Kreacher bowed his head a second later as if he couldn’t bear to continue to match gazes with them.

            “It not being mattering,” he whispered. “It being too late. Kreacher will help masters.”

            Draco thought he might have said more, but the persistent rumbling from the corridor had grown too loud to ignore. Draco looked up—

            And saw the tide of blood washing towards them, thick and persistent as madness.

*

            Harry had no idea where all that blood had come from, except for Kreacher’s muttering about the bloody letters on the walls, but he didn’t think it mattered. The blood was heavier than water, and Harry could see sharp shapes moving in it that made him think that the blood wasn’t alone, that other things bubbled and slimed and shrieked beneath that surface.

            He drew his wand and put himself between Draco and the blood.

            Draco tugged at his shoulder. Harry knew what he would say without turning to see. He would say that they should face the danger together, side-by-side, and that Harry was a fool to take this all on himself.

            And Harry could admit the justice of that, but he could also admit that part of him had frozen solid and begun to ache the minute he had to torture Draco with that spell that would relieve the pain of the necromancy possession. He wanted to do this for Draco, to show that he could still protect as well as hurt him.

            Draco tugged at his shoulder. Harry transferred his weight to his left leg, letting Draco pull at that, and lifted his wand with his right hand and the right side of his body, barking out, “Adsero!”

            The spell flamed up from inside him, spun out along his arm, and ended up exploding into a shield between them and the blood, a shield in the form of a great, crouched red-and-gold lion, paws extended on either side of itself and mouth open. The oncoming blood poured into the lion’s mouth and vanished, and so did some of the creatures that swam under the surface, torn by magical teeth and consumed by the fire that made the lion up in the space of a second.

            Draco made a soft little noise behind him. Harry reached back and laid his hand on Draco’s shoulder, pressing hard enough that he felt Draco wince. “Was that worth letting me defend you?” he asked, without turning around. The lion was stalking back and forth, but had already faded a little, and Harry poured more strength into the spell. The lion shimmered brightly again, and some of the shadows that had leaped through the door—Harry thought they had swum in the blood until now—shrank back.

            “How did you do that?” Draco whispered. “I’ve never heard of that spell before.”

            “Sometimes Light wizards possess useful knowledge,” Harry said. “I told you that before, when I helped you get through the wards on Malfoy Manor.” He felt Draco press painfully on his wrist for a moment, but he said nothing, and Harry turned, very briefly, to grin at him. “Feeling up to joining the battle now?”

            “Move.” Draco shoved at him, and Harry stepped aside and let him up and into the thick of the fight. The shadows dashed into the room, and the lion stuck out a lazy forepaw and speared them to death. But there were other creatures writhing in the corners, their bodies made of bloodied angles that resembled the shapes of the letters, and Harry couldn’t keep this one spell going forever; it would leave him too weak to maintain any other defensive shields.

            Draco swept his wand along in front of him and hissed an incantation between his teeth, quickly and quietly. A few of the shadows collapsed, as though deflated from the inside. Harry looked at Draco and raised his eyebrows.

            Draco shrugged and looked far too pleased with himself. “Trade secret of a Dark wizard.”

            Harry sniffed and began casting more ordinary curses and charms and hexes at the shadow-creatures that were breaking through the door now. “Light wizards know more than Dark wizards think they do.”

            “Not hard at all,” Draco retorted, and took a quick dancing step to get around the thick-bodied thing that was breaking through the doorway. It had paws and a mane and open jaws, like a distorted reflection of Harry’s lion, but Draco stuck his wand through its body, and it expired, kicking and giving a sound that wasn’t a growl because it wasn’t deep enough. “And besides, would you say that you’re still a Light wizard?”

            Harry grinned as he cast a Blasting Curse that ripped straight through the center of an oncoming blood-wave and reduced it a splatter against the far wall. It seemed that the house’s unnatural defenses were growing weaker, if one ordinary spell could do that to them. “This sounds like a loss either way for you, Draco. If I’m not really Light, then you lose the chance to tell me I’m stupid. If I am, then you’re wrong right now.”

            Draco sneered at him and leaped over something dark green, with multiple heads, before it could tear off his leg. “Only a Light wizard thinks in that limited way. But then, only a Light wizard would think he could still be one despite using Dark Arts.”

            “When I use Dark Arts to survive…” Harry began. He had to break off the lecture to destroy another wave of blood, though, and that left Draco able to slide in and insert himself into the conversation, smoothly.

            “When you use Dark Arts to survive, then you might as well use them in other portions of your life, too. Besides, unless you can make the point that your survival includes mine, you’ve mostly used them for other purposes.” He tossed Harry a bright smile and the corridor a glowing hex that destroyed something like a huge centipede scrambling towards them.

