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Parsimony	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14122 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Thirty-One—Confusing Magic

            “Explain the spell again, Draco.”

            Draco took a fortifying sip of the tea that Harry had sneaked into the kitchen to get him, and then leaned back against the wall of Firenze’s classroom again. He looked pale enough that Harry wished he had something stronger to slip into the tea. Of course, the house-elves wouldn’t give him Firewhisky, and he wasn’t sure that it was the best thing for someone in Draco’s state of mind, anyway. He cast another spell to warm up the tea and made it strong enough that Draco almost dropped the cup in shock. He gave Harry a wan smile and nodded.

            “I have to talk about it,” he whispered. “I know what they’re doing, but I expect it’s probably confusing for you to try and understand it.”

            Harry bit his tongue so that he wouldn’t snap something about confusion and Draco’s casual assumptions about his intelligence, and just said, “Yeah,” instead.

            Draco sat up. He was shaking off this shock a lot faster than he had the shock of seeing his father in the Forest of Dean, Harry thought, even though this was probably the more severe one. He had a serene look on his face, in fact, and even if that was the result of him conquering some strong emotion, Harry was impressed.

            He’s stronger than he was. Maybe shaking off some of his desperation and solving one problem did that for him.

            “All right,” Draco said. “This spell—it melds people together. They’re no longer two separate individuals, not once somebody’s cast it. My mother and father might still have two minds, it would depend on how mad they are, but they have one body. It’s just that the body can be in two places at once.”

            Harry blinked, and blinked again. Then he said, “So…at one and the same time, your father is in Azkaban, and out in the Forest of Dean.”

            Draco nodded and looked at him with his head on one side, as if he was being forced to change his perception of Harry. “Exactly. You grasped it faster than I thought you would.” Then he sighed and bowed his head. “I’m not sure which mind is where. I think my mother might be the Lucius who volunteered to stay in prison, because that’s the only reason she would have cast the spell in the first place. She wanted to spare Father suffering. She always did,” he whispered, and there was a thready whine in the back of his voice.

            Harry, not knowing what else to say, reached out and grasped Draco’s shoulder in sympathy.

            “So,” Draco said, when he went on with another little gasp, “she’ll be the one there, and he’ll be the one who’s out running around and causing trouble. He probably wanted his freedom so much that he never considered the price, or asked her exactly which spell it was.”

            Harry frowned. “He wouldn’t have known?” Lucius Malfoy didn’t strike him as someone ignorant about the Dark Arts, even if he would never say that to Draco for fear of distressing him.

            “He wouldn’t let himself know,” Draco snapped. “Think about if someone loved you enough to sacrifice themselves for you, Potter—”

            “Someone did,” Harry said softly, thinking about his mum.

            Draco paused, a shadow passing across his face, and then nodded choppily. “All right. Fine. Imagine that you had been old enough to understand what was happening and know that it was either you or her. She could have stepped aside and had the Dark Lord spare her life; someone mentioned that to me, I think it was Aunt Bella, who was awed that he would show such favor to anyone. But she chooses to sacrifice herself to save you instead. Would you let yourself know that, if you were older? Would you let yourself think about that? Or would you prefer to think that she had died fighting, or some other explanation?”

            Harry just nodded, and didn’t comment. He could understand what Draco was getting at, and why it would be important for his father to believe something else. Harry himself didn’t really understand the impulse, that was all. He would always want to know the truth.

            “So my father accepted the spell, and the sacrifice,” Draco said, staring at the far wall again, through the rising steam of his tea. “Two minds, two versions of the same body. It’s why he rippled in the Forest when I cast the spell at him. His appearance isn’t the one he used to have, because the melding is a hard process, so my spell did try to take care of it. But it wasn’t a glamour, either, and it really was him, just a little different-looking, so the spell failed in the end.”

            Harry nodded again, and started to speak, but Draco turned and looked at him, a world of sadness in his grey eyes.

            “My mother loved him enough to sacrifice herself for him,” he whispered, “but she didn’t love me enough to stay free.”

            Harry winced, and couldn’t think of a thing to say. He wondered if his father would have thought the same way if he had survived the night Voldemort attacked, only to learn that Lily had sacrificed herself for Harry, and then dismissed the idea. His father had died fighting for the both of them.

            Then again, his parents had been a lot younger than Draco’s parents when they died. Maybe that would have changed as they got older. Harry felt a slight tremor of sadness that he wouldn’t ever know.

            Instead, he leaned forwards and said, “Is there any reason to think you can get her back? Break this spell, get her to separate from your father and become her own person again—anything?”

            Draco’s eyes had shut, and he had slumped back against the wall, breathing in and out slowly, carefully, as if he thought he would lose control if it went faster. His voice was dull. “Nothing I’ve ever heard of. Besides, would she thank me for pulling her away from my father? I’m not sure of that. If she really wants to be with him, enough to give up her mind and her identity and her memories and her body, she probably never intended to go back.”

            “I wish she would have sent you an owl, at least,” Harry whispered, thinking about it. “Maybe she thought you would try to stop her if she did.”

            “Of course I would have tried to bloody stop her!” Draco looked at Harry as if he were mad. “There’s no reason—there was no reason for her to do this. Father had a prison sentence, yes, but some of the Wizengamot owed him political favors. Not important enough ones to get him out of this mess forever, but enough that we could have pulled him out of the prison eventually, given time. The last time I wrote to her, I mentioned that. But there was no answer.” Draco’s mouth pulled sharply downwards. “She might already have cast the spell by that time. Sacrificed everything to give him a second body. And not even one that can be outside the prison all the time, because they knew the outcry that would raise. One of him has to stay there.”

            “Why did we see his body flickering when we took the potion?” Harry thought to ask. “Is it because the body or mind that’s in the prison isn’t the original one?” It was still hard to think about that, to think about one mind split two ways, because if Narcissa had given up everything there wouldn’t be anything of her left in the second Lucius body. Of course, that was probably why the spell drove people mad.

            Draco gave him a thin smile that had so many shadows clustered in it Harry had to look away. “Why, very good, Potter. Yes, the potion revealed the spell to us in the first place, but made the body flicker to show it was under the spell. And it’s more than likely that it’s my mother in there.” He gave a sudden, violent shiver, half-wrapping his arms around himself. “I wish we could go and see her,” he whispered. “Well. Him. The person she is now. Even though I know she wouldn’t remember me the way she used to.”

            “We can go,” Harry said, thinking about it, the burst of adrenaline through his veins making him reckless. “What’s to stop us from doing it? We’ll go tonight!”

            Draco stared at him, his lips parted. Then he snorted and shook his head. “Are you listening to yourself, Potter?” he asked sharply. “Of course we can’t go. There are a thousand school regulations that say so, and they won’t allow someone who’s still a student at Hogwarts to visit Azkaban without a professor along. I learned that when I applied for permission to see my father over the summer, after I’d already been accepted back.”

            “They won’t allow most students,” Harry said, watching him intently. “But they’ll allow the Boy-Who-Lived.”

            For a moment, Draco’s mouth pulled sharply downwards again. Then he smiled, and there was the dangerous diamond glitter about it that Harry had seen in third year when Draco was pretending Buckbeak had hurt him worse than he really had. This time, Harry fervently hoped, that glitter was on his side.

            “Father would have told me, when he was in his right mind, to take advantage of powerful political contacts,” Draco murmured. “Yes. Why not?”

            Harry nodded, and stood up. He waited until Draco was standing up, too, and then reached out and gripped his hands. Draco watched him warily, his head on one side, as though he assumed Harry would change his mind any second and try to talk him out of this. Harry didn’t see why, when he was the one who had proposed this, but relentless questioning wouldn’t help Draco right now.

            “I’ll get you there,” Harry said. “If nothing else, I can force the thing by pretending that I’m so upset about one of my classmates being unfairly denied his rights that I’ll go to the papers. But I don’t know anything about your parents, and almost nothing about this spell. Once we get there, you’ll have to handle things.”

            Draco blinked, once, twice. Then his hands closed down on Harry’s, and he was the one who tugged him closer and kissed him, his mouth hot and wet and hungry. Harry went with it, but stepped back the instant Draco showed an inclination to withdraw.

            “Yes,” Draco said again, in answer, Harry thought, to more voices than Harry’s own. “My motto should be get out of my way.”

            Harry smiled, and followed him out of the classroom.

*

            “You want to do what?” Klein’s voice was soft and angry, and she tapped her wand against her palm as she stared back and forth between Harry and Draco.

            Draco stiffened his shoulders next to Harry. He wasn’t shrinking, Harry thought, but he must remember that Klein was an Auror as well as a professor, and that she had the power to hurt him a lot more than she could hurt Harry.

            And he had looked at Harry more than doubtfully when Harry had chosen Klein’s office. Why, his eyes asked, didn’t they go to McGonagall, or Flitwick, or someone else who could make the firecall for them and would be more sympathetic?

            Harry had his reasons for going to Klein. And as she met his eyes, he met hers right back, and gave them to her.

            “This is your chance,” he said. “Your chance to get around all the roadblocks that you know the Azkaban guards are going to throw in your way, and gain the knowledge that you told me they wouldn’t give to anyone because of their stupid power-plays. We’ll find out once and for all whether Lucius Malfoy is really in Azkaban for you. That can only help your investigation.”

            Klein’s mouth tightened for a moment. Then it relaxed, in what looked like contempt at herself more than anything else, and she shook her head. “I never should have admitted to you what I felt about the guards at Azkaban,” she murmured. “You are using this as ammunition, as a weapon, when there is no reason to think you can succeed.”

            “I’m using it because you know that our relationship isn’t the normal relationship between a student and a professor,” Harry said, as politely as he could when he privately thought Klein a regular coward for not taking advantage of this the way she should have. “It couldn’t be from the moment you saw me kill in the Forbidden Forest.”

            Klein pointed her wand at him. “And sometimes I still think I should have brought you into the Ministry for that.”

            “But you didn’t.” Harry stood tall and met her gaze evenly. “And are you going to regret doing it forever, or are you going to do something that could work out for you as well as us?”

            Klein looked towards the door into her office, as though she assumed someone was lurking outside to report her and her thoughts to McGonagall. “I shouldn’t,” she murmured, even though she sounded tempted. “I could get in trouble. There’s no doubt that Olversvald wouldn’t like it.”

            “Would he, if you explained everything to him?” Harry leaned forwards and smiled as persuasively as he could. “He already knows that I’m an irregularity in the lives of the Aurors that they have to deal with.”

            Klein gave a short laugh. “I hope to God that you don’t become an Auror, Potter. Someone is going to have to deal with you and curb your arrogance at some point, and I don’t want it to have to be me.”

            Draco stiffened and shifted beside Harry, but Harry put a hand on his arm and shook his head slightly, so that Draco could just see it out of the corner of his eye. “Fine,” he said. “I don’t really care what you think of me, as long as you help us.”

            Silence again, and Klein watched them as she apparently did a silent calculus of her own about how much trouble she would be in. Harry stayed still, and meek, and said nothing. That was the best service he could do himself, he reckoned. Klein thought he was troublesome beyond belief; time to show her that he could be obedient sometimes, when he thought it might do him or his cause some good.

            Finally, Klein sighed and nodded. “Fine. As you will. I’ll take you beyond the wards into Azkaban and arrange passage out again with someone I can trust, since I don’t think that I can linger there that long without arousing suspicion. What you do with your time while you’re there is up to you.”

            Her eyes stayed on Draco this time. Harry thought she was probably hoping that Draco would trip over a stone or something and break his neck, saving everyone else the trouble of dealing with him. He met Klein’s eyes and showed his teeth without smiling.

