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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Three—Pounding on the Wards

            Draco found it unexpectedly easy to ignore the great blows that shuddered through both wards and Manor house as Harry went to work on them. When he had left here seven years ago, he had severed the connection to the wards, and his parents had completed the process with their forgetting of him. This was the place he should have inherited, but it wasn’t his anymore.

            Does that mean my name shouldn’t be Malfoy anymore?

            Draco firmed his jaw. No, he wouldn’t think about that right now. He had as much right to the name of Malfoy as his parents did. More, since he hadn’t decided that exiling his own blood from the family was the right thing to do. He would keep pressing forwards, for now, and taking the things he still wanted.

            He shrunk several Dark Arts books and dropped them into his pockets. Then he looked around the library for any sign of the artifacts that his parents had once kept here—nothing particularly valuable, but useful.

            He didn’t see them, but he did see something else, something that made him narrow his eyes and move towards the far shelves. He winced reflexively as the walls and floors jumped around him, but that was easier to get past when he didn’t brace for it. A quick breath, and it was already finished.

            Draco held up his hand and traced the complex pattern of silver and gleaming wards that covered the shelves. From a distance, he could have mistaken them for some of the silver instruments he had once seen in Dumbledore’s office, when called up there for a “talk” during his sixth year. Dumbledore had, Draco knew with hindsight, realized exactly what he was doing and wanted to give him an early chance to surrender. But Draco had walked away convinced he had managed to fool the Headmaster.

            He shook his head to dismiss the memories and studied the complex chain of wards again. They were small, but formed a grid, more angular than a spiderweb, tracing over the entire front space of the shelves. He had no idea what they were at first, but as he looked more and more closely at them, he began to suspect.

            Hiding wards. His father had mentioned them once, during a casual conversation that was meant to test Draco’s Dark Arts knowledge before he returned to Hogwarts for his fifth year. He hadn’t shown Draco how to cast them, merely talked about what they looked like and what they were useful for: concealing something behind them at any cost.

            No amount of force would break them.

            Draco smiled a little grimly and took his wand out. Along with mentioning their purpose, his father had also hinted at how to disarm them. Figuring out the various cryptic things he said was part of Draco’s test. He had done it at once, desperate to see the faint expression of pride gleam like winter sunlight on his father’s face.

            He could have mourned for the child he had been, the child who had not only thought that was a great treasure but had assumed his father would continue to value him forever.

            But Draco preferred to avenge that boy instead.

            He waited until the next blow was past, so that the sounds and jarring effects of the room shuddering couldn’t distract him. Then he aimed his wand at the wards and cast the Dark spell that wouldn’t break them. Instead, it would tell them that a wizard with a soul akin to the soul of the one who had cast them stood in front of them.

            “Carnificina.”

            The spell did nothing but form the slight image of a gallows in front of him, a puff of silvery mist that dissipated in the next instant. It couldn’t do more than that unless paired with stronger words that would make it an incantation instead of a greeting sign.

            But the hiding wards softened and thinned as the image did, and Draco stepped up to them and let his hand glide through. The wards were hiding Dark Arts books, in this instance. If they had been hiding something else, Draco would have had to prove that he had the soul of someone who would value it, not misuse it.

            That spell had merely shown that he would commit torture if he had to. It was Dark enough to allow him access.

            What he drew out wasn’t one of the usual tomes he remembered from his childhood, though, or even a grimoire that might have appeared during the Dark Lord’s occupation of the house. Instead, it was a staid blue volume with a golden design on the front. Draco recognized it as a natural philosophy book—rather like the ones that Newt Scamander had made famous, in sanitized form.

            Draco frowned as he flipped through the book. There was no marking he could find, and no sign that one page had been looked at more often than the others. Nor was there any sign that the writing might be a code, the book a glamour of disguise.

            Draco shook his head and shrank the book to put it in his pocket along with the others. It wasn’t for him to linger and decipher it here. Harry could only keep up the barrage on the wards so long. Draco had to move on and find out what evidence he could of Elder’s hiring.

            And see if there was anything else he wanted. He had got used to living without Malfoy money; what he wanted now was artifacts.

*

            “Your superiors at the Ministry would be interested in knowing what we do about you.”

            Harry smiled and didn’t take his eyes off the wards on the left side of the house that he’d been hitting with spells for the last ten minutes. There was no reason he had to. The Malfoys were still behind the wards. They would have to aim either over them to hit him, which would give him time to counter, or lower them, and then they would be as vulnerable to Harry’s wand as he was to theirs. “I’m sure they would,” he replied, and let go with another Blasting Curse that pounded down like heavy fists.

            Narcissa Malfoy stepped forwards. She had come out with her husband, but he stayed back. She was the one who gave him a slight bow. “Why have you returned?” she asked.

