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Black Phoenix	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21568 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-Three—An Unexpected Move
            “I can guarantee you a hundred watchers.”
            Skeeter had said that, but Draco hadn’t thought she meant it literally. He’d had fifty reporters before at his speeches and meetings and conferences and announcements, but not more than that. For one thing, there just weren’t that many reporters in the wizarding world. Most people would rather appear in the news than write about it. For another, they were as likely to decide that they needed to write about Celestina Warbeck and the newest song she was coming out with as politics.
            But there were either a hundred reporters on the grass in front of him now, or Draco’s eyes really were deceiving him. He shook his head a little when Rosenthal glanced back at him. “I don’t know. I didn’t expect that many either.”
            He saw Skeeter watching him expectantly from the other side of the smallest group, and gave her a weak smile. She smiled back and picked up her robe hems, stalking across the mud towards him.
            “Are you surprised that I kept my promise?” she asked as she fell in beside him and Rosenthal and scanned the group with some complacency. “Or merely displeased?”
            “I didn’t think you could,” Draco said. “I didn’t think there were that many reporters, let alone ones who would listen.”
            Skeeter glanced at him with her eyes gleaming. “Never underestimate my influence in our rather closed little community, Candidate Malfoy.”
            “I’ll try,” Draco muttered. He hoped that he didn’t sound shaken. It wasn’t the part of a successful candidate for Minister to sound shaken. “Are you sure that all of them are here to see me speak, though? They could have come for Minister Tillipop.”
            Skeeter just looked at him, and Draco recognized the silent demand for trust in her experession. It was the same kind of look that Rosenthal had given him more than once. Draco lifted his hands in silent agreement and turned to Rosenthal.
            “Our security arrangements won’t be disrupted by this?” he whispered to her.
            “I trust not,” Rosenthal said, and if Draco had learned to read her gestures at all, the way he prided himself that he had, that meant, Not if I have to change the spinning of the world to make sure that it doesn’t happen. She stalked away, high on her dignity, to speak to the wardmaker she had hired to stand guard on this particular mess. Draco sighed and shook his head, turning to speak to Skeeter again.
            But she had turned from him and was staring across the long expanse of grass at the far podium set up for Tillipop. “What’s this?” she muttered.
            Draco looked with her. They were on the grounds of Bellfast Manor, belonging to a minor pure-blood family who had been more than happy to volunteer their grounds as a “neutral” meeting-place for the two Ministry candidates based on the publicity it would bring them. Draco supposed the grass pretty enough, but thought it rather too short and green and unvaried for his own taste. The house, looming off in the background behind Tillipop’s podium where snapping cameras couldn’t fail to capture it, was better.
            Tillipop was speaking to someone Draco didn’t recognize, a woman with bronze hair piled so high on her head that she looked as if it might topple over any second. She was gaping up at Tillipop, and opened her mouth as if she might argue. Then she straightened her shoulders and shook her head, so resigned that Draco bit his tongue to keep from snickering.
            But then she floating a red banner into place, one that she was hanging in the air with strings of magic. Draco focused on it, wondering if it would explain who she was and what she was doing with Tillipop when Draco had never seen her before.
            The banner had long white letters on it that looked to have been conjured, or maybe painted, hastily, because streaks of fresh paint or magic ran away from their sides. It said, MINISTER TILLIPOP RESIGNS FROM MINISTERIAL RACE.
            Of course, many of the reporters gasped hungrily, and cameras started snapping and flashing. That was the purpose of the banner, Draco was sure, especially as he watched the bronze-haired woman step back with her arms folded and Tillipop hunch down as if he could escape the gaze of the reporters after all. They didn’t want to talk a lot about it. They just wanted to create a good headline and then retire from the contest.
            But they had reckoned without Rita Skeeter, and probably without the wizarding public’s appetite for gossip. Draco didn’t know how she had done it—probably she had changed into her beetle form and flown the distance across the grass between them—but she was right up next to the podium where she hadn’t been a moment before, tongue and Quick-Quotes Quill both flashing away as she spoke to Minister Tillipop.
            The bronze-haired woman tried to intervene. Skeeter withered her with a single glare.
            “Sir?” It sounded strange to hear Rosenthal speak that way, and even stranger because her voice was so low and timid. “Do you want me to go over there and find out what’s going on?”
            “Yes,” Draco said. He burned to go himself, but reporters were already turning to him with questions, and his place was here. He watched Rosenthal hurry off before turning to meet the quill that was thrust almost in his face.
