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The Descent of Magic	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—The Flight of the Letters

            Draco smiled as the owl deposited the letter in his hand. It was an owl of the same sort that delivered the Daily Prophet every day, brown and ordinary but marked by powerful wings and talons. Draco knew who it was from, and he took his time opening the envelope so he could take a long, luxurious sip of his tea beforehand.

            Dear Mr. Malfoy,

            What you have to say sounds most interesting. As long as the time and day do not change, I can be at the doorstep of Mr. Potter’s house on the seventh at four to cover it.

            Your servant,

            Rosemary Dibs.

            Draco rolled his eyes at the closing signature, and then shrugged. Dibs had made her way in the newspaper with that kind of caution; she was the one who printed her stories last, but full of the kinds of facts that would make her audience sit up and take notice, because she had spent time researching and found the most interesting or exciting or sensational news. It was none of Draco’s business if Dibs wanted to lie on her way to greatness.

            He set the letter aside, wondering idly as he did so if Potter had received any reply to his Longbottom letter.

*

            “This is really true?”

            Harry felt his face soften as he looked at Neville. His friend was leaning through the Floo as if he was going to change his mind about just making a firecall and visit Harry right then and there. His hand shook on the letter Harry had written him, and he was swallowing again and again, swiping at his lips with the back of his hand.

            “Yes, it is,” Harry said. “As far as we can determine,” he had to add next. “If there’s something else that would explain the pure-blood pattern of not having children as well, we haven’t found it yet.”

            From the look on Neville’s face, he’d only heard the first part of what Harry said. He was turning the letter over and over in his hand again, his mouth still slightly open. Harry understood. The words were one thing, one kind of promise, but they weren’t something that Neville could touch and hold the way he could the letter.

            “When and where is this conference you mentioned going to be held?” Neville asked softly then, looking up.

            Harry leaned back in his chair and carefully levered his leg into a new position; his knee was bothering him that morning. “At four on the seventh, in front of my house,” he said.

            Neville thought about it for a second, and then nodded. “I should be able to get away. My seventh-years need a few lessons on their own with the Devil’s Snare, anyway.”

            Harry traded a smile with Neville, and then the fireplace went dark. Harry turned to the list of pure-blood names and crossed off the Longbottoms. Malfoy had owled him that afternoon to tell him Dibs would be the reporter. That left…a lot of people to go, really, but their letters would all go to Malfoy anyway.

            Harry put down the quill and leaned back in his chair, willing his heart to stop leaping and bounding so fast. But the grin remained on his face, despite the fact that this really wasn’t a happy discovery and he knew some people would hate him for it. That didn’t matter. Things were moving. They were on their way.

            He was alive again.

*

            Draco stepped out of the Apparition point and nearly collided with a fat wizard in a yellow jumper whom he didn’t recognize. He stepped back with a murmured apology and watched the wizard tug his black-clad wife and a single child along by the hands. There was a set to his face that Draco had become used to seeing in his fireplace over the past week.

            Anticipation and urgency, both at once. These were pure-bloods who were anxious to learn why they might not have had more than one child, but at the same time, they were more than a little apprehensive about what they might have to change.

            Draco smiled, and lifted his head. He could feel something like blood, something like joy, dancing through his veins. It connected him to the crowd forming and eddying in front of Potter’s house, and made him breathe more deeply and walk with his head held high. He knew what they would do next, what they wanted, what they suspected, what they feared.

            And he knew what to do about it, how to make them react and run in one direction with a simple crack of the whip. It was a wonderful feeling, to know what they would do and how to make them do it.

            He was the expert here. Not the expert on public relations that Granger fancied herself as, or the expert on house-elves that, again, Granger would claim to be, but the expert on how his own kind moved and breathed and thought.

            Potter and Granger would do nothing successful without him.

            That was what I wanted, he thought in wonder as he moved and flowed with the crowd towards the doorstep where Potter was preparing to give the wizarding world a brand new problem. Something to do, something to get me out of the house. It’s all very well designing new theoretical potions, but how many people ever read the journals? How many even of the ones who do can give me good competition? I need stronger enemies, more rush and pull and push and risk.

            Now he would have them.

            He reached the far edge of the crowd, which surrounded the rows of chairs Potter and Granger had placed out, and made his way towards the front of it and the platform where Potter and Granger sat. Granger, he was pleased to see, had made an effort, wearing black button-up dress robes with white lace edging on the cuffs. A conservative outfit for a witch about to make a revolutionary announcement. It was the best mixture of both worlds that Draco could imagine.

            Potter, though…Draco narrowed his eyes. His clothes weren’t scruffy, like the ones he wore inside his house, but they weren’t dress robes, either. They were plain black trousers, and a black shirt on top of that. Nothing horrible, but not conservative in the way that Granger’s clothes were.

            Perhaps that was for the best, Draco admitted slowly to himself as he climbed the makeshift stone stage Granger had Transfigured the doorstep into to stand beside them. Potter was widely-known for not wearing dress robes, and to change things now, just like standing, would be to encourage people not to trust him.

