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The Library of Hades	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4439 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Five—Secrets of the Dead



            “It stinks.”

            Draco nodded and refrained from saying the many things he could have said. He stepped back from the folding shelf on which Moxon’s skin was draped and waited for Macgeorge to draw closer so that she could conduct whatever necromantic rituals she wanted to on it. Draco didn’t think they would be interrupted. No one was in haste to spend that much time around the skin, and Macgeorge’s wandless magic would give the Ministry some trouble to track, the same way that they didn’t have Harry registered as a Seer because his visions simply happened to him, without the aid of a crystal ball or any other tool.

            But Macgeorge didn’t step closer to the shelf. She simply stood, one hand to her nose, looking so stricken that Draco shifted his weight.

            That got her to move, though whether she feared criticism or feared being made fun of Draco didn’t know. She crouched down by the edge of the shelf and shut her eyes, splaying her fingers above the bloody letters. Two quick breaths in and out, and then she wasn’t breathing at all.

            Draco stood up, but held himself back. He remembered reading about this, in one of the books on necromancy that he’d glanced into during the year that the Dark Lord spent in the Manor, when anything would have been of value as a distraction. Some necromancers got closer to their subjects by making themselves like the dead for the duration of the ritual. No breathing, or no heartbeat, or no motion.

            In this case, it seemed breathing was the only one Macgeorge was going to stop, and even that didn’t last long. Her eyes opened again, fixed on the wall above the shelf, and a rasping voice Draco had never heard said, “Who did you see?”

            The skin shivered once. Then a long strip that had been the side of a finger peeled away, and kept peeling, all down the flank of the finger, the side of the knuckle, the width of a hand, until Draco thought it had blended into the arm. But his rising gorge wouldn’t let him keep exact track of that, and he had to glance away and take a few deep breaths until he got it under control.

            When he turned back, the strip of skin hung like a banner above the shelf, in front of Macgeorge, and she was bending closer to read the writing on it. Draco tried, but from this distance, it simply looked like random smudges of smoke and soot.

            Macgeorge nodded. “And is the truth written in your blood?”

            Another strip of skin peeled loose, this time from the opposite hand. When it draped over the first one, to form a cross shape, it was close enough that Draco could read a few of the words. Truth and unregarded.

            Macgeorge nodded again, which seemed to be a kind of control gesture for the pieces of skin. Her breath gargled in her lungs, and that was when Draco noticed the tension of her muscles. Using her flaw like this seemed to take the kind of toll on her that his visions did on Harry.

            “I can ask only one more question,” she warned Draco in an undertone.

            Draco stopped the irritated words that wanted to rise to his lips. If he had known that, he would have asked her to make her first two questions more relevant. He thought, while the strips of skin hovered and Macgeorge fought whatever wanted to consume her with trembling muscles.

            “Ask why the killer was using such Dark magic, why it was different from other Dark magic,” he said at last. He could have asked whether Moxon knew the killer, but that was probably covered by Macgeorge’s first question, and he was curious, intensely so, about the way his Mark had hurt when they briefly dueled the twisted.

            Macgeorge blinked, human. “You’re sure?”

            Draco nodded. Macgeorge turned back to face the corpse, and quivered briefly, as though someone had jammed a pole down through her throat and affixed her to the floor. Draco grimaced and looked in the other direction for a moment. This case was definitely affecting the grotesqueness of the metaphors in which he thought.

            A third strip of skin came loose, but slowly, as though Macgeorge was having to fight Moxon’s spirit for control of it. The letters began to form, though, which was what Draco wanted. He leaned forwards to see if he could read them himself.

            Halfway through the scroll of unfolding words, the skin abruptly shredded, tearing into smaller and smaller pieces. Draco swore. The explosion of magic that briefly shimmered in the holding cell made his arm hurt.

            Even that satisfied him in part, though. It seemed that their twisted knew about the possibility that someone might use necromancy on his victim and had protected himself against that.

            Which only brought up more questions, but ones that might be more productive. Who would be suspicious enough to think of necromancy? The Ministry allowed the use of some other magic it restricted, such as Legilimency, under tightly controlled circumstances, but necromancy had never been allowed.

