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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 Eighteen—Coming Together

            Experienced as they were, the Shadowborn still paused when they’d come through the door, taking in the situation, and the fact that there was one more person in the room than they’d expected. Harry knew that moment of hesitation would come. It was something he would do himself, confident that his enemies would be taken as off-guard as he was by the intrusion.

            But it cost them this time, when they were facing two trained Aurors. While they blinked and peered, Draco had extended his hand, and Harry had taken it, and they had spun so that their arms were linked and they were back-to-back.

            Harry raised a shield around them, with a hole in the middle right where he knew Draco would put his wand. Through the hole, Draco fired a curse, and then turned, hauling Harry with him. It caught the lead Shadowborn on the shoulder, and he staggered and then went heavily down, his body already turning to stone. Since the spell could be reversed, it wasn’t even technically Dark magic.

            Before the Shadowborn could retaliate or catch their breaths, Harry was swinging around to fire his own hex through that hole, then repair it and open another one in the shield, further up. His spell made the Shadowborn still piling into the room slip on the suddenly Transfigured floor, covered by a thin layer of oil.

            And he turned, and Draco came along, having used the moment of recovery to decide on his next spell. And there it was, the curse that Harry saw only from the corner of his eye, but recognized anyway by the flash of its red-gold tail. He smiled into the distance. That curse would blind everyone in the room with ill-will towards the caster. He could only hope that Hermione had either hidden her face or was already hiding under the table and had had the sense to cover her eyes.

            A swing, a turn, and it was Harry’s chance to come around again. The nearest Shadowborn, however, either got lucky, or had had the skill to mark the position of the hole in the shield, even blind. His spell tunneled through and scraped a long and bloody slash down Harry’s shoulder, shredding the cloth on its way and earthing itself in the bones of his wrist like a lightning bolt.

            Harry hissed, and didn’t manage to fire the spell he’d decided on after all before Draco swung him back around. He uttered another hiss at the missed chance, but reached out and put his good hand on Draco’s shoulder when he saw the look in Draco’s eyes.

            “You don’t need to kill them,” he said quietly. “You really don’t, Draco.” He hesitated, and then added, because these were still the Shadowborn even if they were stumbling around right now, blind, “I don’t think so, anyway.”

            “They hurt you.” Draco turned to face him, brushed his wand along the cut, and released a cooling, soothing liquid that dried the blood. Harry shut his eyes and shivered.

            “They did,” he agreed. Draco would have felt his flinch and heard his sound of pain, so there was no point in trying to hide it. “But I can still use my wand, so they didn’t take me out of the fight even though they were trying for that. You might as well do something else to round them up.”

            Draco’s smile stretched, and he looked at the Shadowborn with an interest that made Harry almost glad they couldn’t see. “Round them up,” he murmured. “Yes, that would be an interesting use for a set of skills that I haven’t tested in years.”

            “What are you talking about?” Hermione demanded from under the table. A few Shadowborn wands swung towards the sound of her voice, and Harry placed a prudent Shield Charm around the table’s legs, although Hermione had already done that. His shields were stronger. “You can’t do something inhumane to them. Harry, you can’t let him.”

            “Shut up, Granger,” Draco said, and Harry nodded frantically to Hermione. Anything that would get the look out of Draco’s eyes, short of murder, was fine with him. And if they could keep the Shadowborn for questioning, or at least prevent them from going back to the Ministry and reporting their location, then they would have control of things again. Harry moved out of the way as Draco concentrated, then swung his wand in a wide circle that encompassed all the Shadowborn in the room.

            “Commuto porcos,” Draco whispered.

            There was a complicated shimmer that seemed to replace Harry’s view of the Shadowborn, and then their robes wrapped and draped around them. A undignified, terrified squealing came from under the robes. Harry began to suspect what Draco had done, and started laughing even before the first piglets came squirming from under the robes into the light. They ran in mad circles, but Draco waved his wand again, and a net seemed to come down from the ceiling or rise from the floor—maybe both at once—and scoop them up. They lay against one another, trotters waving helplessly.

            “You meant your Transfiguration skills,” Hermione said, standing up and staring at Draco as if he was a stranger.

            “Yes, of course I did,” Draco said, and rolled his eyes at her. Hermione blinked and looked as if she didn’t know what to do.

            Harry nodded to the piglets. “That will hold them for a while. I think we’d better get out of here, though, before someone figures out what’s going on, or more of them come to see what happened to the first ones.” He still didn’t feel like speaking the word “Shadowborn” aloud, even if the ones currently in the room had found them some other way.

            “A moment,” Draco said, and nodded to Hermione. “Granger, you know more healing spells than I do.” It was nearly a command. “See what you can do for Harry’s arm. Can’t have him bleeding everywhere.”

