Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ad Pavonem	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4188 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Four—Peacock Distraction
“What are we going to do?”
When he thought about it, Draco had no idea why he was asking Potter that question. He had turned to him instinctively, but now he shook his head. Potter had only been his savior in the most indirect of ways. And now he was affected by Malfoy magic, even if it was a spell Draco had had no idea about. He couldn’t save anyone.
Potter didn’t seem to know that. He stood in place, jerking his head around, staring at something so intently Draco turned around to see what it was. He noticed only empty air, and turned back with a sigh just as Potter raced towards the end of the corridor and flung himself into the air. There was a glass door there usually left half-open so the temperature in the attached greenhouse could be adjusted easily.
“Where are you going?” Draco asked. “You can’t get out that way—”
For an answer, Potter burst through the glass roof and out into the open air. Draco gaped after him. There was blood all over the sleek white feathers, and Potter landed with a scream and a flop of his wings that seemed to indicate something was broken.
The next minute, he ran towards the wall where the steadiest pounding on the wards was coming from.
Draco ran after him. At the moment, the only thing he could come up with was that Potter wanted the other Aurors to think Draco had hurt him, and had added pain and wounds in the most dramatic manner he could.
Not that that would make sense when he had been communicating with Draco so calmly just a few minutes before, but…
Draco had become used to the world not making sense and changing in a minute, usually in a way that made things worse for him. He gritted his teeth and ran faster.
*
Harry sped up, using his wings to give himself a little extra beat or loft only when he absolutely had to. He knew he’d badly damaged the right one. It felt like a severed muscle. It wanted to flop instead of lie neatly folded, and the pain kept stabbing him with every movement he used it for.
But it would be all the better for his plan if the wound was real, so he paid no attention to it. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t felt pain like this before, or worse. He really had better things to be worried about.
When he reached the outer wall of the gardens where the wards shimmered, Harry didn’t hesitate. He leaped up and screamed, loudly enough to attract some of the Aurors’ attention. Then he balanced himself against a sapling that grew beside the wall, raised a foot, and tapped the top of his forehead, where a mirror in the corridors had showed him a faint patch of feathers in the shape of a lightning bolt.
“What the fuck?” asked someone who sounded like Dawlish. But at least the pounding on the wards stopped, and some people came forwards to inspect him. Harry danced in place, and tapped his forehead again.
“Is it…Potter?” someone asked in disbelief.
Harry cocked his head and crooned softly. He didn’t tap the lightning bolt again. He was swaying and feeling dangerously as if he would simply fall off the wall. He leaned into the hands that rose hesitantly to receive him, Ron’s hands.
“He’s been hurt,” Ron said, and turned him around. Harry shrieked as he tried to keep his injured wing from being jostled, and Ron reached out and cradled him in a new position. His face was dark enough that Harry suspected he would have a hard time keeping his best friend from reacting harshly, though. “What do you think did this to him? Malfoy?”
Harry rapidly shook his head, and would have flapped his wings for emphasis if he could have. He clacked his beak instead, and then reached out and jabbed Ron’s wrist. Ron jumped and stared at him.
It was Kingsley, who stood towards the back of the group of Aurors, who understood first.
“Auror Weasley, you were wearing a wristband at one point that the smugglers left behind, correct? One that you hoped might help you track them down?”
“Yeah, useless rubbish…” Ron’s voice trailed off. “The smugglers did this to you?”
Harry bobbed his head up and down as rapidly as he could. This was the best plan he could come up with literally on the fly. Let them assume that the smugglers had hurt him, even that they had transformed him into a peacock. As long as they didn’t suspect Draco.
“Then Malfoy must be working with them, the way we thought!”
Oh, Ron. The only reason Harry didn’t hide his head under his wing and moan in distress was because he could hear Draco’s footsteps coming rapidly across the grounds. There were already Aurors aiming their wands at him, which would just make everything so complicated that Harry didn’t want to endure it.
So he didn’t. He fluttered over their heads, screaming at the pain in his wings, and landed on the grass in front of Draco. He spread his wings, and his tail, which luckily didn’t pull on as many muscles, to make a shield for Stunners.
Draco stopped moving. At least he has the sense for that, Harry thought, and fixed his beady gaze on the Aurors. Are you going to pay attention to us now, idiots?
*
Draco had been preparing to slow down anyway. He’d been close enough to hear most of the conversation between Potter and his fellow Aurors. He was lying to them, of course he was, but he was doing it with good intentions.
Just intentions that Draco could hardly believe. Potter had injured himself to do this.
And then Potter flew over, making himself bleed some more, and got in front of Draco like a guardian angel. Draco stared through a gap in the pale feathers down at the top of Potter’s head. He couldn’t see them from this angle, but he was sure that Potter’s green eyes would be glittering as ferociously as ever.
He’s doing this for me. Why does he believe so fiercely that I’m innocent? I mean, I’m glad he does, but he didn’t have any real time to get proof before he got turned into a peacock. And then I tried to use a Body-Bind on him. Most Aurors would think that made me guilty…
Draco didn’t have much time to wonder, because Weasley was snarling, “What did you do to him, Malfoy?”