            Unless it was someone who knew the Socrates Corps, who might know about Macgeorge’s flaw and her developing gift…

            Draco turned to Macgeorge, ready to ask who knew about her flaw, or whether she had managed to read anything on that third strip of skin before it dissolved. He found her lying on the floor, neck twisted towards the shelf, a few thin pale bubbles trailing out of her mouth and coating her tongue. He swore again and dropped to his knees beside her, taking out his wand, ready to cast an Rennervate.

            And that was how the door burst open, how Harry found them.

*

            Draco was kneeling beside Macgeorge, who had something thick and disgusting and white flowing down her chin. He stared up at Harry for a moment, then said, “Well? She fainted when she was trying to read the truth about the twisted from Moxon’s corpse. Help me revive her.”

            Harry frowned and knelt down beside him, but said nothing. He had gone first to the Socrates office, thinking Draco would be there, or that he would bump into him on the way back. Or maybe he would even get there and Draco would owl him demanding to know where he was, since he would have reached Harry’s house by then.

            Instead, Harry had found all too many people who were delighted to tell him exactly where and how they had seen Draco and Macgeorge walking, and how they had looked very close, their heads bent together in conspiracy.

            Harry had reminded himself all the way down the corridor to the holding cell that those rumors still came from who he was, and who Draco was, not because they were true. Too much delighted glee in the eyes of the rumor-mongers, for one thing. These were people who would never have wanted that much to do him a good turn.

            But it was still a relief, stupid as it was to admit, for him to see the bubbles on Macgeorge’s tongue. Draco wouldn’t have wanted to fuck someone who spat up like that.

            “Using her necromantic flaw?” Harry murmured, holding out his wand and clasping Draco’s hand. Draco started, and Harry smiled at him. “I find it easier to focus my magic on helping someone else when I’m like this,” he explained easily. “And of course she was. That’s much easier to hide than magic done with a wand.”

            “Yes,” Draco said, eyes still narrowed as though Harry had been the one to do something weird in coming here and preparing to revive Macgeorge, instead of him. “Yes, she was. And then she collapsed when she pulled the third strip of skin free, the one that would have contained the answer about why the twisted’s magic was so bloody Dark.”

            Harry swallowed and kept his head turned carefully away from the corpse. “Oh.”

He and Draco chanted the Rennervate together, and magic flowed back and forth between them along their linked fingers. A moment later, Macgeorge coughed and stirred weakly to life, rolling her head to the side so that she could spit out the thicker bubbles that came up. Not just bubbles, froth, Harry thought, smelling of sour cheese.

At least he had the satisfaction of seeing Draco recoil at that. Draco didn’t like strong smells of any kind, and the one coming from Macgeorge was particularly disgusting.

            Harry decided accusations and questions right now would be counterproductive. He leaned back, instead, and let Macgeorge decide how she was going to react to seeing him.

            It turned out to be a blank stare, and then she turned to Draco and went on speaking as though Harry was a natural extension of Draco’s presence. “So. The corpse saw nothing except a figure of soot and shadow, and the story written on his skin in blood is the truth. The word ‘unregarded’ appeared several times in that answer.”

            “Why?” Draco asked, as serious as though he expected to take up necromancy in the near future. Harry rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Draco looked at him anyway and moved his fingers up and down his wand.

            “The dead don’t tend to be coherent conversationalists,” Macgeorge said, and spat out a bit more cheese-like substance that hit the floor and sparked. Draco rose to his feet, finally, and moved away. Harry moved with him, making sure that he kept himself a pace behind Draco, in a good strike position. “They repeat themselves, talk about details that others wouldn’t notice, and ignore some we would find obvious.” Her voice had risen now, clearer, stronger, but she still stank, and she still wasn’t looking at Harry. “This seems to mean that no one else particularly cared about those facts of his life, that he had no particular enemies or friends.”

            “Like Adriana,” Harry murmured.

            Draco gave him a single quelling look, which wasn’t enough to escape the interest from Macgeorge. “What do you mean?” she asked. “The last victim whose case you worked on? Or should I say, the first victim in this case?”

            Draco’s look sharpened. Harry simply blinked back, guileless. He trusts her enough to have her do illegal necromancy for our case, but not enough to give her publically available facts?

            “Yes, Lugar was our last victim before Moxon,” Draco said at last, apparently on the realization that Macgeorge would not dissolve neatly into mist and blow out the door. He sighed and touched his hair, the ends of the strands, as though they would have had time to be ruffled during the short walk from the Socrates office.

            That’s where they must have been.

            Still, Harry held his tongue. He wanted to know a lot of things, including what Draco had been thinking to come here with Macgeorge, but the less of a fuss he made now, the sooner they would be out of this room and he could confront Draco in private.

            “I wish there was a way I could gain access to her body,” Macgeorge said, and sighed. “Even a vial of her blood would help.”

            “Why?” Harry felt entitled to say, and gestured at the cross made of skin-strips floating above Moxon’s corpse. “It wouldn’t enable you to read the information out from the flesh in the same way.”

            Macgeorge gave him a long, slow look. “Because there are other ways of talking to the dead,” she said, and shook her head at Draco. “I don’t envy you this one. Bring me the blood in the morning if you can. I’m tired.” She walked out the door without giving Draco time to decide what he would say.

            “I think it’s time that you came home now,” Harry said quietly.

            Draco pivoted on one heel to face him, light and dangerous and free. “Where? To my house? Or to yours, where you intend to treat me as if I was writhing on the floor with her?”

            Harry smiled, despite the heat going off like a sunrise, like a firework, inside him. At least they were getting straight to it, instead of dancing around the subject and hinting endlessly the way he thought Draco would like to. “Your mother firecalled me,” he said. “She told me that they’d promised you your old family and your old life back if you just betrayed me, and that you’d talked to Hale behind my back. Why did you never tell me about that?”

*

            Shit.

            Draco had assumed, without thinking, that this was all about Macgeorge—and Harry’s face had turned that particular violent purple color when he saw Draco on the floor beside her, so Draco had reason. But come to think of it, that didn’t explain why Harry would have awakened from what Draco knew was a sound sleep and come rushing down to the Ministry, then to the holding cells.

            Draco licked his lips. “I didn’t tell you about visiting your old partner because I was jealous and we were having that unreasonable argument over whether we really needed to spare the twisted who kill people,” he said. Harry’s eyes glinted like the light off steel, but he didn’t interrupt. Draco appreciated the courtesy. “She was merciless. I don’t blame you for backing away from her. You need someone warm.”

            “You didn’t tell me,” Harry said quietly.

            “We were arguing.” Draco stood up and circled warily towards him, pausing only to wave his wand and pull the strips of skin that Macgeorge had enchanted into a small vial that he then Summoned. No use leaving them here for Ministry officials to find, and although any other Aurors who came to look at it would be able to tell that someone had taken skin off the body, Draco could truthfully claim it was their evidence.

            “And afterwards, when we weren’t?” Harry tilted his head to the side to watch Draco walking nearer.

*

            “I didn’t tell you,” Draco said, weighting his words as though he assumed Harry would throw them back in his face if he didn’t, “because you would have taken it the wrong way. The same way you would have taken my parents’ request.” He paused, in body and in words, and left Harry to wait until Draco had licked his lips and said, “I never considered it seriously, you know. Abandoning you for what my parents could offer me. The moment they told me that was a condition, I knew I couldn’t do it.”

            “Thank you,” Harry said. It was a big concession, so he let the silence hang there for a moment between them until he added, “And telling the truth?”

            Draco hissed and reached out for his wrist. “Not here,” he said. “Not in a holding cell where anyone could come by.”

            Harry went with him, silently amused that Draco would say one of the most intimate things that he’d ever said to Harry in a holding cell but worried about an audience for their arguments.

            Perhaps, come to that, it might just be the subject they were talking about. Draco had grown used to defending his choices, to himself if no one else, in the seven years since he had rejected his family’s plans for him and become an Auror. But his relationship with Harry was new, and Harry had seen the way that he glared at Macgeorge, at his reflection in the mirror, at Harry himself, as if any of those people might try to take it away.

