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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Two—Bloody Letters

            “Fucking bats.”

            Harry wrinkled his nose and stepped back. The bones lying on the floor at his feet had been fluttering through the air in front of him only a few seconds earlier. Luckily, he and Draco had finally learned the spell that weakened the necromantic connections that bound them together, from Ernhardt’s own notes, and they weren’t hard to defeat now.

            Draco nodded to him, stepped around him while kicking the bones apart, and strode ahead down the corridor. Harry sighed and followed him.

            The more they explored Cuthbert’s Corner, the more they found: hidden passages, hidden tunnels, a whole half-floor that existed like a balcony above the second one. Harry wondered why they hadn’t found it the first time they were in the house, but of course, the last time they had been here, they had been looking for Dark magic and Ernhardt, or possibly the other way around. They’d had more people with them, but less time.

            And some of the Dark magic they’d found here had taken hours to unravel, especially the wards Ernhardt had dropped in front of some of the doors.

            So far, though, they’d found precious little for all the wards and hiding. Some notes in code that Draco thought he could decipher, a few grimoires so old they were falling apart—which made Harry wonder if Ernhardt had been older than he seemed, leaping from body to body—and cauldrons with dried potions crusted on the bottom. Draco had put those aside to analyze later. Harry was more than willing to let him. Potions would forever be tainted for him, almost more than necromancy.

            Now they were investigating what Harry devoutly hoped was the last hidden place, a corridor that led off a short one with only two rooms on the ground floor. The wood in here was dark, stained with long splashes of what might be blood, but Harry found it hard to worry about them, honestly. At least this blood was dry. And he and Draco were only trying to make the house safe for them to live in today, not discover every one of Ernhardt’s secrets.

            Draco halted ahead of him. Harry stopped walking at once, one foot in the air, and then cautiously eased it back down. He swallowed, which made him wince, as he wondered if the sound had been too loud after all, but Draco didn’t turn around and scold him for it. Draco was turning in slow circles instead, head uplifted to the ceiling.

            “Something above us?” Harry asked, mouthing it, waiting until Draco had turned back towards him and would be able to catch the movement of his lips.

            Draco shook his head impatiently. Harry stayed still. He didn’t know what Draco had sensed, but they had saved each other’s lives multiple times. Lovers and partners and comrades in arms. He could trust Draco enough to conquer his impatience. If Draco thought it was better to keep still right now, then it was.

            Draco held his wand out in front of him, and murmured something that Harry couldn’t catch. The spell was enough to make the tip of the wand flare with light far stronger than a Lumos, though, and Harry resisted the impulse to blink and lift his hand to shield his eyes. It might be important to stand still for a while.

            “You can move.” Draco arched his neck back and lifted his wand closer to the ceiling. “I saw something I want to read.”

            Harry glanced up, then stared. There were what he had thought were more random patches of dried blood on the ceiling, but closer inspection showed him the handwriting that curved and raced through the blood, delicate letters mingled with the sort of symbols—open eyes and rising suns—that dotted the code on the parchments they had found. Ernhardt’s writing, he assumed. He moved back and studied the blood on the walls beside him. Yes, there was writing there, too.

            And he never would have noticed if not for Draco. Draco was the one who could interpret the code, of course, but also the one who had taken the time to notice this in the first place. Harry smiled at him, knowing that he probably looked half-idiotic in his frank adoration, but not caring. It wasn’t like anyone else was there to make fun of him.

            Draco caught his eyes, and frowned. “What?”

            Harry shook his head a little. “I just wouldn’t have noticed,” he said. “How did you?”

            “I’ve seen the letters on the walls for a while.” Draco traced his wand down, so Harry lost sight of the writing on the ceiling but could see it more clearly in the blood on the walls. There was what looked like letters that said khe… and then trailed off into another symbol of a rising sun. “But parts of it were missing. There would be no reason for Ernhardt to leave a message like this, either for himself or as part of the house’s defenses, and then break it. But it makes sense now. The missing part is above us.” He tilted his head back to study the ceiling again, looking grimly satisfied.

            “Is there anything I can do?” Harry asked. He wasn’t up to interpreting the code, he knew that much.

            Draco started to shake his head, then paused. “Copy some of the letters and symbols on the walls down on a parchment,” he ordered. “I was keeping track of what I could—reading as we went along. But now I have to look at what’s up here, and if we keep going back and forth like this, I’ll miss something. It’ll be easier with another copy that I can take back and study with me.”

            Harry nodded and took parchment and a quill out of his robe pocket. It was one of the things he hadn’t thought they’d need in Cuthbert’s Corner, except to send owls, but luckily they had found a large supply in the drawer of a desk. Ernhardt had to have some around to construct the message in the first place, after all.

