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The Auror Method	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7771 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The Auror Method. I hope it’s been great.
Chapter Fourteen—Paean to Skill
            “You know that you’re going to be sentenced to Azkaban, right, Malfoy?”
            Draco sat in the holding cell and studied the pattern on the wall in front of him. He didn’t think anyone had intended to leave that pattern. It was a soft scratching of lines, and someone had tried to scrub it off, so another prisoner like him must have left it here. But Draco could still make out the hulking, hunched form of a Dementor.
            It seemed to be towering over a smaller group of human figures. Draco squinted, trying to make out whether he could see the Dementor opening its mouth to swallow the souls of the humans, or whether that was only a smear on the wall instead of part of the pattern.
            “Are you listening to me, Malfoy?”
            Well, no, he wasn’t. Draco couldn’t stop his ears from picking up the sound of Greengrass-Rosier’s voice, but he could stop himself from responding. He shifted so that he could lounge in the chair a little more comfortably. The bars that separated him from Greengrass-Rosier weren’t as interesting to look at as the wall was, and there was always the chance that the arrogant Auror would think Draco was looking at him if he turned that way, even though Draco was ignoring his existence right now.
            “I ought to come in there and tell you what arresting you cost this Department—” From the sound of it, Greengrass-Rosier was starting to scrape his wand against the lock.
“I can give him an accounting better than you can, Elian,” said a voice that made Draco’s heart beat faster, despite everything. “And it’s interesting seeing you down here anyway, when I distinctly heard Kingsley tell you to stay away from this prisoner.”
Greengrass-Rosier gave a little snarl that Draco didn’t think was feigned. This time, Draco thought it worthwhile to turn his head and see the idiot. He was leaning against the bars as though to protect himself from an attack from behind.
And Potter was the one who was behind him, giving him a vague smile in the instant before he turned his head and fixed his gaze on Draco.
Draco looked back with his pulse fluttering in his throat. There was no way that he could pretend to be indifferent to Potter, and it would be a waste of time to try. He would start when Potter spoke, and betray himself. Or he would make a motion with one hand to reach out and touch Potter, and only then remember that he wasn’t allowed to. Something would happen that would be stupid and give him away.
“I’m the one who took on the costs of this operation, while you only had one acting part,” Potter went on quietly, turning to glance at Greengrass-Rosier. “I’m the most appropriate person to enlighten him. And you’re the one who needs to leave, or the sacking that we thought we were playing at becomes real.” He added, as Greengrass-Rosier opened his mouth, maybe to question Potter, “And I have that directly from Kingsley’s mouth.”
Greengrass-Rosier slinked away like a whipped dog. Draco nodded, and was proud that his voice was distant when he spoke. “Thank you for getting rid of him. He was tiresome to listen to.”
“I’m sure.” Potter leaned one elbow against the bars, and Draco promptly looked away again. He had thought Potter was going to come into the cell and speak to him, and that would have been an acceptable excuse to pay attention to him, but this wasn’t.
“You’re not sorry for it, even now, are you?” Potter asked, his voice full of something that sounded like soft sadness. “I have to wonder how you got away with your deception for so long. You’re arrogant and won’t lower yourself to feigning something you don’t feel, like respect for others. And you never noticed that I was playing you.”
Draco tightened his fingers on the sides of the chair, but didn’t respond. Perhaps the image on the wall wasn’t a Dementor after all, the way he had first thought it was. Perhaps he was looking at a Grim hunched over and about to strike at his prey.
“Malfoy? Are you listening to me?” Potter rapped on the bars and made them ring like bells, something Draco hadn’t known was possible. He jumped. Potter sighed. “This could be important, you know. That you aren’t as good an actor as you think you are.”
Draco said nothing. He and Potter had already said everything that had to be said between them, he thought, and Greengrass-Rosier was right. He would be sentenced to Azkaban for his thefts, and there was nothing Potter could do to stop that, not when he had been the one to bring Draco in in the first place.
Potter sighed, said, “Maybe it’s better this way,” and then turned around and walked down the corridor. Draco allowed him to get far away enough away that he knew Potter wouldn’t suddenly turn around and come back before he closed his eyes.
But still he wouldn’t bow his head. And he opened his eyes in a few minutes and went on studying the pattern on the walls, which he was now pretty sure was a crouching dragon breathing fire back at the humans trying to fling chains over its wings.
