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Parsimony	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14122 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Thirty-Two--Decisions At the Last

            Harry heard Draco and Klein drew in their breaths at the same time. He had the impression that both of them were thinking of the same curse to use on the wolfwere, as a matter of fact.

            He rendered matters moot by standing forwards and crouching down in front of the wolfwere. However ambivalent Klein might feel towards him, he doubted she would curse him. And Draco...

            Well, sometimes Harry thought he couldn't answer for how Draco felt about anything, never mind him. But he still didn't think he would curse him. Call it faith, call it trust, call it complete bloody stupidity, which Ron probably would. Harry still felt it.

            "All right," he said quietly, into the wolfwere's face. "What do you imagine you can do when we get there? We're going to have enough trouble sneaking unauthorized humans into this place. You have to admit that you'll stand out, even if the guards there don't have noses as good as yours."

            The wolfwere stared into his face. Harry didn't know what he'd planned from this point forwards, or what he'd planned at all, so he simply sat still and said nothing, his arms draped across his knees.

            At last the wolfwere said, "There is magic that you can cast. I know the spells, in the same way that I know the one that permitted you to look afar." His tongue swept noiselessly across his jaws. "It will keep me safe and silent, and if you take me along with you to this place, where I might seek the killer of my pups, then I shall do nothing to break it."

            "And you expect us to believe that?" Harry flinched automatically at Klein's words, and saw the wolfwere crouch a little closer to the earth. "After telling us how much you want to find the killer of your children, we're supposed to assume that you'll go along and be an obedient dog?"

            "I do not know what some of those words mean," said the wolfwere, his gleaming eyes fixed on Klein, although Harry thought he did, actually, and was downplaying things so Klein would think him less of a threat. "But I will go along and stay still and silent behind you until the moment when you can find who killed them."

            Harry winced and glanced up at Klein. "Wouldn't you want to find someone who had slaughtered your family members?" he asked. "At the very least, the wolfwere has helped us before. We owe it to him to see this through."

            Klein stared at him until Harry heard Draco shifting uneasily behind them. Harry bit his lip. He was doing this for Draco's sake, really, whispered the part of his brain that had most liked the kisses and other touches he and Draco had shared, and didn't that mean that he should get on with it, if Draco wanted to?

            But Harry rejected the thought a moment later. That was a part of him, sure, but an unworthy part. He was incapable of refusing the wolfwere's request for aid simply because Draco didn't like it. Another thing he wouldn't do for Draco.

            "You are treating him as if he were human," Klein said at last. "Instead of a magical creature. Instead of an animal."

            Harry stood up. He realized, as he did, that he was trembling, and he had moved his body, again, in between Klein and the wolfwere. The wolfwere thrust his head curiously around Harry's legs and snarled at Klein, but didn't try to stop him. Harry was glad of that. He had too many things that he wanted to say.

            "Just a magical creature," he repeated. "That's really all you see when you look at him, isn't it? Not someone who got caught up in our battle with the Death Eaters when he didn't ask to. Not someone who's worthy of being helped just like anyone else would be who lost his family. Not someone who's offering help as well as asking for it. Because God forbid that you have to consider a magical creature equal to a human."

            Klein stared at him some more. Then she said, "He is not like the centaurs, or the merfolk, who have treaties with the Ministry. Or the goblins, who have a place in our society. He is an animal, born an animal, who can achieve human form. That does not make him our equal."

            The wolfwere's soundless growl made Harry shudder. Harry didn't make one himself, but only because the wolfwere's said everything he wanted to. It at least made Klein back up a step, her hand on her wand.

            "An animal couldn't understand what you just said," Harry told her flatly. "They have different morals, or no morals at all. But the wolfwere understands vengeance, and crime, and people who don't value him. We all do. Are you going to let him come along or not?"

            Maybe it was the wolfwere's eyes. Maybe it was Harry's. But after a long moment, Klein bobbed her head in a choppy nod. "As long as he's quiet, and doesn't attack the Azkaban guards," she snapped, and then went back to gliding ahead of them, watching out vigilantly for danger.

            Harry sighed and touched the wolfwere on the back of his neck. "Would you prefer a Disillusionment Charm, like the one I'm wearing?" he asked quietly.

            "Yes," said the wolfwere, staring up at him with those wild eyes. Harry wondered about some of the shadows he could see in them, but then thought of his own words to Klein, and muffled a snort. Who wouldn't look like that when most of their family had been murdered?

            He wondered, for a moment, as he cast the spell, whether he ever wore such a look himself. Then he watched as the barely-there shadow of the wolfwere followed Klein, and glanced back to make sure Draco was still with them.

            Draco had removed the Cloak from his face and was staring at Harry from a few inches away, so that his head appeared to float in midair. "What?" Harry asked, because there were shadows in his eyes, too.

            Draco cleared his throat, swallowed loudly, and then finally said, "I didn't realize that you cared so much about someone who wasn't me."

            Harry leaned forwards until his brow, with the scar, rested against Draco's clear one. Draco stared back, and whether he was afraid or fascinated or angry, he wasn't going to move.

            "I don't care about him instead of you," Harry said. "I care about him in addition to you. And I do the same thing with my friends, and Snape, and the professors who are worth doing a good job for, and the memory of my parents. Understood? I would do a lot for you, Draco, but you aren't the only one I would."

            Draco stared at him, utterly motionless, and made Harry wonder if he was frightening him after all, just so badly that Draco didn't dare pull away. Then he swallowed, and his hand came up and flailed around for a moment under the Cloak, until Harry found it and grasped it with his own semi-transparent one.

            "Thanks," Draco whispered. "I think you needed to say that, and I needed to hear it."

            Then he hurried after Klein and the wolfwere, and Harry trailed him, feeling lighter, for some reason, than he had for a long time.

*

            The Portkeying to Azkaban--once Klein had gone through the tiresome regulations that prevented just anyone from getting their hands on one--was a crowded affair, the wolfwere pushing close against Harry's legs and Harry's hands closing in his ruff, Draco leaning against him and Klein holding Draco's arm with one hand while her other arm encircled Harry's shoulders. The first thing Harry did when they landed on the island was check to make sure they hadn't left anyone behind or Splinched anything, although to be fair, he didn't even know if Splinching was possible with Portkeys.

            The second thing Harry did when they landed on the island was look up at the grey buildings, the stone and the cold of them, the waves that lashed the shore, and the gulls that wheeled crying overhead.

            Actually, there were fewer gulls than he had expected. And less island, too. And a colder sea. All in all, the Ministry had chosen the most isolated and desolate place it could do for a prison. Harry grimaced. He was sure that most of that was deliberate, because they wanted to break the prisoners' spirits, and this was the kind of thing that would be effective even without Dementors.

            Not that Dementors had been good, either. Harry felt a stir of revulsion at the bottom of his soul, and shook his head. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that he didn't want to work for an organization that sucked up prisoners' happiness and kept a whole squad of people just to alter Muggles' memories.

            And perhaps he didn't want to allow it to go on existing without change, either. But he wasn't naive enough to think that working for the Ministry would change it. No, that would have to come from the outside and be forced onto them.

            Maybe that would be a good thing to use my fame for, just like I'm using it in this case to help Draco.

            "Come," Klein said, snapping both Draco and Harry out of their hypnotized stares at Azkaban, and strode towards the front of the nearest building. It had heavy black iron doors with steel locks, and Harry reckoned it must be the headquarters, or the place where the guards congregated to stay out of the wind, or something. He felt the soft brush of near-invisible fur against his leg as the wolfwere followed, and he glanced back a time or two to make sure that the Cloak covered Draco all the way to the ground.

            "Halt."

            One of the guards stepped out to confront Klein. To Harry's eyes, the robes the man wore were a lot like Auror robes, though he was sure Klein could indignantly point out all sorts of differences. The main one that Harry could see was that these were grey, the same stone-grey as the buildings, instead of red. The man was a tall one who aimed his wand at all of them even when Klein sighed and rolled her eyes.

            "Chervets, as we agreed," she said. "I've brought you visitors." She didn't move her eyes towards any of them, though, and Harry was privately impressed. If they had to scatter away from a vengeful guard, he wouldn't necessarily know where any of them had gone, or be able to track more than one.

            The man spent some time looking into her face. Harry shivered from the wind, and hoped that didn't cause the borders of his Disillusionment Charm to shake in such a way that Chervets could notice. It was bloody cold out here, and the longer the guard looked at them, the less sure Harry was about the whole thing. It seemed as though he wanted more than what Klein had promised him, or something, at least if the way his fingers tightened on his wand were any indication.

            Then Chervets snorted and jerked his head sideways. "As we agreed," he repeated, and held out his hand. Klein reached into her pocket and pulled out something that shone dazzling and mirror-like, especially in that dim place. Harry only had the chance to blink at it before Chervets had dropped it into his pocket and turned away. He didn't know what it was, although it hadn't looked like a bag of Galleons, or a diamond, or anything else potentially valuable enough to bribe an Azkaban guard.

            "This is the way it works," Chervets said in a quiet, harsh voice, not looking back at them. He had a long brown beard that he stroked as if he thought it would give him good luck before he continued. "You follow behind me. If I tell you to take a step up or down, you take them. No questions. As little noise as possible. Don't break or strike out at anyone, even if you hear references to the members of your family, or your friends, or whatever, who are here. Don't expect me to help you if you get yourselves stepped on or bumped into. Keep out of the way. Understood?"

            Harry nodded, and he assumed that the other two did, as well. Or perhaps the wolfwere did something other than nod. At the very least, there was no sign that he didn't understand and was going to lash out.

            Chervets didn't wait for them, anyway. He began to walk forwards into the central building of the prison, one measured pace at a time. Harry glanced quickly up at Klein and found that she was frowning at him, one hand on her wand as if it was a security blanket.

            "Do exactly as he tells you," she whispered. "I trust him to get you out of here as long as you follow his instructions, but deliberately disobey and he'll wash his hands of you. I'll see you back at Hogwarts." And then she had wheeled and was walking away herself, towards the tip of the island where they had landed in the first place. Harry thought he saw her hand rest on the Portkey.

            Harry sighed and hurried ahead, after Chervets, who was walking slowly enough but hadn't stopped during Klein's farewell. He could feel the shapes of the others beside him, Draco a silky whisper against his arm and the wolfwere trotting as comfortably on all fours as Harry walked on two legs, whisking in and out between his feet. Harry concentrated on taking the stairs carefully, given that, so that he wouldn't trip over the wolfwere and make any betraying noise.

            It was dangerous. He knew that. But he did have a number of plans in case Chervets betrayed them, and they would make sure that Klein wouldn't get away unscathed, either.

            Right now, it was the best they could hope for.

*

            Harry was grinding his teeth by the time they got to the bottom level of Azkaban, evidently the one where the most recent prisoners were kept. His desire to destroy the Ministry was so great that sometimes it was hard to remember what both Klein and Chervets had said, that lashing out would reveal their presence here and destroy or at least lessen their chances of getting out unseen.

            Only Draco and the wolfwere really kept him grounded. Because he had more people than just himself to worry about. Otherwise, he would have been tempted to reveal himself and declare that the Boy-Who-Lived was here and was angry.

            He had never seen a place more designed to break someone.

            The guards had comfortable quarters, if dark ones, in the top of the building, with fires and food and sleeping mattresses and more wizarding games on the walls and books on the shelves than Harry had expected. He had seen holes in the walls up there, which seemed to lead down to the cells, but he hadn't known what they were for. Maybe water to wash out the cells of prisoners too dangerous to open the door for, or ways to give people showers.

            As they descended and he saw prisoners huddling by those holes, then he knew. They were places where they could listen to the guards laughing and talking and playing, hear casual references to their own names and crimes maybe, could hear the voices of people pleading to be allowed to visit them.

            The Ministry didn't give the prisoners any comforts, plus they taunted them with knowing exactly what had been taken away from them, and that there was comfort somewhere on this island, if only they could have broken out of their cells and found it. Harry could see the way some of the listening prisoners' eyes were shadowed, as if they would have murdered the guards if they could have, and he absolutely didn't blame them.

            It was also cold in the prison itself, with the kind of grinding chill that meant you wouldn't ever really get warm, no matter how many blankets you wrapped yourself in--and the prisoners might have one thin one, but no more than that. It was the kind of cold Harry remembered from walking to primary school in tattered clothes that were too big for him. It wasn't enough to give anyone frostbite, but it wore you down, it consumed you in making you think about getting warm instead of something else, and Harry could at least duck into a reasonably warm building after his walk. There was no change here.

            There was no color, either. Harry thought that might drive him mad most quickly of all, and he wondered what it had done to Sirius (assuming the prison had looked like this when he was here, of course). Grey floors, grey walls, and dim lights buried here and there in those walls that threw cold illumination without much shadow, just enough to see the guards and the food they brought, or for a prisoner to grope their way to their sleeping pallet or the latrine in the floor.

            The lower floors were worse than the upper ones, with smaller pallets and smaller cells, some so tiny they were like egg-shaped hollows in the stone. The prisoners had to sit bent over if they sat up at all. Not all of them were like that, but enough were that Harry thought he'd worn away several layers of enamel on his teeth by the time they reached the cell where Lucius, or Narcissa, was.

            He was going to do something about this. Not because someone had begged him for help, but because he wanted to. This was inhuman.

            Only when Draco said, "Father?" in a slight whisper did Harry remember what they were here for. He shook his head and turned his attention back to what was happening in front of him. Too much focus on something else could be fatal, here.

            Chervets was standing back in one corner of the corridor with his arms folded, looking bored, but not liable to betray them yet. Draco had the Cloak off his head and was staring through the bars into the cell. Harry felt the brush of fur against his side that meant the wolfwere was standing there, probably sniffing.

            "Father," Draco whispered again.

            Harry stepped up beside him and put his hand on Draco's shoulder. Draco gave no sign that he'd noticed. He simply continued staring straight ahead, and Harry perforce looked with him.

            And was almost sick.

            Lucius Malfoy sat there, and didn't sit there. It was nothing as open as the flickering of his body that told Harry so; the body didn't flicker here, without the potion to show him the truth. And Harry reckoned there were some prisoners in worse shape, including some they'd passed on the way down here.

            But this Lucius sat with his head cocked slightly to one side, his teeth grinding, his eyes staring into nothing, his fists so tightly shut that little streams of blood had leaked downwards from his palms onto his grey robe. Chervets seemed to notice them looking and flicked his wand, once. The old stains disappeared, but Harry already knew that new ones would join them, and "Lucius" wouldn't do anything to stop them.

            And although probably no one would have noticed except Draco or Harry, who had looked into Narcissa Malfoy's face when he thanked her at Lucius's trial, his eyes weren't the right color. They were a darker blue than usual, and they didn't move in the right way. Harry definitely didn't know if he would have seen it without realizing that someone else's mind was in that body, but there were all sorts of little wrong things when you did start looking.

            "Step back," Draco said, turning abruptly to Chervets and lifting his chin. "I want to say something to him, and I don't want you listening."

            "I promise you," Chervets said, with a little yawn and a shake of his head, "you can't say anything I haven't heard before. The whining, the pleas, the secrets, the demands...people aren't as different as they think they are, under the skin."

            Harry shuddered under his skin as he looked at the guard. There was another thing that could wear people down, he thought, besides the constant cold. Live here long enough with the horror, and you'd think that this was normal. Be an Azkaban guard, and you'd either ask for transfer out or adopt this coldness to keep yourself from going mad.

            "Nevertheless," Draco said, and gave Chervets a plain, vicious smile. "Or is what Klein paid not enough for you? Because there's this." He reached into his robe, under the Cloak, and pulled out a vial of sparkling green potion, one moment invisible and the next floating in the air. Harry hoped he was the only one who heard the wolfwere's soft snarl.

            Chervets didn't seem to, if only because he was so focused on the potion. He stumbled a step forwards, and then stopped. "That can't be what it looks like," he whispered.

            "It is." Draco didn't look away from him. "Dreamless Sleep made with pure laudanum. I promise, it'll give you a sleep that drives all the nightmares away, and for only half a dose as much as the regular potion, so you can go on taking it longer."

            Chervets licked his lips, then said, "You would be discovered if I left the corridor."

            "Then just go up it," Draco said, and bounced the potions vial on his hand, as if he was considering dropping it and shattering it. Chervets made a strangled sound, and Draco looked at him with that vicious smile again. "Until you can't hear my voice. Believe me, I'll know if you don't."

            Chervets nodded violently, and snatched the vial from Draco's hand. Then he turned and scuttled off. Harry thought he was probably going to chuckle over his prize. Harry cocked his head at Draco, who was already turning back to the cell.

            "How did you know he wanted a Dreamless Sleep potion like that?" he whispered. "How did you brew it?"

            "In advance, because it makes a good bribe," Draco said, without turning a hair or taking his eyes from his mother-father. "And because someone who works here as a guard would always have nightmares, it stands to reason."

            Harry had to concede that made sense, but it wasn't something he would have thought of. Coming here seemed to have kicked Draco's initiative to life. He leaned forwards through the bars and spoke, hardly moving his lips. "Mother."

            Lucius's head jerked, and then lifted. The mad blue eyes stared at Draco, who flinched, but didn't back away. His face looked pale and strained in the small sparks of light. Harry looked at him and wondered where all this strength had come from. Probably it had been in Draco all along, but before now, he hadn't been through circumstances dire enough to call it to life.

            "I know that's you," Draco whispered. "And I know that you probably can't come back to me, that you're mad, but..." He exhaled, and let the sound die in aimless whistling through the grey stone before he continued. "I know one spell that might work. I'm going to cast it now." He reached into his robe for his wand.

            Three things happened at once. The wolfwere growled behind Harry, a sound so fierce and wild that it sounded almost ecstatic.

            Lucius lurched to his feet inside the cell and shrieked, "No!"

            And the Lucius Harry and Draco had faced in the Forest of Dean exploded into being in the corridor behind Draco, Pansy Parkinson beside him, clutching a blood-drenched silver harp.

*

            LeaniaSTL: No, you hadn’t really missed anything! Next chapter is where it all comes together.

            ChaosLady: I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to!

            SP777: Oh, a locked-room mystery? No, it’s true that I haven’t done one of those in a while. I’m more interested in drama and humor right now.

            unneeded: Draco does miss them, yes. It’s one of those things Harry doesn’t pick up on a lot because he didn’t know Draco before.

            Makoto_Sagara: Draco didn’t ignore Harry so much as want a private moment with his renewed friend. Harry understood.

            And yes, if one mind dies, they both die.
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Parsimony