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Building With Worn-Out Tools	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Twenty-One—Immediate Consequences

            Harry knew Malfoy might or might not require the support, but, at the moment, his face was as pale as salt, and Harry wanted to give it. He curled an arm around Malfoy’s shoulders, pulling him in to his side hard enough that he stumbled slightly, and asked the house-elf, as calmly and clearly as he could, “What happened? How was she taken?”

            Seeky might have refused to answer him without Malfoy’s permission ordinarily, but at the moment, the little elf appeared upset and just glad of having someone to talk to. “Master Lucius came back,” whispered the shrill voice, and Seeky looked as if he would tear his ears off his head. “He used the old Malfoy magic, the one that says the oldest Malfoy Master alive is the one we must obey. And he came through the wards, and he took Mistress Narcissa away with him.”

            Draco—Harry supposed he would have to call him that for as long as they were talking about multiple Malfoys—made a sound like a hissing teakettle, and started away from Harry. “Someone must have put that idea in his head,” he said. “He would never have thought of that on his own. Never.”

            “I think I know who,” Harry said quietly, and when Draco whirled on him, hands clenched as if he would strike out, he handed over the notes that he had received from Ginny in the courtroom.

            Draco read them without blinking. Then he drew his wand. Harry stepped out of the way, recognizing rage in the slow, deliberate movements.

            Draco used a curse Harry didn’t know, spoken so fast that he couldn’t even be sure of the incantation, and a line of red light leaped from his wand and blasted a long, shallow groove in the dirt next to the stone drive leading up to the Manor. Harry relaxed. He had been sure for a moment that Malfoy would destroy the notes, and he wouldn’t have blamed him, but they could be important evidence if they went to the Ministry.

            Can we, though?

            The more he thought about it, the more Harry doubted it. After all, the Ministry had shown no interest in Zabini’s use of a Poisoned Missive, even though Hermione had told him once that they had wards in place that would alert Aurors to the use of them. Since this was part of the divorce case, essentially an armed duel between him and Ginny, and assassination attempts were allowed in such a situation…

            Harry clenched his jaw. We’re on our own, I think.

            Which meant there was only one thing he could do.

            “Draco,” he said quietly.

            Draco glanced at him. The look in his gray eyes wasn’t anywhere close to human. Harry prudently retreated a step, but kept his voice calm and clear, the same tone he’d used with Seeky.

            “I can’t imagine Zabini and Ginny will wait long before they contact us. I’ll meet her wherever she wishes and arrange the exchange of the vaults, of course. I just need to know what legal rules I’m invoking by—“

            Draco crossed the ground between them so fast Harry never saw him coming, and the next moment he had Harry by the throat.

*

            Draco imagined he knew what a victim of the Blood-Boiling Curse felt like now—someone who had his blood literally set on fire through a flick of the other person’s wand. But it was not a spell but his rage which burned him now.

            To know that Blaise and the Weasley had done this because he had taken Harry’s case—

            To know that Blaise had contacted Lucius, of all people, the maddest madman Draco knew, the one person who might be able to hurt Narcissa in ways that other people could not even imagine—

            And then to hear Harry speaking as if they had no choice but to give in, to honor what had been done with a capitulation—

            It was maddening.

            Harry’s skin felt smooth and very fragile under his hands. Harry choked, but Draco didn’t care. At least, if he was choking, he wasn’t saying those stupid words, those words Draco couldn’t admit existed, those words that were horrible.

            “No,” he rasped. “No. You aren’t going to do that. We’ll get my mother back on our own, Potter, do you hear me? No surrender, nothing.” Finally, a hand hammering into his arm let him know the strangling had gone far enough, and he stepped back, shaking his wrist to relieve his fingers of the pain of the grip, his stare intense. “No giving them what they want,” he whispered.

            “Look, Draco,” Harry said, and his eyes were full of a compassion as green as spring leaves and very hard to face. “I don’t mind giving up the money for your mother. A life is always worth more than money.”

            “You have no pride, then.” Draco made the words cold and hard, to sting like a whiplash, and from the sudden flush in Harry’s cheeks, they had done their work.

            “Pride isn’t important when lives are at stake,” he insisted.

