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This Enchanted Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3669 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 7
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Chapter Eight--Intricacies of Magic

            "Finite Incantatem."

            The spell blew away the last remnants of the diagnostic one that Harry had cast on the comatose Unspeakable. Harry raised his head and glared in response, pushing his glasses up his nose when they would have fallen. The movement made him pale, and Draco reckoned he'd pulled the wound in his chest tighter than was wise. "Did you have to do that?" Harry hissed. "We were just getting some information here."

            Draco sighed. "No, we weren't." He and Harry had spent the last two hours combing over Unspeakable Retror's body, and it had still yielded no information. He might as well have been a Muggle corpse for anything he told them. Draco had used all the revival spells he knew, and Harry the diagnostic ones, which was a surprisingly large array for someone with such a tendency to anger Healers. Or perhaps not surprisingly large, now that Draco thought about it. Harry must have needed, more than once, to assess how serious a wound was and whether he needed to go to hospital.

            Draco took a deep breath to clear his lungs of the unwanted anger and said, "Harry. What information do you think we're going to find if we remain here?"

            Harry paused, and then the self-importance blew out of him like the spell and left him sagging. He sighed and sat down in the middle of the room where they were keeping Retror's body, stretching his arms over his head. "Nothing, really. What do you think we should do about it?"

            Draco took a glance around the bare stone room for a moment instead of answering. The Unspeakables had removed any artifacts that Harry and Draco could have learned anything from, because secrecy was more important to the Department of Mysteries than the health of their employees. Of course, someone had already moved Retror from the room he'd fallen in, so any chance of examining an undisturbed site was destroyed anyway.

            "I think we should ask those who knew him certain questions," Draco said, watching the walls. Had he detected a flicker of movement in them? He thought he had. If the Unspeakables spied on their words, Draco was at least determined not to make it easy for them. "Such as how long he'd spent around the globes, how often he had touched this one that exploded, whether anyone else had a bad reaction to them, and so on."

            "That's not what you were going to say." Harry narrowed his eyes at him.

            Draco caught his gaze and then glanced at the walls. Harry understood without the need for further explanation, which Draco found impressive. He stood with a brisk snap of his head and walked in the direction of the distant door, his footsteps echoing. Draco tilted his head to the side and thought he could hear the echoes bouncing in places they shouldn't, as though parts of the walls were hollow or close to it.

            "We shouldn't waste time here if we're not going to discover anything," Harry called over his shoulder. "We'll make up a list of witnesses to ask questions of in our office and see how many the Department of Mysteries wants us actually interviewing, how about that?"

            Draco gave whoever was watching a smile to consider and then followed Harry. "That sounds fine to me," he said.

            They preserved a dignified silence throughout the Department, and Draco was sure that more eyes followed them than necessary because of that. He looked at the ceiling, the walls, the hooded grey robes that rustled past them, anything but Harry and the eyes of those that watched them. Let them assume his nose was always in the air. It would probably be better for both him and Harry in the end.

            They reached the door they'd used to enter the Department, and Unspeakable Mellon, the current liaison to other Departments in the Ministry, came in to meet them, her steps surprisingly heavy on the floor for such a small woman. Draco had heard rumors that one of the artifacts she'd examined had turned her feet to stone. That might explain some things. "Were you able to figure out what caused Eliot's loss of magic?" she asked.

            "Still investigating, Unspeakable Mellon," Harry said, and smiled at her, the kind of smile Draco had never seen directed at him. He suspected Harry reserved them for newspaper interviews, which there hadn't been many of since they joined the Socrates Corps. "I promise we'll let you know the instant we find something, though."

            "Of course." Mellon turned her head and stared down the corridor, face so distant that Draco would have believed she was mourning for Retror if not for those eyes in the walls. Mellon was too high up in the Unspeakable hierarchy not to know about them. "Well. I do hope this investigation is concluded quickly."

            So we can quit inviting people from other Departments who ask questions in and go back to playing around with time and space and endangering everyone in Britain, Draco completed the sentence silently.

            Mellon turned and looked at him as if she'd heard that correction. Draco smiled blandly at her--he was good at that, after having to attend Ministry functions that included friends of his parents--and guided Harry out. He realized that he was touching the middle of Harry's back quite often, his hand hovering above it as though there was a weapon there he needed to draw.

            He thought seriously about it, and decided to keep it there. He enjoyed it, and though Harry might not be aware, he walked more briskly and appeared more alert when Draco had his hand on him. And the Unspeakables would already have seen the gesture and be able to use the knowledge against them, if they wanted to. Trying to disguise it now would only make them know Draco knew he was being observed. So he walked sedately along, and waited for the moment Harry would notice.

            He didn't yet do it, though. He waited until they were outside the Ministry, because that was where Draco took him, and walking through Diagon Alley. Then he said, "You don't trust the Unspeakables?"

            "I don't think they'll tell us the truth about anything that concerns the globes," Draco said. "Not when things like that are so much more precious to them than human lives, and they'll downplay the danger to be allowed to go on studying them." He opened the door of a small sandwich shop and nodded into it. Harry stared at him, and Draco remembered they had never been out to eat together, unless one counted meals at their desks as being "out." He smiled at Harry, and let his teeth show. "Come on. I'm hungry, and I don't trust any place in the Ministry to be beyond the Unspeakables' reach, if they want to reach it."

            Harry sighed, paused, then walked in front of him. Draco admired the way his robes flowed behind him, at least until he had to make it clear that he wanted a chicken and cheese sandwich instead of one of the other four varieties the shop served. Then he leaned against the wall to wait, and Harry stood beside him and murmured into his ear.

            "What did you want to ask?"

            Draco closed his eyes, luxuriating for a moment in having his partner near and relatively compliant with him. "Whether Retror had any wandless abilities of note," he murmured. "And any difficulty with Healing magic."

            Harry caught his breath. Then he said, "How can Alexander tell? That's the question I want the answer to the most. Sure, he might know--or think he knows--what we are in the Socrates Corps, but he can't assume that the Unspeakable who examines the globes would be, or Stuart, or Syles."

            "I think we've been asking questions like this from the wrong end," Draco said, and went to fetch his sandwich as the shopgirl waved it at him. He waited until he was sure Harry had his own corned beef sandwich in hand, and then led the way to one of the scarred, battered tables. "We should think about what exactly we know about Alexander, and what we don't."

            "Nothing is what we know," Harry muttered, sitting down and starting to eat his sandwich. He crunched and munched and gulped more than Draco thought was strictly necessary, but at the same time, that he ate at the same table was a level of trust in Draco he never would have displayed a month ago. He'd be watching for secret potions or poisons instead. "Except that he makes globes, that he got an infection from undiluted blood--and even there, we have to consider whether Leah was lying to us--and that he hunts accompanied by nightmares."

            Draco nodded and took a more delicate bite of his own sandwich. Perhaps he could model good behavior and Harry would follow him. "Exactly. And that means we should consider why he has those companions. Larkin's were the ghosts of his victims. Alto--we know how she made them."

            Harry reached across the table and let his hand rest on Draco's elbow for a moment. Draco wiped at the crumbs clinging there when he let go, but he did dip his head in a brief, acknowledging nod.

            "So what do the nightmares represent?" Draco asked, and took another bite. Harry seemed to have forgotten his sandwich. Draco wondered if he would have to model eating as well. "Why them? And why do they change when different people look at them, and from moment to moment?"

            "I assumed we knew that," Harry said, blinking at him. "Because they're literal nightmares, of course. Everyone's dreams and their ideas of what's most frightening are different."

            Draco paused, and then had to put the sandwich down. "I had thought of that, and dismissed it," he murmured, "because I took the nightmare description less literally than you did. You are brilliant, sometimes, Harry."

            "Oh, sometimes," Harry said, and rolled his eyes. "Have to have that qualifying word in there, don't you?"

            But he was flushing, and Draco took a moment to look into his red face before he turned away, bit into his sandwich again, chewed, swallowed, and said, "Well. That would explain one thing, at least, why they change. But what could have happened in Alexander's life to cause nightmares?"

            "Too many things."

            Draco turned back sharply, because something in Harry's tone caused him to think Harry would faint right there. Harry caught his gaze and shook his head, then straightened up and began to eat his sandwich again, as if to show that he could.

            Draco decided to be gracious and forget--or appear to forget--about the personal information Harry had revealed. "You're right that that's still the wrong question to ask," he said. "Too many possible answers. What could we do that would narrow down the field and give us some real information?"

            "Talk to Leah again, maybe." Harry licked his fingers, and Draco tossed him a napkin. Harry let it fall to the table, and grinned at him in what Draco would have had to be a Squib not to recognize as a challenge. "But we don't know that she'll tell us the truth, or that she knows everything. So she can't be our only source of information. Didn't Alexander have relatives? I thought that file said he did."

            "It also said that they moved out of the country years ago, and no one has their current addresses." Draco leaned his head back and closed his eyes, struggling to remember. Something in the file had drawn his notice, hadn't it? Something, a name, that drifted under the surface of his mind. If Harry would leave him in peace for a few minutes, perhaps he could recall it.

            Harry didn't comment. He settled for finishing his own sandwich and going to get another. Draco sighed out a small puff of air. Yes, they did work well together, if Harry could tell without speaking that he wanted silence.

            Forget about Harry for the moment. Concentrate and find some other way of pulling that name back to you.

            He remembered something his mother had told him--and he did not like thinking about her, but in this case he pared his memory down to her words and the cool hand on his shoulder and nothing else, and immersed himself in it.

            She had told him that he could make his mind like a glass palace, with a large foundation on the bottom that contained the memories he wouldn't access that much and well-lit rooms on the upper floors that he would walk into often. Nothing ever vanished from the mind; even Memory Charms covered over memories instead of destroying them. There would be ways down to the bottom rooms in a properly-organized mind. And of course pure-bloods always had those.

            The memory of the file wasn't old. Draco drifted through the darkness of cellars he hadn't visited in years, and then fetched up against the name that blazed at him like a sunlit sword.

            "Margolotta Rosier," he said aloud, and blinked, and found himself sitting across the table from Harry, who had paused with his sandwich in his hand but thankfully didn't have his mouth open and full of half-chewed food. "She was Alexander's mother. A pure-blood, and of a family that has some family connection with mine."

            "On the Black or the Malfoy side?" Harry actually sounded normal as he said that. Draco studied him, but Harry shrugged and met his eyes fearlessly. "And does it matter that you've been disowned?"

            "She doesn't necessarily know that if she's been out of the country for years," Draco said. "And she's connected to me on both sides, actually. Not the most prominent family in the world, but known for the Dark Arts and their dislike of Muggles, the Rosiers. She might have left to get away from the scrutiny she assumed would fall on her after the war. I can contact her."

            "What kind of favor will you have to grant her?" Harry leaned forwards and lowered his voice. "I just don't want someone in the Ministry to find out and use that fact against you."

            Draco couldn't help it. He reached out and grasped Harry's wrist, rubbing back and forth with his thumb to feel the pulse. Harry started and nearly pulled away, but then paused and let his hand rest there, passive.

            "We won't let them find out," Draco said. "We don't have to put all the facts in the reports." He paused, and then stared at Harry. "Have you been?"

            Harry rolled his eyes. "Of course not. Half the time they wouldn't believe what I managed to survive, anyway." His voice had a crispness that Draco hadn't heard before, but he moved on before Draco could ask him questions. "But let's make sure we make the call from a secure location not on Ministry premises. That way, they can't scold us for letting facts about this out in the open, anyway."

            Draco nodded. "And now, the problem of the globes. I wonder if we haven't considered his flaw the wrong way around, as well."

            "His flaw is making the globes, I thought," Harry said, licking at his front teeth. Draco glanced away. "What else could it be?"

            "But he also seems to know who has the possibility of wandless magic, and I doubt he knew every one of his victims before he became one," Draco pointed out. "And Retror? The Unspeakables don't associate with anyone outside the Ministry, and we know Alexander didn't work there. How would he have known?"

            "It must be some subtlety or spell in the globes themselves," Harry said, frowning. "Wouldn't that make sense? That they act like that, or explode, or can be used as weapons, against people with the potential to become--what he is. That's why so many people could handle them and not experience anything wrong, but other people had the dreams and the headaches."

            Draco paused. Then he said, "That makes the most sense of anything we've thought of so far," to disguise the way that his chest seemed to flutter with the pounding of his heart. "And his flaw would be not only to create globes, but to create globes that do this."

            "Whatever this is," Harry said, and tugged at his hair. "We still haven't figured that out. I thought he was attacking us because he wanted to save the people we hunt, but his independent attacks against others don't bear that out. But trapping them in their minds doesn't seem to be the goal, either. No one who's had the dreams that we've talked to has chosen to stay."

            "Retror might," Draco had to point out. "Perhaps that's why he's in a coma and has stayed that way. We can't exactly wake him up right now to ask him, though."

            Harry sighed. "And he might have had the dreams and exposure to the globes before, but we wouldn't know because the Unspeakables are so bloody secretive about everything. Even if he told someone else in the Department of Mysteries, they might or might not tell us." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Draco thought about pointing out that he had crumbs in his eyebrows, and decided not to. That might be the kind of thing Harry wouldn't want to know right now. "So how are we going to figure that out?"

            "You work on that while I interview Margolotta," Draco said firmly. "But, as you said, we need a secure location outside the Ministry."

            Harry blinked. "My flat?" he offered. "It does have a Floo connection, and if someone tried to trace you back, well, my flat has wards on it that prevent most people from finding out that sort of thing."

            "Yes," Draco said, more quickly than he wanted to, and without considering the reason for the quickness. He stood and cast a quick Cleaning Charm on the table, which made the shopgirl give him a blinking glance. Well, let her think he had done it out of the goodness of his heart and not because that made him more difficult to follow away from the table or work magic on anything he'd touched. "Lead the way."

*

            Harry winced a little as he unlocked the door of his flat. He hadn't planned on company today--or any time soon, since he always went over to Ron and Hermione's house when he wanted to visit them--and he wondered what Malfoy, used to the spacious expanses of the Socrates Corps office and the Manor, would make of it.

            It wasn't as if there were shirts strewn everywhere and crumpled, dirty Auror robes on the floor. It was more that Harry knew there was soot practically ingrained in the stones around the fireplace, and that he didn't have any furniture in the drawing room but a pair of rat-eaten chairs he'd found in a Muggle shop and liked the look of. The kitchen had a permanent, lingering smell of curry and, for some reason, bread. And the door to Harry's bedroom spent all its time closed and locked except when he was actually asleep in it, because no one needed to see as many photographs of Lionel as he had in there.

            Draco stood in the doorway, looking around in a slow fashion that meant he would notice every detail. Harry winced again and cast an Obscuring Charm that should make the doorway to the kitchen look a little wider and better-lit. "The Floo powder's on the mantle," he said, and took off his cloak, then reached for Draco's.

            Draco took it off himself, and for a moment Harry thought he would fold it and sit on it in preference to the dirty chairs. Then he smiled and handed it to Harry. "This is a charming place," he murmured, more graceful in his lie than Harry had sometimes seen him in the telling of some truths. "But I expected it would have more of you in it."

            Harry snorted. "What? Like Orders of Merlin on the wall and Gryffindor colors?" Nothing in the flat was gold or red, and his Orders of Merlin spent all their time in a bottom drawer in his bedroom. He suspected the Ministry regretted ever giving them to him, with all the trouble he'd got into since he became an Auror.

            "Like a picture of a Healer on the wall with darts in it," Draco said, and smiled more broadly at him. "Or files scattered about. I know that you take some home and read them there." He was staring at the mantle now, although it was perfectly ordinary, somewhat yellow wood. The jar holding the Floo powder was a bit odd for its surroundings, polished silver, but then, it had been a gift from Hermione.

            "I don't care as much about the Healers as they do about me." Harry shrugged, to screw the knot of tension out of the shoulders, and hung up both their cloaks. "And I don't take files home all that often when I'm not trying to figure out the machinations of a crazy twisted."

            Draco glanced up as the door shut and the wards engaged with a buzz that made the air around them shiver. "I'm surprised that you have ones that strong," he murmured.

            Harry couldn't help it; he laughed. "Really?"

            "On thinking about it, that's rather a stupid question, isn't it?" Draco leaned back against the wall and folded his arms, the only thing that showed he wasn't entirely at ease here. "Of course I should have realized that you would have personal enemies and possible twisted to keep off as well as those who might like to raise the Dark Lord. And then there's your general paranoia." His eyes lingered on Harry, with a weird intensity in them, as if he liked being able to look at Harry for as long as he wanted.

            Harry stared back, then shivered and turned away, moving abruptly towards the kitchen. "I'm going to fix some tea and check on these files," he said, waving the files on the case they'd stopped by their office to find. "You can begin the Floo call if you want to."

            Draco didn't move for some minutes, long enough for Harry to mostly boil the water for the tea and shuffle the files around on the table several times and cough loudly. Then Harry heard the clink of the silver jar as it opened, and the distinctive whoosh of the flames. Draco's voice was too low for him to make out the address called, though he reckoned it was the one belonging to someone who could tell him where Rosier was.

            Harry folded his arms in front of him on the wall and beat his head against them gently. Could you be more obvious, genius? He's going to decide you have a crush, and there's the end of the best partnership you could have right now.

            He sighed and straightened. The only thing he could do was try to control himself around Draco and hope they got some work done on the case. Being too cool and aloof would probably destroy their partnership in a different way.

            And he should remain firm on taking up that leave of absence. He needed time away from everything to meditate on his emotions and decide what they meant. A place with mountains and clear air and butterflies somewhere, that was the trick.

            He sat down at the kitchen table and opened the first file, doing his best to imagine different purposes for the globes as he did so. If I was a mad twisted who didn't get that way through study of the Dark Arts, what would I want to do to other twisted?
- 7
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- 9
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This Enchanted Life