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A Determined Frame of Mind	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16811 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- 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 Two—Draco’s Bulgarian Cousin

            Harry paused for a long moment, staring around the bedroom and clutching his wand, before he realized that the vision that haunted him must have been a dream. He could relax then, but warily, and it seemed a long moment more before his fingers would consent to unclench and release the wand.

            He had dreamed he was hurtling through the corridors of the Ministry, hunted by dozens of faceless enemies who grew in number with every step. When he did manage to put his back to a wall and turn to face them, he found that every single one of them had the black cloak and white mask of a Death Eater.

            He tried to convince himself now, as he wiped his face with one hand, that it was only a nightmare and not the revival of a suppressed memory. He had tried too many times in the past year to recapture every memory of that crucial day he’d been at the Ministry before the Cassandra Curse manifested. If there had been some clue to give the caster away, he would have recalled it by now. His dreams didn’t mean a Death Eater, or a former Death Eater, was the one who had cast it.

            “Master Harry is being well?”

            Harry jerked up with a gasp that hurt, and then shook his head warily when he saw the house-elf standing in front of him. Batty was the oldest of the elves who served the Malfoy family, and Harry had learned that she deserved her name; she was forever moving furniture back to the places it had occupied in the time of Draco’s grandfather, and even the dust had to be distributed in old, familiar patterns before she would consent to clean it. She quietly muttered imprecations about his presence in the house whenever she thought he couldn’t hear her, and never minded the scoldings Draco gave her. But sometimes he caught her watching him with a disconcerting gleam in her eyes, as if she were merely waiting for the proper moment to dispose of him. This was one of those. Her gaze measured him frankly for any spot of weakness, and Harry thought she would attack the moment she discovered one.

            “I am, Batty,” he said, clearing his throat. “Very well.” He tried to smile at her, but neither his heart nor his lips were in it. “You can tell Draco I’m awake,” he added, because when he tried to convince Batty that she should keep that secret for a while to allow him time to recover, she became immediately affronted and demanded to know why he was lying to Master Malfoy.

            “Master Harry is being awake,” Batty said. “Master Malfoy will be glad to know.”

            She gave him one final shrewd look before vanishing. Harry shrugged and rolled his shoulders at the same time, wishing he could dissipate the extremely manky feeling she gave him, and then went to shower.

            He reassured some final fears there, as he ducked his head under the warm spray and shook it back and forth, flattening the hair with water as much as possible.

            He did need Draco’s help to raid the Ministry, as much as he hated to admit it. Just because he accepted it didn’t mean he was becoming dependent.

            Not yet, he told himself as he turned sideways and then backwards so the water could wash him more thoroughly. It rebounded off the tiles with a soft ringing sound—tiles smoother and a stall wider and broader than Harry would ever have allowed himself, even if he did have the money to spare. But if you become used to luxuries like this, if you think of him with too much affection, if you succumb to the stupid things your thoughts tell you sometimes, then you will lean on him. And what happens when he steps away from you?

            Well, Harry wouldn’t have to find out what happened, because he didn’t intend to ever be in that situation. He stepped out of the shower to fetch a towel, wipe himself dry, and then seek out the most formal set of robes Draco had lent him. It would help with his disguise as a Malfoy, and it might give Draco second thoughts about his approachability.

            If anything can.

            Harry shook his head again. Just because Draco watched him with sharp eyes sometimes…Well, it was natural, wasn’t it? Draco hadn’t ever given a piece of his soul to someone else. Naturally he would wonder what had happened to it, and what was occurring now in the soul of the person whom he’d given it to. (Harry had refused to let Draco Dive into his soul again, because he saw no need).

            And no, he thought, grimacing at the turn his memories had taken, he was not allowed to feel honored that Draco had given him a piece of his soul. That was silly, and would only lead to romantic delusions he couldn’t afford.

