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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)	By : Tommy-Lane Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13085 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any charactors from the books and I am not making any money off of this.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
- 20
Harry felt rooted to the spot, his heart stuttering in his chest as he stared at the spot where Draco had stood not a second ago. Nothing was there now - just empty air, the coffee mug still sizzling with the magic the disk had held. He felt sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him, that the next time he blinked the impassioned blonde would be scowling at the bed once more. Because he couldn't...he couldn't be gone.
"Ron." He croaked when his vision refused to bring the dark artifacts Analyst back to life before him, his breath growing shallow.
"Yeah?" His partner turned towards him, cocking his head in question as the Healer they were questioning was cut off mid-sentence.
Words felt far too heavy to possibly make it past his throat and off his tongue so Harry merely lifted a hand and pointed, everything feeling like wading through sludge as sticky and hot as tar.
"Did Malfoy leave?" Ron asked after following his wavering finger.
"No...yes...he was just there and then he....oh god." It all slammed forward into his chest in one very real and solid moment, time picking back up and making him jerk forward until he was grasping the coffee mug and peering into its brown tinged depths. The disk was gone, a thick black residue clouding at the bottom.
The bloody bastard couldn't wait, he just had to jump before they knew it was safe, he just had to...Harry's hands shook as his mind spun, the mug clanking back down onto the table as he squeezed his eyes shut. A viscous murderer had set their sights on the blonde long ago and now they had their claws in him - the maniac had managed to draw him away from protection and god anything could be happening to him right that very second. He could...Harry's stomach clenched and he pushed it to the back of his mind.
He wouldn't go down that road. He would get Draco back, he would not become the next victim in the string of ruthless murders. He would not be drudging his body up next.
"What happened?"
"The disk was turned into a portkey." He explained at Ron's softly voiced question after the man had very nearly pushed the Healer out the door and slammed it shut behind her. "It was turned into a portkey and the idiot activated it and now he's..." His hand reached up to finger the purple patch just under his jawline as had become habit as of late whenever his nerves overtook him - his short nail pressing into the blooming bruise that Draco had sucked into being.
"You're sure?" Ron asked tentatively, staring down into the mug with unease.
"Do you see him?" Harry snapped. "God Ron that twisted fuck has him and we have no idea where he is! He's just gone...fucking hell I don't know...I..."
"We don't know anything for sure Harry." The red head interrupted what was quickly becoming an unhinged rant as Harry felt his panic rise along with his blood pressure, fear the likes of which he hadn't felt in years rolling through him.
"Right, because I'm sure it just whisked him away to some luxury spa!"
"No but Malfoy messes with this kind of stuff for a living Harry, he's not going to be caught completely off guard." He clasped a hand on Harry's shoulder, the dark haired man turning towards him and grasping onto his fingers like they were a lifeline.
He shook his head. "He's not in his right mind, this case...it's screwing with his head." He gasped, trying to remember if fear usually hurt this much. "I can't lose him Ron." Not now, not when things were finally starting to go so well after over a year of dancing around each other.
"You're not going to. Now remember what Monie says, deep breaths yeah?"
That brought an unexpected snort from him, the sound rattling around his head and threatening to turn into a hysterical sob. "She says to stop peddling my arse to someone who doesn't appreciate me."
"The other thing." Ron's free hand came up to grasp Harry's other shoulder so he was holding him in a sold grip - effectively stopping him from continuing to sway before he could even realize that he was.
"Gather facts. Formulate a plan. Then go batty." Harry recited, the words somehow forcing some sort of order into his mind and making his thumping heart slow just a fraction - but it was enough for the moment.
Ron nodded. "So what's the facts?"
Harry blinked and ticked his mind back to the second he looked up to see Draco - blonde hair mussed from his fingers, usually immaculate shirt rumpled from Harry's hands, and gray eyes stirring with a storm - releasing his clenched fist over the edge of the coffee mug. The disk splashed, Draco's eyes dilated, the tentacle reached out, and then he was gone. Like a snap of the fingers, his long graceful frame there one second and vanished the next. "Olivia is impossibly gone and now Draco's missing due to a per-meditated planting of a portkey. Whoever did it knew Draco would be the one to activate it."
"Fair chance it's the murderer." Ron added in a tone he'd cultivated over the years working as Auror - somehow allowing him to state perfectly horrid facts in a manner that was purely factual and kept his audience an arms berth away from giving into hysteria.
Harry swallowed against the rock in his throat as he nodded. "He was armed with his wand."
"It's likely whoever it is doesn't want Malfoy dead."
