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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23338 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
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Chapter Nineteen—Poised to Strike

            “Yes, I should perhaps have anticipated that.” Malfoy leaned back in his chair with a pose that frustrated Harry, because it was so casual. “The Unspeakables cannot reach us at the moment, and Skeeter’s article hasn’t yet informed them, but they must know that there’s a high chance we’re behind the theft. So they went after your friends to force you out, knowing how protective you are of them.”

            Harry clenched all the muscles in his legs, which helped keep them from transforming. “And what are we going to do about it?”

            “Plan.”

            That single sharp word quenched the venom that was starting to swell in Harry’s cheeks, and he sat down on the chair, smiling slightly at Malfoy. The white serpent curled around his neck, licked his cheek, and said, I told you that he would try to fix it, brother.

            “Fine,” Harry said. He clasped his hands in front of him and studied them, reminding himself again that Hermione and Ron probably weren’t in immediate physical danger. Hermione would have told him if they were. She was sensible about things like that, quick in a crisis; she would have known it was most important to get that across. “But what should the plan concern? Is Parkinson going to help us?”

            “Pansy might not want to immediately,” Malfoy said, his eyes clouding as he looked up at the ceiling. “She lent her house to us for our first meeting with your friends. She might think that she has done that much and should be excused from more.”

            Harry licked around his fangs, and waited.

            “But Millicent’s a possibility,” Malfoy said, and smiled at Harry. “She was the one who created the distraction that allowed me to rescue you from St. Mungo’s in the first place. I know that she would be reluctant to do something directly in hospital again for a time, lest they suspect her, but the Unspeakables are a different matter. And while I don’t think she has any fondness for your friends, she doesn’t hate them, either. And Blaise might help.”

            More Slytherins, Harry thought, but it was true that he had chosen to surround himself with Slytherins and Dark wizards when he decided to become one. He leaned back and nodded. “Will you contact them?”

            “At once, if you want me to,” Malfoy said, and stood, and bowed, and walked out of the drawing room where he had brought Harry to sit.

            Harry closed his eyes, and thought about it. How many of his fellow Aurors would have gone right away to do something that he asked of them like that? Hell, how many of his friends would have?

            Ron and Hermione, before the Parseltongue and the madness that they suspected of infecting him. Ginny—once. But the subject of Ginny was a painful one, one that Harry sometimes couldn’t help playing with, like a loose tooth, but didn’t want to think of now.

            Mrs. Weasley. The twins, once upon a time. Neville, after that last year when they had all come back to Hogwarts and renewed their friendship. But not many other people, and Harry gave a small, bitter smile. It seemed that he might have doubled the number of people who would help him simply by going to Malfoy.

            That is the way it is, the white snake said into his ear, flinging a coil of cool body there, and then resting against his neck as though he would never move. You only have to accept it. You should be more practical. You have me.

            Harry touched him, and turned his head so that his cheek rested against the scales, in turn, and waited.

*

            “Frankly, you’re going to have to do something more for me.”

            Draco nodded. He really had no more debts to hold over Millicent, and helping a Gryffindor—or former Gryffindor—was different for her than helping someone who had aided her in the past. “All right. What?”

            That made Millicent reach up and wind some of her hair around her fingers; it was clear that she had expected a more extended negotiation. Draco hid his smile and waited, calmly, blandly patient. He loved being able to knock people off-balance; among other things, it signaled to him that he still had the ability to take risks that was necessary for a Dark wizard.

            And it wouldn’t do any harm to go a little further than he needed to for Harry’s sake and have Millicent owe him a favor.

            Finally, Millicent leaned forwards and said, “I think you owe me one of those potions that you’ve been bragging about for years, Draco. The ones that sharpen your mind and make your concentration cut like a knife. I have exams coming up soon, and there are people who don’t want me to pass them because of my family. I need to make sure that my marks are so brilliant they have no choice.”

            Draco shook his head. “Millicent, you are asking me to help you cheat? I am shocked.”

            “I know,” Millicent said, and then they spoke in unison, although Draco had tried to hurry the words up so he would be the first to say them:

            “Shocked that you never asked me before.”

            Millicent smiled. “In truth, no more than a potion to enhance my memory and senses. They would look for something other than that, and I have to undergo a test for every illegal potion they can think of before I enter the room for the exams.”

            “This won’t be one they can think of,” Draco said comfortably. “All right. I’ll want you to meet me at my house this afternoon.”

