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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.

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Chapter Six—Moments of Life
“I don’t think the spell would have affected you as powerfully if not for the Elder Wand.”
Harry settled his tail with a rustle and stared at Hermione. Well, that’s helpful.
Hermione rolled her eyes at him, exactly as if she knew what he was thinking. She probably did. She’d told him more times than Harry could remember. She knelt down next to him and reached out to touch the feather on his tail where the silhouette of the Elder Wand shone.
“The Wand tried to fight the spell, I think,” she said quietly. “The force of death against life came to a standstill, and that’s why you’re trapped the way you are. Anyone else would probably have become a peacock in brain at once, and we would never have known what happened to them.” She shook her head. “Why do Dark wizards play around with magic like that?”
“Um,” Ron said, lounging against his desk and watching Hermione as she crouched in the newspaper. “Because they’re Dark wizards?”
“Yes, thank you for your contribution,” Hermione told him dryly. “In the meantime, do you have the slightest idea how to get Harry out of this form?”
“Nope,” Ron said.
He sounded cheerful on the surface, but when Harry looked at him, he could see the way that Ron’s eyes had tightened and his hands clasped his wand. Harry extended his neck and touched Ron with his beak as gently as he could. Ron started and then looked at him again, dropping his tight hold on his wand with a little smile.
“I’m all right, mate,” he said soothingly, reaching out to tickle Harry’s neck feathers with one hand. “Just a little jumpy.”
Harry turned his head to the side and crooned in response. Ron nodded and looked to Hermione.
“So Harry’s lucky in that he’s been spared what the spell’s meant to do. What can we do to get it undone? What kind of magic do you think can help someone when the Elder Wand’s involved?”
“If I had known this before, I might have been able to tell you.”
Not even Harry had heard Draco coming up to the door, and he’d thought it would be hard for him to miss. He controlled the impulse to fan his tail out, and merely inclined his head. Hermione jumped and then looked annoyed at herself for doing so. Ron only looked as polite and narrow-eyed as he always had around Malfoys since the end of the war.
“I’ve visited my father,” Draco said, stepping into the office and taking the chair that normally would have been Harry’s. He spoke to Ron and Hermione, Harry thought, because they were the only ones who could answer him, but he really hadn’t removed his eyes from Harry so far. “He seems to think that no one can undo the spell unless they can recreate the moment when he cast it.”
“What moment was that?”
“The morning that the Aurors came to take him away.” Draco sighed and bowed his head. “I told him it was about Potter because I thought that would make him eager to help. At least, that way, I would have more of a chance to escape from the Aurors’ custody. But he only laughed and refused to help.”
He continued to stare intently at Harry a moment later. Harry wished he had lips and a human voice. I could have told him that the one time I went to see Lucius in Azkaban, he was too mad to help anyone.
But that would mean revealing he had gone to see Lucius in Azkaban, and why—something Draco might consider an intrusion into his privacy, anyway. So perhaps it was good that he didn’t have his voice.
“The Elder Wand changes things, though.” Draco’s voice altered slightly, but Harry could only hear the alteration, not what it meant. “So the rumors are true and you’re the Master of Death?”
Harry waited, but neither Ron nor Hermione seemed inclined to say anything. So he bobbed his head.
“What did you use to break into the Manor? How did you get caught by Father’s spell in the first place? I’d think the Master of Death would be strong enough to avoid getting caught by such a simple trap.”
Harry wanted to flail around with his feet and scratch out angry traces, but he couldn’t get his answer across that way. And still Draco spoke with his eyes fixed on Harry’s, as if he assumed that would be the best method of making Harry understand him.
He’s speaking to me. Not Ron and Hermione.
Maybe in this case, it would help if Harry tried to translate. He faced Hermione, waited until she extended a hand, and then reached out and tapped his beak softly in the center. She flinched but didn’t withdraw. Harry stirred his foot through the newspaper again and tried to mimic, as best he could, placing a wand in someone’s palm.
“Oh, of course!” Hermione nodded and turned to Draco. “Harry does still use his holly wand most of the time. He only summons the Elder Wand when he has to do something like, well, break into a guarded house.”
“I thought that was so.” Draco hadn’t taken his eyes from Harry, which was flattering in one way and immensely creepy in another.
“When he does break in, he uses it,” Hermione said, and paused to look at Harry. Harry bobbed his head in response. The one thing he was absolutely certain of was that Draco wouldn’t try to use the information to go after him. “He uses it to take him to something dead. He can always bridge the distance between him and the place he wants to go that way. He’d probably have appeared in your grounds, where some small animal had died.”
Harry bobbed his head again, and clapped his wings for emphasis. Draco leaned slowly back in his chair. “Then the Elder Wand is protecting you. Preserving your sanity against the encroachment of my father’s spell.”
Harry couldn’t understand why the information seemed to depress Draco. He nodded again.
“Fine,” Draco said, with a long, drawn-out sigh. “Now, how do you suggest we go about reversing the transformation? It must be impossible to recreate the exact conditions of the day that he cast the spell on.”
“Do we know that?” Hermione was already digging into a book she’d gone to her home library to bring back. “There are such things as imitating the slant of light—the kind of time magic that’s not concerned with time travel, you know—”
“I don’t trust my father,” Draco said, his voice thick and spreading like leaf mold. “I’m sure that he left something out, something he didn’t want to tell me. That means we could do everything right and still not get the spell correct. Or we would do it, and there would be some trapped contingency spell that means Potter would be harmed again.”
He turned his head slightly, as if he wanted to shut Hermione entirely out of his line of vision, and stared at Harry. “I don’t want that to happen.”
Harry couldn’t describe how heavily his heart beat. But he did know it was more like a human’s than a bird’s. He leaned forwards and gently nibbled at Draco’s fingers. He couldn’t do anything else.
“But of course we can compensate for that.” Hermione’s head popped up from her book again. “Harry has the Elder Wand, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” Draco said, in an unencouraging tone. “But it seems all it’s done so far is make it possible for him to resist the spell a little, not free himself.”
“That’s because Harry hasn’t committed himself fully to it.”
Draco snapped his head around, his eyes locked again on Harry. Harry wondered what it was for this time. Hermione's words were true and the right ones for the situation. Harry wasn't about to contradict her.
"What do you mean, hasn't committed himself fully to it?"
"Well." At least Hermione looked as startled at Draco's sudden mood change as Harry felt. "I mean, he doesn't want to be the Master of Death. So he continues to use his holly wand and only uses the Elder one when he wants to get in somewhere or defeat a really powerful enemy. I did tell you about the holly one," she added, probably just to emphasize it.
Draco knelt down in front of Harry and shook his head. His fingers were lightly trembling, and he seemed to be caught somewhere between shock and anger. "You don't want to be the Master of Death."
Even though it didn't sound like a question, Harry shook his head emphatically.
"Why?"
Again it felt as though this was a private conversation, just between the two of them. But Draco had again forgotten that Harry couldn't speak in answer to complicated questions. Harry looked at Hermione.
Draco interrupted her before she could even begin. "Oh, I'm sorry. Let me guess and you can nod or shake your head, all right?"
Harry nodded, cautiously. There was still something off about Draco's response to the situation, and he wasn't sure what it was.
"Let's see." Draco tapped a finger against his lips, his voice light and mocking. "You don't want to have a wand made of elder wood instead of holly wood?"
Harry shook his head, scowling. He was afraid it didn't come across as an intimidating expression when he was a peacock, and sure enough, Draco just lifted an eyebrow before he continued on.
"You don't want to use the wand that Dumbledore did?"
Harry honestly had to think about it, but in the end, he shook his head again. That maybe had been part of the answer once upon a time, but it wasn't now. Dumbledore was dead, and Harry had made his peace with his shade.
"You don't want to have the power?"
He knew that was the answer all along, Harry suddenly realized, and again tried to scowl at the expression on Draco's face. Why did he even bother trying the others? But Harry nodded anyway, because it was true.
"You're ridiculous." Draco leaned even further towards him, so Harry couldn't see Ron or Hermione past his head, and spoke with fervent passion. "You are utterly and completely ridiculous. Do you realize that?"
Harry shook his head again, and wished he dared leap up and try to spur Draco.
*
Draco wanted to squeeze Harry, or shake him. Unfortunately, at the moment that would probably mean damaging his fragile feathers and neck, so instead Draco tried to settle for glaring as much as possible.
Harry only glared back.
He never has wanted power, and look where it's got him now!
Intellectually, Draco could understand why someone wouldn't want power. Harry had had enough examples of someone fucking it up. Voldemort, Dumbledore (well, Draco thought that, at least), Death Eaters, Ministry officials and even Ministers who thought they knew best...
But it was different, Draco was convinced, when it was your own power. Harry wouldn't commit the stupidities with it that the Dark Lord or the Ministers had in the past, especially since he wasn't interested in leading a revolution or running for office. And Draco thought there was an easy-to-see difference between political power and magical power.
Harry could have kept magical power to himself all he wanted. No one except his friends had to know he was the Master of Death. He could have conducted experiments with the Hallows or tried to master the Resurrection Stone or just gone into esoteric theory in an attempt to understand his own gifts.
Instead, he'd lived this kind of half-life where the Elder Wand was apparently mainly important for helping him in his job. And he'd never expected the wand to retaliate against his disrespect?
Draco had to wonder if a tendency towards heroic sacrifice also killed brain cells.
"You have to commit yourself fully," he said. "The Wand has the power to rescue you from this, but the tales are clear. It's proud and it's jealous. It's never been someone's second choice. It's probably protecting your mind and preventing you from being rescued from the spell at the same time."
"But you said it wouldn't be easy to reverse the spell, Malfoy," Granger immediately protested. "What do you mean?"
"Yeah, what does that mean?" Weasley chimed in.
Draco only kept looking at Harry, who lowered his eyes and dragged his tail a little on the floorboards. He knew.
"I've read more stories about the Elder Wand than you have," Draco said calmly. "There have always been more tales about it than the other Deathly Hallows, anyway, and I know some of my ancestors believed that it existed when they didn't believe in the Invisibility Cloak or the Resurrection Stone. Some wand has to be the most powerful, right? Well, it can save its wielder from any spell. Even the Killing Curse, apparently. It rarely did because it rarely wanted to stay with any one wizard long enough, but now it's chosen a master. It stands to reason that it would get Harry out of this if he only stopped acting like a martyr long enough to see the advantages of having an unbeatable wand."
"Harry's not acting like a martyr, he's acting sensible! Everyone would want to murder him if they knew he was carrying the Deathstick--"
Draco held up his hand to stem Weasley's tirade. "He could keep it just between the people in this office, and then no one would know. I think most people already have dismissed the whole idea that he could be the Master of Death from their minds. But if you go about blurting it out all over the place, Weasley..."
Weasley looked properly abashed, which was the only thing that satisfied Draco about this situation at the moment. Harry still wouldn't look at him.
“You know as well as I do that you won’t misuse that power,” Draco said, low and intense. “And you’ve already thought that this is a possible way of overcoming my father’s spell. I know you have. What is a spell compared to being the Master of Death?”
Harry’s head twitched a little, but Draco couldn’t tell at which part of what he had said. He remained silent and continued to will Harry to look at him. Only then would he know what was really going through his head.
Peacock or not.
*
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know me the way I know myself.
And Harry knew he wasn’t perfect. He was rash. He charged into things without thinking enough about them—not as much as he had when he was a teenager, but it still happened sometimes. The last thing he thought the Master of Death should be was impulsive.
People could sometimes hold onto power without being corrupted by it. Harry thought Dumbledore hadn’t been corrupted by the Elder Wand, but he had been tempted by the Resurrection Stone, and look at what had happened with that. Harry might end up only hurting himself. Still, Ron and Hermione had long ago made him understand that hurting himself hurt them, too.
No. It wasn’t possible, for reasons that Draco didn’t think were legitimate but also ones that he didn’t know enough about Harry to consider.
“Harry.”
It felt different when Draco called him by his name than when his friends did it. Harry didn’t know why, but he thought about how good Draco’s touch on the top of his head had felt earlier, and the urge he had to puff out his tail and fight other peacocks for access to Draco, and there was a stirring of alarm in the bottom of his feet.
“Leave, Granger, Weasley.”
“If you’re going to try and hurt him—”
“No. I only want to speak about something private, and see if that argument convinces him where my others didn’t.”
Harry cringed a little. He didn’t want to listen to Draco, because he might be too convincing.
But Hermione must somehow have convinced Ron it was necessary. Harry heard the thump of their footsteps as they left, and then Draco crouched down in front of him and gently took hold of his neck, turning Harry’s head back whether or not he wanted it to be.
“You need to listen to me,” Draco breathed. “Are you listening?”
Harry moved his head in sulky assent.
“We need to have a conversation about why you wounded yourself for me.” Draco stared at him with glinting eyes that were suddenly wildly hard to look away from. “I think you know it as well as I do, and maybe you even intended to talk to me when you came into the interrogation room earlier. But we couldn’t do that when the other Aurors were there.” His voice abruptly sharpened. “And we can’t do it while you’re a peacock. I refuse to ask simple questions when I could hear your human voice answering the complex ones.
“Get back into your human form, Harry bloody Potter. And if you’re really worried about being corrupted by the power of being Master of Death, then I’ll stand by you and help you in that battle.”
Harry let out a soft chirp and permitted his tail to fan out. Draco didn’t react to that, except to continue watching him.
Harry closed his eyes. He had always known acceptance of the Elder Wand would be simple. He had to admit, he had never imagined accepting it for precisely this reason, but needs must.
The wand was waiting for him, a source of power he had always avoided, like a hole in the middle of the floor that he was always stepping around. The magic shimmered, reached out, and clasped him like a handshake.
Then there was a stirring, a falling, a fading. Harry felt as if he was becoming bigger but tumbling down a long tunnel, so it was like being smaller. He stretched out, and felt that he had more digits, and no feathers, and his Auror robes were slimy with sweat and unwashed skin.
He blinked his eyes open. He was kneeling in front of Draco, at least not naked, and Draco was giving him a hard smile.
“Good,” Draco breathed, and with a flourish of his wand, locked the door. To Harry’s stare, he settled back, and said, “Let’s talk.”
*
SP777: Well, I always meant to use the Elder Wand, since I did bring it up in the first chapter.
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