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A Reign of Silence	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3889 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eight--A Refreshing Interlude

            "We know little more about Ernhardt than we did when we went to Cuthbert's Corner."

            Draco, watching from the corner of his eye for dark dogs, only nodded when Jenkins came up to him. She had started the conversation, and her words made no sense to him; to him, they had learned a good deal about Ernhardt's goals and the directions he would probably take next. So he waited for her to make sense, and watched the trail in front of them in the meanwhile.

            "We do not know what he wanted when he was there. We do not know why he set the traps that he did when he had no grand secrets to protect. We do not know what he might have done with the people he captured."

            Draco grimaced. This was the part, he supposed, where he apologized for keeping what he thought he'd discovered in the Potions lab secret. Harry hadn't said anything, either, and that left Jenkins and Warren with nothing more than the conviction that Ernhardt was a sadist, given the skeleton in chains.

            But Draco had never been good at apologizing, so he preferred to skip the whole tedious business and go straight to the giving of information. "I think that he was drinking the blood of twisted. Either that, or feeding them his blood."

            Jenkins stopped walking. Warren and Harry were behind her, and they sped up a little. Draco turned around to face her. Jenkins had drawn her wand, and while she had it lowered at the moment, Draco had already seen how fast that could change.

            "Why would he wish to do anything so useless?" Jenkins shook her head. "Note that I do not comment on the madness of his plans. He is twisted, and madness can be assumed. But what good would taking blood do?"

            "Twisted can be infected or created by drinking the blood of other twisted," Harry said, taking the plunge and moving around both of their temporary partners to stand beside Draco. "We discovered that fact in an earlier case of ours."

            "You didn't think to share it." Jenkins shifted a step towards them, but it was the sort of sideways step that someone would take in battle.

            "You still don't entirely trust us," Harry said. "And when have we ever talked about our cases before this? I only know one time you even worked with Draco, and that was during the Larkin case when I was in hospital. You haven't worked with me. You leaped to the conclusion that I must have killed your partner earlier today. Tell me what in those facts would make us trust you."

            "This is important," Warren said, coming up beside Jenkins and laying a hand on her arm. Harry didn't think it would calm her down so much as hold her back temporarily. "You do not know how important."

            "Because of Ernhardt?" Draco felt confident to speak again, although it meant both of them were suddenly paying attention to him.

            "Because of the honor of our Corps," Jenkins said. "And the way that the rest of the Aurors will treat all of us if he survives and goes free."

            "You said other things mattered more than that when you were proposing to work with us." Harry shook his head. "We think Ernhardt was collecting the blood of the twisted, maybe drinking it because he wanted to see if he could acquire their gifts that way. It probably wouldn't work because he was already twisted. But he might also have fed them his blood. Maybe that would create an army of people whose bodies he could leap into, later."

            Warren stiffened. Jenkins gave a sharp bark of something that was not laughter. "If it wouldn't work one way, it shouldn't work the other way."

            "This is a new branch of magic, for all purposes," Draco said, and shrugged with one shoulder. "The Ministry only recently defined and identified twisted. This could have happened for years, but without the proper framework to understand it, no one knew what was happening."

            "We have agreed that the Ministry's definition of twisted needs some work," Warren began, in the same condescending tone that she would have used if they were arguing for the Ministry's definition.

            "Yes," Draco said. "But we still use it for now. We're still using it to understand what happened with Ernhardt and the kind of opponent we're facing." He spoke in the eminently polite and reasonable tone that Professor McGonagall had used to speak to his mother when she went to Hogwarts to complain about Draco's marks in Transfiguration, and saw that it was having much the same effect on Warren that it had on his mother. Her eyebrows drew down, her shoulders hunching as if she was about to take flight. And yet, Draco had said nothing that she could actually object to. Draco smiled at her and continued, "This is what happened to at least one twisted in the past we know of, infection by drinking someone else's blood. We need to take the possibility seriously."

            Jenkins opened her mouth. Draco leaned forwards slightly, interested to see what side she would come down on. She had been practical in the recent past, but she tended to side with her partner.

            Then the air around them ignited, and flat, crushed rats poured out of it, running towards them on legs that rocked and wobbled, writhing with what Draco thought at first were tentacles and then realized were giant maggots. Their mouths were open, their carrion-scented breath washing into the air. Their squeaks were high enough to hurt Draco's ears.

            Draco whirled to the side, and saw Warren and Jenkins take up a similar position at the same moment as he felt Harry's back bump solidly against his. I reckon Ernhardt didn't leave the outside of his house undefended after all.

*

            Harry remembered the way the last rat had exploded, the one they found in the house Ernhardt had been using while he was Head Auror, and the first thing he did was fling up a shield. Then he studied the rats more closely. Where had they come from, and why had they appeared now, of all times?

