Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ad Pavonem	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4188 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two—The Peacock’s Call
Draco sighed as he cradled the cup of mulled wine between his hands and stared into the fire. The echo of the slammed door still hung in the room.
But given what Pansy was asking of him, and the kind of trouble Draco’s father had got into during the war, how could he do anything but refuse?
Draco sipped from the wine again and let his gaze wander around the drawing room. It was done up with lots of gilt and silver and flashing jade figurines from his grandmother’s time, ugly even by Malfoy standards. Of course that didn’t mean one could change.
Not the inside of his house, anyway. But Draco was trying to change his soul, and his former friends made it…difficult.
He put down the wine when he heard a tap on the window. Either Pansy or Blaise would have sent him a letter trying to get him to house the smugglers, he reckoned. They weren’t ones to give up on a course of action until they’d tried every sort of persuasion.
But when Draco went over to the window, he stared. A peacock was balanced on the sill outside, staring back at him. This one had an especially long and shimmery tail, and Draco didn’t think he’d ever consciously noticed him before. There was also an odd green color to its eyes. That might only be the reflection of the jade figurines in the window, though.
“And just who are you?” Draco murmured. He heard his voice and the playfulness in it, and he wanted to shake his head at himself. The peacock was a peacock, nothing more than that.
It was behaving a bit oddly for one, though. It raised one foot and knocked on the glass like a human being, then stalked back and forth and glared imperiously at Draco. Then it listed to one side as if unused to the weight of its tail, and nearly fell off the sill.
Its wings unfolded, and it fell and flew into the darkness.
Draco snorted and felt a faint smile lingering on his face even as he turned back to the fire and the decision he had to make, which would probably end his friendship with at least one person. He could see why his father had kept peacocks around, even though Draco himself didn’t care about them as a symbol of beauty and wealth in the same way.
Now, though…
Draco sat down in front of the fire and considered. In truth, it wasn’t the decision he had to make. It was the way he would phrase the letter he intended to write.
Because he had no intention of going back to what he had been during the war, no matter how much Pansy and Blaise begged and pleaded.
*
Well, that was useless.
Harry stalked towards the house again, and then had to stop because one claw had caught in his dragging train. He could feel frustration welling up in his throat, but he knew it would only come out as a useless shriek instead of the cursing he needed.
He had thought Malfoy might at least open the window to a peacock acting so strangely. But instead, it seemed he thought Harry was amusing.
Harry beat his wings and screamed in frustration. That only brought other screams echoing back towards him. But no other peacocks showed up. It seemed most of them were sleepy now that the sun had gone down.
I have to let Malfoy know that I’m no ordinary peacock…
Then Harry paused, his neck tilting back and forth in little jerks that he couldn’t quite control. Did he have to? Really? Surely Malfoy should know that he had a defensive spell on the house that would turn people into peacocks, and that meant he would check on it occasionally and realize that some of his birds were humans?
Harry bobbed his head once. Malfoy would probably figure out that he was someone trapped soon, with no help from Harry. And in the meantime, Harry had a little time and an unparalleled opportunity to figure out if there was someone hiding in the Manor.
Harry trotted towards the side of the Manor that he knew was the unused one, huffing and clapping his wings as he did so. He missed his longer stride as a human. Walking as a bird seemed so limited. Not only did he have that bloody great tail, he kept having the feeling that he could get along faster if he spread his wings to help. But most peacocks weren’t good fliers.
Most peacocks aren’t humans who could have been professional Quidditch players, though.
Harry paused at that thought, and glanced around. There were no other peacocks in sight. He supposed it was the time of night they roosted. They might not make a clatter that would alert Malfoy if…
This time, when he spread his wings and did his best to fly, he did it with the consciousness of his tail behind him, and how it would drag, and how different his body was from the one he was familiar with, instead of letting the peacock instincts panic him. He actually flew a good way before he had to land, and then he ran a short distance and took off again.
By the time Harry arrived at the fresh earth next to a flowerbed and landed behind a huge rosebush, he was feeling quietly pleased with himself.
That only lasted until he saw the footprints in the dirt. He once again tried to swear, and once again had it come out as a squawk. They were here! They were actually here this evening! If I’d known about the bloody protection spells…
Stalking around, Harry could discern a few telltale signs that these were probably the footprints of smugglers, and not people who just wanted to visit the Manor for whatever reason. For one thing, they were coming from behind a hedge, around the rosebush, and towards the side of the wing that wasn’t being used by Malfoy. They would have no reason not to approach the front door if they were invited guests.
For another, they wore heavy boots, heavier than Harry usually saw except on fellow Aurors and people who worked with animals, and dragged a heavy travois behind them, from the marks. Harry crowed a little and rattled his tail against the ground. The smugglers they’d been trying to track had ingredients and objects among their treasures that resisted being shrunken or moved with magic. They practically had to use heavy boxes set with the kinds of wood and metal that would protect the things inside.
And…
Harry honestly didn’t know if he would have seen it if he wasn’t so close to the ground, but there was the glint of something bright and jeweled in the furze near the rosebush. He darted out his neck and snatched it up with a movement that felt natural. He supposed a real peacock would use that to eat an insect or something.
Ugh. I refuse to remain a peacock long enough to find out.
When he shook it out so he could see it dangling beneath his beak, he realized it was part of a leather band set with a radiant red jewel that resembled a dimmed ruby. Harry wanted to dance and drum and fan out his wings. The one smuggler they’d almost caught had been wearing a band like this. They hadn’t been able to catch him, but some of the magical theorists in the Ministry had said they suspected such jewel magic could keep the band together and let them Apparate with those objects that usually resisted being moved by magic.
Apparate, but not avoid dragging them once they got there.
Harry’s triumph lasted only until he remembered that the Ministry already thought Malfoy was guilty. Bringing them proof like this—once he convinced them he was Harry Potter and not a peacock—would make them arrest first and ask questions later unless Harry had other means of proving Malfoy didn’t know about it.
The footprints don’t come from the side where he would see them. But Harry knew Kingsley and the others might point out that Malfoy could have invited the smugglers in, then ignored their comings and goings, just wanting to take a cut of the profit instead of supervise them all the time.
Harry made a clucking noise of distress and faced the house again. Until and unless he could get back to normal, his only hope for getting some kind of proof on the side he believed was right was Malfoy himself. Harry would have to break his delicate “cover” and convince Malfoy to cooperate with him.
*
Draco turned over. He was dreaming about rain, about the night that he’d realized his friends had turned into other people, people more obsessed with money than even social respectability. It was a stupid memory that stuck with him long after it should have left, but he could hear the rain tapping on the windowsill while behind him, Blaise and Pansy argued.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Draco rolled over, muttered unhappily as his foot got caught in the covers, and then sat up and realized he was awake. He looked at the window, wondering. It hadn’t been supposed to rain tonight, although of course weather did what it wanted—
He narrowed his eyes when he saw the peacock sitting on the windowsill looking at him. Draco never doubted it was the same one.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
The peacock, unsurprisingly, didn’t answer. It hammered on the glass with its bill again, glanced down as if it was contemplating doing it with a foot, and then opened its beak and screamed so loudly that Draco jumped. It probably would have woken guests, if he’d had guests.
“I have no idea what you want,” Draco told it firmly, standing up and walking over to the window to scare the stupid bird away. “But you have plenty of food and plenty of water, and you can go perch until the morning. Your kind are supposed to go to sleep at night anyway. Go on! Shoo!”
He flapped his hands at the glass. The peacock gave him the most monumentally unimpressed look Draco had ever seen on a bird.
“Go on,” Draco said, and opened the window. That forced the peacock to flutter up, but amazingly, instead of wandering away, it landed on the sill again, still staring at Draco. This close, Draco could see every detail of the gleaming eyes and the way the white feathers crisscrossed over its breast. “Go away.”
The peacock screamed at him and pointed with one wing back over the gardens. Draco stared along the direction of the pointing, then shook his head. What was he doing? The peacock was only a bird.
A bird who had somehow found him twice, not only in his study, but where he slept, which was in a totally different wing of the house. A peacock who had tapped only on these windows, as far as Draco was any judge. Certainly no bird he owned had ever done this before.
Draco wasn’t accustomed to thinking of peacocks as either smart or stupid. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking of them at all. But now he reached out and pulled on his boots without taking his gaze from the one near his window.
“Go away,” he did try, once more.
The peacock gave him a dead-on stare that Draco knew no bird had ever favored him with. They tended to look at the world with their heads on one side, trying to see around the sides of their beaks.
“Lead on,” Draco said, to see what would happen, and to his amazement, the peacock took off, soaring into the darkness and landing not far away. At least the laws of nature hadn’t changed so much as to make peacocks good fliers. And the white feathers shone in the darkness, letting Draco catch up easily.
He shook his head as he climbed out the window, dropped lightly to the ground with the aid of a Cushioning Charm, and sped along the peacock’s trail.
I must be mad.
*
He’s coming!
Harry pranced around and around the smugglers’ footprints, not flaring his tail out even though he desperately wanted to. He knew the feathers could stick out and sweep across the dirt and erase the footprints. He forced himself to stand still and arch his neck a little instead, then jab a clawed foot at the bootmarks once Draco was close enough.
Draco gave him a quite frankly enigmatic look, and knelt down to stare at the footprints. He was still so long that Harry started to wonder if he had mistaken things and maybe Draco had invited friends to stay over who left the marks. But then Draco drew his wand, and cast a Body-Bind at him.
Harry’s peacock instincts reacted faster than his Auror ones could to the sight of something coming at him. He clattered into the air away from it, and landed on the other side of the flowerbed, where he turned to give Draco the most reproachful stare a peacock could manage.
But Draco only shook his head and murmured, “You’re human. You must be,” casting again at him.
Human, and trying to help you!
But Harry reckoned he could see why that notion wouldn’t occur to Draco right away. He spun away from the next spell and darted back and forth, trying to see and not be chased too far away at the same time.
Draco hit him with a successful Body-Bind before he could think of some way to prove who he was. Then Draco stalked over and stood staring narrowly down at him, while Harry struggled wildly against conflicting instincts. Part of him knew it would do no good to struggle against the magic, but the rest of him wanted to fly, fly, fly, and there was danger danger danger.
“Now,” Draco said softly, “we’ll see about this.” He aimed his wand at Harry and incanted the spell that would force an Animagus back into their human form.
Nothing happened. Draco lowered his wand and stared. Harry would have crouched there panting if the Body-Bind had allowed it.
He hadn’t thought the Animagus spell would work, and now his mind was dissolving into the mind of a frightened, hysterical bird.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Draco whispered. Then he went through a series of spells, starting with Finite Incantatem and continuing with related ones, that would undo human Transfiguration. With the part of him that could still hope, Harry thought those might work.
They didn’t. Nothing happened except that Draco got so frustrated he actually stamped his foot, and Harry wore away at the spell as best as he could with his own magic. Well, he crouched in the frozen position and hoped it would end, which was all he was actually capable of doing.
“What are you?” Draco asked, and knelt down by Harry as if he thought taking a closer look at his wings and tail would give him the answer.
The spell abruptly shattered, either because Harry had done something or Draco accidentally had. Harry screamed in his face and took off running, then flew when he thought he heard another spell coming towards him.
He landed in a small tree and sat there, shaking. Murmurs and rustling above him told him it was already full of white peacocks, but he certainly wasn’t about to go back out there with a mad Malfoy.
Harry tucked his head down against his breast and shivered all over. He had nearly lost his mind to the bird’s instincts. He might yet, if this went on much longer.
But Malfoy thought he was either an enemy or something he would probably want to capture and chop up for Potions ingredients. Harry couldn’t count on any help from him. He rattled his tail and ignored the sleepy protests of the other peacocks. He wondered why Malfoy hadn’t immediately jumped to the conclusion that Harry was a victim of whatever defensive spell he’d wound about the property.
The thought made Harry pause. It didn’t seem Malfoy’s style of spell, either before the war or since. He would have wanted to capture invaders the way he’d tried to do with Harry, and interrogate them.
Unless he wasn’t the one who put the spell up.
Harry gave a soft, miserable hoot to himself, and ignored the way another peacock screamed in return. There had been a few days when Lucius had the Manor to himself, besieged as the Ministry and Aurors fought for a way in. He had finally given up after Draco stood outside and called for him to come out.
What if he was the one who created this spell, and Draco knows nothing about it?
Harry hunched some more. That meant this was going to be a lot more difficult than he’d thought.
But it didn’t matter. He had to keep going.
If I can’t get help from Malfoy, then I’ll get it somewhere else!

*
Kain: Exactly. Harry has both a ridiculous problem and a ridiculous time limit.
Addiena Saffir: Thank you! Sorry I haven't updated this story in so long.
SP777: It was akin to seeing a werewolf in mid-transformation.
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