Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Descent of Magic	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—A Shadow of Wellness

            “You didn’t know about this.”

            Hermione’s voice was stiff and strained. Harry leaned back in his chair and took another sip of the pumpkin juice that Kreacher had insisted on preparing for lunch. He had muttered something about it being homely and reassuring when Harry asked him, and Harry reckoned that he could use that right now.

            But not for the same reasons Hermione could, or thought he could.

            “No,” he said, setting the glass down and reclaiming the paper from where Hermione had strewed it on the other side of the table in her agitation. “But what does it matter? It’s nothing I couldn’t guess about him. He sounds as though he’s been more together living under his father’s rule than I was after my leg was injured.”

            Hermione paused, emotions struggling beneath the surface of her face. Then she said, “But that was different. You’d just been hit with something devastating, something a lot of people would have crumbled beneath—”

            “And something a lot of people would have stood up under better than I did,” Harry finished softly. “This article doesn’t harm us much, Hermione. The ones who were going to despise Draco because of this already do. And everyone else should see that this is a harmless secret, as far as secrets go. What did Astoria hope to do with it, except to slow Draco down and make him feel two centimeters tall?”

            “I’ll concede she shouldn’t have gone to the paper,” Hermione said, unfolding her arms. “But what if she has something else to say, something that could damage us more? And he still should have told us about it if he knew that she would go to the papers. And since when have you started calling him Draco?”

            Harry laughed. “Which question would you like me to answer first?”

            It took a minute, but then Hermione smiled sheepishly and said, “All right. I should talk to Malfoy if I want to know the answers to some of those questions, I know. But—when did you start calling him by his first name?”

            “When I started thinking of him as human,” Harry said. “Don’t worry, he’ll be as surprised as you were.” He leaned forwards and caught her eye. “I don’t think we ought to worry about it right now, because that’s exactly what Greengrass wants us to do. Instead, we should plan our next meeting, the one where we reveal some of the specific information about what the pure-bloods are doing to the magical creatures and what that’s doing to their families. And I want to hold it at Hogwarts.”

            Hermione blinked, then flushed, then paled. It was the reaction Harry had thought she would have, and as he had also foreseen, it knocked her quite neatly off the rails of her reaction to Malfoy. She paused, cleared her throat, and then said, “I don’t know that we can make it work this soon, Harry.”

            “You can,” Harry said, and he believed that.

            Hermione’s face turned pink with pleasure. She spent a few minutes thinking, then nodded. “Maybe I can,” she said. “Excuse me, please. And do tell Malfoy that I want to speak with him,” she added, before she rushed out of the kitchen.

            Harry leaned back and shut his eyes. Working on soothing the feud between Hermione and Malfoy was still wearing to him. Maybe a nap would be a good idea…

            But he shook his head stubbornly and sat back up. No, he had come too far to yield to his weariness every time it tried to conquer him. Instead, he would think about what he could do next, whether he should talk to Draco or firecall someone else, or go back to writing letters to the Muggleborns whose names Hermione had left with him.

            Draco first. It would do him good to know that someone cares.

*

            Draco started when the fire in the hearth came to life. Someone was trying to call him, and he hadn’t expected that. He had thought the Howlers would come first from the pure-bloods who had read Astoria’s article and despised him now.

            But he leaned forwards and cast the charm that would give the caller permission to speak to him, because courage had to start somewhere.

            He hadn’t expected Potter’s head to form out of the fire, either. And he hadn’t expected the enormous smile. Draco smiled back hesitantly, then blinked and shook his head. “Are you really Potter?” he had to ask.

            “Yes, of course I am,” Potter said, with the same lack of surprise that he had shown about most of this process so far. “I saw the article this morning. I want you to know that I don’t think it’ll change much. The only ones who should care for what Astoria says are the pure-bloods who already hate you for collaborating with a Muggleborn and someone like me.”

            Draco nodded. It was reassuring to hear those words from someone else’s mouth, despite everything. “Thank you. Is Granger angry?”

