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Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28254 -:- 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 Three—In an Investigative Mood

            “Tell me what you think of this.”

            Harry reached up just in time to catch the file that Ron tossed him. He rolled his eyes at his partner’s back. Sometimes Ron seemed to think that they were still in school and Harry still practiced Quidditch every day. The throws that Ron thought were “easy” would have defied some skilled Seekers to catch them.

            Harry flipped open the cover and glanced down at the photographs inside it, prepared for pictures of murder or torture. That was the majority of the cases they handled, after all. Word had got around the Department that Potter and Weasley were unfazed by images and wounds that made other Aurors vomit all over their boots.

            He could have told them that it was less the war experience—the way that some of the Aurors wisely murmured that it was—and more because he trusted his magic to take care of him against almost all the threats out there, and Ron trusted him. He faced Dark wizards who challenged him, but fewer and fewer of them as the years went by. By the time one was thirty, Harry thought, one mostly knew oneself, and he knew that he was stronger and tougher than most people. No offense to the criminals who thought they were the first in the world to think of illegal trade in human skins or the first to combine the Unforgivables. Long might they commit their stupid crimes and make his life more interesting.

            But he didn’t see any photographs. Or, at least, they seemed to focus on the surface of a golden wheel that was set with blue jewels but not stained with blood. Frowning, Harry turned the folder around and cocked his head, trying to see and understand what he was seeing.

            In a few moments, he knew, and rolled his eyes. “Ron,” he said. “I don’t care what the Gamblers’ Clock says.” He slammed the file down on the desk and folded his arms, making sure to have his second-best scowl ready by the time Ron turned around. His best scowl wasn’t one that he would give a friend.

            “Do you really think it’s coincidence that it showed midnight at the hour when every dog in the city started howling?” Ron asked, lowering his voice and darting a glance over his shoulder as though he thought the clock itself would be floating behind them to listen to what he was saying about it. “I don’t.”

            Harry put a hand over his face and shook his head. Ron’s newfound fascination with Divination extended to thinking that all sorts of superstitions were true. The Gamblers’ Clock was a wizarding artifact in Amsterdam that supposedly chimed out the hours of momentous events, including one’s death or the winning of a great fortune, if the right person approached it and asked the right question.

            “Is this where I think that it probably was midnight, and the dogs were howling because of Muggle sirens or bells ringing?” Harry demanded.

            Ron paused and blinked at him. Harry rolled his eyes back. Ron seemed to think it was unfair for Harry to make educated guesses.

            “Well, it was midnight at the time, sure,” Ron conceded slowly. “But that doesn’t mean the Gamblers’ Clock always chimes midnight at the exact same time other clocks do, you know! It’s independent of the other clocks in the world and what they’re doing.” He nodded several times, then let it go when he realized he wasn’t convincing Harry, and leaned earnestly forwards. “I just think the Gamblers’ Clock is a genuine magical phenomenon that deserves to be investigated, that’s all.”

            “Yeah,” Harry said. “Probably. But not by us, when it’s not Dark magic, and when it’s in another country.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “The real file, please? Or hasn’t Oakbeam given us any this morning?”

            Ron’s sigh probably could have made McGonagall feel guilty, but he handed the file over. Harry shook his head as he took it. He understood Ron’s mindset, or thought he did; since he had married Hermione and no longer bickered with her as much, Ron needed something else to obsess about. He had gone through intense interests in beetles, in Quidditch—though that one was more recurring, really—in Weasley family history, and in Wizengamot politics. At least an interest in Divination was a little more bearable than the hours that Harry had spent listening to Ron declaim on old legal procedure and precedents.

            The opening of the file made Harry wince. Yes, he was used to the horrible things they saw regularly, but there were still cases that hit him harder than others. He flipped past the papers inside, absorbing the evidence in silence.

            The body of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, had been found by a few drunk young Muggles on the edge of wizarding London. Luckily, an Obliviator had followed them to remove their memory of someone Apparating in front of them, and was able to take charge of the case before they could call the Muggle authorities. There was no doubt the girl was magical, or at least had died at the hands of a wizard; the air around her stank with power, and she wore old, shabby robes, the pockets filled with crumpled leaves of dragonsbane.

