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The Conservation of Fame	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22392 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Four—Fame Between the Lines

            Harry stood in the middle of his study, head bowed. Bookshelves on the walls or not, this was the sturdiest room in the house, and the easiest to raise protection spells in. Harry had decided that he wanted one defensive position inside the wards themselves. To mask it from enemies who could pierce through those wards, he chose, not glamour charms, but books. Most people would take a look into the room and conclude that Harry wouldn’t want to try and protect himself in a place loaded with books that could burst into flames or fall from the walls on top of his head or simply lose valuable data.

            Since the war, and especially the spell, Harry had found that simple deceptions were his best defense.

            He concentrated now, his magic rising through him in precise gradations. He had begun to steady meditation out of simple curiosity, and found that he had the same problems with it that he did with Occlumency: it was hard for him to clear his mind. But the discipline he had acquired that way was good for something else, and he was using it now.

            Every breath he took made his lungs expand a bit more. Every one he exhaled carried more magic with it. He could feel the vibrations of it through his hands. His wand had already leaped out of his grasp once. Now it lay on the library table in front of him until he was ready for it.

            And he nearly was. His fingers tingled as he slowly extended them, and brushed the edge of the wand.

            He thought the nonverbal spell for Apparition as hard as he could. If he was going to replicate the conditions in which Malfoy had come through the wards, then he probably couldn’t speak aloud; Malfoy wouldn’t have wanted his pursuers to know which spell he intended to cast next.

            The world around him shuddered weirdly, and Harry felt himself turn sideways. He grinned, even though it made his face feel like it was about to crack. He rose into the air and the blackness of Apparition crowded around his vision—

            And vanished, to leave him in the same place. Because, of course, the safest place he could be right now was here, in the heart of his fortress.

            Harry laughed aloud and whirled around, clenching his fists above his head as he danced. It had worked, it had worked, it had worked! He had gathered his magic until he could will himself through the wards on sheer stubbornness alone, and that meant that he knew how Draco could get in, and that meant that he could patch the hole that had allowed it and make sure no one else could use the same route. His home was safe once again.

            Of course, it wasn’t an exact replication, because Draco had performed the spell under extreme duress, without the time (or at least so Harry assumed) to gather his will and power that Harry had had. And that increased Harry’s admiration for his skill and his talent for survival. But it was pretty close.

            “Are you always this given to mad private rituals?”

            Harry checked his little dance, flushing, when he saw Draco at the door of the library, but he couldn’t help grinning at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I wake you up?”

            “I’m perfectly capable of moving around, you know,” Draco said. “I’m well.” He evidently thought Harry’s glance at his bandaged arms wasn’t worth answering. “And I want to know what happened.” He moved in, staring curiously around the room and then at the table in front of Harry, where he seemed to expect ritual paraphernalia. When he didn’t see any, he rested his hip on the table and raised his eyebrows at Harry.

            “I was discovering how your stupid spell,” Harry said, thinking he should stress just how stupid it was so Draco would know in case he ever wanted to try it again, “could get through the wards. I cast the same spell, with the same desire, but probably not the same amount of will.” He smiled at Draco. “To be able to call it up like that, all at once, and want with an undivided mind, without tiny little thoughts plaguing you…it’s amazing.”

            Draco stared at him some more. Harry let his smile fade, and cocked his head. “Did I make a mistake?” he asked. “Did you do something different?” He grimaced a little at the thought of doing the spell again, when the first time had already been an intense effort, but of course he would if this wasn’t the way Draco had done it. Better exhausting himself a few times in a row, in safety, then remaining unsafe.

            “You’re amazing,” Draco said, voice low and rough. “To reason backwards from a casual mention of the magical theory, to try it, to succeed, and then to praise me…” He lowered his head. Harry thought he was bracing defensively, and nearly responded with a Shield Charm, but stopped himself in time. There was also the possibility that that particular spell might trigger memories in Draco.

            Then Draco—Malfoy, he was that now, the minute that Harry emerged from the haze of success that the spell had cast him into—stepped forwards, and Harry finally recognized the expression on his face. Draco wasn’t going into a rage, wasn’t trying to protect his secrets. He looked like he wanted to get his hands on Harry, sure, but for a whole different reason.

            Harry aimed his wand at him anyway, but only for a swift jab in the middle of Draco’s chest. “Back. Off.” He emphasized each word, the way he had each syllable of his name the other night.

            Draco just watched him, and said at last, “You make me hungry. You make me hungry like no one else I’ve ever met.” He didn’t back off.

            Harry rolled his eyes, a little more easy with this now that the first shock had passed, and decided that a free warning was in order. “You were just wounded,” he said. “Think about that. Think about the shock and the adrenaline you passed through, the intensity of your experiences, what you must have felt when you woke to find yourself in a place of safety.”

