Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Four—Tell Me No Lies

            “We have what you need waiting for you.”

            Harry kept his eyes wide open and alert as Malfoy entered the Death Eaters’ little circle, his stride loose and easy, his hands dangling just a short distance from his hips. Yes, Malfoy could relax all he liked around these Dark wizards. He wasn’t the one trying to identify people behind masks, trying to recall where he had heard those other voices, besides Flint’s, before.

            And trying to come up with a way of warning Malfoy when someone lied that wouldn’t reveal who he was.

            And then Harry remembered that the glamour Malfoy had cast covered his features, and the hair covered his scar. And it was only his voice Malfoy had forbidden him to use. And it was hard to distinguish Auror reflexes from those of a trained duelist once the Auror was out of his robes.

            He grinned. He’d come up with a way. Malfoy wouldn’t like it, most probably, but too bad. Next time, he would remember to arrange a signal beforehand.

            Harry liked it when he could teach other people to sharpen their memories. He lived to serve.

            He strolled casually past the other Death Eaters and looped his arm around Malfoy’s waist. Malfoy stiffened, of course, but not as much as he had when Harry touched his arm for the Side-Along Apparition. Interesting.

            “Your bodyguard seems a bit handsy, Malfoy,” said Flint, and turned as if he thought that Malfoy would need help knocking Harry’s hands away. That made Harry want to shake his head sadly, because anyone who aspired to the position of a wizarding terrorist should be able to see the way Malfoy moved and understand the silent message it sent, but he nobly refrained. Flint would just have to remain unaware of Harry’s sorrow.

            “He is that,” Malfoy said, and still no red stained the air around him. Harry eyed him sideways. He was starting to wonder if Malfoy was being honest for more than just his sake, or if he had discovered some way to resist the magic. But if he had, there would be no reason for him to admit some of the things he had, and no reason for him not to offer that as payment to Harry instead of the contact information he’d promised.

            Unless he had to use Dark magic to resist my curse, and thought that I would disapprove if I knew the true source of his method.

            Harry put aside the idea, to remember it but not act on for right now. He would do what he had come to do, instead. He kept his hand on Malfoy’s side, stroking the fabric of the shirt and imagining the warm skin beneath it that he would stroke if the fabric wasn’t in the way. In the meantime, he looked at the Death Eaters and showed no expression. It was safest, when he didn’t know what his glamoured features would look like.

            Flint stared at him for a while, then shrugged and apparently decided that it was no business of his who Draco Malfoy decided to fuck. Harry licked his lips as Flint turned away, not able to disguise from himself, at least, the satisfaction that flowed through his body.

            No, it really isn’t Flint’s business, is it?

            “Lassi has been working all day on this,” Flint said, and reached out to whip the cover from something that had stood on a wrought iron tripod in the middle of their group. Harry’s attention sharpened. He could feel the shiver against his senses that he usually got when Dark magic was active—active, not simply sitting in the center of a trap and waiting for someone to trigger it. It felt as though someone was gently brushing his spine with a set of knives.

            The globe on the tripod was huge, easily the span of Harry’s circled arms. At first Harry thought it was made of glass, and then he saw the shimmer that moved—that paced beneath the surface. It was like the shadow of a tiger pacing back and forth in a cage. Shaped like a tiger, even, he thought. And he watched, and saw the silver-grey edges of the shimmer creep towards the surface, making it look like milk stained with blood.

            Flint turned around. Even beneath the plain white mask, Harry could tell he was beaming. He thought it would meet with Malfoy’s approval, whatever it was.

            But Malfoy stood there, rigidly staring, and Harry knew he doubted it. That made Harry move his wand in a causal gesture, concealed by his sleeve. The spells he could cast without calling attention to the movement of his wand were limited, and the repertoire of spells that he could both do that with and cast nonverbally was even smaller. But he thought a simple Detection Charm wasn’t amiss.

            The globe seemed to become even more transparent, like a floating white cloth draped over a pool of water. Beneath it, Harry saw glimpses of crude iron, even cruder wood, joists snapped together that would wobble and probably snap when the globe was removed from its tripod.

            He curled his fingers in and tapped them sharply, once, against Malfoy’s side.

            Malfoy hissed his breath out. His hand covered Harry’s, for a moment, and then he turned towards Flint, careful in his motion to keep Harry’s arm around his waist. Harry tried his best to look goofy and puzzled instead of viciously pleased.

            “A lie,” Malfoy said flatly. “An illusion.”

            Flint gaped. Harry flicked his glance around the circle and noted who else stared at them, who stared at Flint, and the wizard who took a step backwards, his wand trembling in his hand when it hadn’t been there a moment before. That would be the “Lassi” who had created the illusion, Harry decided. Flint hadn’t been lying when he’d said that Lassi had worked on it all day. It must have taken that long to create an illusion that would seem solid when touched, as Harry suspected it would, and probably even last long enough for Malfoy to leave the meeting place before he found out he’d been duped.

