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The Rising of the Stones	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13237 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Signs on the Giant’s Causeway

            Draco picked his way carefully across the tilting stones in front of him, down and down towards the sea. He’d looked over the causeway from the heights, and found no trace of Potter.

            He’d been reluctant to go closer to the water, because earth magic often dimmed in proximity to another element, and it made the most sense to Draco that Potter would want the strongest version he could get. But on the other hand, Potter at least had to have visited here. The tingle of the stones made Draco’s back teeth hum.

            He paused on a gleaming pale brown column above the sea, braced his hand, and looked down. White curls of foam ran up onto the stone beneath him, stroking and caressing. Draco sneered a little. There were Muggles here and there on the causeway—not that they could see him under the Disillusionment Charm he maintained—and nearly all of them avoided looking at the water.

            As if it would sense their fear and destroy them sooner. As if they might let a foot or hand slip when they were studiously Not Looking.

            Draco shook his head. He would never understand Muggles and their inability to admit the role chance played in their lives.

            He leaped lightly down and landed on a column that actually vibrated with the pounding of the waves. He balanced anyway, because this was the sort of thing training on a thin rope above conjured vipers was useful for, and cast another spell that ought to let him home in on Potter’s magical signature.

            The feel of it was so strong this time, unexpectedly, that it snapped Draco’s head to the side. He found himself staring straight at a low column with something round on top of it. Draco had seen it from the corner of his eye, but dismissed it as a lost Muggle ball.

            It wasn’t. Instead, it looked like a round stone that had been slotted into a groove of some kind on the top of the column.

            And Draco could see, when he cast another spell, the slight smoke of white and purple magic rising around it.

            Triumph filled him, and he touched his wand to his heels and cast the Mercury Charm without pausing to wait for the Muggles to look away, as he usually would. They couldn’t see him anyway. Draco wanted to be over there right now.

            When he leaped, his feet were light, the new wings attached to his ankles flapping madly. It took a concentrated effort to make his way across to the column and round stone—almost like skating—but that had never impeded the Ministry’s best Auror. Draco landed gently right next to the stone, crouched on hands and feet. Then he stretched out his hand and closed his eyes.

            Yes. There was magic here, familiar magic, and when Draco opened his eyes and looked more closely, he could see the runes someone had carved into the top of the stone ball.

            There wasn’t much room on the top of the column, but Draco managed to pace in a circle around it, running his fingers slowly down the sides and as much of the bottom of the stone as he could reach. The more he touched, the more the familiar sense of magic crept into his fingerbones. By the time he took a step back from it, Draco was sure he would recognize the particular feel of that magic anywhere.

            Then he began a different search, aimed at revealing what Potter had done here.

            Half an hour later, his legs ached from his precarious perch atop the column, a few Muggles had started to glance over as if wondering why they briefly couldn’t see parts of the rock, and Draco wanted to curse in a way he hadn’t wanted to since—well, since the last time Potter had beaten him at Quidditch, truthfully.

            He couldn’t tell what Potter had done. He couldn’t feel the touch of Dark Arts. He wasn’t magically strong enough right now to call up the memories of the rocks for magic the way he had done at Stonehenge. And the runes on top of the stone were the sort that could be used in a ritual, but they were only powerful if the person who’d cut them was right next to them. Potter couldn’t use them to draw earth magic from the Giant’s Causeway if he wasn’t here.

            Draco closed his eyes and forced himself to stop biting at his tongue like an Abraxan champing the bit. He concentrated, instead, on the shapes of the runes in his mind, burning them in until he was sure he could place them in a Pensieve and retain an absolutely accurate memory later. He wasn’t going to mess up the chase by jumping to conclusions about a clue.

            When he was sure he was calm, able to go home and rest and come back when he was restored enough to cast the Stone Memory spell again, he opened his eyes.

            Only to find that the configuration of runes on top of the stone ball had changed.

            Draco hissed and nearly jumped backwards, but the Mercury Charm was dangerously exhausted, and he would probably have fallen. Again he mastered his emotions and bent over the top of the stone to look at it.

            Most of the runes were the same. But they no longer lay in a perfect circle; their shape had shifted so that two of them were floating off to the side of the ring the others made. And as Draco watched, a new rune slowly blossomed among them, the rune Raido, the rune that bespoke a journey.

            No other new runes appeared, although Draco spent long moments staring until he was ready to be sure of that. Then he turned and Apparated home after all, collapsing on his couch and staring at the ceiling. His body trembled hard, with the aftereffects of magic and the effort of keeping from falling and the burn of his rage.

            What is Potter doing? That kind of magic is impossible.

