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The Auror Method	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7771 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Three—Curving Up
            “Mask? Mask, is that you?”
            Draco could find his tolerant smile fairly easily, when he was dealing with someone like the young man who had almost given Gringotts into his hand. “Yes,” he admitted, dipping his head and crowding close to the fireplace so he could whisper. And so that the edges of the black velvet mask he wore, lined with silver around the eyeholes and nose, wouldn’t flip up and reveal anything of his face that he didn’t want revealed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to you for a few days. The goblins were onto me.”
            “No, really?” Jared Mindmirror came close to the fire on his side, eyes flaring. He was a handsome enough young man, black hair and grey eyes and half-blood, that Draco found he had no trouble playing his role as the mentor who admired the young man’s “innate talents” with “money-making magic” enough to offer him an apprenticeship. “I didn’t think I did anything that could have betrayed you! I’m sorry!”
            Perhaps the most irritating thing about Jared was his tendency to speak almost exclusively in exclamation points and question marks. “It was nothing you did,” Draco said soothingly. “A few people interfering where they shouldn’t have been, convinced they needed to protect the goblin stranglehold on wizarding wealth.”
            “They did?” Jared was all but bouncing on his heels now, and Draco’s mask hid a grimace. If his plan did get betrayed, and not through his mysterious enemy who somehow knew he was persuading Jared to hand over goblin secrets, then it would probably falter because of Jared’s noisiness during what were supposed to be clandestine conversations. “That’s terrible! Who was it?”
            Draco shook his head. “Just the usual pure-blood suspects, the ones who think that all goblins should have dominion over the money of all wizards. Malfoy, Greengrass, the like.”
            “It’s still terrible!” Jared leaned forwards, getting his head under the curve of the fireplace and revealing the short stature that marked him as half-goblin and trusted to work in the bank. “What can I do to help?”
            “Give me the last few spells on the vaults as quickly as you can,” said Draco, not needing to try to sound grim. “We need to make sure that we have at least some money beyond their control as quickly as we can.” He grinned. “And to make it better, I’ll take money mostly from the pure-blood vaults as a demonstration of what we can accomplish, before I put it back.”
            “That’s good!” said Jared, with a firm nod. “We need to have control of our own finances!”
            “We do,” said Draco, and thought, With a different definition of “we,” you poor bastard. “Now. What about those last few spells? Were you able to write them down for me?” He knew Jared knew what they were. This whole campaign of seduction, from the time that “Mask” had contacted a young, bored half-goblin and whispered that the goblin control of money in Gringotts was tyranny and they needed to fight against it, had been aimed at actually getting Jared comfortable enough to tell him what those spells were.
            “I did better than that,” said Jared, and beamed at him. The subdued sentence should really have told Draco what was coming, he acknowledged later. “I memorized them myself! So I can come with you!”
            Draco hid a groan, and sighed. “But that would involve putting you in danger, Jared. The mentor isn’t ever supposed to do that with his apprentices.”
            “But I want to go with you! I have talents, you said so! I can help you right on the front lines!”
            “I could never forgive myself if something happened to you,” Draco said simply. Except getting reprimanded by your superiors once they figured out that you were the one who betrayed their defenses. “I’m sorry, Jared, but I can’t allow it.”
            Jared folded his arms and looked around. “Then I won’t tell you what the final spells are, Mask!”
            Draco sighed again. “Then I suppose that I’ll just have to go in and try to free the money anyway. This goal is more important than a single life.” As Jared swung around with his mouth open, he added, “I’m glad to see that you feel the same way. So the next you hear of me will be showing the goblins how easy it is to breach their defenses, and how they’re better off letting some wizards into positions of influence over their money. Or perhaps you’ll be the one to find my body.”
            “I couldn’t stand that,” Jared whispered, and buried his head in his hands.
            Draco waited for a moment in a posture that implied he was turning away. Then he faced the fireplace again and gently shook his head, making sure that he was still shaking it when Jared looked up. “It’s all about what needs to be done,” he said. “About goals bigger than ourselves. Not what one person can or can’t stand.”
            “But you need my help. You said so.”
            Draco glanced at the floor and shrugged. “But you’ve chosen to sacrifice helping me to childish ideas and grudges. I’m afraid that I can’t count on you anymore.”
            Jared gave a hysterical gulping sound that had heralded a flood of tears in the past. Draco had been able to stop him with a harsh word then; he would probably be able to do the same thing now. But instead, he waited, and Jared brushed away incipient tears and nodded to him.
            “You’re right, Mask. This is bigger than any of us. We’re going to set up our own bank, and the goblins can’t stop us.”
            Draco gave Jared a full-on, approving smile, not least because of the lack of exclamation points. “Exactly. Now, can you tell me what the final spells are, and in such glowing detail that I don’t even have to write them down? I’ll remember them just from the way you tell them to me.”
            Jared blushed and looked up at him. “Well, fine. On the Malfoy vault are…”
*
            “Where did you go?”
