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Building With Worn-Out Tools	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Four—Flirting With Danger

“Hello, Skeeter.”

“Malfoy.” Rita Skeeter didn’t sound best pleased to see him, but she wasn’t hostile either. After all, though Draco had forbidden her to write a word in the Prophetabout his mother, he was regular with the payments that assured she wouldn’t suffer monetarily for that silence. “What do you want now? No one’s approached me with a request for a story about Mrs. Malfoy in months.”

“This time, I have some interesting information foryou,” said Draco, and smiled as he saw her eyes light up in interest. It almost made his undignified position, on his knees with his head through the Floo connection, worth it. “You’ve heard about the Potters’ divorce.”

“Trying to find a new angle on that story has been driving me mad,” Skeeter said, giving her glasses an irritated twitch. Then she paused. “No offense meant, Malfoy.”

Her choice of words had been deliberate, of course. Draco ignored them. He only had to think of the tactic he’d dreamed up against Weasley and Blaise to make himself smile. “Going on holiday just as it happened was most inconvenient for you,” he agreed. “But you’re back now. And as for why Mrs. Potter is so eager to attack Mr. Potter—well, that makes you wonder, doesn’t it? One would think she would want as amicable a parting as possible, so that she could have more money from him.”

Skeeter pursed her lips and tried to look knowing and wise. It didn’t suit her, Draco thought. She really only pulled off “sly” well. “This kind of divorce makes enemies of everyone, whether the happy couple was really happy or not.”

Draco smirked and held up a sealed packet of papers. “It would interest you to know that she’s been angling for Potter and his money since she was ten, wouldn’t it?”

Skeeter’s mouth fell slightly open.

Draco casually tossed the packet through the flames; it had a spell on it that enabled it to make the Floo transfer even without a human holding it. Skeeter caught it eagerly, and fumbled it open. When she had scanned the first page, she looked up at Draco, fascinated. “Where did you get these?”

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that,” Draco said. She didn’t need to know that Draco had made friends during the war with a rather talented psychometrics expert—someone who could read the impressions or memories of wizards and witches left behind in the objects they’d touched, and someone he’d used on cases before. Nor did she need to know that the expert had visited the Weasley house one morning and learned as much as he could about their daughter. Even Dracohad been surprised at the conversations that the objects remembered and his friend wrote down. It seemed that Ginny Weasley had been certain she was destined to be Potter’s wife from the first time she met him, and she had spoken about him like someone obsessed the whole year before she went to Hogwarts the first time.

And I thought I was bad for spending too much of my time and attention on him in our first year.

“This is gold,” Skeeter muttered, flicking through page after page and skim-reading them expertly. Then she glanced up at Draco. “I can’t have the article ready before tomorrow, you realize.”

Draco leaned back a little, partially to ease the tension in his cramped legs, and waved a lazy hand. “Take as long as you need, as long it’s out within the week.”

Skeeter laughed a bit. “I do like your deadlines, Malfoy.” Then she waved her wand and closed the Floo connection, leaving Draco on the other side without saying goodbye. She often did that.

Draco didn’t mind. He stood and stretched his arms above his head, reveling in the thought of what Weasley would think she when she saw that article.

That she should have been more careful, that’s what. And that she had no idea whom she was up against. I don’t have Potter’s morals.

He’d read through the papers thoroughly before he gave them to Skeeter, of course, and removed anything that could have damaged Potter even slightly. He thought he understood Ginny Potter better than her husband did now. The love she’d had for him had been more of an obsession, and, like any obsession, when it soured, it did so spectacularly.

And he doesn’t appear to have realized it yet. Poor sod.

*

Harry grimaced as he heard yet another owl crash against his wards. Then he went back to washing the Dungbombs out of his hair.

He’d awakened that morning to find owls around his bed, but that was nothing unusual; he’d expected it ever since the announcement about his and Ginny’s divorce got out into the world. He hadn’texpected the owls all to be carrying Dungbombs, courtesy of the twins. They’d got him thoroughly before he could reconstruct his wards so as to keep out any owl that was carrying a package instead of a strict letter.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t good enough a ward-caster to forbid the ones that carried Howlers; the only spell he knew that prohibited them would also keep his regular post from reaching him. So, when an owl landed on the kitchen table with a smoking red envelope, he heard Mrs. Weasley’s angry voice shouting all the way from the loo.

“—KNEW YOU WERE CHANGED, BUT DIDN’T THINK YOU WERE THATCHANGED! TO TRY AND KILLGINNY, HARRY? THAT’S MORE THAN SHE EVER DID TO YOU. SHE WAS TOO GOOD FOR YOU, YOUNG MAN. WHEN I THINK OF ALL THE TIMES I MADE YOU WELCOME IN MY HOME—“

And on and on it went. Harry gritted his teeth and soldiered through it by thinking of all the times that Mrs. Weasley had taken Ginny’s part in some argument he and she had. It really shouldn’t have surprised him that she would act like this now. She wasn’t his mother by blood, she was Ginny’s, and the news of the grandchild would have changed everything for her, the way Hermione told him it would.

And, well, he hadnearly killed her yesterday.

Harry closed his eyes and shuddered even as he raked his fingers through his hair one more time, to stir out the clumped masses of dung. There were times since the war when he hated having magic, and thought it would have been better for the final battle to have made him a Squib. What good was magic he could barely control, linked to a temper that spiked dangerously at the least provocation?

You lived with the woman for five years, you loved her for seven, and you tried to kill her.

Harry took a few deep breaths to soothe the urge to scream. Half the time, his sorrow turned to anger, and his magic had proven reluctant to tell the difference between the kindsof extreme emotions.

He was just reaching for a towel when he heard the almost noiseless flaps of an owl’s wings. His eyes went to the mirror, and he saw the bird struggling strangely, even though it carried only an envelope.

Instincts developed in the war sent Harry diving to the floor of the loo, though he hissed as he rolled on the tile, and as his right leg cramped, the old wound flaring up. The envelope was obviously heavy enough that the owl couldn’t correct its course in time, and it hit the mirror with its side, the left wing working frantically.

The envelope tore on the corner of the mirror, and green smoke poured out of it. Harry covered his face with his arm and waved his wand, flinging the door more widely open and forcing the smoke in that direction.

A Poisoned Missive. He’d thought he’d never see one again after the war. They were an invention of the Death Eaters, a letter that would literally kill someone as soon as they read it.

I didn’t think even the twins would stoop that low.

Then the obvious conclusion came to him, and Harry snorted into his arm even as he kept his wand moving steadily, herding the smoke away from him and caging it harmlessly in a whirl of wind in the front parlor.

They wouldn’t. But Zabini would.

At last the smoke had poured away, and Harry could stand up and take a deep breath again. Then he shook his head and used a spell to trap the owl and hang it upside-down from the ceiling.

A few minutes’ study was enough to let him pick up Zabini’s magical signature around the eyes and wings, binding the owl to fly as fast as it could with the letter, and remain until it was sure Harry was dead. Harry broke the spells with a few flicks of his wrist. Now that he knew the bastard’s magic, he’d change his wards to keep himout completely, the way he’d already altered them so that Ginny could never intrude in person again; the anti-Apparition spells would automatically reject her.

The owl hooted and thrashed, and Harry released it. It sailed away from him with an indignant sound, and flew as fast as it could for the kitchen window.

Harry, his hair still wet and his leg aching ferociously, did manage to get into the parlor before his anger get the best of him. A glance, and the green, swirling smoke simply ceased to exist. Then Harry spent some moments breathing deeply, so that he could get away without destroying his furniture.

Though he was reluctant to do so, he needed to talk to Malfoy. From what the prat had said yesterday, Harry knew he hadn’t expected Ginny and Zabini to move this soon. Harry would have to report that they’d leaped straight to assassination attempts.

He swallowed, and a sharp pain returned to him, one he’d managed to ignore while he had practical matters to arrange in his head.

She tried to kill me.

She really does hate me.

*

Draco was just eyeing the article on the front page of the Daily Prophetand chuckling over Skeeter’s work when his wards rang. He put down the paper and lifted his head at once, touching his wand. If Lucius had come to the Manor, then he could conjure knives to attack him or a wall to fall on him, depending where—

Then the wards chimed again, and this time Draco recognized the ones that he’d set to ring when Harry Potter came as a visitor to the Manor. Draco leaned back in the chair and raised an eyebrow. I certainly didn’t expect him to seek me out this soon. He couldn’t wait to get out of the room yesterday.

Seeky appeared to ask what he should do, and Draco nodded to him. “Let Mr. Potter in and guide him to my study, Seeky.”

“Yes, Master Malfoy,” the house-elf said, and vanished.

Draco paused on the way to check on his mother—it was sheer instinct—but she was dozing peacefully on a chair in the sunshine, with a house-elf near her who arranged the flowers she had never finished sorting into neat piles by size. Draco pulled back, satisfied, and made his way to his study.

Potter was waiting for him there, not seated, but pacing back and forth. His magic danced around him like a series of small whirlwinds, though infinitely more exciting. Draco suppressed his reaction as much as he could, more interested in studying Potter’s intensely tired face.

“Potter,” he said, with a nod. “Come to discuss the article?”

“What article?”

Strange. I would have thought he was angered by what I had Skeeter write about his wife, not about something else. Draco looked at Potter more closely, wondering if he had missed something. Then he realized that there was barely any hatred in Potter’s expression—and he would have thought there would be, whether directed at Skeeter or at him. Instead, Potter appeared desperate, wounded and hunted and driven into a corner.

Draco bit his lip as exasperation stung him. “You know,” he said, crossing the room so he could sit down behind his desk, “you’ll never last the whole trial if you start buckling this early into it. I toldyou this would be hard, didn’t I? And now you’re—“

“Zabini tried to kill me this morning.”

Draco sat down harder than he meant to. Yes, wives and husbands in this sort of trial often resorted to assassination attempts, but those usually came later if at all. He studied Potter closely, and saw him rubbing his face again and again, as if to dissipate traces of tears, though he obviously hadn’t cried.

“How did he get through your wards?” Draco asked quietly.

“He didn’t. He sent a Poisoned Missive.” Potter closed his eyes and seemed to take a moment to calm himself, perhaps because the whirlwinds around him had started stirring the paperwork on Draco’s desk. Then he finally took the chair nearest the door. “I’d warded away all owls carrying packages, and I thought that meant only Howlers and ordinary post could get through—“

“Why are you letting the Howlers through?” Draco asked sharply, sitting up. “With your temper and your lack of control over your magic, Potter, that’s only askingfor trouble.”

“I don’t know a ward that holds them out but lets ordinary letters past,” Potter growled, opening his eyes a slit to look at him.

Draco controlled the impulse to fume, and nodded. “Go on.”

“This came in, and it seemed like an ordinary letter, but the owl was spelled to deliver it straight to me. Luckily, it tore open the envelope on the mirror, and I recognized that green smoke. I got rid of it,” he added, as Draco leaned forwards tensely. “Don’t worry. I looked at it, and it ceased to exist. I was angry enough for that.”

He has the power to do that, and he doesn’t think to use his magic to ward against Howlers. Draco clenched his jaw so he wouldn’t scream in frustration. Why couldn’t hehave been hit by the curse that had made Potter lose control of his magic? He would have put the power to a much better use.

“What do we do now?” Potter asked, drawing Draco’s attention back to him. “If I need to be on guard against assassination attempts, then I’ll need to strengthen the wards to the point that the cottage will almost buckle. Or do you think this is the only one they’ll try? Is this the limit of their daring?”

“No,” said Draco. “Once Blaise’s anger is roused, he’s terrible. I didn’t thinkhe would try to kill you this soon, but he must have been more pissed off than I thought about your trying to kill his whore yesterday.”

“Don’t callher that!”

Draco watched as his inkwell rose into the air and then dropped back to the floor with a concussion that shattered it. He shook his head. Since he was in his own house with his own house-elves, he wasn’t worried about restraining Potter’s magic the way he had been in his office. “What else would you call a woman who slept with one man when she was already married to one?” he asked quietly, lifting his eyes to meet Potter’s. “A woman who was planning to throw herself at you when she was still a little girl?” Holding Potter’s eye, he extended his wand and called, “Accio Daily Prophet!”

The paper zipped into his hand, and he held it out to Potter. “Read the front page.”

Potter did, and his face turned the color of porcelain. Draco snorted, though he managed to keep it under his breath. He can talk about how much he hates his wife all he likes, but he still cares about her. He’ll have to get over that.

And that meant the suggestion he would make when Potter had finished the article was practical in more than one way. And it would serve his own interests as well. What better reason could there be for a Slytherin to do anything?

*

Harry knew the article was Rita Skeeter’s work at once, even though her name was rather hidden by the headline.

GINNY POTTER: AN OBSESSIVE STALKER AT TEN

Readers of the Daily Prophetmay be interested to know that Ginny Potter, nee Weasley, was planning to marry the Boy-Who-Lived from the time she was ten years old.

Confidential sources report that she spoke about it to her mother again and again—not as a dream, but as destiny. She wouldbe his wife. They were “meant” for each other. She dreamed of the Galleons she could spend, the exotic places she would visit, the expensive brooms she would make him buy her.

What she never seems to have dreamed of is Harry Potter, the man, as himself.

The next year, her first in Hogwarts, she required Harry Potter’s help to save her life. Surely intelligent people, at least, must wonder how thathappened. How much of the danger was real, and how much was arranged so that Ginny Weasley would become a very convenient damsel in distress for the hero to rescue?

Harry looked up and away from the article, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that, Malfoy,” he said. “Our second year, I mean. She really didneed my help, and I—“

“Your addiction to the truth does you credit, Potter,” Malfoy drawled, looking bored. “But this isn’t about truth, remember? It’s about influencing the perception of the wizarding world against your wife and for you. That means that Skeeter will stretch the truth as much as she can get away with, if she decides to favor you.”

Harry swallowed. He had gone into this knowing it would be hard, but after this morning, and now this article—

This was the first time he’d felt tainted by it.

He couldn’t bring himself to read the rest of the article. He put the paper on Malfoy’s desk and stood. “I understand,” he said. His voice sounded hollow even to his own ears. “I’ll go back home and strengthen my wards.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Harry wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t manage it. He told himself over and over again that he did notbelieve Ginny had spent years lying to him and maneuvering around him just so she could date and then marry him for his money, but thanks to the article, he would always wonder. The speculations clung to the back of his mind like a film of dirt.

“I think you need stronger wards than that little cottage of yours can support,” Malfoy said. “And, frankly, with your trusting nature—“ his voice made it clear he didn’t regard that as a virtue “—you might believe some sob story about her wanting to forgive you, and let her in even then. I think, Potter, that you’d be much better off staying here and sharing the Manor with me.”

“No,” Harry said, alarmed.

“And why not?” Malfoy cocked his head at him. “I don’t offer this hospitality to just anyone, Potter. You ought to be flattered.”

“I know, but—“ Harry shook his head. He suspected he was blushing, but hoped Malfoy wouldn’t notice. I wanked last night, and it was partially because of you? How did one say that? “I’ve heard about your mother,” he said, groping for an excuse. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on her.”

Malfoy’s stare sharpened for a moment, as if he suspected Harry was making fun of him, but then he gave a lazy wave of his hand. “Your consideration is appreciated,” he said, and his voice was mostlynon-sarcastic. “But the Manor’s huge. You and she can have separate wings, and you’ll never see each other, except maybe when she’s well enough to eat meals with us.”

Harry paused, reluctant, but also aware that he didn’t really have a good excuse for refusing. He was in danger if he stayed in his cottage. If it wasn’t in danger of losing his life, it was at least in danger of losing his temper, since he thought the twins’ packages and the Howlers wouldn’t stop. In Malfoy Manor, he wouldn’t have to worry about that. And he would just have to ignore this uneasy fascination with Malfoy he’d developed—which, admittedly, didn’t feel very strong right now.

And the accusation Malfoy had made stung, but it was true. He might open the door to Ginny if she came begging him, danger or no. He didn’t think he loved her anymore, and he resented what she’d done to him, but what he wanted more than anything right now was for things to stopand go back to the way they’d been. If she offered that, he didn’t know if he could refuse.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll need to return to the cottage and pack up my personal belongings, though.”

“Seeky will go with you,” said Malfoy.

Seeky turned out to be a house-elf. Harry nodded gratefully to it, decided he wouldn’t tell Hermione about this, and strode out of the Manor to Apparate home.

He was aware that Malfoy watched him go with a faint smirk on his lips, but he really couldn’t tell why.Did he like winning arguments that much?

*

In answer to a few questions: I usually update twice a week on this story.
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