            Harry studied her. She had a long black scar twining around her throat, the result of that magical necklace’s explosion, but she looked better off than he would have thought she was. Then again, pure-bloods like the Malfoys would have money that could take care of unsightly marks.

            Harry decided that he might as well test her memory of his last visit, as long as he kept his eye on Lucius’s wand. “What do you remember of that visit?” he asked, swirling his wand back and forth as though he might be silly enough to try an attack on them. “My motivations?”

            Narcissa frowned and cast a glance back at Lucius. Lucius lifted his eyebrows. Harry saw a slight twitch of his chin that would probably be a headshake in normal people.

            Harry felt a sudden, fierce burst of pride and gratitude that Draco had escaped from them, and with his heart intact, along with the ability to actually express emotions, instead of walling them all up the way his parents did.

            Narcissa faced him again and made a slight, graceful gesture with one hand. “We do not know what you wanted. We did not then. We do not now.”

            Harry smiled and came a pace forwards. “Don’t you? We talked about it. I took something from you, something you blamed me for. You wanted it back so much that you allowed me inside the wards on a promise not to harm me while I was there. You really don’t remember, do you?” He laughed. “Would you believe I was so good at Memory Charms?”

            They didn’t, of course, but the ritual they had performed left them drowning in uncertainty either way. They stared at him, and finally Lucius took over the conversation, leaning in to say, “Will you tell us what it is?”

            “You have nothing I want in return,” Harry drawled. Except something you already gave me. But that line was reserved for an emergency, like them suddenly noticing that someone had gone into the house.

            “We might,” Lucius said. “The Malfoy name is not without influence.”

            Harry bit the inside of his cheek as though in consideration. “That’s true,” he said, long and slow. “But I don’t think you have any influence with Genevieve Edelstein.”

            “There are influences that have nothing to do with money or names,” Narcissa said. “We could bring some of them to bear.”

            “For my partner, too?” Harry asked, because he was curious to see their reaction. The papers hadn’t been sparing with their naming of names. Harry wondered if the ritual they had performed could stand up to a direct confrontation with the fact that one of the “renegade Aurors” was named Malfoy.

            “We know that the person with you is calling himself after our family,” Lucius said, a touch impatiently. “That makes it harder.”

            “Of course it does,” Harry said. “But in that case, I have no reason to give up the information I possess.” He turned back to the wards.

            “I did not say it was impossible, simply harder,” Lucius said, and moved forwards a step to bring himself back into Harry’s field of vision. “You will give up your assault on the wards if we intercede for you, as well as telling us what you were here for last time?”

            Harry had to give Lucius some credit for making those two separate prices. He paused, pretending to concentrate, licking his lips and blinking a little. Not too much, or he would probably make them suspicious.

            “I have to think it over,” he muttered as though fighting to convince himself. “Of course I have to think it over.”

            Lucius smiled at him, but the smile was deep around the edges, and Narcissa touched her hand to the scar around her neck behind him, as though a corner of her memory contained the fact that Harry had been there when it happened. “Do not think too long,” Lucius murmured, stepping back and bowing. “Or you may find that you have outlived our interest.”

            “Nice touch,” Harry murmured, and then nodded hastily when Narcissa stared at him. “All right, all right. This isn’t permanent, it can’t be,” he muttered, looking at his hands and around himself as though he was talking about his whole life on the run. “I can’t survive like this for very long.” It was a horrible lie, but the Malfoys would expect something as pathetic as this from him, so it didn’t matter.

            Lucius relaxed a little. “A good choice, Mr. Potter,” he said with a sharp nod. “You will give us your information first, of course.”

            “I’ve already stopped the assault on the wards,” Harry said. “That means half of my side of the bargain is done.” He smiled at Lucius. “Wouldn’t want to give you incentive to hang onto your influence forever. Now, I want you to give me names of people in the Ministry you’re going to contact about this.”

            Lucius and Narcissa bent their heads together, and the murmur of their voices would probably have been inaudible even without the wards. Harry didn’t really care, but he waited with an alert expression, and hoped they couldn’t see that his hands were slippery on his wand.

            Come on, Draco, find what you want and get out of there.

            “I will contact Montgomery,” Lucius said, turning towards him. “A master of hidden pressures, of secrets that others do not know. He will know what to do.”

            Harry felt a prickle race up his spine. Montgomery. Right. The name Jenkins gave us in her letter.

            “That will do,” he said, keeping his face calm and demure and trying to look as though he knew more than he really did. He watched Lucius turn back towards the house, thought of the way that he might spot Draco if he entered and Draco wasn’t warned, and cleared his throat. Lucius turned back towards him, his robes snapping around him as dramatically as Snape’s ever had.

