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Ad Pavonem	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4188 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Pale Shadows
Harry woke with a start when someone pecked him. It wasn’t the usual way he woke up in the morning, and when he tried to roll to the side and get out of bed, he flailed with his wings and fell a good portion of the way.
The peacock who had apparently pecked him gave him a dignified look and stalked away, tail dragging behind it. Harry shivered a little and stared around the Manor grounds, wondering if he would find Aurors already breaking in.
But there were none yet. Harry supposed they might be waiting to see what would happen, if he would reappear, or worried because a Malfoy who could eliminate Harry Potter was a more powerful enemy than they had counted on.
Meanwhile, the other peacocks were pecking at the grass around him, and Harry was hungry.
He trembled in a way that made his wings rattle at the thought of eating seeds, or insects, or whatever it was peacocks ate most of the time. He might have no choice if he got hungry enough. But he would at least make an effort to be the human he was inside the feathers.
Harry stalked around the side of the house, aiming towards the crooked corner that had house-elves popping in and out of it all the time. To his dismay, he really couldn’t smell much in this form, but he knew the busiest place for any house with elves was usually the kitchen, and they couldn’t all be cleaning Malfoy’s clothes or getting new dustcloths.
Sure enough, he found the right doorway, and peered in at a chaos of ovens and chopping knives and stirring spoons and small green arms doing all the tasks. Not one elf paid him the slightest attention.
And there was a huge piece of cooked and gleaming pork lying out in the middle of a table, getting ignored because no one needed it right now.
Harry studied the setup of the kitchen for a second, ignoring his own fear that the pork would get taken away while he did that. If it did, he would find something else. Malfoy’s kitchen was the size of a small kingdom.
When he was sure of what he wanted to do, he crouched and coaxed his weak wings into action.
He soared over the head of two elves stirring what looked like batter, landed on the shoulder of another one who lurched sideways in shock, fluttered over an oven that had one elf poised to open the door, landed on the table, snatched the pork, and turned around. Instead of making for the outer door, which already had elves blocking it, he ran hotfoot into the house.
The elves chased him, but they didn’t have the advantage Harry did, which was that he knew where he was going. And they did pop in and out in the house-elf version of Apparition, but they kept squeaking and getting in one another’s way, and they were clearly uncertain of whether they had permission to touch or injure Harry.
Harry finally managed to get into a room that had a heavy door shimmering with the taste and feel of magic. He turned around and dropped the pork on the floor and fluttered up, pushing with all his might (and feet) against the door. It slammed shut. Harry listened, cocking his head to get his ear as close as he could to the wood, but no house-elves popped in. There were spells that kept them out of here if the door was closed, then. Harry had thought he’d felt them.
“You are the most unusual peacock I’ve ever seen.”
With a startled squawk and a fluttering that took him away from the pork, Harry turned around. Draco was seated at the table in the corner of the room, a small breakfast nook. There was a Daily Prophet on his lap and a cup of something steaming in front of him.
“I know you’re human,” Draco continued in a musing voice, swallowing some of the steaming mixture and eyeing Harry like he was an interesting fossil. “Not an Animagus. But I don’t know why someone would willingly turn into one of my father’s peacocks and come here, either.”
Harry put a possessive claw on the pork.
“Yes, yes, you can eat it,” Draco said, and rolled his eyes. “If you’re hungry enough to do that instead of discussing who you are with me first.”
Harry was, as a matter of fact, and he still didn’t know if he would be able to write anything with his claw that Draco could understand, assuming there was something here he could write with. He bowed his head and started tearing off small pieces of the pork, keeping an eye on Draco all the time.
But Draco didn’t draw his wand to hex or curse Harry. He looked far too interested—and amused—for that.
*
What is the story?
Draco was less irritated than he’d been last night, probably because he hadn’t been awakened out of a sound sleep this morning. He sipped his tea and ate his bacon and watched as the peacock picked bits of meat off the piece he had stolen.
He didn’t seem to really know how to use his beak and claws. Several times, he paused and stared down at his own foot, embedded in the pork, then shook his head in a distinctly un-avian gesture and went back to eating.
Draco couldn’t even be angry about the way the madman had broken into his house and stolen the pork. For one thing, he had plenty of other food for lunch and dinner. For another, it made Draco feel less crazy for suspecting the bird of being human at all.
It didn’t take much to fill the peacock up, though. He backed away from the pork when there was still a good portion of it left and stalked towards Draco’s table with determination, fanning his tail out behind him.
Draco put a casual hand on his wand, ready to defend himself if this was a real enemy. The peacock never stopped or slowed, though. It leaped up on the table and looked around as though considering Draco’s cutlery.
“For what purpose, I don’t know,” Draco said, and the bird turned its head. There was a glittering green eye fixed on him a second later.
Draco narrowed his own eyes a little. He knew peacocks normally had—well, not green eyes. He couldn’t remember the usual color off the top of his head, but it was different than that. He leaned forwards, wondering if this was a clue to the man’s true identity.
The peacock whipped its head down abruptly and picked up a fork from the side of the table. Then it turned and rearranged two knives with a little push of its foot. Draco watched in utter incomprehension as it laid the two knives a short distance from each other, parallel with their sharp edges facing the side of the table, and laid the fork down in between them.
“What are you—”
Draco looked at the figure the peacock had made, and stopped speaking. It was an arrangement of metal, yes, but it looked stunningly like the letter H.
“That doesn’t help much,” he whispered, but he found himself pushing his empty cup and other utensils at the peacock as if that would help.
For long minutes, he thought it wouldn’t. The peacock made a clucking noise and scraped at Draco’s tablecloth with a claw that left rents in it. Even knowing the house-elves would repair those couldn’t stop Draco from narrowing his eyes in offense.
But the bird found what it was looking for. It seized the empty teacup in its beak and hammered it enthusiastically against the side of the table. The handle broke off. The peacock grabbed another knife and laid it down, then delicately placed the curved handle next to it, shoving until it was satisfied.
This time, it took more imagination for Draco to read the “letter” that had been placed in front of him. But it was undoubtedly a P, or meant to be, with the knife forming the side of it and the curved cup handle making the loop.
Draco had thought the next letter would be a vowel or something, that the peacock was trying to spell out a message. But when he looked at the two letters side-by-side, he swallowed. Only one person he knew with those initials had green eyes like that.
“Harry Potter?” he whispered, staring at the peacock.
Potter spread his tail out and danced back and forth, making several other dishes clatter to the floor with a ring of metal or crash of china. Then he pulled his feathers in and stood looking at Draco expectantly.
Maybe it was only that Draco was looking for it now, but he seemed to see a strange pattern of feathers on the peacock’s head that could have resembled a lightning bolt scar if he was human. And there were the green eyes.
“What happened?” Draco whispered.
He realized how stupid he had been a moment later, when Potter gave him an impatient glance. But he also leaped off the table and led the way to the door of the dining room. Draco got up and followed him. Potter had been clever in finding out ways to communicate so far, despite the limitations of his avian form. Perhaps he could be the same way now.
Potter stalked the corridors carefully after Draco opened the door, tilting his head back and sometimes making a soft squawk of what Draco thought was disgust. Finally he stopped in front of a portrait and made a noise like a chirp. Draco shook his head as he looked at the portrait.
“My ancestors can’t have used a spell that would turn people into peacocks. I would have known it. And I did see some of the flock hatched, and I can assure you, they’re not all enchanted humans.”
Potter snapped his beak at Draco irritably and started tracing a pattern with his foot on the stone floor over and over again. He had to do it several times before Draco could “read” it, but then he figured it out. It was the letter L.
And I’m not stupid, either, Draco thought as he stared at the letter and shivered all over.
“You’re saying my father did this?”
Potter leaped up and down, clapping his wings emphatically. Draco swallowed and looked away.
Now that he thought of it…yes, Lucius would have had the time alone in the Manor before he surrendered to the Aurors to put such a spell on the house. It wouldn’t affect those who had a pass through the wards, like Draco and his friends, which was a good reason for him never to have noticed it. And in the end, the Aurors hadn’t broken through the wards. Draco’s father had surrendered and let them take him away.
He might even have done it partially to protect the secrecy of that spell, Draco thought. Because he thought I would need it.
“Reee?”
Draco opened his eyes. Potter stood in front of him, one claw braced as if he thought he would have to lift it and scratch Draco’s leg. When he saw Draco looking at him, he lowered it and turned his head to the side in a clear, commanding gesture.
“I’m not sure exactly what you think I can do,” Draco said. “I mean…what do you think I can do?”
Potter gave him a slow stare that didn’t even need him to spell anything out with cutlery or by drawing it. Fix it, you fool.
“I have no idea what Father might have used,” Draco said helplessly. “There are hundreds of books in the libraries that I’ve never looked at, because I never wanted to study that kind of magic.” He shook his head. “And if it’s gone undiscovered this long, then I can’t find it by tracking Father’s signature or wand resonance, either.”
Potter’s flat look said that wasn’t his problem.
Draco blinked back, and abruptly the memory of the night before came to him, of Potter dancing like a mad thing next to those footprints in the mud. He frowned at Potter. “Did you come here alone?”
A sharp jerk of Potter’s head that couldn’t be anything but a nod. Draco tapped his fingers on his leg. “Then who were those footprints from?”
Potter began practically doing a tap-dance on the floor with his feet, apparently trying to draw letters. Draco tried to “read” them several times before he gave up and cast a spell that made blue light follow the course of Potter’s foot and then linger on the stone when he was done. The extremely unimpressed look Potter gave him when he did that made Draco smile.
Even then, it wasn’t as though bird feet were well-suited for spelling things out. Draco managed to decipher an S and an M at the start of the word, which for a moment made him wonder things about Potter’s tastes in bed. But the next few letters were useless. Potter had done them too fast.
“Go more slowly on the third one,” Draco instructed, crouching down in case watching the movements more closely would tell him something more.
Potter gave a single, irritated flap, but he went back to drawing. This time, he went slowly, and it was apparent that the third letter was a U, and the fourth one a poor, lopsided excuse for a G. Draco opened his mouth to ask why Potter was insulting him, then abruptly realized what other word could begin that way, besides “smug” itself.
“Smugglers? Smugglers are using the Manor?”
Potter leaped up and down and flapped his wings and pecked Draco’s shoes. Draco drew his foot back at once, frowning.
“But the wards would have caught them and turned them into peacocks, too. They sure as hell didn’t do that.”
Potter tried to scratch something else out on the stone, but Draco had finally realized his own answer to the question. Blaise and Pansy didn’t turn into birds when they visited him, either.
“They’re invited?” He whispered the words, making Potter stop scratching to look at him. “Or they used to be, and their invitation through the wards was never revoked?”
Potter hopped so excitedly that Draco was frankly surprised he didn’t shit himself. Draco sat down again with a bump, feeling ill.
All that work he’d done to detach himself from his father’s legacy, and make it clear to his friends that he was never going back to the kind of life they wanted him to pursue, and it might all be for nothing. It seemed the smugglers were coming through the wards anyway.
“How sure are you of this?” he whispered, looking up to Potter.
Potter gave him another stare, and Draco nodded miserably. Potter wasn’t his best friend, but they had been on the same side since the war. If Potter had been uncertain whether it was happening or not, then he would never have brought it to Draco’s attention.
Of course, that did bring up a question that should have started bothering Draco earlier. He sat up and frowned at Potter. “Why are you here on your own? Why didn’t you come in with a troop of Aurors behind you?”
Potter suddenly became very interested in his claws.
“You didn’t know for sure?”
Potter bobbed his head without looking up.
“But if they sent you here…did you volunteer to be sent?”
Potter gave a sullen kick at the floor and gave Draco a pleading look. Draco only stared back, his arms folded. “I’m being cooperative,” he said. “I haven’t hidden anything from you, and I think you know that. I deserve some answers.”
Potter gestured with a claw at his beak, and Draco rolled his eyes. “You managed to communicate some complex concepts already. You’ll find a way to talk about this if you really want to.”
Potter sulked and drooped some more. Draco waited him out, while memorizing what a sulky peacock looked like for future reference. Of course, he hoped that he would never need to use the knowledge again, but he was hardly about to ignore anything useful.
Potter finally moved his head and started walking down the corridor again. Draco followed, perfectly willing to do so as long as it would let him keep an eye on Potter.
*
Calzade and Robards are both going to be angry at me.
But Harry knew he couldn’t put off the moment any longer. At least Draco should manage to understand without much exertion why someone might have suspected him, whether or not Harry thought it was right or fair. They had suspected him.
Harry peered in at the doors they passed, waiting until Draco opened them for him some of the time. He finally found what he was looking for, a fireplace with some soot in front of it that the house-elves hadn’t cleaned up. He bustled in and dipped one of his wings into the soot, ignoring the faint twinge at his heart when he saw the black darkening the white. It was a vain peacock instinct that would have kept him clean, not human ones.
“What are you doing?”
Harry glanced at him, screeched, and ducked his head into the soot, blackening that, too. Then he scratched himself with one rapid foot—an instinct that was still strange to him—and pointed the foot at Draco.
Draco’s eyes widened. “They think I’m getting back into Dark Arts.”
At least he understands symbolism, Harry decided with a sigh, and tapped the claw against his breast. Then he cleaned his wing with a few rapid strokes and turned around to gaze intently at Draco.
“You didn’t believe the same thing, but they made you come investigate,” Draco said in a heavy tone. “Yes. All right. So, how much time do we have before the Aurors invade?”
Harry didn’t have time to think about how he was going to answer that particular question, since the walls of the house abruptly shook, and a voice enlarged by a Sonorus Charm boomed, “Draco Malfoy, come out and surrender your wand, on suspicion of smuggling and kidnapping an Auror!”
“So,” Draco said into the silence, “that would be none.”
*
SP777: And Harry might have tried to get to Hermione if he hadn't been so hungry!
Kain: Yes, Draco wants to separate himself from his friends' activities if this is what they're going to do. And the explanation he thinks of is the right one, one Harry mentioned in the first chapter: the smugglers were Lucius's friends, and he never revoked the invitation.
Harry would have tried to get out of the garden if Draco hadn't been sympathetic to him the second time.
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