            Harry shook his head, feeling his lips tug, knowing he was on the edge of laughter. There seemed to be nothing to do but to turn and keep chopping apart the creatures that crawled towards them, with multiple legs and stings in their tails, with jaws so wide and bright that the corridor torches glinted off their teeth.

            And then there were no more.

            Harry stopped in the middle of the empty bedroom and looked around. Draco limped towards him, leaning heavily on the bed for a second. Then he stood back up and shook out his leg, and to Harry’s relief, managed to support his own weight.

            “The house decided to stop testing us?” Harry asked. “Just like that?”

            Draco shook his head, clearly believing it no more than Harry did. Then something scraped towards the door of the bedroom, and they both whirled around at the same time, backs together, wands out. Harry felt a little pulse of pride that they were able to do that even considering their recent arguments.

            The scrape was Kreacher. He bowed solemnly to both of them; at least, if he was bowing to Draco first, then Harry couldn’t really see it. “Masters is being coming into the corridor,” he said solemnly. “There is something that masters must be seeing.”

*

            Draco stopped and stared around the corridor. He knew something was different, but it took him a long time—far longer than it should have—to realize what it was.

            The walls were free of the bloody letters that had formed Ernhardt’s code. Here and there he could see dark smudges, where part of the writing might have faded, but he couldn’t make out what they had been even when he went right up to one and squinted at it. The letters had apparently turned into the tide of blood and defensive beasts that had come at them along with any other Dark magic hanging about the corridor.

            Draco took a long breath. Yes, the air tested fresher and cleaner than it had before.

            “Did you do this, Kreacher?” Harry asked quietly. He was looking around, over his shoulder and up at the ceiling as though something up there could explain the disappearance of the letters. Kreacher shook his head so hard that his ears rebounded off his skull with little snapping sounds.

            “Masters is doing it,” he said. “When bloody letters be transforming, Masters be defeating the transformation.”

            It certainly seems so, Draco thought. He wondered if this might be a reason to remain longer in Cuthbert’s Corner. If they had exhausted the house’s defenses, then it had nothing else to attack them with, and it belonged more surely to them.

            But this was only one floor, Draco remembered a second later. No, they couldn’t stay here. They should leave, as Harry had been arguing. At least in Grimmauld Place, the threat that might come through the front door would be Aurors, and they knew how to deal with and fight them.

            “I’m glad that we survived,” Harry said carefully, turning to look over his shoulder at Draco, as if Draco might suspect that Harry had a death wish otherwise. “But I really think that we should leave now.”

            Draco nodded, and had the satisfaction of seeing Harry’s face light up like a firework show before he turned to Kreacher. “You can pack up the rest of our things?” he asked. He only intended to take their wands, the clothes they wore, and the file on Jared Thacker with them for right now.

            Kreacher bowed, and bowed again. “Masters is good, masters is wise,” he said in a voice like a bubbling stream. “Yes, Kreacher is bringing the rest of masters’ things as soon as masters be leaving!” And he gave them an unsubtle shove in the direction of the front door.

            Harry caught Draco’s hand as he passed. Draco smiled and kissed the back of Harry’s, then ducked into their bedroom to retrieve the file.

*

            Harry sensed the difference as soon as he stepped into Grimmauld Place.

            He stood still, nevertheless, because he hadn’t spent as much time in the house as he had in his own flat and it was possible that he might be mistaken. Draco came up behind him and opened his mouth, but Harry held up a hand. Amazingly, Draco fell silent instead of immediately starting an argument.

            The hum of the wards was different, Harry discerned. There had been a background noise all the time they’d been in Grimmauld Place before this, because a place under such severe protection did tend to hum, but this time, it sounded as though someone had adjusted the noise a bit. Lowered it, Harry finally decided. The wards had felt the same when he and Draco stepped in, had looked the same from the outside, but someone had weakened them.

            And considering who was hunting him and Draco right now, there was really only one viable candidate for the people who could have done so.

            Harry caught Draco’s eye and gestured sharply with his head to the right. Draco nodded and faded in that direction. Harry cleared his throat and called, “Kreacher?”

            Kreacher popped in and took a suspicious glance around. Harry caught his eyes and held them, and Kreacher beamed and nodded, his ears bouncing off his skull again. “Master is wanting a pot of tea?” he asked, louder than normal. “Kreacher can be getting those things for himself, yes indeed he can!”

            Harry managed to hold back his chuckle. Kreacher would never make an actor, but it was possible that he would fool whoever was hiding and listening. “Yes, please,” he said, and made his way towards the kitchen. Kreacher vanished in front of him.

