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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-Seven—Keeping the Secret

“I don’t think you have your mind on what I’m telling you, Harry.”

Harry started and glanced up guiltily at Hermione. No, he really didn’t, but he didn’t have a good excuse for the glare she was giving him. In the end, he just shook his head and muttered, “Sorry, Hermione. But I know that you want to arrange a meeting at the Ministry, and that you think you’re close to doing it, and you’re less worried than you were about danger to us from being there.”

Hermione sighed and sat down, letting her fingers play, for a moment, with the edge of the tablecloth in Harry’s kitchen. “That’s a good summary. Just without the pesky details.”

            Harry smiled quickly at her and found something he knew would distract her. “Have you talked to Hugo?”

            Hermione shook her head. “He’s stayed at Hogwarts. But that ends in a few weeks, and then he’ll be home with us. I know that we haven’t got as many owls from him this week, and Ron talked about going to Hogwarts and asking him if he was all right. But then I told him about the conversation you planned to have.”

            Harry found himself holding his breath. He let it out with the urge to roll his eyes at his own melodramatics. “And Ron’s okay with what happened?”

            “He would already have come after you if he wasn’t,” Hermione pointed out, which forced Harry to nod. “Yes, he’s felt for a long time that someone had to reach Hugo, but he wanted to do it without hurting Hugo. And—maybe it couldn’t be done that way. I don’t know.” She pressed her hand against her face, and then passed it over. “Well. That’s in the past, now. I want you to be prepared for the future, which means going to the Ministry and defending this research in front of the biggest crowd we’ve ever had.”

            Harry nodded and sat up, determined to listen this time, and not to think about Draco, still asleep in the bedroom he’d adopted newly as his own, just down the corridor from Harry’s.

*

            “You’re one of my relatives.”

            Draco woke with a start, shaking his head back and forth. He grimaced when he glanced at the golden clock on the wall and saw how late it was. He knew Potter had wanted him to sleep in this morning, even excusing him from the otherwise obligatory meeting with Granger, but it still disoriented him and made him feel as though he should be up and moving about.

            He finally followed the words to the portrait on the wall, hanging not far from the foot of his bed, and studying him with interest. The man it portrayed was unfamiliar except in the basic essentials, which meant Draco knew he was a Black. No one with those narrow eyes and that pointed face structure—which he had inherited from his mother, not his father, no matter how many times Lucius implied otherwise—could be anything else.

            “Yes,” Draco said, stretching and trying to ignore the creepy feeling that this man had watched him as he slept. That was what portraits did, and Draco could have banished the empty frames from the wall if he had wanted to. He was becoming gradually used to the feeling that he could do almost anything in Potter’s house he wanted to, and Potter wouldn’t object. “My name is Draco Malfoy. My mother—”

            “Of course I know your mother,” the man interrupted. Draco was glad that the infusion of Malfoy blood had made him less crass. “Of course. My name is Phineas Nigellus Black, and I knew Narcissa when she was young.”

            Draco nodded, wishing now that he had thought to ask his mother more about her childhood. She could have told him who Phineas Nigellus was, and he would feel less wrong-footed now.

            But, in truth, there were many other things he might have wished his parents to have said and done for him that would have more relevance. That was simply the sort of wish that his mind always sprang to, because he hated feeling awkward for even a moment at a time. “Then you know why I’m here.”

            “Blacks are taking the house back at last?” Phineas’s mouth curved up, and his eyes had a glint that Draco didn’t like. “Good. Much as I am prone to admire young Harry, he does not have our blood.”

            Draco stared at the man until he made a quick step sideways towards the frame of the portrait—a good enough sign of discomfort for Draco. “No,” Draco said quietly. “I’m brewing potions to help Potter’s knee.”

            Phineas studied him with a wise glint to his eyes that Draco still didn’t like, and then gave a small shrug and leaned back. “If you children will make the world foolish with your quarreling, then who am I to stop you?” he murmured. “Go on and leave your house directly in the hands of those who once persecuted you and to whom you lost the war, if you want to.”

            Draco could feel the sting as that shot went home, as his cheeks tingled and his hands nearly tore the blankets. And he could feel the way that Phineas watched him, as though expecting him to storm out of the room and find Potter and declare he was leaving immediately.

            But that was what his father might have done, or his mother. Or maybe his son, although the way that Draco understood Scorpius now, he was more likely to turn the insult aside with a joke and then never forgive the person who had insulted him.

            Draco, though, was a magical researcher, and he had to act like a researcher now, confronted with something he didn’t understand. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Was Potter behind the persecution of pure-bloods? I never heard that.”

            Phineas stared at him. Draco couldn’t identify all the thoughts at play behind those narrow eyes, but he knew some of them, and he felt his smile begin to spill out of him.

