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The Rising of the Stones	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13237 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Two—Runes and Truth
            Draco spent a moment looking at the letter in his hand, nearly doubting the truth of it. Then he rapped on the door in front of him, holding out the letter. If she had changed her mind or forgotten that she’d said she would talk to him, he intended to remind her right away.
            But although the door opened abruptly, Ginny Weasley showed no sign of refusing him. She merely nodded like an exhausted horse and moved out of the way. “Well, come in.”
            Draco did, looking around with neutral eyes. There were tables everywhere, small round ones; Weasley ran a little restaurant in Diagon Alley, in the shadow of her brother’s joke shop. As Weasley turned away from Draco to fling a cloth she’d held over the outline of a counter, Draco saw her soul-mark in the center of her back, directly above the dipping back of her shirt.
            It was always difficult to judge the looks of half a soul-mark when you didn’t know what the whole one was meant to be, but Draco was fairly sure he could say it was broom bristles. It didn’t look like a lightning bolt.
            “What do you want to know about Harry?”
            Draco took the chair across from her at the table she’d flopped down at, and studied her for a minute. Weasley met his eyes and said nothing. She gave him the impression of dust in her hair and around the corners of her face, even though in reality she was perfectly clean.
            “The files I read said that he mourned not having a soulmate. First, I wanted to know if you were his soulmate or ever thought you were.”
            Weasley gave a snort. She leaned back and stared over Draco’s head at the window in the far wall, although as far as Draco could tell it looked out on nothing more interesting than the window of another shop. “I don’t know. I thought for a long time I was his soulmate, because he seemed to trust me more than any other woman he knew. But he never trusted me enough to show me his mark. Eventually, that became unbearable.”
            If his soulmate really was the Dark Lord, then perhaps it wasn’t that he needed to trust women.
            But Draco still had no fuel for that tantalizing fire, so he had to ask a different question. “Did he talk to you about his search for his soulmate?”
            “No. That refusal to show me his mark came between us.”
            “Did he ever show it to Weas—I mean, your brother? Or Granger?”
            Weasley did a good job of withdrawing without moving a muscle. “You would have to ask them that. There were things the three of them talked about that they didn’t bother including me in.”
            Well, isn’t that interesting. “But Potter never seemed romantically interested in either of them?”
            “Ron and Hermione knew they were soulmates from a very young age. I don’t see how Harry could have felt that way about Hermione.”
            The persistent refusal to admit that soulmates of the same sex exist. And the idea that of course desire would simply die once you realized someone was someone else’s soulmate. It’s no wonder that Potter felt he had to run away, if he did end up with a soulmate he hated.
            “You know there were Dark Arts books found in his flat?” Weasley nodded, but offered no information, so Draco had to pry. “He never told you about trying to acquire those?”
            “Why would he?” Weasley lifted her hands, dropped them as if to say they’d become useless. “He didn’t trust me with anything else. By the end—I mean, the end of the time we dated, we were barely speaking.”
            “What time was that?” The notes in the file hadn’t mentioned an exact date, probably because it was so long ago that the Aurors who’d investigated felt it had nothing to do with Potter’s disappearance. Fools.
            “Two years ago. April 30^th.”
            Draco had to pause a moment. April 30^th, the day before Beltane, was also sometimes a time for Dark rituals and the calling of powerful forces that couldn’t be summoned any other day of the year. Had Potter been gazing into fires and stones even then, and had learned that, for him, there was no point to dating Weasley because she wasn’t his soulmate?
            I do wish I could discover what caused him to be so obsessed with the idea in the first place. He has to have known one person who didn’t find forever with their soulmate.
            But Draco didn’t know enough about Gryffindors and Weasleys to be certain of that. He switched tracks. “Do you know anyone in Potter’s year who didn’t find their soulmate?”
            “What?”
            Draco started to repeat the question, but Weasley caught the air and stopped him, shaking her head. “No, I know what you mean. And the answer is, I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, Lavender and Parvati and Neville and Seamus and Dean all did. So not among the people he knew best. There were a girl in my year and a boy in the year below who didn’t, and that’s all I personally know of.”
            Draco braced himself to move fast if he had to. “What about in your family?”
            Weasley gestured at herself. Draco nodded. “But your brother…”
            “And Bill, yeah. And George found his soulmate last year—” Draco did remember hearing about the jokester’s wedding, when he strained his mind a little “—and Percy is probably dating his. I think the only one who didn’t, besides me, is Charlie.”
            “Do you think Potter went and talked to him?”
            Weasley looked suddenly thoughtful. “You know, I never asked.” Then she shook her head and looked at Draco. “But if you’re thinking that’s where he went now, you’re mistaken. The Aurors already contacted Charlie, and he said he hadn’t seen Harry.”
            “I just wondered if it might have happened in the past.” Draco was collecting more evidence for his idea that Potter might have lit out into the wilderness if he didn’t think he could have a perfect bond with his soulmate, stupid though such a thing was. “And one more question. Potter’s parents were soulmated, weren’t they?”
            Weasley nodded, eyes narrow. Draco knew why. That was probably part of the legend of James and Lily Potter that every Gryffindor knew.
            But Draco had never been that interested in the legend of the dead. When a living legend walked around the school with you, you tended to concentrate on him instead.
            “And everyone talked about how happy they were and how they meant the world to each other?”
            “That’s two questions.”
            Draco waited. Weasley sighed through her nose. Looked out the window again, as though her soulmate would reveal himself in the bricks of the facing wall. “Yes. They did. I think it was the first thing everyone mentioned to Harry—well, maybe the second, after they mentioned how much he looked like his father except with his mother’s eyes. How happy they were. How much in love they were.”
            That sealed the confirmation in Draco’s mind. Potter had acted ridiculous, but of course he would, if everyone was constantly laying the pressure on him to find his soulmate and be happy with her because his parents had been.
            “I will try to find him,” Draco told Weasley, as a sop for helping him, and started to stand up.
            “Wait.”
            Draco waited, and still Weasley said nothing, staring at the table like the weight of her hair had become too much. Draco imitated a pillar as long as he could. He could wait for the sake of something else important about Potter, but he thought perhaps Weasley had exhausted all her useful information and simply wanted to make herself feel important.
            Then Weasley looked up, and Draco was sure of it.
            “If you find him,” Weasley whispered, “tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t be what he needed.”
            Draco nodded politely, committing the words to memory. They might be useful to manipulate Potter with. “Good-bye,” he added, and left before Weasley could throw out some other references to doomed romance. Draco wouldn’t be sentimental about it no matter what she did, so staying here simply wasted her time and his.
*

            Draco stood up. He had his first destination in mind, the site of Stonehenge. He would be able to Apparate there without trouble, since he’d visited it years ago in connection with another case.
            And yet he didn’t simply leave his own flat. He paused. There was a niggling in his mind, a fleeting thought that darted behind others like a dragon determined to remain within the shadows of the forest.
            Draco had learned to trust those nigglings. He stood still with his head bowed, until he turned a corner and met it face-to-face.
            There. There it is.
            He needed to look again at the list of books that Potter had left behind in his flat. The Aurors who had investigated had concentrated only on the obvious Dark Arts texts. But there might be another clue hidden behind those. Draco was remembering something he had seen and not recalled until now.
            He turned and dug within the neatly-organized pile of paperwork he’d brought home from the Ministry. Yes, there it was. The list of books left behind consisted of three pages. Draco traveled slowly down it with one finger, not trying to rush his revelation.
            There.
            Potter had bought book after book on soulmates. But only a few were the sort of introduction designed for Muggleborns entering the wizarding world, or directly about legends of unhappy soulmates, the kind of reading material Draco had thought he would choose. There were many more novels and, of all things, collections of fairy tales. Draco recognized most of the titles.
            All about soulmates who lived happily after finding each other.
            Draco cocked his head slowly to the side. Potter had fled with the intent of doing something about his soulmate, whom he thought was unsuitable. Draco was utterly certain of it. What, then, was he doing reading these books? Tormenting himself further?
            Draco would have thought that they were simply the older volumes in Potter’s collection and he had moved on to the uglier side later, but the list of books also included the purchase price and time of those Draco’s inferiors had been able to track down. The novels were almost all new; all but two collections of the fairy tales were.
            What had Potter done, then? Bought the books as cover for the armfuls of less respectable texts he had carried out? Scanned the fairy tales for information that could be seen as garbled tales of older rituals? Wavered back and forth between tormenting himself with those happy versions of soul-marks and the people they drew together and the reality he must be facing?
            Draco frowned and laid the list slowly back in its place. He might not be facing a Potter psychologically prepared for violence and committed to Dark magic, as he had assumed he would. He might, instead, face a conflicted Potter, one who would resort to violence and try to apologize and excuse himself at the same time.
            Draco had faced many such criminals divided within themselves. It was always disturbing, and frequently bloody.
            Then he shook his head. He was sure he knew what Potter was trying to do, and he still had an excellent lead on locating him. His motivations weren’t the most important first step, and could wait.
            Still, as Draco Apparated to Stonehenge, unease rang in the back of his mind like a gong.
*
            Draco felt the magic the minute he opened his eyes.
            Of course he did, he thought as he straightened. Stonehenge was ancient, soaked in earth magic. Many Muggle superstitions about the places were inaccurate; to be fair, so were a lot of wizarding myths. But simply from the placement of the stones, their age, and the way people had come here to gawk and be fascinated and take pictures and worship in muddled ways, much magic had built up around them.
            Earth magic was always like that, fragmented and mosaic-composed.
            Draco began to turn in a slow circle, his wand sweeping out around him like the hand of a watch. He had cast a Disillusionment Charm before he Apparated, and the charm shielded him from the people wandering around. Draco did have to pause and adjust the spell he was using, because too much interference came from the occasional wizard.
            But finally, he picked up on the trail he was searching for, a small trace of Potter’s magic he had acquired from handling things taken from his flat. Draco smiled and began walking towards it.
            It led him on a winding path around the edge of the stones, and then abruptly, right into them. Draco raised his eyebrows and walked delicately through the Muggle guard devices. He could disable them easily enough, and it was clear Potter had done so, too, but Draco wouldn’t have expected a good, “clean” soul like Potter to come so close to breaking the Statute of Secrecy.
            The trail stopped abruptly at a small mound of earth, and then vanished. Potter must have Apparated from here.
            Draco knelt down and examined the mound. It was ordinary, covered already with steadily growing grass that Potter had probably seeded. At least he had cared enough about the Statute of Secrecy to cover up his magical work.
            Draco cast spell after spell. Then he took out a few gemstones and his carving stylus and created a small ritual of his own. At the end, he had to sit back and wonder if he had been mistaken about either the original reason for Potter’s flight or the ability of his own magic to figure out what was going on.
There was no Dark magic here. Only earth magic.
Draco sat in stillness for some moments, head bowed, senses focused on the world around him only enough to warn him if someone came near. His mind was turning slowly over and over, reconsidering angles, trying to make sense of what had made sense so perfectly until he came here.
Stonehenge was the most powerful and closest of the sites Potter might have tried. Draco hadn’t expected him to stay here, precisely because it was the closest. But his remnants should have stunk more of Dark magic than this.
Potter’s motivations might have acquired the importance now that Draco had expected them to have later in the hunt.
What are you doing, Potter?
No answer awaited him where he was. Draco rose to his feet and cast another spell, one that made the stones around him blaze once before they unleashed memories of all the magic performed in their presence in the past ten days. The earth mound was certainly younger than that.
            There were Apparition spells, and small rituals for good luck that had a magical component—sometimes accidentally—and a few spells of the kind that would guard meals eaten outside from ants and flies and the like. A Cooling Charm. A Warming Charm. Draco shrugged. They were in the part of spring that meant the weather could vary beyond individuals’ tolerances.
            Then he stiffened. There was another spell in there, one that was performed next to something that looked like an earth mound, although the face of the person who had performed it was blurred—deliberately, Draco was sure. The wizard bent and passed a hand through the earth mound.
            When it came out, it was holding a stone.
            But not just any stone, Draco saw when he squinted. It looked as if it had been chipped and cut. A stone carving of a blade? Or just a stone blade? Something similar to that, Draco was sure. He shook his head.
            The memory faded then, and left Draco standing among the ancient magic still not knowing any more about what had happened or what Potter was doing than when he had come in. Draco felt his mouth turn sharply downwards.
            He was wasting time—losing time—and that was not acceptable. The best Auror in the Ministry didn’t do things like this.
            Draco reached out and cut his wand through the pattern of another spell before he could think about all the consequences. The magic flickered for a second around him, bone-white and then a cool blue, before it took hold.
            Much more ancient memories leaped up from the stones, magic that had been performed here in the past six months. Draco sank to his knees as the magical exhaustion overwhelmed him. There he stayed, panting harshly, as the images spun through his mind.
            And there was nothing there. Nothing Dark. Nothing that was performed by another wizard with his face shielded. Nothing that involved a small earth mound or a stone knife, or a stone carved to look like a knife.
            Nothing. Draco had cast a spell on the edge of Dark for the effort it took for no reason.
            Anger was stirring in him by the time he could finally stand up and get ready to Apparate. He used it, though, to shape and focus his mind, stripping away the excess emotions, until his thoughts were an arrowhead of purpose.
            As he Apparated to the Giant’s Causeway, Draco used that purpose to guide himself. He was going to find Potter. He was going to bring him down and arrest him and take him back to the Ministry.
            And he was going to make sure, before he handed Potter into the custody of other Aurors, that he told Draco the truth about what he thought he was doing. A private interrogation.
            Draco was going to know.
*
            SP777: Soulmates? No. I think there’s more than enough pushing of the script of perfect, romantic love in our society; we don’t need even more.
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The Rising of the Stones