            Harry saw the tripwire ward before he struck it, the thin, glistening silver line stretched across the entrance to the kitchen. Kreacher, with house-elf magic, had hopped right over it, as the Aurors had probably anticipated he would do. Harry hesitated a second. The people listening to him had heard him talking about tea, knew where he would be heading, and didn’t know he would be aware of them yet. Was he better off striking the ward with a spell and yelling, to preserve the fiction that he didn’t know they were here, or backing off for right now and confronting the Aurors upstairs?

            Before he could decide, he heard the heavy noise of a body falling down the stairs, and a yell. Decision made, Harry reversed himself and dashed towards the nearest staircase. The crackle of spells made the house shake.

*

            Ten Aurors. All for us?

            Draco tried to keep the tone of his thoughts bright and bubbling, to hide even from himself how shaken he was when he saw the immense number of Aurors hiding upstairs. He had seen them at once, when he cast a spell that would let him see through the shadows and darkness into the rooms without lighting a Lumos.

            Ten Aurors. And while he and Harry were skilled, they were also tired from the battle against the tide of blood and defending creatures in Cuthbert’s Corner. Draco didn’t think they could take more than ten of them. There might be twelve, if they had found and freed Montgomery and Hannah from their hiding places in the attic.

            Then Draco smiled. Yes, there were a lot of Aurors, but they hadn’t thought about where they were. And Draco and Harry had the advantage of surprise.

            Draco stood there in silence for a moment, then touched his wand to his wrist and cast a nonverbal Diffindo. The blood welled up from the cut in a second. Draco flinched from the sting, but since that didn’t make any sound, it was permissible.

            Then Draco knelt and dripped the blood in a long line down the side of the stairs. At the same time, he whispered, “I am a member of the House of Black, and I ask shelter from my ancestors.” It was a spell he had learned for Malfoy Manor, with the name of his father’s family substituted for his mother’s, but Draco thought it would also work here.

            The walls were silent, but even that was different from the lowered, almost-silent hum of wards that Draco had sensed when they first came into Grimmauld Place. Then a black mist rose from the walls, a shadowy, soft, obscure thing, that touched Draco’s face and felt like nothing at all, before it blew up the stairs and into the rooms where Draco had seen the Aurors crouching.

            Draco flattened his back against the wall he stood in front of and watched, his head turned and his hands clutching at the wall before he could think to stop himself.

            Then he forced himself to relax. Whether or not this had as much deadly effect as it would have in the Manor, at least he could count on the mist to distract the Aurors—

            Shrieks rang out from above him. Draco jumped, and then moved out of the way as he saw an Auror reel towards the top of the stairs. His hands were up and battering at something that moved in front of him. He didn’t appear to strike anything but air, but Draco could see the curls of the mist, and they tugged and blew and snagged on the walls, anchoring themselves there for a moment before spinning tight around the Auror’s face and throat.

            The Auror gave another high shriek, a sound of piercing pain and fear, and then his head sagged to the side as the mist broke his neck. By then, he was close enough to the top of the stairs that the way the black tendrils unanchored themselves and came free sent him spinning down them. Draco watched the sliding body and licked his lips. He hadn’t thought the weapon he called would react that harshly, and he hadn’t thought in terms of killing any of the people who had once been comrades in the Corps.

            But the Ministry had sent the Aurors after them. And Draco should have thought in terms of it, because the Aurors who poured down after the body all had their wands lifted and their bodies surging like lean hunting hounds. Draco knew they wouldn’t hold back.

            So Draco strung a tripwire ward along the stairs, and made the first ones sprawl. That left the two or three behind them off-balance, and Draco cast Blasting Curses at them, aiming to break their legs and their wand arms, to put them out of commission.

            Harry’s voice rose from behind him, chanting the Disarming Spell like a prayer, and wand after wand soared towards him.

            Draco smiled, beginning to think that they would win this battle after all, especially when Kreacher appeared in front of them and began laying about with a frying pan.

            But that was before one Auror near the back stood tall and lobbed something down the stairs that shone like fire, then dived aside. Draco, his eyes full of white light, groped back and found Harry’s arm, which supported him, clutching his waist.

            At least, that was what happened for a minute, before the stairway exploded.

*

            Sasunarufan13: Draco tends to focus a lot on his own pain. Plus, the pain he caused Harry mostly wasn’t physical.

            I had to post some stories separately here because of the pairing requirements, most notably the Advent stories I wrote. On Fanfiction, I just left them all together as chapters of the same fic.

            Seiren: Thank you! Miffed is a good word to describe Draco.

            SP777: Draco has been as clear as he can be right now.

            And Thacker wasn’t necessarily looking at blood in the sense of inheritance as much as he was blood in the literal sense.
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity