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The Conservation of Fame	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22392 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three--Arguments in the Garden
"You must be someone important, to be protected by such powerful wards."
Harry glanced up. He'd spent some time working in the garden, while Malfoy rested on what Harry had Transfigured into a comfortable chair from its ordinary form as a white bench. Harry had thought he was still asleep. Even if he hadn't been very deeply wounded, Malfoy was still in shock. He could doze in the sunlight for the rest of the afternoon, and Harry would make dinner for them both. It was a good plan.
Malfoy being Malfoy, of course, he had woken up early and lay there with his hands pillowed on his stomach, watching Harry with sleepy eyes that still shone. Harry reminded himself not to let his guard down. Malfoy might think he wanted the answers to his questions, but he would be more humiliated in the end, knowing that his worst enemy still alive had seen him so weak.
"Coward, remember?" Harry answered lightly. "I have the wards because of my cowardice, because I don't want to face up to the perils of the world." He stood up and rubbed his hands together so that the dirt could fall back into the flowerbeds, keeping a careful eye on Malfoy all the while.
Malfoy snorted lightly. "You don't act like a coward."
"What do you mean?" Harry checked the angle of the sun and floated out the next dose of the simple potion for healing pain and fatigue that had been the first one he learned how to brew. Malfoy accepted the cup and swallowed it without blinking. Well, if he did still brew, Harry thought, he was probably used to tasting worse concoctions than this.
"I mean that you don't act afraid as you move around the house," Malfoy said, cocking his head, eyes opening wider as he studied Harry. He had eyes of a very nice, pale grey. Harry noticed that, and then damned himself for noticing. "You trust in the wards more than someone with true cowardice would."
"I've had time to get used to them, and start thinking of myself as safe." Harry shrugged and floated the cup back to the kitchen sink, where it joined the tray from last night. He had decided that he was in the mood, after arguing with Malfoy, to sit in front of the fire and drink and relax instead of wash dishes. "That doesn't change the fact that I was a coward in the war."
He had practiced those lies in front of a mirror, and in front of Hermione's judging eye, until he was good at them, and could speak of them like any other tossed-off fact of existence. So he knew he hadn't blushed or stammered the way he used to when he lied, and Malfoy had no reason to drill him with a stare that seemed to be trying to get through his skull.
"Liar," Malfoy whispered, voice full of wonder. "Why do you persist in deceiving me, when you also claim that we never met before? And when I know that I know you, but not from where?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "If you keep accusing me of lying, then we aren't going to get along very well," he snapped, and brushed past Malfoy roughly to go inside and fetch him another blanket. Sunlight or not, Malfoy was shivering.
"I'm only telling the truth," Malfoy called from behind him, leaning forwards so far that Harry thought he would fall out of the chair when he looked back. "A habit you might consider taking up."
Harry shook his head firmly and brought the blanket back, wrapping Malfoy up until he stopped shaking. Malfoy smiled drowsily at him, apparently taking Harry's silence for the warning it was--that he didn't intend to talk any more right now--and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, shutting his eyes.
But he did murmur, before he went to sleep, "You might as well tell me. I'm going to find out in the end anyway."
Harry rolled his eyes again and turned his back, digging firmly in the soil until he had a hole of the proper depth to transplant the young sapling he'd decided to move. Behind him, Malfoy's soft snores made a gentle background to his work.
*
Harry crouched down in front of the shimmering, seared line where his wards touched the ground outside his home, largely invisible unless one was looking for it, and cast yet another detection spell. It glowed to life as a lightning bolt that spread out in several jagged directions, flickered with blue-green light for a second, and then vanished.
Harry sat back, closed his eyes, and swore in the several languages he'd started studying since he went into hiding. He only knew that his wards had been damaged by an attack the night Malfoy came in, that Malfoy had somehow come through them, and that the damage had been fully healed.
In other words, the same thing every single other detection spell had told him when he cast it.
He stood up and cast several new spells at the nearby gentle downs, every one of which came back negative. If Malfoy's enemies lurked and watched them, there was no sign of it. If they had left any visible trace on the landscape the night of the attack, there was no sign of it. If they had come near enough for Harry's tracking wards to catch a glimpse of them and retain an image, an idea Harry had borrowed from Muggle security cameras...
There's no sign of it.
Discouraged, Harry flung up the usual glamour that concealed his Apparition and then Apparated back inside the wards, rather than stepping through them. No use revealing to an unseen watcher who might not know he lived here that, yes, there was a house behind that hazy shimmer.
"Anything?"
Harry started. Malfoy was out of both bed and the chair, and stood leaning on the wall of the front garden, cocking his head at Harry as if he assumed that Harry had hurried back specifically to tell him the news.
"No," Harry said, and surveyed Malfoy. Yes, his face was less pale and his hands were curled gently on top of the wall, not gripping it for strength. Then Harry would be as forthright. "Who was chasing you?"
