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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Chapter Seven—One Wild Ride

            “Do you think it would be a good idea to come over when Malfoy’s there?”

            Harry had managed to catch George in the middle of baking something. Harry was fairly sure that it wasn’t an ordinary cake. He eyed Harry with some caution from the middle of the flour explosion that he had apparently just happened in his lab, and swatted absently at some of the white dust when it tried to drift into his eyes.

            “I need your help for the plan that’s going to involve taking these robes with the charmed symbols all over the place,” Harry explained. “So, yes, you have to come over.”

            George nibbled at his lip, and then drew his wand and Vanished the flour. “He might still figure out who you are.”

            Harry appreciated George’s discretion with not using his name. Draco seemed to have velvet feet or something, the way he kept creeping up on Harry when Harry wasn’t listening for him. He might come up behind them at any point when they were talking, and then he would overhear something he shouldn’t. Harry didn’t know why his ears wouldn’t work right around the git.

            Of course, the alternate theory was that Harry was simply so comfortable with Draco that he didn’t hear him coming because he didn’t listen for him the way he would for an enemy. But that was so disturbing that Harry preferred not to think about it if he didn’t have to.

            “I know,” Harry said. “But he knows—he figured out—that I fought on the Light side of the war. If he really questions it, we can tell him that I was part of the Order of the Phoenix and make him let it go that way.”

            George snorted lightly. “Make him?”

            Harry shook his head. “We understand each other, in a weird way. I know it sounds even stranger to say that aloud than it does to say that inside my head, but it’s true. We do. He knows that I would Obliviate him in a second, and he would do the same thing to me, if he could.”

            “Because of who he is, and what you made him tell you?”

            Harry nodded. “It hasn’t diminished his curiosity to find out who I am, but he’s stopped that these last few days, as we refine the plan. I think he accepts now that he can’t trick or pressure me into telling him. If he really wants to know, he thinks now—or I think he thinks—that he’ll have to go back to the Unspeakables’ research offices and find out that way.”

            George sighed. “But even if he’s lost his memories, Harrykins, you haven’t.” Harry let the “Harrykins” go; George was allowed. “I don’t understand why you let him stay there in the first place, or why you trust him.”

            “You wouldn’t. You’re a Weasley.”

            Damn velvet-footed bastard. Yes, Draco stood in the doorway behind him when Harry checked, and his arms were set in a stubborn position and his face in an ugly sneer. Harry shook his head and looked at George again. “Sorry about that. I’ll firecall you in the morning, all right? I want you to take some of the robes to Hogwarts and create your most spectacular efforts there.”

            George grinned evilly. “Fred would have approved,” he said, the highest words of praise he could give about anything, and then he made the fire go dark as he shut down the Floo connection on the other side. He usually did that, vanishing into whatever problem occupied him next without saying goodbye.

            Harry stood up and turned to face Draco. Draco’s arms didn’t relax even when he saw that Harry was now alone. This might prove to be a little harder than Harry had reckoned on.

            “The Weasleys,” Draco said. “Instead of opposing the Boy-Who-Lived, you look more and more like someone who might have courted him.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Then you tell me who I am. Who was a Gryffindor, and fought in the war, and was close friends with the Boy-Who-Lived and the Weasleys? And if you call me Hermione Granger, then you can explain to the real one, when she shows up here this afternoon, why you made that guess.”

            Draco’s face cleared with something that Harry knew better than to hope was surrender. He clenched his hands into fists. “I should know,” he said, with passionate intensity. “What did you do to me, that I don’t?”

            “If I did something to you, when would I have done it?” Harry shook his head. “Even if you don’t remember who I am and should have, you would have remembered me if I’d met you since the war.”

            He only meant that Draco would have remembered any encounter with him because he had those Unspeakable-trained abilities of observation, but Draco’s face softened from the stern set it was in, and he looked Harry up and down. “Oh, yes, I would have,” he said quietly.

            Harry had decided that the best thing to do when Draco flirted with him was to carry on doggedly, because doing anything else would only be bad for everybody. “And if it’s something to do with the wards, then you’ll remember when you leave.”