Potter gave a screech of protest and spread his wings more widely. Draco winced when he heard something tear and saw more blood flowing. Potter acted as if he didn’t notice.
That’s rather disturbing, when you think what it indicates about his experiences with blood.
“I want to know what you did!”
Draco swallowed and looked up. Weasley’s wand was aimed right between his eyes, which wasn’t such a surprise, when you thought about it. He controlled the impulse to flinch, especially when he thought about how many impulses Weasley had, and said, “Nothing. It’s apparently the smugglers who have been hiding in my house that did this!”
Weasley paused a little at the outrage in Draco’s voice. It was real for all that the Aurors were wrong about the cause. Draco was almost speechless with rage at the thought that these people had been coming and going without him knowing, using the Manor.
And Blaise and Pansy probably knew about it.
Draco dismissed the thought. It couldn’t help him now, and would probably only get him in trouble, at least with the Aurors. Weasley had lowered his wand, but most of them hadn’t.
“Did Auror Potter get into a battle with them?” the tall man Draco vaguely remembered was called Shacklebolt asked calmly. “And are they still here?” Two of the Aurors peeled off from the back of the group at that, and started stalking along the stone wall that surrounded Draco’s grounds as if they would spot some trace Draco hadn’t.
Draco gave a thin smile. He had the perfect mixture of lies and truth to tell them. “That’s what must have happened, although Potter had barely managed to convince me of who he was before he heard something I didn’t and took off flying towards it. I confused him with another of the birds on my grounds at first, and, I’m ashamed to say, spent some time chasing the wrong ones. I didn’t make it to the battle in time to help Potter out, before the smugglers Apparated out.”
“They can Apparate off your land?”
“How did Harry get turned into a peacock?” Weasley demanded, his question mingling with Shacklebolt’s. Shacklebolt gave him an exasperated look that he didn’t seem to notice. He was far too focused on Potter.
Well, someone needs to be, Draco admitted.
“Yes, they can, because they have an exception in the wards,” Draco said shortly. “I’m not sure yet where they got it, whether they’re acquaintances of my father or two ‘friends’ of mine who kept trying to get me to join the smuggling trade. Rest assured, I’ll be changing that exception as soon as possible.” It would require more work with the wards than he had yet put in since he became head of the family.
“But Harry?”
“I found him like this,” said Draco. True enough. “I can only imagine that the smugglers either have a spell like this, or had a connection to the wards that enabled them to transform supposed trespassers into peacocks. It sounds like the kind of spell my father would have set up.”
There. Now, when they investigated, assuming they brought a ward expert along, they would find the holes and the defensive spell Lucius had set up exactly as Draco had speculated they would.
Potter slowly lowered his wings and tail when he seemed to realize that none of the Aurors were going to cast anything at Draco. He glanced back at him and bobbed his head in what looked like admiration, although Draco admittedly found it hard to read his facial expressions.
“Well, since Harry seems to think that you’re innocent and we have some things to investigate, we’ll leave you free for now.” Weasley managed to make it sound like a huge favor. Draco bit his tongue and spent a moment looking up at the sky, past the edges of Potter’s still-collapsing plumes. “But we need the names of those friends of yours, Malfoy.”
“Of course. Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini.”
A shocked murmur came from a few of the Aurors, but others were nodding. Draco smiled thinly. Blaise was a bit sophisticated in politics, and Pansy could make people underestimate her with her shrill voice and her fluttering eyelashes, but neither of them was as clever as they thought they were.
“And we’ll still have to have you come in for questioning,” added a heavyset Auror Draco didn’t know. “Not under arrest. But questioning. We need to know how to undo the spell on Auror Potter if it’s really part of your wards.”
“You can examine them for yourselves, but that’s not something I know,” Draco said, stepping cautiously around Potter. No one tried to Stun him or restrain him, although they did close in around him once he had crossed the stone wall. Weasley, meanwhile, reached out his arms, and Potter half-limped, half-beat his way across the grass and clambered into his friend’s hold, resting his head against his shoulder.
Draco stared at him as the Aurors guided him out to a point where they could Apparate. Potter looked sleepily back, and then closed his eyes as Weasley murmured a few basic healing spells to close the wounds.
He did that for me. When he came here to investigate me in the first place.
Draco could hardly wait for the Aurors, or maybe for someone else, to find a way to reverse the transformation and put Potter back to normal. They needed to have a talk.
*
“Just how badly did they injure you, mate?”
Harry only shook his head as he held out his wings and let the animal Healer the Aurors had summoned check him over. She didn’t say much, grunting or clucking her tongue now and then, and sometimes muttering to herself about the sadism of people who would hurt animals. That he wasn’t really a bird, that he was really Harry Potter, didn’t seem to matter to her at all.