Malfoy lost his faint smile in seconds, and shook his head. "Some of it I don't remember," he said, "and the rest I can't tell you."
Harry snorted, hopped up on the wall, and then hopped down inside the garden again. "That's one kind of honesty," he said. "But if I don't have any idea who was chasing you, then that means I don't know what kind of weapons they have, and I have no idea if my wards can protect you, and I don't know how you got through them in the first place and whether someone else might exploit the vulnerability." He walked at a brisk pace towards the kitchen.
Malfoy kept up with him easily. "I can tell you this much," he said, as he stood in the doorframe watching Harry get lunch ready. "I was heading for a place of safety. And I know that my enemies didn't have any idea where it was."
Harry clenched his teeth and looked up at the ceiling. "So you said before," he muttered, when he could speak and take out his violence on the sandwiches he was putting together instead of Malfoy. "But you shouldn't have had any idea where my house was, either. So one of your enemies might still be able to follow you, if they happened to cast the same spell." He turned around and stared at Malfoy, while his hands followed the familiar steps of piling cheese on slices of tomatoes he'd grown himself and capping the whole thing with a slice of a ham he'd traded with a Muggle farmer for. "So. What was the spell you used to get in here?"
Malfoy's eyelids drooped, and he looked away. "I'll tell you if you tell me something," he said.
"Bargaining when it's your life on the line?" Harry hit the edge of the counter. "You have more reason to tell me, so I can help you, than I have to reveal anything."
Abruptly, Malfoy gave him a bright laugh and looked back around, his face shining when Harry sneaked a glance at him. "Never mind," Malfoy said. "I'll tell you, because you've answered my questions with the way you were acting. I was about to ask why you considered yourself a coward, but you're not. The way you went out this morning to inspect the wards when someone could have been hiding there, and the way you stand up to me. You're not. That was a lie, and now that I know it, I can proceed to discover what else you're hiding."
"You think you're formidable enough to prove me brave?" Harry mumbled, but he grimaced. Damn it, he'd forgotten to act his part around Malfoy. But Malfoy squirmed under his skin and bit him like a bug, always had.
"Harry," Malfoy said, his eyes glinting with the kind of humor that Harry couldn't help suspecting his Slytherin friends usually saw. "Stop lying. You're not very good at it-- not because you haven't practiced, I can tell you have, but because what you are shines through anyway, the way that a torch would if you tried to hide it under a basket."
"The torch would set the bloody basket on fire," Harry grumbled. "Keep that in mind, if you don't want to be surrounded by flames and screams."
Malfoy jerked straight, and stared at him. "Flames..." he whispered.
Fuck me, Harry thought, barely resisting the temptation to hit himself in the middle of the forehead with one hand. He's searching for clues already, and then I only have to go and give him one!
But the worst thing he could do right now was to confirm Malfoy's reaction by acting as if it was important, so instead he blinked at Malfoy, turned away, and said, "Do you want mustard on your sandwich?"
There was a long moment when he thought it might not work. Malfoy was breathing hard behind him, just the way he had when he flung his arms around Harry's waist and clung for dear life--
And isn't this a nice way to find out that that memory could be arousing? Harry thought, clenching his teeth as his blood stirred.
But the moment passed, and Malfoy said softly, "How we know each other has something to do with fire. I'll remember that."
Harry shrugged. "You never answered the question about the mustard," he said, and when Malfoy didn't respond, turned around and looked at him. "Come on, Malfoy."
"I told you to call me Draco." Malfoy had gone back to lounging against the counter, his head bent as if he found the black-and-white checkerboard pattern of the kitchen floor fascinating, but he jerked up now and turned around to face Harry, his eyes as intense as the centers of diamonds.
Harry raised his hands. "Fine, Draco," he said. The more he thought about that, the more he thought it might be a good thing. It wasn't a name he had ever called Malfoy before, so the echoes of his voice pronouncing it would raise no memories. "But you need to tell me before I just dump all the mustard I can find on your sandwich, and follow it with garlic."
Malfoy blinked and stared. "Well," he said at last, sounding a little breathless, "wherever I know you from, it's not a restaurant. No one in the places I patronize would use condiments that unrefined."
"You just say that because you haven't tried the garlic soup I make," Harry said, deciding at the last second that mentioning Mrs. Weasley's name probably wasn't a good idea. "Anyway. Well?"
Malfoy regarded him for a few moments with the smile lingering around his mouth in a way that looked painful, then shrugged. "A little bit of mustard is fine."
Harry soberly tended to these instructions, and then handed over the sandwich. He wondered what Malfoy would say if he knew that he was eating food mostly grown and raised by Muggle methods, but saw no need to torture him with it. So Harry walked over to the kitchen table, and pulled out Malfoy's chair on the way. He didn't need to take the invitation and sit to eat with Harry, but he could if he wanted to.
Malfoy let out a little moan as he sat down and took the first bite. Harry shot a quick glance at him, and decided that he could have lived without hearing that sound, just as he could have without remembering the way Malfoy had clung on to him as they swooped above the burning Room of Requirement.