*

            Draco walked the corridor again, making sure that he hadn’t missed any of the symbols scrawled on the ceiling. Or in the corners. Or arrayed around each other in five-pointed stars, which was something he hadn’t noticed the first time and made him misread the message in two parts of the ceiling at least twice.

            Then he turned back around and stared at Harry, who was crouched down by a dark red string of letters on the bottom of the wall, his head bowed and his hand moving in a frenzy.

            “We’ll still be able to interpret them if you write more slowly,” Draco said. He was afraid that his voice came out snappishly, but he didn’t want to miss something because Harry had jumped over it in his hurry.

            Harry started and glanced at him. Draco thought he was about a centimeter away from getting a wand up his nose when Harry nodded and turned back to the writing. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

            Draco sighed and came up behind him to put a hand on his shoulder, massaging gently along Harry’s collarbone. Harry closed his eyes and turned his head towards Draco, letting it droop so that his forehead rested on Draco’s hand.

            “I know,” Draco whispered. “And it doesn’t help that the house’s message is spelling out trouble for us.”

            “That’s what this says?” Harry looked at the writing without breaking contact with Draco. Draco had to admit he liked that. They’d been so jumpy for so long, and disagreed about most of the right things to do when staying with the werewolves—who liked Draco better, had no reason to trust Harry, and had nearly killed Harry when he owled his friends. “Does it promise Ernhardt can come back from the dead?”

            Draco shook his head. “His native magic wasn’t necromancy. I think that’s why we’ve run into recent traps that have it, but none of the old wards. He wasn’t here long enough to use it to really defend the house.”

            Harry nodded. “All right. But what’s it say?” He snorted when Draco paused. “Come on. I know that you wouldn’t have brought it up at all if you didn’t intend to tell me what it said.”

            “It’s meant to make us uncomfortable here,” Draco said softly. “More and more, until we reach the point where we’re jumping at shadows.”

            Harry nodded. “Or we’re ready to kill each other?”

            Draco jerked a little. “You didn’t tell me you could read it,” he said, looking at Harry’s eyes, which were focused back on the letters that he copied down. He had to lean close to squint and make out whether a symbol was really an S or the K it looked like, Draco suspected.

            “No, I can’t,” Harry said. “But I didn’t know you could, either. You were telling me that you would need time to crack the code the parchments were written in.”

            Draco winced. “The code the parchments are written in is more difficult than this one,” he said, and turned his head back towards the five-pointed star that lingered on the wall in the corner. “This one—it’s meant to drive us mad, if we stay here.”

            Harry stopped writing for a second. Then he looked up, and his smile bent to the side in the crooked way that Draco loved. “So. Jenkins was wrong about wanting us to stay here, and I was wrong, and you were right.”

            Draco shook his head. “I was—I resented the notion of coming back to a house that belonged to a man who had tried to kill us,” he admitted. “It had nothing to do with the traps I thought were here. Jenkins had a good idea, especially after she Obliviated herself to have no memory of the location. I want—I still want to be able to go back to Malfoy Manor, and claim it as my own. I was daydreaming, and I got upset at the nearest person who told me my daydreams were impossible.”

            Harry reached up and squeezed his hand. “Can you tell how long this trap will take to work? Will it delay working if we leave for a while?”

            “I don’t know that yet,” Draco had to admit. “I’ll need to spend a few days with the code and see how much more complicated the patterns are than the ones in those documents we’re trying to translate.”

            “Then I propose an expedition,” Harry said, copying down the last line on the wall beside him and standing up. “I think we should go to your parents’ house and do what we can to them.”

            Draco blinked. “I told you my daydreams were impossible, remember.”

            Harry snorted. “Right, but we wanted to get some kind of revenge on them, right? Some sort of legacy for you. I know that nothing can probably make them take you back—you explained to me how that pure-blood shit works—but we can take something from the Manor that you should have inherited. Not to mention looking for evidence on how they got in contact with Elder.”

            Draco bowed his head. That was one thing he had thought of, but he had assumed it would have to come second to proving their innocence, and by the time they were in a position to do anything about it, they would also have their innocence and their jobs back. And reinstated Aurors couldn’t go breaking into other people’s manor houses.

            “They might have changed the wards against me,” he said. “It won’t be as simple to walk in as last time.”

            Harry smiled. “I never said it would be simple,” he murmured, putting his hand on Draco’s shoulder. “But they also don’t remember you, and that might mean they haven’t remembered to take the exceptions for you out of the wards, either. Shall we?”

            And Draco, his heart swelling until it seemed to fill his whole chest, could only nod.

*

            Harry crouched in the bushes at the edge of the Malfoy Manor grounds and studied the house quietly. Draco knelt at his side, his hands clenched in front of him on his wand. He had cast the spell that had interacted with the wards to allow them this close without alerting anyone.

