The Auror Method | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7771 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story. |
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Chapter Seven—Odd Priorities Ten minutes into the interrogation of Elian Greengrass-Rosier, Draco was once again unimpressed with Potter. An Auror should be good at all aspects of his job, as far as Draco was concerned. Potter had shown that he was good at defending Draco and sneaking around—much better than Draco had thought he was, to be fair. But now Potter was stumbling all over his feet during an interrogation, and what kind of Auror couldn’t handle that? The sort they sack, Draco thought, looking again at Greengrass-Rosier’s sneering face and then away. Knowing the man wasn’t his real enemy didn’t make this scenario much more comfortable. “I’ll try this one more time, Elian.” Potter’s voice was patient but strained, and he had his hands linked together behind his back, eyes glinting, as if he would like to punch Greengrass-Rosier, but didn’t dare. “Why did you come back to a place you’d specifically been warned away from?” Greengrass-Rosier laughed at Potter without parting his jaws. “As though you can command me. You only think you can.” “When I was your superior, in all senses of that word, then I could.” Potter altered his stance a little, and Draco, who was sitting in a chair behind Potter just in case Greengrass-Rosier managed to spring out of his ropes and use wandless magic, lifted his head. He thought Potter had just surpassed some sort of internal limit, and Draco might get to see real magic now. “Listen to me now, Elian. You have one more chance to answer without coercion.” Greengrass-Rosier rolled his eyes. “You’re not allowed to use Veritaserum on someone who refuses it. You’ll get into more trouble if you do that than my confession is worth.” “I wasn’t thinking of Veritaserum.” The idiot finally seemed to hear in Potter’s voice the change that Draco had already heard. He frowned and glanced about as if he thought that someone might show up and rescue him. Draco thought that was more unlikely than Greengrass-Rosier springing out of his ropes and managing wandless magic. “You wouldn’t dare do to me what you did to Mugstrom.” “Why not?” Potter had been spinning his wand idly, but he put it aside now and moved forwards as slowly as a snake, his eyes tracing up and down Greengrass-Rosier’s body as though he was counting the number of bones in it. “I wouldn’t even need my wand for it. Then they can’t locate it with a Priori Incantatem.” Greengrass-Rosier pressed himself against the back of the chair. “That’s impossible,” he repeated, as if he thought that would get him somewhere when Potter had already proven that he ate impossible things for breakfast. “I saw the amount of damage. There’s no way that you could have inflicted that without a wand.” “My hands,” Potter said, and held them up, turning them back and forth. “And it’s not as if it couldn’t be fixed. It took the Healers a while, but I only left the bones I broke broken, not set them crooked on purpose. They could still repair them with magic. Mugstrom’s hands are as strong as ever now.” Draco tried to imagine Potter breaking someone’s hands with sheer brute strength. He found he could imagine it all too well. Potter was looming over Greengrass-Rosier, and he already had his hands spread as if he was going to grip and break individual fingers. As Draco watched, a ripple of strength traveled down Potter’s shoulders, and he bent almost tenderly towards his prisoner. “Don’t!” It was a squeal. Greengrass-Rosier was shivering now, and he had his hands tucked under his legs as though that would protect them. “Don’t—don’t hurt me!” Draco curled his lip in disgust. It was sort of embarrassing, how his “enemy” was a puling coward this way. “This is the way it is, Elian,” Potter said, his voice soft and lethal and low. “I’m running on so little sleep, since Mytherian abandoned me, that I might do anything. Anything at all to make things easier for myself. And you were creeping around the house, and Malfoy already named you as someone who was contacting him to rob Gringotts, and this is the end of enough.” Draco sighed faintly. He had hoped that his use of Greengrass-Rosier’s name could go unremarked for a little while longer. “I never did that.” Greengrass-Rosier looked startled for far longer than Draco thought at all reasonable; a moment later, his eyes focused on Draco and narrowed. “You little shit.” He lunged against the ropes, which just went to show that some people had odd priorities. Draco moved back a little, because that was what his persona would do, but it took all his effort not to simply lounge in his chair and give this particular enemy a look of utter boredom, which was something that his real self would do. And past real selves. Draco thought even his sixteen-year-old self, a twit if there ever was one, would despise Greengrass-Rosier. Potter took a quick step forwards, and Draco doubted it was a coincidence that it put him between their chairs. “Did you forget so quickly what I could do to you?” he asked, pushing on Greengrass-Rosier’s shoulder and giving him a sharp look. “Or who’s really dangerous to you here?” If he had forgotten it, it was clear that Greengrass-Rosier had just remembered it. He flinched back with a whimper harsh enough that Draco snorted a little. Yes, wonderful attempt to convince your rival that you’re a strong and fear-inspiring Auror. “I don’t,” Greengrass-Rosier whispered, and bowed his head. The corners of his mouth were twitching, from what Draco could see. He appeared about to burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Potter rolled his eyes. “And so you should be, but it’s about three months too late. Do you think that I’ll let you go and reinstate you into the Aurors, because you can offer up an apology when you’re pushed to the edge of terror?” Greengrass-Rosier panted at him, or at least Draco thought that was what the odd noise was. Potter was standing almost with his chest pressed to Greengrass-Rosier’s face, and it was hard for Draco to see his expression. Maybe Potter wants to be intimate with everyone who challenges him. Draco would be annoyed about that, but mostly for the things it said about his own taste. “You know what I came here for,” Greengrass-Rosier said. “Revenge?” Potter gave a smile that Draco could only see in profile, but even that was nasty enough to make Draco shift in his chair. He was just as glad that Potter seemed to have no concept of Draco’s real plans. He was suspicious of some things, but not the truth, or he would already have arrested Draco by now. “We can’t always get everything we want. And what was it revenge for? Only Malfoy’s not marrying your sister, or something else, something to do with a plan to rob Gringotts?” For a long moment, Greengrass-Rosier sat there with a drooping head and a silent mouth. Potter must have got tired of it, because he abruptly lashed out an arm and clouted Greengrass-Rosier on the side of the head. Finally, the man gave another squeal and started talking. “Yes, fine! I did write to him. I did offer to make him part of this plan. But he resisted, and—it was a good plan. He shouldn’t have resisted.” He tried to glare at Draco, but with Potter in the way, it was pretty much a futile effort. “He could have been rich,” Greengrass-Rosier muttered, and lapsed into silence again. Draco raised his eyebrows. Why would Greengrass-Rosier confess to something that he knew wasn’t true, no matter how Potter threatened him? But perhaps he was that scared of Potter. And perhaps Greengrass-Rosier really was the one that had been sending Draco the threats in the first place. After a moment of playing with that idea, Draco sighed and let it go. No, as attractive as that idea would make things, despite the problems it would solve, he needed a suspect who was intelligent, and Greengrass-Rosier wasn’t that. “It’s all right. We’ll catch them.” Draco blinked and looked up. Potter was focused on Draco again, reaching out with one hand as if he would actually cup Draco’s face. Draco moved his head backwards and gave Potter a nervous little smile. “Them? You think there was someone working with him?” He nodded at Greengrass-Rosier, who was staring at the floor and seemed to have given up on everything. “But I thought he said he was the one who did it!” He put enough whine in his voice to make Potter wince, but he only went on regarding Draco with a steady gaze. Reassuring Hero Gaze Number Two, Draco thought. Number One is reserved for the press. “He can’t have been the one who used the spell that burned your hand,” Potter was continuing. “That had to be a goblin.” He turned around again, and took a long stalking step towards Greengrass-Rosier. “You weren’t working with a rogue goblin? Someone who turned on you when he realized that you were planning to rob Gringotts?” Draco wondered for a second if he could sell Potter on the idea that a goblin had also written to him and he’d only just now remembered it, but decided not to. Potter was playing a game of some kind, the way he’d been planning to seduce Draco for his own reasons. He was no innocent, and it would be good for Draco himself if he remembered it. “No,” Greengrass-Rosier said, and flinched a little, as though someone was poking him in the ribs with a stick. “No goblins.” “Why are you believing him?” Draco asked, and let his voice rise. “He could be lying! You could find out who’s hurting me, and then you could do—I mean, you could go arrest them and leave me alone in my own house!” Of course, his “slip” of the tongue got a sharp glance from Potter. Draco put his head down and shivered, innocent and guilt-ridden. Yes, of course, he was the put-upon innocent, the world was so horrible to him, Potter had to believe him! “I think that he’ll tell the truth now,” Potter said. “I didn’t actually show him what I did to Mugstrom, but that’s always a possibility if he tries to act up again…” He took a step forwards, and Greengrass-Rosier did another full-body flinch and frantic shaking of his head. “No, I promise, I didn’t!” “I do believe him,” Potter said. “But we can’t know for sure unless we get permission to use Veritaserum, of course.” “I didn’t think you had a problem breaking the rules,” Draco murmured, almost under his breath, checking his effect on Potter from under lowered eyelids. Potter caught his breath sharply, but he shook his head when Draco tried looking up with his heart in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I can’t, and I told you the reasons why.” He turned his back and walked over to Greengrass-Rosier, tilting the man’s head up with a wand to his cheek this time. Draco blinked and studied Potter’s back with