            Draco looked up at Potter, who was standing in the doorway of his bathroom with his arms folded. “Here,” he said, and yawned, and took another drink from the heavy crystal cup that sat on the side of his sink. “Sometimes I really have to piss, you know. Comes from the pressure on the bladder from the bad leg.” He picked up the cane, which had been leaning against the wall, and nodded to Potter. “And now I’m for bed.”
            “You weren’t in the bathroom,” Potter persisted. “I knocked on the door and called you, and you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t hear any stream of pissing, either. You went somewhere else, you must have.” Potter’s face was slightly red, his hand gripping his wand. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is with someone trying to kill you?”
            Merlin, he sounds like Jared. Draco hated having to drop his eyes and cower in front of someone who was abusing him like this, but it was what his persona would do. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
            “Didn’t want to tell us what?” Potter’s voice was quieter now, and he had advanced near enough to meet Draco’s eyes on the level, at least if he stooped. “Anything that matters to the case…”
            “This doesn’t matter to the case, except affecting how well I can run if I need to,” said Draco, and let a blush overspread his face as he looked away. “I’m sick, Potter, not just injured or depressed. The disease means that I have to use the bathroom. A lot.” He gestured to the loo, which was indeed full, the result of a nonverbal charm Draco had become proficient in. “And I have convulsions sometimes.”
            Potter strode right up to him. Draco cringed, until he realized what Potter was doing: digging his fingers into Draco’s hair and tilting his head. “Are you injured? Did you hurt your head at all? Scalp injuries bleed even when they’re shallow.”
            Draco blinked at nothing in the sideways position Potter was holding his head, then sighed. “They’re minor convulsions, Potter. I’m probably dignifying them too much even calling them that. What they mostly mean is that I jig and shake a bit, and then fall asleep. Or unconscious, if you will. I was sitting…I was sitting on the loo and asleep, and I didn’t hear you calling me.” Draco knew his blush was hot enough now to consume most of his face. “I’m sorry to be talking about it like this, it’s so embarrassing.”
            “It’s not embarrassing,” Potter said in a surprisingly gentle voice, and tilted Draco’s head this time so that Draco was looking at him. “If I’d known you had this sickness, we would have made other arrangements for your protection. We still might have to make them. What happens if your enemy attacks while you’re unconscious and can’t run away?”
            “Well, yes, that’s what I meant when I said that it would affect my running speed,” Draco said, peacefully. He had slipped out of the bathroom down a secret passage that led from there to the disused room in the north wing of the Manor where he usually contacted Jared. “But you don’t need to trouble yourself at all, Potter. I think you’ve already troubled yourself enough.”
            “This is my job, Malfoy. And believe me, I’ve protected plenty of people with more embarrassing problems, and who tried to obstruct us more.” For a second, his fingers dug more into Draco’s hair as if he was remembering those people.
            Draco decided that now was the best way to test some of those conclusions he had come to about Potter earlier. He moaned a little, and Potter moved a hasty step away. Only Draco’s grip on the cane saved him from crashing to the floor. “What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”
            “Quite the opposite,” Draco said, and buried his flaming face in his hands.

            Potter paused, then came towards him. “I didn’t intend to do that, either,” he whispered as he knelt beside Draco. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you’re no longer the boy I despised so much in school.”
            Draco sniffled into his hands, and did his best to lift his head a little. “It’s not your fault,” he insisted valiantly, scrubbing at his face. “How could it be your fault?”
            “I want to be clear, so there are no misunderstandings,” said Potter, his face and voice desperately earnest and noble. “I can’t date or sleep with people I protect. I did it once, and it was the worst mistake of my life.”
            Draco was glad that his hands were wrapped around his cheeks, so his jaw couldn’t drop open. He had never heard that gossip. What in the world was wrong with his spy network, that they had never thought to pass such delicious rumors on to him?
            Potter was, meanwhile, pursuing his misguided mission of trying to make Draco feel better. “I know you’ve changed, and tonight was my reminder of that, if I needed one. I don’t want you to think that you need to subdue your natural reactions around me or change who you are because of me. I just won’t be responding, that’s all.”
            Draco made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sniffle or anything Potter wanted to take it as, and then leaned back and looked up at him. “I understand,” he whispered. “Thank you for being so clear and honest. It helps me greatly.” It at least helped him estimate Potter as an opponent, and think that it probably wasn’t real stupidity that had handicapped him in the past, in battle with some people Draco knew as competitors or colleagues. They had mistaken intense devotion to a code of Gryffindor principles for lack of general intelligence.
            Draco still thought the code of Gryffindor principles could be rather stupid, himself, but he wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it was always so.
            “Good.” Potter pressed lightly down on his shoulder, then glanced around the bathroom. “Auror Mytherian will be on guard outside your door for the first part of tonight, until two-o’clock. Then we’ll switch, and I’ll be there.”
            “You’re not going to be near me all night?” Draco was rather proud of the gasping choke he introduced into his voice, and the pathetic hand that reached up towards Potter. “But I trust you more than I trust Auror Mytherian!”