            “Only that you might have known about this and not told us. And she does want to speak with you,” Potter said, and met his eyes, and waited.

            “Astoria had threatened me,” Draco said. “Perhaps I should have informed you, yes. However, her condition for not going to the papers was that I back off and drop my support of your—our cause. I would not agree. And she told me exactly what secrets she was going to reveal.”

            “Nothing else that you told her and she might be keeping in reserve?” Potter gazed at him thoughtfully through the flames.

            “Not a chance,” Draco said. “I didn’t tell her any secrets about money or the Malfoy business affairs. And while she could collaborate with Scorpius to come up with something else embarrassing, I’m sure, such as how my son and I have argued, there’s nothing that would bring me down with a personal threat.”

            Potter nodded. “Good. Then I want to think about arranging a meeting at Hogwarts of the same kind as the meeting we had in front of my house, except this time we’ll talk in more detail about the theory. Can you be ready for that fairly soon?”

            Draco blinked. He wished for a moment, for the first time, that Granger was there, because he could have used someone to commiserate with over Potter’s abrupt changes of subject and the way that he seemed to leap madly into a whole new project.

            “I’m not sure,” he settled for saying, because half the things he wanted to yell at Potter, Potter wouldn’t understand, anyway. “I still haven’t received responses to all the letters I sent out. Perhaps they need more time to think about things.”

            Potter nodded briskly. “But I am getting responses, and most of them are telling me that they won’t know how to act until they have more information. And I think we can safely start spreading the more complicated bits of the theory out there, now. If someone is knowledgeable enough to come up with objections that you and I haven’t foreseen, well.” His grin flashed. “That’s one problem settled.”

            Draco smiled back because it was impossible not to. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll ready the notes. You spread the word. Dibs has told me that she’d like to speak to you again. Do a nice interview for the Prophet.”

            Potter rolled his eyes. “Of course you would assign me the task that I’d hate most,” he said. “At least Hermione is going to take care of informing the Muggleborns. And I’ll talk to Neville. He’ll be the best one to arrange for us using the space. Between us, we should be able to organize this.” He started to pull his head back.

            “Why Hogwarts?” Draco asked, the less pressing of the two questions that had occurred to him, before Potter could shut the Floo.

            “Because it’s central to the life of the wizarding community,” Potter said, and choked on laughter when Draco glared at him. “That did sound like something Hermione would say, didn’t it? But it’s true. The children we’re fighting for are the ones who attend Hogwarts, and the ones who will go there in the future. I think they should have a chance to hear the same kinds of things that their parents will. And it makes for a convenient excuse for me to visit my two youngest. And for you to see Scorpius. If you want to.”

            “And you know that it makes it easier for him to ambush us, as well?” Draco asked.

            Potter cocked his head. “He can try that,” he said. Draco listened to the deadly calm in his voice and shivered a little as something like a needle of ice pierced him. “I don’t think he’d try it more than once.” Potter turned his head then, listening to something Draco couldn’t hear, and snorted. “Unless you have any other tactical considerations, I’ll have to go. Ron is trying to knock down my front door.”

            “Why did you decide that you would rather believe my side of the story than Scorpius’s and Astoria’s?” Draco spoke the question before his good sense could intervene and demand he take it back. “You’ve known Scorpius better, and for a lot longer.”

            “I like Scorpius,” Potter said, as if Draco had accused him otherwise, eyes locked on Draco’s. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t see his flaws. As long as he just talked about you trying to obstruct his life in typical teenage fashion, well. I’m sure that Al says the same things about me sometimes. But he was so insistent that you were lying and running some long-range plan on me, that you couldn’t care about pure-bloods, and that makes me think that he doesn’t see all of you. The article made me think about your wife in the same way.”

            It wasn’t the ringing endorsement that Draco had imagined he would get, and it wrongfooted him in the same way that his response to Astoria’s article had. But he was able to blink his eyes, and say, weakly, “Oh.”

            “Yes,” Potter said, and graced him with another smile before he disappeared.