            “Yes?” Lucius asked. “I was under the impression that you were anxious to have your name cleared.”

            “I want to know,” Harry said, and lowered his voice, moving closer to the wards, glancing over his shoulder. Narcissa leaned towards him in response, though Lucius maintained his distance. Harry fought to keep from grinning in relief and triumph. Good. “I want to know what you’ve got following me, too.”

            Narcissa exchanged a glance with her husband, her lips moving slightly. Lucius twitched his head in a slight shake. Harry wondered for a moment why it was so easy to read them, and then shrugged. He had probably learned something about the signals they used in watching Draco, who had been trained in the same school.

            “We have nothing following you,” Lucius said. “How could we? We had no idea that you would come back or where you were before now.”

            “But you have influences that have nothing to do with money or names,” Harry said, deliberately echoing what Narcissa had said a few minutes before. He folded his arms. “How do I know that you didn’t contact someone to come and hunt me down? I know that I’ve heard sniffing behind me. And I saw a shadow whisk away behind me when I started banging on your wards.”

            Narcissa raised a hand and caressed the scar around her throat, but dropped it when she saw Harry looking. “We did not hire anything,” she said, a trifle stiffly. “We did not cause anything to happen to you.”

            “But you might have caused something to track me,” Harry said. “That’s what I want to know about. Did you hint to a friend that you might like to have me taken care of? Someone who could hire out a creature to follow me?”

            Narcissa turned fully to face her husband this time. Harry couldn’t see her expression, and didn’t dare to lean around her so that he could. Lucius bowed his head as though he had to listen to Narcissa’s words from a closer distance than usual, but ended up twitching his chin in that subtle shake again.

            “We have no knowledge of what might have been following you,” Narcissa said, turning back to Harry. “Accept the help that we have already offered, and do not try to change the bargain at this point.”

            “All right,” Harry said, but as Lucius turned back to face the Manor again, he thrust his wand into the air and released a shining stream of red sparks.

            Lucius turned back towards him at once, his hand resting on the shaft of his wand. Harry gave him a faint smile and shook his head. “Did you think I came alone?” he asked, lying as brazenly as he had about the creature supposedly tracking him. “I have some friends watching at a distance. Red sparks mean I’m all right and that I succeeded in making a bargain with you instead of getting killed.”

            Narcissa leaned forwards with her hand on her throat again. “If you desire to get killed, then we can oblige you,” she hissed.

            Open threats? Really? Harry wondered if he was stupid for finding that so unsubtle. He’d spent too much time hanging out with Draco, that was certain. He smiled at her a little and said, “I don’t desire it. Don’t trouble yourself.”

            Narcissa turned her back to him and walked towards the Manor, her back perfectly straight and her strides so firm that Harry half-expected to see a house-elf appear behind her to turn the grass back to its perfectly trimmed self. But none did, and Harry watched her vanish into the Manor.

            Why does she keep touching that scar? I know she must have the memories of me from that time, at least. But you’d think someone who prided herself on her mask wouldn’t allow herself such an obvious nervous gesture.

            “You’ve spent enough time annoying my wife,” Lucius said quietly. “Wait here, Mr. Potter.” The weight of the tone was far more threat than Narcissa’s words.

            Harry just nodded back, and didn’t move as he watched Lucius go into the Manor, too. He had done what he could to warn Draco without inadvertently giving away that someone else was there. He would have to hope that Draco had seen the sparks and would understand.

*

            Draco began to move very fast once he caught sight of the rising, and then falling, fountain of red sparks through the nearest window.

            His father’s study had revealed nothing in the way of incriminating papers, and Draco had to admit that he had probably been foolish for hoping it would. His father wasn’t the sort to leave them lying in plain sight, or even lying in plain sight encoded.

            Draco had done what he could with Summoning and Searching charms, but too many cabinets were locked, and too many books were filled with thick pages in his father’s handwriting. He had searched for a few key terms on pages, but that had made every book in the room glow, and Draco had had to stop with a grimace. It seemed that the kind of authors his father read all favored the terms “plan,” “family,” “forgetting,” and “ritual.”

            Then had come his mother’s study, but there was little to nothing in it. That wasn’t the way Draco remembered it, and he had spent more time than he should have hunting among the plain wooden tables and plain green walls.

            He did find a round, discolored spot near one of the shelves, and he’d bent down to examine it when he saw Harry’s fountain of sparks.

            He straightened up with a curse and a shake of his head, and wheeled away from the spot to face the door. No evidence on when they had hired Elder, so far, or how. But they might have destroyed those papers along with everything else relating to him when they went through the ritual to forget him. Draco knew from his scholarship that most of the time, any documents that related to the child or sibling to be forgotten went into the fire.