            Harry put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He hadn’t realized how much the spells woven around Cuthbert’s Corner were affecting them until he was outside it. Now they could breathe, deep enough to actually feel their lungs expanding and the air doing them good, and now Draco was quivering with the nervous tension Harry would have expected him to feel as they neared the house of the parents who had disowned him.

            “It’s all right,” Harry whispered into his ear, and moved a step away, his wand trailing along the air. Draco tensed, but Harry nodded to him, and he calmed down with a little huff, trusting Harry not to use magic that would bring his parents down on top of them right at those parents’ very gates.

            Harry continued walking, the faint, wavering ribbon of magic growing behind him, blue and sparkling, like a smaller version of the Milky Way. This was a passive spell, the most passive defensive magic he knew, and while it curled up and down slowly, outlining the wards and telling Harry where the main ones were, it shouldn’t interact with them.

            He turned around when he reached the end of the clump of bushes and came slowly back, studying the spell. Blue sparkles had settled into the shape of the wards, covering them like snowfall. Harry smiled grimly. Yes, the wards had thickened and strengthened, and he didn’t think they were blood-based anymore, although he would have to confirm that with Draco. They looked like something else instead, something Harry had seen recently.

            “No more exceptions for someone of their blood?” he murmured under his breath to Draco as he rejoined him.

            Draco shook his head. His eyes were focused ahead, and when Harry looked, he saw a house-elf in the side gardens, its head twitching as it trimmed back a rosebush. Harry wondered if it was the sight of the elf in general that bothered Draco, or if he had known this elf. It could be either, really.

            “Yeah, well, I should have thought of that,” Harry said lightly. “They probably did it before they forgot about you.” He raised another gentle shield that would keep them from the creature’s sight, although it didn’t seem that the elf was particularly looking for intruders. That was what wards were for. The elf hopped further into the gardens, waving a hand to gather up all the leaves and clippings that had fallen on the ground and pack them into what looked like a satchel behind it. Harry turned back to Draco. “I think blood exceptions are all gone from the wards, but there might be some that are unique to the Malfoy line that I’ve missed. Come and see.”

            Draco rose to his feet like someone in a dream. Harry rubbed his shoulder. Draco turned abruptly and caught up his hand, and Harry froze, wondering if touching Draco at the moment was something his partner would resent.

            Instead, Draco kissed Harry’s hand above the wrist, his eyes so intense that Harry wanted to flinch. “Thank you,” Draco whispered. “For standing by me. For being here.”

            Harry would have eased the words off with a joke on an ordinary day, but this wasn’t an ordinary day. So he leaned forwards and kissed Draco, and felt Draco shudder a little beneath his lips.

            “You’re welcome,” Harry whispered, and stepped back. “Come on, let’s go.”

*

            Draco walked along Harry’s blue line, studying the cracks and brighter areas where the spell indicated weaknesses in the wards. He looked as hard as he could for certain cracks, and listened to the tingling and spinning of the wards as he moved his hand in and out.

            In the end, he had to shake his head. “All the blood exceptions are gone,” he said. “The wards recognize my parents based on their having lived here for years.” He smiled and turned back to Harry, who studied him as one might a dangerous animal, never looking away from the smile. Draco shuddered a little and faced the wards again. “I’m sure they did that on purpose. I haven’t lived here for seven years, since I became an Auror. The house would reject any claim I did make to establish residency.”

            Harry straightened up, his eyes brightening. Draco blinked as he took his wand from his pocket. He was often surprised by the spells that Harry knew—not as many Dark ones as Draco, of course, but things he had picked up in odd pockets and corners of Auror study.

            “Residency is an interesting concept,” Harry said thoughtfully, swirling his wand back and forth. Brief gleams of magic came to life, tracing the motion of his hand, but died down again before Draco could open his mouth to comment. “No, the house wouldn’t recognize you because you haven’t lived here, but we leave memories behind in the stone—and the ones that you left because you lived here as a child wouldn’t simply disappear.” He turned to face Draco. “What was the room you loved the most when you were a kid?”

            Draco hesitated, looking for the traps in the question. “Loved the most? Or spent the most time in?”

            Harry snorted. “Right. I forgot they might be different. Spent the most time in, then. The length of time is the appropriate thing.”

            Draco tilted his head back to consider the side of the Manor. It looked like unimpressive, aging stone from this side, but he knew, none better, how that could come alive in grey light if someone tried to intrude. He pointed up at a single gleaming window high in the side. “You can’t see it very well from here, but there. That library.”

            “Because it had the most books in it?” Harry stepped back and fixed his eyes on the window. Draco wondered idly what he would do. The library window was still behind the wards, so Harry would have to figure out a way to pierce them first.

            “No, because it had the most Dark Arts books in it,” Draco mumbled. His tongue felt thick, and once again it was hard to look at Harry. “I wanted—I thought it would be brilliant if I went to Hogwarts knowing how to curse my enemies.”

            Harry only nodded, as though that neither surprised nor hurt him, and then reached out a hand. It wasn’t until he snapped his fingers that Draco realized what he wanted. He rested his hand gingerly in Harry’s. Harry’s fingers immediately closed around his wrist and tilted it until Draco’s hand was palm up.

            “All right,” Harry whispered. “I’ve seen this work, but only when there were weaker wards, so if something hurts, tell me right away, okay? Then we’ll know to stop.” He laid his wand in the center of Draco’s palm.

            “What are you going to do?” Draco whispered back.

            Harry opened his eyes and smiled at him. “Wards are meant to keep things out,” he said, tracing his wand in a star-shaped pattern. Draco forced himself not to think of the star-shaped patterns of writing on the ceilings of Cuthbert’s Corner. There were other things it could mean. “Everyone knows that. What they don’t often think about is that they’re meant to keep harmful things out. They can’t be tighter than that, unless they’re on trunks full of treasure and other rooms or objects where nothing inside needs to breathe. Otherwise, they would keep out air and light, too.”

            The star-shaped pattern in Draco’s palm was tingling. He blinked at it, and then at Harry. “What are you doing?”

            “This particular spell allows the love you felt for that room to pass the wards,” Harry said, tilting his head back to study the window again. “The sympathy you built up in it, the way the stones remember you. Wards don’t keep that out. Most of the time, there would be no need to. The members of the family who love and honor the house are the ones who should have the ability to cross the boundaries, after all.”

            Draco blinked again. He had never heard of a spell like that, but then, he hadn’t studied very much of the Lighter branches of magic, either. He had thought there was no way they could be more powerful than the Dark Arts. It seemed he had been wrong. “Wouldn’t my parents have thought of that? I mean, no offense, Harry, but they are more learned than you are.”

            Harry snorted a little. “I doubt they’re thinking in terms of love much at any time, but especially when they’ve rejected you.”

            Draco winced in spite of himself, but Harry smiled reassuringly back at him, squeezed his hand, and faced the window of the library again. “If I’m right, then the connection you still share with the room will pull you through the wards,” he told Draco quietly. “It’ll take a few minutes to work, but once you’re through, you’re through, and the wards can’t spot you. The only danger is if an elf comes along and sees you in the time before the spell takes effect.”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. “And what about you? How are you going to get through them?”

            Harry half-smiled. “I thought I might play distraction again, the way I did the last time.”

            Draco winced, remembering their last visit, which had ended up with his mother wounded from the explosion of a magical necklace she was wearing—which had really been Draco’s fault, although his parents hadn’t known that at the time—and shook his head. “They could still remember you even if they have no idea who I am. They won’t let you in.”

            “I wasn’t planning on having them let me in,” Harry said calmly. “I was thinking in terms of a distraction to give you a chance to search for what you want.”

            Draco hesitated again. Harry reached out and squeezed his hand. “I won’t let them catch me. And I know spells that aren’t Dark Arts and which they won’t have defended against, the way I just showed you. Trust me?”

            With that plea filling his mind, Draco had to nod. “But I don’t want you putting yourself in unnecessary danger,” he told Harry. “If they start hitting you with Dark Arts that you can’t counter, Apparate out of here.”

            “Where are the Dark Arts I can’t counter?” Harry asked in innocence, and then snorted softly and shoved at Draco when he glared. “Go on. I can handle this.”

            Isn’t part of what we share supposed to be about trust?

            Given that, Draco turned slowly away from Harry and walked up to the limit of the wards, waiting. A few minutes later, the spell engaged and tugged him smoothly up and up, by his hands, and through the window as if it were made of silk draperies. Draco landed in the middle of the library and looked around.

            The Dark Arts texts he had spent so much time studying here were surely part of his inheritance, surely owed. He would begin taking them first, as well as looking for any information he could find on when and how his parents had hired Elder.

            As he reached for the first book, the wards shook with a hollow booming noise. Draco’s teeth felt as though someone had reached out and shaken his skull with all of them in it.

            Draco swallowed a little. So now he reckoned he knew what Harry’s distraction was.

*

            Harry grinned as he watched house-elves vanish from the Manor’s gardens. They would go in to secure their own safety and tell the family, though he didn’t think it would be needed, not if the elder Malfoys were as linked to the wards as Draco said they were.

            Harry wondered for a minute if he should care that these people had once been Draco’s parents, loved and sacrificed for him.

            And then Harry sneered and shrugged. Why should he? They hadn’t.

            And he lashed out with another spell, and the wards shook again.

*

            SP777: As is mentioned here, they were arguing about whether they should really go to Cuthbert’s Corner or not.

            Sorry about nothing with the werewolves, but I think since it was such a short period of time it was better to move the story on.
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity