Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Five—Adventures Whether One Wants Them Or Not
It didn’t take that long to find Draco’s interrogation room. Harry didn’t know if he would say that his hearing was better, but he could hear things he hadn’t noticed before. That meant he could hear Draco’s monotone replies to Auror questions even before he got near the door.
He lifted his head and screeched at Ron, who had followed him. Ron rolled his eyes and opened the door. “I hope you understand how ridiculous this is,” he said.
Harry strutted in without bothering to reply. He basically had to strut anyway, to keep his stupid tail off the ground. He had a lot more sympathy for peacocks and the proud way they walked than he’d ever had before.
Not that I thought much about peacocks before.
The inhabitants of the room looked up when he and Ron came in. Harry didn’t think it was his imagination that Draco smiled, although he wiped the expression off so fast that it felt that way. Harry came over and jumped up on the table, aiming so that he didn’t scatter the notes Auror Hazan was taking.
“Yes? Did you want something?” Auror Hazan was one of those people who weren’t really fans of Harry’s, because he always felt that he would have been the best Auror around if Harry hadn’t existed. But now, his brown eyes were alight as he watched Harry’s tail and wings and beak. Well, Harry honestly couldn’t blame him for that.
He turned his tail, though, and faced Draco, cocking his head. Draco paused for a second as if he was waiting for words even though Harry couldn’t speak, and then reached out and stroked the plume on top of Harry’s head.
Harry hadn’t known how good that would feel. He’d once been Transfigured into a cat as part of Auror training, to see how long it took them before animal instincts started to impose on their human minds, and not even being petted on the head had felt like this. He tilted his head so Draco could reach the plume more easily and stalked a step towards him.
“As entertaining as this is,” said Hazan in a strangled voice, “is Auror Peacock here for a reason?”
“He wants to know more about Malfoy’s suspicions of smugglers on his grounds,” said Ron, covering for the fact that Harry couldn’t tell him why he wanted to be here pretty glibly. Harry would have to tell him, when he could, how glib he found it. “He knows Malfoy’s innocent, but he thinks…”
The words faded before the strokes of Draco’s knuckles. Harry barely controlled the impulse to spread his tail and dance in front of Draco. He deserved some sort of acknowledgment for how good he was at this.
Maybe he knows how to pet a peacock because he’s petted plenty of them in the past.
And that thought, ridiculous as it was, made Harry want to bugle in outrage and go back to the Manor grounds and fight a few of those birds who had been birds their whole lives. No one but him deserved to have Draco touch them like this. Only him.
Harry paused, and snapped his eyes open. Draco’s hand continued moving, bringing bliss into Harry’s life, but Harry noticed it slowed down, as if Draco had caught some of the thoughts that were running through his mind.
Peacock thoughts. They had to be. Harry had spent far longer as a peacock than he ever had as a Transfigured animal in the training sessions, and that had to mean he was starting to think the way a bird would. Even spreading his tail and strutting around was a peacock way of trying to impress a mate.
Not that it makes much sense why I’m thinking about taking a human as a mate, if I think like a peacock.
Harry gave his head a shake and backed away from Draco’s hand. Ron was explaining something to Hazan about the smugglers and how long they’d been chasing him which made the other Auror’s face twist up. He cast Draco a look of dislike.
Harry hissed. The other Aurors blinked at him. Draco’s face was blank.
“Mate?” Ron asked cautiously. “What’s going on?”
What’s going on is that I’m being a right idiot who’s succumbing to my instincts. Hermione can’t fix this soon enough. Harry gave his tail as brisk a shake as he had his head, and then leaped off to the table and moved to the door.
“Going to leave us to conduct the investigation the way we’re supposed to, Potter?”
If Harry stayed, he would only make a fool of himself, and probably make things worse for Draco. He strutted away as if Hazan’s opinion wasn’t any concern to him, and waited for Ron to shut the door, before he started down the corridor towards their office.
“What was that, mate?”
Harry wondered in exasperation why Ron kept asking him questions he couldn’t answer. He cocked his head at himself, and Ron nodded, his face lightening.
“Right, your body is driving you to behave in ways that you never would with a human.”
That I wouldn’t do that openly if I was a human, no. And as Harry went on parading down the corridor, he had to wonder how much he needed to think about before he had a conversation with Draco.
A conversation that would go better if they were alone, anyway.
*
The Aurors hadn’t treated him badly, Draco had to admit, even though they also hadn’t let him go home yet. They said they had to investigate the Manor and exactly where the smugglers were hiding, first. They’d treated his descriptions of the shut-up wing and rooms as likely possibilities but not knowledge.
Well, technically I can’t show too much knowledge, or I’ll undo all the problems that Harry tried to spare me from.
They had brought him a fairly substantial meal, with eggs and toast and sausage, as if it was morning, and Draco had eaten slowly and carefully, as much to fend off the questioning beginning again as for any other reason. The Aurors had watched him impatiently across the table, but aside from muttering and stirring, hadn’t done anything objectionable. Draco patted his mouth clean with the provided napkin and turned back to their questions.
He had thought of one thing that would make this interrogation more tolerable, however, and he put the plan into motion before the brown-eyed Auror who didn’t like him could start reading from his script again.
“I do not know how to reverse the spell that trapped Auror Potter,” he said. “My father most likely cast it without my knowledge.”
“We’d established that already from the questions you answered, Malfoy,” snapped Hazan, leaning forwards a little. “Is there some reason that you’re bringing it up again?”
“Yes, actually,” Draco said, and patiently ignored the way Hazan’s eyes narrowed. “I wanted to know whether I could visit my father in Azkaban, to question him on the best way to reverse the spell.”
“Why would we do that?”
Draco shrugged a little. “I haven’t been granted permission to visit my father since his arrest. But from what I understand, the Aurors and Healers who have tried to question him haven’t had much luck. He’s retreated into absolute silence and won’t even open his mouth or look at them most of the time. Right?”
There were glances sliding between the Aurors that told Draco his information was correct. He held his reaction tightly inwards. His relationship with his father was…complex, and not something these Aurors needed to be privy to.
“Yes,” the other Auror who was working with Hazan said, finally, sounding a little reluctant. “He doesn’t even scream when the Dementors pass by, and every other prisoner in Azkaban does that. It’s unnatural.”
Draco only nodded. “It might be that he hasn’t seen anyone he deems worth responding to since his arrest. It might also be that he has some magical means of resisting the Dementors. But I’m sure that I would at least get a reaction out of him. And he might be willing to tell me about this spell. He meant it to protect me, I’m sure. Not get me in further trouble by trapping an Auror of Potter’s status.”
“Why should we reward you when you’re the suspect?” Hazan demanded.
Luckily, Draco knew how to handle this kind of hostility. He leaned back in his chair and met Hazan’s eyes, holding them and smiling slightly, until the Auror turned away. Only then he did he speak. “Did you think I would forget my status if you didn’t mention it for a while?” he asked calmly. “I know that I’m not a suspect. I alerted you to the presence of smugglers in my house once I knew about them. You can’t treat me as if I had done something suspicious when you haven’t even bothered to arrest me.”
Hazan tried to exchange a frustrated glance with the other Auror, but that Auror smiled at Draco instead, in a way that made him think he wasn’t the only one who found Hazan frustrating. “True enough. And if you can’t think of any other way to get information…”
“I can’t,” Draco said, shrugging. “I’ll grant you permission to set traps for the smugglers on my property, of course. Even my friends aren’t true friends of mine if they were willingly aiding them without my knowledge. But to solve the problem of Auror Potter being trapped in a peacock’s form, the only solution I can think of is going to Azkaban and asking my father.”
“I’ll escort you.”
“Jamie! If you really think that it’s a good idea to bring one Malfoy into contact with another—”
“I think it’s a good idea to find solutions, instead of indulging your paranoia,” said Jamie crisply, standing up. He was a taller man than Hazan, and for a few seconds, he smiled down at him, using the advantage. “I’m sure I can handle it if someone not even trained in the Dark Arts tries to turn on me. And that in front of the Dementors and Azkaban prisoners who don’t even have wands to help.”
“How do you know he’s not trained in the Dark Arts? If you think about how little he’s told us about his friends—”
“Unlike you, I sometimes read reports other than the ones for the case right in front of me,” said Jamie, and rolled his eyes at Hazan, then turned his back to extend his hand to Draco. “If you’re ready for the cold of Azkaban, we can leave. If not, then I think I should cast some Warming Charms on you first. I can perform a Patronus.”
Draco actually wondered for a second if Hazan, who looked so frustrated, was about to stab this Jamie in the back, but nothing happened. He only slumped back with a grumble of defeat and a glare so wicked that Draco flinched a little from it, as he would from feeling a dagger pressing against his throat. Then he shook his head. Hazan wouldn’t get away with harming either Draco or a fellow Auror, and he seemed to know that.
“Thank you,” Draco said, and stood still while Jamie cast the charms on him. He knew better than to ask for his own wand. They trusted him, but not that far, and the wands of everyone in this section of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement got confiscated unless they were actually Aurors.
“You won’t find anything out,” Hazan snapped in a low voice as Draco and Jamie walked towards the door. “He’s as Dark as his wretched father.”
“Thank you for the input, Hazan,” said Jamie, and shut the door behind them with a firmness that made Draco blink, and then grin.
“You don’t like him, either?” Draco dared to ask as they walked down the corridor.
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Not many people do. He makes snap judgments and then won’t reverse them—which might not be a bad thing, but we have to be flexible in judging criminals and suspects. We try to make sure that we only bring in those we have a strong reason to think are guilty, but it’s not like that always works, is it? Hazan refused to testify in a trial last year because it turned out we arrested the wrong witch for the crime, and he wouldn’t say that the second one we found was guilty. Even though she confessed under Veritaserum.”
Draco snorted before he could stop himself. “He sounds difficult to work with,” he said quickly when Jamie raised an eyebrow at him.
“Yes, he is,” said Jamie, and then opened a door that had lifts right outside it and escorted Draco to the nearest one. “Now. About Azkaban. You’re sure that you want to go there?”
“I think I have to.” Draco eyed the man for a second. “Unless you have some other way to uncover the truth about the possible spell that entrapped—Auror Potter?” It was a struggle not to simply say “Potter.”
“It’s your funeral around Dementors, Malfoy,” said Jamie with a small shrug, and they made their way out of the Ministry.
*
“Is it comfortable, mate?”
Harry raised his head and bobbed it down very obviously so that Ron would accept the answer. He had created a bed of shredded newspaper on the floor next to his desk, and Harry appreciated both the effort he’d gone to in ripping up all those Daily Prophets and that it was the Prophet he’d chosen to rip off. Harry had to admit he would feel better about shitting on some gossip about Celestina Warbeck or similar than an article Luna had written.
But Ron kept giving him concerned looks, and sometimes standing up and then sitting down again with a frown as if he assumed that Harry would suddenly demand gourmet worms, or something.
Honestly, what looked most appealing was the cheese sandwich on Ron’s desk. Harry caught his eye and jerked his beak towards it.
“You want my sandwich?” Ron sounded a little shocked. Then he frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s healthy for peacocks, mate.”
Harry wanted to tell him, so badly, that he’d taken a huge hunk of pork from the kitchen in Malfoy Manor and eaten that and it had done him no harm. But he had the feeling that wasn’t going to work. He settled for raking his foot hard through the flurry of newspaper and sending scraps fluttering up all around them.
“All right, all right,” Ron said, and rolled his eyes as he broke off a corner of the cheese sandwich and flung it at Harry. He grinned then. “I’d have probably ended up giving it to you anyway. It’s not like I have any idea what that fancy food the Healer gave you was.”
Harry gobbled down the bit of the sandwich, feeling it stretch his throat uncomfortably. He cocked his head and hoped he looked whimsical as he swallowed it.
He had suffered a sudden freezing wave of fear that he would be begging food from his friends or eating fancy bird food like the kind the Healer had offered him for the rest of his life. Always shifting and hearing torn newspaper crinkling beneath him. Always twisting his head and feeling the weight of his train dragging behind him.
But that won’t happen. If nothing else, they’ll find a way to interview Lucius and he’ll tell them about the spell. Or Hermione will figure out a solution, and we’ll never have to ask Lucius in the first place.
Harry made an attempt to fold his head under his wing, or however peacocks did it, and found that it was harder than when he’d been perching in a tree. After he stood up several times and shifted around and made the newspaper rustle, Ron shot him an annoyed look, and Harry flopped back into stillness with a little sigh.
I’ll have to do the best I can to deal with the consequences on my own for right now.
*
“My coward of a son.”
Draco was distantly surprised that Lucius was still sane enough to recognize him right away. He also seemed less disheveled than a lot of the other prisoners Draco had passed. Then again, Draco thought, as he leaned his arm against the bars and stared his father down, it’s harder to impact ice than flesh.
“Because I never visited you before? That’s your sign of cowardice?”
“That you never had the strength to carry on my defiance of the Aurors. I hardly doubt the one behind you dragged you here.”
Draco smiled distantly, hoping he didn’t show anything of how hard his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest. He could act casual, but his father’s words still cut and scraped him far more than anyone else’s.
“I’m here about an Auror-related matter, actually,” he drawled, and waited until Lucius turned to stare back at him. “The spell you set that turned people into peacocks? It’s caught Potter.”
Lucius flung back his head and laughed. Draco felt his skin prickle as he listened. He was accustomed to his father pausing and hesitating, using the time to think about every new move he made, and the effect it would have on people who either looked up to him or opposed him. This was a Lucius who sounded as if he had never done that.
Maybe Azkaban did change him after all, Draco had to acknowledge, as his father leaned towards the bars and smiled in a way that went deeper than lips or teeth.
“Then I am not going to tell you how to reverse it,” Lucius said triumphantly. “Potter is the one directly responsible for all we suffered. And if you choose to look on him as a friend and beg me to reverse it, then you deserve any suffering that this brings to you, as well.”
Draco stood silent, watching his father. There were no longer as many Dementors around as there had been in the past. He had also known his father was firmly convinced that everything he had done was for the best. Those things working together, Draco had hoped, might spare his father’s sanity.
It was becoming obvious that had been a futile hope.
Draco did still lick his lips and try again, even though he thought the Auror behind him was probably convinced that he’d had nothing to do with this by now. “What kind of spell did you use, Father? What incantation? What book in the library? If you want me to work for the answer, that’s all I need.”
“No book,” said Lucius almost gaily. “No incantation. The magic of life, which only needs some blood and the will to survive. A spell of my own devising, made of the grounds and the slant of sunlight on an autumn day and my own laughter.” And he laughed again, doubled back against the wall of the cell by the force of his merriment.
Draco swallowed and looked at the Auror. Jamie nodded a little, his mouth drawn tight. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained by staying here.”
Draco was turning when Lucius’s hand caught his robe. Draco yanked himself away before he thought about it, his lip curling. But Lucius only stared at him with his mouth wide open and laughed again.
“You won’t free him,” he whispered. “You can’t conjure the moment when I made the spell again, and his own life’s magic will work against him, transforming him into a peacock because it wants to survive in that new body. The more time that passes, the more bird-like he will become. You might as well let him live out his life on the grounds. Let him strut and flare his tail and mate and raise eggs. It’s the only fate he’ll have.”
Draco turned and walked out of Azkaban without responding. His head and his belly pounded together with sickness and fear and fury.
Potter had saved him, had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt even though he didn’t have to, had injured himself for Draco, had lied to his best friend for him.
That deserved a better fate than being a peacock for the rest of his life, and Draco intended to provide it for him.
*
SP777: No, I meant wound. Harry injured himself for Draco.
Jester: Thank you!
- 4
- 5
- 6
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ad Pavonem