"This is extraordinarily good," Malfoy said, and then paused to lick a bit of juice that was trailing down his chin. He looked so different from how Harry had ever seen him look that he had to smile. Malfoy looked up, blinked, and then returned the smile with one of his own. "Perhaps I was wrong about meeting you in a restaurant after all."
Harry let his smile fade as he bit into his own sandwich, expertly keeping the tomato from dripping all over his face by the positioning of his fingers. "Will you give it a rest, Mal--Draco? I've helped you and done a few things that you asked. There's no need for you to figure out exactly who I am. You probably wouldn't like me if you knew the real me, anyway." There. He had never thought Malfoy the sort to refuse a warning like that. If anything, he would probably think someone who talked like that and didn't have a lot of money was vulgar.
"What about you is so objectionable?" Malfoy leaned back and propped one of his feet on Harry's lap. Harry pointedly moved to the side so that his foot crashed to the floor. Malfoy smiled as if the movement had told him something, but didn't try again. "As you said, you've helped me and done some of what I asked. Not as helpful as a house-elf, but they aren't good company, anyway."
"Neither am I," Harry said, and turned his hand over to show some of the dirt ingrained in the lines.
Malfoy looked at his palm as if he didn't know what he was supposed to be seeing, and then raised an eyebrow.
"I work," Harry said, tapping his fingers sharply on the table in front of Malfoy, so that the git jumped. "With my hands. And live behind wards, and don't have a lot of money, and don't associate with the sort of people you probably spend most of your life around." Not from their lack of trying, though. At the height of the madness, with hundreds of owls coming to Harry's house every day, it seemed he had received at least ten invitations to pure-blood parties every week, and many more proposals of alliance, financial backing, and loveless marriage than that. Apparently the parties were more exclusive. "Not exactly good company material."
"Someone who's shallow might think so," Malfoy said, and his eyes flashed. "I'm far from that." He splayed one hand out on the table as though he was going to invite Harry to wrestle with him. "Far from that," he repeated, eyes so bright that Harry could feel them burning.
Well, that's too bad, isn't it? Because I don't want him here, and he wouldn't want to be here either if he had the slightest memory of who I was. Harry leaned forwards until his face was a few centimeters away from Malfoy's. Malfoy coiled slightly back in his chair, raising his hands a single centimeter of his own.
Battle-trained, Harry thought. He didn't learn that in the war. The Unspeakable theory was becoming more and more likely.
"What vulgar behavior do I have to show to convince you?" Harry whispered. "Spit in your face? Urinate on your clothes?"
Unaccountably, Malfoy relaxed, and the light in his eyes brightened. "These are your clothes," he pointed out, and plucked at the white shirt he wore, a bit too big for him in the chest but tight across the shoulders.
"You're so literal," Harry said, relaxing back in his seat, too, and shook his head. "Anyway. What about if we just agree not to penetrate into each other's mysteries? You don't want to tell me how you got here. I don't want you to ask questions about me. That's a clear enough bargain."
"But I like...penetration," Malfoy murmured, looking at the moment as if he would never do anything but lounge in the chair over the remains of his sandwich, hands resting lazily on his knees and a half-smile on his face.
Harry choked, and was glad that he'd had only air in his mouth. "Fine," he said. "Then you promised to tell me what spell you used to get through the wards. Well?"
Malfoy's face wiped itself free of the grin, and he looked solemn. Not that Harry trusted that, he told himself. Malfoy was capable of looking like that and still joking around, or lying. Harry thought he knew Malfoy better now than he ever had in school, but that only revealed him as more dangerous, because more adult.
"It was a spell that's supposed to take the caster to the safest nearby place," Malfoy said at last, after a complicated pause. "No matter where it is, no matter what kind of protections it has. No matter if he knows where it is or not."
Harry scowled. "Are you stupid or what?" he snapped. "I know what you're talking about, and it's dangerous, experimental magic. It mingles willpower magic, and that's not a field they’ve studied much yet, with a traditional incantation, and the only way you can do it is to fling yourself into thin air and hope--what are you grinning about?"
"A non-cowardly gardener who's an expert in defensive magic and up on current magical theory," Malfoy murmured, standing and sweeping Harry a little bow. "You do present an intriguing puzzle." He leaned nearer, and Harry found himself holding his breath.
"One I would like to get to know a little better," he whispered against Harry's ear, and then sauntered out of the room.
Harry stuffed the entire rest of the sandwich in his mouth, and sulked.

*

moodysavage: Draco does know that something’s wrong. He has not the first clue what to do about it, though.

unneeded: Yes, the concept of the Boy-Who-Lived is still in people’s minds. And concept says, “Lightning bolt scar, bright green eyes, glasses.” Not every trait of Harry’s, the same way that a celebrity’s description doesn’t include everything about them, but the famous smile or eyes or hair.

Harry usually has them “returned to sender.”

SP777: Oh, by no means! You can send me the story idea if you like, though I can’t promise to use it.
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The Conservation of Fame