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The Rising of the Stones	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13237 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Four—Confusion at Carn Gluze

            Cornwall was bloody cold.

            At least, it is when you forget to put Warming Charms on your robes before you Apparate, Draco thought, as he slogged through the shaggy grass and broken stones. Ahead of him loomed the barrow. Draco stepped carefully around it, but he had to go closer, despite the Muggle security precautions.

            He had cast a spell that attuned him to the kind of runes Potter had left on the stone ball at the Giant’s Causeway. And at the moment, it was leading Draco straight to the barrow.

            Draco gave one glance over the cliff, made sure no Muggles were watching, and then cast a Floating Charm on himself; he was already Disillusioned. The Floating Charm lifted him and let him drift along the top of the cairn without touching it. However, it was hard to control with any wind at all. Draco had to be careful to catch hold of stones along the way to keep himself from simply wafting in a different direction.

            He moved like a soap bubble along the top of the cairn, closer and closer to the runes Potter had carved. Draco peered ahead, but at the moment, he couldn’t make out any sign of another ball-like stone. Maybe Potter had done something different this time.

            He had.

            If he hadn’t looked down when he was flying above the center of the cairn, Draco would have missed it altogether. He had to cancel the Floating Charm right away and drop down, taking the shock of the fall on gently flexed limbs as best he could.

            Potter hadn’t carved runes at all. What he’d done was make them. In stone. Draco stared, and paced slowly around them.

            His first thought was to wonder why Muggles hadn’t found the added stones and removed them. But then he brushed the edge of a Muggle-Repelling Charm, and raised an eyebrow. It was far subtler than the ancient ones buried in the walls of Hogwarts. It would simply convince Muggles that the rocks were natural, not arranged.

            Draco bent down and studied the runes. They were laid in a circular design, like the ones on the stone at the Giant’s Causeway. But when he consulted his memory of those runes, Draco thought this circle was more nearly perfect.

            Is Potter learning as he goes along? But Draco had to shake his head a second later. He was making a beginner’s mistake. Just because he had come to the places in this particular order didn’t mean Potter had done the same thing. Draco had to remember that Potter’s logic and order of the hunt was not his.

            So far, though, Draco had been jumping randomly to sites that had absorbed powerful earth magic. He would have to stop doing that soon, he thought.

            What was the first one? Had Potter really performed the ritual at Stonehenge first of all, or was that a later step in the process? And how could Draco find out? And how much did it really matter?

            And why had Potter decided to make the runes here out of stones instead of carving them as he had at the Giant’s Causeway? From what Draco had read of earth magic in the last few days, the runes would be stronger—assuming Potter had solved the theoretical impossibility of being able to draw magic from a distant site, anyway—if they were all the same. Runes in the same circle, of the same shape, scattered around the British Isles, could give Potter power from several nodes. He might never run out.

            And then I might never catch him.

            Draco banished his impatience and anger and breathed slowly, evenly. Not being caught was Potter’s wish, or desire. Catching him was Draco’s. Therefore, Draco had to take careful steps to make sure that his wish was the one that came true.

            A Malfoy’s wishes always prevailed. But that was because they took the steps to make it happen, instead of sitting back and assuming they could feel whatever they wanted and it would still happen.

            Draco walked around the circle of runes once more, and let his attention, this time, wander out to include the rest of the area. Did the way the runes were placed, in relation to the larger stones of the cairn, have any effect on their powers? He wouldn’t know unless he paid attention to angles, shadows, maybe even the direction of the wind—

            Draco’s eyes widened a second later. He bent down and studied the stones again, the individual ones that made up the runes. It was surprisingly hard to drag his gaze away from the runes they made, from his mind’s insistence that he understand them and read them like writing, and see them as objects instead.

            The stones weren’t simple, round rocks. Or even irregularly-shaped ones like Draco had thought they were a moment before. Draco bent further down and cast the Wry-Neck Charm that let his head twist to the side like an owl’s. He wanted to see if his intuition was right without touching the stones and disrupting the magic going on here.

            He had the feeling that would be a very bad idea.

            The stones were flaked. Some of them had edges broken off as though they’d been pounded against something. Wind and rain? Draco wondered. Or had Potter done it himself? There were spells that would break rock that way, although none made for breaking rock that way. Wizards generally had better things to do with their time.

            One of the stones had a hole near the end of it. Potter could have made that, too, although when Draco settled back and closed his eyes and tried to remember as hard as he could, he couldn’t come up with any magical influence that would have. Some stones with large holes in the center were Potions ingredients; some were even used in the making of luck charms. But this was only a tiny hole, near a flaked end.

