Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Conservation of Fame	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22392 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Six—Flirt-Battle

            “Draco, can you tell me if this is right?”

            Harry was privately sure that it was right, but he didn’t want Draco to feel left out. He had spent enough time yesterday in his room with his door shut, sulking, the exact same way he had before Harry fought and beat their prisoners. Harry didn’t approve. Draco should be involved in his own escape, in the plan they would use to fool these enemies of his so that they could get him to safety.

            And Harry was the ordinary person here, the one with the boring and normal life, the one who had the right to sulk when heroes and villains—whichever one Draco was—intruded on that life. Draco, as the Unspeakable with the glamorous career, should have been the one to take charge and show enthusiasm for danger.

            Since he wasn’t, Harry picked up the role.

            There was silence for a long time, and Harry began to wonder if he’d imagined the sounds of Draco going into the drawing room. At length, Draco sighed, in the way that Harry had when he was a first-year at Hogwarts assigned a long essay, and then stepped into the lab behind Harry.

            His voice altered in seconds. “What the fuck are you doing?”

            Well, that caught his attention, at least. Harry could feel the mad grin bubbling against the edges of his control, but he made sure that he turned around with an innocent face. “Well, you wouldn’t tell me what it was about them that made it so easy for their comrades to find them,” he explained, and swatted his fringe away. It kept hanging in his eyes. Keeping it long to hide the scar was all very well, but clearly something would have to be done about that. “But I decided it was probably the symbols on their robes. Right?”

            Draco just gave him a long stare, and then turned back to the spectacle in front of him, shaking his head.

            Harry had to admit that it was something to see, especially if you came into the lab unprepared for it. The abstract silver symbols that he had cut from the prisoners’ robes hovered in the air above the table that Harry would normally use for brewing, thin lines of golden light connecting them to new robes that Harry had bought in Diagon Alley yesterday. The robes were plain black or dark blue cloth, good enough to pass in a pinch for the robes their enemies had been wearing.

            And while Harry hadn’t copied the symbols to those robes yet, that would be the next step.

            “You can’t just separate those symbols from the robes,” Draco said, staring at the frayed cloth around the edges of the originals as if they would change and blur and reveal themselves still attached to the original robes. “There’s all sorts of spells that would alert them if something like that happened—”

            “Yes,” Harry said. “But those spells relied on being woven into the symbols the same way they’d woven a curse into my wards to collapse them at will. See it once, I know it. See it again, and I can duplicate that weaving and disarm it in a way that won’t alert them.”

            Draco turned and stared at him. Harry looked patiently back. There were inappropriate emotions in Draco’s eyes again, emotions that he would ultimately be sorry if he acted on, but not a lot of them, thank Merlin. Draco was remembering their argument of the other day, Harry thought, where he had given a lot and only got a little, and that would make him more cautious.

            “You make no sense,” Draco whispered. “You could be working somewhere as a highly-respected magical theorist. Why are you doing this?”

            “Who says that I want to be a highly-respected magical theorist?” Harry had never learned how to cross his eyes on purpose, but he raised an eyebrow now and shook his head. “It’s only hard to understand if you assume that everyone is a Slytherin.”

            “What?” Draco blinked.

            “Ambitious,” Harry explained. “If you assume that no one wants to be ordinary. I do. The war was enough for a lifetime.”

            Draco closed his eyes and stood there for a moment in silent thought. Harry had hopes that this would mark the end of his serious effort to find out who Harry was, because no matter what, he wouldn’t be happy with the result.

            And Harry didn’t want to make Draco unhappy. In fact, he would be happier with a contented Draco than was quite good for either of them. But as the only one who knew and understood the truth of the whole situation, he had to be the one to make the decisions. Draco would thank him if he was in a comparable position.

            Draco opened his eyes, and then his mouth, but his question wasn’t about the way Harry had sensed the spells or about the symbols on the robes. Harry was still waiting for confirmation that these were the way the Draco’s enemies tracked their agents, as a matter of fact, even though the heavy magic in them almost ensured they had to be. “Why would someone as good as you are, in all senses of the word, be allowed to retire by the wizarding world?”

The most devastating question that you’ve asked yet, Harry thought, because how close the words came to the truth froze his vocal cords and he couldn’t immediately lie.

Draco was watching his face, of course, and made a little noise of contentment. “I’m right, aren’t I? It wasn’t voluntary?”

            Harry relaxed and was able to speak again. If that was the tack Draco took, he could work with it. “Yes, that’s right. There were—things I wanted to do, but I wasn’t allowed to do them.” That was even true, if you counted “reform the Ministry” and “have some bloody privacy” on the list of things that the wizarding world wouldn’t allow Harry to do.

            “Then I don’t understand why you stay here,” Draco said. “Even with them keeping a watch on you, you manage to do quite complicated magic. You could do something about your exile if you wanted to.”

            His voice was charged, and thrummed, with eagerness. Harry smiled in spite of himself. “And you’re picturing yourself as, what? The knight who champions my honor to the wizarding world?”

            Draco blinked. Then he said, “Who knows? I’ve never been a knight before, though I’ve known a few.” His mouth twisted as if he was eating a lemon.

            They were already dancing on the edge, and the spell had held. Harry decided that he might as well go a little further, for his own amusement. “What, you mean the Boy-Who-Lived? Yes, I reckon he was, if what was reported of him in the newspapers was true.”

            Draco frowned fiercely, although in the way of someone who was fighting his own tendency, Harry noted with interest, to instantly say something, rather than someone who was going to give in to it. “I—suppose it was. To an extent. He was never as kind or compassionate as they claim. Not by a long shot. Not to Slytherins.” He was glaring at nothing now, his fingers curling so strongly into his palms that Harry was surprised he couldn’t hear tendons creaking.

            “Yes, that must have been hard,” Harry said.

            Draco looked at him once, and then asked abruptly, “Did you ever have trouble with him? Is that why they made you retire here? Because you crossed him?”

            Really, Harry thought in congratulations to the absent Hermione, who had told him this would happen sometimes, you were right. I can come up with lies, but none of them are as good as the ones that people convince themselves of. “Not exactly for the same reasons that you had, but yes, I had my trouble with that hero. That legend.”

            Draco nodded. “I know that I knew you. I must have run into you sometimes before this. Where?”

            Harry laughed despite himself. “What, did you have a private club for everyone who hated him? A place that you could gather and toast his downfall? I promise, I never belonged to anything like that.”

            “What if I could help you get back what you lost?” Draco was whispering now, leaning forwards to lay his hand on Harry’s arm. “What if I could help you get your revenge?”

            “You know what I think?” Harry whispered back, and leaned in himself.

            “What?” Draco’s eyes were wide and entranced.

            “That you should tell me whether these symbols are or are not the way they track each other, and if you know of any spells that prevent duplicating them,” Harry said in a normal tone of voice, and stood back up.

            Draco stared at him. Then he said in clipped tones, “It seems that you’re already familiar with the spells that cover them, if you’ve managed to separate them from their robes and not had hordes of enemies descend on us. What do you need me for?”

            There was an ache in his voice and a snuffed light behind his eyes. Harry gritted his teeth and wished he could explain without explaining, or better, that he didn’t notice such things.

            But Draco hadn’t accepted Harry’s warning that he would be better off simply not knowing, and Harry wouldn’t be the person he was, the person he had developed into and liked being, if he could have ignored that Draco was hurt. So the best thing to do was live with it, for however long that took.

            “There could be something I’ve missed,” Harry explained, stepping back and peering at the symbols again. “You’re more familiar with your enemies than I am, even if I’m the one who’s more personally familiar with the spells.”

            Draco spent a moment seeming to think about that. Then he walked around Harry and studied the floating symbols, and turned to study the robes. When he spoke, his voice was subdued. “They won’t be fooled by glamours or Polyjuice, you know. Not for long. What are you going to do?”

            “I know,” Harry said. “But they’ve got to track the robes, and we’re going to copy the symbols, attach them to these robes, and then have some of my friends Apparate away with them. They’ll be hopping crazily around Britain, flashing signals from multiple directions all at once, and your enemies will have to check most of them out simply because any of them might be the real ones. It’s going to drive them mental.”

            For the first time since Harry had repulsed his latest advance, Draco smiled. “And what about getting me to safety?”

            He agrees that he’s well enough to leave, then. Good. “Think about the safest place you can be,” Harry began.

            “This.” Draco turned and studied him with deeper and more melting eyes than he had used on the robes.

            Harry met his gaze patiently, and continued. “—Other than this. We’ll get you there while these people are busy chasing the signals from the fake robes.”

            Draco delicately moved his tongue around his teeth. “They still might leave someone on watch here. We’ve never been able to tell exactly how big the group is, you know. It’s possible that they’ve banded together enough people to keep an eye on the place that I last disappeared and where they had last known contact with their agents.”

            Harry nodded. “That’s why we’re not going to travel by Apparition, or by stepping through the wards. We’re going to fly. How are you on a broom?” he added, as if he didn’t know. And really, he didn’t. It was possible that Draco hadn’t kept up with his Quidditch skills while he was busy being an Unspeakable.

            Draco turned and stared at him. Then he leaned forwards in the same deadly serious way he had when he thought Harry was going to confess. “I am bloody fucking fantastic on a broom,” he said.

            Harry grinned. “Thought so.” He ignored Draco’s stare. “So. We’ll rise. The wards don’t have a hole at the top to let brooms through, but we’ll reach there, and you’ll hold onto me, and we’ll Apparate. Apparition points that are distant from your safe place at first, and then some flying, and then random Apparition, and then gradually drawing near your safehouse.”

            Draco let his eyelids fall over his eyes. “It might work,” he said. “But we’ll need two safe places.”

            “Why’s that?” Harry raised his eyebrows politely, wondering if Draco would suggest that Harry come with him.

            “I need a spot to hide the artifact I took from them.”

            Harry spent a long time staring at him and trying to fight the impulse to shut his eyes and beat his head against his hand. Draco would only take that as another clue to his identity, and Harry had had enough of his guessing for now.

            At last, Harry said, when he thought he had his balance back and wouldn’t shout, “So you’ve had it with you all this time? Something powerful and Dark, something that could have told them where my house is or signaled to them that you were here? Or destroyed my house if it was used the right way?”

            “We’re the only two people here,” Draco pointed out, in an infuriatingly reasonable manner. “I wasn’t about to use it, not based on some of the things I’ve heard about it from my superiors. And you didn’t know it was here, so you couldn’t use it.” He smiled.

            “You are beyond belief,” Harry said, shaking his head as his anger diminished. Of course Draco would do something like that. Of course he would. Well, he had told Harry now, and Harry was able to do something about it. That would have to be enough. “Fine. What kind of artifact is it? How dangerous? How safe to transport?”

            In answer, Draco reached down into his robes, into a pocket near his groin, and pulled out what Harry thought was a piece of metal at first. But he turned it over, and Harry saw the gleam of glass on silver. A mirror, the kind that you could easily hold up in front of your face as you brushed your hair.

            “It shows visions of other times and places,” Draco said softly, his eyes fastened on the mirror in a way that told Harry how severely the thing had tried Draco’s self-control. He might not do anything with the artifact until someone told him to, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t curious about what it could show him. “It’s easy to carry, and I don’t know if there’s anything out there that would damage it. Like so many of them.” He blinked and looked up at Harry.

            “You carry around your Dark artifact in a place where it might blow your cock up,” Harry said.

            “You’re too invested in explosions,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. “Not all of them explode. Just the majority.”

            Harry was about to retort to that when Draco lowered his eyelids and murmured in a plainly sexual tone, “And also, it seems, more interested in the fate of my cock than you should be.”

            Harry touched his tongue to the inside of his mouth, counting time with taps, until he said, “Fine. But still. You carry it around?”

            Draoc snorted. “I hardly think someone like you needs to be worried about that, Harry. Wards of your strength would probably contain it before it could spread that far.”

            “But trap us in here with it,” Harry said. “And let me guess. The wards will keep them from sensing that it’s here—at least, for certain—as long as the mirror’s behind them, but the minute we venture out, the mirror will call to its owner.”

            “The owner has a tracking spell that I haven’t found a way to dislodge,” Draco said. “So, yes.”

            “Then putting it in a safe place won’t work,” Harry muttered, his brain racing. “They would just follow the signal to that place and recover it, and you would probably insist on not leaving it, anyway.”

            “The thought had crossed my mind to retain what I fought so hard to take,” Draco said, modestly.

            “It’s always good to know about these little complications before we make complex plans,” Harry said, rolled his eyes at him, and turned around to consider the hovering symbols. With a few waves of his wand, he cast the sharp spells that would duplicate the symbols onto the robes. Draco gasped as he watched, but he turned back to Harry in concern as Harry put out a hand on the lab table to catch himself. Harry shook his head at him, especially when Draco started forwards and put a hand on his shoulder.

            “I’m fine,” he said. “The problem is that that spell took a lot of magical energy to cast, and if I have to figure out a way to duplicate the tracking spell on the mirror, then it’ll cost me more.”

            “Duplicate it so they’ll think that both it and their agents are running around the country?” Draco nodded. “That would work, if there was some way to copy the mirror. But dangerous Dark artifacts are also resistant to being copied.”

            Harry shut his eyes and waited until the shaking that invaded his limbs had passed for the moment, then snorted. “That’s because I’m not going to copy the mirror,” he said. “I’m going to copy the spell, you magical-theory-deficient arse.”

            Draco was silent for a moment, and then said, “I didn’t know such things were possible. They probably aren’t, for anyone other than you.”

            Harry turned around quickly. There was a tone in Draco’s voice that made him wary. “I’m sure other people could do the same things, if they wanted to,” he said. “If they had the time and money to retire from the world and practice magical theory until the words were dripping out of their eyes when they went to sleep—”

            “It reminds me of someone else who does impossible things,” Draco went on meditatively. “Who did the things that no one else could do.”

            He paused. For a moment, the air between them rang like crystal. Harry waited, his heartbeat making him feel faint, his eyes locked on Draco’s.

            “But sod if I can recall who,” Draco said cheerfully, and turned away.

            Harry didn’t pick up a vial and throw it at the back of Draco’s head, but only because he really was more mature than he had been. Instead, he flopped down in his chair and scowled.

*

            tiggator: Thank you!

            SP777: Well, if I told you that, I would be spoiling the story, wouldn’t I?

            Sorry about not responding to the e-mail; a lot of my older stories on AFF are messed up, but editing them makes them pop up to the top of the category again, and I stopped doing it because people complained about that.

            moodysavage: I hope the plan still seems clever now!

unneeded: Harry is more angry than he shows that Draco didn’t tell him about the mirror.

LeaniaSTL: Harry hopes not! He intends to get Draco away before then.

Thank you!
- 5
- 6
- 7
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

The Conservation of Fame