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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Six--Parseltongue Problems

            Narcissa was staggering in a circle, her eyes shut as tightly as though she really was a basilisk who didn't want to see her own reflection in a mirror. Harry saw her fingers curve into claws, and Lucius take a step towards her. She didn't notice him, and after a second, Lucius moved away, eyes fixed on her.

            Then the scar around Narcissa's neck lifted itself into the air.

            Harry stared. This hadn't been a result he foresaw even when he decided that Narcissa's flaw had to have something to do with snakes. The scar waved back and forth like a banner, like a ribbon, and then with the slower, more deliberate movements of a cobra. It turned its upright end, which Harry supposed he had to call the head even though it had no face, in Harry's direction, and then the end split and a forked tongue came out.

            The scar began to slide down Narcissa's body in the direction of the cage. One second it was coiled around her arm; then it dropped to the ground and undulated across the grass like a current of dirty water.

            Montgomery said something complicated and quiet, stepping in front of the scar as though he thought he would actually manage to prevent it from reaching Harry. Harry wanted to laugh. Montgomery didn't look as though he had expected this to happen, either, and now he thought he could stop it?

            The scar passed through the spell, which had created a complicated web of magic, as though it didn't exist. Then its forked tongue appeared again, and it aimed straight at Harry, correcting a slight turn to the right.

            Harry took a deep breath. He had only one weapon that might work on it--although maybe not, considering the violent reaction Narcissa had had to it in the first place. But no one else could use it, even if someone turned up unexpectedly to save him.

            "What are you doing?" he hissed at the scar. "Why are you attacking me? Am I your enemy because the woman you were on is?"

            The scar came to a stop, rearing up, more like a snake than ever. Harry could see that its "body" had grown thicker, and here and there was a glint of light as if from scales. The tongue darted out again. Harry thought for a moment it might answer.

            But it didn't. Instead, it slid through the gaps between the bars, as quick as a falling star, and reared up towards his leg.

            Harry jumped away, wincing as his back slammed into the bars. He didn't have a lot of room here. And the scar seemed undismayed by his attempt to escape, anyway, circling around and once again taking precise aim. It looked as though it was trying to bite him in the calf of his left leg this time.

            Harry hissed again at it. "Will you leave me alone? I have the ability to kill you, but I don't want to." That was pure bluff. He wondered if snakes could sense lies. He had never tried it with the basilisk or any of the other snakes he had occasionally spoken to over the years.

            The scar stopped, swaying back and forth. Harry found it unnerving to be looked at by something that had no eyes, but he had to accept that it was regarding him somehow, and that it seemed to have paused at last.

            Harry stood up and spoke again in Parseltongue, ignoring the spells that Montgomery and maybe Lucius were casting beyond the cage; he thought he could hear multiple voices chanting. "Does your mistress know what you are? How to control you? You wouldn't want to leave her before she learned fully how to control you, would you?"

            The scar shrank back and seemed to turn its head--if you could call it that--towards the gaps between the bars to look for Narcissa. Harry caught his breath and stood a little more easily. Just keeping the strange creature from killing him when he had no idea how to fight it was an accomplishment.

            "You should keep still, Mr. Potter." Montgomery's voice was low and commanding, maybe meant to be reassuring. Harry didn't glance towards him, though, not wanting to take his eyes off the scar. "You don't know what the creature might do if you let down your vigilance."

            "And you have no idea what I've been saying to it in Parseltongue," Harry murmured back. He thought he could feel Montgomery hesitate, but once again, it was hard to look away and check.

            The scar did one more sway back and forth. Then it slid out through the bars again, towards Narcissa, and curled like a living thread up her leg and around her neck. Narcissa stopped screaming when it did so and touched her hand to her skin, stroking the scar like it was a pet. Harry thought he saw it move under her hand, rubbing against the palm.

            Lucius turned to regard him, his eyes like burning stars. Montgomery stood beside him, his wand resting in both hands, his glance traveling so slowly between Narcissa and Harry that it was hard to read.

            "You will die for what you've done to my wife," Lucius said.

            Harry had only one chance that he could see, and he took it. "Oh, really?" he asked casually, while his stomach flipped around inside him. "Then you want to destroy the only living Parselmouth you know of, the only one who might be able to help her get control of her flaw?" He used the word more for Montgomery than for Lucius, who might or might not have heard what the Ministry called wandless magic in the twisted.

            Montgomery's mouth drew tight. Lucius said, "I have no idea why you use that word. If you are referring to her appearance, if you dare--"

            "No," Harry said, and grinned at him, even though he had rarely felt less like grinning in his life. "I mean that she has a wandless gift of magic, one that comes with a few other traits that the Ministry doesn't like discussing." He watched Montgomery from the corner of his eye, and saw him stand up straight. No, he hadn't been entirely honest with the Malfoys, no matter how closely he was allied with them, Harry decided. Still, maybe he hadn't known that there was any danger of one of them being flawed, and so hadn't thought that he needed to speak about that.

            "You have no idea what she has, and what she does not." Lucius's voice had gone heavy and dangerous, the way someone's voice tended to do when he was contemplating murder. Harry took a moment out to mourn that he was so familiar with that particular sound. Lucius's wand lifted and aimed straight at Harry as he continued. "I grow tired of you and your interfering with my wife. I do not know who your partner was who escaped from the Manor the other day, but I hope I damaged him."

            Harry gritted his teeth and said nothing. Getting angry about Draco right now, especially when Lucius had no idea who he was insulting, would only result in him being caged more tightly. He wrapped his cloak more firmly around himself instead and turned to face Montgomery.

            "Congratulations on capturing one of the most dangerous Aurors alive," he said, keeping his voice as calm as though he really meant the words. "What are you going to do now?"

            Montgomery came a step forwards. A second later, he turned around and looked at Lucius and Narcissa. Lucius had his arm around his wife's shoulders. Harry didn't think Narcissa had stopped caressing the scar since it climbed up her neck and became part of her again.

            "I think that you should return to your manor now," Montgomery said, low and charged. "There are things that Potter needs to tell me which relate to the Malfoy disgrace we discussed the other day."

            "I have as much right to remain here and listen to tales of a Malfoy disgrace as you have to question him about it," Lucius said. Narcissa made a small hissing sound, and her curved fingers rested on Lucius's arm for a moment. Lucius shot her a concerned look that Harry didn't miss, but then he shook his head and turned back to face Montgomery. "I want to know what you're going to ask him."

            Montgomery sighed. "Very well. This has to do with a Malfoy disgrace that you went through a blood ritual to forget. Do you want to remember or not?"

            Lucius stood taller, and he hissed something at Montgomery that Harry, mastery of Parseltongue or not, couldn't understand. Then Lucius turned away, dragging Narcissa in the direction of the Manor. Narcissa struggled against him, then abruptly snapped her spine stiff and walked more naturally. They stepped through the hole in their wards, and the hole flowed back together, repairing itself seamlessly, a moment later.

            Montgomery turned to face Harry again. "You're right that you're too valuable to kill," he said. "But you must know that death will be your fate in the end anyway."

            "Then I have no reason to cooperate," Harry said, and sat down in the cage, leaning his back against the bars. "I might as well lose my life without betraying my own principles and friends."

            Montgomery gave a delicate little sigh. "I didn't want to take you to meet my cousin," he said, "not so soon. But it seems that we have no choice. I'm not the best at extracting information from people, while she does it so very well." He aimed his wand at the cage, and it rose into the air, turning slightly. Harry wondered why. It wasn't enough to disorient him, and that seemed to be the only reason Montgomery would have for moving the cage like that.

            Then he saw Montgomery taking what looked like an ivory button from his shirt, and guessed. It was a Portkey, and Montgomery reached out to take hold of the cage with one hand at the same moment as he closed the other one around the Portkey.

            Harry closed his eyes. Montgomery wasn't looking at him at the moment, and it seemed like there might be a chance to leave a small trace of his presence.

