Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28253 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Four—In a Fever of Impatience
This time, Draco saw nothing wrong with having Potter come in by the front door. He was dressed in Auror robes, as well, and that made eyes all over the room turn so that they could widen at him. Most of his assistants would do nothing more than look foolish, of course, and Draco considered it good training for them. They would serve famous and powerful clients in their time, including those who had to come to them for problems that would make them laughingstocks if they were known. They had to learn to keep masks of coolness on their faces, or they would never succeed as anything more than the apothecary to a small village.
For Campion, the effect was different. He reached behind him and braced his hand on a chair that wobbled from the force of his grip. His eyes were locked on Potter, and his jaw hung so far open that a small line of drool worked its way towards his chin. Draco grimaced, reconsidering his plan. It reflected badly on him not to have trained Campion to a greater dignity, even in the presence of the Chosen One.
But those thoughts didn’t seem to be going through Potter’s head. Instead, he simply moved forwards, his eyes locked, calmly and meditatively, on Campion’s face. He paused once to look at back at Draco, a flicker of a glance that asked whether this was the boy that Draco meant him to investigate. Draco jerked his head down, and Potter immediately went back to the stalk.
Not that anyone watching would know that it was a stalk unless they had foreknowledge like Draco’s or watched Potter’s body movements to the point of ignoring his face. He had a broad smile on it, and he put out a hand to Campion with what looked like perfect friendliness. Draco nodded, reluctantly impressed. He had heard that Potter had picked up some acting skills by attending Ministry functions, but he had expected nothing this accomplished.
What else might he be able to act?
“Campion Fipps?” Potter pitched his voice with gentleness, with a tone that he hadn’t shown Draco yet. Draco shifted in place, and then wondered why. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Your uncle gave me a message for you, and I couldn’t figure out your routine enough to give it to you anywhere but here.” He ducked his head and smiled at Campion under his fringe. “Careless of me, when I’m supposed to be such a skilled investigator.”
Draco forced his face into immobility to hide his smile. Clever of Potter. He gave Campion an excuse to go and be private with him that Campion couldn’t possibly refuse, and he made it sound as if he were nothing that Campion need fear, at the same time. If he was a clumsy Auror who couldn’t track down a young man with a lot of public information available on his movements, then he certainly wouldn’t find out about anything strange that young man might have done.
Those thoughts traveled through Campion’s head so clearly that Draco could practically hear them. The next moment, he was nodding and smiling and ushering Potter into the private room at the back of the shop where Draco worked with sensitive ingredients and the assistants went to recover from allergic attacks. “Of course, Auror Potter,” he said. “I’m always happy to hear from my uncle. If you’ll come this way?”
Though the other assistants looked a little envious—perhaps because Campion got to talk to Potter, perhaps because they didn’t have relatives as famous who could use the best Auror in the Department as an errand boy—they turned back to their brewing. Draco turned to survey them, putting his back to the private room.
He stood by one of the counters where he kept ingredients that needed to be carefully diced and weighed before they were sold, however, and that meant that his hand hovered near one of his hidden modifications to the shop. When he pulled on a buried lever, it triggered a spell that made him able to see things happening in the private room. It was as though a hidden veil in the air in front of him tugged back and made the space known. Draco leaned his hip on the counter and apparently busied himself with sorting through bat eyes, while in reality he watched the vision that no one but him could see. The magic struck up through the lever to a hand that had touched it and no one else.
There were two chairs in the private room, and Campion settled Potter in one while he took the other. Potter seated himself with his legs crossed in a prim fashion that Draco never would have thought he could master before this. Draco had to swallow a sharp crow of satisfaction. It was thoroughly ridiculous that Potter could have succeeded in the Ministry all this time if he was only the intense, blunt man Draco had met on Friday. He had more than one layer to him, and Draco’s last doubts about the plan, that Potter wouldn’t be a subtle enough actor to fool Campion, blew away.
He carried on with his sorting. The click and roll of bat eyes was more than soft enough that it didn’t hide the words from the parties in front of him. And it pleased him to think that he was accomplishing two tasks at once.
*
“Auror Potter. I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”
That’s a lie. Almost everything Campion Fipps had said since Harry came through the door was a lie, in fact, but this one was a particularly egregious one.
The young man could barely keep himself from running away. Dark stains marked the armpits of his robe, and it wasn’t warm enough in the shop for that. His eyes apparently found something fascinating just off to the right side of Harry’s face, one of the telltales of a liar. He kept rubbing and drying his hands on his legs, and although he laughed and apologized, saying he’d been working with a greasy potion before Harry came in, that was also a lie.
The only thing that mattered to him now was whether Campion would acknowledge that and say anything about it.
“So, what’s the message from my uncle?” Campion asked at last, when he had settled into his chair and done enough fidgeting to polish the seat with his arse.
Harry looked around as though making sure they had protections on the room not to be overheard. As a matter of fact, he had heard a slight click and hiss almost immediately after they entered it, and he had almost drawn his wand before he recognized the sound of an Observation Lever. Of course Malfoy would have one installed in this place and not the main shop, Harry thought, relaxing enough to appreciate the man’s cleverness. They were easier to use in smaller spaces, and Malfoy would have any excuse he needed to watch over and listen to his assistants in the main shop. This would be harder.
Harry pretended to cast a privacy ward with a meaningless flick of his wand, anyway, and watched Campion sit up a little straighter. That was the point, of course. Lure the boy into relaxation as much as possible, make him think that he’d got away with it, and he might reveal the crime or foul thing he’d been involved in without prodding.
“Your uncle says to tell you,” Harry whispered, “that the Aurors are close to knowing.”
Suitably vague phrasing, suitably ominous words. If Campion denied knowing what this was about and did so in a way that convinced Harry he was telling the truth, Harry could always pretend that the first words had been a test, either by Schroeder to see if his nephew would confess the secret to anyone or by Harry to make sure that Campion was really in on the secret.
But Campion froze in place, and his blood drained from his face so much that he looked ready to faint. Harry felt saliva fill his mouth and his body strain towards Campion. This was prey.
For a moment, Harry thought Campion would bolt. He was twitching his head from side to side so much that he looked like a malfunctioning Muggle toy. But after a few moments, he managed to draw himself up and clear his throat. “Did—was there any more to the message than that?” he asked.
Harry sighed. “No, he didn’t say so. I think that he didn’t trust me to know more than that.” He sighed again and started to stand. “I think I could have been a help to him if I did know more, because that way I would know whether he needs to be protected from a threat.” He nodded to Campion. “Or you do.”
He turned slowly away, all his senses straining, waiting for the moment when Campion would yield to the temptation, as he surely must—
“Wait!”
Yes. I knew that would happen.
Harry feigned confusion, glancing over his shoulder and blinking. “Was there something you wanted?”
“I can’t believe that Uncle only intended you to carry a message, and not do anything else.” Campion’s eyes were so wide that Harry thought he might start weeping any minute. For all that, though, his hand on the back of his chair was steady, his voice calm and firm. “You can do more for us if you would. You can help me.”
Harry inclined his head. “I would be happy to,” he said, and kept any trace of amusement out of his voice and off his face. Campion had fallen for the trick easily, which was a good thing, not a gift he should waste by laughing. “But what can I do? From what your uncle told me, he seemed to think it was a private affair in your family, and that I should stay outside it.”
“As I said, I doubt that he intended that,” Campion said, and gave Harry a kindly smile that made Harry want to hex him. He thinks I’m stupid, that there’s no way I can possibly understand political subtleties… But again, that was good, because it meant that Campion would trust him more than if he thought Harry a complex or subtle thinker. So Harry nodded, and Campion’s face broke into a smile. “He chose you as his messenger for a reason. So that I would realize how much you can help and take advantage of it.”
Harry hid his smile as he bowed. Tell them as much truth as they need to build on, and their imaginations fill in the holes. He didn’t always tell the best lies, but he didn’t have to, not when omissions didn’t linger for long. People would tell themselves stories, and then tell him, and he would know how to act. “What would you like me to do?”
*
Draco kept his head bowed as though focusing intently on the bat eyes. His assistants tended to assume that was when he was actually watching them most closely, and would concentrate on their work more assiduously than ever. That had multiple benefits for Draco, so he encouraged the habit.
Or tried. At the moment, if one of them should glance up and look closely enough, he knew they would see his brow furrowed and his eyes with wrinkles around them that most certainly didn’t come from concentration.
Potter had used the same kind of technique on Campion that Draco would have expected to see used by a skilled reporter, luring him on to confess more than he knew. The reporter would do it for the sake of a story. Potter was doing it because…
Why? Did he suspect a crime here more strongly as Draco did? Draco had thought it the kind of harmless boyish prank that would make such a callow young man as Campion live in constant fear of Aurors, but it looked now as though Potter wanted to treat it like a conspiracy. And of course Wizengamot members did engage in shallow conspiracies against each other, but Draco would have thought Schroeder smarter than to involve Campion, who couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.
He should keep in mind, too, that Potter had come out here on very little evidence to oblige Draco, who had merely sent him a request by post. That made Draco wonder what else Potter might have known, or suspected, or lulled Draco into thinking, if he was as good an actor as all that. Could Draco be sure that he hadn’t come here in the beginning to spy on Campion, and not for any other reason?
Then Draco snorted. If that had been the case, Potter would never have told him that story about the Divination professor at Hogwarts. There was nothing to prevent Draco from checking on that, and he could not simultaneously propose that Potter was an incredibly smart and subtle investigator and that he would miss that.
So Draco continued to sort and pick, and watched the way Campion in the vision of the spell edged closer and closer to Potter, eyes wide with an appeal. Potter, of course, would be much stupider than Draco thought he was if he fell for it.
Perhaps I should stop making assumptions and instead watch what happens.
*
“This is it,” Campion whispered. “I never wanted to be involved. But I came and called on Uncle at the wrong time, and, well, I saw some notes and overheard what he was talking about with Moonstone.”
The name wasn’t familiar to Harry, but he could remedy that easily enough, particularly as he now he had a name to build on. He nodded, patted Campion’s arm, and urged him with an air of breathless anticipation to go on.
“So now I have to be,” Campion said, with a great, gusty sigh that seemed to complain about the unfairness that was his life. Harry refrained from saying that, as far as he was concerned, Campion had more privileges than most of the people Harry knew who worked in the Ministry. “I have to identify targets—and that’s hard, when I never step far outside the door of the shop without Potions master Malfoy missing me. But now I go and spend time in Muggle places, and that means that I’m more likely to see them.” He bowed his head. “I should have gone this morning. I would have, if I realized that you were coming. But of course you’re on our side, so it’s silly to wish for that, because I would have missed you and the message from Uncle Lucas.” He gave Harry a smile that seemed to ask for pity and sympathy both at once.
Harry’s pulse had started thundering so hard that it was difficult for him to give Campion the murmur and nod of commiseration that he knew the boy was looking for.
Looking for Muggles. Muggle places.
The girl who died wore robes, but no one has reported a girl that age missing. And the Unspeakables did say that they didn’t think she was magical herself, just that she had died because of a wizard—although they admitted that their conclusions on that matter were uncertain.
Harry didn’t know for certain. He couldn’t know for certain, not when Campion had given him so little to go on. But he could feel the snap and click of connection in his head, the sensation that all good Aurors learned when they began their real investigations. There were important facts here, and Campion was hiding them somehow. There were important facts that connected to Harry’s case here, and Campion was hiding them.
His superiors would frown on the fact that Harry had got this much information by tricking Campion, and the prosecution would be made more difficult by his uncle’s position and power. But the nature of the crime was horrific enough that Harry doubted Campion would be able to bribe or lie his way out of a holding cell. Harry could bring him in on reasonable suspicion, and the boy would crack soon under sustained interrogation. The way he’d babbled it all out to Harry at first opportunity showed that he was no hardened criminal, willing to die to protect his family secrets.
“Incarcerous,” Harry said flatly, and watched in satisfaction as loops of rope shot around Campion’s wrists and bound them together in front of him. Campion stared at him with wide eyes and tried to slide away from the chair where he still sat, but Harry tapped the ropes with his wand and repeated the spell, and then his feet were tied. He slid into a kneeling position, babbling hopelessly, his feet flexing as if he thought he could snap magic-made ropes like string. Harry knelt down in front of him and smiled sweetly into his face.
“I know you know something,” Harry whispered. “Interfering in Muggle areas constitutes a crime under the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. I’m bringing you in, Mr. Fipps. I hope that you can convince the other Aurors you’re going to talk to that you really know nothing about this and didn’t participate willingly. Not even your uncle can protect you otherwise.”
Campion’s mouth dropped open again, and then he began to shiver. “You’re not on our side after all,” he whispered.
“I never am on the side of people who do things like kidnap Muggle children,” Harry said. He wanted to add something about and scrape their faces off, but that would give Campion too much information. Harry wanted him to tell what he knew, not what he thought would make the Aurors leave him alone and let him go. He hauled Campion to his feet and adjusted the ropes a bit so that he could stumble along. Then he aimed him at the door of the private room, guiding him back out into Malfoy’s apothecary once more.
“It wasn’t kidnapping!” Campion lashed out with one foot, but Harry knew that trick and was nowhere in range. He cast a Stinging Hex in retaliation, and Campion cried out and curled up, his feet kicking feebly. Harry raised the hex and shoved him past the gaping assistants and smoking cauldrons and Malfoy’s shadowed eyes. “It was recruiting! We were giving them a choice to join us and work with us! Please, you have to believe me!”