            The lead rat reared up on its hind legs and moved its front paws in odd, ritualistic patterns, as if beckoning the others forwards. After a moment, Harry realized that was, in fact, what was happening. The other rats separated into wings as the lead rat's legs separated, and moved off in the directions that its maggots pointed.

            Once you get past the grossness of it all, it's actually rather clever.

            Obviously, the lead rat should be the first one to go, but Harry's own shield was preventing him from getting off a curse that way. He tensed, counting, and readying the curse on his tongue, watching the lead rat all the while, to make sure it wasn't suddenly going to drop to all fours and dart off in a different direction.

            But the rat remained where it was, and from the waves of curses that spread out from Jenkins's and Warren's wands, destroying other individuals, it seemed neither of them had noticed. Harry reached back, touched Draco's shoulder, and nodded.

            Draco followed his gaze and understood at once. He raised a covering fire of hexes that made the rats have to divide or be speared and chopped by the blades and axes that appeared from thin air, while Harry dropped the shield for a moment and aimed straight at the lead rat.

            Of course, that was the moment when the other rats began to explode, but Harry had his focus now. He ignored the slimy feeling of half-rotted flesh covering him, and his curse hit the leader.

            The leader, turning to multicolored dust, made an attempt to run after all, but its maggots had already crumbled, and its body did the same thing a moment later. The rats promptly spread out in all directions, some trying to escape, some attacking each other.

            Warren and Jenkins finished them off in seconds. Draco shook Harry's hand, grinned, and turned to face the other Aurors--probably to carry on their conversation as if nothing had happened, Harry knew. Draco liked gestures like that.

            But Warren started a new conversation before Draco could. "What was that?" she demanded, frowning at Harry. "How did you know which rat to strike?"

            "It was obvious which one led them, when you started looking." Harry kept his voice down. "It pointed them certain ways. They traveled those ways. It wasn't hard, and it wasn't Dark, and my mind hasn't been invaded by Ernhardt, if that's what you're implying."

            Jenkins and Warren exchanged one of those glances that Harry found exasperating, because he couldn't read it. On the other hand, he reckoned that he and Draco probably looked as exasperating from the outside. He kept his mouth shut, and finally Jenkins said, "I would not have implied so."

            "Don't let your partner imply it, then," Draco said smartly, and turned away. "Are we going to the Forbidden Forest? Or are we going to stand here and let Ernhardt strike at us again?"

            "Neither, right away," Jenkins said. "We need time to rest and recover from what happened here, and we should make a vague interim report to the Ministry so that they will not try to assign us other cases in the meantime."

            "More urgent for you than for us," Draco said. "After all, you might have other cases to work, while it's considered that we deserve this shit assignment for letting everything in the Head Auror's office go to shit."

            "You still need time to rest," said Warren. "Neither of you are at full strength after the spells you performed--although still impressive," she added, nodding at Harry as if that compliment could make up for her doubt about his motives.

            Maybe it does. Harry found that he didn't really want to argue anything like that. He shrugged a little and said, "Yes, I could do with a night's sleep in my own bed and fresh plans in the morning."

            Draco frowned at him. Harry met his eyes, and let him see the weariness he would have kept carefully concealed from Warren and Jenkins if this were any other set of circumstances. Draco sighed and nodded. "Let's go, then."

            He's more like me than he knows, Harry thought as they Apparated. He'll do things for the sake of his partner that he won't do for himself.

            But bringing it up right now would only start another argument that Harry didn't want to have, so he waited until they had worked through the wards around his home and were in the middle of the drawing room. Then he sighed and turned to Draco. "What do you need more right now, food or rest?"

            "A shower," Draco said, wrinkling his nose at the rat flesh drying on his sleeve. "And you're sharing it with me."

            Harry smiled. Although he felt a lot like one of Macgeorge's zombies himself, he was sure the shower would refresh him. "What did you have in mind?"

*

            Draco closed his eyes for a long moment, slumping against the wall as Harry's hands moved gently over his back, digging into the tense muscles, lingering on his arse as if Harry were imagining all the many, many things he could do with it. Then they moved on, and Draco sighed as Harry washed his hair, dragging out the strands, massaging shampoo into them the way he'd massaged soap into Draco's skin.

            Cuthbert's Corner had been harder to survive than Draco had reckoned on.

            And this sort of challenge will repeat, again and again, until we face down Ernhardt and destroy him, or break.

            But Draco didn't want to think about that right now. He turned around and kissed Harry instead, ignoring Harry's incoherent protest that he hadn't been finished shampooing Draco's hair. They could do that later. They could do lots of things later.

            Right now, they had being alive to celebrate.