            Flint recovered first, lifting his head and planting his fists on his hips as though he believed that Malfoy would challenge him to no purpose. “It isn’t,” he said, and tilted his head at the orb. “You wanted something that could find your father. Well, here it is.”

            The air around Flint turned scarlet, as though a wound had opened in the sky behind his head. Harry curled his fingers up and tapped again, this time gently, because Flint’s people were watching them more closely now and might notice the signal.

            “It isn’t,” Malfoy said, and cast a charm of his own, although Harry noted that most of them didn’t react to the twisted wrist and parted lips the way they should to a spell. So Malfoy was subtle with his magic, too. That didn’t matter to Harry as long as it wasn’t being used against him, but he would remember it if they did clash. The globe became the center of a diminishing blue spiral, and Malfoy smiled as though someone had tried to stuff red pepper up his nose and stared at Flint. “Would it look like that in reaction to the Defensive Charm if it was real?”

            Flint stared at him, his hands trembling for a moment. Harry saw the bunching in his muscles before he reached for his wand, saw the decision run down his arms and into his fingers, and nodded. Someone like Flint lived and chose more through his body than through his mind.

            Which gave enough time for Harry to uncurl from Malfoy’s side, make his way across the damp mud between himself and Flint, and lay his wand against the idiot’s throat. That caught Flint’s hand out in mid-air, his curses between his teeth, and the eyes of everyone else in the meadow, even the people outside this little Dark wizard gathering.

            “I wouldn’t,” Harry said.

            He kept his voice low and muffled. Yes, he was disobeying Malfoy’s order, but if he played it right, there was no one that should recognize Harry Potter in his voice, either. Personally, he thought Malfoy was being paranoid about someone doing that. He rarely gave speeches, and the “Stop! Aurors!” that he regularly shouted after fleeing suspects was too brief and generic to have anything distinctive about it.

            Probably thinks that just because his own voice sounds like melted chocolate, everyone else’s has flavor. He’s never heard some of the boring things Kingsley says.

            Flint tried to open his mouth. Harry lifted his wand higher and tapped it against one of Flint’s front teeth, trying to imply, without saying it, that he knew lots and lots of evil tooth-breaking hexes.

            “Stand down, Peter.”

            Bastard, Harry thought, as he lowered his wand back to the level of Flint’s pulse. I bet you looked up the importance that Wormtail had after the war and you’re giving me his name as an alias on purpose.

            But Malfoy was clever, and that made up for a lot in Harry’s book. He moved back and glared at Malfoy from underneath his dripping fringe. Malfoy gave him a softened look back, and then moved forwards to flick a finger at Flint himself. Not touching him as he did so, Harry noted. Well, of course. Who would want to?

            Then he saw one of the other masked men edging towards Flint, although he stopped moving when Harry stared at him. His eyes darted back and forth under the mask, though, and he stared at Flint with the kind of single-minded devotion that made Harry want a mask himself, to hide his face. I spoke too soon.

            On the other hand, he could look at this horrifying revelation as a good sign. If someone like Flint, with his looks and his cleverness and his lack of magic, could get someone else interested in him, then Harry should be able to do the same, even if he did still have stained hands and a curse on him.

            “You made a mistake,” Malfoy said softly. “You told a lie, and got found out.” He paused, then added, “I wonder what Corinna would make of that.”

            First lie, Harry thought, almost relieved as the red crown grew around Malfoy’s head like a corona of thorns. That proved Malfoy could lie, and it meant that he hadn’t discovered some way to baffle the magic.

            And more interesting in the case of this particular lie, it meant Malfoy didn’t wonder about what this Corinna would say, because he knew.

            Flint shut his eyes. Then he said, “You wouldn’t have any reason to report this to her, Malfoy.” The air behind him wept, blood pouring down, and Harry held his tongue with difficulty. He wasn’t the only one here who would know that Flint was lying, so why did he bother to try? “You know—you know what she would say about your little quest if she knew.”

            “I know what she might say,” Malfoy said, so pleasantly that Harry yearned to be alone with him for half an hour or so, and see if he could get him to talk that way again. “That isn’t the same as knowing that she would forbid it. So. If you’re quite finished trying to distract me, then perhaps we could move on? Where is the real globe that you promised me?”

            “Lassi,” Flint whispered.

            The man nearest him moved again. So that was Lassi, Harry thought—apparently Flint’s lover or at least best friend, and also the one who had participated in the illusion. He edged towards them, his wand still out.

            Harry didn’t have to say anything, this time. He just spun towards Lassi like a weathervane and came to rest with his wand pointing straight at the moron’s chest. Lassi froze and whimpered.

            “Give me what I came for,” Malfoy said. “Or I swear, Flint, by the Dark Arts, I’ll take you apart. Starting with your windpipe.”

