Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
- 20
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Nineteen—A Way Into the Manor

            “Mother, thank you for meeting with me.”

            Harry smiled as he watched from behind the curtain stretched across the private room’s back wall. He wouldn’t have thought that any of the restaurants in Diagon Alley had private back rooms, but that only proved, as Draco had told him, that he wasn’t used to using his money. Draco only had to offer a few cold stares, a few more dropped words about certain connections he had, and some more Galleons, and he had permission not only to use the back room to meet his mother, but for Harry to stand behind the curtain. The restaurant owner’s expression had said all too openly that he didn’t want to know what was going on.

            “Draco. Thank you for setting up the meeting.”

            Empty courtesies seemed to be the order of the day, Harry thought, watching Narcissa Malfoy as she made a little bow to her son. She was taller than he’d remembered—not that he’d ever seen her very close for very long—and the white cloak she wore billowed behind her. Draco stepped up, took it, drew out her chair, and draped the cloak over the back. Narcissa took it and tilted her head back to watch him with a cool expression.

            If I met her in the course of a case, she wouldn’t look guilty, Harry decided wisely. Which would be all the more reason to concentrate on her as a suspect, of course.

            “Of course,” Draco said, and leaned back behind the table, his knee cocked up to touch the underside, his smile wise and worldly. “You know what this is about, Mother, don’t you?”

            “I could scarcely avoid knowing, when you told me about the letter you received,” Narcissa said, and held Draco’s eyes. She gave him no more help, but glanced at the list of prices and items floating in magically-written letters above the table, and tapped her wand against what Harry knew was one of the more expensive dishes. The letters flashed once, and then returned to what looked like normal.

            “Yes, well.” Draco dropped his head. “I just—Mother, I just want to know he’s safe and happy. That’s all. If you’re in contact with him, will you tell him that, for me?”

            Harry saw the way Narcissa’s hand paused as if arrested by someone catching her wrist. Her eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction, and she shook her had a little. “Draco, you know that I am not in contact with your father. The Ministry permits one visit a month to Azkaban, and since he disappeared, I do not have even that.”

            Harry sighed as the crimson corona around Narcissa’s head flamed into being on her first sentence, diminished on the words about how often the Ministry permitted her to visit her husband, and flared up again when she made her statement about being in contact with Lucius. They had agreed on this variation of Draco’s initial plan because that way, Harry could clearly make sure Narcissa was lying.

            She was. They had found the suspect behind Lucius’s disappearance.

            Harry waved his wand, causing a small piece of dust to rise from the base of the curtain and drift onto Draco’s shoulder. Draco uttered a small exclamation and rubbed it off his shirt. “I shall have to have a word with Master Perkins about the condition of his room,” he murmured, and touched his own wand to some letters in the list.

            The dust was their agreed-upon signal if Narcissa lied. Harry could make out the way Draco’s shoulders slumped for a moment, and then the way he sat up, leaning in, focusing on his mother as though his own gaze could tell him what the lies behind her façade were.

            It was silly of him to do that, when he had Harry as a reliable lie detector and Harry would handle all the violence Draco wanted him to. But like ninety percent of the things about Draco, it was adorable anyway.

            It’s the ten percent that will probably cause most of the excitement in our relationship.

            Harry smiled, but forced himself to pay attention to Draco’s response to his mother. They still hadn’t completely solved the mystery, and wouldn’t until Lucius was safely back in Azkaban, or at least in Draco’s hands.

            “All right,” Draco said, in a subdued tone, and folded his hands on top of the table. “I just—I worry about him. I know he said he was safe in my letter, but I worry.”

            Not even the flash of a lie around his head, because he had got by with calling the letter “my letter.” Harry held back the temptation to chuckle. Narcissa had no reason to suspect he was here, but she wasn’t deaf.

            Besides, Draco folding his hands on top of the table had been a signal. He would keep his mother occupied here while Harry went to the Manor and tried to figure out a way inside to the place where she was keeping Lucius hidden—a modification of the original plan that Harry had proposed when Draco had asked him to spy on the conversation between Draco and Narcissa.

            That only left extracting himself from the curtain, but Harry had worked as a spy inside Dark wizards’ lairs before, and he was more skilled at this than most of his enemies would have acknowledged. He eased sideways, centimeter by centimeter, and listened to Narcissa’s conversation all the while. If she sounded distracted or said something that made red light shine through the curtain, then he would know at once.

            Another advantage of this curse that the Unspeakables did not mean to be an advantage.

            Right now, Narcissa was murmuring commonplaces about how much she missed Lucius and how much it damaged a pure-blood family to have the head of it in prison. Harry listened to the tone and watched for red light, and emerged from the curtain under a Disillusionment Charm without hearing or seeing anything incriminating. He shook his head. Narcissa was subtle, and dangerous, with the way that she had managed to convince Kingsley to act for her, but she wasn’t invincible. He needed to stop acting as if she was.

            He felt Draco’s eyes on his back as he moved towards the door, waiting patiently until it opened and the dishes Draco and Narcissa had ordered floated inside. Then he slipped out and let the door fall to noiselessly behind him.

            If he could have, he would have made a reassuring gesture to Draco, but he was on his way, and Draco would have to survive on his own. He could probably do that. He had done it for more than twenty years without Harry’s help, after all, and sometimes with his active opposition.

            Probably.

            Harry walked to a place where not many people stood and then Apparated, the sight of Malfoy Manor blazing clear in his mind from the investigations of it he had done last year.

*

            The gates of the Manor still shimmered behind the wards that Harry’s spies had told him existed, wards that would keep anyone out who wasn’t of the blood, unless someone who was invited them willingly. Harry sighed. They would see if the precaution he and Draco had devised to get him past them worked or not.

            He dug into his pocket while watching all around him. Narcissa might have human guards, or house-elves, keeping an eye on the house and especially reporting all visitors who came near it.

            But the only living beings he saw were the inevitable white peacocks, stalking back and forth with jerks of their long necks. Harry smiled and watched them as he held out the object Draco had enchanted, a small mirror, towards the wards.

            Harry had never heard of such a thing, but Draco had explained that an enchantment placed in a mirror, if it was strong enough and the glass had a certain other spell placed on it, would retain the feeling of a being’s presence. It was a fact known and used in Potions theory to enable two Potions masters to work on sensitive concoctions, apparently, which would otherwise blow up at the feeling of a foreign magical signature. Draco’s idea was that enchanting the mirror with the feeling of his presence would convince the Malfoy wards that a Malfoy blood heir stood there.

            For long moments, the wards simply shimmered, not hostile as long as Harry didn’t come closer than this to them, and then there was a small clicking noise and they dissolved. Harry stepped up as the gates swung inwards, but kept the mirror held in front of him. He was sure there were other wards along the way, and the mirror might help him with them.

            The peacocks turned their heads to stare at him, and then turned away again. Harry shook his head at them. “Be that way, if you want to,” he muttered, and kept walking.

            The path wound slowly up to the Manor doors, and several times, Harry sensed something watching him, only to dissolve when he turned the mirror in its direction. Yes, Draco’s idea had worked, and it had been a good one.

            But does Draco ever have wrong ideas about anything other than me and sex?

            Harry smiled. He had to admit that he found it hard to think of any.

            He reached the front door, and lowered the mirror. The wards didn’t immediately lash out and destroy him. That made it a good bet that his informers had been accurate and the wards here didn’t link to the blood family. Harry had been surprised when he first learned that, but when he had thought about it more later, the Malfoys probably depended on the blood wards to keep someone from sneaking onto the grounds, not to destroy visitors they would have had to give permission to approach their front door.

            Most people need permission. But I’m not most people.

            With a feeling of well-being like gold in his head, Harry cast the spell he had invented some time ago. The magic sang along his veins, and made his hands glow, in this case an obscured yellow through the black marks on the palms that the artifact had left. Harry hesitated. He hadn’t thought of what the artifact’s lingering magic might do to his spell.

            But he had come this far, and it would be cowardly not to at least test. He reached out and laid his hands on the door.

            The wards snapped at him, stung and leaped and came down like fleet-footed hawks—and were counteracted by the spell that coursed through him, one that rendered any bit of skin which his blood ran beneath invulnerable to harm from defensive magic. Harry’s hair stood on end, and his palms became a bit more singed than he had thought they would. Of course, he had never dealt with wards as powerful as this before, mostly only the hasty ones that a Dark wizard threw up in front of a lair they intended to come back to later.

            These wards assaulted him again and again, and his eyes watered and he was sneezing before they were done. But at last they fell dead, cut through, and Harry swung open the door and stepped inside.

            He wasn’t worried about the security of the rest of the Manor. The hole in the wards only covered the front door, and he was sure that house-elves would repair them as soon as he left.

            For now, the elves only cowered in the corner, staring at him, as Draco had said they would. They were under orders to defend their owners’ property and person, but Harry didn’t intend to attack either of those.

            He laid his wand on his stinging palm and closed his eyes. “Point Me Lucius Malfoy,” he whispered.

            Once again, the magic leaped through him as his spell had done. Harry felt it ruffle his hair, and snorted a little. A lot of that was already standing out from his head because of the lightning-like effect of the wards. He suspected he would look a sight by the time he was done.

            But needs must, when your lover’s mother had stolen his father, hidden him somewhere, and then tried to blame your boss for it.

            The wand aimed up the stairs. Harry went up lightly, making sure not to hit or chip anything. The house-elves would rouse up then, and he didn’t want to have them to contend with, when he was so close to getting away with it cleanly.

            The wand tugged him sideways, and Harry followed. It seemed he was speeding past doors, all of them closed, and he shook his head a little. Narcissa hadn’t taken the trouble to hide her husband that Harry would have expected, but without a spell—without knowing that Lucius was here, which most people wouldn’t have suspected—then you could search in all the vast rooms for months without a clue.

            But the spell was a common one, which did make Harry wonder how Narcissa had planned to hide Lucius if someone suspected and forced an entrance. Or had she relied on the wards to give her enough time?

            Finally, the wand brought him to a halt in front of what looked like an ordinary stretch of stone in the Manor’s walls. Harry studied it thoughtfully, and smiled when he saw signs of fresh construction. He nodded. Narcissa had indeed hidden the room, although again she seemed to have taken a chance relying on the wards.

            He took a step back and closed his eyes. He could have used the ward-defeating spell again, or simply tried to break it down, but for the same concerns about the house-elves. Besides, he thought there was a simpler solution here.

            “Lucius?” he called.

            There was utter silence for a long moment, but Harry was familiar with that kind. It came from someone too stunned to make noise, rather than no one being there. He waited, smiling a little, turning his wand over and over in his fingers.

            Then the stone grated and moved, turning smoothly on hinges Harry hadn’t suspected were there. The door opened out into the corridor, revealing a small room beyond with white marble walls and a roaring fire. That made sense, Harry reckoned. Most Azkaban prisoners spent some time being cold when they came out of the prison.

            Lucius leaned out into the corridor, and stared at him. Then he said, “How can you be here, Harry Potter?”

            Harry saw no reason not to tell the truth. Lucius hadn’t lied to him yet, after all. “Your son hired me to help him find you.”

            Lucius blinked, and blinked some more. Finally, he muttered, “But he wouldn’t have needed to. Narcissa said she would tell him, as soon as the Ministry stopped suspecting that he had something to do with it.”

            “I don’t think the Ministry ever suspected that, except the way they would suspect any member of your family might have broken you free,” Harry said gently. “Suspicion is—elsewhere, right now.” He wasn’t sure this was the time to get into conclusions about the people who might have wanted to destroy Lucius’s soul. “Somehow, your wife broke you free, and she’s kept you concealed from Draco since. Draco really wanted to find you, and he was afraid you might be dead. But he didn’t know. I was the one who figured that out,” he added helpfully. He reckoned it couldn’t be a stupid thing, to let Draco’s family know how clever he was. Maybe Lucius would throw his weight behind a more permanent connection.

            “She used an Imperius Curse on Shacklebolt,” Lucius murmured, shaking his head. “She told me that. But—she also told me she was rescuing me from a worse fate.” He swallowed. He looked gaunt, and Harry thought his hair would have been more shocking if it hadn’t been so near white already, absorbing most of the pale color it had turned. “Are you saying that wasn’t true? That Narcissa would have kept me concealed from Draco forever if she could?”

            Harry set his back. Lucius had no wand that he could see, and Harry was confident of taking him if he attacked. Again, he might as well tell the truth. “Draco wanted you to go back to Azkaban so that he could control his own life. Somehow, he didn’t seem too fond of having you as the head of the family again.”

            Lucius shook his head immediately. “I would never have tried that. Legally and otherwise, he’s his own man now.”

            His voice rang with truth, and the space around his head was clear of crimson. Harry nibbled his lip indecisively and stared at him. Then he said, “But can you deny the Ministry will never stop searching for you, as long as you’re free? And they’ll keep a watch over Draco, too, so he can’t do what he wants. The safest place for you to secure Draco’s future is in a cell.”

            Lucius sighed. “I did not say my wife’s solution was perfect. But I would rather be free than not, and while I am sorry for Draco’s fears—I don’t plan to interfere in his life, I thought he knew that—I will not go back to Azkaban.”

            Harry studied him thoughtfully. Despite what Draco had said, he probably would prefer that his father be free, if there was a way to avoid consequences for himself.

            And Harry could see a lot of good in getting Draco’s father free, and in getting the Ministry to leave him alone. Good in Draco’s gratitude, if nothing else.

            Which just meant Harry had to come up with a brilliant solution that would content everyone all around, and keep the Ministry from looking for Lucius, too.

            Then Harry had it, and he smiled.

            I really am too good.

*

            delia cerrano: Thank you!

            unneeded: Kingsley wouldn’t remember it if Narcissa used the Imperius Curse and a Memory Charm.

            Nightlo: Well, Narcissa might not want to meet Harry, particularly, but Lucius seems to be doing okay!

            Seiren: Thanks for reviewing.
- 18
- 19
- 20
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Leopardspaw