Ron sat down hard on the other side of the table—they were in a small room in the bowels of the Ministry—and looked at him. “Only you, mate.”
Harry winced as the torn muscles beneath his wing pulled back together, and bobbed his head a little. He could understand Ron’s sentiment even though he didn’t agree with it, not this time. Injuring himself had just seemed like the best tactic at the time to distract the Aurors’ attention from Draco and make them listen for long enough that they wouldn’t take Draco into custody.
And thank Merlin Draco had had enough sense to play along. Of course, the only concrete proof he could tell them about was the footprints Harry had uncovered in the flowerbeds, but his mentions of his friends’ names showed he already suspected more than that.
Really, the case was over.
Then the Healer tapped her wand against his back, and Harry shrieked as a bolt of energy zipped through him, and flailed his wings. They felt normal again—well, as normal as they were going to get. But it did remind him of a truth he’d forgotten.
No, it’s really not over until I manage to make the transformation back to human.
“I suppose you can’t tell us anything more about the smugglers?”
Harry gave Ron an apologetic look, or as apologetic as he could get when he looked like this, then glanced around. He was hungry. He wondered if Ron would understand if he scraped the table with a claw and stared pointedly at him.
A flash of color caught his eye, and he turned his head. The Healer was holding out a cluster of bright seed in her hand. She put it on the table, and Harry began to peck busily at it. He supposed it was a reasonable compromise between human and peacock food.
Ron made a quiet sound of amusement, but he wasn’t trying to interrogate Harry or take away the food at the moment. Harry could ignore him.
He hadn’t finished, although the Healer had left, when the door opened again, and Kingsley and Calzade came in. Harry tried to stand to attention, found his tail spreading, and snapped it shut again with an irritated click of his beak.
Kingsley stood back near the door, while Calzade came towards him slowly, staring. Then he shook his head. “Only you, Potter.”
Yes, I’ve heard quite enough of that, thanks. Harry again stared, and Calzade seemed to get the point. He nodded. “Fine, to business. We investigated the wards on Malfoy Manor, and found them exactly as Malfoy had said we would, with an exception for a large group of people not related to the Malfoys by blood, and a spell that can turn unwanted intruders into peacocks.” He sighed and took a chair next to the table. “The main problem is that we found no means of undoing the spell that’s trapped you.”
Harry would have banged his head against the table if he was human. As it was, he only stalked back and forth, and took some joy in watching his claws cut grooves in the slick top of the table.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t find one,” Calzade added hastily, as if he wanted to save the table. “Auror Weasley has suggested contacting his wife. I understand that she does magical research? Although mostly into house-elves.”
“Her research includes some ideas about how house-elves are bound to their owners and the owners’ properties,” Ron cut in. “I thought she might understand how a ward around an old home could do this.”
“Well, as Mr. Malfoy says, it was probably his father’s fault. But we can certainly try.” Calzade shrugged and gave Harry a rueful smile. “Until we find a way, you’ll be on leave, Auror Potter. Do try not to get in any more trouble on the way home.”
“Here, you can’t expect Harry to stay by himself!” Ron sat up. “He can’t open doors or do anything else like that when he’s a peacock!”
Calzade and Kingsley exchanged glances. “Well, that’s true,” said Calzade. “Not something I’d thought of. But we do need you here to work on this case, Auror Weasley, especially since the…last time when Researcher Granger-Weasley worked with the team.”
“Hermione does not need a monitor.”
“Then say that some of our other Aurors do. And a buffer.”
Ron rolled his eyes and muttered, but Harry knew he would agree. Hermione had nearly caused a lot of problems between the Auror Department and several others in the Ministry the last time she had helped Ron on a case. “Fine. Then what would you suggest Harry do?”
Harry shrieked to get their attention—it was a more impressive shriek in a confined room like this than he’d realized—and then reached out and pecked the table. When they only stared at him in confusion, he flung his wings wide and pointed around at the walls.
“You want to stay here in the Ministry?”
Harry bobbed his head emphatically at Calzade. There was no better place for him, he thought, especially if Hermione was going to be coming here. And that way, he was on hand if someone tried to start making trouble for Draco, which Harry was afraid they would the instant they realized that Draco didn’t actually know a lot about the smugglers.
“Well, it’s not a terrible idea,” said Kingsley quietly. “Why not? As long as he has food and a place for him to rest at night, and perhaps by then Researcher Granger-Weasley will have completed her business and he can go home with his friends.”
Calzade nodded. “It’s not as though there are regulations that cover situations like this, not really,” he said, with a sudden smile. “All right, Auror Potter. Consider yourself wounded on duty and confined to the office.”
Harry only bobbed his head again, and leaped off the table to lead the way out of the room. He wanted to find Draco’s interrogation room and make sure they were treating him right. And if Draco did come up with any ideas to undo Lucius’s spell, Harry wanted to be one of the first to hear them.
And if we’ve got some time alone…
Well, I don’t wound myself for just anyone. He probably wants to talk.
- 3
- 4
- 5
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ad Pavonem