The Descent of Magic | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic. |
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Chapter Twenty-One—The Esoteric Song Society
“So glad you could come.”
Highfeather spoke the words with a poisonous smile behind them, but Draco knew the source of that venom and didn’t intend to take it personally. He sniffed the glass of wine that she handed him instead, nodded approvingly, and began to sip at it. “Have you seen Mr. Potter yet?” he asked, casting his glance over the room.
Highfeather’s house was old, but marvelously well-kept, which was probably the reason she had reacted so personally to the suggestion that she give up her house-elves. The room’s carpet, a deep red color with golden roses around the borders, successfully gave the impression that the visitor was standing in the middle of a field at sunset. Draco nodded to it, and lifted his gaze to the old but comfortable furniture on which the guests sat, the small eddies of people coming together around the food tables and splitting up again, and the swirling gowns and formal robes in a variety of splendid muted colors.
“Not yet,” Highfeather said, and pressed a hand bright with rings against her chest. “You don’t think that he might have chosen to ignore the invitation?”
Draco’s reply faded in the sound of a door clicking open. A pause in the conversation either succeeded or occurred at the same time, and Draco turned around, ready to toast Potter for making such a grand entrance, whether he had done it on purpose or not.
Potter came in dressed in shining formal green robes, bowing over Highfeather’s hand and murmuring something that Draco couldn’t hear over the sound of his heartbeat. He hadn’t even seen Potter move, struck so dumb and motionless by the sight of those robes.
So Potter can dress up when he wants to, Draco thought, and tried to summon irritation that he hadn’t done so before now, such as when they held the meetings at Hogwarts. He was being stubborn before, pretending that he didn’t have the right clothes.
But Draco had to remind himself that, for at least some of those meetings, he and Granger and Potter had deliberately arranged things that way, so Potter would look rumpled and non-threatening to the people who might think he was trying to take over the wizarding world indirectly. Draco had told Potter to change tactics this time, to wear robes that would appeal to high society.
He hadn’t thought Potter would succeed, he decided now, as Potter turned and smiled at him. He had assumed he would have to spend at least some time covering for Potter’s mistakes and attracting attention away from him.
Now he would have liked to attract attention away, but for a different reason. Potter was making the circuit of the room, his hand extended as he bade good afternoon to a number of people that Draco had had no idea he knew. Of course, Potter could have learned that information from Draco’s carefully-prepared notes, but Draco had had no idea that he would study them, either.
Draco swallowed. Perhaps he should reconsider how far Potter would go in pursuit of a goal to better the lives of others.
Potter leaned back against a chair as he laughed at one of Lise Yeldon’s jokes, and crossed his legs one over the other. Draco thought he was the only person, because he was the only person watching that closely, who noticed that Potter grimaced when the back of his good leg touched his bad knee.
The potion’s wearing off. And the idiot came anyway.
Draco would have liked to order Potter out of the room, but only a Healer would have that kind of authority, and it would destroy the whole point of having Potter come to this gathering of pure-bloods in the first place. So he caught Potter’s eye, but grimaced at him, and Potter blinked and had the temerity to look puzzled.
Draco turned his back and stalked to another corner of the room with stiff dignity. He would avoid Potter for a time, and hope that cooled his temper.
The temper that had no right to spark, when he thought about it, as Potter had obeyed his instructions. But which was there anyway, and which Draco would best shield by moving away from the origin of it.
*
Did Draco have another confrontation with his son? Or did he have a different reason for not wanting to see me here? Maybe he meant to handle it himself and he sent a last-minute owl after I had already left?
Harry drove the panic into his breathing and managed to soothe it out with a few more breaths. Then he accepted a glass of some sparkling drink from Highfeather and shrugged a little in response to her probing gaze.
“What sort of music can we expect today?” he asked, letting his tongue just brush the lip of the glass. Highfeather’s shoulders came down a little from their high rounded curve.
“A new trio of singers,” she said, and made a small gesture towards three witches who stood in earnest conversation in a corner of the room. Harry blinked. They wore formal enough robes that he wouldn’t have taken them for musicians; they had no costumes at all. “The musical world has not yet recognized their talent for what it is, alas. They are so new that it is like trying to compare one’s first sight of a bird-of-paradise with sparrows.”
Harry nodded, and decided not to mention that he’d never seen a bird-of-paradise. “I look forward to hearing them,” he said, and turned his head as though he wanted to speak to someone else, though really he was looking for Draco.
Draco had his own glass in hand, and stood by himself in a shaft of sunlight that lit his face and hair more brightly than Harry was comfortable with. Harry caught his breath and again let his tongue out to lick the rim of his glass. He couldn’t let Draco distract him. He was here to show that he could indulge the pure-bloods and give a small speech afterwards, Draco had told him. Harry would be letting him down if he didn’t do as they’d advertised.
And he would let down the cause of house-elves like Kreacher, of course, and centaurs like Firenze. But he had cared more about letting Draco down.
That could be a disaster. But Harry had already decided that he wouldn’t let it be. He turned and smiled at the first woman to approach him, and began to make smooth small talk, one of the things that Auror training had given him which he hadn’t lost.
*
Does Potter even realize that he’s in pain?
Draco had begun to think he didn’t. Potter walked and stood and sat, as necessary, but he didn’t rub his knee. That didn’t keep Draco from seeing the shivers of discomfort that radiated up his body whenever his foot brushed the floor, and the way that the slightest touch to his knee made his eyes darken.
Draco swallowed more of the champagne than was good for him, and decided that he would have to focus on the performance, and then Potter’s speech, not the injury. The potion was better than the last one, he knew, and unlikely to give way in the middle of the speech, which Potter could make from a seated position if he wished. Draco chose a chair on the far side of the room as the musicians started stirring and then came forwards to bow solemnly to the audience.
Draco caught his breath as the first singer tossed back her long red hair and faced him. He had thought he would find her too like a Weasley to be worth watching, but she did have a voice—one of the few finds of the Esoteric Song Society who actually did—and the voices of the other two singers blended with hers, creating an exotic, cold music like a vine of ice climbing up the pane of a window. Draco listened to the song that traveled back and forth between English, Italian, and another language that he didn’t speak but thought was Hindi, and forgot about Potter for a time.
When the applause broke out, he remembered, and turned his head. Potter was sitting on a padded armchair, leaning forwards and clapping in a languid way that told Draco instantly he hadn’t enjoyed the performance all that much. Draco sniffed. There were some musical tastes that only a refined audience could really appreciate, that much was true.
As he sat there contemplating that, Potter turned his head. Their eyes met.
Draco’s mouth dried out completely, and the calm mood the music had put him in fell away. There was no ice here, there was only fire, surging up in him: the fire of impatience to approach Potter and ask him about his knee, the desire to know what had transpired with his children in the day since they’d last spoken, the longing to crowd Potter into a little corner and yell at him to his heart’s content—
My heart’s content should not matter that much to me.
Draco broke the gaze, hands clenched on his knees and nearly crushing his glass. He relaxed his grip when Highfeather stared at him, rose with a murmur, and forced his way across the room, towards the balcony. There would be breezes there to cool his forehead, and his fears, and what Draco was afraid might be his heart.
*
Harry sighed when he saw Draco leaving the room. He was sure that he must have offended him somehow, although he didn’t know how. But he didn’t actually need Draco there to make the speech they had planned on. And what offended Draco might not have the same effect on the rest of the pure-bloods.
Harry fastened a smile as brilliant as rhinestones on his lips, and was ready when Highfeather turned to face him and gracefully inclined her head. “We are all so fascinated about what you have to say to us, Mr. Potter,” she murmured, stretching a hand towards him. “Will you stand up and tell us all about it?”
He’d assumed they would let him sit, but of course not. He was to stand in the same place as the singers, Harry saw, a neat patch of plush carpet that might soothe his feet a little, but would do nothing for his knee.
And when he stood, it was with a noise like gears grinding, which he sincerely hoped that no one else could hear. He held back his own wince and bowed a little to Highfeather. The pain wasn’t bad yet. This was a test, too. Seeing him walk through the door, she would want to find out exactly how healed he really was.
He couldn’t let Draco down.
“I’ll be happy to speak,” Harry said, moving over to the area of clear carpet and smiling at many faces in the crowd as if he hadn’t already shared conversations with them. “But I did want to take my time to congratulate you on taking action, not merely mouthing words.”
Highfeather looked so gratified that Harry started. It only takes a word from me to accomplish that?
Well, at one time he would have known that. But two years of isolation had made him dependent on what other people said about the situation in the world outside, and many of his family either never mentioned whether his fame was still great or, like Hugo, only told him about the ones who had been disappointed that he hadn’t stayed on as a great Auror. Harry reckoned he would have to start paying more attention.
You have the power. Use it.
“Madam Highfeather,” Harry told the open-eared crowd, “as you may not yet know if you have better things to read than the Prophet, endowed a sanctuary for unicorns. At one stroke, she preserves beauty for future generations to look at, and may also preserve her own future generations. I think we owe her a tribute.” He reached into his robe as the applause began and drew out a little medal that he’d Transfigured from an old kettle which he’d never liked. That had caused Kreacher to stare at him reproachfully, but seeing the way Highfeather’s eyes kindled, Harry knew that he’d made the right decision. “Please join me in giving her a token of regard.”
