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Bard of Morning's Hope	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9573 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Two--Blood On His Hands
            "This is the bedroom where it happened."
            Draco fell back before the Aurors that Potter guided into the room, two of them with long red robes a slightly darker shade then normal--with black trim, Draco noticed a moment later--and a symbol on their chests that reminded Draco of the crossed bone-and-wand symbol of St. Mungo's. As the two Aurors began to cast careful spells on the bed and the icy announcement of the Bard's presence on the wall that Draco had preserved, Draco turned to Potter.
            "Aurors Grimstone and Adbar are experts in a new kind of magic that we've been developing," Potter explained quietly, his eyes on the two Aurors. His gaze did return briefly to Draco's face, and stayed there for a calm moment before leaving again. Draco found that he was also breathing more quietly after that glance. "They can sense the traces of a magical signature that isn't the victim's own, blood other than the victim's, cloth the murderer may have dragged in from elsewhere--anything that shouldn't be here. But they need to separate the victim's from the murderer's magical signature first. It takes a bit."
            "You're not in on this new magic?" Draco couldn't help the sneer in his voice. He was the only one who needed to know that he didn't mean it as much as usual. "I thought Harry Potter was always the first and the best at everything."
            "Oh, no," said Potter, with a faint grin, as though to remind Draco that he hadn't forgotten their sparring any more than Draco had. "I'm good enough at bodyguard work and leadership that they wouldn't think of putting me anywhere else. Which is why I'll be taking over your defense."
            Draco stared at him. Potter maintained the same expression, which was a triumph of sorts, and he turned to study Grimstone's and Adbar's experiments again. Draco looked, too, but all he could see them doing was standing in front of the icy inscription of the Bard's name again and waving their wands gently back and forth like flower stems in a breeze.
            "That had better not mean what it sounds like," Draco said out of the corner of his mouth. "The wards on the Manor--"
            "Are inadequate," said Potter, his voice suddenly cooler. "The Bard defeated them. It's true that we don't know how he does that yet, but it does mean that you can't stay here. You or your mother."
            "You think we're the next targets." Draco shifted uncomfortably. "But how can you know that? The Bard hasn't struck in any organized pattern." Even the Lestrange brothers had been killed separately, two victims apart from what Draco remembered, not right in a row.
            "I think that you're targets, not necessarily the next ones," said Potter. "But I can defend you. I told you, I'm good at bodyguard work." Draco caught a glimpse of that grin again. "And we'll be moving to my house at Grimmauld Place, where you'll be behind wards I've strengthened with something extra."
            "What something extra?" Draco demanded.
            Potter smiled.
            "I deserve to know, if I'm going to be behind them," Draco said, and lowered his voice savagely. "And my mother, too. Or have you forgotten that you owe her a life-debt?"
            "Oh, of course not," said Potter. "I'll do my best to save her life. But I do think that's best done by acting as I would in any other case, not forcing her to invoke and claim the debt." He finally faced Draco. "And I can't explain what I added to my wards any more than I can explain Grimstone's and Adbar's work. This time, I do understand the magical theory, but you probably don't."
            "Try me."
            Potter nodded. "All right, then." Draco had to scramble mentally a moment to make sure that he was on his feet and ready for the lecture, since he hadn't expected Potter to give in, but Potter continued, "It has to do with the tension between the new moon and the dark of the sun."
            "There is no dark of the sun," Draco promptly retorted.
            "Then perhaps I should stop explaining right here," Potter retorted back.
            Draco considered Potter's easy stance against the wall for a second, and then said, "All right. Then tell me what it is."
            "It's the moment when the sun is the farthest away from a particular point on the earth," Potter explained. "When the solar energy is least." He grinned at the sight of Draco's puzzled expression, and Draco tried to smooth it away and appear impassive but interested enough that Potter wouldn't stop his lecture.
            "It took a long time to set up," Potter said. "I had to cast part of the spell on the night of the new moon that was nearest the point when the sun would be farthest away, and then the other part of it when the dark of the sun arrived. Then I had to add extra spells that called upon the powers of darkness and cold."