Tears pricked at Harry's eyes as he nodded vigorously to drive them away, crying would do no one any good. "His location is unknown, he..." his knees buckled as the wave of terror rose back over him. “Bloody fuck Ron, I need him back, I...I love him and I haven't...I haven't even told him. I need to tell him."
"We will." Ron cracked a small forlorn smile as his blue eyes twinkled with mischief. "Plus I'm pretty sure he knows."
"Doubt it, he's a bloody stubborn git you know." He sagged forward and allowed himself five seconds of complete panic, let is swarm through him, making his stomach churn, and his chest ache, and his head split - allowed himself five seconds of worse case scenarios before forcing it all away and gathering himself up again. He needed to be strong, he wouldn't be any help to Draco otherwise. He wouldn't be burying Draco, he refused. He would be holding him again soon, he would be admitting his love, he would be strong arming the emotionally repressed man into not running away in fright right afterwards.
"You're telling me." Ron mused, causing Harry to blush despite the dire circumstances they found themselves in. Ron had been shockingly supportive of his feelings for the former Slytherin since they had started to stir so very long ago now. "There's no hint of where he might have been taken? You can't think of anything that might point in the right direction?"
Harry dragged a hand through his hair as he racked his brain. "No, I don't think...wait." It hit him like a hurricane, his eyes rounding behind his glasses and hope lighting in his otherwise dismal heart. "We need to get back to the Ministry." Harry's lips set into a stern line as he stepped back and strode quickly towards the door.
"Why?" Ron called after him, two steps behind.
"Because the he's still wearing my Apparation bracelet." Harry heard his pulse in his ears as he ran into the hospitals Apparation room and spun. He had done as Hermione was always admonishing him to do when emotionally tangled in a case - he had gathered facts, he had formulated the beginnings of a plan, and now...now he could go batty as she put it.
And the bastard who had took Draco from him better start praying for his mercy.
****
Bureaucracy had never frustrated Harry more. Draco's, a fellow Ministry employees, life was hanging in the balance and still they made him fill out forms in triplicate and spend nearly an hour running back and forth between departments. He had a near breakdown where he started screaming at the sour faced secretary he was forced to deal with and came so close to actually punching a Wizengamot member who had the audacity to sneer Malfoy's name like it was a deadly thing and hint that maybe it was the man's long coming justice.
In the end it was Ron who acquired the right clearance, who assigned a new batch of Auror's to finish up at the hospital, who just barely managed to catch his fist before it could connect across the man's face, and who had shoved him into a chair where Harry preceded to gnaw on his nails till there was nothing left of them except jagged pink tinged edges. By the time Ron returned with the thick cuffed bracelet that would act as a twin to the one on Draco's wrist and hopefully lead them to him, Harry felt like he was about to erupt.
It was ironic to think that over the last year whenever he had gotten anywhere close to feeling like this he would seek Draco out, either to snap at him, start pointless arguments, or just find an excuse to touch his smooth porcelain skin. He just needed the cool tone of the Analyst and god did he need it more than anything now.
"Ready?" Ron asked as Harry stood and secured the cuff on his wrist, his fingers wrapping tightly around it as he muttered the activation code. It hummed softly against his skin and Harry felt every hair on his body stand up as he stared down at it. "Let's go get your hunky man back."
Harry let out a gasp of a laugh, taking comfort in the lopsided smile his friend shot him. "You're such an idiot." He muttered as Ron latched onto his other arm.
"So says the man buggering the former Ferret."
And because it was either snap completely and send a hex at the Wizengamot member who had the nerve to round the corner again just then, give into his overwhelming fear, or take a moment reprieve in Ron's teasing tone, Harry turned a grin on him. "He buggers me." He winked and then as Ron let out a disgusted, over exaggerated gag, Harry spun them away.
The next few seconds were even more disorienting than usual while Apparating - feeling like something was physically trying to tug them towards a certain point and repel them at the same time. It seemed an eternity before they finally found their feet on damp sand with the sun setting low over the hills, the cuff vibrating fiercely on his wrist before going still, Harry blinked in the low light and over the sparkling blue lake.
"Hell." He murmured as he glanced all around them, recognizing where they were with dread.
"This where Thornbee died?" Ron asked quietly as Harry took a careful step forward, glancing down at this feet and hoping to see Draco's footprints marked out before him. But there was nothing - just blank sand stretching as far as he could see.
He nodded, remembering the first murder very clearly, the feeling of darkness that hung over the lake and the surrounding area just as clear now as it had been that day they had found the former Death Eater's body. No one at the Ministry had cared much when Jenner Thornbee had been found dead, his head of department was barely interested in even investigating. But even then there had been something nagging Harry about it and he had brought the disk to Draco despite the barely veiled instructions to not waste his time on such scum. Now, five murders and months later, Harry couldn't help but wonder if everything would have turned out like this if he had just let it lie - if he would have brushed it under the rug like everyone wanted him to. Would he still be trying to track Draco down if he had let another Auror take the next murder and use Cobble or Luckwood as their Analysis?
Yes.
He couldn't say how he knew that for sure but he had a horrible feeling that things would have unfolded in much the same matter either way. The murderer wanted Draco - those memories were tailored for him - that fact keeping him awake more nights then he could even count. But whoever it was made one gigantic mistake in not disabling him before snatching the blonde right out from under his nose.
He briefly caught the silvery image of a Jack Russel Terrier rushing away from the tip of Ron's wand and Harry was grateful that one of them at least was taking precautions. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his wand, muttering under his breath as he magically probed the surrounding area, looking for any hint of a magical signature or anything that stood out as off. Nothing turned up and holding his breath in his chest he walked forward and cast again, visually scanning the area as well as Ron walked in the opposite direction with his own wand held out. It was slow going and he had made it halfway around the large lake without so much as a shimmer of colliding magic or a speck of anything to follow. His hand clenched so tight on his wand as his head throbbed against his skull. But he wouldn't give up because despite the outward appearance that there was nothing there Harry knew Draco was nearby - he had to be.
You're looking at it wrong.
The voice speaking so softly in his head sounded just like Draco, making Harry's heart clench at the sound of the clear drawl with a hint of haughtiness on the downward lilt - his feet stopping dead. He closed his eyes and thought back to all the times he had brought the man out on assignment with him, pictured him crouched over a strange object that refused to conform to the natural order of things. He saw Draco's long slim hands hovering in place, never dipping lower, never moving closer until he had found what he was seeking out. He remembered the way the man used the elements of the Earth around them to seek deeper, to pull out answers that seemed all too allusive. Harry couldn't even pretend that he understood the way Draco worked his magic, he couldn't even fathom how the blonde did half the things he accomplished.
He fingered the cuff on his wrist and took a steadying breath. He and a team of Auror's had been over every inch of the area on more than one occasion only to come up empty handed. There was nothing outwardly unusual about the lake.
So stop looking at the fucking scenery Potter, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the bloody definition of insanity you git.
He needed to stop looking for magic in the surrounding area. He needed...he needed to look for...
Linking factors Potter, all species have specific ones and the strongest is always in the -
"Blood." Harry finished the blonde's directions. He didn't understand it but he had heard Draco talk often enough of properties and signature factors and the power of the essence of magical beings. It was a shot anyway. So without further stalling, Harry used his wand to prick his finger, he then wrapped the beginnings of a trace around it, praying to god that is would work as he sent the spell flying away from him. It spread out over the sand and rock and water, traveling further and further away from him until it fell down a slope and Harry saw the faintest red glow emitting from just over the jutting rock.
The fear was back in full force as Harry stared at the red tinge in the air, possibilities of what he would find crowding for dominance in his thoughts. He sent a quick signal to call Ron back over to him but found he couldn't follow protocol and wait for even a fragment of a second longer - his feet flying over the uneven ground as he ran towards the haze that may or may not shatter his heart. He slashed through bushes and his feet skidded down the slick rock, his magic swelling and whirling inside him in a way that always had Draco slanting his eyes to him and side-stepping away - muttering about keeping "a leash on your damn magic, you plebian," usually moments before Harry caused what Draco and Ron liked to refer to as an explosion.
He dropped to a crouch as his eyes landed on the source of the red glow - a darkening trail of crimson in small smeared droplets. But that was it, nothing substantial, barley enough to even notice and could have only come from a small gash. His muscles felt constricted with the grating feeling of grinding flint threatening his grip on himself, pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses he let out a long shuttering breath - both overwhelmingly grateful that there was so little blood and frantic that he seemed to be at another dead end. Glancing up, he paused in his crouch as his gaze landed on what seemed to be a sheen of a magical barrier in front of him that had never been there before.
Or perhaps you had simply been too much of a simpleton to notice it because it doesn't conform to what you know, Draco's voice in his head nagged at him in a way that he used to find irritating, then enduring when the man snipped in his ear, but now just made him all that more unhinged. New or old it didn't matter because it was there, thick as a waterfall, strong as a werewolf, and running the length of a rounded opening that he couldn't see but could feel - the trace for wizards blood that he had sent out pulsing from behind it, stronger than the one emitting at his feet.
"Is...is something there?" Ron appeared behind him, slightly out of breath and a deep furrow marring his brow.
Harry nodded. "Draco's in there." He said, knowing the full truth of his statement as it left his lips, almost like he could feel the blonde behind it, just out of reach, waiting for him. Let him be alright.
"Can you get through it?" His partner asked and instead of answering Harry surged forward, pressing his palms over what felt like a slimy metal surface, nearly invisible to the eye but as real and impenetrable as any stone wall braced up by magic. He gritted his teeth and pushed, snapped his hands back when it warmed to his touch but refused to give and started casting, using any and every spell he could think of to get through it - even some that the Ministry would frown rather deeply upon.
Stop it you imbecile, you know what that barrier is, you know what has to be done.
Harry gritted his teeth against the voice, refusing to believe it and pushing it away, determined that it was wrong - that it simply couldn't be.
By the time he had exhausted his store of knowledge in breaking through barriers of the magical sort he felt worn completely thin and a little like he was going to lose his mind, his magic bouncing off the wall before him and making Ron curse and duck on more than several occasions. Then with a frustrated growl, his eyes squeezed closed and he felt a strong, anguished pulse rush out of him, colliding with the surface before him and heating the air around them. It grew and sizzled and he vaguely heard Ron shouting something at him and knew that if Draco had been there that he would have intuitively sent the man flying into the lake to shield him from the torment that was admitting from him.
The reminder that there was no Slytherin to come sputtering from the water moments later was like a physical blow that had him clutching his stomach as he fell to his knees, his magic echoing in his ears tangibly as his explosion reached its highest point and flowed back out - leaving him drained and panting on the ground, tears leaking from his stinging eyes, the barrier still untouched.
"Get a grip." He ordered himself, the stone rough and damp against his hands, unable to recall a time he had been so completely out of control of his emotions and his magic.
"You know it was Ginny who told me first."
Harry blinked through the moister in his eyes and glanced up to find Ron standing beside him, staring straight ahead at the barrier with a thoughtful look, his red mane glowing in the setting sun like a ring of fire. "What?" He croaked, uncertain if he had missed something and wanting to tell Ron to step back, to keep from touching it. It called to your blood Potter, stop playing Savoir and admit it.
"About you. She came over crying because her boyfriend kept talking in his sleep."
"I...I did?" Harry muttered, unsure what else to say. He had no idea where Ron was going with this and his magic was still spiking in an almost painful way inside him, his subconscious that apparently wanted to torment him further nagging at him in Draco's drawling voice.
Ron nodded, his hand lifting to rest lightly against the invisible wall. "I told her it couldn't possibly be what she thought, that there wasn't any way that you could be dreaming about Malfoy in that way. I told her you loved her and sent her back. But it stuck in my mind, you know? Must be a big brother thing because I found myself watching you two more carefully even as I convinced myself that what I was seeing wasn't really happening. I'm not all together dense you know Harry, I picked up on the way you stared off after him, on the blush that you used to only get around Gin when you two first started going together. But I kept lying to her, kept telling her you'd get over it, even though I knew..." he trailed off, his fingers running over the barrier before letting a small smile tug at his lips. "I knew you weren't going to ever get over it. I knew it before you finally broke it off with her, I knew it before you started your rather embarrassingly blatant flirting that only seemed to make Malfoy scowl at you. You're a hopeless romantic Harry, always have been, and a sucker for pain it seems as well."
"Why are you telling me this?" Harry didn't know what to think of Ron's speech, the thought that he and Ginny had known about all those months of erotic dreams of the blonde making his insides heat even as his heart still pounded violently in his chest. But he couldn't figure out why Ron was revealing it to him, especially now - with Harry feeling very much like he was about to lose a very big piece of himself.
Dropping his hand back to his side, Ron finally looked back down at him, his blue eyes holding him still on the ground as Harry felt another jolt of dread shock through him. "Because you recognize this don't you?" He tipped his head towards the barrier and drew his wand from his robes.
"No." Harry shook his head quickly, trying once again to deny what had been nagging at his thoughts and pounding in his veins.
"Never thought I'd actually lay eyes on a blood-arch." He murmured. "Besides I have a feeling your Slytherin wouldn't be all together ecstatic if it’s me that comes running to his rescue."
"Ron." Harry scrambled to his feet, shaking his head almost violently now. "You can't-"
"Nah Harry, it's my pleasure actually just don't snog him in my hospital room yeah?" Ron winked at him and as Harry lunged forward, his hand reaching out in front of him, Ron used his wand to slice across his palm and smeared his red blood on the barrier before him - his eyes rounding wide and his mouth forming an O as he started convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head, transforming the sparkling blue to eerie white orbs. His feet tipped precariously before he feel backwards with a solid smack as the wall shimmered and dissolved, leaving the mouth of a foul smelling cave gaping before them.
- 18
- 19
- 20
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A Vicious Tangle (Complete)