            “Unless you use a Memory Charm on me.” Draco gave him a bright smile and worked his hand towards his side as though he was checking on the position of his wand. Harry already knew where the slight bulge of Draco’s wand was, and it was nowhere near the place his pointing hand indicated. Sometimes training and paranoia paid off, especially when confronted with someone else’s training and paranoia. “If you do that, then you and I are going to have words.”

            Harry knew he should perhaps take some warning from the way that Draco’s voice softened and deepened, but knowing what he knew, he didn’t need to. He just smiled slightly and held Draco’s eyes. “I know. And there will be no Memory Charm.”

            “You’re content to let me go, then?” Draco asked. “That’s it, that’s all, no attempt to find out anything more?”

            “I’ve got what I need from you,” Harry pointed out, and started to walk past Draco, towards the lab, where he had stored the robes with the symbols. “Now, let’s make absolutely sure that we have the brooms in the right places and the tracking spell on the mirror duplicated—”

            Draco slammed him into the wall. Harry was already turning as he went, as he fell, his mind reasoning out the direction he would need to go if Draco was trying for a throat strike, or for a stomach strike, or for—

            And then he realized that he was up against the wall, and Draco was hovering in front of him, not hurting him, not even touching him, but with his hands very present along the sides of Harry’s flanks and hips and shoulders nonetheless, so that Harry wouldn’t be able to ignore him. Harry stared at him, and narrowed his eyes. “Do you mind?”

            A faint smile illuminated Draco’s lips; a faint laugh spilled from his throat. “I really believe that you believe that, too,” he murmured. “That you’ll challenge me and not care. That you think you have some right to a trouble-free life.”

            “Where you’re concerned, I do,” Harry said, and tried to straighten up. Draco pinned him down with nothing but the shadows of his hands. Harry glared at him again. “I took you in when I could have put you beyond the wards for your enemies, healed your wounds, helped you. I’m helping you now. What more do I owe you beyond that?”

            “The rights inherent in the tension between us,” Draco murmured. “The fact that you keep telling me the truth and lying to me at the same time. The right of this.”

            And he kissed Harry, so light and fast and warm that trying to stop it would have been like trying to stop a hummingbird from brushing his cheek with its wing.

            Harry’s mouth opened in a gasp, and Draco followed up the advantage, his eyes shutting, his tongue spilling out of his mouth to lap its way into Harry’s, and Harry felt his heartbeat gave a single, giant, shimmering pulse, as if it was going to gong its way out of his body and into Draco’s.

            Draco was pinning him physically now, chest against chest, his hands on Harry’s hips and the gentle, suggestive thrust of his own hips becoming less gentle as the moments passed. Harry was so excited that he could hear a faint, thin singing in his ears. He wondered if he was about to swoon.

            He hoped not. That really was the kind of thing that he would have to use a Memory Charm on Draco to get rid of.

            And then rationality caught up to the churning of his blood—well, rationality and the memory of what they would have to do that afternoon—and he caught Draco’s hands and forced him backwards, breaking the lock of their mouths.

            Draco stumbled a little, but didn’t say anything, not even in reproach. He looked at Harry instead, his mouth wet and swollen, his eyes bright and dazed, the way Harry imagined he might look after winning a Quidditch game.

            Not that he ever did that when I was playing against him.

            That was good, that was what he needed, a reminder of who they really were and how much Draco would hate him if he found out who he had kissed. Harry shook his head. “That’s no kind of right at all.” He was proud of how normally his voice came out.

            “I claim that it is,” Draco said, and then leaned in with a smirk that made Harry forget to object until those lips were right up next to his ear. That was when he whispered, “And you didn’t object until you began to convince yourself you should. You had to think about it first.”

            He winked and walked out of the room in the direction of the labs, his voice calling over his shoulder, “I think that we should take another look at the tracking spells on the mirror, don’t you?”

            Harry closed his eyes and pictured his peaceful, quiet garden, where he had worked before Draco came, and even in those first days after Draco came when he was still too wounded to spend a lot of time concentrating on the mystery of who Harry was. He pictured it until he could see the green of the trees and the colors of the flowers, until he could smell the rich odor of the disturbed earth.

            He would have that back again, he promised himself. That was the reality, the reality he was heading for, and the eruption of Draco into his life over the last few days was an—an interruption. He would have his real life back soon enough.

            A blast of magic from across the corridor made him open his eyes and run.

And he was not going to regret Draco’s leaving. Not at all. Not when the defensive spells in Harry’s lab had currently plastered him to the ceiling with shining spiderwebs, especially.

*

            “Ready?” Harry asked, looking around the dining room at his friends.

            Ron, Hermione, George, and Ginny nodded. All of them held three of the robes with the fake symbols stitched on them as well as stones or other small objects that Harry had enchanted with copies of the mirror’s tracking spell. Draco had spent a lot of time staring at Ron when he showed up, and hadn’t even moved at first when Harry nudged him and tried to hand him a different kind of robe with protective charms woven into it. Harry had finally given up and simply dumped the robe on Draco’s head. When Draco had dug his way out from beneath it and stopped swearing revenge, then the rest of them had gone past the moment when they might have taunted him. Ron had a faint smile on his face, and Hermione was biting her lip to conceal her giggles, but they could work together now.

            “Ready, mate.” Ron reached out to tap Harry’s shoulder lightly with his fist. Harry could feel Draco’s gaze practically trying to light them both on fire in response, but he wasn’t sure if that came from Draco’s jealousy or from Draco trying to figure out why Ron Weasley would be close to Harry and Draco not know it. Harry didn’t care. Draco didn’t have a right to the first emotion, anyway.

            Harry received nods from the others—well, a nod from Hermione and George and a leer from Ginny, who had looked back and forth between him and Draco and obviously arrived at the conclusion that Harry would prefer she didn’t. Well, he could take Ginny’s teasing. If she wanted to tell him, again, how he needed someone to share his life here, she was welcome. It wouldn’t alter the way Harry did anything.

            “Then let’s go,” Harry said, and swung around, heading for the back garden, where he and Draco had left the brooms. Draco hurried after him, and Harry heard the soft whoosh as Hermione and the others started Flooing to the outside points where they would begin the mad hunt.

            “You never did tell me what you would do with those two you captured,” Draco panted behind him, as they raced through the house and into the open air.

            “I have them under the Draught of Living Death,” Harry said, smothering his annoyance that Draco would choose to ask about that right now. It would be one of his last chances, anyway, since after today he would be gone, and leave Harry in his blessed peace. “I’ll eventually wake them up, when enough time has passed that I’m fairly sure the observers are gone from outside my wards, and take them to the Ministry. Then your lot can have them.”

            “There are compromised Unspeakables,” Draco said, vaulting onto his broom from a standing start, and winning Harry’s reluctant admiration. “Those who want the artifacts for themselves, those who might work with the owners.”

            “You can write to me,” Harry said. He probably couldn’t prevent Draco from owling him, anyway, and this would give him an excuse to confine his letters to official business. “Tell me who you think is trustworthy.”

            “How did you learn to make the Draught of Living Death?” Draco asked, as Harry began to whirl around on his broom and Draco followed him up.

            Harry answered absently, concentrating on the wards above his head, and how he would Apparate when he was a little short of them. He reached out a hand, and Draco held his arm under his touch. “What, you mean Professor Snape never told you that? It was part of the speech that he sneered at everyone on the first day of class, I thought.”

            Draco didn’t respond. Harry looked over and saw that he had his eyes closed in ferocious concentration, his head bowed.

            “You won’t figure out who I am that way,” Harry snapped. “Hold on, and keep stupid ideas out of your head. They won’t be able to keep up.” And he Apparated.

*

            It was madness. It was pure, exhilarating skill. It was a feat that Harry had been longing to perform since he came up with this plan, and it was one that he never, ever wanted to do again.

            They appeared first above Hogwarts, and caught a wave from George; Harry had chosen to come with him because he wanted to give some initial credence to the idea that the enemy group’s agents and the mirror might be in the same place. And then he and Draco leaped, and leaped, and leaped, and leaped.

            Cornwall, with the waves leaping so vividly below them that Harry might have lingered if they were on a less tight schedule. Somewhere close to London, a peaceful meadow where Harry had come more than once to gather wildflowers and small animals’ dung and fur for Potions ingredients. The Orkneys, in the middle of a wind so wild that it nearly brought their journey to an end right there. The small mixed Muggle and wizarding village of Rosemary-on-Thyme, not far from the Weasleys’ house, where people came out of their sleepy houses and stared up. Harry smiled at them, and disappeared again.

            The whole time, they were flying.

            In hindsight, that would probably seem obvious to anyone Harry told the story to, but it was no mean trick to come out of Apparition and immediately bend over one’s broom, hurtling forwards a short distance, zigzagging and circling and falling and rising, and then Apparating again the moment Draco could get hold of his arm. Earth and sky waltzed around them. Wind stung tears from their eyes and tried to blow their lungs out. Storms appeared, disappeared, and alternated with clouds and blue sky and sky so grey that Harry was glad when they were allowed to vanish somewhere else.

            The whole time, Draco kept breakneck pace with him, and when Harry glanced over and met his eyes, he saw the gleam of challenge in them.

            The same gleam he used to see on the Quidditch field. The same one that Draco had shown him the whole time he was in Harry’s house, trying to figure out who Harry was.

            The regret Harry had said he wasn’t going to feel clogged his throat, and he cleared it and glanced away as they got ready to Apparate to the next destination.

            I wish he wasn’t under the spell. I wish I didn’t have to do that to him. Someone who can challenge me like that…

            But once again, Harry shook his head and reminded himself that it couldn’t be different, could it? Of course not. Because if Draco wasn’t under the spell, then he would hate Harry, and then he wouldn’t challenge Harry in the same way; he would snub him and turn away in silence and probably not tell Harry as much as he had.

            He wouldn’t kiss him. He wouldn’t fly beside him.

            Instead of wishing the spell didn’t exist, I might as well wish for the whole of history to be different.

            They were drawing nearer and nearer the safehouse that Draco had chosen, one of the concealed Black properties, or so he had assured Harry when he was helping to plan the route. For the last jump, though, Draco had insisted on being the one to Apparate them. Harry reckoned that was only sense. Draco knew so few of Harry’s secrets, not even, really, where his house stood. He would be reluctant to surrender the Apparition coordinates of the place he was going to hide.

            And in another way, it was only good sense. That way, Harry couldn’t be tempted to visit Draco later, because he wouldn’t really know where he was.

            He shut his eyes obediently when they went through the last leap, and then opened them with his head turned away from the main bulk of the house, because they had agreed that Draco would get behind the wards right away and Harry would Apparate into another merry chase, carrying the mirror with him, in order to fool anyone still tracking them.

            “Good-bye,” Harry started to say.

            The words tore away from his mouth in a ragged gasp as Draco crashed abruptly into him, and he found himself falling from his broom. Harry snatched at his broom’s shaft, but caught only a handful of bristles. He swung his body to the side, and they were still beyond his reach. He grabbed his wand and started to cast a Cushioning Charm.

            Someone snatched his hand. Harry looked up and found Draco gripping his arm. He relaxed more than he had thought he could when dangling without a net or spell a hundred feet above the ground. Draco hadn’t been attacked, then. It was just a rogue gust of wind that had made him lose control of his broom, most likely, and he had still managed to save Harry’s life.

            “Thanks,” Harry said. He shifted a little to the side so that his full weight didn’t hang from his wrist. “Can you—”

            Draco leaned over and plucked his wand neatly from Harry’s grasp.

            Harry stared at him, searching carefully. But Draco’s face didn’t have the soft, slack look that it would have if someone had put him under Imperius.

            “Draco, what the hell?” he asked, not daring to pull too much against the hold on his wrist. He wished he had thought to bring a Levitation Potion, but he had trusted too much in his flying skills to think he’d need it.

            Draco smiled at him. “Now,” he said. “I think we understand each other and our negotiating position. You’re going to tell me your little secret.”

*

            polka dot: Harry didn’t really want him to leave, either, so that part isn’t really cruel.

            elementalwitch: Thank you! As for the mirror, Harry is currently planning to hide and take it, so Draco may not have access to it.

            And the story should be about 18 chapters long.

            SP777: No problem! I did think about changing the battle, but Draco is too fixated on figuring out who Harry is to really flirt properly.

            unneeded: The mirror has a problem that Draco hasn’t revealed to Harry yet.

            And no, Harry doesn’t publish anything. Just in case the spell might not hold for someone seeing his name on a publication, even though it’s extremely unlikely that that would happen.
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The Conservation of Fame