            “And do you think they would really give me my mother back if they once saw that we were willing to back down?” Draco bared his teeth. “No. I think they planned this all along; they always held this tactic in reserve, because Blaise knew how much it would hurt me. And just like this plea on behalf of the slut’s child, if you gave up part of your money, they’d demand more and more until they had everything. I won’t have it said that I lost a case at all. Even if we retrieved my mother alive from Lucius—and I don’t know that we can, Potter, you don’t know what he’s like—my reputation would be shot, and there’s nothing I could do to provide a comfortable life for her after that. I have to keep up payments to the press so the papers won’t discuss her, too, you know.” He let out a breath that he hoped was ice-cold to anyone standing in the immediate vicinity. “No negotiating with Blaise. He already has too much control over this.”

            “I don’t know what you suggest we do, then.” Harry raked a hand through his hair. “Since there’s no one but us to track down Lucius and try to rescue your mum, and no one who will punish Zabini for this.” He paused and glanced at Draco. “Is there?”

            Draco felt a vicious sneer twist his lips. His heart was still galloping so hard that he believed he could have lifted his wand and killed Blaise or his father in that moment, if either one had been so obliging as to appear in front of him. “No. Worse things than this have happened in the past during divorce cases, Potter.”

            Harry nodded. His face had gone still and calm, with a kind of strength that Draco didn’t think he’d seen before. Perhaps this was what he’d looked like during the war. “Then our first priority is to find out where Lucius and Narcissa went,” he said. “I know that the research I did suggested the Death Eater haven is near a small magical creature sanctuary in the mountains of Sweden, but—“

            Draco shook his head. “He won’t have gone there,” he said, his mind racing, clear and quick as light through a crystal, the way it always did when he was forced to consider something like this, against an implacable deadline. “Death Eaters are welcome there, but my mother never took the Dark Mark. If Lucius brings her there, he’d be in violation of the policies that protect him, and they’d cast him out.”

            “He’s insane,” Harry said, sounding skeptical. “Would he think of that?”

            Draco laughed dryly. “Even if he didn’t think of it, they’d cast him out when he tried to bring her back, so either way, he’s not there.”

            Harry closed his eyes for a moment. Then they popped open. “Look, Malfoy,” he said carefully. “There was—a technique—I used during the War, when Voldemort captured one of Ron’s brothers for a time. It wasn’t technically legal magic, so it never made it into the official story that I told the Ministry.” He grinned, and Draco felt himself reassured by the dark edges of the expression. “Blood magic. It can track a wizard, though imperfectly, through someone who has the same family blood he does. Hermione and I performed the spell through Ron, and we were able to find Bill.”

            Draco surged forwards. “Well, then, what are you waiting for?” he demanded, and held out his arm.

            Harry took it, but more as a means of support than anything, as Draco understood a moment later. His gaze was clear and calm, but he chewed his lips as he replied, “I don’t remember the exact incantation. I would have to ask Hermione for help. And that means telling her about the kidnapping.”

            Draco’s shoulders hunched. “The more people who know, the more dangerous it might be for her,” he whispered.

            It was really hitting him, now, that his mother was gone. The woman who had been the only one to love him—or at least the only person whose love for him had endured—from his childhood. He’d tried so hard to repay her and keep her safe, and he’d failed.

            Harry pulled him forwards, and stroked his back for a moment; Draco had no idea what his face looked like, but it must have been bad, for Harry to do that. He murmured into Draco’s ear, “I know. But Hermione won’t betray it to anyone—not even Ron, if I ask her not to.”

            “Why not?” Draco whispered, his fear surging back into bitterness at the thought of Granger’s marriage. “She’s a Weasley by wedding, he’s a Weasley by blood, and that sister of both of theirs—“

            “Because she’s kept secrets like this for me once before,” Harry whispered back. “I had to do something to—to destroy, well, one of the magical artifacts that Voldemort had created to sustain his life. Ron would have killed me just for suggesting it. But Hermione knew it was necessary, so she helped me do it, and nursed me back to health afterwards.” His body was tense against Draco’s, as if the mere memory of it were hurting him. The next moment, he relaxed and patted Draco’s shoulder. “She’ll do this, too. Really, I think Ron would help, but I know that he doesn’t like Malfoys, so it’s better not to even ask him to make the choice.”

            He hesitated, then added, “But, of course, you’re the one who has to make the decision as to whether I go to Hermione or not.”

            It was no choice, and Draco knew it. They had to find Lucius and his mother, as soon as possible. “Talk to her,” he said.

