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One Honest Heart	By : Andreas Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5285 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
17. Peripatetic Peripeteia

Headmaster Dumbledore was
as blatantly amused by our insistence that a Dementor was somehow hidden within
the castle as he was subtly appalled by our Patronus animation of Lestrange�s
body. As genial as ever, his long, dark glances towards Lestrange revealed as
much of his true feelings as one could ever hope to know. Though, as unsettled
as I already was, I�d have preferred being able to take his hospitality and
calm presence at crinkly face value.

Thanks to the Aurors, we were allowed to search the
castle, under heavy guard and led by Lestrange, whose ambling seemed more
purposeful indoors. Now, we were only delayed by the thin Auror�s repeated
visits to just about every bathroom we passed. He wasn�t feeling well. In
various ways, none of us were. Except maybe Henry.

We went up and around, curious students scuttling
out of our way, until Lestrange walked into an empty room and stopped. Though
there was nothing there, it was clear from her stance that she had reached her
destination. When Henry asked her where the Dementor was, she just gave him a
long, quizzical look. The podgy Auror snorted and reminded Henry, very
haughtily, that the latter had asked the Thing to lead us to an empty vessel.
Well, the room was empty, wasn�it? Who could say how that Thing defined vessel,
anyway?

It struck me that the room was, in fact, curiously
empty, but when I asked the Headmaster about it, he replied that it made itself
useful, and left it at that. I didn�t press the matter. What mattered was the
lack of a Dementor at the end of our trail. And the Aurors were not at all
happy about that. Muttering threats about legal action, they left in a huff,
leading Lestrange hurriedly across the Hogwarts lawns. They were eager to leave
(and the thin one eager to heave, it seemed) and knew as well as anyone that
they could not Disapparate on the Hogwarts grounds. I was in no hurry to get
back to a possible arrest and chose to stay with Henry who had, completely
unembarrassed, asked Dumbledore�s permission to do some research in the
Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library. And it was among those dusty
shelves, with Henry pouring over some ancient tome and me gazing out the open
window, that we heard the shrill screams rising up from the garden.

When we arrived at the oak where the Auror�s had,
apparently, taken a break (for the thin one to retch, no doubt), Dumbledore
already stood in its shade, shaking his head sadly. All other witnesses had
moved off and turned away, slumping down on the grass, standing still as
statues, or emptying their stomachs in the nearby bushes. I, on the other hand,
couldn�t stop staring, however much I longed to.

The scene was like something out of a gothic horror
story, thrust into a flowery pastoral. The podgy Auror lay crumpled on the
ground, eyes wide, a tuft of grass clenched in his hand, flies already
gathering on the clotting blood that filled his mouth and dyed the grass below
him crimson, a large fir cone firmly lodged in his swollen throat. His death
had been slow, choking as much on the blood pouring from the gashes torn by the
cone as on the cone itself. He had been trying to retch up the alien object
while Lestrange had dealt the second Auror a much swifter death.

That the point she had devised to drive her stick
into the fir cone�s heart would work just as well on a much softer heart, none
of us had imagined. It had only been the innocent play of a newborn Patronus.
As had her incessant tasting of weeds and flowers.

Or so we thought. The skinny Auror sat with his
back against the tree, his face white and drawn, eyes straining out of their
sockets. When she had snapped his neck, he had already been half dead, perhaps
making a futile attempt to save his colleagues. On his head lay Lestrange�s
crown of weeds. They were the very same weeds she had tasted, the very same
weeds that had made her retch and borrow the Auror�s water bottle. Later
analyses at the Auror headquarters revealed them to be the ingredients of The Maiden�s
Poison, a slow-acting, tasteless venom native to Scotland. According to almost
forgotten legend, Scottish maidens who wished to get rid of irritating suitors,
or prevent nightly rapes, kept the flowers and herbs under their pillows, ready
to be chewed and administered to the unwitting bed-partner through a deadly
kiss. Though untested, the theory is that the poison is counteracted by female
oestrogen to the extent that death could be avoided simply through cleansing
one�s mouth and retching up any remnants of poison that had slipped into the
gastric system.

The Maiden�s Poison had also been favoured by
female assassins and spies during times of war. It was eventually outlawed � by
men, of course � and is now as good as forgotten by the Wizarding world. If it
weren�t for Henry�s being asked to conclusively verify the ingredients of the
archaic poison, I would never have known about it. Poisons that anyone with a
decent herbal can chew up in a matter of minutes are something the Ministry
would rather have stay forgotten. The official story was that Lestrange snapped
the Auror�s neck, no poison involved.

But the scene was more complex than that. The body
of the stabbed Auror had been draped across the poisoned one�s legs, its robes
stripped off. Using the widened heart-wound as an inkbottle, Lestrange had left
a message scrawled across the Auror�s ribcage:

�Le Roi mourra, Vive la Reine� � The King will die;
long live the Queen.

�Well,� said Henry, �the lady�s got a certain
style, at least.�

I murmured half-hearted agreement, but kept to
myself the unnerving fact that Lestrange�s style seemed to be Henry�s. I had,
as always, done my research thoroughly. I knew that Lestrange�s educational
prowess had been erratic at best. And she had never studied French.

That was one of the many things I worried about,
sitting alone on a large stone on the outskirts of the Hogwarts gardens, when
the expected Howler from the Prophet arrived, sacking me at 40wpm and 100dB. It
howled at me what I already knew: My career was as dead as a Demented doornail.
I knew I would make headlines the following day, and every day thereafter for
quite some time. The Prophet would vilify me as much as it could to salvage its
own reputation. I was no longer a quirky oddity but an anti-social, over-ambitious,
notorious nutcase who had been kept on the payroll out of pity.

As I sat on that stone, wallowing in the subdued
woe I�d perfected over the years, some Muggle hikers appeared at the main
gates, gazing up at the castle, pointing and chatting. I waved a despondent
greeting � I even ventured a smile � but though I was straight in their line of
vision, they looked right through me, as if I was nothing but an empty patch of
air. Just as the Howler had told me: I was Nothing. I lay back, closed
my eyes, and suffered a painful sunburn the following day, plodding through
Henry�s family estate in my nightgown. He had offered me room, in his bed. The
house was out of paparazzi reach, and I probably wouldn�t be able to afford my
flat in any case.

My life, for what little it had been worth, was
over. I felt as empty as Lestrange no longer was, thanks to me, and no matter
how much I ate, I never felt any fuller.

Then, when I would have grabbed any
second-hand chance, the phone rang, and I squelched out a hurried Yes.
- 16
- 17
- 18
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One Honest Heart