*
Draco came before the Lower Wizengamot—the smaller version of the Wizengamot, full of members chosen on a rotating monthly basis, that dealt with smaller crimes than murder or violations of the laws governing underage magic—two days later. The Auror who arrived to escort him to the courtroom looked in through the bars at him and whistled softly. “Wow. I’m glad that I never took up a life of crime. I wouldn’t like what it did to my looks.”
Draco started despite himself. This was Auror Mytherian, only looking as Draco had never seen him, with a calm face and almost pitying expression as he unlocked Draco’s cell. “Come on. Walk in front of me, hands where I can see them.”
He was a good actor, Draco thought, studying the sound of Mytherian’s steps as much as he could over his shoulder, while Mytherian now and then murmured directions to go around a certain corner or past a certain office. Draco would have said that all Mytherian cared about was sulking and getting one over on Potter, before this. But this man was an Auror who seemed patient, almost nice, but was certainly keeping a sharp eye on Draco. Draco knew he didn’t dare try to run, even if he could have got out of the Ministry on his own. Mytherian would have captured him in seconds.
That made Draco wonder something, and while he didn’t really think he could escape, he was going to ask questions before he ended up in Azkaban.
“Don’t you envy Potter at all?” he asked, as they approached the thick oak door of the courtroom. “I thought you had to have a real emotion at bottom when you were acting like that. Or at least be able to think yourself into it.”
Mytherian chuckled. “Oh, I would probably find him insufferable if I had to work with him all the time. That noble desire to always be sacrificing himself for something, and the sheer physical pain he went through when he had to lie…I don’t know why he became an Auror at all if he wanted a career that was always ethically pure.”
Draco cocked his head. “Then he does regret having to lie to me?”
Mytherian paused with one hand on the door, coming up beside Draco so that he could give Draco the most incredulous look Draco had ever seen on another being’s face. “You’re as blind as he said,” Mytherian muttered, and pushed the door open. “Draco Malfoy, Auror Mytherian escorting.”
Draco went in with his head lifted, hoping that his blush at Mytherian’s last words wasn’t as visible as it felt like. But he had something more important than even the way the opening moments of his trial went on his mind.
Potter really does regret it. I know he said that, but I thought even that was just a ploy. It certainly didn’t keep him from arresting me.
As the introductions were made of the Wizengamot members who would preside at his trial and the Aurors who would give testimony against him, Draco leaned thoughtfully back in his chair and pursued the sort of understanding he hadn’t been able to when he was so caught up in rage at the failure of his plans.
Potter had said that he didn’t want to do this, that he had freely given Draco the chance to confess. It was true he had also fought against sleeping with Draco. Draco had thought that had to do with the bad experience he’d told Draco about and with some Gryffindor idea that lovemaking should be shared only between people committed to each other. And then Potter had confessed, and he’d attributed every scrap of it to Potter’s ethics, the way Mytherian seemed to do.
But what if it was more than that? What if Potter regretted what he had to do not only because he wanted to be perfectly ethical all the time, the way Mytherian had said, but because it was Draco that he’d had to do it to?
Draco looked up when the recitation of his various crimes and the procedures that would be used to interrogate him finally came to an end. Potter was taking his place at the small mahogany podium set up for the chief witness in front of Draco.
Draco did what he hadn’t tried to do since Potter had betrayed him—turned him in, maybe he could think of it like that—and caught Potter’s eye.
Potter gave him a single look, so deep and blazing that Draco bit his lip to keep from gasping. It wasn’t the cool, detached one he had thought Potter would use, but on the other hand, it wasn’t mocking or upset, either. It was trying to give him a message, and Draco wanted to kick himself for not understanding.
For not looking for the message earlier.
Potter faced forwards again and took the oath that would be used on him in place of Veritaserum, and then began to answer questions. Draco listened with half an ear to a description of what Potter had already told him, how they had started suspecting Draco but had had no excuse to get in and search Malfoy Manor until Draco had put out the call for an Auror guard after he started receiving the death threats.
At least this confirmed that Potter thought him worth thinking about and putting a lot of planning into. And that Potter was intelligent.
Which meant…
Draco snapped back to attention as the chief of the Lower Wizengamot for this month, a plump wizard named Horatio Pinenut, leaned forwards and asked, “And what is your recommendation for punishment, Auror Potter?”
Draco hadn’t known they allowed Aurors to recommend punishments. On the other hand, Potter wasn’t an ordinary Auror. For the moment, Draco was fully prepared to celebrate that fact, if it would work for him.
Potter’s head tipped in so slow and sensuous a motion that Draco had to stop himself from licking his lips. Potter had no right to look like that, that was all.
“There are several complicating factors to the case that inform my recommendation, sir,” said Potter. “May I explain them?”
Pinenut flinched and blinked. It was probably overloading his brain, this notion of exceptions, Draco thought wryly. “Of course, Auror Potter.”
“First,” said Potter, “there’s the fact that Draco Malfoy did not actually complete his intended theft from Gringotts. Second, he endured several minutes of punishment, total, under some of the most powerful goblin curses we know of.” He turned his head and fastened his eyes on Draco. “And third, there is the loss of his wand.”
“He’s committed plenty of other crimes,” a woman with grey hair snapped at once. Draco decided that he didn’t like her.
“Of course, but we couldn’t find enough evidence to try him at the time, and going through the Manor has yielded no results,” said Potter, with a piteous expression that Draco had to work not to laugh at.
Of course going through the Manor had yielded no results. They would have needed a Malfoy to show them where the numerous hidden niches lay and how the wards worked. Without that, the wards wouldn’t even attack them. They would simply guard Draco’s caches of artifacts and Galleons forever, unnoticed.
And Draco hadn’t kept many of the things he stole, either. He’d sold them on. Galleons were always less easy to trace than a distinctive weapon or heirloom.
“Make him help you,” said Pinenut, who looked relieved that he had a solution for this particular difficulty. “Then he could lead you right to the treasures that I’m sure are there.”
“Right now, he has no motive to help us,” said Potter, and he glanced over at Draco. “He has no expectation of anything but years in Azkaban.”
Draco promptly tried to put his chin up and look as haughty and untouched by the threat of years in prison as a master thief should. He got some grimaces from the members of the Lower Wizengamot, before they turned back to Potter.
“You’re sure you can’t find the stolen objects without his help?” asked the same woman who had objected that Draco had committed other crimes.
Potter nodded mournfully. “I’m not that good an Auror when it comes to finding objects, Madam Blavatsky. I’m better at finding criminals and dueling with them.”
And lying, and acting, and sucking my cock, Draco thought. He was trying to keep himself from feeling too much, because hope was so painful, but it crouched there and he felt it anyway.
“Very well, say that we let him help and remove some time from his sentence,” Pinenut said. He still looked happy that they might be coming close to settling this particular matter. “And what about the other two circumstances you mentioned?”
“I’m calling on the Maldovian Exception,” said Potter.
Draco’s mind raced for a second. Maldvoian had been the name of a Dark wizard, someone who had started a new bunch of Death Eaters a few years ago, mostly because he was angry that the Dark Lord had never valued him enough to give him the Mark. That told Draco that, however powerful and determined he might have been, he was a right idiot.
“I don’t see how…” said Madam Blavatsky, but her voice trailed off.
“Exactly,” said Potter softly. “Maldovian endured several bouts of the Cruciatus Curse from his intimates when he began to discuss the notion of surrendering to us. None of us stepped in because we couldn’t afford—or so we thought—to intervene even in torture if it would endanger an Auror. Later, it was determined that we should have taken the risk. We’re supposed to prevent torture, even if it happens to someone we hate. And Draco Malfoy was tortured, and I didn’t break my cover to save him.” Potter bowed his head.
You are so, Draco thought, and then let it go, because he didn’t have an appropriate adjective to complete the sentence.
“You are saying that you are the one who should have intervened and failed?” Pinenut obviously needed the whole thing laid out for him in simple terms.
“Yes.” Potter lifted his head, and his face was anguished. Draco thought that might be the first genuine emotion, other than the blazing glance he’d given Draco, Potter had shown since this trial started. “There’s also the matter of Mr. Malfoy’s wand. I used a curse that burned it to ashes. Its loss lies at the Ministry’s feet. At my feet.”
“You were killing a goblin who would have killed both of you!” objected Madam Blavatsky. “You were saving Mr. Malfoy’s life.” She cast Draco a venomous glance.
“And I’ve received training that tells me not to react with panic under even the most fear-inducting circumstances,” Potter said softly. “I had time to warn Oldridge Shatterstone of what attacking me would mean—that I could retaliate with lethal force. I should have had time to warn him to lay down the wand as well.”