            Klein only nodded to him and turned away. “Be ready to leave tonight immediately after curfew. I’ll spread the story that I want to read and mark for a time and then intend to take to my bed instead of patrolling the corridors. You’ll meet me near the top of the staircase that goes down to the dungeons. I trust that you can come there without alerting anyone.”

            Harry nodded, and stepped out of the office with Draco close behind them. Draco watched over his shoulder until Klein shut the door, and then shook his head hard enough that his chin banged into Harry.

            “What is it?” Harry whispered. “Do you think we shouldn’t have contacted her?”

            “This is the only way, if I want to see my mother,” Draco said, his voice lower and more thoughtful than Harry had expected. Draco didn’t sound as afraid as Harry had anticipated. Well, being confronted with his mother’s vanishing had perhaps given him a kind of bitter courage. “I know that. But what happens if she betrays us?”

            “If she does it before we get out of Hogwarts, then it’ll make her look as bad as it does us,” Harry whispered. “A professor conspiring to transport a pair of students to Azkaban? The press would feast on it.”

            Draco smiled without much conviction. “But if she does it once we’re on the island? We don’t know how many friends she has there, or how far we might be able to trust them.”

            “I don’t think we can trust them much at all,” Harry had to acknowledge. “But we’ll have our own plans in place just in case she thinks that’s a good idea.”

            “What are they?” Draco asked.

            Harry whispered into Draco’s ear, and soon Draco’s easy laugh was echoing along the corridors, startling the Slytherins who were passing. More than one of them glared at Harry and Draco, but one stopped and stepped out of the group he was walking with, towards them.

            It was Goyle.

            Harry hesitated, but in the end, he decided that he had to stay exactly where he was and not move, not even really to breathe. Doing anything that he didn’t exactly mean to could disrupt the rapport that Harry hoped Draco and Goyle would get back, maybe forever.

            “Draco,” Goyle whispered.

            “Gregory.” Draco was trying to stand tall, his arms folded and his body hunched in a little on itself, as if he was feeling a cold wind that his cloak wouldn’t keep him safe from. But his eyes were bright and full of longing, and Harry held his breath, hoping that would be enough, all by itself, to make Goyle think about being his friend again.

            Zabini stepped away from the rest of the huddled Slytherins, who were watching the whole scene like mice fascinated by two snakes. He put one hand on Goyle’s arm, and Harry, watching for it, saw Goyle flinch minutely away from the touch.

            “Come on, Greg,” Zabini said, loud and hearty and with his hand tugging on Goyle’s arm even before he’d finished speaking. “You don’t want to associate with that bastard. The rest of us have our own things to do, don’t we?” He cocked his head at Draco and then looked away.

            It was so transparent that Harry bit his lip to keep from grinning. Draco did allow a faint smile to cross his face, and then he turned and looked at Goyle.

            “I’m sorry,” he said clearly. “I honestly never meant to hurt you, Greg. Things got out of hand and I acted stupid for a while. But I don’t want to. And if you’re my friend, then I’ll do my best never to do any of that again.”

            Goyle was silent and stolid, ignoring both the way Zabini tugged at him and the whispers that echoed behind him. Harry thought he was thinking, but he’d never been intimately familiar with the facial expressions of any Slytherin except Draco, so he wasn’t sure. All he could do, like the rest of them, was stand and wait.

            Draco had a peculiar look on his face when Harry glanced at him again. He thought Draco probably wasn’t used to someone else making the decisions when it came to the Slytherins, and resented losing his position of power now. But he was wise enough not to interrupt and make Goyle back off, and that was really all Harry could hope for.

            Better than I hoped for, in fact. Draco must have the temptation to tell them all off and walk away—but no, he really does want his friends back, more than he wants to show off his pride.

            Finally, Goyle said, his voice slow in a way that Harry knew wasn’t just his usual thought process, “Yeah. I think—I think that I want to be your friend again, Draco.” He hesitated, and then, as if afraid that that wasn’t loud or forceful enough, added, “As long as you never do anything like that again.”