            Normally, Harry knew, they could have identified the victim in no time at all. The wizarding community was small, its children precious, and the disappearance of any of their daughters would have raised an outcry. But no one had come forwards to claim this one, which contributed to the opinion, expressed by a few Obliviators and Unspeakables in the report, that she had probably been a wizard’s or witch’s victim rather than one herself.

            It was hard to tell, of course, when she had no face left.

            Harry leaned close to the photograph and stared, shaking his head. The girl’s face was entirely gone, sheared away from the front of her skull, and her eyes and teeth plucked out with it. Nothing but a sheet of blood and bone remained from her hair down to her neck.

            Harry looked carefully at the edges of her throat, then flipped back through the pages again. Yes. The Unspeakables had confirmed that the edges of the flesh were ragged, as though something had chewed them.

            He reached out and closed the file, gently, then shut his eyes. He held back the bile and the vomit that wanted to rise. The girl was dead; vomiting all over the evidence would do her no good at all.

            He wanted to kill.

            Of course, he often wanted to kill. Sometimes Harry wondered what would have happened if his relatives’ abuse had been just that little bit worse, or if he had been Sorted into Slytherin, or if someone had offered him friendship and managed to turn him to the Death Eaters’ side, against Muggles. He would have been a terror that made the Dark wizards they hunted look small, he was certain.

            That was another reason to control himself. Get wind of what he really was, in the bottom of his soul, at moments like this, and the Ministry would probably cage him up. Or at least take his wand away and sack him from the Aurors.

            It wouldn’t go well for anyone if they did that. Probably the best thing that could happen would be Harry slitting his wrists or throwing himself off a bridge before he hurt anyone else.

            “Mate?”

            That was Ron, his sober, concerned, responsible self again, not trying to get Harry to investigate magical clocks instead of magical murders. Harry opened his eyes and nodded, and Ron nodded back. “We’re going after this one, of course,” Ron said, though his voice rose slightly on the end in a question he couldn’t help.

            “We are,” Harry said, and watched Ron’s smile widen. He reflected it back, more times than he needed to, glinting from bright teeth. Then he rose to his feet and scooped up the file. They would start with the Obliviator who had found the body, or rather found the Muggles who had found the body, and go from there.

            Somewhere out there was someone who had killed this girl, and Harry would plot, and plan, and be careful, and be patient, for the time when that person and the end of his wand could meet.

*

            “Sir? You wanted to see me, sir?”

            Draco rolled his eyes and turned away from the stained cauldron he had been considering to see if he could scrub and sell. That would be Campion, of course. He was always like that, the meekest and most respectful of Draco’s assistants, as though he thought he could make up for his relationship to a Wizengamot member by cringing. Draco would have to teach him better than that, and soon. A Potions master needed either arrogance or an air of quiet confidence, and Campion would learn neither this way.

            “Yes, Campion.” Draco tilted his head towards the document-piled chair next to the lab-table, but Campion missed the gesture and stood there, blinking. Draco snapped his fingers, and this time Campion jumped, then reached out and began to clean off the chair, head ducked all the time. He seemed to think looking up would earn him a blow. Draco shook his head, confident the young man wouldn’t look up in time to see him. Pitiful that this is the future of Potions mastery.

            But Campion did have talent, or Draco would have sent him from his service the moment he discovered he didn’t. That was enough to win a bit of indulgence, namely that Draco waited until Campion had sat down on the chair and hunched over with his hands clasped in front of him before he launched into his attack. “Why did you make that face when you saw Auror Potter this morning, Campion?” He had thought about saying the Chosen One instead, to impress Campion with their acquaintance, but he doubted he could keep a sneer out of his voice when saying that title, even all these years later.

            The boy flinched, looking for a moment like the frog that Draco had dropped into his boiling cauldron that morning. Then he lifted his head and gave a wobbly swallow. “I—I was surprised to see him. Sir.”

            “Yes,” Draco said, fascinated to note that Campion’s eyes were meeting his directly for almost the first time since Draco had agreed to take him on. Potter gives him courage? Or the desire to keep his secret does. “But why? You know, of course, that Aurors like Potter regularly keep former Death Eaters and the businesses they run under surveillance.”

            Campion licked his lips. Then he said, “But I hadn’t seen him here before, sir. I thought—I thought they would send him to bigger targets, sir. That bringing him here would be beneath his dignity, sir.”

            Draco gave him a thin smile. “I’m sure that he wouldn’t join you in thinking so, Campion. After all, he has been humble most of his life.” Lies mixed with the truth make both stronger. Campion was likely to misjudge him if he didn’t know how Draco really felt about Potter, and thus likely to misjudge his actions, should they be in circumstances where Campion tried to allege that Draco had bribed Potter or something similar.

            Campion made a negative twitch of his head, and then caught himself, staring down at his hands again. “I’m sure you’re right, sir,” he said. “Of course you are.”

            Draco let silence pass for a few minutes. The boy began to tap one of his feet against the leg of the chair, whistling tunelessly, irritatingly, beneath his breath. Draco held his temper with difficulty, but considered sending Campion back downstairs to the shop, since it was becoming obvious that he would say nothing useful.

            I wonder, however, why his extreme reaction to Potter happened, if it was only that he thought Potter’s possible investigation of me beneath his dignity. There is something else here, something important, that I am missing.

            As usual when Draco thought he was missing something, he resolved to toss a handful of needles at the person in question and see how much he flinched. He pretended to frown into the middle distance before he nodded. “Very well, Campion,” he said. “If you need more reassurance, or feel strongly about it, then I can ensure that you are in the back of the shop working on cataloguing ingredients when Auror Potter returns for a second visit. You can even speak with him yourself.” That would necessitate warning Potter what to say in advance, of course, but Draco thought that the man he had met this morning would almost certainly enjoy it.

            “S-sir!” Campion rose to his feet, staring. Then he sat back down in his chair in a graceless collapse and buried his head in his hands. Too graceless, Draco thought, staring at him with narrowed eyes that he hoped hid the satisfaction in them. Yes, the boy was hiding something, and like many young men who had secrets to conceal, he thought overacting was the answer.

            “Is there something wrong, then?” Draco kept his voice gentle. “I know that some of my assistants have a prejudice against Aurors for the unfair way they have treated their families, but I did not know that you were one of them.” He knew it was no such thing—as the nephew of a man on the Wizengamot, Campion was unlikely to receive more than the few minutes of trouble it would take the Aurors to realize who he was—but acting as though he was stupider than he truly was had served Draco well in politics for the last decade.

            “No, sir. No prejudice.” Campion swallowed, and tried to smile. It only made him look more ill. If Draco had seen a client walk through his door with such a face, he would have recommended a Pepper-Up Potion and a Calming Draught immediately. Perhaps also a Blood-Replenisher. “It’s just—you’ll think it’s silly, but I’ve had a—a crush on the Savior for years now. Seeing him so close puts me off my work. Can I be in the back of the shop when he returns to investigate? It’s not his fault, but seeing him would put me off my work.” He leaned close to Draco and lowered his voice. “It’s nothing personal, like I said. And I’m a silly little boy, but he’s one of my heroes.”

            If you had told me that five minutes ago, I might have believed you. Draco sighed. “If you wish, Campion. But you should keep in mind that you will need to serve famous clients and powerful ones if you become a skilled Potions master, and not let your own feelings for them interfere. If someone needs a potion to cure impotency or an upset stomach, you must brew it for them without your shaking hands upsetting the amount of shredded Bubotuber you place in the cauldron.”

            “I’ll remember, sir. Of course I’ll remember!” Campion bolted to his feet this time, bobbing his head and smiling as though he thought Draco would forget his overacting. “Thank you, thank you! Just warn me when he’s coming, and I’ll go.” He nipped down the stairs before Draco could officially dismiss him, but Draco thought that less a calculated, overdramatic ploy and more part of the general thoughtlessness of the young.

            Well. Draco leaned back and considered these startling revelations. Campion showed far more fear around Potter than necessary, even given that some cases of hero-worship could be acute. He had shown no sign of realizing that the deception of an investigation Potter and Draco had shown was a cover for something else; he had also shown no mysterious knowledge of why Potter had actually come there, the way that he might if he had overheard their conversation in Draco’s flat. No, the way that he definitely would have. Though he did not know the reason for the boy’s fear, Draco trusted his judgment of Campion in general as someone who would have been unable to resist bragging and hinting.

            So. Something else. Perhaps connected with his uncle. If Potter had been involved in an investigation of the man lately, then Campion might fear being talked to and dragged into it. Never mind that it was extremely unlikely Potter would know him on sight. The young, Draco conceded with the magnificent condescension of a man thirty years old last month, had a tendency to envision themselves as the center of all eyes and the center of all attention even when their elders had far more pressing concerns.

            He would write to Potter and ask him if he had investigated Wizengamot member Lucas Schroeder lately. If he had not, then Draco might arrange to bring him back to the shop purely to see Campion’s reaction.

            It will mean more contact with Potter, perhaps another detailed conversation.

            Draco smiled to himself as he sat down to write the letter, absently Vanishing the badly-stained cauldron as he did so. Such a hardship that conversation would be.

*

            “This is where the body was found, yes.”

            Obliviator Alton’s voice was shaky. Harry cast him a sympathetic smile, and then began to walk out in a circle from the place indicated, whispering a spell that should reveal any lingering magical signatures to him. It almost never worked when the site was more than twenty-four hours old, but it was the way all investigations began anyway. If any Aurors had missed a simple clue that could lead them straight to the criminal, they would have been sacked at once, or, perhaps worse, hauled into the Head Auror’s office for one of Oakbeam’s “little talks.”

            Sure enough, the signature spell revealed nothing but their own magic, steaming from their bodies in little silvery ripples. Harry nodded, then hid his wand with one hand and glanced over at Ron. Ron, sensitive to the slightest motions Harry made after all their years together, promptly engaged Alton in a detailed interrogation about his movements the night he’d found the body. Harry crouched down and murmured the Dark spell that had come to mind.

            “Rursus, rursus,” he chanted, barely letting his lips move in case Alton stepped to the side after all and was able to glimpse them.

            The stones shimmered, and for a moment the same silvery ripples that marked the magical signature with the first spell seemed to rise up from them. Harry clenched his fingers close to his lips, and waited. A darted look to the side showed that Alton was still busy with Ron, though, which let Harry cast the spell again. And again, when it produced another shower of ripples but no other indications that the magic had obeyed him.

            The spell, when it seized him, made Harry’s head snap back on his neck. But he didn’t fall, which meant he didn’t attract Alton’s attention. And one had to be able to bear a little pain, after all. That was what being in the Aurors meant. Harry had learned in training that he couldn’t go crying to someone every time something hurt. He endured, or he took care of the problem, the way he had with Hazelwood.

            Darkness clapped down over him, and pain sheeted over his face. Like the blood on the face of the girl in the photograph, Harry thought, teeth clenched against crying out. It seemed that the Retrovoyance spell was going to give him a stronger impression of the girl’s last feelings and sensations than usual. Very well.

            Screams, screams everywhere. Harry listened carefully, but he didn’t think any of them came from the girl’s—his own—throat. That meant she was with someone else screaming that way. Or many people.

            That meant her murder was less likely to be an isolated incident, and more the product of a group working together.

            Someone snatched Harry’s—the girl’s—head back and muttered next to her ear. Harry didn’t know if she had been able to make sense of the words, immersed in pain and terror as she was, but he could. “Useless. Body can’t take any more. Get her out of here.”