            The reporter in question apologized and danced back, which meant she lost her place in the front ranks. Draco listened to the questions flying, faster than he could possibly have answered them all even if he wanted to, brewing his response in his mind.
            “Did you know he was going to do this, sir?”
            “How do you like being the only viable candidate in the Ministerial race?”
            “How will this affect your policy on the werewolves and Dark Lord Potter? Are you going to go and make a treaty with him right now?”
            Draco was past his first shock, and made sure to smile slowly and arrogantly, and cock his head. That made a few of the reporters who could see his face best shut up, and the others took their cue from them and at least quieted down, although Draco thought he could hear questions being strangled in the back of some of their throats.
            “I don’t know that I am the only viable candidate in the race,” he said, deciding to answer that one first. “Why would I be? If Minister Tillipop has chosen not to stand for re-election, that must mean there are important challenges to the position, challenges that someone else might be better suited to taking on than I would.”
            “Do you really believe that?” There was a reporter who looked as if she really had been studying under Skeeter, but had taken all the wrong lessons from the experience. For one thing, she was wearing acid-green glasses of the kind that Skeeter hadn’t worn in years, and waving her quill around so that all the ink flew off it.
            Draco gave her a smile that he knew was full of pity, and which made the woman freeze a little before she drooped. “Of course I believe that,” he replied. “Minister Tillipop was making a strong showing in the election.” That didn’t receive a chorus of giggles because the crowd was divided into people who believed it and people too diplomatic to let their disbelief show. “There was no reason for him to give up, unless a challenge arose that was too hard for him, and which he didn’t anticipate. Which meant that I didn’t anticipate it, either. Minister Tillipop knows more about this job than I do.”
            He looked over at the podium as he spoke. Skeeter had Tillipop cornered and was probably talking in that voice that sounded so reasonable you found yourself agreeing before you knew what you were agreeing with. Rosenthal stood talking with the bronze-haired woman, one hand raised in a gesture Draco recognized. He relaxed. Rosenthal would at least come back with a good version of the official story, if not the real reason.
            “Sir?”
            Draco turned around again. A reporter who he thought was the one he had almost bumped into when he turned around the first time flourished her quill above the parchment and nodded to him with what seemed to be encouragement. “Do you think that you could tell me more about how your policies on the werewolves and the Dark Lord Potter will be affected by this development?”
            Draco widened his eyes with innocent astonishment. “How can I do that until I know the reason he retired? Of course what happened to cause him to withdraw from the race might affect my policies in that direction.”
            The reporter frowned at him, but she wasn’t experienced enough to press the conversation in the direction she wanted, the way Skeeter might—and Draco was thinking many more admiring thoughts about Skeeter than he had ever realized he would. He mentally shook his head and continued to look helpful and innocent, and the woman turned to confront Tillipop instead.
            Rosenthal, meanwhile, was on her way back across the garden. Draco glanced at her face and hid his grimace. She was a little pale, and that wasn’t good.
            “I did have one question that I think you can answer right now, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy.”
            Draco glanced back, expression cool. The full title, as much as the sarcastic way the words were drawled, told him of this person’s hostility, although he didn’t know the voice.
            The reporter was a tall man with dark brown hair and eyes who tapped his quill against his teeth and gave Draco a polite smile. Well, polite if you weren’t looking at the rest of his face, anyway. “Could you tell us whether you would really refuse the Ministerial position if it was offered to you today? Someone will have to take Minister Tillipop’s place.”
            “But I need to be elected,” Draco said. This reporter looked as if he would prove a greater challenge than the cowardice Draco privately thought had made Tillipop give up on the election, but Draco knew how to answer him. “It wouldn’t be right if they just appointed someone the majority of the people hadn’t chosen, would it?” He widened his eyes again and offered the reporter a smile he had neatly judged. “It will probably be like after the war, when there was a temporary Minister until they could elect another one. But it won’t take as long to get this election together.”
            The man, along with several other people, opened their mouths, but Draco turned to meet Rosenthal and said, “Excuse me, I need to speak with my adviser.”
            Rosenthal grimaced at him. Draco didn’t let that deter him, but tucked his arm around hers as if he had been dying to work with her all day and guided her further away from the reporters, in the direction of his own podium. He could see a few Bellfast family members wandering around, frowning. He suspected he would have to deal with them later, as they came to terms with their beautiful house no longer being used after all.
