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Anarchy as Art	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 12617 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Three—A Crime Like Opals

            “It is not enough proof by itself to merit an arrest yet,” Thorin said out of the fire, his voice so heavy that Harry was tempted to pick up a flagstone and throw it at the wall just so that it would crack the plaster. Of course, that would happen in his own house and not Thorin’s office, so it wouldn’t be worth it. “So he had one of the opals. He might have bought them once they were stolen, not stolen them himself.”

            Harry sat back and closed his eyes. He knew that he could get away with that because Thorin actually approved of people who did all the stupid little tricks that anger management trainers recommended, like counting to ten in their heads.

            Of course, Harry didn’t think Thorin knew that he was mentally resisting the temptation to beat the Head Auror’s skull in in this case, not so much the frustration that he couldn’t yet go after Malfoy.

            But it made sense when he looked at it logically, and he had only himself to blame for rushing to Thorin right now. The bastard wouldn’t move until and unless they had proof flowing over their desks and out of their ears, preferably in proper memo and report format. One opal didn’t prove anything.

            Except that Malfoy really does want to bait me along his trail, the way Linton said he did.

            Harry shook his head in slow self-censure. He hadn’t paid enough attention to that statement. Malfoy was an adult, had run his thoughts, and adults didn’t cling to the grievances and grudges of their childhoods. Linton must have misunderstood his motive, or else Malfoy’s plan involved getting revenge on Harry as only an incidental part of something much larger, much grander.

            But nothing bound Malfoy to consider that motive as ridiculous, if he wanted to exercise it. And Malfoy had had Snape for a mentor, who had clung to his grudges in exactly that way, and for exactly the most ridiculous of reasons.

            “Yes, sir, that’s true,” Harry said at last, looking up. Thorin’s head still waited in the fire. The Head Auror had got his job, Harry sometimes thought, because he was so good at waiting—on people and events and politicians. “But surely buying stolen property is a crime in and of itself, and worthy of arrest?”

            Thorin wagged one finger at Harry. “We can question him, Auror Potter. But we have no proof yet that would enable an arrest. After all, he was only returning the opal to a rightful authority. One could argue that that is an act of charity, like the ones he is famous for.”

            Harry gave a wide smile that made his cheeks ache and bared far too many of his teeth, though Thorin really didn’t seem to notice that last part. “Of course, sir. Sorry, I should have realized.”

            “See that you think about it more carefully in the future,” Thorin said, and vanished from the fire, finger still upraised. Harry leaned back on his couch and closed his eyes, spending a few moments in visions of Thorin marched out of his office in chains of paper before he could calm down and decide what he should do next.

            The questioning of Linton was done, and all the other thieves they had captured whom Malfoy might have taught were months or years in Azkaban, and none had left letters behind them that pointed unquestionably to Malfoy the way Linton’s had. That left Harry to wonder where the hell he ought to go next.

            He wasn’t an Auror for nothing, though, and a certain tension had ached in his muscles ever since Malfoy dropped the opal under his hand. Malfoy wanted to bait and lure him, did he? He thought he was so irresistible that Harry would come rushing to his side the minute he showed up to give him a hint, did he?

            Then Harry would answer the bold challenge in his own bold way, and go to Malfoy Manor.

*

            Harry couldn’t get closer to the Manor than the front gates, which were made of wrought iron and led out onto a pathetically white stone drive, as though the Malfoys had spent all their money for the color of innocence. On the other hand, he didn’t want to get closer, not yet. The strength of the anti-Apparition wards and other spells would tell him something in and of themselves. He landed under his Invisibility Cloak beyond the edge of the wards and walked cautiously in until he felt a hissing and spitting in front of him. Then he retreated, crouched down, and began to cast.

            All the time, he spared one edge of his alertness for the tingling that would tell him of seeking spells on his Cloak that had come close to finding him. He didn’t expect it—the nice thing about owning one of the Deathly Hallows, as he had found several times in the last several years, was that spells meant to detect ordinary Invisibility Cloaks didn’t detect it—but it might still happen. Malfoy knew tricks, like that fire ward, that he must have invented himself or got out of some obscure spellbooks.