            Draco leaned back and stared at the ceiling, and thought about that. Then he shook his head. He needed to organize Potter’s notes and make the final decision about whether to keep his messy handwriting or not, and the meeting at Hogwarts would be fairly soon. That meant he needed to move.

            It was only when he was deeply involved in the process of copying the notes out that he realized what had been nagging at him all through the conversation with Potter. The git hadn’t been sitting in a chair, the way he had for almost every conversation he’d had with Draco, and especially the ones over the Floo.

            He’d been kneeling.

            Draco rushed back to the fireplace and threw Floo powder at it, but despite his use of whole handfuls, nothing changed; Potter’s Floo was closed to visitors and likely to remain so. That drove Draco back to copying out the notes, at last, but in a fuming, stamping way that he was sure Potter had incited on purpose.

            But that made something new and bright burn in him, to think about.

            His potion had worked.

            And Potter thought Draco someone worth teasing with bits of information, the way that he did with his friends.

            That made Draco start to smile, and no matter how much he bit at his lips and told himself to be stern, that an unexpected reaction to Astoria’s article shouldn’t affect how he let Potter affect him, the smile came anyway.

*

            Harry was glad that Ron got to be the first one he showed the new change to. His reaction would be gratifying in a way that Hermione’s wouldn’t, because she had always been sure that Harry could recover, if he only put his mind to it, or researched harder. She had taken it hard when Harry gave up on searching for new solutions from Healers.

            But the way that Ron’s mouth dropped open when Harry opened the front door himself and faced him standing on two legs drove all those thoughts out of Harry’s head. Harry grinned at him, and waited.

            Splutter, splutter, incoherent gasp, and then Ron came out with the right words. “Mate,” he whispered, his body shaking with something that Harry knew was delight, not spasms, no matter how much they might have looked like them. “You’re walking.”

            And then he lunged forwards, which Harry had to turn to prevent, because if he’d caught Ron full on they would have both gone down. Leaning his weight on the wall, he caught his best mate by the shoulders instead and laughed. “Not quite,” he said. “Not for very long. Draco’s potion can’t work miracles. But I knelt down this morning, and walked unassisted all across the ground floor. I’m going to try the stairs next.”

            Ron stared at him, and then laughed aloud. “Draco?” he said, and “Kneeling?” and Harry knew which was more important to him, despite the one he’d started with.

            Harry nodded, smiling. He could already feel the returning twinges of pain in his knee, but even a pain-free hour or so was an improvement over what he could be sure of with the potions he’d been using already. “Yes to both. I think I could use someone to watch my back while I’m on the stairs, though. Can you do that?”

            Ron leaned back, arms folded, grinning. Harry winked at him and turned to face the stairs.

            He didn’t try to hop, because that would only jolt the knee to no good purpose, and it had never worked even during the times when he felt best a few months after the torture. Instead, he carefully bent his good leg and placed the foot flat on the stair, hauling himself up. Then came the bad knee, and he bent it as delicately as though he was underwater and didn’t want to scare some rare species of fish away.

            The imaginary water thrashed around him, Harry’s sight wavered from how intensely he was concentrating, and the knee completed the bend and his foot came down flat. Harry was standing two steps up from the floor, with less effort than he’d had to use since the Healers originally gave up.

            He turned his head and grinned at Ron. Ron nodded back, the smile deeper in his eyes than on his face now, and crossed the room to touch Harry on the shoulder, careful of his balance.

            They stood there like that for a little while, and then Harry shook his head to wake himself up from the happy dream and said, “So, what did you come here for? I know it must have been something more important than to admire the way Draco’s potion worked.”

            “No, it wasn’t,” Ron said.

            Harry closed his eyes and reached up to clasp his best mate’s hand.

            Ron let a few more minutes pass in silence before he said, “I contacted Neville, and he agreed that we could meet on the grass in front of Hogwarts. He can persuade the other professors around. Most of them have good opinions on the idea that pure-bloods might have to change their treatment of magical creatures, anyway.”

