Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Currents of Silver	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 7453 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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            Severus leaned back on the wall of his lab as Harry stepped into it and Draco met him near the door. He had suggested the lab as a better meeting place than Harry’s office—which Draco had wanted to enter when Harry’s meetings lasted into the evening—or the dining room, where Harry would want to eat and not talk.
            As it was, when Harry came through the door, he looked tired enough that Severus was sure he had no wish to argue. Perhaps a meal and a conversation with Draco in the morning would have been the best choice, after all.
            But on the other hand, Draco had insisted that they act before another murder could happen, and Severus had been forced to agree with that.
            “What is it?” Harry glanced at Severus first, and kept his eyes there even when Draco began to shift around impatiently. Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He could almost see why Draco would accuse Harry of ignoring him on purpose.
            “Draco wishes to speak with you,” Severus said neutrally. “About matters related to the murders. He did not deliberately plant his magical signature at the site, and it must have occurred when he was there with other Aurors,” he added.
            Harry nodded and turned to face Draco. He looked like a solid block capable of bearing down any onslaught. There was a reason his patients instinctively trusted him, Severus thought. On the other hand, he knew Harry well enough to see the slight tremble in his hands before he concealed them.
            “I don’t know how you could suspect me of wanting to kill you,” Draco breathed. His gaze was locked on Harry as though nothing else of any importance existed in the world, and Severus moved slightly to the side. This revealed an angle on the situation that he had not thought existed. “I would never do that.”
            Harry coughed to clear his throat and said, “I didn’t think that you—I didn’t entertain the idea that you wanted to murder me seriously.”
            Draco nodded one too many times. “Good. Good. Then you’ll—you’ll let me read your mind and view the memory of the magical signatures?”
            “Yes.”
            Harry spoke with a pale face and another tremble of his hands that he promptly slid behind his back again. Draco didn’t notice, and Severus was honestly unsure if he would have noticed had someone shoved the evidence in his face. His eyes were too bright, too focused. He came a step forwards and put a hand on Harry’s arm.
            “Good,” he whispered.
            Harry’s eyes flickered like startled hummingbirds from Draco’s hand on his arm to Draco’s face. There was an awareness in them that made Severus nod, because it accorded with what he was beginning to think about. Draco desired Severus; he had known that for years, from direct testimony as well as his own observations.
            But jealousy, and the desperate wish for someone to notice one, was also a form of desire.
            Perhaps on Harry’s part as well as Draco’s, Severus thought, stepping back a subtle pace in order to get a better look at both their expressions. Draco crowded Harry a little into the wall. It was a move Harry had seemed to resent when other people did it, although he allowed Severus to get away with it. Perhaps it reminded him of being cornered by his fans.
            But now, he went with it, tilting his head back and doing nothing other than stare at the underside of Draco’s jaw.
            As though the gathering heat in the lab was not all Severus’s imagination, Draco abruptly hopped back a little and nodded. “Then come with me and let me use Legilimency on you,” he said. He threw Severus a sharp smile. “We probably shouldn’t do it here, just in case we knock something irreplaceable over.”
            “Oh, that hasn’t happened in, like, three days,” said Harry, and grinned a little at Severus’s reluctant smile.
            Draco blinked, probably at the casual tone. Severus only nodded, saying nothing. It would do Draco good to be reminded that Harry could get away with some things that Severus normally wouldn’t allow anyone, including shattering vials or messing up potions. He would be angry, but he would not abandon Harry afterwards, which he would have done to most others.
            “Right,” Draco said, and nodded. “Then come with me. I assume you have a private room where we can go and not be disturbed?”
            “Yes.” Harry almost sighed the word, in the second before he shook his head and brushed sharply past Severus and Draco alike.
            Severus cleared his throat as Draco turned after him. Draco tilted his head to the side to show he was listening.
            “Do not hurt him.”
            “Not on purpose,” Draco agreed, and closed the door of the lab after them.
            Severus sighed and began to prepare a Calming Draught, a potion so simple he had done it correctly when he was drunk, or injured, or half-asleep. He might as well do something productive with the racing emotions that wouldn’t have let him concentrate on the more complex potions on the schedule right now.
            He only hoped that the desire Draco and Harry might express towards each other was milder than the first time Draco had made it known to Severus that he wanted him.
*
            “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
            Severus stood back along the wall and watched Draco without moving. He knew how much weight had fallen on the teenager’s shoulders and would crush him if he didn’t balance it exactly right. The danger his family was in, the crimes he had committed since becoming a Death Eater, the harsh regard of the Dark Lord that forced Draco mostly into the role of torturer…those were terrible things.
            But Severus had also come to the limit of his ability to help Draco with those things. He had killed Dumbledore in the way that Narcissa had bound him to do, and the Dark Lord had rewarded him with the Headmastery of Hogwarts, which Severus was due to leave tomorrow to take up. He could not become the torturer in Draco’s place, or help him with his family. At best, he would make Draco look weak by comparison.
            “You have to help me.”
            That was another thing the boy had been saying for some hours. Severus dropped to a crouch in front of Draco, and waited until Draco stopped sobbing and focused wide eyes on him. Severus inclined his head slowly, giving Draco the respect of eye contact.
            “I can do no more,” he said. “Except encourage you to stand on your own and face down the Dark Lord with some grace and commitment.”
            “I can’t do that.”
            “Then you will more than likely die,” said Severus, and watched as that blow tore through Draco, making him flinch and curl away from Severus, wrapping his arms around his head as though to shield it from falling rocks. He gave a single dry sob.
            Severus waited a few moments. Draco didn’t respond or untwist. Severus finally murmured, “Do you think I enjoy doing this? Leaving you here like this?” He shook his head when he saw an eye appear under the curve of Draco’s elbow. “I do not. But there is nothing I can do without making the situation worse for you.”
            “You could take me and my parents out of here.”
            Severus laughed. He stopped, because the sound frightened even him. “And where? The Dark Lord would suspect me at once. I know no safe place beyond his reach. You would be tortured to death running from him rather than within the safety of your own home. Is that what you want?”
            Draco bit his lips savagely, not seeming to notice the small trickles of red that had begun to make their way down towards his chin. Severus conjured a handkerchief and offered it to him. Draco made no move to take it.
            “You could do something,” he whispered. “My mother is always going on about how you care for me, about how you care for your Slytherins. You could do something.”
            No wonder the boy is bitter. He thinks I am refusing simply out of fear of the inconvenience.
            But understanding the situation did not disperse Severus’s anger for once. He leaned closer and lowered his voice until it would burn and sting like secretly biting insects. “I took an Unbreakable Vow to help you with your task. I have done that. I am extending my protection over you while you are here as much as you can, by ‘idly’ threatening Death Eaters who have wanted to torture you. I had to fight a duel with Bellatrix only the other day because she took offense to the idea that I had more influence over you than she did, your own aunt.”
            Severus concealed a shudder. Bellatrix was a special case and had broken down laughing when Severus had managed to curse her with the Cruciatus. Then she had slapped Severus’s hand in camaraderie and gone away, the original cause of the argument lost in her flowing insanity. Severus would not have been so lucky had someone else taken an interest in Draco and his family.
            “Is that what it was about?” Draco’s voice soared, and Severus turned his head to let his eyes pierce Draco. Draco rolled over against the bare wall of the dueling room. “Severus…”
            “There is nothing else I can do,” Severus said. “The Unbreakable Vow would kill me if I broke one of its precepts, but the Dark Lord would do the same thing, and then you would have no protection either way.”
            “Is there something else you want?”
            Severus frowned, not understanding the question. “You are in no position to improve my standing among the Death Eaters.”
            “I mean,” Draco said, and his eyes were so hot and dry that Severus thought any second he would strike out at something and looked for his wand, “something else you want from me. Something I could do for you.”
            “You can make no bargain on your behalf that your mother has not already made,” Severus said, and he closed his eyes for a minute, all his thoughts turning upon a tower. “I have done what I said I should, and that shall be enough.”
            “Severus.”
            That was such a quiet breath that Severus knew he would have missed it if it hadn’t been right in front of him. He opened his eyes with a forbidding expression, and Draco leaned forwards and kissed him.
            For a moment, there was a fire between them, hovering like an invisible flame on their mouths. Or in one mouth. Severus leaned back to get a good look at Draco’s eyes and saw his eyes fixed hungrily, knowingly, on Severus’s face.
            It was not a look Severus could allow to endure. He reached out and gently took hold of Draco’s shoulder, pushing him down and back.
            “We shall not,” he said.
            Draco sat back, shivering all over like a wild thing called to hand. “But you wanted to,” he whispered.
            “I do not know what I want,” Severus said.
            “Yes, you do,” Draco said. “Or you would if you didn’t hold back and tell everyone around you that this is the best thing for them, and you’re the only one who knows, and you’re the best authority.”
            “I think you do not know what you are saying,” Severus murmured. It sounded like it, with the repetitive words Draco babbled. He started to rise to his feet. “Try to keep your head down, Draco. Do what he asks you to do. It is the best advice I can offer.”
            He turned to the door of the dueling room, and Draco tackled him around the waist. Severus exclaimed, throwing out his hands to jam them against the wall and hold himself away from it. Then he turned and drew his wand, grateful that Draco had grabbed his waist instead of his arm.
            It turned out that he didn’t need the wand, at least not in any traditional sense. Draco didn’t attack him with his fists or his magic. Instead, he sank to his knees and used his mouth, tearing at cloth near Severus’s groin with his teeth.
            For a second, there was heat hovering there, too, in a much more dangerous place than between two kissing mouths, and fantasies sprang to life inside Severus, because of course they would. He leaned his head back and gasped, feeling sweat trickle down the back of his neck. There was sweat all over his body, as a matter of fact, soaked arms and armpits and legs and feet and hands.
            And then he reached out and gripped Draco’s shoulder and held him there. Draco looked at him with eyes that were—not unafraid, Severus thought, carefully plucking his thoughts out of the melting morass. Rather, desire had eaten the fear, desire like hydrophobia. Draco was ready to bolt into danger with the same lack of concern as a rabid animal.
            “I meant that we shall not,” Severus whispered. “Not that we should not.”
            And Draco dropped back from him, and put his hands across his face, with another hollow sob.
            Severus shook his head. He felt as though various thoughts were bouncing around it, leaving no room for anything else with their insistent clangor. “Contact me when you can think of something besides your own plight,” he said, and turned, and left the room.
            This time, Draco didn’t follow, and Severus spent the downstairs journey through Malfoy Manor wondering if he should have pressed that much. The boy had some sincere desire at the bottom of all that fear and the desperate wish to find a protector. Or so Severus had assumed with a skimming of his surface thoughts.
            But at the moment, Severus had other things to worry about, and he could not be the protector of Draco Malfoy at all times. His stride lengthened, and by the time he reached the doors out of the Manor, his Death Eater mask was perfect once again.
*
            I do not know how much that ever changed, Severus thought now, stepping back from the cauldron and looking down at the completed Calming Draught that glittered there.
            True, Draco was no longer in fear of his life; Severus thought part of the reason he had become an Auror was so that he would have the skills to defend himself if it ever came up again. But he was in fear, and he had never found someone who had become as close to him or as trusted as Severus had during that job.
            Do I want a lover, no matter how attractive, who will forever long for something that he can’t have, who will be checking on me to make sure that I don’t abandon him at every moment, who will be jealous of Harry partially because he thinks that Harry stands closer to me and more under my protection?
            A second later, Severus’s lips quirked, and he was glad that he didn’t face the mirror he kept in the lab to help with some potions. The smile would have looked twisted.
            If I am being honest, I must say that a certain degree of dependency is in fact attractive. Not as much as Draco exhibits. But sometimes I think that Harry could stand to exhibit more.
            Severus shook his head and reached for the first vial he would decant the potion into. That only returned to his statement to Harry of how he would never have everything he wanted, and he was at peace with that.
            He would have to be. The situation was extremely unlikely to change.
*
            “How are we going to do this?”
            Potter turned to face him across the guest bedroom, apparently the most private place in the house. Draco stalked towards him, feeling as though trapped lightning was leaping around his body. Potter’s hand dropped to his wand.
            Draco forced himself to pause and smile. At least that kept him from crossing his arms to keep me out. “The same way that most people do it, Potter,” he said. “I’ll hold out my wand and say ‘Legilimens’ and then enter your mind. I trust that it won’t hurt that much because you’ll let me in. Won’t you?”
            He made his words as normal as possible, but Potter still narrowed his eyes the way he had during oh so many confrontations in the past. “What is it, Malfoy? You sound strange.”
            Maybe this does have to be done before I can read his mind. Draco murmured softly, “I learned from Severus that you were jealous of me.”
            “Yes? What does that have to do with Legilimency or solving this case? There is a murder case you want to solve, remember, Malfoy?”
            Draco found that he could suppress the impulse to snap at Potter by taking a deep, long breath with his mouth open. Then he reached out and put a hand on Potter’s shoulder. Potter’s eyes widened, but he didn’t move away. Perhaps he thought this was something Draco had to do for the Legilimency.
            “Severus said that you were jealous of me,” he said.
            Potter winced as though someone had scraped a long splinter of steel down his spine, and Draco silently rejoiced. He hadn’t known how much he needed to see something like that, some acknowledgment that Potter was as affected by him as Draco was by Potter.
            But a second later, Potter said, “Yes. I know you have a bond with Severus that I can’t match. I told him that if he wanted to sleep with you, he could.” He turned his head a little to the side, although Draco, standing breathless with astonishment now, didn’t know what he was looking for. “He didn’t take me up on the offer.”
            “Of course not,” Draco said, and now his words were flowing faster than he could hold them back or monitor them, but from the way Potter snapped around to stare at him, that was all to the good. It was only honesty that would ever win him an audience with Potter, Draco was sure, and he could feel his skin flushing and his pulse becoming erratic. “Why would anyone just sneak off and sleep with someone, even someone he wanted, if he could have Harry Potter on the side?”
            Potter narrowed his eyes at him. “What are you talking about? That’s the exact deal I offered Severus.” Then he shook his head and moved away so that Draco’s hand fell from his shoulder. “Or are you thinking that I think I’m so handsome I don’t understand why someone would want anyone else? Sure.”
            Draco heard a world of bitterness in that word and didn’t understand, but he didn’t think he had to understand. He leaned forwards and said, “I wasn’t talking about handsomeness. I was talking about having you, specifically.”
            Potter only studied him with squinted eyes and stayed silent. Draco was glad of that, because it let him go on talking. “Listen, Potter. How long do you think your affair with Severus would last, if he slept with me?”
            “I don’t know,” Potter said starkly. “But I thought it would end right now if he didn’t. That’s why I made the offer.”
            “No,” said Draco. “Severus isn’t one to do that, not once he made the commitment. And I—I didn’t suit him, any of the times I approached him before this.” It was weirdly freeing to admit that, maybe because he didn’t have to do it in the privacy of his own head. “Now, maybe I would.”
            “Then what are you waiting for?”
            Draco shook his head a little and reached out to shake Potter’s shoulder at the same time, ignoring the way it made Potter’s own head snap back and forth. “For you to realize that you’re always part of the equation, idiot.”
            “I’m what?”
            “You were part of the reason that Severus refused me,” Draco said. Merlin, this was like letting someone lance a wound. What came out was disgusting, but once it went, then Draco would be free. “Even before you made your interest known to him. He was searching for someone who would fit him better. The ideal was always there.”
            “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
            “And now you’re his partner, and with him,” said Draco, babbling almost. “And I—Potter, I’ve felt entangled with you since our first day at Hogwarts. How did you think I was going to get away from that unscathed? That you wouldn’t matter to me?”
            “I thought I did matter to you. As an enemy. And I’ve had more than enough of mattering that way to someone!”
            From the way his eyes stared over Draco’s head, Draco knew exactly who he meant, and a shudder ran down his spine as it always did at the mention of the Dark Lord. But he said only, “You don’t matter to me as an enemy. You matter to me as someone I envied, and someone I would like to have been friends with, and someone who has talents I still admire.”
            That made Potter blink and blink again, and at last he said, slowly, “The way that I matter to you is as a rival.”
            “Yes,” Draco said, grateful that Potter had found the words for it, which he didn’t think he could have. He leaned in towards him and said softly, “If you had the slightest notion of how much time I spent thinking about you, then you would wonder if I wanted you, instead of Severus.”
            That made a blush flood Potter’s face, and Draco ducked his head. He knew he would laugh if he kept staring, and he didn’t want to. He wondered for a second if Potter had never been with anyone but Severus and if that was the reason he was reacting so strongly to someone declaring a simple interest.
            The thought made more than interest stir at the bottom of Draco’s throat and groin, but he had no intention of speaking aloud of those thoughts, either. He cleared his throat instead and murmured, “So that’s it. I don’t want to shoulder you aside. Now that I know you’re jealous of me, I want to know you better.”
            Potter eyed him sideways. “Why? I thought most people did prefer to forget the existence of their rivals.”
            “Not me,” said Draco. “The thing I hated the most was knowing that I thought about you all the time and you never thought about me at all. It grouped me with all those other people you never thought about at all. The gossips. The fans. I wanted to be special and distinct, and now I find out that I was special and distinct to you all along.”
            Potter pulled further back. Draco let him. He knew, now, that Potter was definitely going to let Draco read his mind and do all the other things Draco wanted to, and that made him less impatient and irritated.
            “You’re strange, Malfoy,” Potter said at last. “If you don’t mind me saying so.”
            “It depends on the kind of strange,” Draco said. “If it makes me unforgettable, then I don’t mind.”
            Potter stared at him a little more, eyes traveling from Draco’s forehead to his lips. Draco didn’t think it was his imagination that Potter’s gaze lingered on his mouth more than anything else, and he was sure of it when he licked his lips in uncontrollable response and Potter stared at them, and his tongue.
            “I—I don’t know,” Potter said. “But fine. Go ahead and look at my memory of the overlapping magical signatures. It was the strangest thing I ever saw.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, taking a seat on the bed, in a way that Draco knew meant he was probably pulling the memory to the front of his mind. That would make things far easier for a Legilimens trying to find it.
            Easier, and far more impersonal. Draco took a step up to him and knelt down on the floor in front of him. Potter’s eyes popped open as Draco took his hand. Draco asked softly, feeling more adult than he ever had before, “May I go further into your mind? Look at the memory in its resting place among all your other memories?”
            Potter made a face at him like a sniffing rabbit. Draco knew it would probably be imprudent to betray how close he was to the edge of laughter. He waited instead. Potter finally nodded and let his hand stay in Draco’s as he drew his wand and murmured the spell.
            The surface of Potter’s eyes seemed to break like water around him, and for a moment, Draco whirled through more well-defined corridors than he had the last time he entered Potter’s thoughts. Severus’s influence, he thought, but he looked around and took more time to breathe than he had before.
            The walls and corners and nooks were tinted a shimmering blue-green, rather like Potter’s eyes in some lights. And now that Draco wasn’t trying to get in and then out as fast as he could, or as worried about what other Aurors would think of him for not succeeding, he realized that he could hear a distant hum in the background. Rather like the hum of Muggle machinery he had heard around some of the crime scenes, he thought.
            The negative association immediately darkened the blue-green around him. Draco swallowed and shook his head. No, he wouldn’t do this. He would remain uncommitted to one precise opinion, positive, open. He leaned forwards, thinking of that, and the corridors smoothed out around him again and the hum resumed.
            He could also think of it like merfolk singing to each other without words, Draco thought. His last case but one had involved sirens.
            He smiled slightly. Well, Potter had always had the ability to command his attention, sometimes almost compel it, the way that sirens could do with most of their victims.
            Draco strolled slowly forwards, his eyes turning from side to side. Now and then, he caught sight of what seemed like glittering watery globes, and he knew they were memories. He saw one in which his own face reflected, and he reached out and touched it.
            And he was slammed straight into the opening of one he would have preferred to forget: the one and only time that he and Potter had dueled at the behest of their Auror instructors.
            Knowing that Potter would sense his withdrawal, and having his own reasons to care about that now, Draco sat back and resigned himself to watching the memory play through, and comparing it with his own recollections of those moments.
*
            “You understand that this is to stop the instant you see first blood?”
            Draco nodded at those words, because it was expected of him. But he had studied Crushing Curses and others that wouldn’t immediately send blood flying, and looking Potter in the eye, he had the impression that it was the same for him.
            Whoever had chosen to let this happen was at fault if Draco badly wounded Potter. Not Draco himself. They ought to have taken Draco seriously when he wrote down Potter’s name as someone he never wanted to be partnered with or work with or have to face in any way.
            Now, standing in the formal dueling circle—a ring of copper and gold set into the floor—in an oval-shaped dueling room not very different from the one at the Manor, Draco was glad that someone had chosen to ignore him. He was going to enjoy this so very much.
            “You may begin.”
            The butter-haired Auror, Julian Sandridge, had barely stepped back from the circle before Draco lunged forwards and shouted, “Contundo manus!”
            Potter leaned backwards from that curse, his eyes never moving from Draco. Nor did he watch as the curse that would have crushed all the fingers in his wand hand shattered harmlessly against the barrier raised around the dueling ring to protect the spectators.

            It was infuriating, just how little reaction Potter did show. Draco chased him around the circle, shouting “Confringo ossum!” and “Contundo pedem!” and all sorts of other spells that should have caused Potter a lot of pain while not actually shedding blood. But Potter resisted them all, ducked them or blocked them or leaped over them. And he did it without looking at the spells once they had passed a certain distance in front of him. He looked at Draco the whole time.
            It was starting to creep Draco out more than a little.
            Then he shouted a spell that spread an invisible icy coating of water all over the floor, and Potter finally slipped. He spun around on the floor, his hands flattened. It didn’t do him any good, not when he couldn’t get a grip on anything that would actually stop the spinning.
            Now. Draco charged at Potter, being careful not to slip on his own spell. He would use a crushing spell that would break the bones in Potter’s wand hand, the way he’d wanted to at first, and then he would use another that drew blood to fulfill the Aurors’ instructions and end the duel.
            Potter was only a short distance away. And then he lifted his wand and hissed out a spell so thick and low that Draco only realized later he did recognize the general shapes of the word. “Copula.”
            A rope shot out from his wand, binding around Draco’s chest and arms before he had any time to stop or resist it. Draco struggled wildly, but none of the slicing charms he uttered in the heat of the moment had any effect, maybe because his wand was already aimed below the level where they would have done any good by the bonds themselves.
            Then Potter snapped his wrist, and Draco went sprawling. The rope began to retract into Potter’s wand in the next moment, pulling Draco with it.
            Draco didn’t even bother trying to resist the drag. He was seething, but he would only look worse if he expressed it aloud. He had done what he could, and Potter had managed to humiliate him in a way that would take all the sting out of what Draco had done to him.
            Potter pulled him close enough to stare into his eyes. Draco stared back, watching for the moment when Potter would use some spell that didn’t shed blood to hurt him in turn.
            Potter leaned towards him. His eyes shone in a fashion that made Draco start. The glow actually appeared to come from inside Potter’s eyes, as if they were a cat’s shining in the dark.
            Draco knew powerful magic could occasionally do that. And he understood abruptly that what mattered wasn’t the relatively puny amount of power Potter had expended to lasso and pinion him. What mattered was how much he had, and could hold back.
            “I don’t care about hurting people,” Potter whispered. “Remember that. I care about winning.”
            And he used his wand to open a shallow cut on Draco’s cheek, and another minor spell to cut the rope. When he stood and turned to accept Auror Sandridge’s congratulations, it was with his back to Draco.
            Draco didn’t bother trying to get up until Sandridge came for him. He was burning and freezing both at once, too involved with his own rage to think about anything but Potter’s words and the glow in his eyes.
            The power there, and the way that Draco had once thought nothing could be more impressive than power itself.
            Now, he knew. The one thing more impressive was restraint.
*
            Watching the memory from Potter’s perspective, Draco could see the way he flinched when the spells exploded near his head or his hands, or when he recognized them. He was breathing overtime when he finally fell and then used the rope spell that dragged Draco towards him.
            But he had managed to make Draco ignore those signals in the past. Draco was still impressed.
            He finally turned away from that memory and plunged back into the green-blue corridors of Potter’s general mind. He touched a few more memories that he flinched from—including the final battle with the Dark Lord—before he found what he wanted, and stepped into the garden as it had been from Potter’s perspective.
            Most of the time, memories only showed objective things, like words and gestures, that anyone could notice, but that was when they’d been collected in a Pensieve. This way, Draco could see what Potter had noticed because of his spells, and he could feel the emotions that saturated the air.
            There were so many magical signatures racing around and tangled about each other that it reminded Draco of the huge plates of spaghetti that the house-elves of Hogwarts had sometimes prepared. He wondered for a second how Potter had sorted Draco’s own signature out of that mess.
            Then he knew what had to be the answer, and smiled a little. Potter knows me. He pays more attention to me than I knew. Jealousy or something else, what does it matter? I stand out to him.
            He was still a little giddy with that realization. Draco cleared his mind with a concentrated meditation technique for a moment before he turned around and studied the signatures again.
            All of them blazed red, orange, or yellow, usually alternating colors along their lengths. Draco blinked. That was unusual. He had read about the colors that magical signatures could achieve, although he’d never seen them because spells that revealed them were extremely rare. Those combinations of colors meant the person casting the spell was tumbling between rage and terror and nausea. Draco knew that he’d been calm when he cast in the garden, and so had his fellow Aurors.
            Not that I would know which ones are theirs, either.
            Draco froze the memory in place and paced slowly around, taking time to pick up details that Potter probably couldn’t have. There’d been too little time between him casting the spell that revealed the magical signatures and getting caught in that trap.
            So many. So many. Draco shook his head. There couldn’t have been this many killers, even if some of the killers were also Aurors he worked with. It looked as though hundreds of people had crowded into this garden to take turns torturing the Muggle to death. No, thousands.
            Then Draco paused. It looked as though there were hundreds or thousands. Also, it looked as if there was no pattern to the tangled mess, but now that he had walked over several of the twisting threads on the ground, he was convinced he had stepped over some of them before. As if the threads led from one central point.
            Draco twisted around, and saw what that point was. Potter stood in the middle of it.
            For one second, Draco thought he was bathed in the cold water of his own sweat, but then he shook his head. No. Potter couldn’t be the killer. Severus would have sensed it and done something about it before now, probably before the second murder had ever happened.
            But then what the magical signatures implied—
            Draco’s sudden realization was powerful enough to throw him out of Potter’s head, and he reeled. Potter caught his hands and stared into his eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
            It felt good to have the anxiety in that voice focused on him. Draco concentrated on that, nodded a little, and said, “I think those signatures show there’s something out there pulling a little bit of magic from everyone who’s ever disliked you, or hated you, or feared you, or wished you would give them more attention. And that magic is lashing out and building up until the moment when it achieves critical mass and manages to attack you.”
            Potter blinked. “Then why attack random Muggles and wizards I haven’t ever met? And how can we stop it?”
            “I don’t know,” Draco admitted. He tilted his head down between his knees, and breathed.
            Potter’s hand came to rest on the curve of his neck, and stayed there, rubbing a little.
            Draco closed his eyes. He knew some people would say he was twisted, especially when he still had no idea how to stop more innocent people, or Potter, from being killed.
            But Potter’s touch made everything worth it.
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Currents of Silver