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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.

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Chapter Eight—Following People Through the Forest at Night

            “So let me get this straight,” Harry said for the third time, because Malfoy’s first two explanations had made no sense. He rubbed his head and took a sip of the cup of water he had conjured when he realized they were going to be here a while.

            He’d given Klein’s wand back to her, because she hadn’t shown any inclination to attack him, or Malfoy either. She simply stood back with her arms folded and her smile permanently fixed to her face, while Harry sat in the dirt and Malfoy stood in front of him with his arms folded like a parody of Klein. Harry was the only one who seemed interested in figuring out what to really say and do; Malfoy only told his story, and then stuck his lip out when Harry didn’t buy it.

            I might buy it if I could understand it, Harry thought, and rubbed his forehead again, where he could feel a headache coming on.

            “Right,” Harry told the air, and then faced Malfoy. “So you followed me when you saw me leaving the school, because…?” He raised his eyebrows and nodded encouragingly, so Malfoy would understand an explanation of some kind was required.

            Malfoy looked at him haughtily and said nothing for a moment. Then he gave in to the encouragement, sniffing as he did so. “I wondered what you were doing out of bed so late at night. I wondered if you were going to the library to research…” His eyes flickered warily over to Klein, and he shook his head slightly, as if to tell Harry he mistrusted her. Well, of course he did. “That matter I told you about. So I followed you.”

            “But it should have been obvious after a little while that I wasn’t going to the library,” Harry said. “So why did you keep following me?”

            “Because I wanted to know where you were going,” Malfoy said, and managed to convey with a particular glint of his eyes that he pitied Harry for not thinking of that.

            Harry nodded patiently. “And why didn’t you reveal yourself to me when you realized I was going into danger? Or go back?” This was the part where Malfoy always got lost in his story. The first time, he had claimed it was fear, and that he wanted Harry to protect him—only how would Harry do that when he didn’t even know Malfoy was there? The second time he said he had only been curious, and wanted to get Harry in trouble, since he was a prefect. Except he wasn’t a prefect; McGonagall had taken the office away from him when they got back to school. Harry wasn’t sure why, and didn’t see that it was his business to ask.

            Malfoy hesitated. Harry added, “Feel free to tell the truth this time.”

            “It’s that,” Malfoy said, “the school’s changed.” He cast one glance at Klein, and then seemed to decide she could hear what he was saying if she wanted, and he didn’t care. “I don’t have a place here now. I barely have a place even in Slytherin House, which was where I assumed I would always have one. My friends are turning against me.” He swallowed, and Harry heard the click of the sound from here. “I don’t want to be outcast like that. I thought—I hoped—that I would find something if I followed you. Something I could report to someone, so I would be important again for a little while, or something you wouldn’t want me to find out, so I could blackmail you and be important that way.” His hands clenched into fists. “I admit it wasn’t well-thought-out, Potter. But I want things to change, and it was an impulsive plan that I came up with on the spur of the moment. It was the best thing I could think of right then.”

            “Well, some of my plans were like that, too,” Harry muttered, and rubbed his head again. He thought this was the truth, or near enough that Malfoy lying wouldn’t make a huge difference. I wish I could give him some of my attention. There’s enough of it and to spare, and God knows I don’t want the bloody stuff.

            “Right,” Malfoy said, and took a step towards Harry, then stopped to look at Klein again. “I knew I could trust you to understand.”

            “Once you explained it to me, sure,” Harry said, and nodded, and stood up. “Anyway, what I’m doing tonight is already known to one professor.” He jerked his head to the side, at Klein. “So you don’t have to worry about blackmailing me or reporting it to someone else. You can leave, now.”

            “And find my way back through the dark, dangerous forest by myself?” Malfoy touched his chest with one hand in a perfect parody of the heroines in some Muggle films Harry had watched during the past summer. Mr. Weasley had finally got a telly to work, and the whole family had spent a few days in front of it, enthralled and forgetting the grief of Fred’s death as best they might. “How can you suggest such a thing, Mr. Potter?” He fluttered his eyelashes at Harry.

            Harry just studied him thoughtfully, and didn’t respond. Malfoy, when he begged for help in school and talked about the spell someone had used against him, even when he gave his reasons for following Harry into the Forest, had acted more innocent and helpless—and stupider—than usual. Just now he sounded more like his old self than he had since the school year began.

            Malfoy caught his eye and seemed to understand what he was thinking and, in typical Malfoy fashion, to resent it. He deflated and looked away from Harry. “Anyway,” he said sullenly. “It’s impossible.”

            “Why?” Harry asked. “You could at least stay here inside one of those Indestructible Bubbles that we studied the other day in Charms, and you’d be safer.”

            Malfoy sniffed at him. “And be left out of the excitement that has to do with the wolfwere and his pups?” He looked down at the wolfwere on the ground and reached out a foot as if he would prod him. “Of course not.”

            “Don’t touch him.”

            Harry was surprised by the deadly quiet with which he spoke, and especially the way that Malfoy looked at him and the way his eyes widened. He pulled his foot back and stepped away with his hands in the air, as though he had been about to use them instead. Harry took his hand off his wand, but not his eyes off Malfoy.

            “He hasn’t done anything to you,” he said quietly. “Don’t you harm him.”

            Malfoy’s face twisted as he watched. “I wish someone would do that for me,” he whispered, once again speaking to Harry as though they were the only ones there. “That someone would fight for me, that someone would care if I was Stunned and lying on the ground. No one does.”

            Harry blinked. Malfoy had a lot of force behind his words, too, and the way his gaze gripped Harry’s made it hard to turn away from. Because he was surprised, and because he was stupid, Harry found himself fumbling for words.

            “Your parents must. Of course they do. I saw how much they loved you during the Battle of Hogwarts.”

            “And what can they do?” Malfoy shook his head, his hair whipping around. “Nothing, not when they’re still under suspicion even though they were acquitted and the Ministry is still looking for any excuse it can find to take their wealth away. I have to be the one who takes care of them, the one who tells them how strong and fine I am with every owl, because they can’t take care of me.”

            Harry hadn’t considered that. He hesitated, reminded himself again that Professor Klein was listening to all of this, and said, “Well, I’ll try to fight for you. But you can’t go around kicking other people who never did anything to you.”

            Malfoy lifted his head. “But you won’t interfere if I fight your enemies? At your side?”

            “As long as you don’t stab me in the back.”

            Harry thought he might get upset when Harry said that, or just angry. Malfoy didn’t move, though, as if Harry had made some remarkably clever observation instead of speaking plain truth. His eyes widened, and Harry could hear his breath whistling in and out of his lungs. It sounded like they were punctured. Harry shifted in place and resisted the temptation to reach out and snap his fingers in front of Malfoy’s face, or cast a diagnostic charm that would tell him if the git was sick.

            “You’d let me,” Malfoy said, and no more.

            “Yeah, I would,” Harry said. “Do you care about that?” If Malfoy had some issue with his wording, it would be better if they had it out here and now, before they went into the deeper part of the Forest and might have to depend on each other for survival.

            “I care,” Malfoy said. “It’s more than anyone else has given me in the last four months.”

            Harry cleared his throat. Then he coughed, because clearing his throat hadn’t got rid of the weird feeling creeping up on him. “That’s not true,” he said. “Your parents—”

            Malfoy glared at him, and Harry reminded himself of what Malfoy had just said about having to be the strong one for his parents, instead of the other way around. Harry would have thought they had still given Malfoy companionship and a reason to live, but, well, perhaps not. He nodded instead and said, “Fine. Come on.”

            He turned around, and found Professor Klein standing there, shaking her head as though she was very sad about something. Harry stepped up and glared at her. “What?”

            Klein sighed. “Only this. We are not going on an adventure. This is not one of Beedle the Bard’s tales, where frightening things happen to characters very away and in another time. Mr. Malfoy could find himself fighting those whom only a few months ago he fought beside. For various reasons, this is not a good idea.”

            “But you would let me come with you?” Harry demanded.

            “You just Disarmed me,” Klein said. “I am not so sure about Mr. Malfoy’s prowess.”

            Harry started to turn back, wanting to ask Malfoy if he minded casting a spell, and Malfoy had his wand drawn. Harry tensed instinctively, but Malfoy only traced what looked like a lazy figure eight in the air and murmured an unfamiliar incantation.

            Harry found himself standing at the edge of an abyss. Below his feet, the earth crumbled away, dropping into a pit that flashed with lightning somewhere down near the bottom, in the darkness. Harry shuddered and closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around himself. He could hear himself breathing, so fast that it sounded like a rabbit’s, or like the breaths Malfoy had been taking a few minutes ago.

            Down there in the darkness, something stirred.

            Something was looking for him.

            Harry couldn’t say where the conviction came from, but it was instant and total and seized possession of his whole mind. He couldn’t move, and he didn’t want to. Tears dripped down his face and covered his cheeks. His skin quivered, and he could feel a threatening pain in his stomach that made it seem like his bladder was about to let go. He knew instinctively he couldn’t meet that monster and survive.

            “Finite Incantatem!”

            The vision vanished. Harry opened his eyes and found himself back in the Forest, next to the stirring wolfwere. He knelt down and laid his hand gently on the creature’s head, using that posture to avoid looking Malfoy in the eyes.

            “Dark Arts,” Klein said, and her voice grated like Harry’s shame. “Proving yourself skilled in the use of the Dark Arts is not enough to convince me to let you accompany us, Mr. Malfoy.”