            The spells danced along the edge of the wards, lighting them in a complex system of sparks that would only mean something to Harry’s eye, and ought to be too pale for anyone looking down from the house to notice. The more information they conveyed to him, the more Harry felt his smile warp and stretch and twist across his face.

            And Malfoy thought he was so clever.

            There were wards here that would detect any sound made in the grounds and funnel it directly to one of several rooms in the Manor—Harry couldn’t tell which ones, but he assumed the chambers or wings that Malfoy spent the most time in—and wards that would Transfigure any animal in the gardens into one of several battle-capable magical creatures, and wards that would bring sharp spikes out of the ground or down from the air, an innovation Harry hadn’t seen before. Not to mention small, neat hexes in the realms of fire and ice, and spells that would snatch stolen objects back out of visitors’ pockets, and any number of curses that could render a human into a decorative stone statue or piece of wrought iron fencing.

            It would be interesting, Harry thought as he rose to his feet under the Cloak and stared at the strutting white peacocks that could become stalking tigers in an instant, if Malfoy was responsible for kidnapping as well as theft. How many people stood in his gardens as statues now, or were part of his fence?

            “Boo.”

            The word came from right behind him. Harry seized iron control of himself, and that alone kept him from leaping into the air. He turned around and nodded at Malfoy, pulling his Cloak off his head. “You have better perceptions than I thought you did,” he said, tucking the Cloak over his arm. No sense in hiding it when Malfoy knew it existed. “To see through a Cloak like that.”

            “I didn’t see through it,” Malfoy said, and a muscle near his mouth twitched. “That’s the whole point of an Invisibility Cloak, isn’t it? That one can’t see through it?”

            When Malfoy played stupid innocent like this, it most definitely meant he was up to something that he didn’t want anyone to know about. Harry stared back at him, his Auror mask, the one that he used for harder interrogations than the Linton one, firmly in place, and suddenly Malfoy took a step back and laughed. The laugh was like the coming of spring.

            Don’t think things like that, Harry snarled at himself. You don’t know what the fuck he could do to you if he wanted. You know what the fuck he is, though, and you have no reason to forget that.

            “Harry,” Malfoy said, and he had calmed down and was beaming at Harry with a stupid, rapturous expression. “I always know exactly where you are. Exactly. You can’t hide from me.”

            Damn it. Harry knew he shouldn’t have worn the same robes on this expedition that he’d been wearing the other day when Malfoy found him in the Leaky Cauldron. No doubt he’d put a tracking spell on them, and Harry didn’t find it.

            It would have to have been a good one, to fool the wards on his house into ignoring its presence, but that didn’t matter. Harry should still have found it. No reason to blame Malfoy or Thorin when it was easier to blame himself.

            Malfoy leaned forwards, as if something about his latest volley hadn’t gone to his satisfaction and he wanted a better look at Harry’s face. “What’s the matter with you? I would expect a smart answer to that by now.” He paused, then added, “Or a dumb one. I wouldn’t want to tax your efforts.”

            “There’s no reason for me to give you what you expect,” Harry said, and decided that he might as well drop a phrase from Linton’s letters into the mix. Did Malfoy know yet how much evidence they had on him, how serious the hunt was this time? He must not, or he wouldn’t have dared come so close to Harry and say such incriminating things. “Don’t you thrive on ‘what’s least expected, what throws you into the air and shows you that you always land on your feet’?”

            Silence. Malfoy’s eyebrows crept up towards his hairline. Holding his gaze, Harry found that he felt strange, as though he had made a promise and then broken it, or as if Malfoy had done the same thing.

            Then Malfoy blinked, and laughed again, and the gaze released him. “Well, yes, I do,” Malfoy said, as if admitting to a minor bad habit, like smoking a low-class brand of tobacco. “But, following in the traces of the conversations we’ve had so far, I wouldn’t have expected you to oblige me with that, either. What reason should you have to want to see me thrive?”