            Harry nodded, and stepped back from him, drawing his wand. Draco saw him preparing to Apparate, and clamped a hand on his arm. Harry looked at him questioningly.

            “Firecall her from the Manor,” he said. “I don’t think that either of us ought to go anywhere alone right now.”

*

            Harry thought he could see another reason in Draco’s eyes, hear it in his voice. Draco didn’t want Harry to leave.

            But why should he begrudge him that, after all, even if he couldn’t say it?

            “All right,” Harry said quietly. God knew he would do more than this for someone on the verge of losing a parent, but who might still have a chance to keep that parent alive. He didn’t want Draco to know what it was like to live with the memory of a murdered mother. He let Draco guide him into the Manor, past the house-elves, and the edges of tattered magic that Harry was certain came from broken wards, though he wasn’t tied into them and so couldn’t say for sure how much damage had been done.

            Draco took him to the library, of course. Harry cast a handful of Floo powder into the fire, and then hesitated for a moment. It was the middle of the afternoon, which meant Hermione wasn’t likely to be home.

            “Weasley-Granger office in the Ministry!” he shouted to the fire.

            The flames danced and spun, then turned a radiant, poisonous green. Harry overcame his own shudder at the color—that roused memories of the war, too, and he’d already had enough of them for one day—and thrust his head through.

            He could just see the front of Hermione’s massive wooden desk, which was regularly covered with paperwork relating to house-elves. Portraits hung on the wall, but he could only make out one from here, a stern witch talking to a goblin. Both turned to stare at him in the moment before Hermione uttered an exclamation and came bustling around the desk towards him. She wore her dark purple working robes and a worried expression.

            “Harry, are you all right?” she asked, stooping down in front of the fireplace.

            “Not hardly,” Harry said grimly. “Listen, Hermione. Ginny’s done something unforgivable. She’s arranged for Draco’s mum to be kidnapped by his father. They’re both mad, but his mother can’t defend herself. I need to know the incantation for that blood-seeking spell we used to find Bill during the war.”

            For long moments, Hermione was still, even as her eyes filled with tears. But then she closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and swallowed noisily, as if condemning all the moisture to her stomach. When she looked at him again, she was steady. Harry smiled in spite of himself. Hermione had been like this in the war, too, able to shove away personal griefs no matter how heart-rending, and focus on the situation at hand.

            “I still have the book,” she said quietly. “I move it around regularly from the house to the office; I don’t think it would be safe if anyone knew for certain where it was.” She paused suddenly, whirled, and cast a locking spell in the door’s general direction. Then she turned back towards him, her face sober. “I think I should come to you, though. You need two people to cast that spell.”

            “No, you don’t,” Harry said. Hermione had been the one to actually cast the spell. He had been there to calm Ron’s hysterics and to make the cut in his arm that would provide the needed blood. He didn’t think Draco would have any trouble giving up the blood. If anything, he was too calm.

            “Harry—“

            “It’s Draco’s decision,” Harry said, and pulled his head out of the fire, which to him had always been an intense, dizzying sensation. He shook his head for a moment, then turned and faced Draco. “Do you—“

            He’d evidently heard their conversation. His voice was a rasp, but he said, “No. Only you.” His eyes glinted with a ferocity that told Harry he wasn’t about to back down on this.

            Harry sighed, and then turned back and faced Hermione again. “He only wants my help, Hermione. Hand the book to me, please.” She’d used the temporary pause efficiently, of course, to fetch it. Harry eyed it warily. It didn’t look like anything important, just an innocent tome in an unornamented brown leather cover, but he knew it contained several powerful Dark Arts spells.

            Hermione sighed at him, and then held the book out, slowly. Harry took it, and said, staring into her eyes rather than at it, “Don’t tell Ron.”

            “I won’t,” she whispered.

            Harry took a moment longer to give a hard nod in her direction—she hadn’t complained, hadn’t said it would be best if they did something else, hadn’t tried to boss him about, and he knew how hard that had been for her—and then pulled out and shut down the Floo connection. When he turned, however, Draco was holding up a letter. Harry shut his mouth fast.

            “This was on top of some books on the highest shelf,” Draco said, his voice eerily empty. “It started glowing a moment ago. I suppose a spell was set on it to draw attention to itself if we didn’t find it within a certain period of time.” He paused. “It’s from Blaise.”

*

            Draco’s fear and bitterness had both frozen into an ice-like casing. The rage went on burning outside it. It would not melt the ice, Draco knew. He was perfectly capable of feeling more than one emotion at once, and of putting aside the ones that were not useful until they were needed.

            Harry started a bit, but immediately brushed soot from his robes and walked over to stand beside him. For a moment, his hand rested on Draco’s shoulder, heavier than before. Then he flicked his wand at the letter, looking for curses and hexes.

            Draco watched with interest, but was not surprised when the scan revealed nothing. Blaise wouldn’t have wanted Draco to be stung from a simple letter. He hadn’t kidnapped Narcissa just to torment Draco. He wanted a number of specific concessions, and a pained or dying Arguer wouldn’t persuade Harry to agree to them.

            On Harry’s nod, he was able to open the letter and read it.

            Draco:

            Lucius left this for you. By now, you must know what we’ve done and why we did it, since Potter would have showed you Ginny’s notes.

            The only way for you to get your mother back is to meet us at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade at six-o’clock tonight. Bring Potter, but don’t try any tricks, Draco. Pansy’s antics or not, this isn’t something you can squirm your way out of.

            Zabini.

            Draco glanced up. Harry was watching him with shadowed eyes, and he nodded to the letter. “Do you think it’s likely to be genuine?”

            “Yes.” Draco folded the parchment several times, along neat, straight creases. “They want to use her as a bargaining chip. What would sending us a false letter suffice? Blaise has always been a little nervous in the middle of grand plans, no matter how well they go for him. He’ll want to end it as soon as possible.”

            “They could have set it up as an assassination attempt,” Harry said quietly. “Maybe they hate us enough to want you or both of us dead.”

            Draco hadn’t thought that, but, after a moment, he shook his head. “They have to know that your wife is gone from your will now, and killing you would just put a stop to the divorce case, without winning them anything,” he said. “We’re dealing with money-hungry, greedy thieves, not killers.”

            “Except for your father,” Harry said.

            Draco tilted his head. “Yes, except for him.”

            “And when we catch up with him—“ Harry hesitated. Then he said, “Do you want me to kill him?”

            The offer was one that Draco wouldn’t have anticipated hearing just a few hours earlier. But then, he couldn’t have guessed that Harry would offer to give up all the money in his vaults for Narcissa, either.

            “Yes,” he said.

            Harry merely nodded, once, his mouth grim. Then he glanced at the book in his hand. “Should we perform the blood magic now?”

            “Not yet,” Draco said softly, and stood. “We don’t have enough time between now and six to perform the ritual, likely. And if I knew where Lucius and my mother were, I would be tempted to skip the meeting so I could hunt them.”

            Harry licked his lips. “So, until then—“

            “Until then,” Draco said, and his voice was vicious but he didn’t care, “I consider what I’m going to say to the whore and the son of a whore when we see them. And I need time alone to think of that. Please.”

            Harry didn’t react as he expected, backing out with one cautious eye on him. He just nodded again, and then let his hand brush briefly along Draco’s arm in support.

            “I’ll study this,” he said, with a glance at the book, and walked out of the library.

            Draco let himself fall into a chair, but that was the only careless action he planned to take between now and the time they located Lucius. He closed his eyes and forced his mind to work, rising above the emotions crowding it to lay out a plan of action.

            It had to be perfect. He had to convince Blaise that he was a broken, cowering thing, utterly unmanned by fear for his mother, and willing to give them whatever they wanted, even as he tried to pry secrets from them. And he had to use this meeting to set up a plan of revenge that would lacerate Blaise down to his soul.

            The first plan he’d conceived, hunting up Blaise’s past, had turned up nothing as yet, and it was taking too long to work. No.

            He wanted something that would kill without killing, that would make Blaise consider suicide the better option.

            He will suffer. I swear it.

*

            Thrnbrooke: Showing the judge the note won’t do much good. She only reflects what goes on outside the courtroom; she can’t influence it. The most she could do was scold Ginny for using magic in the courtroom.

            Oh no she didn’t: Part of the divorce process is based on how hard the divorcing couple can make each other’s lives. Ginny might not deserve the money, but Harry might eventually be willing part with some of it for peace.

            Berkie88: Yes, Blaise had indeed already contacted Lucius; there are more details on this in the next chapter.
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