            Draco blinked, rapidly. "That sounds like Dark Arts."
            "It's not," said Potter, and looked up as one of the other Aurors approached him. "Because no one studies astronomical magic anymore, and no one ever got around to forbidding it."
            Draco watched through half-lidded eyes as the Auror, probably Grimstone, spoke with Potter in an undertone. It was true that Astronomy at Hogwarts was largely confined to recognizing constellations and planets, and sometimes predicting what influence they could have on magic. But no one ever seemed to actually use those rituals that were influenced by the rising of the full moon, or needed a precise point of sunset to work. Perhaps because they were too fussy and most wizards had easier methods of getting what they wanted now.
            It made Draco wonder why Potter had studied it. Then he snorted. It was probably something Granger had looked up and nagged Potter about until he implemented the result on his house.
            Potter caught the snort and maybe Draco's look, but he said only, "Grimstone tells me that the attack didn't come through the wards."
            Draco blinked and stared at Potter. "I don't understand what that means. Of course the bloody Bard had to get through the bloody wards. Do you think we invited him inside?" Even if the killer was another former Death Eater, which Draco couldn't believe given his list of victims, Draco had taken care to revoke all the exceptions to the wards that Lucius had put in place the minute his father went to prison. Lucius hadn't taken them back when he came home, either.
            Draco's eyes blurred abruptly, and he whirled away from Potter to drum a closest fist against the wall. Potter waited quietly until he turned back.
            "No," said Potter. "I don't mean that." The other Auror had already gone back to tapping slowly on the walls with his wand around Draco's parents' bed. "I mean that he came into the bedroom in a different way. It's the difference between coming into a house through an outside door and walking from room to room inside a house."
            Draco paused. "So he was already in the house," he said, and his voice was dull.
            "Yes." This time, Potter pressed briefly against him, just a touch of shoulder to shoulder, as he slipped past Draco and out the door. Draco straightened up and tried not to shake. He thought he could manage it, if barely. "There was something here that brought him. An anchor. Perhaps he'd shed drops of blood inside the house, or left a piece of his hair here. Those would be the usual kinds of anchors."
            Draco rubbed his head wearily. He'd heard of what Potter was talking about before, but... "I thought it was only a theory. Sympathetic magic that strong. Magic that could tug you through the wards, and replace Apparition."
            Potter gave him a gentle glance. "No. Not anymore."
*
            "If I knew something, I would tell it to you immediately, to bring the killer of my husband to justice. But I don't know anything."
            Sitting in front of Narcissa Malfoy, Harry was certain of that. She had the same sort of dignity he had seen in her when she lied to Voldemort about Harry being alive. She sat bolt upright in front of Harry, in a rocking chair, with a white shawl around her shoulders that looked like a mantle of snow. She kept her eyes grimly on Harry all the while, and the rocking chair didn't tremble once.
            Still, Harry had to do what he had to do, so he gave Narcissa a temperate smile and asked, "Tell me the story anyway? Sometimes we can pick out what the victims don't know they know. That's what we're trained to do."
            Narcissa gave him a frigid stare. Harry knew the ice wasn't for him, though, and he remained calm. Grimstone and Adbar were questioning Malfoy in another room about his impressions of the bedroom where his father had died. It was best to keep stories separate at first, so as not to have the witnesses convince each other of an impression that one of them might not have experienced, and Harry knew that he and Malfoy were still grating on each other in an uncomfortable way.
            "There is no possibility that I would lie," Narcissa said.
            "Not lie," said Harry. "Be mistaken."
            That only added an extra glaze of ice to Narcissa's features, and she sat up with her hands knotted in her robe. "Why are you here?" she asked. "From what Draco said to me, you cast no spells in the room upstairs, only observed what the others were doing."
            "I'm here to guard you, of course," said Harry simply. That seemed to catch Narcissa so utterly by surprise that she only stared at him, which gave Harry the chance to continue. "I'll be watching over you in Grimmauld Place for as long as necessary, until the Bard is caught and punished."