            And Potter didn’t look as though he took this less than seriously. And wearing dress robes, it might have been painful for him to support his leg.

            Draco scowled, and used that expression to greet both Granger’s equal scowl and Potter’s smile in his direction. He hated being forced to acknowledge that maybe his enemies had a point.

            Except that those wizards out there are more likely to become your enemies, he thought, as he turned and took his chair facing the crowd. The silent men and women staring at him, watching, pressing their children close to them and looking back and forth between their three faces as though wondering what could bring these three notorious people together.

            Granger stood up, smiling. She made a speech that Draco knew few people listened to. Most of those in the crowd wouldn’t listen to her because of her heritage, and the rest would get lost in the platitudes.

            No, they were waiting to hear the truth. And the best way to present that truth was fast and fierce and uncompromising. Draco felt the words forming in his head, and he leaned back and sipped at the glass of water Potter’s house-elf, who had a fondness for him, had placed in front of him on the table as he waited.

*

            They didn’t have enough chairs for everybody.

            Harry thought that made some sense, on one level. Even people they hadn’t contacted themselves would hear rumors of this, and of course they would want to make sure that they didn’t miss out. And they would bring members of their families who might be concerned, too. It made sense that they wouldn’t be able to predict how many people would show up.

            But he still found himself freezing when he looked at the ocean of faces beneath him. He hadn’t seen these many people since he was hurt—

            Then he clamped control of himself down over his body, which wanted to storm and scream and run away in panic. No, that was not going to happen. For one thing, he would look silly flopping on the stage like a stranded fish.

            That made him loosen the panic in his throat, and actually listen to Hermione’s welcome speech, which so far was being greeted with stern faces from beneath them and little applause.

            “—relates to the intimate circumstances of our lives.” Hermione had agreed not to talk about house-elves until Harry and Malfoy had a chance to do so, mainly because she wouldn’t stop once she started, but Harry could see how much she wanted to. She worried her lip between her teeth, and spoke more slowly than normal. “And my friend Harry Potter is the one who discovered it.” She turned and held out her hand to Harry.

            Harry swallowed back what he instinctively wanted to say to that, and faced his public. He opened his mouth.

            He caught his breath back when he felt Malfoy’s hand on his beneath the table. He looked towards him, and Malfoy nodded slightly and whispered, “Let me address them first. If I may,” he added, when Hermione looked at him with her mouth open.

            Harry blinked, not sure whether he felt more relief at being granted the reprieve or surprise for the politeness. But he trusted Malfoy in a way that he knew Hermione didn’t. He trusted his commitment to the idea, at least, and the way it would be received among pure-bloods.

            And maybe Malfoy even felt some of the same desire he did, the desire to get this knowledge spread so that wizards could stop hurting their own chances of having children.

            Harry leaned back and nodded to Malfoy. Malfoy stood up and stepped around the table, holding the eyes of those in the crowd. Harry followed his gaze and saw some people relaxing, as though they were hot and Malfoy was the cooling breeze that would soothe them. Harry raised his eyebrows. He was right. They’ll listen more easily to someone they think is a pure-blood like them.

            “My name is Draco Malfoy,” Malfoy said, and Harry knew as if it had been whispered in his ear that he wasn’t doing that because he was afraid that people in the crowd didn’t recognize him. It was a shared bond between them, a way of giving family credentials and proving to them that he had a stake in this, too. “I have a single son. In my case, my wife did not wish to bear more, and we were lucky enough to have an heir within a year of getting married.

            “But many of you—many of you have no choice.” Malfoy lowered his voice and took a step towards the edge of the stage. “Some of you have lost multiple children in the womb, or at birth. Some of you have children who cannot participate in your heritage.” That was as close as he would come to the word “Squib,” Harry thought, which, surprisingly, both Malfoy and Hermione had agreed they should avoid. “Some of you simply have not had the children you wanted, despite the best spells and the best Healers.” He paused.

            There were heads in the crowd nodding now, and downcast faces, and staring ones. Not everyone was reacting in the same way, Harry thought, but at least the reactions seemed mainly to favor their cause at the moment.

            “Some of you,” Malfoy went on, and his voice was gaining strength, “will have sought the answer in Dark magic. Some in books. Some in ancient historical records, and the Ministry’s Archives. But the answer is closer to home, in our houses themselves.”

            A few people looked faintly sick. Harry was sure they were thinking of something environmental, something about the bricks or walls or floors of their houses that they could have made safe for their children if they had only known.

            “And for the answer to that dilemma,” Malfoy said, and moved a step back, “I give you the one who discovered it.”

            He spread his hand to Harry, in a gesture so near Hermione’s that Harry blinked. Then he sighed. So Malfoy wasn’t going to try claim credit for his research? Harry licked his lips and tried to calm his churning stomach. It would have been one solution.

            But not the best one, he reminded himself as he turned outwards and faced the crowd again. He had always hated public speaking, but sometimes one had to. Just the same way that he’d had to kill Voldemort and fight in the war.

            And this was a war he wanted to fight far more than that one ever had been.

            “Hello,” he began. “You know who I am.”

*

            Draco restrained the urge to roll his eyes, or to shout that they did indeed know who Harry fucking Potter was, but why didn’t he tell them again, just for taste?

            Instead, he leaned back and watched Potter, watched the way he handled the crowd, and paid more attention to that than the words. They knew what he would say. While Draco could improvise, and Granger could and would deliver her plans word-perfect no matter what the crowd would listen to, Potter fell somewhere in between them. He had discussed his ideas to death with them, but not his words.

            Now, he spoke quietly, with the Sonorus Charm rather than a shout carrying his voice to all parts of the crowd. Dibs, in the front row, listened to him silently except for the rasp of her quill. Most of the rest fell silent, too, as they listened to Potter speak about the covenant and the kinship between magical creatures and magical humans, and how, in the future and the past both, changes should be made.

            They listened until Potter said, “And the closest relationship we have is with house-elves. The research I’ve done has shown that, in past ages when the people who owned them treated house-elves kindly, they achieved larger families. When they treated them badly—”

            “It’s always been left up to individual families to treat house-elves as they will,” Dibs said quietly, looking up from her notes. “Are you proposing to change that, Mr. Potter?”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t like Dibs to interrupt when someone was talking. She was known for her politeness and her ability to coax a story out of someone foaming at the mouth by simply standing up to them.

            Unless she’s doing it as a test. Or a way to make sure that she gets this story before the shouting starts.

            “I can’t force anyone to do anything,” Potter said, and gave her that big smile that seemed to belong to a village idiot rather than the destroyer of the Dark Lord. “But I rather think that some families might value their ability to have children more than their ability to clip house-elves’ ears or hang their heads on the wall after they die.”

            Dibs smiled and sat back, her quill tapping against her parchment. Draco was sure that she had got what she wanted, one way or another.

            “We can’t—we can’t change things like that,” said a tall woman in the middle of the crowd, who Draco knew from her face must be a scion of the Highfeathers. “You can’t tell us to.”

            Potter raised a hand. “As I said, I can’t force anyone.”

            And that’s the problem, and the reason that you’re so effective, Draco thought to him. You could if you wanted to. If anyone could, it’s you. If your power and your reputation and your debts were laid side-by-side, you would have the power to force anyone to do anything you liked. They’re wary of you, and they don’t understand why you hold back.

            I think I’m starting to, a little bit.

            “We can’t change anything,” repeated the woman, and folded her arms. Draco thought it made her look ridiculous when her opponent was a seated invalid, unless one had seen the scar on that particular invalid’s forehead. “That would destroy the way we are, if we start bowing to the whims of an individual.”

            “I don’t ask you to,” Potter said, and his voice rang with an echo that might have been irritation, for a moment. He dismissed the emotion with one shake of his shaggy head, though. “But I do ask you to look at the evidence, and see if you can see your way clear to changing things. If not with house-elves, with other magical creatures. The way you think of them. The way you act with them. Reach out to centaurs, or stop hunting unicorns, or contribute to a dragon sanctuary. That worked, with some wizards in the past.”

            “We can’t change,” the Highfeather woman repeated flatly, and then she turned and shoved her way out of the crowd.

            Draco counted the ones who followed. Two families, four, six. And then no one else. The rest of the people pressed closer to the stage, staring at Potter as if he could put his body between them and this threat the way he had between them and the Dark Lord.

            “How do you know that it’s the way we treat house-elves, and not something else?” the yellow-jumper wizard Draco had seen on his way here shouted.

            That seemed to be the cute for more questions, and they poured their way over Potter like a tide from the sea. But he waved to Granger to collect them, and she moved forwards and started answering one at a time, using a charm that made her voice quiet and steady and impossibly hard to outshout, simply prone to be heard.

            Potter leaned back with his hands behind his head and turned his face from side to side, seeming to count faces, directions, angles, enemies, the ways people were looking at him. He looked far brighter, more alert, than any of the times that Draco had seen him so far.

            Then his eyes found Draco’s, and he smiled, his face falling apart into light.

            Draco smiled back before he thought about it, and then it seemed best to let the expression remain. It was only one. And it would make a good show for the crowd.

            I must think that way.

*

            ChaosLady: Thank you!

            moodysavage: All of those, I think, but also about being taken seriously, which few people in his life now—not even his own son—do.

            SP777: Those are honestly the kinds of things that this Draco would notice.

            unneeded: I think Harry’s magic might work badly with Muggle medicine, yes, and then there’s also the problem of having to explain how and why he needed it. No paperwork in the Muggle world, no convincing story…it might be possible with Obliviation, but Harry doesn’t like to do that.

            Yes, Hugo’s kind of an oik. Hermione does keep trying to talk to him, but it doesn’t work.

            dominique1: They are at least starting to work together.
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The Descent of Magic