            This was it, the only chance Harry thought he would ever have to explain to Malfoy why he didn’t want to chase him. He folded his arms and maintained his silence so long that Malfoy stopped shifting from foot to foot.

            “I want to see you thrive as what I know you can be,” Harry said quietly. “Intelligent and good at potions and someone who’s learned from your mistakes. You told me you had after the trial, and, fool that I was, I believed it. I was sure that you would make a life for yourself that had nothing to do with blood purity nonsense or the kinds of crimes that your father committed under Voldemort.” There, a minute flinch cracked the perfect surface of Malfoy’s composure. Harry wasn’t surprised. If all this bad behavior came from unhealed war wounds, references to Voldemort would surely still usnettle him. “But you didn’t. You decided that the Dark Arts and illegal potions were for you, not the legal ones that I know you could have made extra Galleons brewing, if you needed extra Galleons. Yes, I wanted you to thrive. But you disappointed me.”

            Silence stretched between them, and Malfoy blinked once and then again. Harry watched closely, but of course there was no remorse in those eyes, only more of the silence, the shock that someone would dare question the choices he’d made and the chances he took.

            Then Malfoy moved. He tried to slam Harry up against the wrought iron gates, but Harry always knew exactly how far he was from the wards at all times and didn’t allow himself to be pinned. He moved to the side instead and tried to hook his foot around Malfoy’s ankle, to trip him and make him fall.

            Malfoy had a knife in his hand again, but he didn’t make it dance along his knuckles this time. He avoided Harry’s strike as Harry had avoided his, and threw the knife instead. Harry grabbed the knife out of the air, half-turning to the side and feeling the blade catch in the trailing sleeve of his robe as he did so.

            “Careful, Malfoy,” he said mildly, turning around. “That’s assault on an Auror, the very crime I assumed you wouldn’t be eager to commit the last time we met.”

            “Assume,” Malfoy said, the croak of his voice crow-like. “Yes, that’s all you do about me. All this—I thought you were one of the only people who saw me as I am, but all you can do is stare at me through a misty maze of tears. You want me to be Gryffindor, don’t you? You want me to be innocent. A scared little boy, not the man I’ve grown into. Well, I won’t be your symbol of innocence, Harry Potter.” Harry finally focused his eyes again, and saw Malfoy standing in front of him with his arms folded and his gaze hard as hooves. “Everything I’ve chosen has been for myself, not in the shadow of my father, and I intend to keep it that way.”

            “It really doesn’t matter how we see each other,” Harry said, and his voice was still calm, and although his cheeks were flushed, Malfoy was the one with the face that looked worse, the one breathing hard, the one whose hands would form fists shortly. “What matters is what you’ve done.” He tossed the knife to Malfoy, and he caught it with a fine flash of his hands that made Harry take note. He was fast in battle, but he thought Malfoy might be close to his speed. “And if I find proof that you stole those opals, that you trained Linton, that you’ve sold potions and done all sorts of other things that we suspected you for, you’re going to Azkaban for a long, long time.”

            Malfoy again stopped, as though Harry had said something as devastating as last time. His gaze sought Harry’s face. Harry didn’t move, didn’t alter his stance or the expression he wore. What he said had been pure truth, and if Malfoy didn’t like it, perhaps he should have chosen some path that didn’t involve the Dark Arts.

            Malfoy smiled.

            The mask of the last few minutes cracked and fell away. Harry found himself taking an uncertain step backwards. He hadn’t meant to, but abruptly it seemed as though he was the one who was on the retreat, and Malfoy who pressed forwards, shining.

            I don’t think like this. Shining like what? Why am I retreating, when Malfoy is the one who’s in the wrong and we both know it?

            Harry shook his head and put his hand on a small steel chain in his pocket that was meant to slice through enchantments that might be caused by smashing a potion on the ground and letting the fumes fly into the victim’s nostrils. He felt no different when his hand touched it, though. Malfoy’s gaze still made his blood tingle, and his face flush as that changed blood rushed into it.

            “You don’t understand a thing,” Malfoy whispered. “What matters is what I’m doing now, isn’t it, not the crimes in the past?”