The applause soared as Harry came forwards and carefully draped the medal, of iron and silver, over Highfeather’s neck on a silky red ribbon. Highfeather reached up to touch the ribbon, then dropped her hand as if she had recalled where she was and thought someone would think less of her for doubting the medal’s reality.
“Thank you,” Harry said, looking into her eyes, and trying for the melting expression that he knew the Ministry had expected him to adopt when being given an award for something. “There’s nothing that means so much to me as seeing magical creatures get a fair chance, and you’ve proven that you know what it takes.”
Highfeather spent some more time staring at him, her fingers playing with the ribbon, and then nodded and looked away and said, “Yes, certainly.” Her shoulders hunched a little. Harry wondered if he had made her do that, or if the situation had. Perhaps she was better equipped to deal with opposition than thanks.
Well, so am I.
Harry moved back into the center of the cleared patch of floor. Between one step and another, his knee locked up.
He had had this happen before, though, if never in front of as many important people. He caught himself casually against a wall as though he had stumbled over a tiny ripple in the carpet and smiled at them. “Never been as good on the ground as I was in the air,” he said lightly.
Gentle cascades of laughter, a few more claps. Harry stood up and began talking about how other pure-bloods could do the same thing, endow sanctuaries and fight for the rights of magical creatures and the birth of their own children with money, and how he and Draco and Hermione would be very grateful if they did.
They hung on those last words the most, Harry saw with a smile he fought to suppress. Apparently all of them wanted medals like the one he had given Highfeather. Though it was probably the hands she had received it from rather than the cheap little medal itself that attracted them.
Whatever works.
*
Draco leaned his head against the glass door that shut the balcony off from the room—not something he would have done normally, but he knew that no one in his potential audience would notice him right now—and stared silently at Potter as he exploded through his speech.
Explode was the right word. His voice came out in little bursts of information, and then he would pause to think, and start off in a new direction. No one in the audience minded. That was how they preferred to listen to speeches, Draco knew, to hear praise of themselves mixed in with much shorter pieces of what wasn’t praise.
He’s doing well.
That depended on what one meant by doing well, of course. Draco’s eyes moved from Potter’s face to Potter’s knee. He had seen the stumble when Potter first began speaking—Potter should never think that he could hide things like that from Draco, and Draco intended to tell him so at the first opportunity—but he had recovered well from that, too. Perhaps they had nothing to worry about.
Then Potter shifted his weight.
The pallor flashed across his face like a comet. Draco stood and silently opened the glass door, gliding into the room. No one noticed him, still rapt on Potter. And even then, what rapt them away was his words and not his face, or Highfeather, at least, would have made a point of mentioning that something was wrong.
That was a clever gesture of Potter’s, with the medal, Draco had to admit. Now Highfeather was much more likely to consider herself an ally and do something to rescue Potter if she saw him failing, because what happened to them concerned her as well.
But no one could rescue someone they thought looked perfectly fine. Draco moved off to the side, drifting, listening to Potter’s fine words and watching for the moment when the knee gave out. He had thought the potion would come to a more gradual decline, but instead it had given Potter more pain-free days than he’d reckoned on and instead was coming to a sharper end.
If it can only last a few more minutes. If it can only give us time to get out of here.
But instead, someone in the audience asked a low-voiced question after the thunder of the applause that marked the end of the speech, and Potter leaned forwards to listen, all his weight dropping like a sledgehammer straight down onto his knee.
The stunned surprise that flashed across Potter’s face had to be visible to the most inexperienced. The speaker paused, and then Highfeather stood up and came forwards, words as soothing as ice on her lips.
She didn’t make it in time to catch him, and neither did Draco, trying to make his way there with both speed and subtlety. Potter gave a little, agonized moan and measured his full length on the carpet.
*
ChaosLady: Yes, and now he’s dealing with a fall! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun).
SP777: It’s hard to know what Draco could say to make an impression on Scorpius, who’s simply convinced that he’s lying all the time, but Harry could probably put more pressure on his own children. He simply doesn’t want to, since he doesn’t want them afraid of him.
unneeded: Thank you! I don’t think this story will go forward enough in time to show whether Al and Scorpius ever become lovers or stay friends.
Hermione would probably use that tactic with success even against pure-bloods, except that some of them are too pig-headed to listen to anything she says because of her “blood.”
Nyouko: Thank you! I’m sorry about the pain in your knee and hope that you aren’t in too much pain.
Draco has made his relationship with Scorpius worse in a lot of ways, but Scorpius has also become invested in continuing it, so it’s not a surprise that neither of them can simply turn on a dime to make it better.
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