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The Name I'll Give to Thee	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42129 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 6
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Thirty-One--Comes the Answer



            For long moments, the man Harry presumed was Aurelius Shepherd didn't move. His eyes had widened, and his hands tightened on his sleeves as if he wanted to rip the cuffs off. Then he dropped his arms and smiled at them. Harry had seen smiles that looked more fake during his time as an Auror, but not many.

            "You don't understand, then," Shepherd said, with a small nod. "You are cleverer than I expected, but you still don't understand."

            "What do you mean?" Draco was leaning forwards, poised on the balls of his feet as though he was going to sprint across the distance between him and Shepherd. Harry put a hand on his arm to stop him. Shepherd's smile still remained, and his eyes had flickered to the side. This was another distraction, Harry thought, or another attempt to stall them until more allies could arrive. Shepherd didn't mean anything with his cryptic words.

            "You don't understand why I would want to take Malfoy Manor away from you." Shepherd's gaze was commanding, Harry had to give him that. "Why I would be a better custodian than you would."

            "No, I don't," Draco said. Harry was grateful to see that he kept his hand tight on the basilisk wand, at least. "Nor do I understand why you couldn't challenge me in the courts if you thought you had a claim that would stand up to legal scrutiny."

            Shepherd shook his head in what looked like disgust, but probably wasn't. His acting remained a thin layer on top of something that was meant to be deeper but didn't run deep enough for him to convince Harry. "Draco, Draco. There is a difference between a legal claim and a claim made by blood and ink." He snapped one hand over his shoulder, and the thin, brown-haired wizard behind him handed him a tightly-wound scroll.

            "It never occurred to you that other people who were Malfoy by blood could look at the Malfoy box in the Ministry Archives, did it?"

            Draco started badly. Harry kept his eyes on the wizards behind Shepherd. They had started to spread out, and he doubted it was to make it easier for them to congratulate Draco and Harry on their victory.

            "I am still Malfoy by blood." Shepherd shook his head a little. "Not name, but it doesn't matter in this case. I was able to find a copy of your grandfather Abraxas's will. Normally, that wouldn't matter now, since your father supplanted him as head of the family and could have made his own will, but your father is in prison. Highly irregular, wouldn't you say?"

            The other four wizards behind him had formed a pattern. Harry squinted. He was on the edge of recognizing it, or at least thinking where he had seen other patterns like that before, but then Draco spoke and shattered the spell of memory that was coming back on him.

            "There is a break in the continuity of the family." Draco spoke in the same calm, studied voice that he had used when they were confronted in the Ministry. "I have never denied that. But since I am my father's natural heir, the Ministry saw no reason to take the Manor away from me."

            Shepherd laughed softly. "But your grandfather Abraxas planned for this. He apparently didn't like his son getting involved with the Dark Lord. Shall I read you what he said would happen if Lucius died or otherwise lost control of the family without having made a will?"

            Draco's eyes were all for the scroll. Harry's eyes were all for the wizards behind Shepherd, and this time--

            This time, he realized that they were forming the points of a triangle, with one of them in the center of it and Shepherd resting somewhere around the triangle's base.

            Harry reacted without thought, because he had to, and for all he knew they might have prepared the rest of the ritual before coming here, which meant they could give Shepherd their power at any time. He leveled his wand at the wizard in the center of the triangle and barked, "Confringo!"

            That wizard went flying backwards, two of his bones breaking. Better, he slammed into one of his friends on the way, and they fell, rolling over and over, and destroying the pattern they had so carefully tried to build up with Shepherd as the focus.

            Harry turned neatly to the side and so blocked the hexes that immediately came flying at Draco. He then dropped to the ground to avoid the curse aimed at him, and saw that Shepherd had his wand out, pressed against the scroll he had been unfurling in front of Draco.

            "Call your husband back and leash him," Shepherd snarled, "or I'll burn this, and you'll never know what kind of danger you're in!"

            Harry flicked his wand once. Shepherd cried out as the scroll burst into flames, and leaped back, swatting at the sparks, embers, and ashes that covered him.

            "The Ministry would never have let him leave with the only copy," Harry told Draco, who was staring at him, and then leaped up and charged straight into the middle of the group before they could reform.

            His best choice now was to keep moving fast and keep striking, never where they thought to expect him, never still where they would expect to see him. Harry broke one wizard's foot, dislocated another's shoulder, and encouraged the fire on Shepherd, keeping him busy, in one complete dash around the circle. He completed it with another roll, feeling a spell ruffle his hair. It would have set him on fire, too, but rolling on the ground was good for things like that.

            He sprang up on the very edge of the wards that throbbed around the Malfoy property, and felt the answering song to the wards from inside his blood. Draco had said that the demi-marriage didn't change Harry's actual blood, but it seemed his body had chosen to disagree.

            Shepherd had finally managed to get the fire out, and was in the middle of a ring of his allies. Although they were pale, one limping and the man Harry had initially blasted bending over with a hand pressed to his ribs, they curled around Shepherd, and Harry heard chanting from the mouths of at least two of them.

            Harry didn't even want to think of the kinds of rituals they could do here, on the edge of the property, with the head of the Malfoy family and his heir both in front of them. He charged without hesitation again, and their chanting broke apart in a wave of defensive spells that he easily batted aside.

*

            Fuck, Harry!

            Trust his demi-husband to get right in the middle of the battle and make it impossible for Draco to cover his back for fear of hitting him, Draco thought furiously, dodging from side to side and still not managing to keep up with Harry's speed. He didn't trust the basilisk wand enough yet to simply cast, and Harry should have known that, and remembered how important he was to the Malfoy line, and kept back.

            And how important he is to me.

            Finally, Harry broke clear of the hexes that were trying to incapacitate him, and Draco pointed the basilisk wand at the wizard whose magic he thought was strongest, the blond one to the right of Aurelius. The wand throbbed with his desire, and that wizard crumpled over, one hand planted in the middle of his chest and his mouth slightly open. Draco could only hope it was the heart attack he had envisioned and not something else. Hopefully, it would keep the man out of the rest of the combat.

            Aurelius spun to face him. "Your grandfather was the one who specified that the nearest blood relative, not in the direct line, was to be his heir if one of his blood heirs demi-married a half-blood or Mudblood!" he spat.

            For a moment, Draco nearly wavered, nearly believed him. But Harry was right that the Ministry's Keeper of the Archives would never have let Aurelius walk out of her sight with the only copy of the will, which meant there was another copy in the Malfoy box, which meant Draco could check for himself.

            "I'll believe it when I read it," he snapped back, and clenched his hand into a fist, throwing his arm forwards.

            The air around Aurelius congealed, the wards reaching out and tugging him into them. Caught like a fly in amber, Aurelius struggled and yelled, but no one could hear his words now, and his allies started backing away.

            Draco hadn't known the new wards could do that, but he wasn't about to let on. He folded his arms and smirked at his cousin. "Are you still convinced that you could take this house from me?" he asked softly.

            There was a sharp pop as two of Aurelius's allies tried to Apparate away. Draco turned towards them, cursing himself for believing that they would simply stay and not putting up anti-Apparition spells--

            And then the two wizards appeared again, shaking their heads in a dazed way that made them look as if they had collided with a glass wall. Harry lowered his wand and gave Draco a vicious smile over his heads.

            I didn't put up anti-Apparition spells, but that doesn't mean someone else didn't, Draco thought, comforted, and faced Aurelius again. "I'm interested in your motives," he said. "Did you really send all those people to try and kill me and Harry?"

            There was a brief exchange of sharp curses, and then Harry finally Stunned the last of Aurelius's allies and bound them. Draco watched a certain level of hope fade out of his cousin's face. Apparently Aurelius had thought he had a chance of breaking free as long as some of the people he had brought with him were conscious.

            "I don't need to tell you anything." Aurelius thrust his chin into the air and tried to do the same with his hands, obviously forgetting that the wards restrained them like webbing. "I have a right to a fair trial."

            "When you attack me out of thin air, and conspire with people who have admitted they'd like to marry me in Harry's place, and try to conduct a ritual on my property, and hire an assassin?" Draco stared at him. "Do you think so?"

            "The Ministry will avenge me if you kill me!"

            Sadly, Draco had to agree with him. Gone were the days when prominent pure-blood families could simply murder their enemies and no one would question it, accepting that it was natural for someone to want their enemies gone, and that the level of wealth and power in the wizarding community was even improved by it.

            "We have the time we need to find out your secrets without that," Draco said kindly, and Stunned Aurelius. When he gestured again, the wards drew Aurelius inside and floated him towards the house. They would place him in the same secure part of the cellars where they still held Madeline Robbs, Draco knew without knowing how he knew.

            "I didn't realize the wards could do that."

            Draco turned around to find Harry tightening and checking the bonds on Aurelius's allies, and then Lightening their bodies, something he had probably learned in Auror training. Draco smiled. "You could do it with them, too, I'm fairly sure. Something I didn't realize was built into the wards, but you quite literally contributed your strength to them. I'm sure they're stronger than before, and not just in the way that they're built and what they can resist."

            "I can carry them," Harry said, scooping up the bodies with a wordless Mobilicorpus and floating them behind him.

            "You like it," Draco said, watching him as Harry made for the gates of the Manor, although he also could have Apparated--probably--back inside the house with his captives.

            Harry paused and blinked at him. "I like what?"

            "The manual labor. The danger." Draco cocked his head as he watched Harry. "Do you enjoy that kind of thing because it's what you feel you're best at? Or did something else, someone else, once tell you that it was all you're good for?"

            Harry rolled his eyes instead of flushing or blanching the way Draco had half-hoped he would, because that would mean he was on the right track to understand some of the ways Draco reacted. "You can't analyze everything I do that way, Draco," he said, and began to haul the bodies towards the house again. Draco had to admit that it was a good idea not to try and Apparate with them into the house until they understood more about how the new wards worked.

            Draco followed thoughtfully. He was sure that part of what he had said was right and he had understood something about important about Harry, but he wasn't sure what that was, yet.

*

            Harry stepped into the cellar room that contained Shepherd and spent a moment idly tossing his wand up and down in his hand. He knew his place in this interrogation, which was to conduct it. Quite apart from Draco's reluctance to come near interrogations in the first place, he had shown during the fight that his cousin could affect him. And Shepherd didn't seem to be afraid of Draco.

            But he cowered from Harry, even though his chains were long and he could move away from him in this small, wood-paneled room. Harry simply had to fight down his own memories of being imprisoned in a similar place in Malfoy Manor and remind himself that he was part of the family now, and this was part of his place. He had worn the robes that had the Malfoy crest on them for his own reassurance as much as to intimidate Shepherd.

            "So," Harry said, sitting down in front of Shepherd and considering him. "I think we could charge you with at least six separate counts of Dark magic, if we wanted to take you to the Ministry."

            Shepherd stared at him. "Just because you're an Auror doesn't mean that you're a lawyer," he said. His voice trembled, though, and his eyes hadn't stopped darting to Harry and then away since Harry entered the room.

            "The spells necessary to control that dragon," Harry said, ticking them off on his fingers. "That ritual you intended to enact here. Hiring an assassin who used Dark magic. Hiring former Death Eaters who used Dark magic. The second ritual that you would have conducted, the one with the ring and not the triangle, if we had given you time." He paused and thought about it, started to shake his head, and then said, "Oh, right! The fire spell that you used to attack us before you appeared this time." He folded his hands in his lap and smiled at Shepherd. "It's six after all."

            "You can't prove that I had anything to do with any of that," Shepherd whispered.

            "We have your name from one of them," Harry said. "From two sources, actually. And the rituals and the fire spell we saw with our own eyes." He smiled at Shepherd again. "Our alternative is the merciful one compared to the term in Azkaban that involvement with those crimes could give you, I'm sure you'll agree."

            Shepherd had to lick his lips twice before he spoke. "What are your terms?"

            "That you tell us everything that had to do with this plot and the murder attempts, under Veritaserum," Harry said. "That you swear an Unbreakable Vow not to try to harm Draco or me again, or to try to get hold of the Malfoy name and properties in any other manner. And that you make restitution to us."

            Shepherd shut his eyes and shook his head. "I don't have any money, and I have people who are--disappointed that I can't pay them. You can't make me pay you."

            "Draco has something else in mind," Harry said. And Draco had mentioned something, but he hadn't said what it was, and in the end Harry had leashed his curiosity and let his husband keep quiet for now. "You might know what better than I would. As a Malfoy by blood, I mean."

            Shepherd's eyes were darker when they looked at him. "Why couldn't you not exist?" he whispered. "Why couldn't you refuse to marry Draco, the way everyone expected you to? Without you, none of this would have happened."

            "I still don't think Draco would have chosen a penniless and powerless magical relative to marry, no matter what you think."

            "Powerless?" Shepherd lurched forwards to the length of his chains. "Face me with my wand in hand, and say that!"

            "I recognized those rituals," Harry told him. "One of them, the first one, could have been intended to give you possession of the Malfoy property, to transfer the loyalty of the wards to you. But the other one? The one they were curling around you like a cocoon to enact in haste? I know what that means as well as you do."

            Shepherd folded his arms, which made the chains rattle, and tried to make him back down with another glare. Harry sat there, and continued with the calm, relentless voice that had been his best tactic among the Aurors when questioning suspects.

            "I know that you were going to draw on the magic of your allies--I'm sorry," he added, as Shepherd shifted and made the chains rattle again. "Should I call them your associates? Your donors? You don't want to name them that way, but they're people who you owe money to, I'm certain. Your magic is declining. Or at least it was too small to handle the burden of the wards and the Malfoy family magic."

            "You're wrong," Shepherd said, but his voice was a tiny thing that lost itself a few centimeters from his mouth. Harry knew what he had said more from the shape of his lips than from the sound.

            "What is it, then?" Harry asked. "The Devouring Plague?" That was a disease that weakened magic, and which couldn't actually be caught, despite its name; it simply appeared randomly in some families. "Some curse that hit you? Someone taking your magic as payment?"

            Shepherd flinched so hard that he nearly rammed his head into the wall. Harry smiled. "Ah," he said, barely moving his own lips.

            He knew he had a crack in the facade Shepherd had tried to present. More than a lucky guess, more than simply the reason that Shepherd might have chanced this, it was the thing that made Shepherd shiver and stare at the ground. In an Auror case, this was usually the point where Harry would have a full confession.

            Shepherd, though, rocked himself, and said nothing. Harry sighed. It was true that he couldn't use one of the Aurors' time-honored techniques: promising to find and try the person who had betrayed their suspect. Shepherd already knew that Harry and Draco probably wouldn't be turning him over to the Ministry, the way they hadn't with his assassin.

            "Who took it?" he whispered.

            Shepherd shook his head, and kept staring at the floor. Harry sighed again. Perhaps the name didn't matter, although he still planned to give Shepherd the Veritaserum. After all, that person had done something to Shepherd, and hadn't necessarily played any part in the attacks on Draco and Harry.

            "Why were you important enough to your allies to have so much time and effort spent on you?" he asked. "Surely the spells to control the dragon alone, and to have the Dragon-Keepers follow and attend on it, cost them more than they could ever hope to gain from you."

            Rock. Stare. Harry wondered if he had gone too far in guessing the truth, if Shepherd had something of the Malfoy pride, and the crack he had seen had actually been Shepherd breaking down to the point that he lost hope.

            Harry half-closed his eyes and thought. Draco had told him Shepherd was poor, and from there had come the whole theory that he was in debt to someone and those people would lend Shepherd magic and money to get their money back if he could step into the Malfoy fortune. Even the coordinated attacks on both Draco and Harry had made sense with that theory. If Draco was dead, they would still need to kill Harry before Shepherd could inherit, and if Harry died, then there was the chance that Draco would accept and marry his cousin.

            But money wasn't the only thing the Malfoys had. And if Shepherd really had married Draco right after the collapse of the wards, then the family would still have been relatively poor thanks to the losses Harry had inflicted on them. Draco would have had to spend the Galleons he had on acquiring a new wand, repairing the wards, and Healers for his mother.

            What else do the Malfoys have?

            Secrets. Artifacts.

            Harry slapped his forehead. He had committed the sin that all his teachers during the Auror program had always told him he was too quick to commit, latching onto one theory and charging off after it.

            "No wonder they wanted you alive," he told Shepherd softly. "They would need you and your Malfoy blood to touch whatever artifact it is, wouldn't they? Maybe they thought they could take Draco at first, when the wards fell, but then they went back up too quickly and he proved that he had a new and powerful ally."

            Shepherd stared at him. "You're a Legilimens," he whispered. "You're reading my mind."

            "No," Harry said. "I was an Auror. That's all."

            "Get out of my head." Shepherd's voice crept up slowly, and then in a shrieking spiral. "Get out of my head!"

            It would be useless to try and feed him Veritaserum now. Harry retreated from the cellar room, and closed the door on him. Draco, waiting outside and leaning against the wall, lifted his head quickly and stared at Harry.

            Harry took a deep breath. "I think I may know some of their motives. We can question the others, but they're unlikely to give us more concrete information. What kind of heirlooms or artifacts do you have that your enemies would kill to possess?"

            From the shadow that rippled across Draco's face, Harry thought he probably knew.

*

            delia cerrano: Pretty quickly, I would say.

            Diana: Thank you.

            CareLessLover: Maybe a few more answers than questions.

            SP777: Sometimes I think their roles are a bit switched, when it comes to that.

            polka dot: Probably not more than the enemies Harry's made, from the war and that last little stunt with the Ministry.

            Nightlo: Shepherd? Or Blaise?

            unneeded: You can see here why they were desperate for an heir of Malfoy blood.
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The Name I'll Give to Thee