            Zabini tried to hiss something in Goyle’s ear, but Goyle just walked away from him as if he wasn’t there and held out his hand to Draco. Draco had brightness in his eyes, but he wasn’t smiling—at least, not with his mouth, Harry thought. You had to know him well to see the way that his ears and the corners of his eyes and even his cheeks seemed to encourage the smile that hadn’t quite formed. Zabini knew him that well, if the narrowed state of his own eyes and the stiff way that he folded his arms and turned away with an outrageous sniff was any indication.

            “I can promise never to do anything like that again,” Draco said seriously as he clutched at Goyle’s hand. “What I did was stupid, and I never want to be stupid again. I’ve learned my lesson.”

            Goyle paused, as if listening to someone who wasn’t there or at least wasn’t visible to Harry, and then gave Draco a hesitant smile. “Good. Living under that curse was awful.”

            And that, Harry thought, probably sums up what it was like better than any more elaborate statement from Zabini could.

            The other Slytherins turned their backs in a solid body, and continued walking down the corridor. Neither Goyle nor Draco seemed to notice them go. They were talking, their heads close together. Harry backed away one soft step, and then another, and they didn’t notice him going, either.

            Harry turned at last and left, his face bright with his smile, which he wasn’t even going to try and stop escaping. Hermione would scold him for missing Defense and Potions, and warn him again about NEWTS—if she wasn’t too involved in her own sadness over her parents, at least. But this once, Harry didn’t care.

            This happiness was one that he could be happy about, even if he would never know exactly what either Goyle or Draco felt.

*

            “Potter. Where is Malfoy?”

            Harry swept the Invisibility Cloak off over his head and opened his mouth to answer Klein, but was saved having to admit that he didn’t know when Draco’s cool voice said, “Here,” and he trotted up the staircase that led down to the dungeons. He did nothing but smile blandly at Klein when she glared at him.

            “Come, then,” Klein snapped over her shoulder, and swirled her cloak ostentatiously as she motioned towards the doors of the entrance hall. “Once we start moving, you have to make as little noise as possible. Professors have permission to pass through the wards at any time, but if I meet someone else, I’d have trouble explaining a pair of noisy shadows.”

            Harry motioned Draco under the Cloak and cast a Disillusionment Charm for himself. He was more used to moving under them after last year, and if someone did see him and stopped him, he was the one who would have the better explanation for being out after curfew.

            Or the better chance of casting spells that would convince someone else to back off, Harry had to admit, as they followed Klein across the hall, out the doors, and across the silent grounds. I don’t really want to have that power, but I might as well use it, since I have it.

            After a little consideration, he cast a charm that would muffle his footsteps and Draco’s, too. It seemed that they both made enough noise for Klein to wince and glare at them over her shoulder no matter how quiet they tried to be.

            And then there was a low growling noise in front of them, and the shadows seemed to give birth to the wolfwere, who sat down in front of them and bared his teeth in the general direction of all and sundry. He was in his half-human form, the better to speak, and utterly ignored the wand Klein pointed at him.

            “I can smell the hidden ones,” he said. “And I know purpose and determination when I smell it, as well. I want to come with you.”

*

            LeaniaSTL: I hope the explanation here made things a bit less confusing for you! Basically, close to soul travel, but the other body is solid instead of spiritual.

            unneeded: Harry is sort of sharing his new knowledge with Klein? She knows that their going to Azkaban will help her, at least, but she doesn't know all the details.

            Harry has been distracted from the problem of Hermione's parents--plus he knows that Hermione and Ron would both like to solve it on their own--but if he knows anything that could help, he definitely will mention it.

            ChaosLady: It depends. If she was going crazy without her husband, too, maybe not.

            SP777: Thanks! The wolfwere will be in at the climax, as you can see here.

            And, uh, I think I'm doing a mystery story right now with 'Writ on Water.'

            polka dot: Narcissa, like Lucius, is insane. Plus no longer really a separate person.

            Sneakyfox: Yes. Except there really is no one left outside the prison.
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Parsimony