            "There is no sign that we'll be the next victims," said Narcissa, after a moment of thinking about it.
            "No," Harry agreed readily. "But it's a precaution, and my wards are stronger in a way that I know they need to be, now. Malf--Draco told you about my colleagues' conclusion that the Bard walked through the house by using something already inside the wards as a gateway?"
            Narcissa sniffed and gathered her shawl closer. "That magic is theoretical only, Mr. Potter. Impossible."
            "Not now," said Harry, and decided that he could reveal this. He was pretty bloody sure that Narcissa Malfoy wasn't the Bard of Morning's Hope. "We've had some Aurors, like Aurors Grimstone and Adbar, working on new techniques that tell them absolutely what kind of magic a murderer or other criminal used. And that's what they say happened here. If it's theoretical for the Aurors or the people we're trying to protect, it's not theoretical for the Bard."
            Narcissa looked at him with a turned-down mouth, so motionless that Harry started to stand in concern, thinking he might have to call Malfoy to his mother, even if interrupted the questioning that Adbar and Grimstone were doing. But in seconds, the expression had passed, and Narcissa sat up.
            "That is more of an answer than I had before," she murmured, "as far as the question of how is concerned. And I will not forget that you brought it to me. I am ready to tell you what I can."
            Harry nodded back in relief and sat down. "All right. What time did you get up this morning to go to your engagement?"
            As he had expected, and as Narcissa herself had claimed, the details provided little help. Narcissa was certain that Lucius had still been alive when she left. For one thing, Harry thought, she would have noticed that he was an ice statue if Malfoy himself had been able to see that much from the bedroom door. There had been no icy signature on the wall, either, and that would have been noticeable to someone who was half-blind. The Bard always wanted his victims' families to know it was him.
            "Who is he?" Narcissa asked abruptly, when Harry had taken her through every step of the morning up until the point when she had left the house. Harry had thought she might start weeping as they discussed Lucius's death more and more, but instead, her eyes were ablaze with such anger it seemed to have burned up the tears. "Do you have any clues in that direction?"
            Harry looked at her closely. "I'll tell you what I think," he said. "But that's not the same as what the Aurors are officially inclined to proclaim."
            "I do not care."
            No more does she, Harry thought in a little admiration. "And I have to have your promise that you're not going to run out and try to take vengeance based on this," he warned her. "That could be dangerous for everyone involved."
            Narcissa made an impatient little motion with her hand, still watching him. Harry accepted it and said, "I don't think there's any doubt that it's a Muggleborn. There were theories at first that it was a surviving Death Eater who blamed his own side for Voldemort's fall, but I don't think that. He would have targeted me first. All the ones we've found like that certainly have targeted me."
            Narcissa blinked at him. "I did not realize that you had suffered assassination attempts."
            "We found it best not to publicize them except when they happened in front of a lot of witnesses." Harry shrugged at her stare. "What they wanted was renown and publicity for trying to destroy me. I'm pretty good at denying wizards who try to kill me what they want. I see no reason to break that tradition."
            He won a faint smile from her, as he had hoped he might. Then she said, "But you have no specific suspects?"
            Harry hesitated once, then said, "Someone who fought at the Battle of Hogwarts."
            Narcissa touched the shawl across her shoulders as if she might find the reason for that written in the strands, and then murmured, "Nothing like that has been reported in the papers."
            Harry shook his head. "Like I said, it's my own guess. I think that I might be wrong, and I don't want to risk causing anyone any distress until I know for sure whether it's right."
            "You will tell me now why you think yourself right."
            Harry hid a smile and nodded. Narcissa was no worse than some of the imperious Auror instructors he had worked with, and he had made them all respect him in the end.
            "The only people that the Bard's killed were all at the Battle of Hogwarts," Harry explained. "I didn't think that was true at first, but then I found out all the Death Eaters were there, even Theodore Nott's father, who was reported as being there only a year later. And that Slytherin girl the Bard killed was the same way. She wasn't Marked. Neither was Montagu, actually, although they only discovered that when he was buried. So it can't be that it was just Death Eaters, or even just people on Voldemort's side."
            "Mr. Potter," said Narcissa.
            It was the second time she had refused to grant him the title "Auror," but Harry wasn't that bothered. He understood why she wouldn't feel the title was important right now. "Yes?" he asked.
            "Please refrain from speaking that name around me." Narcissa sat up as though flame was coursing her and holding her back from topping forwards. "I do not wish to hear it, and I despise looking like a coward."
            Harry was about to reassure her he didn't think she was a coward, but Narcissa caught his gaze, and he understood. She thought she looked like a coward when she flinched. No matter what Harry might tell her about what he thought, she would prefer not to do it for her own self-image.
            "All right," said Harry calmly. "The people who fought in the Ministry for Snakeface haven't been attacked. Neither have some of the Death Eaters who had actually done more damage in the war, but were in Azkaban or injured and so didn't participate in the battle at Hogwarts. I believe it all comes back to that connection."
            "Why haven't you publicized these conclusions, then?" Narcissa now gazed at him like a hawk deciding whether to tear its prey apart right now or wait until it could really sink its claws into the prey's body and give it some pain.
            "Because I'm not sure." Harry spread his hands. "And until today, I had no primary involvement with this case. I did make the suggestion to the Aurors who are investigating it, and they promised that they would take it into consideration."
            "You are only telling me because...?"
            Because you asked, Harry thought, but that would sound ungracious. "Because your husband was just murdered," he said. And anything that helps victims make sense of that situation can help.
            Narcissa considered it some more. Harry waited, but before she said anything else, the door opened, and Harry turned around.
            Grimstone and Adbar stood there, Malfoy between them. Grimstone, a heavyset Auror with a face befitting his name, nodded to Harry. "We're done with the questions, Auror Potter. You'll be moving the witnesses?"
            "Yes." Harry stood up and smiled at Malfoy, then turned the smile on Narcissa when Malfoy only stared at him. "I thought I'd extend an invitation to visit me behind my wards."
            It took a moment, but Narcissa inclined her head, and Malfoy followed her. "We accept your invitation," said Narcissa. "Only allow us to retrieve some small objects that we will need to feel more comfortable in your home."
            Harry nodded in silence, and stood back so that Narcissa could get past him. Meanwhile, he thought of the other reason that his suggestion about the Battle of Hogwarts was one that other people weren't eager to hear.
            It struck most of the Aurors as extremely unlikely that the killer was another Death Eater. Which meant, if they'd been at the Battle of Hogwarts, they were dealing with a hero of that battle.
            Kingsley and several other people high up in the Ministry, committed to justice though Harry knew they were, were also a lot more politically sensitive than Harry was. He knew they didn't want to think about arresting a war hero any more than they did arresting Dennis Creevey right now.
            But Harry didn't care. When he had become an Auror, fiery-eyed instructors who believed it had told him that the Aurors had an obligation to treat all criminals fairly, bringing them safe and alive to trial. They were arresters, not executioners; they stopped things from happening. And Harry believed it as well.
            But that also meant that they had an obligation to see that all sorts of people could be criminals--even popular ones, even pretty ones, even ones who had done good in the past. They weren't to stop their investigations merely because the clues were leading them in a direction they didn't like.
            So he was going to stop the Bard. And he was going to do it whether that person was Muggleborn, half-blood, pure-blood, crazy or sane, war hero or not.
            If they don't, I will.

*
            Kain: Thank you! I have you to thank for the prompt, since it was detailed enough for a chaptered fic.
            As you can see, Narcissa and Draco are stunned by this idea, but they can at least accept Harry being their guard, if not rejoice in it.
            This person is absolutely committed to his goals. I think you'll see why when his identity is revealed.
            I am not yet sure if Pansy will be in the story or not.
            SP777: This chapter does move the story forwards, I think, although there's no murder this time.
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Bard of Morning's Hope