            Then someone lifting, seizing, tilting him, her, them, and the sharp, powerful squeeze of Apparition. Harry listened to the crack that followed their appearance, and felt the stones under his back when whoever was carrying the girl threw her to the ground.

            “Frango cor,” said the voice, a calm voice, without much inflection and without much interest. Harry had heard the same tone from fellow Aurors who’d been doing paperwork for a solid week and wanted nothing more than to go home on a Friday night.

            He recognized the spell, too, and he gritted his teeth in frustration as the girl’s heart stuttered and stopped. At least that confirmed the Unspeakables’ report that she had died of a heart attack and it was highly likely to be magical. He had gained that much from casting the Retrovoyance and living through the last moments of her life with her.

            I’m sorry, he promised himself, as the darkness of missing eyes became the darkness of death and he opened his eyes to find himself still alive on the cobblestones. But we are going to do whatever it takes to find your murderer and bring him to justice. Your murderers. There was more than one person involved in this, and that means that someone, somewhere, must know something and be willing to spill it. It’s always more difficult to keep a secret when the Dark wizards run in packs.

            He glanced over, ignoring the throbbing, phantom aches on his face and in his chest, and saw Ron watching him from the corner of his eye. He nodded once. He was done, and there was no other evidence to be gained here. The reports from the Unspeakables and Alton had been quite clear.

            Ron clapped Alton on the back and said something hearty. Harry rose to his feet, eyes still locked on the stones where a little girl had died, though one would never know that from the scrubbing, both magical and physical, that had taken place.

            I’ll find them. I’ll find out what they meant. I’ll remember their voices. One good thing about the Retrovoyance spell was that it burned the memories, shining, into one’s head, as strongly as a Memory Charm took them away. I’ll find them and give you justice. I promise.

            As they headed back to the Ministry, Ron kept sneaking sidelong glances at him. Harry caught his eye and smiled a little. “I’m fine, Ron. I promise. Really, they have no reason to classify the Retrovoyance spell as Dark. The only one it affects is the person who casts it.”

            “You know what it does,” Ron said quietly. “The imprint it leaves on your mind and body. How many times have you cast it now, Harry? Ten? Twenty?”

            “I lost count at twenty-five,” Harry said. “And it’s not like it’s the only one I ever use.” He knew Ron was worried about him being caught and tried for Dark Arts, but he was careful. He’d never do it in front of someone who was suspicious of him and would probably betray him. And even if he slipped, the goodwill he’d built up with the Ministry was for things like this, to get him out of scrapes that could damage him and stop his ability to work.

            Ron sighed, but didn’t say anything else. Harry touched his shoulder in silent thanks, and they went back to the office to start considering files on dead and disappearing children in the last few months, to coordinate the dead girl’s case with them if they could.

            First, though, an owl was waiting on top of Harry’s desk, an elegant grey bird with slashes of black in its feathers. Harry gave it a part of his lunch while he examined the message it bore.

            Dear Potter,

            One of my assistants, Campion Fipps, is extraordinarily afraid of you and actually dropped a cauldron when he saw you leaving the shop the other day. I have spoken with him, and he tried to tell me an unconvincing story of a crush. I would like to speak with you again about possibly visiting a second time and catching him unawares. (He is the nephew of Lucas Schroeder, so if you’ve investigated Schroeder lately he may fear being caught in the net).

            Draco Malfoy,

            Potions Master,

            Chemic Alley.

            Harry smiled a little as he sat down to write a reply. He hadn’t investigated Schroeder, and the name Campion Fipps meant nothing to him, but he would like to know what was happening. And helping Malfoy would be a distraction from a case he could already tell was going to consume his heart and mind.

            And…well, I wouldn’t exactly mind seeing Malfoy again.

*

            SP777: Ah, I suspect that lad-back atmosphere does change a little in this chapter…

            js: Thank you! They’ll have more chances for that later.

            Arieru: Thank you! This story is pretty fun so far, and I hope to keep bringing the readers along with me.

            unneeded: Not much finagling necessary; I know exactly where this one is going.
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