            Draco forced Harry back a step, then two. Harry went, but with his hands still tangled in Draco's hair, so that it wasn't as easy to pull away and kneel down to take Harry in his mouth as Draco had imagined it would be. He pulled back and glared a little, with eyes that he knew were probably blurry and so not very impressive, in Harry's direction.

            Harry hummed under his breath and kissed him again, then tugged at Draco and pulled them both down onto the floor of the shower. "Like this," he said, and spun them both around. Suddenly Draco found Harry between his thighs, and his head between Harry's, his chin bumping against Harry's cock.

            And a soft, warm mouth fastening itself around him.

            Draco groaned and rearranged Harry a bit, spreading his legs, ignoring the way the hard title of the shower pressed into his own shoulders and hips. In a very short time, that wouldn't matter a bit, and he could enjoy himself right now. His tongue flicked out and caught Harry's tip, and Harry started and became a little less than perfect in the way he was sucking Draco off.

            As long as that's known, Draco thought smugly, and sucked and licked and caressed and tapped with his tongue until Harry's breath was ragged and he only managed to do the same to Draco every few seconds.

            It went on, the heated and misty air of the shower blending with the hard tile blending with the warmth around him blending with the warmth he was giving, and Draco came in a way that made him feel as though someone had tossed him up in the air and then thrown him back down. He laid his head on the floor and panted for a moment.

            Harry grunted and reached down towards himself. Draco blocked his hand with an easy stretch of his own fingers. Harry glared at him, his face blurred.

            Draco did no more than stick out his tongue and touch Harry with it once, in exactly the right place. Harry arched his back and grunted again, and that was the end. Draco watched him splash on the floor of the shower with a satisfaction that eased whatever aches and pains still remained to him.

            Harry recovered in a few quick, panting moments, and then reached up to shut off the shower. Draco groaned in protest. He would have raised his wand to turn the water back on, but his head was spinning, and he didn't actually know where his wand was right now. His hands tingled.

            "We'll be better off resting in a bed," Harry said, and hauled at Draco with what he thought was unwarranted harshness. Draco managed to stumble to his feet, and then stumble out of the shower, and then into a towel, and then into bed.

            It was soft, yes, and large enough, but not warm enough. Draco took some pleasure in reaching up to Harry's shoulders and pulling him into the bed after him. Harry landed with another grunt. This time, it was probably because Draco had driven the air out of him rather than the pleasure, but Draco didn't much care.

            "Stay with me," he whispered into Harry's ear.

            "I will," Harry said.

            Draco didn't need stronger words. He closed his eyes and drifted off into sleep that felt all the thicker and better for the partner that curled strongly around him, and snored into his ear when he woke up.

*

            "I suppose you're going to tell me why you should be allowed to continue this case when it seems to have involved nothing so far but danger to some of our best Aurors."

            The Auror hierarchy was currently engaged in a game of pass-the-responsibility, Harry thought, eyeing the woman they'd deputed to deal with him and Draco this morning. She was Auror Helen Melgaden, senior enough, and severe enough, with her blond hair pulled back as though she hated its existence and didn't want to be reminded of it by a stray strand any time during the day. But she wasn't Okazes, or any of the immediate adjuncts to the Head Auror who would have dealt with them before.

            Of course, since that Head Auror had turned out to be Ernhardt, Harry thought that perhaps the Auror hierarchy was just as anxious not to bring him and Draco near anyone else.

            "We should be allowed to continue it because we've found the place where Ernhardt might have gone." Harry had agreed to sit back and let Draco handle this case because that was the way they worked best in the face of opposition, and he thought now that the decision had been a good one. Draco's face was calm and grave, his tie straight, his Auror robes professional. He looked impeccable, and Harry didn't think he did. "A house in the Forbidden Forest."

            Melgaden sat up and looked back and forth between them. "And you discovered this by yourself?"

            "No, madam." Draco's eyes blinked wide open once, and then shut, as he shook his head slightly. "The other two Socrates Aurors, Thomasina Warren and Simone Jenkins, also helped us."

            "There are four other Socrates Aurors," Melgaden corrected him sharply. "One of which is Isla Rudie, last partner of the woman you're hunting." Harry shifted in his seat, wondering if Melgaden was one of those who refused to believe that Ernhardt had really been a twisted and what his flaw was, but stopped when she looked at him. "One would think that you would rely on her for help, rather than pulling two senior Aurors off their cases."

            "Warren and Jenkins volunteered to help us." Harry raised his head a little when Melgaden glared at him, but, well, it was true. "And standard Auror procedure says that Rudie is too close to the possible death of her partner to be assigned to this case."

            Melgaden laughed in a nasty, open-mouthed way. "And you're going to start relying on standard Auror procedure to protect you now?"

            "It still applies." Draco gave her a cold little smile. "If you think that we haven't followed it well enough up to this point, rather than being persecuted by a so-called Head Auror determined to destroy us, then you should encourage us to follow it the better, not remove us from the case."