            “I didn’t mean that,” Phineas said at last. “No, I never meant that, never said that.”

            “You implied it,” Draco said, leaning forwards. “Implied that this house was in the hands of enemies and I should fight to get it back. It’s true that Potter won the war, but by that time, I wasn’t willingly on the Dark Lord’s side anymore. I don’t consider Potter an enemy for that. If he did something to insult my family and drive us out of the house, though, then that might be a reason to do so.”

            Phineas did some more staring. Draco looked back with a bland smile that he hoped revealed nothing of what was behind his own eyes. You thought I was the sort of hot-blooded young man that my son is, maybe? You thought I would believe you and storm down and order Potter out of here.

            “He is a half-blood,” Phineas said at last. “I had the impression that you cared about that.”

            “At one time, more than I do now,” Draco said. “And I don’t think that you can care as much for blood purity as you’re pretending, or Potter would have ensured that your portrait frame was moved out of the house.”

            Phineas gave a weak snort. “You know nothing about the ways that portraits can find to stay and spy.”

            “I don’t,” Draco agreed. “I hope it’ll be a long time before I die, and the ways of magical portraits were never a study that interested me. But you ought to know that knowing when someone is manipulating me is familiar, and of great interest. I think it’s a weak way to try and drive a wedge between me and Potter, but if you want to try it again, you can. Only I’m going to tell Potter.” He rose to his feet.

            “Tattling, then?” Phineas looked as if he wanted to run out of the portrait, but he did stay where he was, scowling at Draco. “You can’t bear the fact that someone might be telling you the truth about your precious Potter?”

            “It’s the truth I used to believe,” Draco said. “That his blood was the only thing that mattered. That was before we worked together as research partners, and he made it clear that he cared about the pure-bloods as much as he does the half-bloods and Muggleborns.”

            Phineas flinched back from him, his head looking for a moment as though it would slam into the side of the frame. “You’re mad, if you think that.”

            “I don’t think so,” Draco said. “And while you think you know him, and you’re angry at him, you can’t have spied on many of the conversations we had. You also implied that you admire Potter at the beginning of this conversation, and then you urged me to evict him from the house that’s been his home for years. Your inconsistencies are too much for me. Maybe you’ve gone mad from old age. Or maybe it’s a test, of some kind, and in that case, I think I pass.”

            He turned and left the room. Phineas said nothing, and when Draco glanced over his shoulder from the corridor, the old man was gone.

            Draco shook his head. He was going to go back in tonight and make sure the frame was turned to the wall. He had no time for one of his ancestors who would try to pick apart the alliance between him and Potter in the name of “family friendliness.”

*

            “There you are, then.”

            Hermione said that in a diamond-edged, sparkling voice the minute Draco came down the stairs. Harry coughed, to remind her that he was still in the room and would appreciate her not picking at Draco more than necessary.

            Hermione turned her head and gave him a smile as sharp as her voice. Harry leaned back in his chair and forced himself towards resignation. Hermione was the one who would probably try to taunt Draco, or go too far with him, and find out too late that he had a greater fund of confidence now.

            At least, Harry hoped he did, with their feelings out between them and acknowledged at last. He would hate it if it diminished Draco’s confidence.

            Draco took a seat at the table and sipped at the tea that Kreacher had left, then reached for the honeyed scones, his unchanging favorites. Hermione coughed. Draco looked up at her and nodded to indicate she should continue, while he broke off a bit of scone and lifted it, dripping, to his mouth.

            Harry found his own mouth watering, even though he had finished breakfast an hour ago. He didn’t know how, but food seemed to become more appealing when Draco ate it.

            “Do you know what you’re doing?” Hermione asked.

            “Eating,” Draco said, and broke off another crumb of scone, his eyes on Hermione and his smile bright and hard-edged enough to match hers.

            Hermione visibly checked the retort she wanted to make, and only shook her head. “I mean in the next meeting that we’ve planned, the one for the Ministry. This is the most important one so far, and everything has to be perfect.”

            “I’m sure that you can plan that better than either Potter or I can,” Draco said, and took another sip of tea.

            Hermione muttered as if counting her heartbeats until the wild pulse in her temple calmed down, and then leaned in and murmured, “Given that we’ve been allies for weeks now, you could at least call him Harry.”

            Draco glanced over Hermione’s shoulder. “What do you think about that, Potter? Do you want me to call you by your first name?” His face was the same polished mask that Harry had seen during the meeting at Hogwarts, when he had dealt with questions from the pure-bloods in the crowd that way.

            “Only if you wish to,” Harry said, and tried to meet Draco’s eyes in a casual way that would fool Hermione, and yet also in a way that would reveal all the deep undercurrents that ran between them and remind Draco that this was his choice to make.

            Draco bowed his head and offered him a small smile, then went back to eating. Hermione sighed deeply enough to be a mermaid surfacing from the water, and then turned back to Harry. “I think the Ministry will swing their might behind us if we can just handle this right,” she said earnestly. “I know that lots of people in my Department already want to. It’s a matter of finding the right words and statistics to appeal to them.”

            Harry smiled at her. To his mind, Draco had been the shining star of the meeting at Hogwarts, and he knew that a lot of people had only come to the one outside Grimmauld Place because they were curious to see Harry Potter the Recluse appear. It was Hermione’s turn. “You’re going to organize it wonderfully,” he said. “And I know that you’ll find the right ones to make an impact on them.”

            Hermione pulled back and narrowed her eyes. “And in the meantime, you sound utterly unconcerned about it.”

            If Harry had been able to be honest with her, he would have admitted that his head was sometimes still floating from Draco’s kisses. As it was, he shook his head and reached out to press her hand. “Not that. But I know that I haven’t kept up with the Ministry’s politics in the past few years, and I wouldn’t know all the mistakes to avoid making. You tell me about them, and I’ll write letters to and firecall the right people. But I can’t be an equal partner in this, because I don’t know everything.”

            “I will firecall the pure-bloods,” Draco said, looking up from his empty plate. Harry felt a violent satisfaction in the middle of his belly, to know that Draco ate so well here, and was content enough to take pleasure in the meals. “They should have equal invitations to the meeting, and not many of them work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

            “I never intended to keep them out,” Hermione said shortly, her head still bowed over the papers in front of her, but her shoulders tensing and rippling like wings.

            Harry quelled Draco’s immediate response with a little flicker of his eyebrows. Draco stared back and shook his head, then told Hermione, “I didn’t say you did. I did mean that you might want someone pure-blood to speak to them, and I’m the best candidate for the job and the only one you might be able to trust.”

            “I don’t know how much I trust you and how much I don’t, Malfoy.” Hermione’s voice was so soft Harry found it hard to hear. “You’re acting as strangely today as Harry is. Why are you still here?”

            “Because I invited him,” Harry said, before Draco could feel that he had to defend himself from Hermione. That was the truth, and it was a comfortable out from the questions that Hermione might otherwise press home, thus upsetting Draco. “And I want him near me.”

            Hermione spent a long time looking back and forth between them. If she had thought that her eyes alone could make them confess, though, she was wrong. Harry did nothing but blink at her innocently, and finally ask her if she was all right or if her eyes hurt. That made Hermione turn back to planning.

            Harry smiled at Draco across the table in a moment when she wasn’t looking. Of course he looked forward to the time he could tell his best friends and weather, if necessary, their disapproval so that they would see he was happy, but in the meantime, it was sort of exciting to have this kind of secret.

*

            Draco leaned back and shut his eyes, and pretended not to hear Granger when she asked him a question. As Draco had hoped she would, she gave up and spoke to Potter instead. That gave Draco a few more seconds to recover his breath and to decide that he had made it past the first stage of the Granger Inquisition and he wasn’t about to die.

Because I invited him.

            Just like Potter, to sound gracious and open while concealing a multitude of sins, Draco thought. That was a side of him that Professor Snape would have been familiar with.

            But Professor Snape wasn’t here right now, and Draco didn’t want to think about his death, with all its attendant, familiar frustrations and sorrows. He opened his eyes at last, and answered Granger like a calm and reasonable human being. If she didn’t always choose to behave that way to him, well, he understood and could overlook it from the same position of graciousness that Potter had adopted.

            And Potter went on watching him, not from that emotional distance but with burning eyes, and sneaked him smiles whenever Granger was looking at her papers. Draco thought it more likely that Granger saw those smiles than not, but she didn’t interrogate them, and that was the same thing as not seeing them.

            For the moment.

            Draco was startled to realize that a determination was waking in him to make her see them, and not far in the future, either. Perhaps it was his conversation with Phineas Nigellus that morning, the way the portrait had presumed so easily that Draco would be more loyal to his ancestral blood than he was to Potter. Perhaps it was the way that Granger distrusted Draco and suspected him of keeping a secret more than she did Potter, although this secret was Potter’s equally.

            Either way, he was determined to make her see that he was Potter’s equal, and could be with him if he pleased. Either way, he wanted to make all of them see.

            Perhaps someday soon, I can.

*

            ChaosLady: To Harry and Draco too, I think.

            unneeded: Yes, Hermione is already starting to suspect something.

            SP777: Draco usually didn’t talk about things that left him vulnerable when they were younger, though. He mostly bragged and tried to make it seem as if he was better and invincible.
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The Descent of Magic