            Potter shot him another keen glance. “I thought you knew. We discussed this earlier. One of us will be outside your bedroom door, and one inside. It’s just that we’ll switch positions so that we don’t fall into too established a routine. Both of us will be awake all night.”
            Draco nodded and let his eyes convey his relief, while he kept his laughter inside.
            The perfect opportunity to seduce Potter, noble principles and all. He certainly doesn’t have any trouble touching me. And having him stand next to my bed…
            For a moment, Draco considered whether Potter would tell Auror Mytherian if Draco did seduce him, since he seemed so committed to honesty. Then he snorted a little.
            It wouldn’t matter if he did. Mytherian would report the incident, and rid me of part of the problem. Or he would keep silent and try to figure out a way to use the information against Potter later. And that will be after they’re out of the Manor and away from me.
            “Is something wrong with your throat?” Potter had heard the snort, and reached towards him.
            “Not at all,” said Draco blandly, and grasped the cane to help him to his feet. “I am tired, though. Can we go to bed now?”
            Potter’s eyes narrowed a little at the innuendo, but all he did was nod and lead Draco to his room.
*
            Draco leaned back into the embrace of his bed—wide, white, fluffy, with pillows piled up at the head and edged in lace, as befitted his assumed personality—and sighed. Potter gave him a curious glance, which Draco thought was tinged with envy, as he paced slowly around the bedroom, setting up wards and charms and traps. Draco watched out of the corner of one eye, but the information he could gather was limited; Potter performed most of his incantations nonverbally.
            “Is it that comfortable?”
            Draco twisted himself around and gave Potter a whimsical smile. “Well, a lot of it is being able to get the weight off my bad leg, you see,” he whispered. “But I’m surprised. Does someone who could surely buy anything he wants deny himself the pleasure of a nice, big bed?”
            Potter smiled slightly. “I don’t see much point in buying what I’d rarely get to sleep in.”
            “You have that many calls on your time?” Draco folded his arms behind him on the pillow and gave Potter an expression of absolute wonder that he didn’t have to feign. Potter had seemed able to command his time to him, to choose his cases, although up until that point Draco had assumed that was a function of his status as the Boy-Who-Lived rather than any inherent competence as an Auror. Perhaps not, though.
            “Yes,” said Potter simply, but he had turned around and stood with his back to Draco, gazing towards the door. “You don’t have to worry, though. I can concentrate on cases, and while that business with Elian Greengrass-Rosier might have given you a poor idea of me, you’ll be my primary charge for as long as you need protection.”
            “It didn’t concern me,” Draco said, and made his voice as gentle as a wind swaying grass. “It impressed me.”
            Potter twisted back to him, one eyebrow raised. “Well, it’s good to know that you’ll trust me to fight for you.”
            “More than that,” Draco said, and let his eyes linger and burn. “I would trust you with every part of me.”
            Then he turned away again and wrapped one arm around his head, sighing. “I’m sorry. I forgot that you don’t want to hear something like that from me. I promise I’ll be quiet.”
            Potter said nothing. The silence settled on the room, and Draco knew that he needed to do something else, that innuendos by themselves weren’t enough to make Potter abandon his annoying self-righteous stance and come to bed with him.
            Draco moved his arm gently up under his pillow until his wand was aimed at his temple—but with his pillow in the way, Potter would have a lot of difficulty seeing that. Then he whispered the incantation of a certain spell he hadn’t used in a long time, and then mainly for revenge against difficult people.
            He fell asleep smiling, a swift, sweet, natural sleep that he knew would be broken later on that night. But breaking it was the plan, after all.
*
            “Malfoy!”
            Draco came awake thrashing and gasping. Potter was standing over him, his wand lit and his expression strained.
            “Are you all right?” Potter was sweeping the bed with a professional gaze. “You were groaning as if you were in pain. Are you subject to nightmares usually? If not, we have to consider the possibility that this was a sorcerous attack from your enemy.”
            Draco felt the blush lighting his face on fire, but even that was a natural consequence of the spell. “It wasn’t a nightmare,” he whispered, and drew his robes tighter around his groin. “It was—a natural occurrence. But I do need to cast a Drying Charm.”
            Potter certainly understood him, but he couldn’t keep his eyes flickering down to the wet patch on Draco’s groin anyway. Then he blushed himself and nodded. “It’s nearly time for me and Auror Mytherian to switch places,” he murmured. “I’ll alert him, and he can escort you to the bathroom if you’d like.”
            “Thank you,” said Draco, not trying to disguise the huskiness in his voice that the Wet Dream Charm usually created.
            Potter turned away. Draco watched the stiffness in his back muscles and smiled. First point to me, I think.
*
paigeey07: Or at least thinks he’s deceiving everyone, anyway!
Kit: Thanks!
SP777: Draco thinks so, too.
Tommy-Lane: Mytherian makes his first big move in the next chapter.
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The Auror Method