            Harry nodded. He had thought that would happen. A centaur taught Divination at Hogwarts again, and a woman with more goblin blood than Flitwick had taken over Care of Magical Creatures. It was hard to avoid changing your mind about people of other species when you worked beside them day after day.

            But…

            “I thought I was going to be the one contacting Neville,” he said.

            Ron spread his hands and looked innocent. “Can’t a bloke help his best mate? It’s just something I could do, and wanted to.”

            Harry cocked his head. “Yes, a bloke can help a best mate, but you can’t get that look on your face unless something’s happened. What did? And why did you feel that you had to talk to Neville to make up for it?”

            Ron sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I really would feel better discussing this if we were sitting down, mate.”

            It was a transparent dodge, but Harry nodded and allowed it, carefully proceeding up the stairs with Ron behind him. By the time they were sitting down in the drawing room where Harry had spent most of his research time, his knee felt as if it was on the verge of freezing again. Harry leaned back in the chair and wondered when Draco would have time to brew more of the potion, and if there was anything in it that was addictive.

            Ron spent a few minutes fidgeting with his teacup—Harry had allowed Kreacher to bring that, since he was on the verge of going mad with nothing to do—and then looked up at him. “Hugo has decided to join the people who are on the opposite side,” he said. “Like Astoria Greengrass, and so on.”

            Harry blinked. Well, he couldn’t say that he hadn’t expected it. Hugo wanted to make Harry feel as bad as he did, somehow, about not taking the experimental Healing therapies that could have meant losing his leg or his magic. “How is he doing that?” he asked. “There’s not much a sixteen-year-old can do to affect the outcome, I don’t think.”

            Ron grimaced. “He’s telling everyone in Hogwarts who will listen about how you’ve gone a little mental and spent too much time with old books. I think people are listening to him because he’s still known as Harry Potter’s favorite nephew, and it’s an explanation that a lot of people see as making more sense than that you’re a new magical researcher who came up with an innovative theory.”

            “That’s the one that doesn’t make sense to me,” Harry pointed out dryly.

            Ron nodded. “Anyway, he might well appear at that meeting you’re going to have at Hogwarts and yell at you. I wanted you to be prepared.”

            Harry thought about that for a little while, watching the gentle drizzle outside. He imagined it coursing down the windowpanes that Kreacher would then grumble about cleaning, and the way that it would fall into and barely disturb the stagnant pond in the back garden. The rain fell everywhere, and didn’t care about what it touched.

            Then he reached out and took Ron’s hand again. “Thank you for the warning,” he said. “And for contacting Neville. But it’s really not your fault. Hugo has to make his own choices and decisions, and if he shows up, I’ll deal with it.”

            Ron nodded, relief rising off him like steam off the pond. He changed the subject then, and Harry leaned back and let him take the conversation over.

            Part of him throbbed gently in shame, that he had raised a subject and a theory in the first place that was tearing the Weasley family apart.

            But, in reality, that bitter wound was more than two years old. Perhaps they even stood a chance of purging it, if Hugo confronted him and spewed his bile where other people could hear it. Maybe that would be enough of a blaming session for him.

            Maybe.

*

            moodysavage: Absolutely not. He brooded on it until it seemed much bigger to him than it really was.

            ChaosLady: Yeah, that was part of the point. Astoria thought she had a lot more control over him than she really did.

            unneeded: She doesn’t have much else. She was counting on making pure-bloods draw back their support, but also on discouraging Draco too much to go on.

            Mehla_Seraphim: What Scorpius thinks will probably have something to do with Al and Hugo and what they do.

            Sp777: No, washed was the word I meant to use. I wanted it to give the impression of Hermione kind of walking back and forth in a wave-like motion across the kitchen.

            Yes. I was more interested in showing Draco’s reaction just then.

            TalisRuadair: Welcome aboard! Glad to have you.

            Draco is changing rapidly. He might have been able to do it without Harry, but he’d spent too long isolated in the Manor not really talking to anyone except Scorpius and Astoria.
- 14
- 15
- 16
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Descent of Magic