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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twenty-One—Temptation Falls

            Draco barely had time to draw the Cloak around himself before Harry and Blaise’s mum appeared in front of him. He had lost more time than he thought in touching the Cloak and wondering if it really was one of the Deathly Hallows, in running his fingers through the cloak’s collar and imagining the adventures Harry must have gone through in Hogwarts while covered by it.

            And now he was master of the place where he had had all those adventures.

            Then the walls quivered and Draco saw one flat stone at his feet lengthen and stretch its neck up like a hunting hound, and he swung the Cloak around his shoulders and ducked his head. Harry was there in the next instant, without the characteristic crack of Apparition. He hadn’t made a sound when he walked through Draco’s wards either, Draco remembered. Perhaps it wasn’t exactly Apparition that he had done to get himself and Fifernum back inside.

            Fifernum stood in front of Harry, her arms bound behind her back by a shifting silver cord that looked as if it was made of flowing mercury. She watched Harry without expression, her eyelids closed enough that it was hard to tell what she was looking at. Draco swallowed painfully. He had watched Blaise wear that same expression when he was trying to get out of trouble that he knew he’d deserved.

            “You cannot touch me under the law,” Fifernum said.

            “I don’t need to touch you, not if you can prove a few simple things to me,” Harry said, and there was a change in the room. Draco didn’t know how to describe it, except that fog seemed to tighten around his throat, and it felt as though he was going to sweat more heavily than usual. “Did you know that I was abused before you came across those pictures?”

            “No.” Fifernum spoke in a tone as clear and sweet as an opera singer’s, not looking away from Harry as he began to pace in front of her.

            “Did you know that I was abused when you came across those pictures?”

            “No.” Fifernum’s voice seemed a bit more choked this time, and she cleared her throat. “But the information in the file that accompanied the pictures made it clear.”

            A second later, she blinked and touched her neck. Draco knew the sensation. He thought she hadn’t meant to say that much, but the words had squeezed out of her whether she wanted them to come or not.

            Draco had some idea of how Harry had changed the air in the room then, and he shivered convulsively, glad for the heavy material of the Cloak that flowed and draped around him.

            “Who made that file?” Harry hissed the words out at the end, and the silver cord clapped Fifernum’s elbows together. Fifernum staggered, caught herself, and answered without falling or looking away from Harry.

            “Minister Fudge, who left the position some years ago.”

            Draco didn’t bother studying Fifernum’s expression this time. He looked at Harry as the words died in the air, and saw the way Harry was drawing into himself, how the stones under his feet tried to get between his shoes and his toes to actually touch bare skin, how he gave one great flinch that seemed to grip him from heart to head before he shook his head again and settled into glaring at Fifernum.

            That’s not a shock to him. But he hated that it was going on this long.

            “Why put the file together at all?” Harry’s voice was low, charged, and he went back to prowling, but this time in a circle around Fifernum instead of just in front of her. She didn’t bother to turn her head to keep track of him. It was probably to show that she was cooler and stronger than Harry had thought her, but Draco wondered if she could see the miniature lightning storm that had started to brew in the air behind Harry’s neck.

            “I don’t know the exact purpose,” Fifernum murmured. “The file had a lot of partial evidence, interviews with Muggle neighbors and the like. They seemed to think that you were attending something called the St. Brutus’s School for Incurably Criminal Boys.”

            Draco blinked. That part had been left out of the recitations that Harry had given him.

            “But there were notes that made me think he’d put it together for political ammunition against you, in case you showed any interest in trying to dictate how the Ministry should respond to the Dark Lord.” Fifernum bit her lip a moment later, but the words went on spilling out anyway. “He didn’t think he would be driven from office before that happened.”

            “Of course not,” Harry muttered. “Dolt thought he would last forever. And why not? People elected him in the first place, after all.”

            Elected a man who knew I was abused, and chose to do nothing about it. Draco could hear the undertone to the words, as bitter as smoke. He would have said something comforting, but there was no way that wouldn’t have revealed his presence to Fifernum. He hung onto the Cloak and tried to think support and strength to Harry instead.

            “I chose to make use of it,” Fifernum said, and choked. “What did you do?”

            “Made it impossible for you to lie to me.” Harry stared at her, the motion of his neck as slender and graceful as a snake raising its head out of the mud. “And for you to have to volunteer information you have on the subject, even if I don’t ask you a question.”

            “There’s no spell that can do that,” Fifernum whispered back, never letting Harry’s gaze go. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t         have had to invent Veritaserum.”

            Harry’s smile was terrifying in its gentleness. “What makes you think that the newly declared Dark Lord needs to use a wand anymore?”

            Fifernum would have retreated, but the quicksilver cord around her wrists prevented that. She tried to make up for it by standing tall and looking down her nose at Harry, but Draco could have told her that wouldn’t really work. Harry looked back at her, and Fifernum was the one who turned away first.

            “I want to know more about why you chose to make use of that file, and how long you knew it was there.” Harry stood still again, his gaze so focused that Fifernum shivered even though she wasn’t meeting it anymore. “Did you know that you might have to tell other people about the abuse?”

            “I used it—as a weapon.” Fifernum was choking now, trying to bite her tongue and the insides of her cheeks, but it didn’t matter, Draco saw. The words were coming. “I knew I would use it as a weapon. I knew about it for several years. I didn’t think I would have to use it so soon, though. Someday, when you became more influential in the Ministry. Not now.”

            Draco nodded under the Cloak. Fifernum, along with everyone else, had likely never seen Harry moving outside the Ministry and establishing a power base of his own.

            “Did you not care?” Harry’s voice flicked out, and Fifernum moved her head to the side as if they had been a literal lash that had stung her on the cheek.

            “I,” she said, stopping.

            Harry took a single step, and stopped. “You knew about it while I was still living with the Dursleys,” he said, and Fifernum’s head bobbed as though someone was pushing on her neck from behind. “Did you never think to tell someone who would look into it and have it stopped? Did you?”

            Fifernum’s eyes slid shut. Her voice was a low gasp. “I knew that you were in Gryffindor House and followed Headmaster Dumbledore blindly. Whether or not we chose to join with the—the Dark Lord, I knew that you would end up our political enemy someday. That means that I had to keep it in reserve as a weapon.”

            Harry was silent and still. Draco wished he could move and get a better glimpse of his face, because Harry stood with his head mostly turned away from Draco, but he didn’t dare. There was the chance that Fifernum would hear him moving and see the slight ripple of the Cloak no matter how careful Draco was.

            And Draco didn’t want anyone to know he was watching this. It had turned out to be more an opening of old wounds for Harry than punishment for someone who had known about the abuse.

            Harry finally turned his head and asked a question that Draco hadn’t anticipated. “If the abuse was happening to someone else, someone you knew, or the child of someone you knew, someone in Slytherin, would you have rescued them?”

            Fifernum blinked at him, and her answer slid out without as much effort as it would have had she fought it. “It would have depended on how much of an advantage and ally to our family they could be in the future.”

            Harry nodded once, and stepped back. Draco saw lazy dark swirls traveling through the stones at his feet. This time, he didn’t think those came from the stones reaching out to comfort Harry, in any way.

            The magic this time was a twisting, crushing force, although Draco knew the heavy yoke on his neck wouldn’t break it, because it wasn’t aiming for him. For Fifernum, though…

            Draco watched as her eyes widened and her mouth opened, although nothing but a puff of air emerged. Harry took a step towards her and gestured with one hand, twisting it sharply through no motion Draco knew. He suspected that Harry didn’t really know, either, that he was reaching for the magic and making it do what he wanted rather than coming up with a spell that fit the situation.

            And in the end, the pressure grew so severe that Draco’s eyes slid shut despite himself. He stood there, shivering, and wondering what he would say if Harry asked him what he thought of the punishment later.

            As it turned out, though, Harry announced the punishment, in a voice that could have cracked glaciers, so Draco didn’t need to watch.

*

            There was such darkness in Harry’s heart, the kind of clanging and shouting darkness that he had felt when he successfully used the Unforgivables. He could have used them now, he knew, without a wand, without anything but the buildup of the power he had already sunk into Hogwarts. And he could have made Fifernum suffer the convulsions of the Cruciatus without going mad, could have commanded her under the Imperius Curse so that she knew exactly what she was doing but had no choice about doing it anyway, and could have stretched the Killing Curse out for moment after moment, so that she always knew what was coming.

            He could have done that. He wanted to.

            But in the end, none of those were personal enough. And he hadn’t forgotten that he had an audience, that Draco might suffer at the sight of the curses he’d seen performed over and over again in the Manor during the war.

            So Harry reached out in a different direction, towards something he could barely sense, but which was there. Not Fifernum’s magical core, although that would end up entwining itself in the spell, because it had to. No, to something beyond that, something faint and flickering, a shadow on ice, a dancing blade.

            He reached it, and grasped it. He felt the jolt that traveled through Fifernum, inside her and not outside, as Harry took hold of her soul.

            “You are going to travel to Privet Drive in sleep now,” Harry whispered. “Every night, you will be there, in that house where I was abused, every hour, unsleeping, unable to do anything but sit in that cupboard or that room. And that’s where your soul is going to go after death, no peace, no sight but that house for the rest of eternity—unless you do something while you’re still alive.”

            “What?” Fifernum spoke it in a faint gasp, and Harry wasn’t sure where he heard that voice, inside or outside. He opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized were closed, and watched her. Her head was hanging a little, and she shivered. She looked as though she would have preferred the Cruciatus.

            “First,” Harry said, “you’re going to make me a promise that you won’t ever move against me politically, and neither will anyone in your family.”

            “I promise. I promise. I—”

            Harry cut her off. He knew that she would only go on repeating the words if he didn’t. “Very well. If you break that promise, then I will know, and the condition will return.”

            It took a long moment, and it was hard to tell given how much her head was hanging in general, but Fifernum did nod.

            “Good,” Harry said, and fought to keep his lip from curling. “Second, you will give me the memory of who you told about the abuse, who you had send the pictures, what you hoped to accomplish with them, any meetings you held about them—everything concerning them.”

            It took longer this time, but memories started to flood Fifernum’s mind. Harry grabbed them greedily with his own mental eyes, knowing that he could put them into a Pensieve later and more fully absorb them.

            “Third,” Harry said, and lowered his voice into a hiss so that it would press all the more strongly into Fifernum’s ears, “you are going to find out about other magical children who are abused. Whether they live with Muggles or not. Whether they’re the children of people who can give you an advantage or not. It’s too late for me, but it’s not too late for them. When you find out, you are going to send me an owl immediately. Any time of the day or night, whether you’re tired or hungry or anything else. Do you understand?”

            Fifernum took the longest over this. Harry waited. It could be reluctance, or moral doubt, but he thought it was simply because he had taken her a long way away from herself, into fear and the knowledge that she would have to change, and it took her a while to find her way back.

            “I promise,” she whispered at last. “I will do it. Any time of the day or night.” She did lift her head and gasp one question. “What if I’m not sure about whether or not they’re being abused?”

            “Then you send me an owl with all the details you know,” Harry said, tightening his grip on her soul and seeing her eyes flood white, “and you send along a vial with Pensieve memories so I can determine for myself.”

            Fifernum nodded as though lead weights hung around her neck, and Harry released her soul and the bonds on her wrists. He knew it was possible that she could break her promises, but he didn’t think so. She had already fulfilled one of them.

            And the chains he saw on her soul now, insubstantial, steel-colored things that ranged around her body and entwined her neck and hair, would serve as more than enough insurance, should she break her word.

            “Thank you,” Fifernum said.

            Harry raised his eyebrows. He had wanted to send her back to the Ministry and be rid of her, but this was unexpected enough to make him pause. “What do you mean? For what?”

            Fifernum’s head came up slowly, and she blinked at him as though the chains were on her eyelids, too. Finally, she managed to say, “For—sparing my life.”

            Harry choked to keep the words he wanted from escaping, that taking her life would have been worth little compared to what she could do now that she was still alive, and nodded curtly. “Take my Floo back to the Ministry,” he said. “Go wherever you want and come up with whatever explanation for my appearance there that you want. But keep in mind what betraying me will mean.” The chains around her neck gave an ominous rattle.

            Fifernum nodded to him and limped across the room. Harry waited until the fireplace had flared and she was gone before he turned towards the corner where Draco hid under the Invisibility Cloak. Harry couldn’t even remember when he had realized that Draco was there. He seemed to have always known.

            Draco whipped the Cloak off over his head and stared at Harry for a long time. Then he shook his head a little and whispered, “I thought you didn’t have magic that could touch the soul.”

            “I didn’t know I did,” Harry admitted.

            Draco stared at him some more. Then he asked in a subdued tone, “That means—you didn’t know if you could do that, but you reached out and fed magic into your hands until you could?”

            Harry nodded, pleased that Draco had described it so exactly. It saved him from having to explain it to Draco himself. “Yes.”

            Draco looked at him in silence for long seconds, and then said, “You were less bloody than I expected.”

            “This is the kind of punishment that will help others,” Harry said shortly. “Not just me. Although making her visit Privet Drive in her sleep every night is revenge for me.”

            Draco nodded. He seemed distracted by something. Probably my power, Harry thought. He’s probably afraid of me now. There was a dull pulse in his temples at the thought.

            “I should go,” Draco said quietly, handing the Cloak back to him. “There were matters Rosenthal wanted to discuss with me today, and firecalls I should make to some of the people who were at the party last night.”

            But he lingered, one hand on the stone, until Harry smiled at him and came over to kiss him. “Thank you for watching that,” he said. “I think it—helped.”

            Draco nodded, and vanished out of Hogwarts in a rush of flame. That made Harry sit down and stare at his hands and think about what Ron and Hermione would say when they heard.

            They’ll probably be horrified. Hell, part of me is horrified, too.

            But…

            Harry swallowed. I won’t take it back. I made her pay for what she did, and I think the punishment is appropriate.

            I could take it back. But I won’t.

            I’m glad I did it.

*

            SP777: No nail pulling. Although I think this is worse.

            alexkdp: Thanks! Hope this chapter was everything you wished for.

            qwerty: Thank you! I hope this scene was as clear.

            Ch3rry: Thank you! Hope you continue to enjoy.

            unneeded: Well, what Harry did in this case. I don’t think Harry would have wanted Draco to help him even if Draco had volunteered.
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Easy as Falling