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An Alchemical Discontent	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10911 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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.

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Chapter Nineteen—On the Way to Daphne

            Hermione cried in alarm from the side. Probably she thought he should be rolling away from the manticore instead of attacking it, Harry thought. She would think he was wounded and should attend to the wound first, or at least to the poison snaking through his veins.

            She didn’t understand him—at least not right in this moment, when Harry could feel his rage as hot and as loud as his heartbeat in his head. He had had enough of running, pretending that certain things didn’t exist.

            He certainly couldn’t do it now, when this beast was only one of many obstacles that he would need to face to get Draco back.

            By the time he’d completed those thoughts, his wand had shot out, directing a Stinging Hex directly into the manticore’s face. He’d remembered reading in Care of Magical Creatures that the over-large nose and jaw were particularly sensitive. And sure enough, the manticore fell back, screaming and roaring and lifting a paw to stroke mindlessly along its human features, adding scratches to the stinging welts it had received. Its scorpion tail lashed wildly from side to side.

            Harry hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should check on his poisoned wound, but he couldn’t bring himself to, when his magic was up like his temper. He directed a Blasting Curse at the manticore’s tail, and it separated from the lion-like body and clashed against the wall. The stream of blood that followed it was most impressive.

            Harry’s vision abruptly clouded and he staggered. He scowled. Stupid poison, ruining my aim. His second Blasting Curse had broken apart a piece of furniture instead of smashing the manticore’s limbs.

            Hermione finished a chant of a lengthy, powerful spell from the side, and the manticore’s flesh began to peel away from its bones and liquefy. Harry stared, fascinated, as the creature dissolved into a pile of quivering goo. It was colored like blood and flesh, but if someone had asked Harry without his seeing the manticore, he wouldn’t have said it had ever been alive.

            Then his legs collapsed beneath him, and he fell to the ground, choking. Hermione hurried over to bend down, cursing breathlessly. Harry could barely tell when the curses merged into the chanting of a healing spell. He only knew that the clutch of his throat eased a little, and he could gulp in stale, slightly dusty air that was still the best he’d ever breathed in his life.

            Hermione held her wand to the wound on his shoulder and finished casting whatever charms she needed to cast. Harry felt the heat and the swelling go down. He shifted to the side, trying to stand, but Hermione caught his arm and shook her head.

            “No, you have to stay still for right now,” she said. “The victim’s efforts to get away just exaggerate the effects of the venom.” She shuddered and closed her eyes. “A few more minutes and you would have been dead,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you draw back from the fight and cast a Shield Charm, Harry?”

            “Because I knew I could kill the manticore if I just kept on,” Harry said. “And because I want to be with Draco again, and a few more minutes is an awful delay.” He looked down at his shoulder, though because of the angle at which the tail had stung him, he wasn’t able to see the injury very well. “How much longer before I can move again?”

            “Who was the one who killed the manticore in the end?” Hermione snapped at him. “And it’ll be at least ten minutes, I think.”

            “Hermione.”

            Her face flushed, and Harry had been close enough to her for enough years to recognize the anger and worry combined in the way she stared at him. “You’re no use to Draco dead, idiot,” she said. “And I hardly think that he’d be content with your killing yourself on the way to him. Do what’s sensible as well as brave for once in your life.” She clasped his good shoulder and shook him to relieve her feelings. Harry’s head actually rolled on his neck.

            “I thought I wasn’t supposed to move?” he asked, when he’d recovered.

            “Impossible,” Hermione said darkly, and then stepped into a position where she could watch both doors, the one they’d come through and the one on the far side of the dim room, with her wand at the ready.

            Harry lowered himself to rest and lie obediently still. He really couldn’t prevent a fond smile from collecting on his lips. He hoped Hermione would understand if she glanced over at him and thought he was making fun of her concern.

*

            “How sweet,” Daphne murmured, studying the mirror. “Your little paramour is willing to kill himself on the way to you.” She glanced over her shoulder at Draco. “And yet I know that you’ve never even shared a bed.”