            He dug his teeth sharply into his hand at the base of his thumb and pulled. The skin split; blood welled up. Harry didn't flinch. He'd had to go through harsher pains than that during some of his Auror training.

            He thrust his hand through the gap between the bars, and nothing sprang up to punish him, probably because he wasn't trying to aim his wand or do magic. Instead, the blood dripped to the ground on the leaves and tree roots a second before the Portkey activated and spun them away from Malfoy Manor into a dark, crowded room.

            Draco might be able to use his blood to track him. Harry knew there were plenty of Dark spells that worked like that.

            It depended on Draco coming here in the first place and finding it, of course. But at the moment, he didn't have many other options.

*

            Fuck you, anyway, Harry.

            Draco was pacing in a circle around the bedroom, more worried than he wanted to admit. Then he snorted and rubbed the back of his neck. Why not admit it aloud? Harry wasn't here to chide him for it, and no one else was here to scold him.

            No one might ever know where he had gone if Harry didn't return. They had been careful to keep contact with Harry's friends to a minimum, and Draco didn't have many friends, after seven years of exile from the pure-blood world, to talk to anyway.

            Draco turned with a slight frown towards the door. It was too bad that he no longer had house-elves. One of them could go and check whether Harry was all right, or even take Draco to Malfoy Manor, without alerting anyone else. Including Harry if he was all right and would be furious at Draco for taking the chance.

            Then Draco paused, one hand resting just above the doorknob. He'd been about to open it and glare into the stubbornly deserted corridor with its glow of bloody letters for the fifth time.

            But doesn't Harry have a house-elf? One that was left to him from the House of Black because he was technically my cousin Sirius's heir?

            Draco couldn't remember at the moment what Harry had done with the elf, or whether it had died--although he thought Harry would have told him if something like that had happened. But there was no reason that he couldn't call on it, either, and see what happened. He took a step back, doing it before he could convince himself it wasn't a good idea.

            "Kreacher!" His voice seemed to echo and hang in the empty room. "Draco Malfoy commands your attendance."

            Nothing happened for long seconds. Draco wondered whether the defenses on the house, either the original ones that Ernhardt had raised or the extra ones he and Harry had placed, might be too brutal for a house-elf to get through.

            But then there was a noise like the pop of a dislocating shoulder, and an elf appeared in front of Draco, bowing and scraping with his hand across his stomach and his ears drooping so low that they brushed the floor.

            "Kreacher is mosts happy to being with Master Draco Malfoy. Master Draco should have be calling sooner!" Kreacher lifted his head and sniffed around the room. "This is no fit place for the House of Black to be stayings!" He glared at Draco as if the choice of accommodation was his fault.

            Draco smiled. Maybe it was his fault, for agreeing with Harry that these accommodations were good enough. And it seemed that his parents' ritual hadn't affected the way Kreacher perceived him, probably because nothing could get rid of Draco's Black blood even if his Malfoy name had been stripped from him. Interesting.

            "I know," Draco said, but he held a hand up before Kreacher could spring into action cleaning the blankets and bed, which, from the way he stared at them, was the next thing on his mind. "Kreacher, Harry went hunting a while ago and left me behind. He should have returned by now, but he hasn't. I suppose you can find him?" He held out his hand. "I want you to take me to him."

            Kreacher gave a great, put-upon sigh. "Master Harry is not givings Kreacher good work, and then there is much," he said, shaking his head. He took Draco's hand. "Kreacher can finds sometimes-nice Master. Master Draco must be holdings on tight."

            Draco nodded and clutched Kreacher's hand, making sure that he had his wand tucked into his sleeve. He didn't know what kind of situation they would appear in the middle of, but knowing Harry, it was likely to be either a battle or something to do with an enemy holding Harry captive.

            The world around him jerked and popped, as though they were traveling through a mass of crunchy porridge. Then they appeared in a large stone room crowded with shadows from dancing torches. Draco flicked his eyes to the floor as something there impinged on his consciousness, and he saw the thick brown marks of dried blood there, tracing out some sort of ritual pattern.

            Then he looked up, and saw the great silver cage with Harry in it in the center of that pattern, and the wizard and witch, with identical eerie red hair, wheeling towards him, wands in their hands.

            Battle, then. Draco smiled at them and cast the Strangling Curse, shouting an order to Kreacher to free Harry.

*

            Harry winced as he clutched his arm. Montgomery's interrogation techniques were--innovative, but painful.

            Both of them, he thought, his eyes darting back and forth between the wizard and witch in front of him. Edward Montgomery, the one who had captured him, stood at the far end of the ritual circle, his wand lifted as he moved it back and forth with sharp precision, murmuring something under his breath that Harry couldn't make out. He wasn't sure that he would have wanted to hear it if he could, though. The words didn't have the characteristic edge to them that Latin gave, and they definitely weren't Parseltongue, and they placed a thick film like soot on his skin from top to toe.

            On the nearer end of the circle stood Hannah Montgomery, her head bowed and her lips moving in some of what Harry thought were the same words spilling from Edward's. Not that it mattered, Harry thought. He didn't know what effectiveness they could have without wandwork, and she hadn't lifted her wand yet except to curse him.

            Harry winced as the dead weight of his arm shifted yet again next to him, like a piece of wood strapped to his shoulder. She could be good with her wandwork, of course. But lighting all the nerves in his arm on fire at once wasn't the kind of effectiveness he wanted to encourage.

            Hannah took a step back, her head raised to the roof of the room, her hands following a second later. Her voice was going so fast now that her words blurred, and Harry twisted to watch her cousin instead.

            Edward had lowered his wand and was chanting in the same way. The film of invisible soot on Harry's skin grew deeper.

            Harry clenched his hand on the bars of the cage, then pulled it back with a wince when he realized how much magic was traveling through the silver. It would probably burn him to stay holding onto it, and he had no desire to have more than one hand disabled.

            If a chance came for escape, no matter how stupid and impossible, he was going to take it.

            Hannah's voice slowed, her words surging like the tide, and her eyes opened, fixing on him. Harry shuddered. He hadn't had much chance to notice her eyes before she started to "work" on him, but he'd thought they were grey-green. They were bright red now, to the point that they cast a faint light over the bloody runes on the floor.

            "What are you doing?" he whispered. It wasn't like they'd told him before they began this. They'd just tortured him a bit, trying to find out about Draco and what Harry could tell them about Narcissa's snake scar, and then hauled the cage into the middle of what looked like a pre-prepared ritual circle and began.

            Then there was a distinct pop that made Harry look up, wondering what kind of villains had house-elves deliver something to them in the middle of a ritual. Of course, knowing the Montgomerys, they were probably having carving knives or extra vials of blood brought.

            But what stood there was Draco, clutching Kreacher's hand. Draco had already cast the Strangling Curse. Harry watched for a dazed moment as the orange light sped towards his captors, then focused at once on Kreacher, who was coming towards him.

            "Disrupt the ritual!" he shouted. "They're doing something that will taint me and the House of Black if I ever return to it!" Well, he didn't know that for sure, but it seemed like a good guess.

            Kreacher uttered a small shriek of outrage and waved his hands, shouting. Harry couldn't hear what he'd shouted. Suddenly Edward's chanting had sped up and turned to a roaring thunder, while Hannah turned to deal with the spell that Draco had cast at her. Harry was disappointed but not surprised to see the curse dissolve on the air a few centimeters from her.

            Draco squared off against Hannah, wincing only a little as the robe on his back dragged against his wounds. Harry clenched his hand again, on air this time. He had almost forgotten Draco was still wounded. He had to get out of here and help him.

            Abruptly, the dark room flared with brown and red light. Harry jerked his head away, blinking. When he looked down, he realized that Kreacher had cast some sort of Drying Charm on the blood there, or maybe just a Cleaning Charm. The ritual circle had been entirely scrubbed away.

            The magic left coiled in it unlashed into the rest of the room, searching, spinning, for an anchor. Harry saw it grab Kreacher and fling him against the wall.

            Then Edward stepped forwards, aiming his wand at Draco's back, and Harry knew his plan as if he had spoken it. He would master the wild magic left over from the ritual and use it to take Draco down. Then they would both turn back to Harry and complete whatever purpose they had been trying to accomplish in the first place.

            No.

            Harry only had one resource right now, and he used it. "Kreacher!" he shouted. "The House of Black is about to die!"

            Kreacher immediately popped back to his feet, all the hairs in his ears bristling in outrage. Although he was limping, he still aimed his finger at Edward and shouted, "You are nots to be interferings with Master Malfoy!"

            This time, it was Edward who went shooting into the opposite wall. Hannah, distracted, glanced over her shoulder, and Draco hit her with something that made her stagger and drop to her knees. Harry waved frantically at Kreacher.

            Kreacher hurried across the now-clean floor, still muttering under his breath, and fumbled for a second at the front of the cage. The bars vanished, and Harry bolted free, holding his good hand out for his wand. Sweat broke out on his palms as he Summoned his wand, but it was there in seconds, making its own escape from Edward's pocket.

            Hannah was back on her feet, and looked back and forth calmly between them as though determining which enemy she would fight first. Harry knew better than to try and cow her. And he didn't think they could prevent her from hurting one of them if they dueled her, especially with his useless hand and Draco's injuries.

            So he flicked his wand and snapped, "Stupefy."

            The Stunner hit Hannah on her leg, where she didn't have wards; she had counted on the ritual circle to protect her. Only now did she seem to realize that the circle was gone. Her eyes had the chance to widen before she slumped to the floor.

            "Bind her, Draco!" Harry shouted, turning back just in time to face Edward as a Stunner came at his own foot. He managed to leap, although his arm swung against his side as he did it and he hissed involuntarily with pain.

            Draco turned around and stared at Harry as his own magical ropes writhed around Hannah's body. He saw Harry's arm. He followed Harry's gaze at Edward, and he made an understandable mistake. His face burned a little as he stepped forwards, his own wand raised.

            "Stun and bind," Harry snapped, before Draco could get ideas like the Strangling Curse into his head.

            "I'm afraid this has been diverting, but I can't let you take my cousin," Edward murmured, bowing. "She may be only my aunt's bastard daughter, but my dear aunt would never forgive me if anything happened to her."

            He raised his hand, and then dropped with an odd expression on his face. Kreacher stood behind him, holding a huge iron pot. As he slumped, Harry knew he wasn't the only one gaping at Kreacher.

            "Kreacher is never withouts a weapon," Kreacher said, and brandished it at both of them.

            Harry nodded, glad that he'd never got Kreacher really angry at him since the end of the war, and immediately set about binding Edward, too. He leaned against Draco when he came up beside him, and Draco touched his useless arm and said nothing.

            "I'll make it," Harry said, in response to an eyebrow lift.

            Draco nodded, and held onto him as Kreacher vanished with their captives, coming back a few instants later for them. Harry shut his eyes and concentrated on nothing but holding back as they were whirled through darkness. It felt so good to be rescued.

            He couldn't even complain much when he opened his eyes and noticed it was Grimmauld Place Kreacher had brought them to, instead of Cuthbert's Corner. He was sure Kreacher had masked their presence somehow, and the Ministry had already searched the place, though they'd doubtless left wards to alert them if Harry or Draco showed up. Harry had to hope house-elf magic went deeper than theirs and could keep their wards from functioning.

            "Rest," Draco whispered, and pressed his lips to Harry's temple.

            Harry retained a few more blurred memories after that, but not enough to be sure who helped him to bed, Kreacher or Draco. They were all of Draco's face.

*

            SP777: I would have a hard time with a traditional wedding, especially because we don't know much about how they differ from weddings in the Muggle world.

            What, a cliffhanger is unexpected? ;)

            And other people do read, but not everyone reviews for every chapter.

            Seiren: Hope you enjoyed both the trouble and Draco's reaction!
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity