Black Phoenix | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21568 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5 |
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Chapter Twenty—Not Amused “Can you think of anyone who would want to kill you?” Ombershade snatched a piece of meat from the plate whole before answering. Harry leaned back in his chair, legs propped up on the table before him, and let Ombershade eat. Harry had made him expend a lot of energy during the night without giving him a single bite, after all. “Not me specifically,” Ombershade replied at last, surfacing from a deep-sea plowing of his plate. “What I represent, perhaps. Werewolves acting in their own interests, without hanging back and waiting to see which wizards will serve them best.” “Yes, I could see that,” Harry murmured. And it would solve the puzzle of how someone had hoped to get away with putting poison that a werewolf could smell in the potion. They hadn’t targeted Ombershade, unless they’d hoped that Harry would execute him for the murders afterwards. They had targeted whoever he would have leaped on once he managed to get out of his rooms. The poisoner definitely couldn’t have foreseen that Ombershade would remain inside his rooms instead of being outside them. “I think it ran deeper than that,” Greenbush said. She was sitting at the table with them before Harry could blink. Students had already been dismissed to classes, and it ought to have been easy to see her cross the broad, empty space of the Great Hall. But instead, she claimed a plate of bloody meat of her own and stared at Harry. “I think someone wants to destroy a good part of your court and what you claim to stand for. A werewolf breaking free and killing people would do that—destroy some of your literal human support and your promise to be a safe sanctuary for magical creatures at a single stroke.” Harry grimaced. “I’d already assumed the poison originated with the Ministry. I don’t know if it’s fair to assume more than that.” “Who cares about fair?” Ombershade looked up from his plate, and his eyes had the wild shine of the wolf’s. “Someone nearly got me murdered last night, one way or the other. More, someone tried to make me into a murderer. I think we have the right to take this personally.” Harry blinked. “Well. Yes.” He had had the feeling of fighting mostly alone against the Ministry for so long, he had forgotten that other people wouldn’t be amused when the Ministry tried to play with their lives in the course of destroying Harry. He turned to Greenbush. “Was your potion poisoned as well?” Greenbush shook her head and sucked a little juice off her fingers. “No. I suspect that whoever sent the poison only had enough to sneak into some of the ingredients, and it was entirely a matter of chance which ones ended up in which potion. If you think about it as an attempt to assassinate one of us, this was a risky strategy. The Ministry had no way of knowing that Miss Granger would put enough poison in one goblet to kill whoever drank it. We could have ended up with all the poison in mine, or Ombershade’s, as happened, or with it so mixed up and diluted that there wasn’t enough to harm either one of us.” Harry frowned and opened his mouth, to ask if she thought someone other than the Ministry had sent it, but then shook his head. Of course. She was saying if this had been a plan to kill them, which meant it probably wasn’t. “Is it a kind of poison that you’ve smelled before?” he asked instead. Ombershade shook his head fiercely, but Greenbush murmured, “Yes. It has similarities to False Aconite, which is a potion and not an herb, no matter what it sounds like. It’s supposedly a less dangerous version of the Draught of Living Death. Or that’s how it developed and was marketed. In reality, if you add enough wolfsbane to the potion, it tips over into a poison. It might kill in the victim’s sleep, so it can be hard to tell from a heart attack, but the smell is very distinctive.” “Like the potion,” Harry said. “But not that.” Greenbush gave him a friendly contemptuous glance. “Of course not. No potion could survive, unchanged, the extensive brewing process that creates the Wolfsbane. There would have been an explosion or some other sort of reaction that would have alerted Miss Granger long before she got to that stage.” Harry nodded thoughtfully, and swallowed some water. “Then it was an attempt to undermine my court, you’re sure, but with a poison that only resembles some others, but isn’t them.” “That’s what I said.” Greenbush’s voice was low, as if she thought that Harry was making fun of her because he wasn’t following everything right away. “Good,” Harry said, and faced Ombershade. “Are you up to talking to Hermione today? If you can figure out what poison was used, she might be better able to track back the ingredients she got, and decide which ones they were and where they came from.” Ombershade grimaced at him, but it was a comical one, and he stood up and put one heavy-nailed hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I’m sore, but I might have been much worse than that,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Yes, I can do that.” He limped away, and Harry watched him go. It was a moment before he realized that Greenbush wasn’t doing the same thing, as he had assumed she would, but staring at him without expression instead. Harry twisted his head. “What?” he asked, and picked up his cup of water to drink the rest of it. “I heard about what you did for Ombershade,” Greenbush said, and leaned forwards. “And while I am grateful, and it did work out well, only another werewolf could tell you how dangerous that was. One who was sane last night,” she added, effectively cutting off what Harry was about to say, that Ombershade knew what had happened and he hadn’t talked about how dangerous it was. “We cannot afford to lose you.” Harry sighed. “Do you think I would have gone up against Ombershade unless I was sure of what I was doing? And it’s not like I would advise anyone else to do it. I knew that Hogwarts would protect me, and that’s the only reason that I did it.” Greenbush leaned forwards. There were sparks in her eyes, too, and ones that made Harry more cautious than the ones in Ombershade’s eyes did, because this woman was fully in control of her actions. “You cannot predict the outcome of every event. You did not predict that the Ministry would manage to seize you. You should be more careful. At the very least, you should have plans in place for how your court would function without you. Do you?” Harry knew his silence condemned him. Still, he would have come up with a defense if Greenbush hadn’t stood up, shaken her head, and said, “You should.” Then she strode out of the Great Hall, almost as fast and silent as a wolf.Harry scowled at the far wall. Then he sighed and stood up. He still had things to do, things that had nothing to do with the investigation into who had poisoned Ombershade. He would have to leave that up to Hermione and the werewolves for a while. He hadn’t been in contact with the poisoned potion before it got served to Ombershade. Hermione knew more about Potions theory anyway, and so did Greenbush, if some of the things she had said about False Aconite were any indication.
Harry just had everything else to worry about: classes, soothing the members of his court, the new proposal of alliance that had arrived on his desk yesterday, Persephone’s strange behavior… And Draco. This time, Harry wouldn’t wait for news to make its way to Draco; he would tell Draco about his fencing with Ombershade last night before someone else could. He didn’t think Draco was likelier to be any happier than Greenbush, but at least he would have the evidence of Harry’s trust in him.* “This had better be important.” Draco felt his voice soften anyway when he saw Harry in the fire. Harry’s call had come at a slightly inconvenient time, it was true, drawing Draco away from a planning meeting with Rosenthal, but it could have been far more inconvenient. There were no visitors from the Ministry or other places Draco needed to impress this time. “Is everything all right?” Draco asked, because it seemed to him that Harry was looking a little pale. Harry yawned before he answered, which reassured Draco. Whatever it was might have cost Harry a night’s sleep, but he would be snapping through the yawn if it was really urgent. “Someone tried to poison Ombershade’s Wolfsbane last night.” The name of the potion told Draco more than the name of the person did. He couldn’t recall the names of all the people who had entered Harry’s court lately, but werewolves were a bit more important. He frowned. “Did they succeed?” “They succeeded in putting the poison in the potion,” Harry said. “Probably by sending ingredients that Hermione used to make it which were already infused with the venom. Luckily, he smelled it in time and didn’t drink it.” Draco winced. “I have to admit that I don’t think it’s lucky if you had to put a wild werewolf down last night, or even just cage him until he subsided.” He knew that Harry’s bond with Hogwarts would make wounds to the castle echo with pain in his own body. Harry gave him a half-embarrassed smile. “Well, I couldn’t let him hurt other people, but I also couldn’t let him hurt the castle. So I, uh, put a collar of stone on his neck that would freeze his movements if I really needed it to—” “Hogwarts stone?” Draco interrupted. He hadn’t known that Harry’s bond with the castle could include things like that, but it made sense. Harry nodded. Before he could continue, Draco murmured, “Well, that is fortunate for you, but hardly something you needed to contact me for.” He was trying to feel out why Harry would have wanted him to know about this. Just to watch out for poison? Did he have evidence that someone might try to threaten Draco as well as other people who were allied with him? Harry coughed. “I, uh, couldn’t be sure that letting him go into the Forbidden Forest would be a good idea later. He might have run too fast for me to catch up with him and control him with the collar when I needed to.” Draco narrowed his eyes. “Spit out what you called to say, Harry.” “I used myself as bait,” Harry said. He started talking rapidly, probably because he knew that the way Draco’s mouth fell open a little wasn’t a good sign. “I mean, I did it because I knew that Hogwarts would keep me safe. It could slide me around the corridors and the grounds like I was skating. I was the only one in the castle who would have been safe. We couldn’t risk him killing a child or a centaur or anyone living there or—” “You fled from a werewolf all night,” Draco interrupted him. He knew his voice was flat, but he didn’t know who could blame him, other than maybe Harry himself. “Well, yeah.” Harry looked at him a little anxiously. “I think it was more like playing, but you could call it flight if you wanted.” “I do want.” Draco planted his hands on the cushions on either side of him and leaned forwards. Harry winced, even though they weren’t physically in the same room and Draco couldn’t have reached him. “Listen to me. What you did was stupid, foolish, and dangerous. Freeze Ombershade and confine him all night. Why couldn’t you do that?” “I was worried that he would hurt himself if I tried something like that,” Harry said. “And I only thought of using the collar of stones after I realized that he was pacing around inside his room and hurting himself.” Draco shut his eyes. “That doesn’t answer my question.” “It really does.” Harry sounded apologetic, but Draco knew the expression that would have overcome his face if Draco looked, one of his most stubborn ones. “I didn’t think of everything I could do right at first, and I honestly did plan to leave him locked up. But he was tearing at the walls, and when I imprisoned him by trapping his paws in the floor, then he started biting his own flank. I didn’t want that to happen, either.” Draco opened his eyes. He was calmer than he