            Mind ticking quietly over the arguments they’d had and the intimacies they’d shared without once relinquishing his need to know why Draco hadn’t spoken to him about this before, Harry let himself be led.

*

            Draco knew he was going to have a difficult time of it with Harry just from the way that Harry stood and spoke. He was angry, yes, but he hadn’t flown into a jealous rage over Macgeorge the way Draco had thought he would at first. He looked Draco in the eye and asked questions that made Draco feel as if someone was pushing a needle into his bone.

            And he didn’t intend to let Draco’s visit to Hale go. The moment they were inside Harry’s front door, Harry turned around, back to the wall and arms folded, and asked, “So, what did you think of dear Lauren?”

            Draco tensed, but stepped closer to Harry and touched the back of his neck. “That she didn’t deserve you, and you were right to leave her,” he said simply.

            “Yes, well, she’s cold,” Harry said, and fixed his eyes on Draco. “But I still would have liked it if you’d told me you went to see her. That suggests you don’t really trust what I told you about her.”

            Draco grimaced and dropped his hand. The bad thing about the way that Harry tended to react to romantic advances—that was, to ignore them or be oblivious most of the time—was that Draco couldn’t distract him that way, either. “I thought there had to be something more that you weren’t telling me, that partners wouldn’t fall out because of what you mentioned,” he said, staring at the wallpaper. “And my parents had mentioned her as if there was some great secret behind it, too.”

            “You trusted your parents more than me?”

            Draco looked up. Harry’s voice had gone quick and ragged. He broke away from the wall, stared at Draco, shook his head, and then turned and snapped his way into the drawing room. Behind him, the wall where he had stood quivered, and bristly magic unfolded in midair to stroke down the side of Draco’s face.

            Draco followed him. “It wasn’t a matter of trusting them,” he said to Harry’s back, as Harry paced in front of the fireplace. “If you remember, I did come and ask you about Hale.”

            “And didn’t accept my answers, enough that you had to go and talk to her, too.” Harry glanced once at Draco, and Draco fell back before what was in his eyes. “I told you the truth, Draco. Only the truth. Maybe my feelings don’t make sense to you, any more than they did about Lionel, but you should be used to that by now, shouldn’t you?” He shook his head and laughed down in the hollow of his throat. “How much don’t you trust me? What other things would you go behind my back to find out about, maybe if you were more friendly with the Weasleys? Shit, Draco.” He stopped and pounded one hand against the brick of the fireplace for a moment.

            Draco at once stepped forwards and seized Harry’s wrist. Harry was allowed to be angry with Draco, but he wasn’t allowed to injure himself.

            Harry twisted savagely, and Draco staggered away and had to save himself from sitting down in a chair with a swift hand on the mantle. He stared at Harry. They had both had the same Auror training, and that meant most motions they both knew wouldn’t work on the other one of them. This must be one of the times that Harry was upset enough to really bring his strength to bear.

            “You knew they wanted you to give me up,” Harry said, his eyes bright enough to hurt. “You knew that they wouldn’t have clean motives for telling you about Hale, if they have clean motives for anything. And you still weren’t satisfied with my answer.”

            “I wasn’t thinking straight at the time,” Draco said. “We were in the middle of a difficult case, and a difficult argument, and you—Harry, I want to know everything about you. Including what other people say.”

            “So you must pay attention to all the rumors that spread through the Ministry, too,” Harry said, with a credible attempt at a drawl. Draco managed to resist feeling too proud. “And the rumors that they print in the Prophet. And you must want to go to my friends and learn all about me that way. Funny, the way you reacted to Ginny, I thought you had other intentions in front of her than learning what she thinks about me.”

            “Stop it.” Draco stalked a step closer. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that I want to know about you, and you didn’t tell me.”

            “I told you the truth,” Harry said. “Sorry it wasn’t dramatic enough for you.” He paused for a moment, his arms folded and his eyes locked on Draco’s face.

            “Why did you trust them?” he burst out with in the next second. “Your parents, the ones that you know betrayed you and wanted you to get rid of me? What was so important about them that you—that you had to go behind my back?”