            “What is it?” Draco asked, when he had made sure that no one was near enough to overhear them.
            Rosenthal managed not to close her eyes, but she looked overwhelmed, still. Draco kept walking, now and then moving his lips to fool anyone who was watching them into thinking that they were keeping up an important conversation.
            “Well?” Draco asked again, finally. He understood that Rosenthal must have received a severe shock, but Draco was starting to feel a little of the way she looked, just from not knowing what it was.
            Rosenthal swallowed and said slowly, “Sir, Minister Tillipop is withdrawing from the election out of fear of Dark Lord Potter. That’s the official excuse, at least. With Lord Potter targeting Aurors and Ministry officials and all sorts of other people, he doesn’t feel safe.”
            Draco turned his head and kept her under careful observation. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
            “It isn’t that which makes me feel as if I was about to faint,” Rosenthal snapped back, glaring at him. At least her back was stiffening now, and she was lifting her head as if she had finally begun to recover from the blow. Draco approved. “They’re appointing a sort of council to keep up the Ministry until someone can be elected. And from the way Madam Rufous spoke, they knew it would be you.’
            “Who’s on the council?” Draco asked quietly, his mind darting among likely candidates.
            “A few Aurors,” said Rosenthal. “People high up in Magical Law Enforcement. Some from the Wizengamot. A name I recognize from the Department of Mysteries.” She sighed. “And Gorenson.”
            Draco paused. “How do you know that? Did Madam Rufous actually name him?”
            Rosenthal gave a hollow laugh. “Of course not. But she said that there was someone advising them who had as many faces as he had names. Then she grew very mysterious and seemed to think that she shouldn’t have said so much. But I’m sure that they think we only know him as Gorenson, and we don’t know that he moves from position to position in the Ministry and changes so much. We—this is serious, Draco.”
            “I would say so, if you’re calling me Draco.” He was trying to tease, but the strained expression on her face didn’t relax much. Well, Draco couldn’t honestly blame her for that. “You’re right, it is serious. I didn’t know Gorenson had that much power or that much ability to control what the Minister did.” He looked thoughtfully across the grass at Tillipop. He was speaking to Madam Rufous and waving his hands around. If he had suffered from loss of power because he wasn’t Minister any longer, he didn’t appear to notice it.
            “He may not have been the one who made the decision,” Rosenthal said softly, staring across the garden at Tillipop again. Or the place where Tillipop had been, Draco saw; he was gone, so he must have already Apparated. Madam Rufous was packing up the banner and the podium itself, shaking her head briskly when other people approached her with questions. She probably thought Rita Skeeter—gone as well, Draco noticed—had got enough information about Tillipop’s departure out of him.
            “Tillipop was a useful sort of tool. That’s what the people we talked to from the Ministry, who wanted you to replace him, said.” Rosenthal slowly draw a long, thin strand of hair through her fingers, staring at nothing. “I wonder if he’s been discarded because he’s not as useful anymore. But that raises the question of why?”
            “Yes,” Draco said. He was queasy about something else, too, and after a long moment’s hesitation, he brought it up with Rosenthal. He thought she would at least be able to tell him if he was being ridiculous. “And this is a public announcement, too, instead of something private like cutting Minister Tillipop out of most decisions but still using him as a front.” Draco was inclined to believe that had started happening years ago, anyway. “Why shake up the status quo? Why try to make it seem like I’ll be elected, which will most likely happen now? Do you think they’ll try to stop the election?”
            Rosenthal shook her head. “I can’t see them announcing this so publicly, if that was going to be their choice.”
            Draco had to admit that he couldn’t, either. He simply would have been happier to know Gorenson’s motives behind this.
            Maybe we’re placing too much importance on him, though. He’s not the only one in the Ministry with power. He’s not the only one who could have decided this, and I’m sure he’s not the most powerful or important person on that council.
            Draco flexed his fingers. Maybe it was time to admit the truth: what scared him the most about Gorenson wasn’t his power, but his intelligence. He had come up with a plan that had nearly worked to hold both Harry and Persephone. He had nearly killed Draco. He had kept hidden from public notice for years, and he had enough glamours and other names that he had probably abandoned being Gorenson after his public outing. And Draco thought he was probably the sort who learned from his mistakes.
            So if he was ready to move so openly…
            There must be some reason.
*
            Meechypoo: The real reason behind Persephone's behavior will be revealed pretty soon now.
            SP777: They kind of are! A soul-tree.
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Black Phoenix