Writ on Water | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3959 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
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Chapter Five--Oddness in the Auror Department
Draco stood quite still for a long moment. It was the best way to calm the roaring in his ears, to make it freeze and turn into an ocean of ice that he could cross, instead of a sea that would drown him.
Then he smiled and shook his head. "I must have misheard you," he said. "It sounded as though you said that I'd have to give up Harry in order to become your heir again." He had used Harry's first name deliberately, and was rewarded when he saw his father's slight flinch, too quick to escape concealment. His lip curled the more.
"Yes, you do," his mother said, with a motion down by her side that was probably her hand resting, once again, in the middle of his father's back or on his arm. "Surely you must see that the man who killed his father's Lord is not a proper friend for the heir of the Malfoys."
Draco stared at her for another reason. Then he said, "You might just as well say that the woman who lied to that Lord to save his destroyer is not a proper mother for the heir, either."
Narcissa flushed, a wave of delicate pink that washed all the way down to her neck where it emerged from her pale robes. Then she shook her head, hard, as if by doing that she could make things other than what they were. At last she said, "I had my reasons. They were focused on you and preserving our family, Draco. If you asked Potter, he would be the first one to tell you that."
"I think he understood that, yes," Draco said, although he and Harry had never discussed the matter in any detail. "But he saved my life as well. The Malfoy family has always paid its debts, you told me. Or does that not include life-debts?"
His father flushed this time, along the jaw. He cleared his throat with a note that Draco thought--or hoped--would have rung false even without the previous words as a warning, and said, "I am sure that you have saved his life enough times in the course of your investigations to repay any lingering remnant of the debt, Draco."
"And he has saved mine, again." Draco let his smile sharpen, until it was the one that he usually offered those criminals who had tried to kill Harry. "So we are tangled together, in a knot without beginning or end."
Lucius shut his eyes in something that might have been disgust or weariness; Draco had never learned to tell those emotions apart on his face. His mother leaned forwards, as if she imagined Draco would focus so completely on her that he wouldn't notice his father's expressions, and said, "Draco, if you would pay attention, you would see that we are offering you everything you professed to want when we first cut you off seven years ago."
"And you do not think seven years changes a person?" Draco asked, and then paused and nodded. "Ah, yes. I can see why you would think otherwise, congealed as you are."
Perfect stillness passed over both his parents at the same time, so that once again it was like a Floo call from a pair of statues. Draco watched them, panting slightly, and all he could think of, as he contrasted them with Harry and even the other Socrates Aurors in his mind, was, How lifeless.
"You offer me everything I wanted, except my Auror career and my Auror partner," Draco said at last, when he realized that they would never speak and so it was up to him to do so. "You offer me, therefore, without change, the same choice that you did seven years ago. I made my decision then. I would make the same one now." He stood up and turned away from the Floo, his mouth powdery with disappointment. He would have expected better from his parents as they got some emotional and temporal distance from the war.
Then again, perhaps he should not have been surprised. They had been incapable of understanding, even then, that he was not a child anymore and so not under their rule. Perhaps that was what would never truly change, war or not.
"Draco."
His mother did not call on him to wait, but she might as well have, using that tone. Draco turned his head and listened courteously, without blinking and without facing her fully again. She would have to earn that.
"Yes, Draco," Narcissa said, her voice soft and regal, "we do request that you give up your partner. But everything else, you may have. The career, even. We--understand that you had to do something to redeem the Malfoy name after the war, and this is as good a way as any. We were unable to accept that at the time because of the way the Aurors had treated us."
More politely than they treated any other Death Eaters, Draco thought, staring at the wall. And the reason for that? Harry, again, who told everyone he could find that you lied for him and I saved his life. Once. Which one could consider repaid by the way that he snatched me from the Fiendfyre. But Harry doesn't think like that.
When had he, for that matter, started thinking more like Harry than like his parents?
He turned and leaned against the wall, letting his Auror cloak drape and flow around him, emphasizing his slenderness, his muscles, his strength. A subtle change came over his parents' faces. Draco nodded. They knew the importance of presentation, and he wanted them to think about the difference he might make to the Malfoy name dressed like this: the noble Auror, the Malfoy who had risen from the pyre where his father had burned their pride and made it into a phoenix of service to the Ministry.
Of course, saying it in such open terms was something Harry would do, and therefore something his parents would despise. He had to remain in the shelter of his deception for the moment, and let his gestures and appearance wear away at his parents' resolve.
"What is so objectionable about Harry?" he asked. "I am paired with one of the most powerful Aurors in the Ministry, one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Surely that's good enough, even for a Malfoy."
His parents shifted and glanced at each other, and then Narcissa said, "You know that from the Socrates Corps, you will never rise."
"It is the cellar," his father said. "Used for Aurors who are good for nothing else, either because they cause trouble or the Ministry hierarchy distrusts them." His open stare said that he had no doubt into which category Draco fell.
"I have sometimes thought something like that," Draco said, stating the bald truth and letting them take it for a gracious concession. They swallowed the bait, as he saw by his mother's slow smile, and he wanted to shake his head in wonder. How was it that Harry-tactics--he might as well call them that--were serving him better here than all the political sophistication he had learned at his father's knee?
"Then you must know," Narcissa said, "that you need another Corps to advance. And that means another partner. The Ministry will never let Potter out of his service there, Draco. It is the perfect place for him. Arrests that don't exist, wizards whose crimes cannot be admitted, murder that will stain his name if it should ever come before the public again. Whereas you..." She let her voice caress the word.
"If the Head Auror distrusts me that much," Draco said, "then separating from Harry wouldn't mater. I can't change my name, or my heritage."
That won him his first fully approving smile from his father in seven years. No, longer, Draco thought, his breath catching as his heart danced against his ribs. Ten, at least. Since the war. He held his father's eyes and tried, hard, not to let the expression seduce him.
"Then you understand the ramifications of the situation better than I had feared you did," his father murmured. "Draco. You must see that Potter's partnership is not the gift you may have thought it was when you first become paired with such a powerful and well-known man. Potter has squandered his fame, and all the power he could have used for advancement. He would rather pursue quixotic quests for causes of dubious worth than make himself into Head Auror, which he could have done by now if he had used the strength that would have gathered itself behind him. I see by your eyes that you yourself had seen and despised this trait in him," he added quietly.
Draco had curled his lip when he thought about Harry's insistence that they shouldn't kill the dangerous twisted, sure enough, but he was not about to give up an inch of ground to his father. "I may have seen it," he said. "I may even have despised it. Have you thought about what it would mean if I left my partner not because we had an argument, but simply because I cared about my own standing? No one else would be eager to partner with me--"
He stopped, because his father was laughing. It wasn't easy for anyone to see who didn't know him, but there it was, the ripple of laughter in his mouth and the sparks that had appeared in his eyes.
"Draco, one of Potter's previous partners left him because she could not stand him," whispered Narcissa. "It is hardly without precedent. Go to Okazes and tell him that you are tired of Potter's attention-seeking, his attempts to shed his life as if it were an irritating burden, his failure to guard you. I assure you, Okazes will be sympathetic."
Which was code for the fact that Okazes must have taken money from his father in the past. Well, perhaps that explained his attempts to ride herd on Draco over the years since. He might dislike Draco not for having his name, but for having, as his parents would see it, betrayed that name.
"Who was that partner?" Draco asked, because he didn't think he had heard that particular tale. Of course, he had entered Auror training as Potter was being promoted to full fieldwork, and had been too involved in what was happening around him, and then struggling to survive both his cases and the contempt of the Department after that, to really notice such scandals unless they hit him directly.
"Lauren Hale," Narcissa said. "Find her. It may be that she will have some amusing tales to tell you."
"And when you have talked to her," Lucius added, sounding as if he was conscious of using someone else's fireplace to conduct a conversation as delicate as this one, "then find us again."
The fire blinked out. Draco shut his eyes and shook his head slowly, wondering why he should have expected a farewell from people who had cut off contact with him for seven years, and still hadn't showed the slightest sign of regret for having done so.
He turned away, half-making up his mind to find Hale immediately, and nearly ran into Stonewall. She stood there with her hands clasped and her head bowed as if she was praying. By the shrine of power and influence, doubtless, Draco thought dryly.
"I hope that I have been helpful to you and your family, Auror Malfoy?" Stonewall whispered. "I hope that I have earned some--future consideration, if not present?"
Which was as naked a plea for Galleons as Draco had ever heard. He looked at her, and when she finally lifted her head and met his eyes, she recoiled from him, banging hard into a cupboard behind her. She looked at the floor, swallowed, licked her lips, and added hastily, "Of course, your parents have been more than generous, and reassured me that I had helped them."
"Good," Draco said. "Do remember that." And he turned and strode out of the office, wondering only when the door had closed behind him if he should have asked her how to find Hale.