            Melgaden didn't pinch her nose and look away in disgust, but Harry thought it was hard for her. "You are still pulling senior Aurors off cases."

            "And Rudie and her new partner don't have one?" Harry asked. "Or is it better somehow because they're less senior?"

            Melgaden stood up and walked around from behind her desk. Harry tensed, but Melgaden was gazing out the window and stood with her hands on her hips, as if the enchanted view before her would show her something or change without her prior approval.

            "You cause too much trouble," Melgaden said finally, and swung around. "We understand that Aurors can't always follow the more restrictive procedures in the field. We understand that your fame is a problem, and so is the recent death of your partner, Auror Potter. And yours, Auror Malfoy." She nodded at Draco just when Harry had been about to bristle that they needed to acknowledge him. "But you cause too much trouble and cost the Ministry too much time and money."

            Harry shrugged. "Some of what we've endured in the Socrates Corps is Ernhardt's fault."

            "Madam Melgaden." Draco leaned forwards in his chair just as Melgaden opened her mouth for what would probably be a lecture on Harry's faults. "I just wanted to know. Who informed you that we had taken Aurors Warren and Jenkins on the case, and that it was probably against their will?"

            Melgaden watched Draco, but either she found nothing to actually disapprove of in him beyond the fact that he was Harry's partner or his polished, politely interested exterior was too much for her. She grunted and sat down, drawing a file towards her. "Auror Elder. He's concerned about the probable effect on his partner."

            "What effect?" Harry asked. "Rudie wasn't there when--"

            Draco pressed on his arm with one hand, and Harry had the sense to shut up. Draco's silent pressure was right. They had already caused enough trouble for Rudie by tangling Macgeorge up in their last case.

            "The effect of knowing that all of you are out hunting the same target, her former partner if we believe your reports, and that there is no one to back her up on her current case." Melgaden rapped her fingers on the desk and looked back and forth between them.

            "She hasn't asked for help," Harry said. "She might not want us to help her even if she did want it from someone. We're involved in the disappearance of her former partner. She's let us know that she does partially blame us."

            "Socrates Aurors are supposed to work together." Melgaden looked at him with eyes like a lizard's. "When four of them work together as a unit and exclude the other two, it naturally leads to certain uncomfortable feelings."

            "Since when are Socrates Aurors supposed to work together?" Draco asked suddenly. "That was never a regulation before. We were always sent out on individual cases by partner teams, and when we first joined the Corps, one of the Aurors there, Latham, didn't have a partner."

            "And he died on the Larkin case," Melgaden snapped. "You see how important it is to stay within reach of a partner."

            "Can you tell us when this new rule that we're supposed to help each other came into effect?" Draco's voice cracked like a whip. "If you plan to tell us that it's new since the Head Auror was revealed to be twisted, that's fine, but you can't punish us for violation of a new rule introduced in the last fortnight."

            Melgaden wouldn't stop staring at Draco, but Harry thought the request a perfectly reasonable one. He said, "He's right. We were assigned cases as teams, but the only time that we worked together with the others before this was the Larkin case, and that happened partly because I was in hospital and Draco wasn't supposed to approach him alone."

            "You are banned from St. Mungo's," Melgaden said, transferring her frown to Harry.

            "At the time, I wasn't." Harry kept his voice and his face inflexible. "The banning happened as the result of my actions on the Larkin case."

            Melgaden spent some more time silent, then shrugged. "The Aurors are deciding that hunting twisted is much more dangerous work than they thought it was. That means that you must spend as much time with each other as possible."

            "If Aurors Rudie and Elder prefer to hunt on their own, no amount of offering them our aid is going to matter," Draco said.

            There came a knock on the office door, and Melgaden stood. "That would be why I asked them to meet us here," she said. "And they can accompany you to this famous house in the Forbidden Forest, if it exists."

            The look on Rudie's face when the door opened was bad enough, but the glances exchanged between Draco and Elder...

            Harry clenched his fists. I don't know if Elder wants to interfere on his own or if someone in the Ministry's hierarchy is doing this because they want good publicity. Or maybe it really is a conspiracy against us the way it was with Ernhardt, and they really do want us to die.

            Either way, I'm going to make sure Draco lives.

*

            SP777: It basically means "I burst the heart."

            I do like this series, though sometimes it's hard to come up with plots for the one-shots.

            Yes, that was the last chapter set in the house. As for writing it, I wrote it pretty much the same way I always do.

            delia cerrano: Draco has faced those things already, in a very short time. But the fear from his last case with his old partner is one that he hasn't resolved or dealt with.

            Seiren: The Forbidden Forest is probably the location of Ernhardt's other lair. Glad you're enjoying it!
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A Reign of Silence