            Draco frowned in frustration. He had the impression there was something obvious he was missing, and he hated little more than that.

            But for now, simply crouching in one place and staring doubtfully down at the stones didn’t seem likely to produce anything further. Draco shook his head and stood. He had an appointment with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger to keep.

*

            “Speak up, Malfoy, I can’t hear you.”

            That is entirely the fault of the place you chose to meet, Draco thought, driving the sides of his hands into the table. But from the way he held his mug, no one would notice anyway. His face was calm, at least, and that was the only thing a berk like Weasley paid attention to.

            The noise of the Leaky Cauldron at lunchtime hammered around them. People shouted and laughed and made bets and drank and slammed their mugs and shouted some more. Draco had a mug for its usefulness in hiding his emotions, and no other reason.

            Weasley had a whole plate full of crisps that he ate with loud crunching noises. Granger sat beside him with a salad she’d doubtless made and brought along. Draco doubted the Leaky Cauldron sold anything as fastidious.

            Unlike Weasley, Granger might notice the shade of white on his knuckles. Draco forced himself to relax his hands and speak in a smooth voice. “I only wanted to know if you think Potter’s flight is related to his birth records.”

            “Hard to know,” said Weasley, with a crunch and a snap that made Draco want to cast a certain charm at his nether regions, “when we haven’t seen them.” He leaned a little closer, and grease got in Draco’s face. “The Minister wouldn’t let us look at them, even when he wanted us to tell the other Aurors where Harry had gone.”

            Granger, sitting calm and alert at Weasley’s side, put a hand on his arm suddenly. “He wouldn’t let you see them?” she asked.

            Draco must have revealed some frustration without meaning to. He immediately countered, smoothly building the slip into his strategy for reaching Granger. “No, he wouldn’t. Something surprising about that, isn’t there?” He smiled a little. “After all, we got told that the birth records were the reason, or at least were closely associated with it, but no one can actually look at them.” The we could mean the other Aurors and Draco, but it was also an attempt to pull Weasley and Granger close, include them. It could work.

            Granger gave Weasley a look. Weasley nodded and waved a hand and leaned back, eating the crisps with ostentatious quietness.

            He could have done that at any time, Draco thought, and felt as though someone had jabbed him in the back. He was trying to play me as well as I was trying to play him.

            That discomfiting realization made him focus all the more sharply on Granger, his stare a silent demand. Granger nodded back and then said, “I don’t know that the birth records were the reason. But I can tell you Harry wasn’t involved in the Dark Arts. He told me that one night when I asked him if he was, because he had—a stink about him that told me what potions he had been brewing. He said he wasn’t. I trust his word.”

            Draco blinked. No one had mentioned anything like this, and from what he remembered, Potter was too poor at Potions to try brewing on his own. “What kind of potion was it?”

            “Why should I tell you that?”

            Draco met her eyes, understanding some of the tones beneath the question, and said, “I can promise you I’m more understanding than I used to be. I’m doing this as an Auror who wants to ask Potter certain questions. I’m kinder than the Minister or the press would be. And I don’t want to bring him down as a personal rival.”

            Maybe Granger would trust Draco’s word, too, even though she had no reason to do so. That certainly seemed to be her reaction as her eyes fell away from his and she frowned at the table. Draco waited.

            “Fine,” Granger breathed, looking up at him. “Don’t give me a reason to regret this.”

            Draco nodded and waited again, although he could feel his muscles trembling with the tension of the chase. This might be the revelation he finally needed to connect the puzzling pieces of the ritual Potter had performed in his home, the earth magic he had apparently mastered, and the disillusionment with his soul-mate that Draco was certain lurked somewhere at the bottom of this.

            “Harry was brewing potions that could help someone change personality traits they didn’t like in themselves.” Granger sighed a little and picked at her salad. “They’re tricky—” she didn’t have to tell Draco that, but he didn’t dream of interrupting “—and they can change someone further than they meant to go. I told him that, and he told me that he had a very specific idea of what he wanted to change. The things he hated most about himself.”

            “What?” Draco breathed. It was likely Potter was trying to change his soul in the hopes that would change his soulmate. Some of the fairy tales were about that, although usually it was a powerful magical creature uniting new soulmates with a wave of its paw, not a potion.

            “He wanted to change his magic. And the way he related to his wand.”

            Draco fell back in his chair, staring, thwarted again. What did that mean? What in the hell did Potter think he was doing? His soul-mark by itself would tell him nothing about his soulmate’s magic; knowing who it was still wouldn’t let him know exactly how they related to their power, or how it was similar to the way Potter wielded his.

