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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.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Nine—This Work

            Harry sank gratefully into the chair at the kitchen table. He probably would have felt a bit better upstairs, but he couldn’t face the steps right now, his leg ached so abominably. And he wouldn’t go and sit in the study when Malfoy was with him. There were things there he would sneer at.

            “Wow,” Hermione said, closing the front door, from the sound of it, and heading for the kitchen.

            Harry couldn’t tell what she felt about the meeting from that particular word, so he leaned his head back in the chair and raised his eyebrows at her as she came around the corner.

            “I never expected to meet so many prejudiced people in my life,” Hermione said, and sat down with a bump in the chair that faced Harry.

            “From their point of view, you are equally prejudiced, and want them to give up things that they wouldn’t have dreamed they needed to surrender,” Malfoy said over his shoulder. He was preparing the tea, and since Kreacher was there to watch him and help, Harry had let him go ahead with doing it. He wondered why Malfoy wanted to do it when they had a house-elf, but perhaps he wanted his cup specially prepared or something. “I think we’re lucky to have come out of it with as few insults as we did.”

            “Only one group of people in the wizarding world tried to kill me,” Hermione said, with a dangerous peacefulness in her tone that Harry recognized. Sometimes it showed up right before she erupted in yelling at him or Ron, too. “Only one group would have happily snapped my wand and said that I had stolen my magic from some pure-blood.”

            “That’s right,” Harry said, Summoning one of the pain potions that he kept in the cupboard on the far side of the kitchen. Malfoy twitched as the door opened and the vial zoomed out and into Harry’s hand. Harry wondered if it irritated him to see potions treated so cavalierly. “The Death Eaters.”

            Malfoy made a sound that might have been a choke, and his shoulders shook. Hermione stared at Harry, her eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to prove something, Harry?” she asked.

            Harry looked at her, and smiled, and shook his head innocently. “Prove something? Me? Not really, Hermione.”

            He left her to puzzle over what he had meant instead—not that that would take long, Hermione was a brilliant witch—and turned to Malfoy. “How many do you think we managed to convince?”

            Malfoy busied himself with the tea until Hermione shifted impatiently in her seat, which Harry was sure was what Malfoy had been waiting for. Then he turned and came to the table with the tea, steaming in what seemed to be identical cups. Harry eyed them, then shrugged. Malfoy could still do what he wanted as long as he didn’t try to poison someone, and Harry thought he wouldn’t. They were too convenient.

            Malfoy slid a cup over in front of Harry first, tilting his head at the potions vial. “You should eat something before you take that, Potter.”

            “He knows that,” Hermione hissed, instantly. “How long do you think he’s been taking those potions?”

            “Not long enough, if his face still gets as pale as that.” Malfoy took his own seat, his expression curiously inflexible. He locked his eyes on Harry and took a sip of his tea. Only then did Hermione take one, and Harry saw her wand moving, performing charms over the cup.

            He started to turn to her and shake his head warningly, but Malfoy cleared his throat, commanding Harry’s attention. “We didn’t convince many of them,” he said. “But we made them doubt, and with some of them, that’s better, sometimes. Why do you take that potion on an empty stomach, Potter?”

            “I can tolerate it that way,” Harry explained, taking the cork out of the vial. “When I take it with food, it just makes me throw up.” He gulped the thick, murky liquid, grimacing as he thought he felt leaves and larger things brush the sides of his throat. But it was a price that had to be paid, and a moment later, the throbbing pain from his knee eased.

            “And you’re not addicted?” Malfoy was watching Harry with the most normal expression Harry had ever seen him use. Harry reminded himself to remember that it existed when Malfoy was being a real pain in the arse.

            He shook his head. “My reactions to it aren’t normal in any sense of the word. I can take it on an empty stomach, I don’t get addicted—I’ll accept it.” He put the empty vial in the center of the table and sipped his tea, just a bit. Liquids usually mixed all right with the potion, but sometimes not. “Which ones do you think are the most likely to doubt? Should we try to contact them and enlist them as allies?”

            Malfoy flicked his eyebrows up, and the normal expression became a neutral one. “Strategy, Potter? What is the world coming to?”

            “That much I know,” Harry said, and found himself almost grinning. Some things were predictable. His knee would always hurt, his reaction to pain potions would always be strange, and Malfoy would always disparage his intelligence. Harry could count on that, and anything that made Malfoy more predictable would also make him easier to work with. “But I don’t know if speaking to them separately would make them back off in suspicion or convince them to come closer, at this point. That’s what we have you for.” He tilted his teacup at Malfoy.

            Malfoy gave him the weirdest look at that, weirder than the normal one a little while ago had been. Harry sipped at his tea again, more strongly this time as his stomach stayed settled, and wondered what Malfoy was thinking.

*

            He’s…taking me seriously?

            Draco hadn’t taken it into much consideration when Potter stepped in the way of Granger’s anti-pure-blood rhetoric earlier. Potter wanted a cordial working relationship as much as the rest of them did, and it would probably suit him best if neither Draco nor Granger said something that called for action.