            And he was a fool to lie here thinking things like that, when he had clearly seen a new rune come to life on the stone. Potter had done it. Draco had to figure out how, instead of hiding his head in his hands and wailing that it couldn’t happen.

            Draco rolled over, punched a pillow savagely, and then lay back down and focused his mind on what Potter must be doing, the motivations as he had seen them, the facts of the case as he knew them, diving into meditation from which he did not intend to emerge until he had some more clues.

*

            Draco tossed another book over his head, and savagely shook out the pages of the one he held. He knew he had read a possible explanation for what Potter was doing in one of these books. He wasn’t going to let it defeat him. He would find it and he would read it and he would have it.

            And there. There it was. Draco narrowed his eyes and stilled his trembling hands, and read about the spell that was entirely theoretical, but which it seemed Potter had now accomplished.

            Earth magic is the least well-understood of the elemental branches of magic. Other than in the matter of clearing earth for houses—not something that wizards in Britain often do now, with most spaces fully-occupied and no longer able to grow—it seems less immediately useful than water or air magic. Fire magic has been adapted into offensive spells, but by common agreement, few earth magic spells of the same caliber have been adopted. Offensive earthquakes and the like have as much potential to cause damage to the casting wizard’s side and allies as the opposing one.

            However, the possibilities of earth magic have sometimes excited the brains of the best research wizards. One course of study that has received particular attention is the idea that it might be possible to cast a distant spell on a particular patch of earth, and still receive the benefit of the magic, as long as one’s feet were kept solidly on the earth.

            This kind of magic would still be limited by bodies of water and the like. However, there is a connection between one patch of earth and another unless they are broken by oceans or channels; earth flows on, and at the deepest levels connects in ways that humans cannot touch. A wizard who could master earth magic might touch off offensive spells or wards or even charms that could strengthen his core in one area while being safely far away, at any distance he chose that was on the same side of an ocean. It might even be possible on the far side of an ocean, if the magic penetrated sufficiently deep into the unbroken earth.

            Aside from the lack of study most earth magic has received, this theoretical possibility has another problem, however. Objects like stones grow in magic as they attain age. But their very age makes them harder for wizards to work with, as does their natural magic, which is not human in origin. Great feats of power await the researcher who manages to get around these limitations.

            Draco put the book back on the shelf and sat on his couch staring into space. His heart was still thundering, and he could taste anger in his mouth.

            There were theoretical puzzles Potter could solve that would have made the magic possible. Draco could acknowledge that. That wasn’t the same as saying he could have solved them.

            Why would someone who had never shown any interest in magical theory, and whose book purchases in the past year had included fairy tales, suddenly be able to master a kind of magic that had baffled the greatest minds for generations?

            Draco shook his head. There was a piece here he was missing, at least one. But he was too close to the problem now, baffled and infuriated about a hunt he had expected to be easy. He would relax for now, contemplate the signs he had unearthed, and write a preliminary report for the Ministry. He would begin again tomorrow.

*

            He didn’t get the full evening’s meditation and full night’s sleep he had been planning on.

            Draco was rising from his time in his meditation circle when the Floo puffed to life. Draco drew his wand automatically, but relaxed a little when Minister de Berenzan’s face appeared in the flames. Or at least moved to a different level of tension.

            “We need to talk about the Potter case, Auror Malfoy.”

            “Yes, sir,” said Draco, and waited until de Berenzan had pulled back to wave his wand over his robes, Transfiguring them into Auror ones. If the Minister could condemn Draco for disrespect, he would, even if it was something as simple as showing up in informal robes for an unexpected meeting.

            Draco went through the Floo with grace, even given de Berenzan’s notoriously short hearth. He thought there was a gleam of disappointment in the Minister’s eyes as he took the chair across from him.

            They studied each other.

            Enrico de Berenzan was a short man with intense dark eyes and a graceful face and hands that made him seem taller than he really was. Draco, who had sometimes used his own carriage and gestures to compensate for what other people thought of him, could admire that.

            But nothing else about the man. Including how he had pushed his way to the top through flogging pure-bloods with their guilt about “failing” Muggleborns during the war, and then turned on his pure-blood supporters and slashed them to ribbons.

            “I want to know everything you’ve found out about Potter’s flight.”

            “Yes, Minister.” Draco didn’t blink. “I found that he’s been practicing earth magic. He’s been to Stonehenge, and performed a ritual there that ended with him pulling a stone knife out of the earth. He’s also been to the Giant’s Causeway—”

            “Why would he flee for practicing earth magic? There must be something else. Something you’ve missed.”

            Draco met de Berenzan’s eyes without fear. Even if the man had been a Legilimens, Draco would have trusted in the strength of his mind’s walls. “There must be indeed, Minister. Rather like the Aurors who first investigated Potter’s flat.”

            de Berenzan’s face stiffened. “If you mean to imply something about my nephew, Auror Malfoy—”

            “No,” said Draco. “He would not have had reason to notice the extra red candles in the fireplace and the next room, and the way the candles were arranged in a spiral instead of a circle.”

            Draco watched in peace as de Berenzan struggled for a response. It was either show ignorance or his real knowledge—which Draco was sure he had—and thus seem as if he had studied Dark Arts.

            In the end, de Berenzan went with the humiliation of false ignorance. “What do you think that ritual was meant to do, then?” he growled.

            “Cast and burn an image of Potter’s soulmate. Everything I can find indicates he was deeply unhappy with his soul-mark, for some reason. He seems to have been frustrated that he didn’t find his soulmate in the youngest Weasley sibling. I spoke to her. He had never showed her his mark. There is also an open possibility that he might have found his soulmate in someone he despised.”

            Draco spoke with the briskness he always used when reporting, while keeping an open eye on de Berenzan’s features. He was the one who had banned anyone else from looking into Potter’s birth records. That argued he knew what was in them.

            de Berenzan had turned pale. For a moment, his hand passed across his mouth, but Draco didn’t have a chance to analyze that gesture before he snapped, “Continue working those angles, then, Malfoy. I suppose you haven’t spoken to Potter’s friends yet?”

            “I was unsure if you would want me to, Minister. I know your feelings about former Death Eaters approaching war heroes.”

            For a second, de Berenzan looked as if he was going to vomit. Draco would have enjoyed it if the hand he had passed across his mouth earlier was to hold himself back from emptying his stomach, but he didn’t think he could be that lucky.

            de Berenzan shook his head a moment later. “This is a very important case, Auror Malfoy. You need to find him. And he’s already a war hero, anyway. I give you permission to speak to Weasley and Granger.”

            “Thank you, sir.”

            They sat in silence a second more, and then de Berenzan jerked his head at the fireplace. Draco bowed his head and rose to his feet.

            “I heard that you tried to gain access to Potter’s birth records, Auror Malfoy.”

            “I did, sir. Since Potter fled right after reading something in them, there was the possibility that—”

            “I want you to stop.”

            “Stop hunting Potter?”

            “Stop trying to gain access to his birth records.”

            Draco nodded, while a thrill cut through him. It was like the moment when he saw a criminal make a careless move that was going to result in Draco tracking him down no matter how clever he had been.

            There is something important there. Something that the Minister knows about, and he wants to keep other people from knowing about. Something I can use to turn this around on him later, if he tries to blame me.

            Of course, Draco knew he was going to succeed and bring Potter in. The mere idea that he might not succeed was nonsensical. But it was always nice to have blackmail material on the Minister anyway.

            “Yes, Minister,” Draco said aloud, aware that he might have been silent long enough to raise de Berenzan’s suspicions. “I won’t.”

            “I mean it, Auror Malfoy. If I even hear of you down in the Ministry archives again, I’ll make sure that you have a minder placed on you.”

            “I shouldn’t have to go there to complete the hunt, sir,” Draco told him gently. “Should I leave now?”

            de Berenzan nodded, and Draco left, again not stumbling the way he thought the Minister would have wanted him to. But when he came out into his own flat, he spun around and laughed in exhilaration.

            Something Potter had fled from lurked down there in the archives. It should have frustrated the hell out of Draco that de Berenzan was keeping something from him and still expecting him to bring Potter in. But it was no more than he had thought would happen, given the way de Berenzan wanted to use Draco’s skills and despised having to turn to a Death Eater at the same time.

            And he would win through anyway, and without that information. In the future, when Potter was safe in a holding cell and de Berenzan had moved on to another political cause, Draco would go down and obtain the information for himself.

            For now, he had theories of his own to work on, theories more engaging than any facts at least twenty-seven years old could be. Draco, feeling as invigorated as though he had slept a whole night already, took another tome on earth magic down from the shelves.

            He no longer feared that Potter was going to do something impossible and outwit Draco while he did. Draco was confident, once more, in his own strength and incredible resourcefulness.

            He would win the day, despite all the obstacles his enemies placed in his path. He always did.

            And he would have the satisfaction of conquering Potter while he did so.

*

            DinaTheCat: Thank you. I’m trying to show the soul-marks as like any other trait that someone’s born with and which gets cultural traits attached to it; for some people it has enormous significance, for others nothing in particular.

            And I can promise that particular mystery will eventually be cleared up.

            AnonymousTigress: Thank you!

            SP777: Because it is. Draco is very much in this to prove that he’s the Ministry’s best Auror, along with wanting to beat Harry for once.

            NoxAccio: Thank you!
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The Rising of the Stones