*

            “So.” Harry folded his hands in front of him. Despite the tempting breakfast spread before him—everything from five different kinds of drinks and fresh grapefruit to delicate golden-brown toast and sliced strawberries to cover them—he’d barely eaten. Draco had to diagnose nerves, along with a certain reluctance to linger over the meal, as if he thought Draco would change his mind at the last moment. “Glamours, you said.”

            Draco nodded. “But not just glamours. I’ve seen too many disguises fail when someone cast a Dispelling Charm in the right place.”

            “Often dressed up as a girl in the dungeons, did you?” Harry muttered, picking up a piece of toast to nibble on.

            Draco rolled his eyes, but was too pleased to see Harry eating to really retaliate in kind. “We’ll also use dye for your hair,” he continued, “and a charm to lengthen it. Even if someone casts a spell to end all magic on you, that won’t affect something permanently altered.”

            “I know,” said Harry. “There’s a difference between Transfiguration and glamours. I learned that when I was getting ready to run to the Muggle world.”

            Draco inclined his head. Harry had revealed his plans in fragments, but enough for Draco to get a good idea of what he had once intended. He had thought it was mad then, and he still did. “Tell me something,” he said.

            Harry looked up at him, eyes alert.

            “Why didn’t you choose some isolated place in the wizarding world?” Draco asked quietly. “As long as you performed the Transfiguration and didn’t tell them your real name, the curse would still have a diminished effect on you. Why did you want to go to the Muggle world?” Draco could never have contemplated leaving all magic behind completely, no matter what danger he was in.

            “Someone could still recognize me by my magical signature if I was around other wizards, Malfoy.” A small, grim smile chased itself around the corners of Harry’s mouth. “Or were you entirely asleep during the relevant sections of Charms Theory?”

            Draco sat back and gave him an affronted look. “I am trying to help you, Harry.”

            “Hmmm,” said Harry noncommittally, and buried his mouth in a slice of grapefruit.

            After some more glaring—and really, why did Harry have to be so difficult? It wasn’t as if they could ignore the fact of what Draco had sacrificed for him forever—Draco decided to return to talk of the plan, in hopes that Harry could regain his sanity by listening. “So. Glamours, dye, and a layered glamour on the scar on your forehead, so that two targeted spells would be needed to take it down—and if someone’s aiming them there, they probably already know who you are anyway.”

            “They could be testing everyone who comes into the Ministry for signs of a scar there,” Harry said, unconvinced.

            Draco sighed heavily, much put-upon. Harry’s mistrust would get in the way of their plans, just as he had envisioned, if Harry didn’t stop fearing that his enemies were omnipotent soon.

            “Do you want to stay here, then?” he asked, shifting his voice to the one that he used on people who tried to sell him “Dark Arts detection charms” in Diagon Alley. “Just hide for the rest of your life, and forget about finding who did this?”

            Harry’s hands closed on the edge of the table, and his eyes had a hectic glitter, as if he were feverish. “Of course not!”

            “Then stop acting like a child who thinks his enemy can spy on him from the closet and know everything he does immediately,” Draco snapped, and leaned forwards. “They won’t find us out, Harry. And if they do, they’ll have to give themselves away somehow, so their finding out would just provide us with more clues about who did this.”

            “But you said—“

            Draco was quite sick of useless arguments like this. He jumped to his feet. At least that made Harry stand up, too, his hand on his wand and his attention on the immediate threat.

            “Stop fucking arguing,” Draco commanded him quietly.

            Harry bared his teeth. And Draco started, because suddenly there was a swift humming in his ears, like the wings of a frightened bird.

            It was the piece of his soul.

            He had hardly felt it since coming back to Malfoy Manor from St. Mungo’s. When they were physically close, and after they had both accepted that the soul-piece was there, it no longer strove to connect them. And since Harry was within a limited radius at all times, Draco hadn’t needed to locate him. That was Batty’s job, if he needed to know where Harry was.

            But now—

            Harry had a savage look on his face, the look of a wounded animal trying to figure out where the pain had come from and what would happen next. He started to back away, but Draco crossed the distance between them and laid his palm against Harry’s chest before he could bolt.