            “That wasn’t Dark Arts,” Malfoy said, and his voice sounded more calm and confident than Harry would have thought it would after a scolding like that, from a woman he didn’t want to anger. She was an Auror, after all, Harry thought, shaking his head so that he could get the dizzy, swimming feeling out of it. She could take Malfoy right back to prison, if she wanted to. “That was a simple illusion.”

            “And the feeling of fear?” Klein asked softly.

            Too softly. Harry had heard Bellatrix Lestrange talk like that, and Voldemort, although mostly in the visions and not in real life. For some reason, he’d done a lot of shouting when Harry was around. Harry forced himself to his feet, gave the wolfwere a glance so that he would know to stay still and they’d speak in a minute, and then stepped between Malfoy and Klein before Klein could come any closer.

            “It was,” he told her. “I would be feeling a lot worse than that if it was Dark Arts.”

            Klein’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

            “Magical allergies,” Harry said. At least, that was what the wizards at St. Mungo’s had told him, when he collapsed after the final battle with a headache so severe it seemed to punch through his skull and legs that wobbled so badly he couldn’t stand on them. “Most people never get a dose of Dark Arts until later in life, and so they aren’t as bothered by the spells themselves. But the Healers reckoned that since I had the Killing Curse cast on me when I was a baby, and my mum made sure I survived it, I have some kind of reaction to them. They don’t always take me badly, but I definitely get a headache. And I don’t have a headache because of Malfoy’s spell.”

            “You look queer, Potter.” Klein’s hand tightened on her wand. “Are you sure about that headache?”

            “It’s not headache, it’s vertigo,” Harry snapped back. “You try standing on the edge of an abyss and thinking that something is going to come out of it and pop you out of your skin like a peanut.”

            “I was there, a moment ago,” Klein said. “But permit me to stay that you have quite a flare for metaphor, Mr. Potter.”

            “Simile,” muttered Malfoy, uncontrollably. Harry wondered how in the world he had managed to acquire a better sense of when it was better to nod and smile along with a person in authority, and reached back to pinch the git’s arm. Malfoy yelped.

            Klein stared at him, and then sighed. “We are wasting time,” she said. “No one has been back here recently, but they may have returned—and they will, if they have heard our noise and suspect there is a chance of capturing our Mr. Potter.” Harry, turning around to check on the wolfwere, caught a glimpse of Malfoy’s face, and saw that for some reason it looked pleased. Probably because he anticipated Klein’s next words. “Since you are both here, and I suspect the Headmistress would not like me to use Memory Charms on her students, we will continue. Mr. Malfoy, if you use any other spell on me that I suspect of being Dark Arts, I will Body-Bind you first and ask questions later.” She pivoted and stalked into the Forest.

            “Who are the ones who did this?”

            The wolfwere was on all fours next to the bodies of his pups, his nose buried in them. Harry winced and knelt down next to him, ashamed of having forgotten about him for a moment. “People who we’ve hunted before,” he said quietly, stretching the word we about as far as it would go to include Malfoy. “Somewhere in the Forest. Dark wizards. Would you know where they might have a den?”

            The wolfwere lifted his head. His face was calm—or maybe it was just that Harry couldn’t read it very well—but his teeth were showing.

            “There is a place we smelled them once in the last fortnight,” he said. “I will lead you there.” He broke into a lope and entered the shadows, more or less in the same direction Klein was going. Harry sighed with relief and followed him, and heard Malfoy following him.

            “You’re trusting him?”

            And that would be Malfoy, not the wolfwere, though from the way his ears twitched backwards, Harry was sure the wolfwere was perfectly aware of what they were saying. He stifled his sigh and answered as briefly as he could. “Yes, Malfoy. Why not? He found me in his territory, and he could have killed me. He was the one who asked for my help instead.” He swallowed, and felt the anger moving at the bottom of his stomach for the first time since Voldemort died. It was hot and sweet, like the spiced Firewhisky Mrs. Weasley had given him when he got out of hospital after treatment for his Dark Arts allergy. “They killed his pups. Babies.”

            “But he’s a magical creature,” Malfoy insisted, his hand on Harry’s shoulder as if he needed help getting through the darkness despite the lights on their wands. Well, maybe he did. “And an unusual one. He has no reason to trust or work with humans.”

            “I think he’s working pretty well with us right now,” Harry pointed out. The wolfwere had drawn level with Klein, and said something to her. She paused for a moment, then nodded and followed him. He slid down a small hill, and Harry prepared to do the same thing, although he knew he would make much more noise when he did. “He’s leading us to our enemies.”

            Malfoy said nothing, but made a discontented humming noise under his breath. Then he changed the subject, and Harry again thought how differently he was acting in the Forest as opposed to the school. Could someone paying attention to him really revive him that much? I should try it more when we get back to Hogwarts. “I was following you.”

            “Yeah,” Harry said, and kept the contempt out of his voice with an effort. “I, uh, know that by now.”

            “I mean,” Malfoy said, and suddenly he was leaning a lot nearer, almost looming now, “I was following you long enough to notice some of the ingredients you were gathering. Why in the world would you need ingredients for a Resurrection Potion, Potter? You’ve got coming back from the dead down to an artform.”

            Harry stared into the darkness and breathed slowly for a moment, so slowly that both Klein and the wolfwere glanced back. Malfoy, of course, had taken his hand from Harry’s shoulder by then and was walking along with big, bright eyes trained on the Forest ahead. Klein and the wolfwere turned back, and Harry made his decision.

            If there was anyone Snape would trust with the secret of this potion, it was Malfoy. Malfoy had been his darling little pet and probably the best Potions student in the classes Snape taught. But Snape hadn’t said that Harry could tell anyone, and he hadn’t mentioned Malfoy as an exception. Harry would have to visit Snape again, and ask, and see if he could get permission to tell the git.

            Who would probably be intolerable until Harry did have permission, asking and hinting and sniffing around. But, well, tough.

            “Well?” Malfoy pressed, and his voice had claws in it, sharper than the wolfwere’s.

            Harry sighed. “It’s for someone else,” he said. “Someone I can’t tell you about, because they don’t trust anyone.” Not that Snape really trusts me, but he trusts some points of my character. “I’ll have to ask them if I can tell.”

            They walked along in silence for a minute or so, while Malfoy turned that over in his mind. Then he said, “Not good enough.”

            “Not good enough?” Harry demanded, lowering his voice just in time from a yowl to a hiss of outrage so Klein and the wolfwere wouldn’t take an interest in the conversation. “What the fuck do you mean, not good enough?”

            “I mean,” Malfoy said, his voice so thick with what Harry suspected was delight that he wanted to punch him, “that I heard what you were saying to yourself before I revealed myself to you.”

            “You mean, stumbled into sight,” Harry muttered, and kept an eye on Klein and the wolfwere. They hadn’t stopped and started listening behind them yet, but they could do that any minute.

            “We shall agree to disagree on the means of my entrance, shan’t we?” Malfoy said pleasantly, with an undercurrent in his voice that said they had better agree on that. “But what I meant, Potter, is simple enough. I have material to blackmail you, and simply knowing who you want the Resurrection Potion for isn’t good enough, not when it might not be information that matters to me. I want you to do something for me.”

            Harry kept his gaze straight ahead for a few minutes, not so much because he was worried about Klein and the wolfwere as because he had to. Then he said, “I’m researching the spell that made your friends turn against you for you. I told you that I thought you were important enough to pay attention to. And you want more than that? Fuck you, Malfoy.”

            “What?” Malfoy sounded startled.

            Harry turned around to confront him, keeping his voice low enough that neither Klein nor the wolfwere should take alarm. “Go ahead and tell people I was sneaking around the Forest after midnight. No one will believe that I really want to brew this Resurrection Potion, which I’ve never heard of, except maybe Slughorn. Everyone else sensible knows I don’t have a trace of Potions ability. And meanwhile, I’ll just try again. I have resources available to me that you can’t imagine, Malfoy, thanks to my name.” He watched Malfoy grimace as though he had bitten into rotten fruit, and nodded at him. “Yes, I know you don’t like thinking about that, and about how much your own name is diminished. Too fucking bad. You can tell on me. Go ahead. But I won’t give you the power to blackmail me.”

            He turned around again and marched through the fallen leaves with immense dignity—even though part of him, in the back of his mind, was laughing at that, and at the words he’d said to Malfoy. Sure, Malfoy would tell on him, and then he’d be reduced to getting the ingredients for Snape’s potion by owl order. A fine sight that would be.

            But he really didn’t care, he realized as he began to cool down a bit. That was the beauty of it. He would do this if he had to, because he had promised Snape. And he was never going to allow someone to blackmail him. If it happened once, other people would do it again, and again, and he would never be free. Not when he was a celebrity the way he was.

            “Potter,” Malfoy began behind him, in what sounded like a more reconciled tone.

            Klein said, in a voice that made it clear she expected to be obeyed instantly no matter what other people were thinking about at the time, “Down.”

            Harry dropped to the ground and rolled, getting his wand out from under him. He kicked Malfoy’s leg, because the git was crouching but not far enough, and made him fall over.

            A good thing, too, as the night came alive with vivid green shooting stars, at about head-height.

*

            unneeded: Harry would be glad to turn over some of the potions work if it turns out that Snape will let him tell Malfoy about the potion.

            SP777: Harry thinks something weird is going on with Draco, the way he alternates between weak at school and strong in the Forest.

            And unicorn water means exactly what Harry thinks it does.
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Parsimony