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Parsimony	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14122 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Seven—First Stages

            Harry swatted aside a branch, and then sneezed as it swung back into his face and leaves filled his nostrils. He paused, sighed, and cast a Lumos. In hindsight, his brilliant plan to go through the Forbidden Forest without a light—because that would mean he didn’t draw attention—wasn’t so brilliant after all.

            In any sense of the word, he decided, blinking around at the trees that loomed in front of him. The roots made the ground hump and straggle away as though someone had broken it with a series of axe-blows. Harry bent down and squinted at the nearest one. Snape’s list said that one of the kinds of fungus he wanted sometimes grew in the shade of large trees, on piles of hippogriff shit.

            Nothing there, not even shit, just a little dusty hollow filled with fallen leaves. Harry paused to cast a Muffling Charm on his feet. There was some hope of walking silently now that he could actually see where he was going.

            He also paused so he could get Snape’s list of ingredients out of his bag. Other than the mushrooms and the fact that Snape didn’t want rosemary, he’d forgotten what he was supposed to find.

            Mushrooms, right. Lots of them. Unicorn water (and the list didn’t say whether that was water a unicorn had pissed out or whether it was water touched by their horns, though Harry fervently hoped it was the latter). Dragon scales—Harry would have to steal those from Slughorn’s stores, probably. Petals of a midnight rose. Roots of a midnight rose. Stem of a midnight rose. Harry rolled his eyes, wondering why Snape had bothered to list those separately.

            Something crunched behind him.

            Harry wheeled around, his wand raised. The light found a small shape that scuttled away wildly, a long, fiery tail flapping behind it. Harry relaxed. Only a Flame-Tailed Rat. Hagrid had mentioned them to Harry a few years ago.

            He checked the list to be sure that Snape didn’t need anything from the rats, then forged his way deeper into the Forest.

            He had never realized how strange it would be to come in here at night. The gloom was deeper. The Forest seemed to inhale and exhale around him, so alive that Harry’s shoulders prickled, waiting for something to drop on them. Now and then Harry could hear distant calls and songs. Half the birds in the Forest didn’t seem to care it was night, or that autumn was coming and they ought to have migrated.

            Once, Harry heard a harsh barking noise. He paused, thinking of werewolves and then of Greyback and wincing. The last he heard, they still weren’t sure whether they had found Greyback or not, only bones that might or might not have been his.

            But the barking faded, going overheard, and Harry nodded wisely. Probably the sounds of a flock of geese, who were migrating sensibly, the way birds should.

            He literally stumbled into a small pond that splashed beneath his foot, and pulled back, disconcerted. It was a clear pool of water, at least, and it smelled fresh and sweet when he bent down and sniffed it. Perhaps this was unicorn water?

            He couldn’t see any sign that it was or wasn’t, though, so he only used one of his vials from the bag he’d brought, until he could get it back to the makeshift potions lab he was setting up in the Room of Requirement and test it. Then he turned his head and saw the huge bush full of nodding black roses on the shores of the pond.

            Well. There you are.

            He didn’t know for sure if these were midnight roses, but they looked like the pictures in the book he’d hastily consulted in the library, and they must be magical flowers to still bloom this late in the year. He plucked several of them, using the gloves he’d borrowed from Herbology class when the thorns tried to sting him, and packed the tough flowers into another vial. Then he crouched down and looked dubiously at the roots.

            Did he mean the roots of the bush? Or was I supposed to find a flower growing alone and bring its roots?

            Harry didn’t know, but in the end, it didn’t prove that hard to hack loose a few roots and store them in another vial. It occurred to him, as he did, that he hadn’t seen any other denizens of the Forbidden Forest yet, and he snorted. They’re probably all keeping away because they think I’m mad to be out here at midnight.

            It was the best time, though. He’d probably be missed if went into the Forbidden Forest too early in the day, and later at night, his roommates had a tendency to wake up, especially Neville, who was already nervous about the NEWTS this early in the year. He straightened up, still prodding at the roots so they would fit into the tiny vial he’d brought along.

            Something growled behind him.

            Harry swallowed, staring straight ahead. The growl repeated itself, and he counted to three under his breath, then leaped back, sitting his shoulders and spine against a solid tree with huge roots spreading out like hillocks to either side of him, so it would be hard for creatures to attack him from those directions. Then he thought hard about a nonverbal incantation and swished his wand through the patterns, and the light coming from his wand swelled, chasing the shadows away.

            A wolf stood at the edge of the light, staring at him. His charm made its eyes grow red, and it retreated with another growl, but didn’t run. That surprised Harry. Remus had told him more than once that real wolves were shy of people, and this looked like a normal wolf, not a werewolf. It wasn’t full moon, anyway.

            Although who says that some really accomplished ones like Greyback can’t change their shapes at other times?

            But no, it was still too small, and its head looked nothing like the twisted nightmare Remus had turned into during Harry’s third year. He stood there, and the wolf stood there, and Harry started to feel a bit stupid when he realized that the wolf was regarding him like it was a prefect and he was a trespassing student in the corridors of Hogwarts.

            “Go away,” Harry said, loud enough that his voice seemed to bounce back from the walls of a huge cavern and rouse more than one echo it really shouldn’t have. “Shoo.”

            The wolf stuck its tail out, low, and swept it back and forth. Harry hoped it was wagging it, but he knew that his luck wasn’t that good. Sure enough, a moment later the wolf charged him, moving in absolute silence and faster than he had known it could, springing over the pool between them.

            “Protego!” Harry shouted, not caring what other creatures of the Forest he might rouse with the noise. Hell, at the moment he would be glad to see some centaurs, bows and arrows and all.

            The wolf’s nose hit the shield that appeared in front of it, and it rolled away, baring its teeth at him as it landed. For a moment, it raised one paw as though it would touch the end of its nose and soothe the sting, and then it started to circle around the tree-root, hackles raised and tail still held low and vibrating.

            “What did I do to you, I’d like to know?” Harry muttered, turning so he could keep it in sight. “You aren’t starving, it isn’t winter, and I didn’t threaten your puppies. Go away and go to sleep.”

            The wolf’s tail quivered, as though it understood the words and took them to be a personal insult. Then it crouched again and aimed for the side of the enormous root. When it landed on top of it, it panted once in triumph before trying for him once more.

            This time, Harry used a Shield Charm that angled up, like a roof tilted to dump off rainwater, and the wolf hit it and tumbled down. It righted itself before it hit on its side and turned its head to stare at him with immense dignity.

            “Well, yeah,” Harry muttered at it, shaking his head. “Play with a wizard who can use defensive magic and you’re going to get hurt.”

            The wolf sat down beside the rosebush and studied him for a few moments. Harry cast a spell that made the noises of fireworks appear in the air, although no sign of their light. The wolf leaped to its feet, fur bristling, when the spell took effect, but after a few seconds of staring about and cocking its ears back and forth, it sat down again and resumed its study.



            “What do you want?” Harry snapped at it, though he knew the chances it could understand him were remote. Perhaps it had some werewolf blood, though, which would explain the abnormal way it was acting as well as its lack of fear of humans. “Tell me, and maybe I can give it to you, and then you can go away and leave me alone.”

            The wolf bowed its head and opened its jaws. Harry winced when he heard it hacking; if it was throwing up to show its contempt of him or something, it sounded as though it might bring half its intestines with the vomit.

            But instead, the wolf shook, ripples running through it as though it had become water itself, and then suddenly, a naked man crouched where the wolf had been. Harry stared at him in silence. His skin was grey—not grey like Snape’s had been, not dim with ingrained dirt, but simply the color of a wolf’s pelt. Faint stripes covered his hands and his nose, which was unnaturally long. He raised his head, and his eyes were as golden as the wolf’s, and still shone red now and then in the light.

            “Um,” Harry said. “Holy fuck.”

            The creature shook his head. “Holy nothing,” he said, in strained but recognizable English. His teeth flashed as he spoke, and Harry saw why he had trouble speaking; his fangs remained long enough to catch his tongue as it traveled between them. “I am myself.” He raised one leg as though to scratch behind an ear, then dropped it to the ground with a sigh of frustration and a small explosion of leaves. “Your kind—your kind would, perhaps, call me a wolfwere.”

            “A—wolf who turns into a human,” Harry said. “But why?”

            “Magical creatures are their own why.” The wolfwere studied him, eyes flickering especially to the bag he carried to hold the vials and gloves and other things he had thought he would need to collect the Potions ingredients. “Why are you stealing plants from my land?”

            “Because I know someone who needs them to brew a potion to come back to life,” Harry said.

            He could think of more than one human person who would have started at that, and then started asking questions he couldn’t answer. But his response seemed to relax the wolfwere. His tongue dangled between his teeth as though he was laughing, and then he nodded. “The one who smells of death? The one who is beneath the tree on the edge of the woods? I know him.”

            “Then you don’t have objections to my taking the potions ingredients for him?” Harry asked cautiously. It was better than the punishment he might have got from the centaurs, at least. And he wondered if he could ask the wolfwere for help in finding some of the plants. He might know them by smell.

            “If you pay the price,” the wolfwere said.

            Harry shook his head. “I won’t let you kill me.”

            “Eating your meat outside of winter would not be a good idea,” the wolfwere said, and went on before Harry could wonder what would happen when winter came. “I want help finding my pups.”

            Harry blinked. “Someone took them?”

            “They are gone.” The wolfwere seemed to have a habit of not answering his questions the way anyone else would. He moved his head restlessly back and forth, lips wrinkling back from his teeth in a way that made Harry think he would snarl, but he didn’t make a sound. “I returned from the hunt, and the scent in the den was cold. I have a mate, and I have an older child. They did not sense anything, either.”

            “Can they change into humans, too?” Harry asked.

            The wolfwere shook his head. “They were nearby when the pups went into the den. And they saw and heard and smelled nothing.”

            Harry frowned, thinking about it. “Is there a back entrance out of the den? One the pups might have found but you didn’t know about?”

            The wolfwere showed his teeth again, but there was something haughty now about the tilt of his head. Harry wondered if that was on purpose. Of course, the headshake showed that he knew at least something about human body language. “We investigated the den thoroughly before we chose it. If there had been a passage, there would have been a movement of air. A scent. We sensed nothing.”



            “All right,” Harry said, and wondered if he had to go and help tonight. Probably. The trail would get cold. “How long ago was this?”

            “Last evening.” The wolfwere heaved himself to his feet, as if he would try walking on two legs, and Harry had to look away. He didn’t spend time checking out naked blokes in the showers, and he wouldn’t do it here, either. In the end, though, the wolfwere settled back on his haunches and sighed. “We can find nothing.”

            “Do they have names?” Harry lifted his wand higher.

            The wolfwere gave him a patient look, and Harry understood. They wouldn’t have names in the sense he meant, although they would presumably have distinctive smells and sounds they made. Harry nodded and turned into the Forest, waiting until the wolfwere told him he was facing the right direction. Then he whispered, “Point Me wolf pups.”

            The wand wavered uncertainly before it stabilized, pointing straight into the depths of the Forest. Harry sighed. Of course, his life couldn’t be easy and the pups couldn’t be close to the castle. Right into the depths of the Forbidden Forest, at night. Why had he agreed to do this, again?

            Oh, yeah. I chose to.

            And sometimes choosing sucks.

            “Come on,” he told the wolfwere, and found himself listening as he padded after him, over the tree-roots and up a thin path that a deer, or centaur, might have made. Still no noise, although moving around in a human body had to be clumsier than a wolf one. Harry shivered absently and promised to spend some time with magical creature books when he went back to the library.

            In between all the other things that you have to research. But at least it seemed that Malfoy’s spell and Snape’s ingredients were less likely to surprise him in the Forest at night.

*

            The trail led them past more pools, through clearings with the grass trampled flat by what might have been dancing house-elves for all Harry knew, over more tree roots and small hills and one large hill that made Harry pant as they climbed it. The wolfwere loped beside him all the while, watching him critically out of the corner of one eye. Harry scowled back at him. Yeah, well. I’d like to see you come to Hogwarts and perform magic as well as I do. I could have used my magic to climb the hill better if I’d wanted.

            They reached the bottom of that hill, and the wolfwere froze, head held up, nose twitching. His fingers clenched the dirt in front of him, and he showed his teeth in the way that had made Harry wonder what the gesture meant for him before. This time, he was especially sure it wasn’t a smile.

            “I smell them,” the wolfwere whispered. Then he sniffed again, shifting his head to the side as if to catch the smell more clearly, and froze, his fingers clenching in and out of the dirt again. “I smell—wolf. I do not know if it is them.”

            The note in his voice made Harry want to pat him on the shoulder in commiseration, but he didn’t think the wolfwere would allow that. He smiled instead, reassuring just in case the wolfwere wanted that, and nodded. “Then come on. We’ll rescue them if there’s any way we can. If that’s them.”

            The wolfwere sprang into the darkness without answering. Harry had to trail behind and watch out for the flash of his legs as best he could.

            They ended up at a branch in the path. The wolfwere paused, eyes closed as he sorted through the input from his ears and nose—at least, Harry thought that was what he was doing—and then snarled and opened his eyes. He sprang away down the right-hand fork, and Harry crunched after him, pausing a second to renew the Muffling Charm on his feet. No use in warning whoever was waiting for them.

            It was a clever plan, or at least he thought so, but by the time he looked up again, the wolfwere had blended into the darkness.

            “Bugger,” Harry muttered, turning in a circle. He had no name to call. Perhaps he should have asked the wolfwere to give him one. The Point Me spell had faded, and Harry thought he probably needed to cast it again. At last he did, whispering so that no one would hear him, and focusing it on the wolfwere this time.

            The wand practically shot out of his hand. Harry jogged through some thick underbrush and then abruptly crouched down. There was the ruddy glow of a fire ahead, and he could see a gleam off to the side that was probably the wolfwere’s eyes reflecting the light of the flames.

            “Down,” the wolfwere snarled at him, but Harry didn’t need the advice. He could feel adrenaline flooding his veins, and his head clearing. He waited, his wand in his hand and his legs so lightly poised that he felt as if he could move in any direction and be dangerous. This was the way he had felt facing Voldemort at the last, and when he battled Death Eaters. He would make the right decisions, or he would die.

            A tall figure moved across the firelight. Harry tensed, and heard the wolfwere tensing, too. The figure stooped down and picked up something from the ashes. It was soft and limp and dangled, and reminded Harry of a dead kitten.

            And might, from the limpness of it, have been a dead wolf pup.

            The wolfwere had decided not to wait. Again he leaped, soaring as he had when he tried to climb the tree-root and attack Harry. Harry charged behind him, shouting. There was a chance the shout might startle whoever it was, and the advantage of surprise was lost anyway as soon as someone saw the wolfwere’s shadow moving across the ground.

            The tall figure whipped around, dropping to one knee. A Stunner slammed into the wolfwere, dropping him to the ground with his head splayed to the side and his golden eyes glaring viciously into nothing. A shield appeared in front of Harry at the same moment, as the figure swept its wand around in front of it.

            Harry skidded to a stop before he could hit the shield, ducked around it, and cast a Blasting Curse, the first one that leaped to mind. The figure was wearing a hooded cloak, and he couldn’t see who it was. But a hooded cloak made him think of Death Eaters, and someone who would murder wolf pups probably wouldn’t stop there.

            The figure blocked and returned a stream of pale green light that reminded Harry of the Killing Curse. A skip and a roll, and he was out of the way. He focused on the memory of holding Teddy Lupin in his arms for the first time when he visited Andromeda this summer, and shouted, “Expecto Patronum!”

            The stag charged out of his wand and around the camp—not able to do anything, since the person he was fighting wasn’t a Dementor, but showy enough to be a distraction. Sure enough, his opponent reeled to its feet, and Harry called out the Disarming Charm and Incarcerous at the same time.

            The figure managed to dodge the ropes, but its wand flew over to Harry. Harry immediately stuck it in his back pocket and cast a Sticking Charm—he had learned the hard way to make sure he kept wands with him—and took a step towards the figure. “Surrender.”

            A pause, and then long pale hands reached up and drew back the hood of the cloak. At the same time, the figure moved closer so that Harry could see its face in the light of the fire.

            “I must say,” said Professor Klein, looking at him with interest, “it is some comfort to find your reputation is not exaggerated.”

            Harry stared at her, then shook his head. “Professor. What are you doing out in the Forest?”

            “That is a question I could also ask you.” Klein smiled at him. It was the most animated he had seen her since she arrived. She looked at the wolfwere and sniffed. “I suppose it was not your choice to keep company with this creature.”

            “He was looking for his pups,” Harry said, and then shook his head again. She still wasn’t answering his questions, and she was the one who had attacked him, when he was in the light and she could see his face perfectly well. “Anyway. Tell me what you’re doing here, and why you had one of his pups.” Looking down, he could see a small dead wolf lying in the dirt at Klein’s feet.

            “I was investigating rumors of a Death Eater camp and Death Eater sightings in the Forest,” Klein said. “One that my superiors warned me to keep you well away from.” She rolled her eyes. “At least you can fight well, and should you find any of Voldemort’s supporters, then you may stand a chance against them. But they will want to kill you in the name of their Lord, and will not fight as gently as I did tonight. Please stay out of the Forest, Mr. Potter. It would be best for you.”

            “Your superiors?” Harry stared at her. “You shouldn’t have any of those except McGonagall. Did the board of governors hire you?”

            Klein laughed, a harsh noise that sounded like the cough of a dragon getting ready to breathe fire. “No, and they would be most dismayed if they knew I was here. There are still some who think you should be kept ignorant and out of the way, and perhaps disposed of quietly when you have no more use to them and the interests they represent. No, I am here with the Headmistress’s agreement, but under a false title—one I will thank you not to betray. The proper one would be Auror.”

            “You’re here because of the Death Eater sightings?” Harry shook his head. “Or to bodyguard me?”

            “Both.”

            Harry glared at her. “And did you find them?”

            “Someone has made camp here and killed animals for sport, including these poor pups.” Klein nodded down, and Harry winced when he saw four or five small bodies strewn around the fire. The poor wolfwere. “Others, they’ve killed for food. How long they might have made camp here, I cannot tell. The fire has a charm on it to keep it burning, but no one has been here for at least twenty-four hours.”

            Harry started to respond, but just then Klein turned her head to the side. Harry’s first thought was that the wolfwere had recovered from her Stunner, but instead he heard a loud crackling, and saw a ripple of movement at the edge of the trees.

            “Finite Incantatem!” he called, since he still had Klein’s wand. The childish Disillusionment Charm promptly ended, and the figure tangled up in its own cloak crashed into the open.

            Harry blinked. He couldn’t say anything. It was left to Klein to murmur, “Mr. Malfoy. And what are you doing here?”

*

            unneeded: Despite Death Eaters, I intend for it to remain pretty light. There’s not going to be a lot of darkness except at the very end, when Harry begins to find out what happened to Draco.

            SP777: There are times I speak the dialogue aloud to hear what it sounds like, or deliberately use a line I’ve heard someone else say.
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Parsimony