            He was going to run through the study door and up to the library where he had come in, and wait for Harry to retrieve him through the wards. He was. He didn’t want Harry to think his warning had gone for nothing.

            But for some reason, Draco turned around and wheeled back to that spot on the wall, staring intently at it.

            There was something about it that he wanted to remember, or something that he hoped would trigger a memory. He stood there, his fingers cutting into his arms as he stared, wishing he had the time to drop his memory of the spot into a Pensieve and compare it with older memories of the room. Well, and that he had a Pensieve. That would help, too.

            Something, something that reminded him of another room with shelves all around him and something round on the wall…

            And then Draco reeled back, and cursed softly in shock, despite the elves who might hear him. Fuck. The spot hung exactly where there had been an enchanted mirror, ornamented with snakes, in his parents’ main library.

            He had shattered that mirror, the last time they were here. And in response, the necklace his mother wore around her neck, a thick band of coiled silver that Draco had never seen before he was exiled, had shattered, and Narcissa had fallen to her knees screaming. Harry had described the way Lucius stared at him, with hatred, and the blood flowing down Narcissa’s throat in consequence. His parents had thought Harry was responsible for it. Only an oath they had sworn to let Harry go unscathed protected him.

            It looked as though a similar mirror had hung here, at one point.

            Draco reached out and traced a hand up and over the circle on the wall, his heart pounding away the seconds in his ears, knowing that he was being stupid, but wanting, needing, to know what had happened here. His hand rose and fell and traced the circle, searching for some tingle of magic.

            Then he saw it, something small and shiny and embedded in the wall at the very edge of the dull circle.

            Draco Summoned it with a non-verbal incantation and turned to leave. He could hear footsteps moving through the corridors beneath him, too heavy and self-assured to be those of house-elves.

            A shadow flickered past the door of the library.

            Draco hissed beneath his breath and flattened himself to the wall. He didn’t think they had seen him, and there was a good chance that the spell they had used to forget about him wouldn’t let them really focus on him even if they did. But he didn’t want to take the chance that they would strike first at an unwanted intruder in their home and ask questions later.

            His mother’s voice came from what was perhaps a meter away. “And we promised that we would pay him back. We let him leave unharmed?”

            “Of course we don’t,” said Lucius’s voice, soft, precise. “Leave it to me to choose the means of our vengeance.”

            Draco swallowed. He heard his father’s footsteps move towards the door, and he added, as he began to step into the study, “I need to retrieve the shards you hid. That would be the most effective way to do it, and the most poetic.”

            Draco sneered as he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, far calmer than he had expected to be in his father’s immediate presence. Lucius had not always called it “poetic,” but even after the war, he seemed incapable of learning the lessons Draco had, that practicality was more important than the effect of something.

            Lucius walked over to the far wall beneath the window and bent down. Draco could see him tracing his wand in circles in the air, and a section of the cool green wall began to swing out, probably revealing a hidden cupboard.

            But Draco didn’t want to wait any longer. The window was the best exit, and it meant he would have to past his father. But he had to warn Harry, too. They hadn’t given up on taking revenge on Harry for, as they saw it, hurting Narcissa the last time he was here, and they wanted that more than they wanted whatever Harry had promised them—probably information to repair the holes the ritual would have left in their memories. Draco had no reason to stay here.

            He moved silently forwards until Lucius straightened up. He had cast a Shielding Charm on his hands, Draco noticed, and in the center of his palms lay bright, jagged shards. They glinted like the mirror glass Draco suspected they were.

            And Draco had come far enough that he could begin to move faster now. He did so, springing. Lucius turned, frowning, but the double barrier of the ritual he had performed and the Disillusionment Charm kept him, Draco thought, from seeing anything.

            Then Draco cast his own Shielding Charms on his body and jumped through the window.

            He heard the glass break around him, flying apart without cutting him. He heard Lucius’s startled shout. He twisted in midair and began to cast the Cushioning Charms that would make him bounce on the grass instead of hit it.

            Then he felt the curse that hit him in the back from Lucius’s wand, and the pain that spread all over his shoulders in seconds, in a web of blazing fire.

*

            delia cerrano: Thanks!

            SP777: Do you mean, why Morningstar feared Draco’s parents? She feared them because she knew that an encounter with Narcissa turned her twisted.

            And Harry has been an Auror for seven years, Draco for four. Harry was just finishing up training when Draco entered it.

            Rina: Cuthbert’s Corner is the safest refuge for them right now because no one else is going to demand it or think to look for them there, now that Jenkins and Warren have forgotten about it. If they can find some other place that’s as safe, they’ll go there.

            And yes, Harry does enjoy pounding on the wards.

            Harry and Draco are both close to thirty.
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity