Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Descent of Magic	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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

Chapter Six—Working a Change

            Draco sat back and sipped at the glass of water in his hand. He had almost asked the house-elves to bring him something stronger, but he had had that earlier, and he did not want to drink enough to lose track of the papers he was studying. Potter would undoubtedly attack him if Draco lost some of his precious research.

            Draco felt his shoulders try to hunch. He quelled that impulse with another sip of his water, and studied the silver signet rings on his left hand until he was sure it was truly gone.

            Then he set the cup aside and leaned in to study the papers again. He had arranged them by kind, the way that Potter should have ordered them, on the table in front of him. Lists. Charts. Photographs. Transcripts from official books and court records. At least Potter had some sense; he was looking for more records than just the books that would support his own side, of which there were precious few in the era of wizarding history that he was looking into. Both wizards and magical creatures had known the magical creatures’ place, then.

            The evidence looked back at him, and Draco imagined that he could see the letters winking mockingly, the way they would if they were Potter’s eyes. Potter’s eyes, green and taunting and looking as if they never opened on a world of less than innocence and beauty…

            Draco took the envy, considered it coldly, and so froze it to death and put it away from him. It was ridiculous to envy Potter when Potter would never have the blood and breeding that Draco did. Perhaps his children could pass for pure if they didn’t mention their mother’s blood traitor status often, but Potter was too close to someone tainted, the manky nature too perfectly balanced with the clean.

            No. He had considered the evidence so far, and it was true that he could come up with no theory that Potter could not refute in his head at once, or that the evidence could not refute. But that did not mean that Potter was right.

            Draco rose to his feet and paced around the table in a circle, head cocked so that he could literally look at the documents from every angle.

*

            “Uncle Harry.”

            Harry opened his eyes, and smiled. Rose was sitting in the chair beside him, her hair twined around her head in the style of crowning braids that she favored and which had driven Hermione mad when she first began using it. She said that it took twice as long as any other style Rose could have used, and it made her look like a woman twice her age, and why didn’t Rose favor the kind of commonsense, loose hair that Hermione had when she was a teenager?

            Of course, that was part of the reason Rose continued to wear it that way, and Hermione had to know it. But Harry could listen to her complain, and listen to Rose defend herself with gentle explanations, and in the end see the argument fade into complacency just as so many arguments between Hermione and her children did.

            Except her row with Hugo about the way he treated Harry. Harry sighed as he thought about it. Hugo was always the most difficult one.

            “Uncle Harry, I’m worried about you.”

            That drew Harry’s eyes back to Rose, and he frowned, wondering if Al and Scorpius had spread the news of his research even further than to Malfoy and Hermione. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not doing anything dangerous at the moment.” He smiled a little and touched his leg above the knee, in the same place Hermione had touched it yesterday. “This kind of ensures that I can’t.”

            Rose frowned at him and reached out with one hand, slowly. Harry raised his eyebrows, and she pulled her hand back. “Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s only Dad and Mum. But…you’re falling asleep all the time in the afternoons. And you’re having more and more trouble walking. Victoire mentioned that,” she added, before Harry could accuse her of bribing Kreacher for information.

            Harry sighed and shrugged. “I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep when I was younger. Maybe this is just my body’s way of catching up.”

            “I don’t think so,” Rose said, and her voice was so low, her shoulders so tight, that Harry looked more closely at her. He wondered how long this had troubled her. Maybe she was right to have come and disturbed him about this. Harry would rather spend half an hour talking to his nieces and nephews than have them spend that long worrying about him. “I think—that you’re losing track of your life. Charge of your life, maybe. You’re drifting, and you sit here like some grandfather we can come and tell stories to.”

            “And ask advice from, and have tea with,” Harry said. “I like that aspect of my life, Rose. I would have done something about it if I didn’t like it.”

            Rose nodded, but not as if she believed him. “You aren’t a grandfather,” she said.

            “Not for James’s lack of trying,” Harry muttered, remembering the latest scandal, big enough in Romania to hit the papers here—although any news of Harry Potter’s children involved in something like that would hit the English papers, whether the other country thought it was important or not. Luckily, the girl had simply been scared, not pregnant, and James didn’t have to be a father. Harry was not looking forward to the day that he came under the delusion that he could be.

            “Will you listen to me?” Rose leaned forwards, and Harry saw her mother in every line of her face. “You’re acting old. You’re not old.”

            “Let me number the people who would disagree with you about that on both hands,” Harry said, and held them up. “Molly, Lily, Al, Scorpius—”

            “I mean that you’re not old enough to just sit back and watch life go by.” Rose’s hands were tight on the sides of the chair, which meant it was important enough to her to get angry. Harry nodded and listened. “You need an interest. I know that you said you were getting involved in magical research, but it can’t be that interesting if you keep falling asleep as you’re sitting in your chair.”

            Harry hesitated on the verge of replying. She was right about the days since he had stopped looking through books. While hunting for solutions to the problem of pure-blood fertility, he had been alive, excited, on edge, in a way that he hadn’t felt since he left the Aurors.

            But on the other hand, did he want to be like that all the time? It would suggest that there were endless disturbing problems to solve, and he didn’t want that to be true. Hell, he didn’t want this to be one of them. He wanted Malfoy to come back and tell him that he had imagined everything and he was an idiot.

            But Rose was waiting for him, and she was the one who had to be answered before he could come up with any answer for Malfoy, if he would even need one, so in the end he shrugged and said, “This really suffices for now, Rose. I think that I can learn how to be involved with the world again a bit at a time, maybe.”

            Rose narrowed her eyes. “You’re thinking about my prat of a brother again. You shouldn’t think about him.”

            “Not just him,” Harry said, and gestured towards his leg. If he hit it as hard as he wanted to, he would live with the pain for the rest of the morning. “I really am slower and less capable than I used to be, or I wouldn’t have quit the Aurors.”

            “They would have kept you,” Rose muttered. “That’s what Mum said.”

            “I know,” Harry said, snapped, really. “But I didn’t want the kind of desk job that they would have given me.”

            “Then find something else,” Rose said, and shoved at the air with both hands, as if she could push it towards him and force him to breathe it, in and out, and get his lungs working again. “Uncle Harry…I love you. I really do. But I think someone needs to challenge you, root you out of that chair and make you do something, or your arse is just going to freeze there.”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself. “You know your parents would hate to hear you talking like that.”

            “They’re not here.” Rose leaned forwards again, insistently. “Will you think about it, Uncle Harry? Think about finding something?”

            “I will,” Harry promised.

*

            There could have been other laws passed at the time that would have the effect on pure-blood fertility that Potter contemplated. For example, if there had been laws relaxing the Statute of Secrecy and more wizards had mingled with Muggles, that could have meant more pure-bloods with tainted magic and fewer children.

            Except, Draco had to admit a moment later, that that wasn’t likely. There had been numerous tests done to see if mere contact with Muggles damaged a pure-blood’s ability to have children, and it did not. Being around them in King’s Cross Station when they went to take their children to the Hogwarts Express, for example, didn’t cause miscarriages in pregnant women.

            Perhaps there was another factor, however. What if family size had increased when the laws pushing for good treatment of house-elves were passed not because magic was taking its revenge on wizards, but because of something else associated with that? They had made the house-elves happier, and so the house-elves took better care of their children in response?

            But when Draco read his history books, he had to abandon that theory, as well. There had been a fashion in the first of those large generations for witches to care for their children themselves. House-elves were less involved in rearing children than ever before.

            Which might be another reason that more of us survived, if Potter’s theory is correct.

            But Draco did not want it to be correct. And there was more to it than that, than even that, as important as that was to him. He refused to believe that a novice magical researcher had hit on the right solution, the first time out, to a problem that had baffled the finest pure-blood minds.

            Perhaps that’s why he managed to see it and we didn’t. We won’t look at house-elves the same way he did, we would never give them credit for influencing us in this way—

            Draco closed one hand into a fist, and scowled. He would not lash out, of course; it was not something a Malfoy did. But he had to admit that the thought followed him, and troubled him, on his constant dizzy journeys around the table where Potter’s notes were laid out, as he thought and thought and thought about it.

            What other explanation could there be? Something as full, as far-ranging, as self-consistent as Potter’s. That was what would ultimately make it a persuasive theory if it was allowed to escape into the world, Draco had to admit. Potter could find answers that he could add to the structure of the theory without changing the essentials of it, and so counter objections like the ones that Draco had tried to raise in his home and was trying to raise now.

            Assume it is true.

            Draco nodded stiffly. He had been obliged to do that in the past, even when he most hated the theories or ideas he was fighting. For example, he had been forced to face the idea in the past few days that Scorpius was unworthy to inherit the Malfoy name, and that was far more devastating than the idea that he was wrong about something Potter was right on.

            No, it isn’t.

            Draco opened his mouth and exhaled like a displaying dragon, all hot breath and soundless air without a roar or flame. Then he sat down hard on the couch he had risen from earlier and put his head in his hands.

            So it still mattered that much, after all these years, the need to prove Potter wrong? He hadn’t known that about himself. Yes, he had known he wanted to be the best, and he had wanted to prove this theory wrong because of the changes that it would necessitate in their way of life if it was true. But he longed to prove Potter wrong more than he longed to have a son who was a fit heir?

            No, Draco decided, slowly, after struggling with it for so long that he thought his head might burst. That’s not it. It’s not—that simple. Winning over Potter is what I want, yes, but there’s more than one way to do that. And proving him wrong doesn’t look like something I can do, not easily.

            So Draco would follow his father’s advice, and change the ground. Assume for the moment that Potter’s theory was true. How would Potter go about trying to ensure that pure-bloods treated house-elves better?

            Draco snorted. He could just picture it. Tearful appeals before the Wizengamot, saccharine speeches about house-elves being sentient just like wizards, rhetorical questions that would lead the audience along because he was Harry Potter and would make them think they’d never heard anything so profound.

            And in the meantime, he would alienate his real audience. Some of them would hate the idea of the change, and others would hate him because he was Harry Potter and had ended the Dark Lord’s dreams, and the rest simply wouldn’t believe.

            Draco shook his head, aware that he was smiling and that it might look frightening from a distance, aware at the same time that Lucius would be proud of him.

            If this theory was true, then they needed to spread the truth, because nothing was more important to the future of Draco’s kind than carrying on their families, and having worthy heirs. With more children, they would have more of a choice about who to leave as head of the family in their place.

            And they needed to do it right, so that Draco’s peers would believe in the need to do this, to change things, instead of shoving themselves away from the idea and then letting Mudbloods outbreed them.

            Draco stood, staring down at the notes with his fists clenched.

            He still didn’t know if they were all true. He didn’t know if he would, in the end, give Potter all the credit, or claim it for himself. But for the moment, he couldn’t disprove them, and the needs of his kind outweighed his own.

*

            This time, Harry thought as he reached for his glasses, fingers fumbling in the light cast by his fire, he had a reason to be legitimately irritated, since whoever was calling him had woken him up in the middle of the night, instead of the afternoon.

            He blinked when he saw Malfoy’s face in the flames. He had instinctively thought that Malfoy was the sort of person who went to bed with the sun, so as to keep his shiny hair and perfect eyes intact.

            “Malfoy?” he asked, around a yawn. “What is it?”

            “I think that I know ways I can propagate this theory, and get people to believe it, and change their behavior towards house-elves,” Malfoy said, without a pause, so that Harry’s brain still foundered on the fact of him having decided Harry was right before he listened to what he had said about their tactics. “If you’ll put me in charge of the public relations, instead of insisting you have to be because you’re Harry Potter.”

            Harry blinked, then smiled. “Anything that’ll reduce the attention I get is a good fit for me,” he said. “Though Hermione might fight you for the position you want.” He leaned forwards, aware that his heart was beating fast and there was a sharp taste in his mouth. “We’re agreed on this, then?”

            “If I find a better theory, I’ll support it,” Malfoy said flatly. “But yes, for the moment, I can accept this.” He met Harry’s eye, and gave him a smile that was stuck somewhere between a grin and a sneer. “We’re going to change things, Potter.”

            This is it, Rose, Harry thought as he grinned back. This is what I needed to break me free.

*

            unneeded: In the end, disproving the theory is too much work. But don’t worry, he will continue to be an utter utter twat bag for a while! (I love that insult. It sounds so musical).

            ChaosLady: Don’t worry, that is coming up in the next chapter. Especially since they’ll both think they know best on the public relations side.

            moodysavage: Draco actually cares a lot more about his motivations for the actions than he does about the actions, if that makes sense. Just like he convinced himself that there was a way he could accept the theory, then he might be able to accept that there’s a way he could get along with Harry.

            SP777: It would drive his father batty, too!

            My specialty is English, but you can’t do that without knowing a lot of history, too, and sociology, and history of art, and so on.
- 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 Descent of Magic