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Providence	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 15841 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
- 9
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight�What
Draco Malfoy Realized

�� This
is�sudden.� Kingsley blinked and leaned back, his hands folded across his belly
as he studied Harry. �You�re sure about this?�

�� Perfectly.�
Harry clenched his fingers on the shrunken trunk in his pocket. He�d already
been home to pack, in a whirlwind of activity because he was afraid he might
change his mind at any moment and decide to remain in England to be near Draco.
But his mind was clear now, and he intended to see that it stayed that way.
�I�ve even decided where I want to go.�

�� Do tell.�
Kingsley had a curious expression on his face, as if he thought that Harry
wouldn�t be able to come up with a destination and that would show he wasn�t
serious.

�� Madrid.�
Harry leaned forwards and tapped a hand triumphantly on Kingsley�s desk. �They
had all that trouble with Dark wizards a month or so ago and asked us for
someone to speak on our Auror tactics, didn�t they?�

�� Kingsley
blinked like a lizard, or like the way that Draco did when he was confronted
with a disorienting surprise. Harry noticed that, and then told himself to stop
thinking about Draco. �So they did,� Kingsley murmured, drawing Harry�s
attention back to the problem in front of him. �I didn�t realize you�d remembered
that.�

�� Harry
folded his arms and glared. �Well, I did.
And just because I didn�t agree to it at the time doesn�t mean I never would.�

�� Glad to
hear it.� Kingsley reached for a packet of parchment in front of him and wrote
Harry�s name on it, then handed it to him. Harry accepted the set of papers
with a small smile. He thought that Kingsley had probably planned to send
someone to Madrid as soon as possible, and if Harry hadn�t wanted to go there
but to Iceland or Germany, Kingsley would have tried to persuade him out of it.
�This contains all the information you�ll need to become a guest of the Spanish
Ministry and stay out of sight of the Muggles, as well as the translation
charm.�

�� Harry
opened the packet and studied the incantation for the charm a minute. As he�d
suspected, it was depressingly long and complicated. Oh, well. I�ve done worse things. One just an hour ago, in fact.

�� After he�d
sent his letter to Draco, he�d realized what a fantastically stupid idea that
was and what he�d revealed about his identity when he said that he�d killed
Dark wizards. But that just caused his half-made decision to get made all the
way.

�� Sympathetic
magic had its limits, and, in particular, letters sent with it couldn�t cross
salt water. If Harry went to the Continent, he�d put enough distance between
them. He couldn�t be tempted to answer those letters if he never saw them.

�� You�ll be
expected to explain your own particular experiences as well as the general
procedures of the British Ministry,� Kingsley droned on. �I�m sure that someone
will want to interview you about the Battle of Hogwarts. Emphasize the
principles you acted on rather than the methods, please.� He gave Harry a tepid
glare. Harry knew that there were still times that Kingsley was disappointed
the war had been won with a simple Expelliarmus.
�And of course you�ll be standing in as a representative for us. I expect
you to act up to the highest standards you know.�

�� Of
course,� Harry said automatically, though he hadn�t paid much attention to
Kingsley�s spiel. It was all obvious. He tucked the packet of parchments into
his robe, all but the single sheet that contained the translation charm and
directions for his Apparition points, and then turned to leave.

�� Oh, and
Harry?�

�� Harry
glanced over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised. �Yeah?�

�� I expect
to remain in ignorance of whatever is making you flee the country at the
moment,� said Kingsley flatly, and then turned back to his paperwork.

�� Harry
marched out, his back stiff with offended dignity. I�m not fleeing the country. I�m just�making a strategic retreat.

�� But he
could be honest with himself in his head, if not with Kingsley. He�d made a lot
of mistakes in his attempts to approach Draco. The letters plan had been a
stupid one. He�d been equally stupid to assume that Draco would accept Astoria
without persuasion, or even with it. He hadn�t counted on what would happen if
or when Draco ever came near to discovering who had sent him the letters.

�� He didn�t
blame himself for not realizing that Draco would consider a male lover, though.
There had never been any sign of that, and there was only so much that
observation could do.

�� He needed
to look at other things, other people, for a while. He needed to be in a place
where he could answer normal owls, but not Draco�s spectral ones. He needed to think, without the overwhelming pressure
of the emotions that Draco always stirred in him.

�� And who knows? he thought, as he chanted
the translation spell and then memorized the Apparition coordinates. He would
have to hop several times, once onto a small scrap of land in the Channel,
since intercontinental Apparition was impossible. Maybe it�ll be a holiday in more ways than one. Maybe I�ll find someone
there who takes my mind off Draco entirely. That�s not likely, but I really
have to consider how much I love him, if I could pull something like this and
then not know he refused to consider an equal partner.

*

�� Draco took
a deep breath and forced himself to spend a few minutes thinking of nothing,
gazing in front of him at the plants in the garden. The fronds of the ferns
were swaying; the marigolds were brilliant; the lilies and the narcissus that
his father had planted long ago in honor of his mother shone in the sunlight.
If he sat there long enough with his mind blank, then he would have to accept
the peace into his soul.

�� Or that was
the theory.

�� But the
plants, growing in contentment, satisfied with their lot, only reminded him of
how miserable he was. He hadn�t been
able to contact his writer for a fortnight. Every spectral owl he sent out
failed to come back, and he�d received no letters.

�� Draco
doubted that his writer had suddenly learned a miraculous self-control. Rather,
he seemed to have moved himself into a place where sympathetic magic no longer
worked. Draco thought that he wasn�t in England any more.

�� But where
he might have gone�there were too many places, too many choices. Draco had not
the least idea.

�� He raised
his head and let his hands clench into fists on the bench beside him. If he
could not banish his anger, then he would accept it and work with it. He would
not let it get the better of him, as it had of his writer when Draco sent the
baiting letter. It would become a weapon in his arsenal and not a weakness.

�� There were ways he could find out where his
writer had gone, given the collection of torn pieces of parchment floating in
vials in his lab, locked under a preservation charm that kept their contact
with his writer�s skin vital and burning. He had wanted to wait to use the
parchment pieces until he understood more about sympathetic magic, so that he
wouldn�t waste them. But then he had still anticipated responses to his
letters, unguarded communications that would reveal more about his writer and
perhaps enable Draco to discover him even before he felt ready to use the
parchment.

�� There had
been a particularly revealing line in the last letter, about killing Dark
wizards. It was likely that his writer was an Auror. Draco could at least try
to find out which Aurors had been sent away from the country in the last weeks.

�� Except that someone will wonder why you want
the information. The Ministry workers had not, for the most part, fallen to
his charm. They had been closer than most to the front lines of the war, since
the Dark Lord had taken over the Ministry so decisively. Someone would, at the
very least, report Draco�s interest in Auror movements to the Minister, and
then Draco might find himself questioned regarding every unsolved crime that the
Department of Magical Law Enforcement had on their records.

�� No,
sympathetic magic it was. Draco would simply have to force his mind and
understanding to work faster, so that he would grasp its essence and not waste
the parchment when he was ready to cast his spell.

�� He had not
realized until now how dependent he was on the letters from the writer, on the
knowledge that his writer was out there, regretting and impatient and in love,
doing everything he could to evade identification and capture. Draco pictured
the man without a face who still became daily more and more defined in his
imagination, and pictured him taking someone else�s hand, stepping into a new
life, or simply ignoring Draco for the rest of his days.

�� It sent a
pang of what felt suspiciously like panic through him.

�� Draco
disliked that. This was a chance connection in his life, with a casual
beginning, and he did not enjoy the suspicion that his writer, so eager to make
contact at first, was now freer of the need for that contact than he was. But
he thought it might be happening, and if so, the only way around that was to
show his writer how much of the other man�s attention he, in fact, deserved.

�� He stood up
and retreated inside to spend time with his sympathetic magic books once more.

*

�� Would you
like to come with me to hear a concert, Harry?�

�� Harry
grinned and swung the satchel he�d taken to carrying with him over his
shoulder. He felt like he was back in Hogwarts, with everyone in sight handing
him parchment�suggestions for further contact with the British Ministry,
mostly, but also some testimony about Dark wizards that could be useful if this
particular group ever showed up in England. �That�d be great, Rodrigo.�

�� Rodrigo Jos�
L�pez Mart�nez grinned at him and fell into step beside him as they left the
Spanish Ministry. Harry felt a calm, deep contentment spread over him. Rodrigo
matched him without appearing to notice what he was doing, walking as fast as
Harry did and keeping up with him when he showed off his dueling skills. And he
had a sense of humor, which Harry couldn�t remember Draco ever having.

�� Stop thinking about Draco. Harry would
much rather think about Rodrigo, who had dark hair and odd eyes�brown in one
light, greenish-hazel in another�and the unselfconscious grace of someone who�d
been trained in the Spanish Aurors� style of fighting.

�� Like Ron,
he was comfortable company. Thanks to the translation charm, they understood
each other perfectly, though Rodrigo teased Harry that his Spanish had a
British accent. And Rodrigo had been able to tell Harry about international
politics in a style that actually made it interesting, unlike the times he�d
tried to learn anything about it from Hermione or Kingsley.

�� Harry
wasn�t prepared to say that he�d forgotten Draco, yet, but the holiday had been
the mental vacation that he�d anticipated, and more.

�� They came
out of the Ministry into a street that looked bigger than it should, thanks to
the huge, billowing pavilions that had replaced most of the buildings. Harry gave
them a rueful look. When he�d heard about the Spanish problem with Dark
wizards, he had assumed that a small group of them had murdered enough
high-profile people to cause news and maybe a panic. He hadn�t anticipated a
group larger than the Death Eaters that had destroyed half the wizarding
section of Madrid.

�� It was
close,� Rodrigo said, following his gaze. �At one point, we were backed up to
the Ministry itself and fighting, with the Minister prepared to Portkey out at
any minute.�

�� And you
never found out what they wanted?� Harry asked in interest as they started to
walk down the middle of the steep street, avoiding the architects who zoomed
around the pavilions on brooms, measuring and arranging and arguing.

�� The ones I fought told me it was revenge for what
the Spanish Empire did in America and Europe centuries ago,� Rodrigo said, and
rubbed his face. �Which means, if that was true, that they�ll never stop.
There�s no way to undo those atrocities, and if we kill everyone who comes
after us for them, we�ll only end up causing more bad feeling.�

�� Harry
nodded. He�d spent years listening to Hermione talk about British Muggle
history and the way that pure-bloods abused house-elves; some of that had sunk
into his skull even if the international politics hadn�t. It was a huge knot of
useless guilt and useless resentment on the part of those who felt �attacked�
for the deeds of their ancestors and productive efforts stymied by hatred on
both sides.

�� Rodrigo
briskly shook his head and straightened his shoulders as if throwing the burden
of the attacks off. �But I don�t think that was true,� he said determinedly. �I
think that was just something the bastards tried to use, so that we would blame the wrong people and not look for them
in the shadows. We�ll find them yet.� He smiled at Harry. �And I think I�ve
spent enough time brooding on the subject. Come along.�

�� Harry
followed easily, but Rodrigo slowed to wait for him without even seeming to
notice that he�d done it. Harry grinned again. He appreciated the
consideration, and though so far Rodrigo had shown no inclination to flirt
beyond a few smiles and interested glances, Harry wouldn�t be adverse to seeing
if any attraction bloomed between them.

�� Consideration is so different from what I would
get with Draco.

�� Harry
shoved the thought out of his head again. There were other reasons to admire
Rodrigo, beyond the fact that he was very different from Draco. He had fought
in wars in much the same way Harry had�not the same war, but that hardly
mattered. Spain was battered by persistent Dark wizards, some of them working
with Muggle terrorist groups, which meant that even the pure-bloods had to be
more aware of the Muggle world than was the case in Britain. His background was
more like Harry�s, therefore, than most of the people he tended to work with on
a daily basis.

�� Harry liked
feeling he had something in common with someone besides Ron and Hermione.

�� And Rodrigo
had asked questions about the war against Voldemort and Harry�s defeat of him,
but in the learning-oriented way that one soldier would ask questions of
another, not in the fawning way that people tended to do at home. When he�d got
the answers he wanted, he nodded and switched the subject. And he didn�t keep
returning to it obsessively, either.

�� He was
someone who had walked through the shadows, like Harry, but who hadn�t allowed
those shadows to taint him. Harry liked to
believe he was free of the taint, though he wasn�t sure he was.

�� If he had
to find someone to fall in love with to replace Draco, surely he couldn�t
choose much better than someone like this.

�� So he and
Rodrigo went to a small restaurant and then to the concert, whilst the sunset
blazed overhead and declined slowly into the dark, and Harry�s thoughts stayed
resolutely away from a certain Manor in Wiltshire.

*

�� Draco
stared down at the scraps of parchment spread in front of him on a map of
Europe, soaked with sea-salt and creating a rough half-circle. Inside them lay
another half-circle of torn pieces, these smaller in both their spread and the
size of each individual piece. They�d been touched with Draco�s own sweat and
saliva, creating a link to him that was similar to the link the rest of the
parchment had to his writer.

�� He�d used
every piece of the parchment except a few ragged corners with no ink on them,
which he�d judged his writer less likely to have touched. If this test failed,
then he wouldn�t have enough left to conduct another trial.

