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This Enchanted Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3669 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Six--Another Name for Infidelity

            "It's beautiful."

            Draco watched the back of Harry's head as he bent over the globe that the Unspeakable had placed on the table in front of them. Not that one could tell much from the back of a head, but then, there were also trembling hands that Harry locked together behind his back in this case. Now and then he closed his eyes as if he was struggling to hide tears.

            Draco didn't expect the Unspeakable who had offered them the globe to understand that, and indeed, he didn't seem to. He just gave Harry a single curious glance and nodded. "Yes, it is. Of course, that only makes them more dangerous in this case. Someone might be drawn to pick them up having no idea what they are, and become trapped in the dreams we think they inspire."

            The light inside the globe had a delicate gold-green color, like a huge tree in summer leaf and sunshine. Draco could feel the automatic twitch in the center of his own palm, the desire to hold it and see if he could make the colors change. Unlike some of the other globes in photographs, or the ones he had briefly glimpsed before Alexander used them as weapons, these hues stayed frozen and fixed. Perhaps that was a consequence of the globes continuing to exist instead of shattering, as they seemed designed to do.

            "How did you know about the dreams?" Harry's voice cut through the haze that had briefly surrounded Draco's thoughts and brought him back to something that, it seemed, he should have wondered about himself.

            The Unspeakable, when they looked up, smiled gently at them and shook his head. Draco watched his eyes. He was younger than most of them, and so far he had burbled happily through all the explanation they wanted instead of trying to hug his secrets to himself, the way that most of those in grey robes did. He had curly dark hair that looked the way Harry's might on an exceptionally good day and dark blue eyes.

            Blue eyes that lightened as Draco watched.

            "I know," said a soft, smooth, hoarse voice, not too different from the young Unspeakable's, but enough that Draco knew they were no longer speaking to the same person. "You have not been curious. If you had conducted your investigation on different lines from the beginning, then you would know as much as I know now."

            "Tell us." Harry's hand was tight on his wand, and he radiated the sheer, stupid, defiant courage he always had when standing up against someone more powerful than himself--something, Draco had to admit, that he had spent his lifetime doing.

            The man laughed at them, showing fine white teeth that must belong to the body he was inhabiting at the moment. "No, I rather think not. Say that I am in full sympathy with Alexander's goals in this particular instance, and see no reason to interfere in them. But I do look forward to the day that you make the same discovery, and must make the same decision I did."

            The Unspeakable blinked, and the blue was gone from his eyes, or at least the unusual blue. He looked down, and saw Harry's wand, and stood very still, staying the hand he had started to lower to clutch at a device in his pocket. Harry stared at him, then grunted and lowered his wand, shaking his head.

            "Sorry," he said. "We've spent too much investigating these bloody globes. For a moment, you acted like you were affected by them."

            A neat lie, Draco had to admit--neater than he would have thought Harry capable of. He reached out and touched his elbow, and Harry nodded back, confirming his support and asking for Draco's in return. Draco stood still, his hands clasped behind his back in turn, a picture of earnest innocence.

            "Well, it's true I don't have much of a memory of the last few minutes," the Unspeakable muttered, and swiped at his forehead, frowning. "I don't...oh, well. They'll take me off this case soon, anyway, and assign me to a place that can better use my talents."

            "You don't know anything about dreams connected to the globes?" Harry asked. Draco debated reminding him that there was really no reason to say such a thing, and then decided to keep silent. Harry's moment for taking the lead, Harry's moment for deciding how he wanted to handle it.

            "Dreams? No." The Unspeakable shook his head. "Not my area of expertise, and not something we'd think to look for. The globes do nothing when we touch them." Then he leaned towards Harry and lowered his voice. "But if you do know something about how they work, of course we would welcome the information."

            Draco stifled a snort. Unspeakables. They would disclaim an interest with one breath and demand any new thoughts someone else might have with another. Their world was made of thoughts and research, and putting them in the right order. Little they cared if those thoughts and research ever found a position to actually attach to.

            Harry shrugged. "We have a few thoughts, but no sure conclusions. And we have a very limited sample."

            The Unspeakable let them go at those deadly words, muttered a few complaints about his work assignment, found them unsympathetic, and scooped up the globe with a cloth to carry it into the back room. Harry watched him go with his fingers playing on his wand, and then shook his head.

            "I want to know who he is," he murmured.

            Draco knew he didn't mean the man they'd spoken to for most of their time down here. He touched Harry's elbow again, and Harry nodded and started threading his way out of the Department of Mysteries, lowering his voice but continuing to complain. "He's shown up enough times by now. There ought to be a way to track him. And what does he know about Alexander that we don't?"

            "We'll learn," Draco said. "You know we haven't had much ability to investigate Alexander close to, let alone him." He had no name that would suit for the blue-eyed menace they encountered on a regular basis, so calling him by a pronoun felt right.

            "I know," Harry said. "But we can consider. And...one thing I didn't consider. He might have spoken to Leah."

            Draco smiled and curled his fingers around Harry's arm. "Exactly where I was going to suggest we go next."

*

            This time, the door of Eleanor's Enchantments was slightly ajar, but when Draco knocked on the door, a mouth appeared in the wood, opened in a wide yawn, and snapped, "We're closed. Next opening on the evening of never." It slammed shut again, making splinters fly out.

            Draco ducked without taking his eyes off the door. Harry was impressed despite himself, and then rolled his eyes. Right. You're impressed with the little things he does the same way that you were impressed when Lionel did them. You heard Draco. You had a little crush, and you blew it up into something big. The same thing is happening now. It'll pass.

            That was the only comforting thing about his crush on Draco, Harry decided. If Draco was right and he'd just been infatuated with Lionel, not in love with him, then the excessive grief should die away soon. Probably the infatuation would have died if Lionel had lived. And his weird fascination with Draco would do the same thing. It might take a little longer because he was constantly side-by-side with Draco, but it would.

            Draco cast a small spell that moved the door back and forth as if it weighed much less than it actually did. Then a network of pale blue lines over the door flared to life. Draco snorted quietly. "Wards. But she didn't close the door fully, and they didn't engage." He leaned close to Harry and lowered his voice to a whisper that made the bottom of Harry's stomach shiver. "You go around the back. So that we don't seem as if we're entering illegally, I'll call out, but I doubt she'll come this way."

            Harry had heard the faint, hurried sounds inside the shop, too, the ones that made it likely Leah was packing up and would run away when she realized who was there. He nodded and circled into the alley behind the shop, ducking so he would be less visible from the windows. He could smell a strong, sharp odor that made him wonder if she'd spilled some ingredients in her haste.

            Then he cocked his head. No. He'd smelled that particular scent before, and it didn't come from Potions ingredients, which Harry never spent time around unless he had to. It came from a particular kind of oil that, like Muggle kerosene, could make a fire burn faster, and hotter, and longer.

            He started to circle back to warn Draco, but at that moment, Draco, probably assuming Harry had had enough time to get in position, rapped his knuckles on the door and called, "Aurors! Come out, please, Miss Anderson! We have to talk to you about the attack by Alexander."

            Harry hesitated once, then decided that he could trust Draco to take care of himself for the length of time this would take and ran as fast as he could towards the back door of the shop. He heard a sound that might have been Leah casting a spell or taking a frightened breath, and then she responded in a calm, rational voice that trembled only a little. "Auror Malfoy? Thank goodness you're here. There's been no second attack here, but I heard about the one on you. I am glad that you're all right."

            And how did you hear about that, hmmm? Harry thought, settling down behind the back door and checking to make sure there weren't any other points of exit from the shop. Granted, Alexander's ambush of them had happened in a public street, but the news still seemed to have spread suspiciously fast. Especially since all of Leah's neighbors had claimed not to know where she was a short time ago.

            "I'm fine, yes, and so's my partner," Draco said in a calmer voice. "But we do have to ask you a few questions about Alexander's past work history. Can you come out of the shop, Miss Anderson? Or may I come in? This isn't the kind of discussion that we should have in a public place."

            More soft, frightened breaths. Harry, every sense alert and tingling the way it used to be when he hunted with Lionel, felt the moment when Leah came up with a plan. "Of course, Auror Malfoy," she said. "Please give me some time to move the crates, though. I'm afraid a new shipment of ingredients came in today and I haven't been as quick to organize them as I should have been."

            Harry rose slowly to his feet to look in through one of the darkened windows. He made out a woman's figure stooping over what looked like a crate and coming up with a flask. It could have been Firewhisky to steady her nerves, or, given that it was an apothecary, any of a number of liquid ingredients that Harry was unfamiliar with, but what it smelled like was the oil that would accelerate fire.

            Harry waited one more moment. Leah could still intend to answer Draco's summons, or Draco might want to wait because, if she cooperated, bursting into her shop would look bad.

            But then Leah turned and doused the entire contents of one container open at her feet in the oil, and raised her wand. "Incen--" she began.

            Harry slammed his shoulder into the door, which had no wards on it, probably because it was used by the people who delivered to Leah. It shook, and Leah lost the incantation and backed away, looking pale and cowering in the moonlight. At the same moment, Draco came in through the front door, ducking and rolling as one stray ward that must have engaged burst above him, and coming to his feet with his wand against Leah's neck. The first thing he did was cast a Lumos Charm, and it filled the shop with enough light to show Leah's terror and the smooth way Draco held her, one arm snug around her waist.

            Harry blinked. He didn't know that Lionel, or he himself, could have managed a capture better.

            And you need to stop thinking this way.

            With his face burning, Harry stepped up to Draco and nodded once at Leah. "How do you want to handle this?" he asked quietly. He hoped Draco wouldn't ask him about his flush, because he wouldn't be able to tell the truth, and they needed trust at the moment to present a united front.

            Other than one quick glance at him, though, Draco didn't seem inclined to take his eyes off Leah. "I want to make sure that she can't escape, first of all," he responded, and whispered words under his breath that made silvery ropes appear and snake around her arms and legs, doubling her up. "And then I want to encourage her to talk to us." His wand tapped against her throat.

            "You'll never understand what happened here without me," Leah whispered. "And you'll never encourage me to talk. I know what spells you're allowed to use. None of them would convince me."

            Draco smiled, and there were edges to that smile that made Harry back up. When Draco stepped around in front of Leah and showed it to her, she flinched and tried to lift her arms to shield her face, forgetting they were bound. Draco floated her backwards and into one of the chairs that still stood in the shop, leaning against some high shelves Leah had probably taken ingredients from.

            "You forget which Corps we belong to," Draco said quietly. "The mission of Socrates Corps is to kill the twisted. And if someone else gets in the way, someone who has secrets about the twisted and won't give them up, I don't think our masters will look too closely at what we had to do to get that information."

            Leah flushed, and her trembling hands started to rise. Then she snatched them back to her sides a moment before the ropes could tug tight around her wrists. "That's not true," she whispered. "I know it's not. You're only trying to frighten me."

            Certain she wasn't looking at him, Harry rolled his eyes. Really, what other motive would they have?

            Draco bent closer and breathed out into Leah's face. Leah jerked her head back, her fists doubling up again, but Draco just kept talking, his voice so deep and calm that one had to listen closely to figure out why Leah was flushing and paling at once.

            "Really? You would be willing to bet your life and sanity on that? There are Dark spells I can use that leave no mark even in the mind, and the only witness is my partner, who stands as loyal to me in everything I do." He flashed a smile back at Harry, who blinked before he nodded jerkily. He didn't know if that made it convincing enough to Leah, but then, Leah had never taken her eyes off Draco. "And there is nothing on your shop that will detect Dark Arts like that, or I would already have felt it."

            "I could--I could testify..." Leah's voice trailed off into a bubbling squeak as she stared at Draco, who stared critically back.

            "You believe that," he said. "You believe that I would leave you enough of a mind to testify with after scooping out what I need." He shook his head and sighed sadly. "You work with Dark wizards and yet don't understand them well enough to be allowed to face one by yourself. It's sad, the deficiencies of our education system these days."

            Leah swallowed and then opened her eyes, so bright that Harry thought she would weep. "I can appeal for protection," she said, and turned her gaze on Harry. "You would not let this happen to someone, would you, Auror Potter?" she asked. "We all know what they say about you. That you're a hero, that you wouldn't let someone torture even an enemy. And what he's talking about would be torture."

            Harry raised his eyebrows. His mouth said, "Alexander flung a globe at me, and it hit me, and I was unconscious for several hours. I still don't know exactly how else it might have affected me. That was your fault, I think. If you'd told us the truth from the beginning, then we would have known to be more wary of the globes, and of Alexander."

            But his mind was thinking about the memory of Draco at his desk that Healer Estillo had pulled forwards during their session, and how Draco had smiled at him and used his first name in sleepy unconsciousness of what had been happening around him. He was comparing that smile with the utterly mirthless one Draco wore now, and trying to see them as two different people. Lionel had never been cruel. That might make a difference between them in Harry's mind, and mean that his feelings for Draco would shift and change.

            He couldn't see them as different facets of Draco, though. He saw them as parts of the same man, and they remained stubbornly joined in his mind even as Leah slumped back in her chair and moaned, and Draco moved towards her to whisper in her ear like a lover. "We don't have to hurt you. There's no reason to think that. As long as you tell us the truth, and tell us all about Alexander without holding anything back, there's no reason to hurt you. Will you do that?"

            Leah swallowed, then bobbed her head frantically enough to nearly knock herself out on the back of the chair. Draco nodded back to her once. "Good. Why do you have powdered blood in vials and boxes all over the shop? What kind of blood is it?"

            Leah hesitated, and her hands twisted together. Harry glanced about and made sure that her wand was still lying on the floor and she didn't have it in her pocket. They should have Disarmed her, perhaps, but her letting her wand fly away when Draco had grabbed her was as good as an Expelliarmus. Harry moved a step forwards and pinned the wand down with his foot.

            "Wizards' blood," Leah said at last. "Special wizards' blood. But given willingly," she added defiantly, perhaps because she had seen something in Draco's face that Harry hadn't. "You can't arrest me for breaking the laws about blood magic, because I always asked first, and paid a fair price."

            "Special wizards' blood, you said." Draco leaned nearer to her, and Harry watched as she flinched and craned her head back. He said nothing about how much he longed to be in her place, because it wasn't something either Draco or Leah would be interested in hearing right now. "Tell me how."

            "The blood of--of Dark wizards," Leah faltered, and although Harry had never been expert in reading small signs in witnesses the way some other Aurors were, he knew she was lying. "I--don't make me say any more."

            "But I want to," Draco said, and Harry saw him spin his wand so that it pointed straight at the center of Leah's forehead, which it hadn't before.

            "The blood of the twisted," Leah whispered. "Who are really just Dark wizards who aren't good at Healing magic and have an ability of wandless magic. That's all they are. That's all." She stared at Draco, and seemed to expect him to respond to that somehow, although Harry didn't know why. Seeing the way Draco's lips drew back from his teeth, she ought to have known he would use that information to build a stronger and better case, not leave something alone.

            "And they could agree to anything, could they?" Draco whispered. "When they're mad, and that's also part of the definition?"

            Leah laughed, and her hands clenched in her bonds. "You don't understand. You and the Socrates Corps and the Ministry, carefully defining the twisted as separate from their precious, precious employees!" She jerked her head at Harry. "Don't you understand? I've heard about you, about how you have trouble with Healing magic, about how you have the wandless ability to see the visions of people's deaths. What does that make you but a twisted? Different definitions, but of course the Ministry would define them so as to leave you out, and of course it would think that the best people to hunt twisted are twisted themselves!"

            Draco's face went white, and for a moment his hands on his wand trembled. Then they steadied, but his face remained colorless, and Harry understood why. Harry's ability to do wandless magic was public because it had helped him more than once in his cases and the papers had reported on it, but Draco also had a hidden gift like it. He was sensitive to Dark magic and could tell in an instant if an innocent object had been tainted with it, or a person. And he had once told Harry that he also had trouble with Healing magic, at least beyond simple spells like Episkey.

            Shit.

            Harry's mind darted through some of the other Aurors in their Corps. Auror Warren had once mentioned that she could "smell" trouble from the past; if she was in a place where someone had died violently or committed suicide, her nose would twitch and flood with the scent of blood. It made it impossible for her to be in some parts of St. Mungo's and the Ministry. Auror Macgeorge, one of their newest recruits, carried a finger bone in one of her pockets, and more than once Harry had seen it twitch and point and vibrate. He had thought it was a little Charm or sleight-of-hand on Macgeorge's part, but maybe not. And necromancy had always been called the Darkest of Dark magic.

            Shit.

            Leah abruptly lunged to her feet and tried to make her way past them. Draco cast another binding hex that tripped her up, and made no attempt to catch her as she fell to the floor. She gasped and sobbed, probably because she'd broken her nose. Draco levered her back into her chair, and continued in a voice so merciless that Harry would have thought all his changed and broken perceptions hidden away if he didn't know the man as well as he did.

            "I want to know what happened with Alexander. Did you know that he was a twisted when you hired him?"

            Leah shivered and whimpered and said nothing until Draco cast a rough Episkey to heal her nose. Then she whispered, "You're stupid. I would take their blood, but I wouldn't work with one. They can't control themselves. He became a twisted. He drank potions made with the powdered blood, even though I told him that wasn't safe, that the blood had to be diluted, and anyway it was better to use it on your skin, not ingest it--"

            "You idiot," Draco said, his voice deadened, and his face paling again. He caught Harry's eye.

            Harry nodded back. If there was a way of spreading a twisted's nature and magic like an infection, then they were in trouble, and the Ministry would probably go to any lengths to suppress the information. Which could be dangerous for future cases.

            "This is what we're going to do," Draco said, his voice soft and brisk. "We're taking you into protective custody for the moment, because we don't know when Alexander may come back here--"

            Something with too many limbs and too many heads oozed through the front window and attacked Draco, its limbs swinging out to embrace him and one tentacle plunging down his throat. Alexander followed it, striding through the door as if it wasn't there; the splinters disappeared down the throat of a second, shadowy creature that accompanied him. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it forwards at Harry.

            Harry leaped over it and charged the beast holding Draco without thought. He had Shield Charms up against the globe that Alexander launched a moment later, and the shadows that scraped at his ankles. But he couldn't care about them, or what Alexander might do to Leah.

            He had lost one partner. It would not happen a second time.

*

            Sp777: Thanks. I think the fact that Harry doesn't think much about it in this chapter is telling, because then he would have to face the fact that maybe his feelings for Draco are deeper than his feelings for Lionel.

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This Enchanted Life