Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Anarchy as Art	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 12617 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five—Making Fools

            Harry hesitated before he put Linton’s letters into the locked safe buried in the wall of his office. He couldn’t help wondering if they would be any safer there than they would be in his home, given how easily Malfoy could break complex wards. The wards on the Ministry might actually be a degree of magnitude less difficult than the ones Harry had set up.

            But Malfoy would have more witnesses here, and he had always avoided committing crimes in the Ministry, as far as Harry could find, even if all the crimes Harry suspected were his really were. Harry would rely on the bastard’s need to preserve his reputation untarnished rather than spells, he reckoned.

            His reputation…

            Harry clenched his fists and stared at the shut door of the safe, which blended with the wood at the bottom of the wall, for long moments in silence. He couldn’t tell anyone what Malfoy had done last night, except for Ron and Hermione. What would happen if word of that got out? Some people thought Harry was an excellent Auror, but they would snicker behind their hands at the thought of someone escaping him when they had broken into his house like that.

            No. Thorin had told him he had to investigate this case alone, and Harry had just come up with another reason to do so.

            “Morning, mate.”

            Harry shook the thoughts of Malfoy off—they occupied his mind too much lately—and turned to smile at Ron. Ron yawned and nodded and shuffled over to his desk, spreading the Daily Prophet out on top of the piles of paperwork there. Harry inwardly shuddered. He would never be Thorin, with his passion for reports, but he had got used to a clean desk, and he didn’t understand how Ron preferred to have his files spread out instead of neatly stored in a cabinet or something else.

            “Oh, this is entertaining.”

            Harry leaned over Ron’s shoulder to take a better look. Ron pointed at the lead story, which contained a winking photograph of Malfoy remarkably like the one on Harry’s wall and the headline DRACO MALFOY: DANGEROUSLY DARING.

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Oh, did he make a contribution to a charity that will scandalize pure-blood prats again?” The Prophet thought Malfoy was being “dangerously daring” to donate to orphans for Muggleborn children and efforts to find a cure for lycanthropy. Harry turned away to check the safe again and make sure that no one had any reason to suspect it was there.

            Ron was skimming the article, and he yelped, spraying the cup of tea he’d also carried in all over the page. Harry whipped around, his wand coming up, and then managed to settle down a little and shake himself when he realized Ron was fine. It had only been the noise that had startled Harry in the first place.

            “You were right about him, mate,” Ron said, leaning back to give Harry a look of wonder. “At least, partially right. He’s claiming that he’s going to steal the Fountain of Magical Brethren from the Atrium.”

            Harry stared, and the first words that came into his mind were I don’t believe it.

            Perhaps Ron saw an echo of that in his eyes, because he rolled his own and thrust the paper at Harry. “What, this is a confirmation of everything that you’ve been saying for years, and the first time you have a chance to believe it, you decide not to? Read the article.”

            Harry picked up the paper with a hand that trembled and denial thrumming through his body. But why should it be denial? Malfoy liked risks. It would be like him to claim that he was going to steal the Fountain just to put the Aurors on alert and then succeed at doing it anyway, and to increase the challenge, the game.

            But Harry still didn’t believe it. The Fountain didn’t fit the huge theft that Malfoy had talked about planning, except that it was public and large. Yes, taking it would be difficult, but it wasn’t particularly expensive, not since the war, when they had made the new figures out of pewter. And if Malfoy told the truth, then they would trace the theft straight to him. It might be hard for some of those who had spent the years convinced Malfoy was a gentleman philanthropist to believe he would do it, but if the Fountain vanished, then the Aurors would be honor-bound to at least investigate.

            Malfoy, Harry knew, didn’t want that. He wanted the mask of deniability. So it made sense that he would proclaim a theft of one kind and then steal something else.

            “I wish I knew what the fuck he wanted,” Harry told the paper.

            “Oh, I think I know,” Ron said, and batted the paper aside so he could reach the stack of files immediately beneath it.

            Harry blinked and turned to his friend. It wouldn’t be the first time that Ron had come up with an insight that Harry had missed. “What?”

            Ron looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. “Well, to be notorious, of course. To have people pay attention to him. God knows that he spent enough time trying to get your attention. So it would make sense for him to say outrageous things that would make him famous for a little while. Maybe he heard the rumors you’ve spread about him and decided that he might as well claim the title of thief.”

            Harry gave the paper another long look. The Malfoy pictured there really did seem to look directly at him and wink, like the one that he would have to get someone professional to charm off his wall, even though Harry knew the Prophet hired photographers who would make sure that the pictures looked like that to everyone.

            He wants attention. But not just the public’s attention.

            Mine.

            Harry gritted his teeth and tossed the paper back in the middle of Ron’s desk, ignoring his mild protest as it knocked one of his stacks over. Malfoy was probably expecting Harry to storm after him the moment he saw this article.

            Well. Harry thought it was rather time that he not do what Malfoy wanted for once.

*

            “You don’t have the evidence necessary to arrest him yet.”