�� Draco took
a deep breath, falling into habit despite the fact that deep breathing hadn�t
worked at all this evening to calm him down. If he failed, then he would find a way to get another letter
and conduct another trial. It was possible that every single one of the
original letters together could be as powerful as this one.

�� There were
all sorts of things that could go wrong. He might have misread the books of
sympathetic magic, or misjudged the strength of the spells he was going to use.
He might have saturated the second half-circle too much with his own body
fluids, which, being more recent, would be stronger than the older link with
his writer. His writer might not be in Europe. That last was the strongest and
the worst possibility.

�� But Draco
refused to second-guess himself continually, as much as he refused to allow his
writer to escape him.

�� Draco
Malfoy deserved the best. He�d always known that. But he�d had a very limited
notion of best until his writer had
shown him new depths to the word.

�� He�d
pictured someone who would obey him. But most of the women he�d dated had only
been too happy to try that in the hopes of getting into his good graces, and
he�d become bored with them. That should have told him something right there,
but it hadn�t, because he wasn�t used to paying attention to his own signals
and was too infatuated with the old picture of perfection.

�� He�d
imagined that best would include
beauty. Yet looks couldn�t satisfy him without a corresponding personality.
Astoria was among the better-looking women in his social circles. And still he
grew hard for his writer, whose face he wouldn�t recognize if he passed him in
the street, because of the spirit and the will that shone through his words.

�� He�d once
declared proudly that he could never date someone who opposed him during the
war. His writer had as good as declared back that he�d fought on Dumbledore�s
side. And here Draco was, preparing to seek him out anyway.

�� He could
change, if his writer demanded that of him and the changes were within reason.
He�d already changed in the past fortnight, studying magic that he normally
considered beneath him and spending time and effort on a person he didn�t know.

�� If there
was a way to hold his writer, Draco would find it, and then he would adopt it.
He would enjoy engaging with that fierce pride more than he would dismantling it.

�� Because I deserve the best, after all. And
doesn�t that include the best entertainment?

�� He smiled
faintly and held up his hands. His wand was in his right one, but he wouldn�t
be using it for the first few passes. As sympathetic magic depended on the
touch of skin or blood, on toenail clippings and locks of hair, it was his bare
palms that would begin the process of connection between him and his writer.

�� I call
myself,� he said. �I acknowledge the bond.� The books had made it clear that it
didn�t matter what words were used, as long as they were simple and offered
some form of acknowledgment. Sympathetic magic worked badly when people
resisted it.

�� The
half-circle of torn parchment soaked with his sweat and saliva glimmered.
Draco, watching it intently, waited until it had achieved a soft, uniform blue
glow the color of frost. Then he touched his wand to his left palm and
breathed, �Diffindo.�

�� A cut
opened, across the furrow that hand-readers called the life line, and his blood
flowed out. Draco twisted his hand so that most of the blood would fall
directly on the shining pieces of parchment.

�� The blue
light flared when his blood hit it, and the color changed until it was the
green of foxfire.

�� I
acknowledge the bond,� Draco whispered again. �This is blood, freely and
willingly shed, with the intent of bringing me to a person whom I feel
companionship for.� The spell would have been stronger if he could have claimed
love, but the books had warned him
that a false statement was worse than having the spell be a bit weaker.
Falsehood could destroy sympathetic magic altogether.

�� The green
light twisted, and became red�the color of his fresh blood, the color of a
beating heart. The light started to reach out lazy, waving tendrils like
seaweed�s towards the other half-circle of parchment, and then stopped.

�� This
parchment comes from the companion I would reach,� Draco said, in a loud, clear
voice this time. �I believe him to be somewhere within this area.� He scattered
his blood across the map of Europe, glad that he had taken the time to phrase
his statement carefully. At least it wouldn�t be a falsehood if it turned out
his writer was in America or Australia, and so he wouldn�t suffer from
backlash. �I shed blood willingly, freely, and claim the touch of his hand on
material sent to me willingly. I ask to be connected with him.�

�� The red
light embraced the parchment his writer had touched without hesitation this
time, and then shot out in several separate arches to touch the blood scattered
on the map. Draco gasped as he felt his own heart begin to labor in sympathy
with the throb of the light.

�� There might be more reasons than one that
this kind of magic isn�t used often, he thought, and blinked the sweat of
effort and concentration out of his eyes.

�� The magic
swirled outwards, forming several cyclones on the map. When he squinted, Draco
could see that each one centered in a different country. They grew brighter and
brighter until it looked as if he�d chosen to paint his potions lab scarlet.

�� Draco would
have laughed if he could have around the noise of his heartbeat, which was
taking all his strength. As if I would
ever choose such a color.

�� Then all
the cyclones but one winked out. Bending closer, staring out of one eye, Draco
could make out that it was hovering above Madrid.

�� And then
the magic formed into a single glowing chain that led from his heart to the
cyclone, and his hands tingled, and the bond tightened, yanking him through
time and space to his writer�s side.

*

�� and then
I got to say, �I told you so.� For
the second time that night!�

�� Harry
laughed aloud and stepped into the room he�d taken in a tiny house not far from
the Ministry. The owners had been happy to have a lodger who could give them
money to help them rebuild their other property that had been destroyed by the
Dark wizards. �And his face was something to see, I take it?�

�� Rodrigo
dropped his jaw and stared straight ahead in a good imitation of shock. Harry
laughed again and moved back a little so that he could accept the implied
invitation into the room, if he wanted.

�� Rodrigo
did. His glance flickered sideways at Harry for a moment, and his lips curved
up in a pleased smile. Harry grinned back, exhilarated. He�d never taken this
kind of risk�Draco was the only man he had ever been attracted to, and of
course Harry hadn�t tried to come closer to him. But at the moment, with a man
who matched him in experience and who had a sense of humor about others as well
as himself, he wanted to try.

�� Harry shut
the door and moved forwards, giving Rodrigo plenty of time to slide sideways
and let matters sink back into casual again. But Rodrigo muttered something
that sounded like, �Wondered when you would get the nerve� and was probably
even more insulting in Spanish, and reached up to grip his chin.

�� The air
seemed to explode, and Rodrigo was propelled backwards. Harry jumped and
whirled around, his hand already on his wand. His first thought was Dark wizards!

�� It had
nothing to do with Draco Malfoy, who was standing in the center of the room
staring at him. In fact, seeing him made Harry realize he hadn�t thought about
Draco all evening.

�� Not that it
mattered. Draco�s eyes were wide and fixed on Harry; he didn�t look at Rodrigo,
who could as easily have been the one writing to him. His face grew paler and
paler as he stared, until Harry thought he would pass out.

�� Potter,� he said, and his voice was
thick with many complex emotions, but there wasn�t enough of the ones Harry
wanted to hear most, regret and anger�the ones that might have indicated Draco
was thinking about walking away.

�� Harry�s own
anger and regret and frustration whirled up in him, and he pointed his wand at
Draco, choosing the only spell he could think of that would remedy the
situation. �Obliviate!� he snarled.

�� Draco
ducked out of the way, and rose to his feet with a breathless laugh. �Oh, no,�
he said. �Not so easily.� He flicked his wand idly at Rodrigo, and Rodrigo vanished
out of the room, forcibly Apparated. From the curses Harry heard through the
window, he�d gone no further than the street below.

�� But it was
the sheer nerve of Draco�s daring to
do anything about Rodrigo at all that infuriated him. His emotions clouding his
mind and rapidly tipping towards rage, his heart pounding with the injustice of
Draco showing up when Harry had done his best to forget him and wasn�t good for
him anyway, Harry attacked.

�� Draco, who�d
been casting locking and anti-Apparition spells, met him wand to wand, and the
battle was joined.

*

�� yaoiObsessed:
Yes, Harry and Draco will be equal. Draco wrote otherwise only to rile Harry
up, because he knew it would make him angrier than anything else.

�� MewMew2:
Thanks for reviewing.

�� snappy pants:
Thank you!

�� thrnbrooke:
He probably would have lost him if not for sympathetic magic.

�� SP777: The
problem is that that line can apply to just about any Auror, or it might have
been just bragging.

�� And I
suspect I am about to see how far you can kick.

�� DHnotHD:
Thanks! I wouldn�t call Harry innocent in this fic, exactly, but he is pretty
dense at times.

�� Clau: Thank
you! I think the next chapter will show them changing positions quite
frequently.

�� butterpie: Harry�s
method of answering is to remove himself from the situation. It�s what he�s
tried to do from the beginning (arguably, even the letters were a way of
putting a barrier between him and Draco). But now he�s got no choice but to
stay still, or, at least, duel with Draco in a locked room.

�� Yami
Bakura: Thank you! I�m really glad you�re enjoying this so much.

�� YanaYugi:
Here�s the next chapter!
- 7
- 8
- 9
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Providence