would have been if he had heard about this and not known Harry survived. But he still had something important to say. “Did you consider what your court would do without you?” “I thought I wouldn’t die.” Harry’s head had acquired that particular tilt that meant he wasn’t going to change his mind no matter what Draco said. Draco gritted his teeth and tried to dig deeper anyway. “You thought. Did you know for certain? You can’t anticipate absolutely every circumstance. I would rather have you worry about this now than end up facing enemies that you don’t know how to defeat.” Harry blinked. “Greenbush said something like that. Her Wolfsbane wasn’t poisoned, and she spent the night sleeping in her rooms. I think that she understands the dangers that would come from keeping Ombershade cooped up, but she wasn’t happy about the way I danced with him anyway.” Draco refrained from snapping at the word “danced.” It would only encourage Harry to retreat into his stubborn shell when it came to this action and consider himself in the right. Instead of arguing that he’d been wrong, Draco thought he should concentrate on the emotional consequences of the situation. He lowered his head and shut his eyes. “It’s not only your subjects who would have reason to mourn losing you,” he whispered. “Or people who want to oppose the Ministry. Some of your…allies would be sorry to see you go, too.” “You’re more than an ally, Draco.” Harry sounded as soft and repentant as Draco could wish, and he opened his eyes to see Harry stretching his hand out to the fire. He snatched it back an instant later, but his face was still gentle and open. “I never meant to cause you any kind of distress, you know. I was only…” “I know what you were only,” Draco said, and stared up at the ceiling of his room. “But you have to realize that you can’t handle every challenge in the first way that occurs to you. The most dangerous way. If nothing else, this could encourage the belief that you’re insane, just like every other Dark Lord that Britain has ever had.” Harry made a small noise, small enough that Draco couldn’t tell what it was. Then he said, slowly, “It was still right to make sure that Ombershade and my court and the castle didn’t suffer.” “I agree that you had to do that.” Draco turned more squarely to face him. “Your bond with the castle and the fact that you keep your promises, unlike some other Dark Lords I could name, mean that you couldn’t do anything else.” “But maybe I could have found a different way to do it.” Harry frowned at his hands. “I don’t think that freezing Ombershade in place with the collar and leaving him like that would have made him very happy with me. On the other hand, Greenbush wasn’t happy with me for putting myself in danger.” Draco nodded, his heart full. This was encouraging, he thought, the right direction for Harry to go. He had to remember that he had more responsibilities than whatever lay in front of him at the moment. And he had to remember that his magic couldn’t keep him safe from everything, the way it hadn’t from Gorenson. “There’s nothing you can do that will make everyone happy with you,” Draco said. “You learned that with the Ministry.” Harry snorted, a spark flaring to life in his eyes. “I also learned that maybe I should have more important concerns than whether I’m going to make people happy with me.” Draco held up his hands. “I know, but it’s less easy to abandon the oaths and promises and bonds that you have now.” He smiled. “And I hope it’s less easy to abandon your lovers, too.” Harry smiled at him with his heart in his eyes. Draco went on with more confidence. “Just think about it more. You said that Greenbush was fine. You could have gone and woken her up and explained the situation to her. A werewolf under Wolfsbane can still understand English. She might have been able to help you with Ombershade, even if she didn’t think locking him up all night was a good idea.” Harry sighed. “That’s true. I’ll try to think about it. I don’t want to appear any more insane than I already am.” Then he looked Draco in the eye. “But I also wanted you to know so that you would hear it from me, rather than someone else. You have every right to know.” That caused enough of a warm glow to carry Draco through the rest of the day. Of course, it was helped by the kiss that Harry flung through the fire before he went back to his own court duties, and the burning sensation that his magic imprinted on Draco’s lips.* Meechypoo: “Interesting” is not what Draco would say about it.SP777: Well, Ombershade’s main loyalty right now is to the werewolf group, not to Harry.
minieegold: Thank you! I’m glad that you’re enjoying it so much.
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