            Millicent smiled. “How horrible. Healer Trainee Otterson will just have to handle the case of that child who continually cries and pisses himself on her own, since I’ll be in bed with a headache.”

            Draco nodded, and then let the Floo connection die so he could call Blaise. He received no answer at home, so he called Blaise’s office, chiding himself for forgetting. He was a magical researcher—and independently wealthy, which was really more of a concern—and could set his own schedule. Blaise, on the other hand, had chosen the path of demanding, risky work instead of demanding, risky fun.

            The sounds of the office came through the minute Draco called out Blaise’s address: the scratch of quills, the murmur of hastened and hushed conversations, the rustle of parchment as trainee lawyers compared what they had written with what the law books and old scrolls said. Draco waited until someone had the leisure to attend him. Even though he could only hear and not see most of this world, it was still knowledge.

            A clerk peeped around the desk that Blaise kept in front of his Floo, squeaked and nearly toppled over with bowing, and then turned and ran in the opposite direction. Draco sat back. The next minute, Blaise strolled around the desk as though he had just happened to be walking in that direction and sat down, arching his eyebrows at Draco.

            “This chair is less comfortable than I remembered,” he murmured. “I shall have to have a new one put here.”

            Draco studied him with some admiration. He and Blaise had been lovers several times, and Blaise had an even finer dress sense since he had opened his own office, with a set of deep red robes that made him look as if he were clad in smoldering embers and flattered his dark skin. He had tousled his hair—not in the same way Harry’s was, which even Draco had to admit didn’t look professional—and had done up his face with a few subtle touches of glamour charms. He could look reassuring or command attention with the merest change of expression.

            “Do,” Draco said. “But don’t worry about it right away, as you can sit on one in the Manor.”

            Blaise nodded, as if he had expected nothing more. “You’ve run into trouble with the Unspeakables, then?”

            Draco didn’t flinch or blink an eye, because he had expected this. “Pansy,” he said with a sigh.

            “Pansy,” Blaise agreed, with a small smirk and a tilt of his head to the side that made him look almost winsome. Draco, who knew him better than any of the people working in the office ever would, had to admire his acting ability. “I must say, Draco, you’re hanging around a better class of criminal these days.”

            “Yes.”

            In that one moment of intense eye contact, Draco knew, Blaise had learned things about Harry and Draco’s claim on him that Draco would have had a hard time putting into words, but which Blaise could sense. He lifted his hands in a delicate defense. “Draco, Draco, you wound me with your distrust,” he said. “All right, no repayment of favors that way. But is it permitted for me to ask for something else?”

            “I wouldn’t trust you at all if you told me that you were going to work for free,” Draco pointed out.

            Blaise nodded. “True. Then what I want is your guarantee that Potter is going to use my services for his future legal troubles.”

            “Defamation and the like?” Draco asked. “Taking up a new line, Blaise?”

            “Oh, no,” Blaise said, in a liquid voice that had also fooled more than one magistrate, more than one member of the Wizengamot, into thinking that here was someone harmless that they could babble all their troubles to. “I meant more in the line of services such as unfreezing Gringotts accounts.”

            Draco smiled. “It isn’t a line of work I would have thought of asking you to undertake,” he said. “But isn’t that trading a favor for more work?”

            Blaise shook his head. “Not with the amount of attention Potter will draw to my business,” he said, with a wave at the office that Draco knew full well didn’t represent a tenth of his interests. “And if he agrees to act—discreet—in public, then we can do even more. Besides, think of the legal precedents for a case like this!” By now, Blaise was sitting fully upright, and his eyes shone. “If they can freeze the accounts of a Parselmouth for being a Parselmouth, then what about the Metamorphmagi, or Animagi, or any wizard who’s a bit different and has an inborn gift that could potentially be used for the Dark Arts?”

            “Those haven’t traditionally been considered Dark gifts in the same way,” Draco had to point out, because he never skipped the chance to point out Blaise’s lack of a research background when he could.

            Blaise flipped a hand. “Semantics. In the meantime, Potter and I will be conducting the real business, and investigating legal precedent, and pointing out the delicious consequences of the slippery slope.”

            Draco laughed, and saluted Blaise. Blaise nodded back and turned around as someone called “Mr. Zabini!” from beyond him.

            Draco stood up and executed a little dance step as his own Floo closed. He and Harry had allies, and even if those allies didn’t like Harry—the way that he knew Pansy didn’t—then that was still more than enough firepower for the Unspeakables.

            They wouldn’t know what had hit them.

*

            Harry stared at the parchments that Malfoy had spread out in front of him, and then shook his head. “I don’t understand all these notations,” he said, letting his fingers rest on the abbreviations that seemed to dominate the sheaves of paper.

            He didn’t miss the way Parkinson raised her eyebrows at Malfoy, and knew what she would be saying, silently. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know half of what he should. Why did you let him be with us, again?

            Harry flushed at the thought, and held his head up high. Parkinson only looked further away. Probably the sight of the collar of scales around his throat wasn’t an inspiring one, Harry had to admit.

            Do not worry, brother, said the white serpent, coiled close and happy on his shoulder. She will help us no matter what she feels for you. Because when the cold one mentions the Unspeakables, she stinks of fear.

            Harry wished for a moment that his senses were that sharp, and then thought of the smells that would probably come to him all the time from Malfoy’s direction and took the wish back. Besides, he could create snakes to warn him of danger through all the senses if he wanted to. The white serpent was merely his closest and most constant companion. Why do you call him the cold one? Because he doesn’t build the fires up enough? He and Malfoy were still sleeping in separate beds, and Harry had noticed that the white snake went under the covers last night, as if the fire wasn’t adequate.

            The white snake stuck out his tongue and looked at Harry in what seemed to be, honestly, nothing more than surprise. Because he has no snakes to warm him. He must be cold.

            Harry would have responded, but Malfoy interrupted then. “They’re just abbreviations in case someone manages to steal the plans,” he said dismissively. “In the meantime, Blaise is going to use his contacts in the Ministry to find out what the Unspeakables are doing with your friends, if they’re just keeping a watch on their Floo or if they’ve actually moved them out of their house and someplace else.”

            Harry swallowed. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Ron and Hermione might not be in Ron’s Place anymore, but he should have. He had firecalled Hermione yesterday, and that had got, briefly, through the watch the Unspeakables had put on the Floo. That meant they might have decided a more secure location was better.

            “Then Millicent is going to create a distraction.” Malfoy nodded across the table to Millicent Bulstrode, who had joined them that morning. Harry studied her covertly. She looked a lot different from the girl he’d known in Hogwarts, but he wondered how much of that was the clothes of a trainee Healer. She nodded to Harry now and looked at Malfoy as if his existence was unimportant. It probably was, Harry reflected. He could have been a Slytherin, and he was now a Dark wizard, but he wasn’t part of that same tight circle of friends around Malfoy.

            And sometimes, you want to be.

            Harry was glad that no one else in the room could understand Parseltongue, and that only Malfoy was looking sidelong at his flaming face. But then, Malfoy noticed everything, and there was little Harry could do about that. He blinked at Malfoy in reassurance, and Malfoy decided that it was all right and said, “You ought to see Millicent’s distractions.”

            “Oh, yes,” Bulstrode said, and touched something lying on the table in front of her, something that looked to Harry like a chip of black diamond, or condensed dust from the Dark paths. “This one is going to be spectacular.”

            Harry decided not to ask at this point. Then it might seem that he didn’t trust them. “All right. And you and Parkinson and I are going to go in and hit the Unspeakables once we figure out where Ron and Hermione are?”

            Malfoy turned his head modestly to the side, which unfortunately looked too much like the position he’d taken up in the shower the other day not to arouse Harry. “Of course,” Malfoy said, while Harry literally sat on the arousal and tried not to listen to the white serpent hissing gently in his ear. “We three worked well together when we went into the Department of Mysteries. It only makes sense to assemble the same team again.”

            “I want him not to change.”

            Harry started and looked at Parkinson. She hadn’t spoken much today, and that was one reason why, but her voice had changed, too. It was flat, and she leaned forwards with her fists on the table and her eyes on him.

            “I don’t want you to change into a snake again,” Parkinson said. For some reason, he voice sounded almost lilting even though it was flat. “Promise me that you won’t.”

            “Unless I need to take to that Dark path I conquered, where being a snake is almost required, then I won’t,” Harry promised.

            Parkinson leaned back and looked at Malfoy. “Not good enough,” she said, less with sound than with the shape of her lips.

            Malfoy sighed and turned in place to look at Harry. “Pansy has a problem with the full shapeshift,” he said. “We probably won’t use Dark paths much at all when we go in after the Unspeakables, because we can’t guarantee that your friends’ house or wherever else they are has one. So can you manage to keep from turning into an anaconda?”

            Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that Parkinson should examine her own prejudices about Parselmouths, and nodded. She was still far less prejudiced than his friends were. And he had to work with her, he didn’t have to like her.