            Draco still didn’t move, but his face underwent a rippling change, like several clouds piling together to form an image. “You’re saying,” he said at last, voice so odd that Harry frankly couldn’t tell which emotion was uppermost, “that I’m responding to you this way just because you’re my Healer?”

            Harry nodded, relieved that Draco had said it instead of Harry having to say it himself. “You phrased it elegantly,” he added, because more praise was probably safe now.

            “You’re ridiculous,” Draco said, and strode out of the room. He did have to stop and catch himself against the door, Harry noticed. He had staggered sideways. Harry cast a few Strengthening Charms unobtrusively in his general direction and sighed, glancing around the study.

            It did seem less important that he had achieved this triumph, now that Draco wasn’t here to share it. But Harry shuddered to imagine what Draco would feel if he broke through the spell and discovered that he had trusted all his secrets to his boyhood rival. Better a small betrayal now, the irritation Draco might feel that Harry had rejected his advances, than a greater betrayal later, one that might mark him for the rest of his life. Harry was doing his best to care for Draco’s future as well as his present, his mind as well as his body, although he knew Draco didn’t see it that way.

            Besides. If he’s that well, he can leave in a little while, and between us, we’ll figure out how to get him to the Ministry or wherever else he needs to go without alerting his enemies.

*

            “I’m going to Hogsmeade,” Harry called into Draco’s bedroom, where he knew Draco had spent the past hours sulking. “Is there anything you need?”

            No response. Harry shook his head. Either Draco was asleep, probably the best thing for him right now, or he had decided Harry wasn’t worth talking to. Which would sting a little, but was the best in the end for both of them.

            Harry stepped into his front garden and shut the door gently behind him, hoping Draco would go to sleep if he wasn’t now.

            And then his wards rocked again.

            Harry at once dropped the satchel that he’d taken to carry the things he intended to buy, cast it against the house where it would be out of the way, and stretched out a hand. The small pool in the center of the garden rippled and arose into a shining sheet of water, one that displayed a flat surface for Harry’s eyes.

            “Show me,” Harry half-growled, and leaned forwards. This was one of his camera-like defenses that he hadn’t had time to use the day Draco showed up on his doorstep. But he was here now, and he was in time, and it was going to show him his attackers, oh yes.

            The water filmed over like a mirror, and showed him two cloaked figures, a man and a woman, both in dark blue robes with an abstract silver design over their hearts that Harry didn’t recognize at all. They had their hoods pulled back so Harry could see their faces, but those weren’t familiar to him, either. They pointed their wands at the wards—they stood in the place he had investigated the other morning, the one where they had first attacked—and spoke an unfamiliar spell as one. Once again, the wards rocked, and Harry braced himself against the physical shock without taking his eyes off the mirror.

            The clever, clever bastards. The second shock had come from within the wards themselves. No wonder Harry hadn’t found a spell that would tell him whether they had weakened his defenses; they had woven the vulnerability into the wards, like planting a bomb in a wall, and trusted Harry’s even more powerful magic to cover the traces of their interference.

            Harry narrowed his eyes and nodded. All right. He understood how they were fighting, now, and while he might not know who they were, where they came from, or everything they could do, the simple beginnings of the fact increased his confidence immeasurably.

            He was going to do this.

            He stepped forwards, whirling around on one foot, and Apparated with the nonverbal spell, appearing behind the attackers. They were good, and one of them turned around at once, the woman, with dark red hair and dark eyes that reflected tranquil power. She didn’t care that she was breaking into someone’s home.

            Fuck reasonable, then, Harry thought, and gave up any thought of persuading them to leave. Instead, he launched a fire spell that landed like a burning star on the woman’s right leg. She paused to swat at it, no doubt thinking it was a spark, and no more than that.

            Because her hand was touching the spark at the moment it blew up, both her hand and her leg went numb. The leg collapsed beneath her, and the woman went down hard enough to hit her head against the dirt, her expression still incredulous when Harry Disarmed and Stupefied her.

            Harry then turned to face the man—

            Who wasn’t there.

            Auror training or battle experience or common sense, it could have been any of them that saved his life right then, but Harry wasn’t complaining, especially not when they did it. He leaped forwards, sprawling on the dirt and kicking left at the same time. The spell that was carefully aimed right where he had been standing splintered past him more than anything else, throwing up dirt when it landed.

            The man’s brown eyes flashed as he spat yet another spell Harry didn’t recognize. Harry raised a Shield Charm shaped like a ramp in front of himself, and the spell skidded off it and bounced back at the man as if off a mirror. He barely got out of the way in time.

            Harry locked his heels beneath him for a moment, counted to three, and then kicked himself off and up and around, coming around in a wild, flailing spin that meant the man’s next two curses failed to strike him as well. Then Harry murmured, “Catenis,” and they came to life around the man, enormous chains that lost all their slack in an instant when Harry gestured. The man flew to the ground in much the same way as the woman had, his wand flying free before Harry’s Expelliarmus clipped it and carried to him.