            And that’s what he says before he even asks why I’ve firecalled him, Harry thought, and managed to keep from rolling his eyes only because he’d dealt with Thorin for so long. He knelt next to the hearth and arranged his face in a pleasant expression. It was important to stay there so that Thorin couldn’t see the changed colors in his drawing room, which Harry still hadn’t managed to remove. “I didn’t firecall about that, sir.”

            “Oh?” Thorin’s eyebrows contracted. He looked like he was pushing a painful thought up a steep hill. “What for, then? This is your only case now, Potter, and I expect you to pull it through to a successful conclusion.”

            Harry spread his hands slightly. “At the moment, sir, until Malfoy either moves or doesn’t on the Fountain, I don’t feel that there’s anything I can do. If he commits himself, we’ll have the evidence we need to arrest him. If he doesn’t, then I’m sure he’ll sit back and enjoy the public frenzy, which means he won’t move until after it dies down. Either way, I don’t want to waste Department time and resources. I respectfully request another case.”

            Thorin squinted at him, but Harry had this down to an art by now. He just had to keep a quiet and a patient face, and eventually Thorin would decide that the mask was truth. Especially when Harry was echoing the thoughts that Thorin had spent a lot of time trying to convince Aurors to believe over the years.

            “Well,” Thorin said, and smoothed his beard for a moment. “It is pleasant to see you growing up, Auror Potter. There were some who thought you would die during one of your risky operations before then.”

            Compared to what had happened last night, that wasn’t insulting at all. Harry reminded himself that he would get more pleasure out of throwing Malfoy in a cell than beating Thorin’s face to a pulp, and nodded seriously, leaning forwards as if to convey a secret. “Yes, sir,” he whispered. “I sometimes thought that myself. But the Auror Department has taught me some valuable lessons over the years.” He had debated saying that Thorin had taught him those lessons, but decided to back off at the last instant. That was a little too much flattery, and Thorin wouldn’t believe it.

            Thorin almost beamed at him, and said, “Very well, Auror Potter. You’ll be back with Auror Weasley tomorrow. He could use some help on his latest case.”

            Harry released a breath that had more than one cause to come out as shaky as it did. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            He closed the Floo connection and stood up to face the photograph of Malfoy tacked on the wall again. He knew it wasn’t true, but he had the perception that the winking eye closed a little less confidently and quickly this time, and that was all to the good.

            “Let’s see what happens when I’m not chasing you,” he whispered. “You want my attention? Then work for it.”

*

            Harry sighed and carefully began to cast the complex series of incantations that, in reverse, would remove the enchanted emerald collar from Ron’s neck and allow him to breathe again. For the moment, Ron was under a charm that would transport air to his lungs through a modified Apparition, because the collar had completely closed off his throat.

            Ron, draped over his desk where the collar had clamped itself to the wood, rolled his eyes at Harry and made grunting noises.

            “I know,” Harry said patiently, and then paused so he could make sure that he had the Latin in the next spell right. “But that’s why normal people don’t pick up cursed collars and hold them next to their neck while daring them to clamp on. A lesson learned, hmmm?” He managed to imitate Thorin’s tone exactly, and Ron looked caught between laughing—when he could—and telling Harry exactly what he thought of him.

            “Auror Potter! A message for you.”

            Harry just barely got the next spell off in time, and the collar finally flew home to the dark wooden base it had come with and Ron gasped in a grateful breath of air. Harry nodded and made sure that his face showed only pleasant attention as he turned towards Auror Flowing. “Thank you,” he said. “Next time, please, don’t interfere when you see an Auror engaged in a delicate magical operation. Auror Weasley might not have appreciated having his head cut off by the collar.”

            “What?” Ron shot his head up and glared at Harry. “You never said that was a possibility—”

            “It might have been if I didn’t put the incantations in the right order,” Harry said, and shrugged with a grave face, because Flowing was right there, staring at them as if watching a Quidditch game, and he didn’t want to laugh. “But since I was always going to put them in the right order—”

            “Bar unexpected interruptions—” Ron said, and looked at Flowing.

            She tried to babble an apology, but Harry overrode her. “Which I can deal with because I’m such a good Auror—there was still more of a chance that you’d choke to death than that you’d be decapitated.”

            Ron rolled his eyes. “Just as long as the chance was small, then.”

            “It was,” Harry said, and then turned and held his hand out for the envelope he assumed Flowing had carried into the office.

            She flushed all the harder, but said, “It’s, er, an owl, sir. We can see your name on the letter, but it won’t come near us. It’s flown up into one corner of the main office and just sits there staring at us, sir.”

            A sharp tingle shot up Harry’s spine, ending the last vestiges of his worry over Ron. He knew that his lips were stretched in a smile that must not be reassuring, but he managed to restrain it enough to nod to Flowing and say, “I’ll come right away.”

            Flowing backed up as though to put her back against the doorway and nodded once, eyes still fastened on him. That made Harry sigh and say, “I think I know who it’s from. You don’t have to worry. It was just news that I was expecting, that’s all, and I’m happy to hear it’s arrived.”