            It’s good that you don’t like her, said the white serpent, turning around to put his chin on top of Harry’s head. I think the cold one might not like that.

            Harry really wished that his face would stop flooding with color so often. Once again, Malfoy cocked his head, and once again, Harry just had to meet his eyes and shake his head. There was no reason for him to speak, and nothing he could say that would explain it to Malfoy without violently embarrassing them both.

            Malfoy let it go, mercifully, and said, “As long as you agree not to do it unless you must. I think even Pansy wouldn’t have a problem with it if you were saving our lives.”

            “From extreme duress, as Gryffindors would say.” Parkinson’s eyes were more slitted than the eyes of some of Harry’s snakes. “Then no, I wouldn’t have a problem.”

            Harry nodded. “Then I promise not to shapeshift unless it’s to save our lives.”

            Malfoy reached across the table and lightly touched his hand. Harry shuddered under the touch, his skin jumping. Malfoy didn’t miss that, he knew; a slow smile made Malfoy’s mouth appear broader than before, and he withdrew his fingers with a few slow scrapes up and down Harry’s tendons.

            “Good,” Malfoy said, turning away and looking at Bulstrode and Parkinson. “Then no one else has any problems?”

            Parkinson shook her head, and Bulstrode followed, scooping up the black seed in front of her. Harry decided that he would watch her “distraction” carefully and keep his snakes well away from the magic if it looked destructive. He had already lost more than he would like.

            “Blaise should have news for us before tomorrow,” Malfoy said, and clapped his hands. “So rest now. We need to be ready to move at any time, even if it’s the middle of the night.”

            Parkinson and Bulstrode nodded and departed. Harry sat at the table for a minute after they were gone, caught up in the differences between the way they planned and the way he and Ron and Hermione did. If Hermione was directing this, she would tell them every detail, and Ron and Harry would argue over it. Harry wondered if the way that Malfoy and his friends went about it conveyed more trust, or less.

            “Harry.”

            Harry started and looked up. Malfoy stood over him, looking down, mouth a hollow slash against his face. Harry smiled wanly. “The order to rest applies to everyone, right?” he asked. “I know that I didn’t sleep as well last night as I should have, with the way I was worrying about my friends.”

            I offered to smother your mouth and nose until you passed out, the white serpent said, swaying back and forth sadly. I would not have let you die. It is not my fault that you didn’t choose to avail yourself of my good offices.

            Harry would have replied, but Malfoy touched the back of his hand again and stopped him. “Sometimes,” Malfoy whispered, bending over him so that his hair sheltered both their faces, “to rest, you need to make sure that you exhaust yourself first.”

            “More work in the lab?” Harry rose, and found that he was rising into Malfoy’s arms. They circled him as if they would have hold of him in any shape, let his shoulders sink or his trunk thicken, and Harry shuddered and swayed towards him, captured despite himself by that promise of utmost faithfulness.

            “No,” Malfoy said. “I thought something else might serve.”

            The white serpent unwound himself and slithered down Harry’s arm. Human mating is still uninteresting, he announced, near the door; Harry hadn’t known he could move that fast. Wake me when you come to bed, so that I can adjust my position. And send house-elves to build up the fire.

            Harry opened his mouth to say, either to the serpent or Malfoy, that he hadn’t said yes yet, that he objected to the automatic assumption that he would spend the night with Malfoy—

            And then realized that his body had spoken for him, with the way he swayed into Malfoy and the hand he had already raised to touch his cheek. Besides, the white snake had doubtless picked up the truth from his smell.

            “Yes?” Malfoy asked into his ear, and the sound traveled deep and stirred up echoes that rang through the bones in Harry’s skull.

            “Yes,” Harry said, and knew it didn’t matter whether he spoke in Parseltongue or English. Malfoy would understand either way.

            It’s wonderful to have someone who does.

            As they kissed, the world tilted around Harry, and he seemed to fall down a chute. He had no idea what waited at the bottom, and he had to admit that he didn’t fear finding out. Perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should remember, still, that Malfoy was dangerous and his enemy up until recently.

            But he didn’t want to remember. And this was his will right now, his choice, his freedom.

            He reached out and gathered Malfoy into his arms the way Malfoy had already gathered him.

*

            Talltree-san: Ron and Hermione’s decision to contact Harry sure isn’t made any easier by the Ministry’s harassment, that’s for sure.

            Seiren: Thank you! I hope that you find the planning in this chapter as interesting.
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