            “Why did you trust my mother when she firecalled you?” Draco countered, flicking a glance at Harry’s Floo. He would have to go through the wards on it and make sure they were tight. He didn’t really trust a Floo that his parents could access. “You must know that her most likely motive was to make trouble between us, to encourage you to distrust me, or even to make sure that you found me with Macgeorge. She has spies in the Ministry who could have told her that I was with Macgeorge and you were nowhere around.”

            “I came to see,” Harry snapped back. “That’s the point. I went to see, to talk to you about it. I didn’t hold back and wait to see if I could gain some advantage, I didn’t accuse you of lying. If you’d told me that you never went to see Hale and your mother was lying, then I would have accepted that.”

            “I won’t lie to you,” Draco said.

            “Except for lies of omission,” Harry said. “And lies about your family. I wondered why your mother agreed to help you torture Nancy. Because you went there and told her that you would become their heir again if she did it, didn’t you?”

            Draco winced, but couldn’t help a smile at the same time. The old Harry, the one from before Draco had partnered with him, would never have bothered to guess that, and wouldn’t have known what to do with the information even if he did. Draco had taught Harry suspicion and politics, among other things.

            “Yes, I did,” he said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you.”

            Harry’s head snapped around as though Draco had wedged a fishhook behind his jaw. “What?”

            “I said that I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Draco repeated, and cast a small spell that would check for sense-blurring hexes on Harry’s eyes and ears. He wouldn’t have put it past his mother to cast those through the fire; if anyone would know how to use the Floo that way, it was his parents. “Didn’t you hear me?”

            “I didn’t expect an apology,” Harry said, after a long moment had passed, filled with enough lightning that Draco thought Harry might throw him out and tell him to come back in the morning.

            Oh. Another thing for both of them to learn. Draco hadn’t considered apologizing until this moment, but now he didn’t know why not. Harry wasn’t someone who would try to use the words against him, the way that far too many others would.

            “I’m sorry for going to Hale,” he said calmly. “No, I didn’t believe what you told me. But having met her, I can understand. She’s very cold, very restrained, very pure-blooded, in a way that I could never be, and which my parents despaired of me for not being. Your partnership would never have worked out.”

            Harry nodded, slowly, wide eyes still fixed on Draco. “I don’t believe that you were cheating on me with Macgeorge,” he said abruptly. “Or that you were necessarily wrong to trick your parents. But not knowing about it—yeah, that gets to me. I don’t deal well with my partners not trusting me.” He grimaced and scrubbed at his hair.

            Draco stepped in and gently took Harry’s wrists, bringing his hands down in front of him. He wouldn’t do his hair any favors, playing with it like that. “Because you think Lionel didn’t trust you after you told him you were in love with him,” he murmured. “And because of Hale. And because we haven’t had such good luck on our cases when we didn’t trust each other, when I was under Alto’s influence or you kept plans from me.” His voice sharpened despite himself, since Harry had done that on the Morningstar case.

            Harry looked up at him and laughed quietly. “Then we’re both dealing with the same thing, aren’t we? Still trying to live up to the new promises.” He tilted his head back and kissed Draco, passionately, right out of the gate, just as he had begun this argument.

            Draco kissed him back, smugly thinking that this was the best “fuck you” he could offer his parents. To continue working with Harry, having Harry trust him, believing in Harry himself, presented an unbroken independence.

            Harry stepped back, tugging him in the direction of the bedroom. Draco went, moving like a leopard, heat building inside him. He and Harry had been together several times, but this time…

            This time, if only from the sparks in Harry’s eyes, he thought it was going to be more. Mean deeper.

            No, I was wrong. This is the best “fuck you” of all.

*

            unneeded: Draco agrees, but so far, he doesn’t really have a plan.

            AlcyoneBlack: Hope the necromancy scene was all you were looking for!

            Harry doesn’t trust the Malfoys. He will go and ask Draco what they’re talking about, though, because he knows that it would be stupid for Narcissa to talk about something that could be disproven.

            SP777: Narcissa wants Draco back as her heir. Of course she’s going to meddle.

            Thanks for the compliment on Harry.

            If you don’t mind the fact that a character named Stephanie in this series could well end up becoming the victim of a twisted, sure!
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The Library of Hades