            At the moment, Draco was glad that he’d never slept with Harry. It would have been another private experience for Daphne to tear out of his head with her Legilimency and try to corrupt. So he simply lifted his chin and looked back in silence, and after an instant, Daphne seemed to find the mirror more interesting.

            Draco tightened his hands together in the wire. Daphne had cast the spell that allowed them both to hear what Harry and Granger were saying so she could listen in on the plans of her enemies, he knew, not for his sake. But still, hearing Harry’s words had made shock and wonder tingle up his spine like a lightning bolt, followed by an emotion he hadn’t felt in so long it took him a few moments to recognize it. Delight.

            And because I want to be with Draco again, and a few more minutes is an awful delay.

            Draco ducked his head to make it harder for Daphne to see his smile if she happened to look towards him.

*

            This time, Hermione went in front, casting detection spells in a loud voice that Harry thought was partially intended to warn any enemies they were coming. He went behind her, fretting but trying to convince himself that being impatient did no good. Ultimately, if he got wounded again and had to wait whilst Hermione cast healing spells, he would be prevented from taking his place at Draco’s side for a longer time yet. And God forbid he end up in St. Mungo’s through stupid heroics.

            He wouldn’t mind if Draco had to be taken to St. Mungo’s, of course. It was likely, when Daphne had had him for as many hours as she had. Harry would visit him every day, and find love poetry to print on cards and embarrass him, and order flowers delivered anonymously—if that was what Draco wanted, of course.

            Sometimes Harry thought he had started feeling affection for Draco without understanding the man. Yes, he had seen flashes of wit, intelligence, artistry in his Potions making, independence, pride, and passion that made him long to imitate it, and to be a worthy lover of its possessor. But he barely knew anything about Draco’s past other than what he’d managed to observe in Hogwarts. He didn’t even know why Draco couldn’t reconcile with his parents; when Harry had shown him Lucius’s letter, Draco had simply tightened his lips and turned his head away.

            If we rescue him, then there will be time to find those details out, Harry reassured himself, and then raced forwards as Hermione let out a loud shriek.

            They were traversing yet another dim room, the light of the Lumos charms on their wands barely pushing back the shadows. Harry had seen more blocky furniture draped with thick cloths, more odd corners that showed where wizardspace pushed against the real walls of the house, and more shining patinas of gray dust. So far, though, he had thought this room would be less dangerous than the other. Something like a manticore would have charged them at once, after all.

            But evidently Daphne had decided to stock this room with traps that waited until you passed them. The curved banister of a useless staircase—trailing off in mid-air, as though the architect had forgotten to finish it—had grabbed Hermione’s arm. And though she’d already lit the wood on fire, the flames danced harmlessly over the banister, which was using the railings that connected it to the steps to reach out to Hermione like a spider.

            Harry used a Blasting Curse, but it bounced back at him exactly as if the staircase were under a Shield Charm; he barely ducked in time. Hermione was still fighting, until one of the rails managed to knock her wand away. Harry Summoned it at once, then turned to confront the problem in front of him.

            His magic was no help; the potion had strengthened it, Harry thought, only in respect to protecting Draco, and since neither Harry nor Draco was in direct danger at the moment, Harry didn’t think he could command it to get rid of the staircase. Besides, Greengrass was probably watching, and he really should keep his most powerful weapon in reserve if he could.

            So he stared hard at the staircase instead, remembering one of the most useful lessons he had learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts: If something seems invulnerable, it’s got a clever disguise on.

            And sure enough, he made out the slight flicker of green shoots within the “railings” of the staircase dragging Hermione inexorably towards the steps, and smiled. This was some kind of plant, not a piece of animated furniture at all. That saved him trying useless charms to remove the spell that guided it. And though the tough woody casing around it seemed resistant to common offensive magic as well as fire, Harry doubted it had any protection against the spell he’d just chosen.

            “Saxum!” he shouted, the spell that Neville had once told Harry he used on anything in his garden which grew wilder and more ferocious than he liked it.

            The magic traveled out as a rippling wave of purple light that engulfed the staircase, but not Hermione; she wasn’t actually part of the plant, the sole target of Harry’s spell. He felt a sudden blow like something striking his chest from the inside. Startled, he wondered if his magic had responded to his will after all in some special way; it could at least tell that he didn’t mean to transform Hermione.

            The wood became stone, polished gray granite, and in the alteration from organic matter to non-organic matter lost the terrible life that had made it strong. Hermione hissed and flexed her hands, and Harry broke the grip of the stone tendrils with another flick of his wand. This time, they shattered harmlessly. He helped her stand up and gave her her wand back.

            “Yet another thing to check for,” Hermione muttered as she healed the bruises on her arms. Harry wanted to say that those probably wouldn’t slow down her spellwork even if they met more enemies, but said nothing. She would snap at him in the mood she was in, and he wanted her to save her rage for Greengrass. “I was checking for traps, wards, magical creatures, poisons, and half a dozen other things, but I didn’t think to cast a spell for plants.”

            “How careless of you,” Harry said mildly.

            She gave him a harsh look, directed primarily at the wound on his shoulder, and then turned and stamped towards the door on the eastern side of the room. Harry followed her, grinning. That had been a nice relief from the rage he could feel building up beneath his skin again, making his eyes itch.

*

            “Hmmm.” Daphne sounded disappointed. “I didn’t expect them to discover the counterspell to that staircase so soon.”

            Draco just breathed. He doubted she expected any answer, and he wouldn’t have had one to give even if she did. He could barely take his eyes from the mirror. He had never seen the Harry who walked there now, glancing calmly and alertly from side to side, thrumming with power. If he had, he probably would have jumped him long ago.

            And maybe then something of this could have been avoided, he thought sourly, remembering the way that he had been so anxious for Harry not to find out about Daphne, so that he wouldn’t feel disgusted by Draco. I should have found some other way to placate her, or some other way to pay the debts I owed to Cordelia.

            Daphne abruptly spun around to face him, so suddenly that Draco felt his back go up despite himself. Daphne examined his expression and laughed a little, shaking her head. “Relax, Draco,” she said. “I don’t mean to torture you yet. But I want you to tell me. I wasn’t there when he defeated the Dark Lord, if you will remember.”

            Draco nodded stiffly. Daphne had already fled the school with the rest of the good little Slytherins. It was only his own foolishness that had made him stay behind, certain he could capture Potter and regain his family’s favor with the Dark Lord.

            Harry. I was trying to capture Harry.

            For a moment, Draco was consumed by intense dizziness, trying to reconcile the dazzling figure in the mirror he was depending on to rescue him with the Potter he had despised and actually tried to sacrifice to his greatest enemy.

            But Daphne was speaking again, and he needed to concentrate on her words. “How much power would you say he has? How much did he use when he defeated the Dark Lord?”

            Draco managed, with a very great effort, to keep all his muscles from tensing at once. He would not betray Harry to Daphne like that. He would not make her think that she had to use Legilimency on him to learn the truth.

            Looking her in the eye, as sincerely as he could, Draco said, “You must have heard about it. Everyone thought Harry would use the Killing Curse to finish him. But it turned out that the Elder Wand, which the Dark Lord had seized, acknowledged Harry as its master. It had been Dumbledore’s wand. I defeated Dumbledore, and then Harry defeated me.”

            “I did hear about that,” Daphne murmured. She wasn’t trying to read him; at least, Draco didn’t think she was. She stood with her eyes focused past his face, on the far wall. But he had never been able to tell for certain when she was probing into his memories, so he could only try to keep both his hope and his dread very far under the surface of his mind. “I thought the reports must have been mistaken, however. Surely Potter flung a Killing Curse too fast to be noticed.”

            Draco shook his head. “The Dark Lord tried one,” he said. “But the Elder Wand refused to attack Harry, and he finished the Dark Lord off with his own curse, the same way he had when he was a baby.”

            “And that was a sacrifice of mother’s love,” Daphne said, and began to smile. “But against me he has no such protections.”



Draco bowed his head. “No, he doesn’t,” he said. He had only a moment to judge the tone of his voice, to hope that it was just sullen enough not to seem like overacting and make her suspect something. It was the most important performance of his life, and he put everything he had into it.

            Daphne’s hand descended on his hair. Draco flinched, thinking she might jerk his head up and read the truth out of his eyes. But Daphne only laughed and said, “I told you, no more torture for right now. Not until I have Harry Potter in front of me.” Her footsteps sounded a moment later, moving away from him, back towards the mirror.

            Draco peered at her through one eye. She was studying the glass, smiling expectantly, impatiently, her wand bouncing up and down in her palm.

            I’ve done what I can to fool her into thinking you’re less powerful than you are, Harry. Now get here and save me, goddamn it.

*

            Harry coughed. It seemed the latest room he and Hermione had entered was even fuller of dust than usual. But it had fewer pieces of furniture, and none of Hermione’s detection spells had revealed anything unusual. Even better, Harry could see what definitely looked like a staircase and not an oddly-shaped plant on the far side of the room.

            He and Hermione had just reached the bottom of it when the thoughts in Harry’s head suddenly stopped moving.

            It was a very odd sensation. He had been constructing a fantasy of what would happen when he rescued Draco from Daphne, and had reached the part where Draco looked at him with shining eyes and said—

            And Harry couldn’t imagine what he said. He found himself straining as if he were trying to pick up giant metal blocks without his wand. He parted his lips to say something, but only a strangled whine came out.

            When he looked at Hermione, he saw an expression on her face as if she had forgotten to return a book to the library on time. She clasped her hands against her temples and pushed hard, inwards. But Harry knew it was doing no good even before he watched her sink to her knees.

            Visions of Draco continued to drift in front of his eyes. He tried to come up with ideas about what might have happened to him and Hermione, but he could barely frame the name “Greengrass” in his head. He coughed again.

            Hermione didn’t—and the rest of the thought was wordless and he could not have spoken it, but he knew what he needed to do.

            His wand dangled, heavy and awkward, in his hand. He brought his arm up as if it were on winches, and barely managed to touch the tip of his wand to his throat. And then he couldn’t speak the incantation that would clear his lungs no matter how hard he tried.

            He imagined, with an effort like swinging chains, what would happen if he delayed too long here and Greengrass managed to torture Draco and drive him out of his mind.

            His magic rose in a brimming flood and followed the course of the incantation that hovered behind his lips. Harry’s lungs suddenly cleared, and a huge puff of dust, mingled with streamers of a thin yellow gas, flew out of his mouth.

            Coughing furiously, Harry turned to Hermione. This time, he didn’t have trouble pronouncing the charm that cleared her lungs aloud. Hermione choked, lips moving almost as if she wanted to keep the gas in, and then she made a sharp sound like haaak and loosed the yellow streamers. Harry cast a charm to keep the air circulating that Mrs. Weasley had taught him when they cleaned Grimmauld Place and knelt down, putting an arm around her shoulders whilst Hermione trembled as if she might need to vomit.

            “You’re all right?” Harry whispered, stroking her hair back from her face.

            Hermione nodded. Her trembling had already stopped, and she waved her wand, conjuring a glass vial. Harry blinked as she said, “Stop using that charm, I want to capture it,” and she used a different kind of air-stirring charm to direct the few tattered clouds of gas remaining into the vial, which she corked.

            “What?” she asked, when she saw Harry staring at her. “The Ministry might be able to analyze this gas.”

            “Would you really show it to anyone when you would have to admit we got it breaking and entering Daphne Greengrass’s manor house?” Harry raised his eyebrows.

            “Well, then I can still analyze it,” Hermione said, and tucked the vial away.

            “Never waste an opportunity to learn,” Harry muttered, in the voice Hermione had used on him and Ron at Hogwarts, and steered her towards the stairs.

*

            “They’re overcoming my defenses more easily than I thought they would,” Daphne murmured. Now her wand was tapping against her lips.

            Draco paused for a moment, muscles still flexing and then relaxing in his bonds. He could do something, if he dared, to distract Daphne for a moment and help Harry. Of course, he had no way of knowing how much it would help. At any moment, Daphne could read the truth out of his mind, and then what she had done to him so far would look like a love-tap.

            But Draco was sick of simply sitting here whilst Harry came closer and closer and Daphne revolved God knew what barbed schemes in that Slytherin brain of hers.

            “Of course,” he said. “Hermione Granger is with him.”

            Daphne turned around, the curious motion of her head to the side reminding Draco of what a cobra looked like when it cocked its neck to strike. “What do you mean?”

            “Granger was always the brains of that operation,” Draco explained, tilting his head back to ease the pain in his neck. The chair Daphne had chosen didn’t have the virtue of being a comfortable one. “She was the one who came up most of the spells that kept him one step ahead of the Death Eaters, I heard, and even helped him win the Triwizard Tournament.” And he sincerely did believe that, which would lessen the problem if Daphne decided to use her Legilimency. “The same way his mother’s love helped him defeat the Dark Lord.” He sighed and shook his head a little. “I think Harry Potter has been very lucky in his friends and his parents, but he’s less lucky in himself.”



“And yet, you’re ready to settle with him.” Daphne never did anything as girlish as sulking, or Draco might have mistaken that expression on her face for that.

            “Well, he’s attractive,” Draco said, with a little shrug. “And he has personality characteristics that I find enjoyable in a lover. A fierce temper, for example. That doesn’t mean he can do everything on his own. Breaking into manor houses to rescue me isn’t generally a test I impose on my partners.”

            “You should,” Daphne said. “It separates the quality from the chaff.” She looked at the mirror again. “And how magically powerful is Hermione Granger?”

            “Fairly,” Draco admitted. He remembered the Gall Bladder Curse that Granger had designed and used on Theodore Nott, and shuddered. “You would have a hard fight of it, confronting them both at once.”

            “There’s no need for that,” said Daphne, and spoke a single word, too high and shrill for Draco’s ears to hear it.

He dropped his head back against the chair and hoped silently that she wouldn’t turn and punish him.

*

            Halfway up the stairs, Hermione cried out. Harry swung around on one heel and saw that a cage of energy, wickedly glowing blue light, had sprung up to separate them. He reached back down, but Hermione cried out again when the bars bent inwards, and Harry smelled the scent of singing hair.

            When he backed away, ready to hurl himself at it, the bars snapped into their original positions. And Hermione said a word she had once threatened to wash out Ron’s mouth with soap for saying.

            “What?” Harry demanded anxiously.

            “This is the Flexible Cage Spell,” Hermione said, sounding more angry than upset. “It holds a prisoner safe as long as no one else tries to touch her, but anyone else coming near—friend or foe—makes the cage hurt her. It was used on prisoners that some of the old Dark Lords wanted to starve to death.”

            “Maybe if I gather my power, I can—“

            “It can only be broken from the inside,” Hermione snapped, “and it’ll take me a while to remember how to do that. Go on up ahead and face Greengrass.” She peered between the gap in the bars when Harry hesitated. “Go on,” she said more insistently. “Draco probably needs you more than I do right now, and it’ll be easier to concentrate if I don’t have to watch you dance from foot to foot like a small child needing the loo.”

            Despite the fear rising in him, Harry managed to smile. He waved and turned away, hearing Hermione begin to mutter as she tried the first of what he knew would be many spells on the recalcitrant cage.

            He took the stairs two at a time now, casting a detection spell every other step, heart beating fast. But no one and nothing attacked him, and at the top of the flight was only a single door, standing open.

            Harry paused a moment to wipe his hands on his trousers. He saw no point in waiting, since his enemy most likely knew he was here already.

            His rage and his magic spreading around him like invisible wings, he stepped through the door.

*

            SP77: What can I say? Sometimes the cliffhangers are more abrupt than other times.

            Pendragon6644: Thanks for reviewing!

            Lilith: Thanks for reviewing!

            Mangacat: The third part concerns confrontation with Diggory and attempts at reconciliation with Ginny and the Malfoys, among other things.

            Yume111: In a way, you can interpret Daphne like that. She is upset she never managed to get Draco panting after her like her other lovers, but it’s not the center of her life.

            Draco’s pride has already taken quite a beating thanks to his own stupidity where Daphne was concerned. He’s done what he could to help, and that will have to be enough.
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An Alchemical Discontent