            And that’s no lie, Harry thought, as the corona faded from around Malfoy’s head.

            Flint jerked his head back and looked as though he might insult Malfoy. Harry let his wand move, lazily, wandering back and forth from Lassi to Flint. He watched them tense for a moment, and then he watched them come to a different conclusion: that any spell he cast now would more than likely hit both of them, as opposed to one.

            Lassi whimpered and folded his arms, ducking his head in an attempt to make himself look smaller. Flint shut his eyes.

            “We don’t have what you want, Malfoy,” he said. “The thing you talked about—it’s incredibly complicated. How many resources do you think we have, anyway? Not enough to do this kind of thing and stay out of the clutches of the Ministry.”

            Harry smiled and reached out to let his hand brush Malfoy’s side. When Malfoy tilted his head towards him, in the manner of a lord condescending to his servants, Harry held up a single finger.

            Malfoy interpreted that the right way, luckily, to mean that the first thing Flint had said was a lie. He nodded and said, “You may not have the globe, but you have the information I need. Where is my father?”

            Flint licked his lips and said nothing. Whether he had figured out the connection Harry had to it or not, Harry didn’t know, but he did know that Malfoy could tell when he lied.

            There were other methods of discovery than words, though. Flint’s eyes flicked to a third man, slight and unassuming, who stood behind Lassi and towards the outer ring of the small circle the Death Eaters had formed. Harry immediately glided towards him, although he kept his body turned towards Lassi, and the man half-bowed and came up holding his own wand.

            Again, it was Auror instincts and training that saved Harry, and not anything he had been bidden or forbidden to do. He angled his wand to the side, and the Shield Charm he raised caught the oddly-aimed curse that would have hit Malfoy in the side of the head. The next one bounced the hex the man had aimed at Harry. The third one reflected the duelist’s Blasting Curse back strongly enough to make him stagger and hold up a hand as though that was a defense.

            Harry closed in, hard. That little bow of the head signified a master duelist, the kind who would use the courtly impulses of his training no matter what, and Harry wanted to take him down hard, before he could make things difficult. Taking someone out before they could make things difficult was the basis for at least a dozen lawsuits against the Auror Department every year, but those lawsuits were always dismissed by the Wizengamot. For one thing, he was Harry Potter, and they were Dark wizards.

            And for another, it was a little hard to argue that you hadn’t meant to cause trouble and Harry had overreacted when you’d been about to slit the throat of someone lying on an altar or use an Unforgivable.

            The duelist put up a short but spirited defense as he fell back, and Harry responded with hexes that splintered his fingers and came near to splintering his wand. The man cried out when he realized that and turned to flee, which meant that Harry’s next spell, a Stunner, caught him exactly in the chest where it was supposed to, and he slumped to the ground.

            Silence. At least in Harry’s ears, it was a ringing silence, filled with silent speculation. He turned around and bowed to Malfoy, then stepped away from the downed man. Unless Malfoy said so, they weren’t here to take prisoners.

            That meant arguing with the instincts that had saved him so far tonight. But since everyone else in the immediate area was frozen and gaping at him, Harry thought he could take the risk.

            Everyone else, except Malfoy. He only stood there, his eyes fastened so intently on Harry that Harry squirmed a little under them. But he kept his head up, and walked smoothly and confidently forwards.

            “As you commanded,” he said, a lie of his own to make the others think Malfoy was the dangerous one here, and then fell back to stand at Malfoy’s left shoulder, the way he remembered hired bodyguards had stood in that one mercenary gang of Dark wizards he’d had to infiltrate.

            In the silence after that, the only one who dared to speak was Flint, who gulped and said, “If you can find someone like that, why would you need any of the help we can give you towards finding your father, Malfoy?”

            And Malfoy smiled.

            Harry adored that smile. He wanted to marry that smile, or at least give it lust potions and spend a lot of time enjoying the resulting fireworks. He would give a lot to see that smile again.

            That rich, deep, dazzling smile with a darkness behind it as strong as the light that Harry sometimes saw when he looked at his best friends, Ron and Hermione, shining like stars even now, even after all they’d been through together.

            “I think the better question to ask,” Malfoy said, like a lover, “is for you to wonder what else I might do to you, if I can find someone like this?”

            And after that, Flint and the others couldn’t help falling over their feet to agree.

            Harry was grateful for the fact that he could stand by himself and do nothing more than make a subtle cough or turn of the head for Malfoy to see when someone lied. It allowed him more time to dream, and look, and admire.

            And to plan.

*

            unneeded: The hunt definitely does not end here!

            And yes, perceived truth is truth to Harry’s eyes. That’s why Flint and the others could get away with some of the statements in this chapter, because they did believe that Malfoy just needed the illusion or the help they wanted to give him, instead of what he’d paid for.

            polka dot: At least in this case, it didn’t look to Harry as though the animal was being hurt, only examined.
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