“I’m sure that you would like me to,” Harry said, and showed Campion his wide eyes and grinning mouth. Campion jerked his head back as if slapped, and cowered in the ropes. Harry smiled more widely at him and urged him forwards with a wand in the middle of his back. “That doesn’t mean I have to. That doesn’t mean I will.”
Campion drew the tattered shreds of his dignity around him as they reached the door of Malfoy’s shop, not looking at his fellow assistants, who had stopped in their brewing to gape. “You’ll suffer for this,” he said. “You know how powerful my family is. Not even your fame will protect you if they get angry.”
Harry leaned in so that his lips were just a few inches from Campion’s ear, and blew out delicately. Campion jumped, and then whimpered and cowered back when he realized that Harry was that close. Harry left his mouth right in place—the ropes kept Campion from lunging too far away—and whispered so softly that he knew not even Malfoy, at the counter less than a foot away, would hear him.
“You can take me off the case. People have done that before. You can threaten me. People have done that before. There are all sorts of ways to play politics, and not everyone loves and admires me.
“The problem is that I’ve anticipated that, and you have no idea how many plans I can weave in response. There are people who hate me and want the status quo to stay the same, and there are people who want writhing little worms like you to be punished.” Campion flinched from the venom, but Harry didn’t move, and didn’t raise his voice. He had a lot of practice at this by now. “I have no problem finding allies. You walk away laughing, and I’ll ensure that you suffer before you die.”
“You’re an Auror,” Campion said, but shock had stolen the strength from his voice, so that if he wasn’t as silent as Harry, at least no one but Malfoy heard them. “You’re not supposed to think like that.”
“No? We’re supposed to be the easy-to-beat fighting force that looks the other way when the Ministry needs us to? The ‘law enforcement’ that you can bribe to enforce whatever law you want?” Harry laughed gently. “Well, some of us are, there’s no denying that. But there exists that other faction I told you about, and you can never be sure that some of your guards don’t come from there. I’d resist the temptation to immediately call on your uncle for help, Campion. The Aurors who spend their lives guarding the Wizengamot aren’t all the easily swayed sort, either.” He put his hand in the middle of Campion’s back this time and pushed, and Campion had to catch himself on the edge of a crate. He gave a few hopeless sobs as they made their way out of the door.
Harry looked back over his shoulder once, feeling as though someone had spoken his name. As far as he could see, no one had—the lips of most people in the shop seemed frozen with surprise—but Malfoy stood behind his counter and pinned Harry with a fierce gaze, and Harry knew he would have interfered if he could have.
Harry shrugged back at him, and turned away to fix on his prey. If there was a chance that Campion could help them solve the case of the dead girl, then Harry would have been willing to do far more damage to Malfoy’s shop than just arresting one of his assistants. Malfoy had been unexpectedly helpful and charming to be around, but this was Harry’s job.
*
Draco sighed and spelled the door of the shop shut. It turned out that an armed Auror dragging a brewing assistant out the door in the middle of the morning rather put off the kind of people who sought Chemic Alley on business.
He wished that Potter had spoken to him before he left. Draco had rather thought they were allies, or the next best thing to it, but Potter had seemed to care only about whatever Campion had said to make him suspicious. Draco had listened to the whole conversation, and still didn’t know what that was. He could only assume that it related to a case that Potter had already been working.
It was telling, he thought, that he was more upset about the way Potter had left than he was about the day’s lost business.
He had turned his back when someone knocked. Draco cast the spell that opened the door again with a faint smile. So some business had not been scared off, but had simply waited until Aurors and observers alike were out of sight.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Draco asked as he saw two wizards step inside, before his brain caught up with his mouth and he realized that they both wore scarlet robes. He immediately went quiet and waited.
The nearest Auror was a hefty man with black eyes that Draco thought he might have seen sometimes in the photos that the Prophet loved to snap—or had learned to love snapping since Potter had become an Auror—of captured criminals with their hands held in back of them or on their heads. He was more than burly enough to hold down a whole group of escaping criminals. “Draco Malfoy?” he asked, without more than a cursory question in his tone. Draco’s appearance was distinctive enough.
Draco nodded.
“You’re under arrest for the crime of harassing an innocent,” the man announced briskly, and then tensed as if he expected Draco to run.
Campion. Potter must have been wrong about his belief that he could keep Campion caged up, and he had complained to his uncle, and that meant Draco had paid the price for inviting Potter to his shop a second time.
Draco turned around and held out his hands. That made the second Auror, who looked less burly than the one who’d spoken but no less eager, blink before he reached out and began to wind the ropes around Draco’s wrists.
Potter. I hope you hear about this and have some answer for it.
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