No, he decided. He was sure that she had not listened to their conversation--one of his parents would have spotted her if that was the case, or Draco, with his Auror training--but mentioning the name of Harry's former partner would reveal too much of the conversation's content.
Draco's blood buzzed, and he headed back to the Socrates office in a far different frame of mind than he had left it. He had a chance at his heritage back. His money, his circles, his friends. His life.
The trick would be persuading his parents to give him their backing, to accept him as their heir, while also retaining Harry. Because Draco had no intention of giving anything he wanted up, ever again.
Only when he stepped into the office did he see Harry sitting at his desk, head in his hands as he studied a piece of parchment, and remember the row that had driven him out of it. Draco felt his lips thin as he clutched at the door with a hand that had gone still. He would lash out if Harry said the wrong thing, and perhaps, in a more fey frame of mind, he would go to his parents and accept their offer as it stood.
Harry looked up and saw him. His face was ashen enough that Draco had crossed half the distance between them before he thought about what he was doing, and then it would have been silly to pretend he had not and go back. He completed the journey, and opened his mouth.
Then he saw the symbol of the morning star burned into the parchment that Harry sat looking at, and changed his focus.
"What does this mean?" he asked quietly, tracing it with one finger.
"That's what I've been trying to determine for the last hour," Harry said, and gave Draco a ghastly smile. "I woke up to find myself in an interrogation room, with a bunch of nonsense about meeting a woman named Nancy who was a captive of the blue-eyed twisted written on this parchment in front of me. I was about to throw it away--I thought I had been dazed by one of the spells in that intense sparring session the other day--until I saw this." He flicked his finger at the star and sun at the top of the page.
Draco picked up the paper and read the "nonsense." "And you don't think the blue-eyed twisted possessed you?" he asked when he was done. "You have no memory of the time that you spent under the influence of this spell?"
"Why would he tell us a bunch of information about his house, even in jest?" Harry nodded at the notes on the paper. "I can see possessing me to make me kill someone, or kill myself, if he's really afraid that we might find him someday. But this? Is silly."
"To make you doubt your sanity?" Draco asked, but Harry was already shaking his head, and gave the answer Draco had thought of a moment later.
"We know he exists. I might doubt my sanity if we didn't, but whatever happened didn't erase all my memories of him, or make the notes on this parchment such complete nonsense that I threw it away. Whatever happened left this behind." He reached out and let his fingers linger on the shape of the morning star.
"Then it must have been the twisted we are hunting," Draco said quietly. "A bold one, to walk into the Ministry and leave his symbol behind. The morning star as a twisted symbol makes sense, you know. Not all of them have them, but Larkin did."
Harry grimaced and nodded. "Although that doesn't answer the question of where the notes come from, the ones that keep appearing around Jourdemayne's house. If the twisted is targeting her, why? Why not just kill her instead?" He waved the parchment around. "Why not kill me, for that matter? If they can make me forget--"
He stopped at the same time Draco did, and they met each other's eyes.
"That's it, I'm sure," Draco said quietly, his blood buzzing again. "This twisted has the power to make someone forget their appearance."
"But they can't erase written things." Harry touched the parchment. "Although that doesn't answer the question of why they didn't destroy them in a physical way--but, well, there's no saying this one is sane."
Abruptly, the corners of his mouth turned down, and he sighed and glanced up at Draco. "I'm sorry for some of what I said," he muttered. "I don't really expect you to sacrifice your life to save a twisted. That's not what we became Aurors to do. We're supposed to treat criminals respectfully, ethically, but not better than we do ourselves."
Draco viciously crushed the immediate response he wanted to make, and studied Harry again. Harry sat up in his chair and stared back. "What?" he snapped. "I'll explain more if you want me to, but I thought I was pretty clear."
Draco nodded, once. "But that doesn't mean that you think we shouldn't save some twisted. Your position is clear. But I fail to see what has changed, and what would make you apologize to me."
Briefly, he thought of mentioning his parents and what they had said about Hale, but he put the notion aside for the moment. Those were weapons that he might choose to pull out when it was time for them.
*
Harry sighed and ran a hand over his scar. He still had a residual headache from whatever spell or influence or hypnosis he had been under, and he really didn't know what Draco wanted him to say.
"I still think we should save the sane ones," he said. "Not immediately try to kill everyone the Ministry accuses of being twisted."
A faint smile played along Draco's lips, and he looked right into Harry's eyes. "It's not usually the Ministry accusing them," he said smoothly. "It is their own actions, or lack of them. It is their symbols, and their companions, and their flaws."
Harry looked towards Draco's left arm and the hidden Dark Mark, symbol and even source of his own flaw if Draco was right, and said nothing.
Draco clenched one hand down over the sleeve, and said, "You know that we don't hunt people that act sane and then turn out to be very often, Harry. Larkin was wrong from the beginning. It took us a while to learn about Alto, but I was--the victim in that case, the one falling under her charm. Alexander seemed harmless at first, but didn't turn out that way in the end. I don't know what you want. You act as if there's a whole class of harmless twisted out there being unfairly hunted down, but every one we've come across has tried to kill us, or manipulate us, or put us in a coma."
Harry bowed his head and tried to think about making his point reasonably this time, without letting either his positive or his negative feelings about Draco influence it. At last he murmured, "I just want us to be more mindful of it. It would be a good beginning if we tried to change the Ministry's definition of the twisted. That would make it clear that sometimes these cases need to be grey instead of black and white."
"And that will just make it all the more complicated," Draco said, voice strenuous but low, "when they try to kill someone, and new recruits to the Socrates Corps are hesitating between different procedures."
"I said we should change the definition, not the procedures," Harry snapped, leaning forwards. "Don't you ever listen?"
"Changing one means changing the other," Draco said, unmoved. "And it could put our lives in danger. It could put the lives of other Aurors in danger, not to mention those the twisted attack. Like Jourdemayne. You do remember her, I trust? The one tormented by your twisted who can erase memories, the one who may indeed be as innocent as a lamb but is causing Jourdemayne anxiety all the same?"
Harry ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Draco was right, that was the problem. The Ministry would consider changing the definition the same as changing the procedures. Convince them that the twisted weren't so easily defined as they thought they were right now, and they would ensure that Harry and Draco had more to do when following them, more paperwork to fill out, more justification to do when they killed a twisted.
At the same time, though, Harry couldn't stand the hypocrisy of simply being Aurors who committed murder when they were supposed to protect people.
"All right, look," he said at least. "What if we try to understand the twisted? Go back and document everything we know about them. Start writing a report on the differences between Larkin, Alto, and Alexander, and maybe the new one when we know who he is. Or she," he added, looking back at the parchment in front of him that he'd scribbled with notes about Nancy. "If and when we end this case and we're both still in shape to do it, then we can complete the report and submit it to the Ministry. You know they take forever to get anything done, but--it's still something."
Draco stared at him, unblinking, for so long that Harry could only assume he'd committed some other mistake without knowing it. Then he smirked. "A sop to your conscience that won't interfere with our work," he said, "since, yes, the Ministry will take forever to make decisions based on it. I like it."
Harry stood up and paced around his desk to be nearer Draco. To his surprise, Draco didn't move away, just went on looking at him with steady, bright eyes.
"I didn't mean it that way," Harry said, softly and passionately, into his face. "I still want to do something more than this, something to acknowledge that not all twisted are the same and we might be able to help some of them."
"When you come up with a way to do that doesn't put our lives in danger," Draco said back at him, his voice as soft and vivid, "you tell me."
Harry turned away with a snarl and folded his arms. He hated disagreeing with Draco, much the same way he had hated doing it with Lionel, but at least their past gave him more practice with it.
"What now?" he muttered, aware that he sounded sulky, and not really caring.
He thought he heard Draco mutter something under his breath that included the name "Hale," and turned around swiftly. "What?" he demanded. Working with Lauren was a bad memory that he spent a lot of his time trying to keep from intruding into the front of his mind.
Draco sighed. "Something I should keep to myself for the time being. Come on, let's go talk to Jourdemayne again. She might have written something else down besides those notes--if she wrote them--which could reveal the existence of this twisted, or her power."
He held open the door of the office for Harry. Harry paused to glare into his eyes on the way out and say, "I might fight with you, but I do still like you a lot, you know. There isn't much I wouldn't do for you."
Draco looked strange for a second, but his hand was utterly strong as he rested it on Harry's shoulder and said, "I can't think of anything I wouldn't do for you."
Except spare the twisted, Harry thought, but on the whole, he departed from the office satisfied, and listened to Draco's footsteps ringing behind him with the same sense of satisfaction.
*
unneeded: Lucius and Narcissa thought some negotiation would be necessary, but they do expect to win.
SP777: Not necessarily. If they're right about Nancy's power, she could erase herself from Draco's memories, too.
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