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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.

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Chapter Fifteen—Two Kinds of Battle

            “Oh my God, Harry. So you are all right.”

            Hermione’s voice was so hushed that Harry winced a little, and put out a hand to the fire as if that would make it better. Then he remembered that he wouldn’t be able to touch her anyway, and pulled it back and cleared his throat. “Yeah, I am. Somewhere safe, with Draco. What is the Ministry saying happened?”

            Hermione paused, and Harry could see her shuffling the truths in her head like volumes in the library that Bainbridge wanted to write. She would understand so much just from that simple statement that Harry felt braced and comforted already.

            A moment later, Hermione nodded and leaned forwards. “They’ve been saying that they just wanted to question you, but your home was empty and they can’t find you or Malfoy anywhere,” she said quietly. “They’ve been saying that you abandoned important files in plain sight, and that you’re increasingly unstable. Okazes is calling for your resignation, but if you won’t come in or at least send an owl, then, well, the orders are to arrest you on sight.” She paused. “Where are you?”

            Harry nodded again. Hermione was smart enough to realize that any secret place he wanted to use wouldn’t remain secret for very long if he added a Floo connection. The Floo network at least wanted an address. “I broke into someone else’s house and I’m using their Floo.”

            Hermione blinked at him. Then she said, “Oh.”

            Harry grinned at her. In the storm that was happening all around him, Hermione was also smart enough to realize that berating him for breaking into someone else’s house wasn’t the point. “I left Galleons on the table to pay for the broken wards,” Harry added. “And the broken window.”

            Hermione nodded back. “I think they’re going to bring out rumors of your insanity, too. There are those dark hints in the paper again that you’re mad just for speaking Parseltongue, and Skeeter is telling anyone who will listen that she predicted this years ago, when you were just a student at Hogwarts and she was writing stories about you.” She scowled. “I thought she would be on your side, given all the articles she’d written about you lately.”

            Harry snorted. “She’s on the side of a good story. Right now, that might seem like the best one.” Draco had contacted her, but they hadn’t heard back yet. Skeeter was probably weighing which version of the story would give her the most attention. “And have you—Hermione, have you heard from Ginny?”

            “Ginny’s in France, I thought,” Hermione said. “Gone to track down some old boyfriend of hers.”

            Harry relaxed all in a rush, to the point where he nearly dropped his forehead down to thunk on the wooden mantle. That was an innocuous explanation. She’d probably got worried about Michael Corner and felt she had to go. “Thank you,” he whispered. “What about Ron? How is he taking it?”

            “You’re innocent, the Ministry should shut up,” Hermione returned promptly. She shook her head. “You have something else you want to ask me about, Harry, and I can see it in your eyes. You might as well ask me.”

            Harry sighed. “Yes. What Department of the Ministry would employ wizards empowered to kill, and who wear ash-grey robes?”

            Even through the flames, he could see her face drain of color, and he sat up. “What?” he demanded.

            “Where did you see them?” Hermione whispered.

            Harry hesitated, but in the end, he couldn’t live with the conviction that Draco was his only friend in the world, even if he could manage to distrust some of his friends who were acting suspiciously, like Ginny. “In my house,” he said. “They were the ones who came armed and ready to use curses that melted flesh. What are they, Hermione?”

            Hermione shut her eyes. For a moment, her fingers moved in front of her as though tapping the keys of an invisible calculator. Then she opened them and said, “Not here. I don’t know—a few mentions of them should be safe enough, but they have the kind of spell that Voldemort used during the war, to alert them when enough people say their names or certain phrases. I’m sure that the color of their robes is one of those phrases. We need to meet somewhere and work out a secure code.”

            Harry did some more staring. Then he said, “How can you know how they are? I’ve worked for the Ministry in a Department that’s more secure.”

            Hermione nodded. Her face looked haggard. “I know, Harry, but—it’s—it’s not that simple. There are things that I investigated and found out about that I didn’t tell to you and Ron, because you needed to be idealistic about the Ministry to continue working there.”

            “You didn’t?”

            Hermione met his eyes and smiled sadly. “No. I know I was the more idealistic one when we were younger, but I’ve accepted that the Ministry is flawed. It’s still better than a lot of the other structures for changing things, though.” Her face stilled. “But not them.”

            Harry clenched his hands. “I’ll need to talk to Draco before I agree to meet you anywhere. He needs to know.”

            “Okay,” Hermione said patiently. “I’ll wait.” She paused. “But if the Ministry has sent them after you already, they won’t hesitate to do it again, especially if Malfoy starts spreading the word about them. Don’t wait too long.”

            “I won’t,” Harry said, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he might have heard the front door opening, although he doubted it. Still, he shouldn’t stay here too long, either. “Give Ron my love, Hermione.”

            “Always,” Hermione whispered, and vanished.

            Harry cast a few spells that would keep anyone who studied the Floo connection from being able to know what the last address it had contacted was, and then turned and Apparated. The house’s broken wards gave a last forlorn twang behind him.

*

            “Mr. Malfoy. Or do you think that you still deserve the title of Auror, despite what the Ministry claims?”

            Draco smiled and leaned back in his chair in the dusty back room of the Hog’s Head, kicking his legs out in front of him. He had chosen dragonhide boots bought that morning under a glamour, and the best robes he owned that weren’t Auror robes. In the end, it had been child’s play to go back to his house once the Ministry assumed he was no longer there, slip past the warding spells, and slip out again with some of his best possessions. The Ministry had planned for wards that could slow down an Auror, not a Dark wizard. “Already beginning with the questions, Rita? I don’t even know that you’ve planned to tell my story yet.”

            Skeeter fussed with her hair for a moment, and Draco narrowed his eyes as he studied her. She hasn’t. She came to the meeting still undecided, and that means that I need to make the decision easier for her.

            “Well, that’s true,” Skeeter said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s just that there are so many different factors to choose from, this time, and whatever I choose to write about will influence my audience in the most intimate of ways.” She met his eyes and simpered at him. “I’m sure that you know what I mean, Auror Malfoy.”

            The title was a good sign. Draco was glad Harry hadn’t come with him, as he wouldn’t have thought so. “I know,” he said, and sighed so hard that he ruffled the tip of the feather on Skeeter’s quill as she drew it out of her bag. “Intimacy is the story of what I’ve been struggling against.”

            Skeeter paused one more time, and Draco watched amounts of money dazzle and flash behind her eyes. He didn’t mind, he found. It was good to be with someone he was able to understand in such a transparent way. Harry didn’t do things for motives of money or power, and thought he was simple because of it. In the world Draco had grown up in, he would have seemed an incredibly complicated person.

            “Then I want to hear that story, Auror Malfoy.” Skeeter leaned forwards. “What sort of intimacy? The sort that the Ministry is reporting you have with Mr. Potter?”

            Draco arched his eyebrows and smiled coolly. “Oh, no. This is the story of a struggle within the Ministry itself. A struggle between Departments, and the right to free control of information, and the way—” He paused, and drew the pause out, which left Skeeter staring at him in breathless anticipation.

            “Yes?” she whispered, swaying towards him.

            Draco barely kept from snapping his fingers in victory. He no longer had his parents’ money behind him, but he still had their training, and that meant he could seduce someone with little more than his breath.

            “The way that we get to define the future of the Chosen One,” Draco whispered, lowering his voice. “Whether that title is only a relic of the war, or whether it means something to other people, including those who would go out of their way to suppress it because they fear Harry’s power.”

            Skeeter was sitting upright, her eyes sparkling, probably because of the way he had referred to Harry as much as anything else. “Such a war,” she whispered, “would be of interest to the vast majority of my readers.”

            Draco winked at her. “That’s one reason that we decided that you should be the one to tell it to the world, Ms. Skeeter. Because we know that we can count on you to make it interesting, and reveal it in all its gorgeous, crawling detail.”

            Skeeter broke into a little rippling laugh, more generous and genuine than any of the laughter that Draco had heard her use in the past. “I like you, Auror Malfoy,” she declared, and poised the quill while Draco was still blinking in shock. “Now. To the story!”

            And Draco, after a moment more to bob in the sea of surprise, recovered, and gave her what he and Harry had decided on.

*

            “Hermione says that we shouldn’t reveal anything about them.”

            Draco made a humming noise and drank some more tea, staring so hard at the wall of Harry’s kitchen that Harry turned his head in spite of himself. But no, the wall was still that dirty, ordinary beige color. He shrugged and faced Draco again. “Well?”

            “Granger may well be right that they have a spell that allows them to detect mentions of themselves,” Draco mused. “But that only means we shall have to work out a way to talk about them.”

            Harry paused. That didn’t sound so bad, when from Draco’s expression, he had imagined that he was about to light some kind of fuse. “Yes, that’s what Hermione meant,” he said cautiously. “You didn’t say anything about them to Skeeter, did you?”

            Draco shook his head and looked at him. “Not because I’m paranoid, but because I thought she might be, and refuse to release any information about them without some kind of proper assurance that they won’t target her next.”

            “I don’t think Hermione’s being paranoid.”

            Draco swung his boots to the floor and leaned across the table to take Harry’s hand. Harry watched him narrowly. Ever since he had come back from his interview with Skeeter, Draco had sparkled with a strange energy. He stroked Harry’s hand now as if it was a way to persuade him of something.