“I must say, the Shatterstone goblins are demanding more than this,” said Pinenut suddenly. Draco could almost see the moment when the thought struck him and woke up his brain. “They claim that stolen treasure was indeed taken, and they’re demanding compensation for the death of Oldridge.”
“I’ll be dragged through mud in public for the mistakes I made,” Potter said. “I deserve it. So let the goblins take the loss of my reputation as a competent Auror for the compensation. And I know that Mr. Malfoy removed a dagger from the bank. I’ll return it, with appropriate penances and observances.”
Draco bowed his head. He hoped he could look penitent to someone who observed him, and not like he wanted to burst out laughing.
How much of this had Potter planned? How much was him just taking advantage of circumstances? Either way, Draco had to admire him for it.
And not just because it was sparing him from a long time in Azkaban.
“You are saying that many of the failures and excesses of this investigation can be laid at your feet?” someone else from the back asked now. Draco knew from the slow excitement in her voice that she was probably an enemy of Potter’s.
“I am.” Potter bent down until his hair was almost touching the podium. “I did my duty, but I should have done it in a different way. It’s only due to my mistakes that we didn’t have a full confession from Mr. Malfoy earlier.”
Draco wanted to howl. Potter had been the only Auror in the Manor with him for much of the case. No one could contradict him, unless Draco chose to do so.
And Draco was not a fool.
*
In the end, even after (spittle-flecked) testimony from Greengrass-Rosier, the Lower Wizengamot was persuaded by Potter’s arguments, enticed by the chance to make Potter suffer in the press, and bored by the case. Draco was sure of all those motives, although he didn’t know how many of the members felt each one, or a combination of the emotions.
Once he had agreed to show them around the Manor and reveal the hiding place of those stolen trophies he still possessed, they gave him a six-month sentence in the Ministry holding cells, with a potential month to be taken off depending on the extent of his cooperation.
Draco shut his eyes and sighed when he stepped down from the criminal’s chair. Six months being held by the Ministry was still annoying as hell, but at least it wasn’t Azkaban. He would make it.
“Malfoy.”
It was Potter, right beside him as they entered the corridor, and Mytherian stepped back with a knowing smile. Potter nodded to him. “I have to talk to Malfoy about when we’re going to go to the Manor.”
“Of course,” said Mytherian. The knowing little smile continued. Draco would have found that annoying, but he didn’t think Mytherian would betray them. He’d had the chance to do so many times before. “I’ll go and wait by his cell. A pleasure working with you, Potter.” He nodded and walked away.
Potter stared at Draco. Draco lifted his chin and whispered, “Are we being observed?”
“Not here. Not now,” said Potter.
Draco smiled, and let Potter wait on the hooks of the moment before he said, “How much of that was real?”
“A lot,” said Potter. “I did make mistakes, and if this is my way of atoning, I don’t see why you care.”
Draco let his eyes narrow at that. “What if I say that I don’t much fancy the idea of having a lover who has a shady reputation, either? If I’m to get back on my feet and do something else after I’ve served my six months, I would like someone who actually manages to enjoy some favorable press and can use his contacts to my advantage.”
Potter turned pale. Then he turned red. Then he coughed. “L-lover?”
“Of course,” said Draco. “I fully expect the cooperation we’re going through to build a new sort of alliance.” For a moment, he took Potter’s hand, and squeezed it fiercely. Then he added, “It’s not the conventional way to build a relationship, but I don’t think either of us are the most conventional people.”
For a second, Potter searched his eyes. Then he said, “Do something different? Really?”
“I’ll be showing you all my best hiding places,” said Draco, with a shrug. “There’s not much point in continuing to be a thief after that. I think—yes, I think I’ll need a new way to show off my cleverness.” He paused for the exactly right length of time, then added, “Perhaps acting? I know someone who could give me lessons.”
Potter’s eyes lit again, that deep, blazing look, but this time, Draco understood what it meant.
And when Harry leaned forwards and kissed him, Draco took Harry’s chin in one hand and his hair in the other, and tugged a little, and enjoyed Harry’s deep gasp and his shifting as he hadn’t enjoyed thievery in a long, long time.
The End.
*
MoonlightVampiress: Well, good! I hope you liked this chapter, as well.
SP777: Thanks! I hope you liked Harry here as well.
moodysavage: Thanks! I think he manipulated the Wizengamot pretty well, too.
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The Auror Method