            Harry, breathing hard, checked the man’s hands for other weapons and then spent a moment “listening” to both of them. That was the only way he knew how to describe it, the extension of his concentration and his senses beyond his body so he could pick up on things that were there but which he rarely paid attention to. It was the best method of finding out how powerful their magic was; everyone, he had discovered, had magic that could sing, and the power of the tone would tell him about the power of the spells.

            The man and woman were both, to his surprise, only moderately powerful, their tones sounding in his ears like someone running a finger around the top of a glass. It must be their training that had made them dangerous, instead of inherent strength. Harry had nothing to fear from them, he thought, as long as he kept them away from their wands. They lacked the raw power that would let them use wandless magic.

            So he spent a few moments figuring out what they had done to his wards and pulling out the near-invisible weave that was meant to crack them down the middle, and then some more repairing the damage they had caused with this latest series of blows.

            Then he grimly rounded up his captives, cast the spells that would blind and deafen them for the length of their stay so that they would have no idea how to get into his home, and dragged them back inside the wards.

            Draco had some explaining to do.

*

            “Talk.”

            It was gratifying, Harry had to admit to himself, despite everything, to see the expression on Draco Malfoy’s face when Harry slung the two enemy wizards down in the door of his bedroom and then leaned against the frame with his arms crossed. By then, Harry wasn’t even winded. The battle had been intense, but shorter than many of those he’d fought in.

            Draco stared for long moments, as though he had never seen those blue robes and their strange silver symbol before. Harry was about to tear off the patch of cloth that held the symbol and show it to him when Draco moved from the bed, coming over to crouch above the woman’s body. He let his fingers trail above her left arm, not touching, and Harry found himself holding his breath and waiting for a hidden Dark Mark to appear.

            Then Draco spat into her face.

            Blinded and deafened or not, there was nothing wrong with her sense of touch; she flinched violently backwards, slamming her head into the floor on the way. Draco gazed grimly down at her, and something like humor touched the edge of his mouth before he drew back and stared at Harry.

            “I never saw these particular people before in my life,” he said. “But that may be the memory loss, I don’t know.”

            “But you know the organization they work for,” Harry said, who had heard the omission in his words and wasn’t in the mood to let it pass unmentioned.

            Draco tipped his head to the side, eyes so wide and wary that Harry grimaced. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said, taking a step back and standing so that Draco could shut the door on him if he wanted. “But this has become less about how much you trust me and more about how I’m going to keep you alive. So. What information can you share with me, because it will be helpful but not damage you?”

            Draco was silent for a few minutes more. Harry waited, telling his thrumming blood that it could bloody well wait. He’d calm down, or later he would go and brew a really vigorous potion or something. Either way, it wasn’t going to have violent action right now.

            “You’re being awfully patient about this,” Draco whispered at last.

            “I can think of a few reasons that you wouldn’t have told me already,” Harry said. “It makes me patient, to know that you might actually have a good reason. But the game’s changed, now.” He nodded at the people on the floor. “Either someone else might have seen the fight—it’s what I’d do, leave a spy out of the battle to see what happened, maybe a trainee—or they’re going to realize that two of their minions are missing soon. What?” he added, since Draco’s lips had twitched.

            “Minions,” Draco echoed. “You do talk like a Gryffindor.”

            Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you call them. Unless it does, and this is something you can share with me.”

            Draco licked his lips some more. Then he said, “There is—some truth to the guesses you’ve made.” Which was as good as saying that he was either an Unspeakable or worked in some other capacity for the Department of Mysteries, Harry reckoned. “But I can’t let a gesture of trust like that out without some guarantee of return.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Say what you mean, without all the fancy dancing around the subject.”

            “I want to know who you are,” Draco said. “Where you trained. Whether you’re the kind of person who can be trusted with the truth of who these people are and what they want. Because, believe me, in this case, truth is nearly as dangerous as ignorance.”

            Harry stared at him. Draco stared back, and while it was the same kind of hunger he had shown earlier that blazed behind his eyes, there was more grim determination in the way he looked than Harry had wanted to acknowledge.

            All Harry could think was, Bloody. Fucking. Impasse.

*

            UnwantedMemories: Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying it.

            SP777: And now Harry and Draco are even more there than they were!

            Thank you for the story idea; I’ll see about using it.

            moodysavage: Yes. And more attracted than ever now that Harry has displayed courage and intelligence and battle prowess.

            kit: A combination of both, I’d think. Harry has told the lies before this one to people he doesn’t really know well.

            unneeded: Yes, Harry will give himself away fairly soon—he arguably already has. But the spell relies on how well a person knows Harry. It doesn’t increase in intensity, so it can’t really hurt him that way.
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The Conservation of Fame