            Harry didn’t trust Hermione’s instincts more than Draco’s. But what she had said made sense to him, and so did delaying whatever response Draco wanted to make to the grey-cloaked wizards until they had heard what Hermione had to say.

            “She might not be,” Draco whispered, and gave a quick kiss to the back of Harry’s hand. “But until we know what she knows, then we can’t know that.”

            Harry untangled that for a few desperate seconds, then nodded. “That’s the only thing I’ve been trying to get you to agree on,” he said. “That we’ll arrange a face-to-face meeting with her, somewhere safe, and learn what she does know.”

            Draco gave him a dazzling smile. “And lose ground in the meantime? Wait for our enemies to find us and strike again, or react to Skeeter’s article and become desperate enough to employ more Ministry resources in hunting us down? No.”

            “We put the article out there,” Harry said. “We gave Hermione some news she can work with. We have to sit back and await results. That’s what you said, why you wanted to do something like this first.” He wondered how the fuck it had happened that he was the one pleading caution and restraint, and Draco was the one who talked like he was tap-dancing on a volcano. “We have no choice.”

            “We’ll wait for the article to become public and some kind of reaction to happen,” Draco said, his fingers rubbing Harry’s wrist so firmly now that Harry didn’t think he could pull his hand away. “As far as the world outside this house knows, that’s all we’ll be doing.”

            Harry watched him again. Draco’s face was still distant and dazzled, gazing on some other world. “And we’ll talk to Hermione,” Harry added cautiously.

            “Of course, talk to Hermione,” Draco echoed.

            Harry leaned forwards and tapped Draco’s cheek, hard. Draco started and looked at him, and Harry shook his head. “Now I know you aren’t paying attention,” he said. “Because you called Hermione by her first name. What’s going on in your head that you can’t share with me?”

            He did snap his mouth shut after those words, because it had occurred to him that this might be the way Draco had felt all the times that Harry had some secret plan—to break out of hospital or take on Nancy Morningstar by himself—but hadn’t wanted to share it. Still, he agreed with Draco now that that hadn’t been a good tactic for anything but getting himself killed, and he believed the same thing about Draco’s silence. He sat there, staring, daring him not to answer.

*

            Draco wondered if he could share the deep, thick, starlight kind of will moving inside him. He didn’t want to scare Harry off, but equally, he didn’t know if he had the right words for this.

            If you don’t have the right words, then you can’t convince Harry.

            Draco nodded as he thought about it. Yes, that was true. And it meant that he would go without Harry’s help, or at best with him trailing Draco around, trusting him but hating it.

            “There are ways,” he murmured, taking Harry’s hands, “that we could confront a few of the people hunting us without alerting them to the fact. Especially your knowledge of the Ministry and your skill with the Memory Charm.”

            Harry’s eyes were cautious so fast that Draco blinked. He had grown used to the lack of that look in a remarkably short time. Perhaps it was only natural for Harry to distrust, though, when he had so few months of Draco being his partner instead of his opponent half the time.

            “More knowledge isn’t worth the risk we would take by breaking into the Ministry and confronting Okazes,” Harry said quietly. “Besides, with the article, we would have them looking for us in a way that they weren’t before it came out.”

            Draco only smiled back, delighted that Harry had grasped his plan so quickly, and stroked his palms, turning his hands over. “That’s true, but if we go now, before the article comes out? And if that isn’t the only tack we take? I admit, I’m curious about the Ministry’s reasons, how much of this is due to a long grudge against you and how much is embarrassment. They could have kept the failure of the Bainbridge case quiet. Why admit it?”

            “The grudge against me, I’d assume.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows. “And that’s worth making themselves look foolish, when they were the ones who gave us permission to try that trap in the first place?” He stroked Harry’s hand again, and Harry looked thoughtfully at him. “No, this runs deeper. And I don’t think it means that they want to discredit the Socrates Corps, either, because they have the power to disband it if they wanted to.”

            “Then there would be no one to hunt the twisted,” Harry said.

            Draco nodded. “This is connected somehow. The grudge against you, the Bainbridge case and why they aren’t more interested in scolding us for wasting resources, why they sent those wizards after us in your home. I want to know, and the only way we can find out is by asking the people who set this up.”

            Harry spent a few minutes looking at him, as if trying to uncover hidden motives. Draco looked back and tried to radiate sincerity, something he’d never had much practice at. But this really was all he had wanted, to convince Harry to try going to the Ministry, questioning Okazes and others, and then using Memory Charms to make them forget that Harry and Draco had done so.

            Harry finally said, “I want you to agree to something in return.”

            “Delighted,” Draco said, and played with Harry’s fingers for a moment. “I think. No, I am,” he added, when Harry squinted at him. “I can think of many things you’ve done for me, and fewer that I’ve done for you.”

            Harry shook his head. “You were the one who made me live again. There’s nothing I can do that would repay that.”

            Draco disagreed, but silently, in the confines of his head, where Harry couldn’t hear about it and possibly say something tiresome. He tilted his head to the side in the meantime and quietly raised his eyebrows.

            “I want to set a trap,” Harry said. “A real one, one that would draw Bainbridge in. And possibly also make the blue-eyed twisted notice us enough to pull him in.”

            Draco snorted. “And you think that my plan to enter the Ministry is too risky? I’d remind you that we don’t have any way to hold Blue Eyes yet. No way to make him stay if he wants to leave, and no stray victim for him to possess.”

            “That’s something we can work on,” Harry said, with the steel in his voice that Draco had only heard before when they were arguing before about how dangerous some of the twisted were. “But I want to do this. We started the case; let’s give the best retort we can to the Ministry’s accusations of incompetence by showing that we can finish it, too. And if we can take Blue Eyes down at the same time, we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

            Draco cocked his head in interest. “All right. I’ll concede that it would be a good idea to get rid of both of them at once.” He waited, then added, “Do you have any idea how we’d do that? Just to give me a lead, you understand.”

            Harry smiled, and Draco discovered that there was still a corresponding rush through his blood to his groin when that happened, Bainbridge and the irritation of what the Ministry was doing to them and all.

            “I have one.”

*

            Harry lifted his head and sniffed. He heard Draco draw in his breath behind him, doubtless about to say that Harry couldn’t literally smell out danger, but he didn’t say it. He was probably as cautious as Harry about making too much noise.

            Harry nodded. “It’s clear.”

            They had entered the Ministry by means of a small side door that Aurors usually used when arresting someone, like a Wizengamot member, who would make headlines if brought in through the Floo. It had been guarded, of course, but Harry had Obliviated the two Aurors there, and now they were happily at home, convinced that someone had come and told them they had a temporary holiday.

            “It’s almost scary how good you are at that,” Draco murmured, following him. Harry knew he didn’t mean sniffing out danger.

            Harry shrugged at nothing. “I learned the basics of it during Auror training. I got good at it when I was partnered with Ron.”

            Draco was staring at his back as they moved through the corridors, quieter but not absolutely silent with the approach of evening. “Did you and Weasley have a lot of cases that needed it?”

            “We had a lot of cases that led back to the Wizengamot and other people who might not have let us live if they knew we were hunting them,” Harry said shortly. He still thought it was the pressure of those cases, and the politics in general, that had made Ron quit the Aurors. And he still felt a fierce ache when he thought about it. He couldn’t blame Ron, but they hadn’t been as close since then.

            Draco took a quick step, and Harry started to turn around with his wand lifted, thinking Draco had sensed some danger. Instead, Draco leaned close to Harry and sniffed himself, as if he wanted to inhale his scent.

            “Listen,” Draco whispered. “I won’t say that I’m sorry, because that skill is saving our arses now.” He tightened his hold on Harry’s arm, so hard that Harry doubted he could have withdrawn if he’d tried. “And I won’t say I’m sorry that Weasley left you, because that left the way open for me to become your partner.”

            “You won’t say you’re sorry for things that you have no reason to be sorry for, in other words,” Harry pointed out, and squeezed Draco’s arm. “I know. Let’s go. Okazes usually stays late, but there’s no reason for him to linger too long.” They had discussed sending a message to Okazes hinting that the writer knew something about Potter and Malfoy and he should remain in his office that afternoon for a private interview, but had dismissed the plan as too risky.

            Draco nodded and followed him in silence. Harry paused in front of Okazes’s office door and sent a quick, testing probe charm in, one too light for the wards to detect. He sighed with relief when the probe told him that Okazes was sitting at his desk, alone.

            He nodded to Draco. Draco nodded back, and they burst through the door.

            Draco cast the Silencing Charms, Harry the binding ones. Okazes was sitting in his chair with the ropes wrapped around him and the door was locked and warded even more powerfully before Okazes finished opening his mouth to shout.

            Harry shook a little as he reached back and gripped Draco’s hand. It was the fastest they had ever acted together. Draco nodded to him, clasped his fingers, and then leaned back against the wall and proceeded to look bored. It was the plan they had agreed on.

            Harry smiled at Okazes. “I think we should have a conversation, don’t you?”

*

            unneeded: Thank you! I think they function well together, especially in this chapter.

            And yeah, the Ministry is being more than a bit dumb, although they wouldn’t have started this if they didn’t think they could finish it. They underestimated Draco and Harry, though. Badly.

            SP777: That was cute! Although I think Draco would spend a bit more time complaining about how awful the place Harry brought him to was.
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The Library of Hades