            But this was something more. And Potter hadn’t made jokes about the poisoned tea, and he had said something that made good sense, and he had yielded to the expertise about pure-bloods that Draco had seen himself as bringing to the table but hadn’t known that anyone else would acknowledge.

            Draco cleared his throat, excruciatingly aware that his father would never have been caught this far off-guard, and nodded. “Either could happen. I would recommend speaking to the ones that you can trust first, Longbottom and Bones.” He paused, and then added, “And Alicia Highfeather.”

            “The woman who stormed away before the debate began?” Granger leaned across the table and tapped her fingers on the top of it. She looked as though she would much rather that her fingers were making a fist and punching Draco’s nose in. “What’s the purpose? She wasn’t there to hear the conversation. She can’t understand anything of the context.”

            Draco smirked at her. So wonderful, the feeling almost physical, to know that in this game he knew more than she did. “That’s it. You make the others think that there’s something special to know, so bring them closer. You impress those who can be impressed, with your tolerance. You show that you’re serious about including all pure-bloods under the spread of information, even the ones who have no interest in cooperating. And Highfeather is the sort who will insult you and then feel insulted in turn if you behave with less than perfect graciousness to her. Go after her now, and we stand a chance of making a strong ally of her.”

            “I don’t think we should indulge that sort of behavior.” Granger’s cheeks were mottled an ugly combination of red and pink.

            “We have to,” Draco said coolly. “We’ll see many things that are worse, and our best chance is to play the more understanding, more tolerant, partner in this conversation. We can’t start shouting and turn away from those who anger us. After all, isn’t our stance that everyone deserves a chance to know the truth and change their behavior, even those who hate us? We’ll damage that, and our reputation in the eyes of judges like Dibs, if we spitefully cut people off.”

            Granger looked as though she didn’t know which insult to hurl first, but Potter reached across the table and touched her hand. Draco wondered if he was the only one who noticed Potter’s slight grimace when his leg slipped with the movement. “Hermione,” Potter said softly. “He’s right. Remember that Thomas Occult case?”

            Granger’s mouth tightened, and she looked away. Draco did a quick rifle through his memory, found nothing that matched the name, and decided that high-handed condescension was his best bet. “What are you talking about, Potter?”

            “Someone mental calling himself Thomas Occult,” Potter said, turning to face him. “He kept practicing spells that weren’t quite illegal, but related to the Dark Arts and the Unforgivable Curses. And he kept daring the Ministry to make a martyr of him by putting him in Azkaban. He also kept challenging me to a duel.”

            “You didn’t want to go, of course,” Draco said, remembering how rare Potter’s public appearances had been when he could get away with it. It seemed he spent more time testifying for cases or escorting criminals around than doing anything he could have done with that power and prestige.

            If I’d had it… It was hard to keep his face steady, through the sudden burn of old resentment.

            “I didn’t want to go because I knew I could probably destroy him,” Potter said flatly, and his face had a strange expression. Draco had barely managed to recognize it as the one in most of his father’s photographs when Potter continued. “He would use spells that would force me to respond with all of my strength, and that’s—not a good thing. I don’t want to kill people, but some of my instincts do.” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked away for a minute.

            Draco opened his mouth to ask a question, such as how many people Potter had killed and why Draco didn’t know more about this when it was perfectly fascinating, but Granger said, probably to prevent Draco ever getting anything he wanted, “And going to duel him would have shown everyone that Harry was taking Occult seriously, but refusing to duel him made it seem that the Ministry was frightened.”

            Potter nodded. “Right. So I went out and made a speech about how I would be happy to duel him, but only if we agreed to keep our spells under a certain strength. Because I didn’t want to hurt him, I said. Which was true. But it also meant that he would be sure to lose the duel, because all his expertise was in the strong spells, not the ordinary ones.”

            Granger smiled. “That put Occult in the same bind that he’d put Harry in. And in the end, he just stopped bragging about his dueling skills, and the Ministry never heard anything more from him.”

            Potter looked at Draco. “We can do the same thing with Highfeather. Of course, it might depend on how good a strategist she is. What do you know about her?”

            With the surreal feeling that he was riding a dragon that had just turned sharply to the left, Draco murmured, “What I already said. She dispenses ungraciousness and expects graciousness in return. She sets high store by manners. She loves prestige, and notice. She won’t like your heritage, Potter, but she’ll be sensible to the merits of being noticed by the defeater of the Dark Lord. And you can get away with having less polished manners because Aurors sometimes have to be rough and uncouth.” He nodded at Granger. “Combined with your blood, it would be too much. Potter had better deal with her.”

            Granger opened her mouth, but Potter, without looking at her, said, “It’s all right, Hermione. I think Malfoy’s right. We should follow his advice.”

            He didn’t look at Granger because he was looking at me, Draco thought, and his face tingled with something that might have been a blush, except that of course he was too sophisticated to do anything like that. His mouth dried out, and he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

            Someone is taking me seriously. Someone treats my opinion of my heritage as valuable, someone who isn’t Scorpius or one of my parents.

            And that someone is Potter.

            Draco warned himself to be careful of his reactions. He wouldn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking Potter respected him, because, plainly, he didn’t.

            But it was nice to know that someone thought he could do something other than brew experimental potions. Draco began to work out ways to drop this fact casually into his next conversation with his son.

            Someone you idolize thinks that I’m right, that I can strategize. He takes pure-bloods seriously. Why don’t you?

*

            It took several more steering attempts to get in between Hermione and Malfoy when one of them wanted to say something that the other one wouldn’t like, but at last the point arrived when they’d split the labor. Hermione agreed to talk to some other people in the Ministry who were half-bloods or Muggleborns who had pure-blood friends, and see what they could do next. Malfoy would approach Highfeather first, with a letter, and then Harry would follow. And Harry would approach Neville and Susan.

            Hermione left with a final murmur to Harry about talking to Hugo. Harry smiled at her, and nodded. It wouldn’t do any good, of course, because Hugo was sixteen and had an unusually advanced case of believing his opinion was the only one that mattered, but he was glad that Hermione at least didn’t think he should get away with his shit.

            Malfoy stood up slowly from the table, studying Harry intently from beneath his eyelashes, the way he had throughout the latter part of their conversation. Harry nodded back to him, and concealed the sharp twinge he felt from his knee, he hoped. “Thanks for doing this, Malfoy. I’ll firecall you tomorrow.”

            He should have remembered that Malfoy had always been good at spotting his weaknesses, and therefore would have seen the twinge. “That pain potion didn’t work,” Malfoy said.



            Harry blinked. “Yes, it did. What are you talking about? My knee was in such agony before that I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on strategy without that potion, even my baby version of strategy.”

            He thought that would make Malfoy smile. Malfoy just looked intent instead, and prowled around the table. “But the pain isn’t gone.”

            Harry shrugged. “It never really is, unless I’m lying in bed and I’m warm enough and I’ve cast the charms just right.”

            “That’s not right,” Malfoy said, which Harry didn’t understand until he saw the way Malfoy was staring down at his leg. “A joint, even one tortured the way yours has been, shouldn’t hurt that much, all the time.”

            “I’m just special, I suppose,” Harry said dryly. He wanted, badly, to get out of the chair and into a more comfortable position, but he also wanted not to limp and moan in front of Malfoy. If that was pride, well, he still had it. “I can take a more effective potion in a few hours.”

            “Which ones do you take?” Malfoy turned to look up at his face.

            Harry hesitated, then shrugged again. Malfoy was a professional Potions researcher. He probably wanted to know just to compare it with some of the potions he’d brewed in the past. “The Joint-Easer. A variety of generic ones that I don’t know the names of. Painless. Dreamless Sleep when I can’t sleep for it throbbing.”

            Malfoy’s mouth turned sharply down. “It’s a wonder you’re not addicted, Potter,” he said, and his voice made it sound as though Harry had done it to personally annoy him. “I could come up with something better than that regime in my sleep. Come on.” He held out his arm commandingly, and moved back from the chair as though he expected Harry to take it.

            Harry shook his head. “Walking that way doesn’t work,” he said. “Hopping makes it worse, and so does hobbling, and it’s hard to do anything else when someone’s holding you by the arm and waist that way.”

            “What do you do, then?” Malfoy stared at him with silently burning eyes, as though Harry had come up with inadequate ways to travel in order to humiliate him, too.

            “Limp,” Harry said, and swung himself out of the chair. The knee didn’t feel as if it was going to freeze and lock when he put his weight on it, which was good. He limped carefully towards the study and the stairs, and Malfoy followed him.

            Harry tried, and failed, not to be jealous of the way that Malfoy walked on two good feet. Well. It would pass.

            When he turned to face the stairs, Malfoy said, in tones that could have stripped some of the old paper from the walls, “Please tell me that you at least Lighten and Levitate yourself.”

            “I did that, until my muscles started atrophying,” Harry said. “Now I just take them slowly.” He reached out, hooked his arm around the bannister, and hauled his dead weight leg up. Then the good one, most of his weight on the bannister, and then the bad one again, and the good one, and so on. He had to turn to the side to keep his knee from bending as much as possible.

            “For Merlin’s sake,” Malfoy said, far gone in exasperation. “Once won’t kill you. Levis. Mobilicorpus.”

            Harry tried not to stiffen as his body washed with lightness and then floated off the ground. For a moment, he thought his knee would collide with the bannister, but Malfoy turned him smoothly and then sent him drifting up the stairs with a gentle shove in the small of his back.

            Harry hesitated, and then decided that, all right, once would be okay. He didn’t let Kreacher help because if he did, Kreacher would never stop, and he would have no independence left. And he really had begun to lose the muscle tone in his leg until he forced himself to stop relying on spells.

            But sometimes, it was nice to have someone else to help.

*

            ChaosLady: Thanks! And a better start than they realize on relationships between themselves, I think. At least Draco and Hermione aren’t shouting at each other all the time.

            moodysavage: That wasn’t the kind of evidence the crowd was ready to look at at that point in time. They’ll introduce charts and so on later.

            unneeded: Little by little. They want people who are actually interested in seeing it, not people who will ignore it to shout.
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The Descent of Magic