            Harry shook his head at Draco as Hermione walked to his side with her back stiff. He knew Hermione wouldn’t believe him if he tried to explain that look in Draco’s eyes when he first realized Harry was hurt, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to. It was good to have some secrets.

            “It’s not that deep,” Hermione said, when she had stripped away the soothing liquid that Draco’s charm had created on Harry’s cut. Harry held his breath through that, and didn’t cry out, because that would only make Draco angry at Hermione for something she couldn’t help and make everything worse. “You should take it easy with the arm, though.” She tapped the cut and murmured little words of gentle encouragement, and the skin knit itself with remarkable speed. Harry nodded. He always resolved to study healing magic more and never did, but if the ban from St. Mungo’s endured for a while and they lost access to the Ministry Healers, he would have to.

            “Good,” Hermione said, standing away from Harry when he had showed her that he could bend his arm to her satisfaction. “What the fuck was that all about?” She nodded to the squirming net of piglets. “If you could do that before, why didn’t you do it the first time they showed up?”

            “I didn’t know then what they wanted,” Draco said, working his own wrist back and forth as he stared up at the net. “And I didn’t think that my Transfiguration skills were up to it. But now we know what works against them.” He turned to Harry. “Another case for your skills at making them forget, I think. I don’t want to kill them, but I also don’t want them going back to report what we can do.”

            Harry felt his face heat up as Hermione stared at him. He hadn’t actually advised his friends that he was good at Memory Charms, either. But for now, all he could say was, “If we go with my plan to capture Bainbridge and the blue-eyed twisted, then I don’t think we’ll need to Obliviate them.”

            “Your famous plan,” Draco said, with a faint frown. “I don’t understand how it was supposed to work before, and now we know that the grey ones might not be far behind us. How do we take the time to set it up when someone could come bursting in on us at any moment?” He looked up at the piglets and shook his head. “That’s going to take some powerful Disillusionment and Silencing Charms to get out of here.”

            Harry swallowed. He thought he’d understood and planned for everything, but what if he hadn’t? He might be responsible for getting Draco or anyone else who helped hurt.

            Then he remembered the way Draco had Transfigured a bunch of people for him, and he saw the steady faith with which they both looked at him—even if there were also questions in Hermione’s eyes and waiting on her tongue—and he knew that it didn’t matter. If he had forgotten something, they would tell him. That was what it meant to have friends, and a partner, who trusted him.

            “This is what I want us to do,” he said.

*

            Draco looked at Granger and winced. He had done his best, but her own magic was powerful, and that tended to rebel against Transfigurations tried on the hair and face. Draco hadn’t dared use glamours. If they were the only disguise Granger had, Bainbridge would probably sense them when he got close.

            “You could be in danger,” he said for the third time. He had agreed to Harry’s plan, but he had thought Granger would refuse the part Harry wanted her to play. When she hadn’t, he had tried to encourage her to back out. They could find someone else, a female Auror, for example, to do this. When Harry had pointed out that they didn’t have anyone else to contact, Draco had still been desperate to come up with a solution. “Are you sure that you can handle yourself if Bainbridge suddenly appears?”

            Granger scowled at him. He knew that scowl, even through the Transfigurations of sleek blonde hair he’d cast on her and the way he’d made her eye blue and her lips fuller and redder. “I know what kind of risks I’m taking, Malfoy,” she retorted. “There were times I helped Ron and Harry on their Auror work, when they were still partners.”

            Draco blinked. He hadn’t known that. But it made sense that Granger would be familiar with intrigue, at least, since they had poked their noses into everything as children. He made a mental note to ask Harry about working with Granger on cases later.

            If we survive this.

            Draco let out a calming breath. At least he couldn’t accuse Harry of wanting to hide out and not carry the battle to the enemy anymore. This was carrying the battle to the enemy with a vengeance.

            “Very well,” he said. “Can you use an auditory glamour on your voice? I don’t know if anyone will recognize it, but at least it might make you seem more like a Sarah.”

            Granger smiled with her teeth alone, but touched her wand to the base of her throat. A moment later, a soft, squeaky voice that Draco would have associated with Pansy Parkinson if he hadn’t seen it coming out of Granger’s mouth said, “Will this do?”

            Draco blinked at her, and then inclined his head jerkily. “Fine. Come on. He’ll be waiting for us.”

            “Him and all the rest of the wizarding world,” said Granger, and swept out of the back room of the pub. Harry had gone through already, taking the load of Shadowborn-piglets out under the powerful glamours and charms that Granger had used. She’d offered to cast them, since she would have to use less magic in the pursuit of this mad plan than Draco or Harry would. The owner of the pub stared at them suspiciously anyway.

            Draco smiled at him in a way that made him decide to look elsewhere, and then they were standing in the street in front of it, hurrying towards the Apparition point. Draco sped up, and Granger hissed at him. He shortened his steps again, wishing he was walking beside Harry.

            Soon. One way or the other.

*

            Harry paused and looked around him, trying to estimate how many people would hear him when he made his declaration. The Atrium had more or less a normal number of people for this time of morning, which meant many hurrying back and forth between the Floos, and Aurors dragging along sullen suspects, and flunkies chattering to other flunkies while balancing enormous piles of folders in their arms.

            It looked more normal than Harry had thought, in fact. Then he snorted as he realized where his thoughts were tending. Yes, of course, everyone should stop their routines in distress and clasp their hands to faltering hearts over Harry Potter going on the run. Most of them were probably nodding and thinking they had predicted it anyway, that Harry had never been happy as an Auror and a bit of a loose hex caroming around the building.

            Which could make things difficult for him now, if someone decided to play hero and take him down.

            Harry shook his head and reached into his pocket, moving slowly so that no one would notice the ripple of shadow and color that the Disillusionment Charm produced if you knew what to look for. He heard no shrieks of outraged virtue yet, which was a good thing. When he got ready to produce shrieks, that wasn’t the kind he wanted.

            He curled his hand around the little badge that Draco had implanted with what he said was “a Dark Shield Charm.” Harry had raised his eyebrows, but Draco had assured him it would work, and also that Harry was to use it if there was the slightest chance someone would curse him before he could spring the trap. They could blame Draco for the Dark Arts if they had to, but Draco wanted Harry safe.

            Remembering the look in Draco’s eyes when he said that, and the way he had reached out and then hastily tucked his hand back against his side because of the look on Hermione’s face, Harry smiled. Yes, he would do what he could to keep Draco’s worry at bay, because it was Draco, and Draco loved him.

            He took the badge out of his pocket and turned it over. It must have been torn from a set of Draco’s Auror robes; the trailing threads on the edges were scarlet. Harry stroked it with one finger before he held it up and tapped the back of it twice with two fingers, the way Draco had told him he should.

            The magic in it bloomed in front of him, unfolding violently enough to make Harry shudder. It tore through the Disillusionment Charm, and most of the eyes in the Atrium turned in his direction. A moment later, he heard the shrieks of recognition.

            Harry grimaced, and lifted his wand, ready to block the first hex, a Stunner that one of the Aurors hauling a prisoner hurled at him.

            The badge leaped into the air before him, and the magic that had expanded from it formed into a billowing, rippling shield in front of him, the way Draco had promised it would. It looked like a kite, almost, but it was black, and soft, and cold, from the way that Harry felt it chill his hands. It swallowed the Stunner as though it had jaws, instead of reflecting it the way a Shield Charm normally would. Harry could still see the other people in the Atrium as he looked through it, but it was like peering through dirty water.

            Someone tried to sneak around the side of the shield and try another Stunner. The shield promptly grew, forming a half-circle in front of him on all sides; Harry had already backed himself into a corner, as Draco had instructed. Someone else tried to bounce a curse off the ceiling, which Harry had to admit was a clever tactic, and the shield was there, too, up and down and all around, glowing more and more fiercely the more magic it ate.

            That got all the attention he could wish for.

“A Dark Shield!” an Auror by the Fountain whispered, and that rumor ran around the room. Of course, most of the people didn’t try to press out the doors as they should, because that would make too much sense. Instead, they pressed closer and closer to the shield, eyes as wide as it was.

Harry smiled grimly. He had got the attention he’d asked for, the attention that was necessary to make his plan work.

And, he hoped, draw both Bainbridge and the blue-eyed twisted out of hiding, or at least into a place where Harry and Draco could combat them. Harry had decided that their best chance of being reinstated in the Ministry, and recovering the career Draco had worked so long and hard for, was spectacularly solving their current case and revealing the blue-eyed twisted at the same time.

If it happened to cause chaos in the Ministry as well, that was good. The chaos might end in the Ministry at least doing something different about twisted, or it might end up in them receiving their former jobs back and apologies from the Ministry hierarchy.

Harry wouldn’t cling to wild dreams, though. He would be content with them having their jobs back.

“You’d probably heard that I’d gone rogue,” he said conversationally to the stares. He had chosen his site well, he thought. There were people here who would listen to anything he said, rather than walk out the door and miss this. “My name is Harry Potter. And I’m here to tell you what’s really happening in the Ministry’s hierarchy, in the Socrates Corps, and with Head Auror Ernhardt.”

*

            “When we come through the door, I want you to look around and announce—”

            “I don’t need coaching for this part, Malfoy.”