            Flowing looked as though she wasn’t convinced, but nodded and backed up some more. Harry turned to look at Ron and caught—although he hoped Flowing didn’t—the widening of his eyes and the parting of his lips as he mouthed, Malfoy?

            I hope so, Harry mouthed back, and turned to Flowing. “When you’re ready.”

*

            The owl was a magnificent creature, with pale feathers that reminded Harry painfully of Hedwig for a moment. But the freezing look it turned on him from its immense amber eyes couldn’t have been less like the looks Hedwig had always given him, and he took a step towards it with memories safely dead in the back of his mind.

            The owl examined Harry’s face, twisted its head to the side as though his identity could only be satisfactorily established by examining the back of his neck, and then launched itself into the air with silent flaps of its wings. Harry thought it was coming down to his arm and held it up. Instead, the owl landed in a rush on his shoulder, crowding so close that for a second Harry thought it would knock his head off his neck to find a good standing place. It made a complicated clicking noise with its beak and extended its leg to Harry, the envelope on it swaying back and forth from the push of its passage.



            Harry narrowed his eyes as he took the envelope. It had the formal Malfoy crest on the outside. He could only hope that Flowing’s report of the owl’s temper was true and no one had got a good look at the letter before the owl flapped up on top of the tall cabinet where it had been sitting when Harry entered the room.

            What the fuck does he want?

            Then Harry rolled his eyes. Useless to ask the question when the answer lay so near. He ripped open the envelope and pulled out the slim letter inside. In his haste, he tore one corner, and felt the owl ruffle up on his shoulder at the offense.

            “If you’re waiting for me to respect your master, you’re going to be waiting for a long time,” Harry told it out of the corner of his mouth, and turned the letter right-side up; it had emerged from the envelope wrong way round.

            Harry.

            It is useless to think that you can remove yourself from the chase until I tell you that you can. And that will only be when I have caught you.

            Respond to me at once. If you do not, then you will not like the results.

            Draco.

            Harry blinked, then shook his head. The threat was exactly the one he would have expected from someone like Malfoy: vague, haughty, and cheeky. Harry could have asked him not to use Harry’s first name, but he knew exactly what the response would have been to a request like that.

            “No answer,” he told the owl, and put his hands in the right places on the letter to tear it up.

            The owl’s feathers bristled to the point that they poked Harry in the ear and eye and made him turn his head. There was a warning in the amber gaze that made Harry have to blink and remind himself that, no, birds couldn’t threaten people, and this was just his imagination. Of course, if this was Malfoy’s owl, it was absolutely no surprise that it had picked up some of Malfoy’s attitude where Harry was concerned.

            I’m not his possession.

            The anger burned hot in Harry, and he ripped the letter and tossed the halves of it into the air. Then he pointed his wand at them and cast a nonverbal Incendio. Flowing flinched as the flames consumed the halves of the paper.

            The owl didn’t.

            It sat in place for long moments and continued to stare at Harry. Then it rose into the air and flew towards the far wall, exactly as if there was a window there.

            Harry put his hand on his wand and opened his mouth to shout, the faint premonition of what would happen coming to him the way it sometimes did when he was fighting a skilled opponent and knew what spell they would cast next before they did it.

            It was already too late. The owl vibrated, and magic broke from it, coruscating rays of black and blue that made it look, for a moment, like a black hole with the sun rising behind it. Harry flung his hand over his eyes as the owl flamed, its magic striking down again, and again, and again, and again. He heard each bolt as it hit, and smelled the scent in the air, sharper than lightning.

            Silence reigned when it was done, although it was still a long moment before Harry could make his dazzled eyes work. Whatever the consequences, they were enough to cause a faint moan from Flowing.

            He saw, at last, that every cabinet in Flowing’s office was a bent, twisted, and smoking ruin. Flowing had moved to kneel beside the nearest one, her hands patting ineffectually at the heated air rising from it.

            “Our files,” she whispered. “Our files were in there, all the records of the criminals we arrested in the last year.” She glanced up at Harry, her eyes so bright and mournful that Harry’s stomach twisted like the cabinets had. “All our evidence.”

            If you do not, then you will not like the results.

            And it wasn’t Harry who had suffered, but two low-ranking Aurors on whom Thorin’s wrath would fall like Voldemort.

            Harry felt his lips pull back from his teeth, and once again Flowing flinched. But Harry made sure to catch her eye and shake his head, gently.

            “I’m going to get revenge for this,” he said. “And I’ll explain what happened to Thorin. He’s more likely to listen to me.”

            And if he doesn’t put me back on the Malfoy case, I’ll put myself back on it.

            You wanted my attention, Malfoy? You have it.

            But I doubt you’ll like the results, either.

*

            SP777: Yes, I tend to be in a good mood when I write this story! Although I think that Harry is not. ;)

            unneeded: Harry disregards that in part because he can’t see a way, either, and so he thinks the statements about him are just Malfoy’s cover for something more devious.

            Mehla_Seraphim: Thanks! Although I’ve been trying to remedy that by letting Draco do cool things in Sanctum Sanctorum.
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