            The humming soared to a high, sweet pitch, like some especially persistent cricket, and then silenced. Draco bowed his head, and felt the connection tug once, as if it were plucking just to be sure it still existed.

            A part of my soul is in him.

            It was something more intimate than he had ever given anyone else, something he still tended to forget if he wasn’t being careful.

            Harry had gone silent and still, as though he, too, considered it stupid to fight when they shared what they did. When he felt he could speak, Draco leaned forwards and murmured into Harry’s ear, “Let’s just go through with the plan the way we agreed upon yesterday, shall we? We don’t need to hammer all the implications out right now.”

            Harry nodded in a dazed fashion. Draco traced one finger around his lips, and the green eyes just regarded him cautiously.

            I prefer him like this, Draco thought. Not silent, not exactly, but when he has no choice save to consider me.

            He tried to break the mood by stepping away and smiling lightly, but it didn’t work. Even when he was working the blond dye into Harry’s hair with the aid of an enchanted mirror, the knowledge of the soul-connection lingered between them, another level of awareness.

            Not that Draco minded, exactly. Harry wanted to heal at his own pace. Draco had said he would respect that.

            But he wouldn’t be true to himself if he didn’t test the boundaries.

            Just a bit.

*

            Harry shook his head and told himself that he shouldn’t be remembering the feel of Draco’s fingers in his hair; he’d put the dye in nearly half-an-hour ago, after all, and what normal person would remember something like that, like a flesh memory?

            Someone deprived of all human contact for nearly a year, and acting like a prat about the little he did receive?

            Harry shook his head one more time and then did his best to stand stolidly at Draco’s side as he talked his way past the suspicious Undersecretaries to the Undersecretary. Incredibly, Dolores Umbridge had regained her position, after a few years of scrambling around in the lower levels of the Ministry, and now Scrimgeour used her in the same capacity Fudge had—thought Harry at least had the feeling that he had never trusted her as much.

            The dye turned his hair blond. Subtle glamours had altered the color of his eyes so that they seemed hazel instead of green, and sharpened the angles of his face so that he resembled a poor echo of Draco. Harry had pointed that out with a small amount of grumbling, because anything that could cause an argument in the wake of the extremely strange hum between them was a good idea.

            Draco had only smiled at him and said, “No matter what you look like, Harry, you’ll always be handsome to me.”

            Harry had flushed and turned away, because, goddamn it, what was he supposed to say in response to something like that? Someone should publish a book that contained proper responses to Draco Malfoy’s backhanded compliments. Harry, at least, would buy two copies, the better to have one on him at all times.

            He had changed into robes that were just slightly out-of-date—according to Draco—and absurdly formal for a visit, when Draco had simply invited him along to show him “the wonders of our fantastic British Ministry.” Draco had lengthened his hair, as promised, and grown him a beard. And the glamours layered over his scar were so subtle that Harry had trouble detecting them himself, even as close as he understandably was. He would have to trust that he was disguised as well as it was possible to be, Draco had said.

            He seemed to overestimate how easy it was for Harry to trust.

            “And why should we allow you to see Madam Umbridge?” one of the secretaries asked. She was a woman with a nose so upturned that Harry believed she must have trouble breathing, and eyes of a blue so piercingly brilliant she must be using glamours herself. She had on a pink robe that clashed with her red hair. She peered intently, disapprovingly, at Harry, who tried to affect a gormless stare. “And who is this with you?”

            “My Bulgarian cousin, Albert Malfoy,” Draco said importantly, and then leaned forwards and lowered his voice. “Very well, I’ll tell you my business, though I warn you that Madam Umbridge won’t be impressed with you if it gets loose before I tell her. I have information on the whereabouts of Harry Potter.”

            Even knowing that had been the necessary key to visit Umbridge, Harry still felt an unpleasant trickle along his spine at the speaking of his name. The undersecretary gasped and turned as pink as her robe, and then began to fumble with a speaking tube in front of her, doubtless thinking how good it would look to be the one who brought the news to the Undersecretary to the Minister.

            “Just a moment, Mister Malfoy, sir,” she said, her cheeks still glowing. She whispered into the tube and listened intently. She looked disappointed when she glanced up a moment later. “Madam Umbridge isn’t in her office.”

            “Oh?” Draco painted an expression of such intense corresponding disappointment on his face that Harry had to stifle a laugh. “And I was so looking forwards to talking with her.” He flashed the witch a smile that could have probably melted icebergs—and immediately Harry told himself that it was inappropriate for him to notice that. “I don’t suppose she left word saying where she’d gone?”

            “Oh, Mister Malfoy, I don’t—“ The secretary was still flushed, but for a different reason now. Draco leaned nearer still, putting his elbow on a corner of her desk. Harry had to look away, and repeat like a mantra that just because Draco was getting close to someone else didn’t mean that he was about to abandon him, Harry. It was all just part of the plan, after all.

            “I’m sure Madam Umbridge would understand if you made an exception,” Draco said softly. A mermaid couldn’t have coaxed better, Harry thought with reluctant admiration. “Just think what this news could mean, Madam--?” His smile and slightly dipped chin, inviting confidences, seemed to make it impossible not to answer, and so of course the woman did.

            “Honeybee.” And then she lowered her eyelids and giggled like an idiot. Harry rolled his eyes once he made sure that she was looking safely away from him. He’s not that attractive, woman. Good God.

            “Honeybee.” Draco’s voice made the word a caress. Harry shivered, and then told himself to stop it. God, he was vulnerable like this, and he hated being so. “It couldn’t hurt, could it? I assure you, Madam Umbridge would want to know this. My information is perfectly, precisely accurate.”

            He’s going to betray you, fool, Harry’s mind hissed at him.

            Harry clenched his eyes shut and tried to regulate his breathing. He had to trust Draco, or what was the point of being here at all? Without Draco, he couldn’t even leave Malfoy Manor safely; he couldn’t talk, which was one reason they had decided to pretend that “Draco’s Bulgarian cousin” knew almost no English.

            For a moment, the wild longing swept Harry to simply turn and flee. He would be out of the Ministry before Draco could catch him, and he could remove the glamours and the dye himself. He would be gone.

            Grimly, he battled his own hatred of the situation, and just managed to calm down in time to hear the undersecretary’s response.

            “Then I suppose there’s no harm in telling you that she went to the Auror Department,” Honeybee giggled. “After all, it’s not as though she would be angry with news of the fugitive Harry Potter’s whereabouts.”

            “That’s true.” Draco caught the woman’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you most kindly, my dear. Come, Albert,” he added over his shoulder, and then rattled off a string of impressive-sounding gibberish that was meant to be “Albert’s” native language. Harry followed him numbly, still breathing a bit harshly from the upsurge of helplessness.

            You’ve got to trust him. You’ve got no choice.

            At least the harsh reality of the situation had managed to curb any ridiculous romantic fantasies he might center around Malfoy.

*

            Draco could have cheered when he heard Umbridge’s location. That meant that she and Lila Ambernight were likely to be in the same general area, and they could more easily locate and question them both without giving themselves away.

            If Harry could hold steady that long.

            Draco shot him constant concerned glances, while trying not to be too obvious about it. Harry’s breathing had quickened since they took the lifts up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his eyes now and then reflected a despair that had caused a few of the passing wizards to peer at them in concern. He looked—well, he looked two steps away from a nervous breakdown, if Draco was honest with himself.

            And he thought he could guess why.

            He leaned nearer to Harry and whispered into his ear, “I’m not about to betray you.”

            Harry shot him a startled look, which made Draco feel a bit insulted—how could Harry still be a mystery to him when he’d seen the man’s soul, after all?—and then glanced away again. He seemed to be making a concerted effort to control himself. Draco sighed inaudibly. He would have liked, for more than one reason, to reach out and rub a hand over Harry’s shoulder, but it was impossible in the current situation for him to touch Harry as long as they both needed.

            When we get back to the Manor, Draco promised himself, as the lift stopped at the proper floor and spoke the name of their destination in a calm voice.

            Draco didn’t waste time; the moment that they were out of the lift, he had his wand in his palm, whispering, “Point Me Dolores Umbridge.” The wand pointed straight into the heart of the Department, so it was there they went, ignoring the sometimes curious, sometimes pointed stares of the Aurors over desks full of paperwork.

            Harry walked more slowly behind him. Again, Draco thought he knew why. This was the place where he had spent a substantial part of his nights and days, after all, especially in the last year. He would recognize colleagues, old partners, probably his friends—though Draco fervently hoped they wouldn’t run into Weasley.

            Draco shook his head. He could recognize his own jealousy, and his own impatience; he wanted Harry’s mind focused on their plan. Harry would claim to be an old acquaintance of Lila Ambernight’s family, and insist, in the “charming” way of an obnoxious foreigner who didn’t speak much English, that she must be wrong when she tried to put him off, while Draco engaged Umbridge. It made sense that they each take on the one the other was most suspicious of. Lila had dealt with Draco recently and might take his reappearance badly, while Harry would have difficulty controlling himself around Umbridge.

            But it still meant they would have to separate, since Draco highly doubted that Umbridge would consent to speak of the fugitive Harry Potter in front of other people, and they would probably pass Ambernight’s desk before—

            “Vot is this?” Harry exclaimed, in his horrible accent. Draco winced, but then, the chances that anyone here would know what a Bulgarian accent was supposed to sound like were unlikely. Harry could just imitate Viktor Krum, and all would be well. “A voman I know? You is Martha’s niece! You must be!”

            Good luck, Draco tried to will to Harry, since he had no chance of saying it—in fact, he was supposed to wander on, as if he hadn’t noticed that his cousin had gone missing—and then made his way forwards. Two more turns, and he rounded a corner and came on Umbridge hemming at a harassed-looking Auror.

            She looked nearly the same as she always had, Draco thought in revolted fascination. Still the pink jumper, still the toad-like face, still the fake beaming smile that she had given him when he became a member of her Inquisitorial Squad.

            This time, though, knowing that she might have been the one who’d put the Cassandra Curse on Harry, Draco had to control the impulse to hex her lungs out of her chest.

            He stepped forwards and coughed lightly. Umbridge turned towards him with the same fake smile, but no sign of recognition.

            God help me, Draco thought, nauseated, she has kitten earrings.

            “Madam Umbridge?” he murmured. “Undersecretary to the Minister?”

            “Yes, that’s me.” She widened her smile a bit for him. “Mister Draco Malfoy, is it? And what reason might you have for seeking me out?”

            “I have some valuable information.” Draco took a step nearer and lowered his voice. “It concerns Harry Potter.”

*

            BeautifulVoice: Thank you! This story’s pace will be different from ‘Reckless,’ as it’s longer, but I hope to provide a good bit of intrigue and action.

            Darthkripple: That makes me giddy. I’m a teacher in real life, so hearing that I inspire people to be better is always heartening.

            MadnessWithinMe: Good! While this story should recognizably be a sequel to ‘Reckless,’ it won’t be anywhere near the same—hence the tone change.

            Ravenshadow: Things between Harry and Draco will continue tense for a good while to come—though some of it is resolved in Chapter 3.

            Mangacat: Ginny and her “guy” will show up later. As for the Blood Quill, Draco was going to make a comment about how unfair it was, but he stopped himself with the reminder that it wasn’t like Harry hadn’t endured plenty of unfairness (and that year, he helped).

            Ramandu, Thrnbrooke, venusgirl91, paigeey07, jbj1031965, iamtheanti, Justmine25: Thank you for reviewing!
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A Determined Frame of Mind