more interest than he supposed was strictly necessary. Potter had certainly received Shacklebolt’s order to seduce Draco. Why would he hold back now? Greengrass-Rosier was broken enough not to notice the activity in the room, especially something as mild as mutual flirting. “But, are you sure—” “Yes,” said Potter, and kept his back turned as he cast a spell on Greengrass-Rosier that made him slump unconscious against his chair. He turned around and studied Draco with a critical eye. “I don’t think you’ve been getting a lot of sleep yourself lately, have you? You should get to bed.” What, not going to ask about the spell you cast and why I broke it? But Draco rose obediently and reached for his cane. Potter was there in a second, handing it to him. Draco paused and glanced shyly at him. “Sometimes I wish you could stay here and take care of me all the time.” “Sometimes I wish I could, too,” Potter replied, with a strained smile. “I wonder if I chose the wrong career, if I should have been a Healer instead of an Auror.” “Then I wouldn’t be alive. That goblin spell would have killed me.” Draco dared to reach out and squeeze Potter’s wrist. “Please,” he breathed, “reconsider.” “I’ve given it all the consideration I will,” said Potter, with what Draco thought was brutality, and turned his back, walking over to undo the ropes around Greengrass-Rosier. Draco watched his back. “Did you really break someone else’s hands not using magic?” he asked, not sure why he chose that question out of all the ones circling through his head. Perhaps because he had to ask at least one, and that one was the most harmless. Potter went still for a second. Then he said, “Yes. I did.” Draco waited to hear more, some justification, sure that the Great Hero Harry Potter wouldn’t have done that without some, but Potter said nothing else. “It’s late,” he murmured, and slung Greengrass-Rosier over his shoulder. “You should go to bed.” “You didn’t ask him how he got through the wards,” Draco said, not moving. It was something he had been keeping in reserve, thinking that the way Potter asked it of Greengrass-Rosier would provide some clues as to what he was up to, but so far, zero clues had been provided. “I know that,” Potter said tightly. “When we took the case, the Aurors who originally came here and me, we were keyed into your wards so that we wouldn’t keep bumping into them. That exception should have been removed when I took Elian off the case, but it wasn’t. What it tells me is that someone in the Ministry didn’t do their job.” “Could someone in the Ministry be in league with my enemy?” Draco asked, intrigued by the idea. It would explain a few things, not least why they might have decided to send Greengrass-Rosier in the first place, and maybe why Potter was ignoring Shacklebolt’s orders. “I doubt it,” said Potter, but with a too-quick shake of his head and an avoiding of his eyes that would have roused suspicion in a Slytherin baby. At the moment, Draco didn’t intend to pursue it. He let Potter shepherd him into bed instead, content. He had done his share of infecting Potter’s mind for the evening.* Once again, Draco woke with some wispy strands of sleep breaking loose from the surface of his mind, and he hissed soft and deep, hoping Potter would hear the words as Parseltongue. What did he think he was doing, enchanting Draco to sleep again? But when he turned his head, it was to see Potter slumped asleep in the chair beside him. Draco held still. He doubted that would have happened naturally, no matter how tired Potter was, and that didn’t leave a lot of options. “Malfoy.” The voice crackled and rasped up and down the walls, and set some small silver dishes on the mantel that Draco liked to collect to vibrating. Draco frowned. If his enemy cracked his plates, he was going to feel more contempt for them than he did already. “You know why I have come,” said the voice, and a large spiral of glowing yellow light began to twist into being in the center of the bedroom. Draco braced his hands more or less calmly on the bed, and shot to the side when the predictable curse came crackling at him. At the moment, preserving his persona’s tale of a bad leg wasn’t his primary concern. But instead of simply setting his bed afire or breaking the headboard or something else usual, the curse bounced off the headboard and came after him. Draco whirled into the fire-grate and away, and this time the curse didn’t even touch the wrong target. Instead, softly humming, the same color as the ball of light, it turned on a curve and came after him. Draco tried to leap over Potter. He didn’t really want the curse to hurt Potter, but if it came down to the sacrifice of one of them, he knew which he was choosing. But the curse wasn’t fooled by that, either. Instead, it ducked under Potter’s chair and met Draco head-on when he was trying to stand up and raise a shield. Pain flooded Draco, constricting his lungs, and when he looked down, it was to see the shadows of flames dancing through his skin.*BAFan: Thank you!
Clau: Well, I’m glad you like Harry, but he’s not Jared in disguise! If he had the evidence that Draco was involved in that, he would have arrested him already.
delia cerrano: Draco keeps changing his mind about that, but yes.
moodysavage: Yes! Although Draco thinks Harry is more convinced than Draco is by Harry.
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