            “An Auror can only investigate a crime after it’s happened, Malfoy,” Harry said, but his voice didn’t have the heaviness that he wanted it to have, a weight borrowed from Thorin. He sounded as though he stood on the tilting deck of a ship with the wind blowing in his ears, and he gave a single, rapid shiver.

            Malfoy saw it, and he smiled with one half of his face, eyes so intent on Harry that they hurt. “But if you can find out a crime is going to happen, then you can stop it,” he whispered. “And at the moment, I’m in the middle of planning a theft far more valuable than those opals. Do you believe it? Will you let me help you trap me?”

            “There’s no way that you would want to trap yourself,” Harry snapped, and used that undeniable truth to recover his balance. Really, he was as foolish as Ron sometimes said he was when watching his obsession with Malfoy, to let the bastard take him off-guard like this. And to let Malfoy catch Harry spying outside his gates, as well! It was nonsense. Harry should be a better Auror than this. He was scolding Malfoy for his imperfections, but what would happen if he did so poorly in the investigation that he utterly failed to stop Malfoy from carrying off this theft he was talking about?

            If that was real after all, and not a delaying tactic.

            Harry met Malfoy’s eyes, and his suspicion that the theft Malfoy talked about probably wasn’t real died a violent death. There was too much conviction there, and too much mad delight. Of course there was. Malfoy thought he was luring Harry closer to him, there to turn him against the Ministry. He was arrogant enough to think he could pull that turning off, where no one else had ever succeeded in corrupting or bribing Harry before.

            So. Real theft. Harry only had to watch out for it and prevent it from succeeding. And Malfoy would probably trap himself, leave clues all over the place for Harry to “find” and…end up making it easier to prove that he was a thief and had knowledge of the Dark Arts. Harry sighed.

            Because it was in his nature to give criminals a chance to surrender, he tried one more time. “You know that we’ll capture you in the end, Malfoy. You took risks, and one of them didn’t pay off. You could surrender and tell us everything that we want to know, and save yourself a lot of expense and trouble.”

            Malfoy bounded forwards, and ended up a few inches away from Harry. Harry kept himself from flinching. His heartbeat did speed up as he remembered how isolated Malfoy Manor was from the nearest wizard dwellings, and what Malfoy might be able to do to him up here without anyone else knowing of it…

            It took Harry a moment to distinguish Malfoy’s hoarse words from the pounding of his heart. “You ought to know better than that. If I take risks, and you think them useless ones, well, this is just one more. But I take risks because they make me feel alive, and this is the best one. The thing I’m going to steal—I’ve wanted it for a long time. I’ve waited, I’ve trained and made ready, and now I’m finally sure that my skill level matches my ambition.”

            Harry let his teeth show in return. He longed to seize Malfoy’s wand and arrest him immediately, but Malfoy could always laugh and claim he had been joking when they got to the Ministry, and at the moment, Harry had no legal cause to use Veritaserum. What would seal the investigation was catching Malfoy in the act of stealing.

            But in the meantime, every memory Malfoy gave him was more grist for the Pensieve, another link in the shackles. Harry didn’t have a confession yet; Thorin wouldn’t let him take these intense whispers as one. But when the day came, Harry could lay those words out and show how everything had led him up to the moment when he caught Malfoy with the jewels or the keys or the Galleons in his hand.

            Which led Harry to wonder what Malfoy would want to steal that he hadn’t already taken at least a chance at trying to obtain.

            “You’re not paying attention to me, Harry. I don’t like that.”

            And Malfoy lunged forwards and kissed him on the lips, light and quick and chaste and yet burning, and danced away from Harry with a mocking laugh.

            He vanished. Harry felt the anti-Apparition wards open like relaxing fists, and was sure that they had snatched Malfoy back behind the walls and inside his home.

            As if in a dream, Harry reached up and touched his lips, shaking his head.

            That’s who I’m dealing with. A daredevil, someone who’s let his own talents go to his head and believes he won’t ever be caught.

            I’ll have to show him better. In the end, I run everyone to ground.
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