            This was the strangest case Draco had ever heard of.

            And he doubted it was going to get more normal, the rate things were going. He shook his head and focused on Granger again. “Did he tell you why?”

            “No.” Granger looked weary suddenly. “Do you think I would have let this charade continue if I knew where he was? And if he’d told me anything about why he wanted to change his magic, then I would have been able to find him.”

            Draco leaned slowly back and watched her a second. Granger looked even more tired. She picked a blueberry out of her salad on her fork and ate it without looking away from Draco.

            “I think you would have tried anything to find him,” Draco said finally, nodding.

            “Of course, Malf—”

            “Unless he told you to keep it secret. Or unless he told you not to look for him.” Draco leaned forwards, aware that Weasley had stopped munching his crisps, even though Granger’s hand went on steadily poking the fork down into the berries. That was a small salve to Draco’s wounded pride, that Weasley wasn’t as good an actor as Granger. “Which one was it?”

            Granger sat still, and didn’t move. Her eyes met his in silent challenge. Draco knew he could use Legilimency, but then she would have a case against him for abuse of his powers. Every single use of Legilimency had to be authorized by the Ministry, and Minister de Berenzan would never grant Draco permission for something like this.

            “It’s neither,” Granger whispered.

            “I think that Potter had compelling reasons for disappearing when he did,” Draco whispered back. “But I can’t know what they are, or know if I should arrest him or hunt him or leave him alone, if you don’t tell me more.”

            Granger exchanged another look with the silently watching Weasley. He apparently deferred to her, because Granger turned back to Draco and exhaled as if she was looking down a wand pressed to her throat.

            “Harry had been talking for a while about difficulties he’d had with his magic,” she began.

            Draco sat still, simply soaking in the information. This was new, not in any of the reports or files or interviews he’d read. This was wonderful.

            “He said that he would cast a spell and it would stop too quickly. Or it would keep going and break or repair or heal more objects than he meant to.” Granger frowned down at her salad. “I tried to help him diagnose it, but I couldn’t. I thought at the time that it was because it was a unique problem, maybe one related to him defeating Voldemort or having the Horcrux in him or any of those things. Now I think that Harry was hiding truths from me.”

Some of Draco’s exaltation faded. He wouldn’t get all the information he needed from her.

What is wrong with you, Potter? What’s so disgraceful you had to conceal it from friends who were loyal to you through a war?

            Granger went on. “I never did see the problem in action. He would work on spells in front of me, and he seemed as normal as ever. Ron didn’t see it, either.” Weasley simply shook his head. “But he kept saying he had the problem, that he had to change the way he reacted to his wand. He only laughed when I suggested he get a new wand, though.”

            Draco glanced once at his own hawthorn wand. Granger followed his eyes and read his thoughts, something that happened infrequently enough that Draco was impressed.

            “Yes, maybe it had something to do with the other wands he mastered. I don’t know.” Granger gave a windy sigh and rubbed at her face, finally abandoning her salad to stare at him. “But I don’t know why he would have lied about any of that. I don’t know why he would have vanished after he saw his birth record. I can’t tell you more than I already have, Malfoy, because I don’t know.”

            Draco nodded. He wanted to say that she had already told him more than he’d guessed, more than he knew. But there was no point in contending with her when she had helped him.

            He stood up and nodded in turn to Weasley. “I think I might have a lead on Potter,” he said. “Thank you for speaking with me.”

            “What lead?” Granger asked.

            “More than half intuition at the moment,” Draco said with a little shake of his head, meeting her eyes squarely. “I wouldn’t want to tell you and give you false hope for what might not turn out to be right after all.”

            A second passed before Granger nodded, but she did nod. At least she most likely knew the reason behind what Draco said, quite beyond the normal prohibition on talking about in-progress cases too openly with non-Aurors. What she and Weasley didn’t know, the Minister couldn’t force them to reveal.

            Draco glided out of the pub and stood for a moment in the street, considering. He told himself he didn’t know much more than before, that this might be only another lie Potter had laid to deceive someone who tried to follow his trail, or that problems with his magic might have nothing to do with problems with his soulmate.

            But the pulsing, pounding excitement in his own blood told him otherwise. He did think he had the answer.

            A soul-mark shaped like a lightning bolt. Trouble with his magic that only started to show up a while after the war. All those fairy tales and the willingness to use the Dark Arts, and the ritual, and the earth magic that might let him change his soulmate.

            Draco did think, now, that Potter’s soulmate had been the Dark Lord. And he would find some way to make sure of his instinct before he took Potter in.

            I very much want to hear what he has to say for himself.
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The Rising of the Stones