            Draco bit his lip hard enough that his ears rang, but then he simply nodded and stood out of the way to let Granger—disguised as Sarah Offer—walk in front of him. This was the part that he liked the best, because at least he was close to Harry again as they entered the Atrium and could get to him if he needed help. And if Granger got herself injured because of her insistence that she could take care of herself, that might show Harry that his friends weren’t as smart as he thought they were.

            Not that Draco would stay out of it if Granger needed help. He might be a bastard, but not the kind who would want Harry’s friends hurt simply to prove a point. Harry would be insufferable to live with afterwards.

            No one noticed them come in at first. They were listening in silence to the tale that Harry was spinning, safe behind his shield and with his wand in hand. Perhaps some of them had remembered how good he was with it, Draco thought, and hoped. From the looks of it, though, a few people had tried to get around the Dark Shield, so perhaps not.

            “…and that’s the reason that Head Auror Ernhardt has the grudge against us, supposedly,” Harry said, glancing around from face to face. He hadn’t seen Draco and Granger yet either, then. Draco was sure that he would have looked at them immediately if so. “He thinks I cost the Ministry too much money.”

            “You do,” snapped one of the Aurors that Draco knew by sight although not by name, a tall brown-haired man with a sulky mouth. “The fees and lawsuits that hit the Ministry, the way they all want to talk to you. No one else can get a word in edgewise, and no one else can get half the credit that you do.”

            “Perhaps that’s because I actually solve my cases, Fethridge,” Harry said, with a poisonous sweetness that Draco had never known was in him.

            It made him want to take Harry home and fuck him again.

            Amid the laughter, Fethridge tried to say something else, but it was a tall woman who interrupted. Draco thought she worked as a secretary for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. “That’s interesting, but why should we believe you? It might be a fine fairy tale, not the truth.”

            Harry shrugged a little. “I know it sounds mad. But I believe that there’s evidence I can offer that someone in the Ministry hierarchy is concerned about what I say. The Ministry didn’t simply say they were concerned and we should come in and talk to them. They sent wizards to kill us.”

            Granger stiffened beside Draco, barely breathing. “Tell me that he’s not going to do it,” she whispered. “Tell me that it would be too mad, even for him.”

            “Why don’t you tell him that?” Draco asked out of the side of his mouth. “Except I think you’re too far away to do any good.”

            “The Shadowborn,” Harry said flatly. “Secret police who punish the Aurors and others who might be too dangerous to arrest, and who might say something and be believed by the people they give their lives to protect. Or who might actually kill the people the Ministry sends to arrest them if wrongfully accused. The Shadowborn can kill without mercy, and they can track those who speak of them by name.” He raised his voice to compete with the babble that broke out, and he must have cast the Sonorus Charm without Draco noticing, because suddenly his voice boomed above it. “But their power is secrecy! They can’t track and kill everyone in the wizarding world, and they can’t silence everyone here, especially if some of you leave right now.”

            That provoked a scramble for the Floos. Draco stood back out of the way, with his arm across Granger’s chest to ensure she didn’t try to interfere. This was what they wanted. Spread the word, and the Shadowborn would lose their ability to corner and Obliviate or intimidate everyone in the room.

            “I challenge the Head Auror to appear and contradict what I said,” Harry said, crossing his arms. “Or silence me. If he wants to challenge or change what I’m about to say, about the way the Ministry treats the Socrates Corps and the twisted, then he’ll have to come.”

            Draco wondered if he was the only one who heard the rumble of the lifts. Head Auror Ernhardt might well be on his way down now. He hoped that Harry was ready. He had come up with the plan to attract an audience, and hopefully have everyone there when the blue-eyed twisted and Bainbridge appeared—the blue-eyed twisted drawn by the revelation of his existence, Bainbridge by Granger dressed up as Sarah Offer.

            Harry had explained, convincingly, how he meant to quell Bainbridge and the blue-eyed twisted once they had them there, but Draco could hardly help being nervous.

            And then Harry screamed, and Draco saw a flinch of blue in his eyes before they slammed shut and his hands went up to grip either side of his head.

            Draco felt his heart beating and his mouth drying. The plan had gone wrong, and the blue-eyed twisted was here earlier, when there was no reason for him to be. It wasn’t as though the blue-eyed twisted cared about the Shadowborn, or had heard Harry talk about him yet—

            He’s insane. Suspicion that Harry might mention him could be enough.

            And Draco had perhaps two seconds to decide what to do, before the Head Auror arrived, Granger dashed into battle despite his restraining arm, or Harry yielded to the blue-eyed twisted—or all three happened at once.

*

            Seiren: Thank you!

            SP777: But I gave you sex in the last chapter! That makes up for everything, right?

            unneeded: Draco is determined to show everyone Harry’s value in the end.
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The Library of Hades