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The Library of Hades	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4441 -:- 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 Nine—Taunting the Malfoys

            Harry opened his eyes, and blinked. He thought he’d heard the sound of a Floo connection opening, but it was the middle of the night. And Draco slept beside him, his mouth slightly open and his arm flung across Harry’s chest. That left Harry to wonder if Narcissa had found a way past the wards on his Floo connection again. He hadn’t investigated that as closely as he should.

            But when he rolled out of bed and padded into the middle of the drawing room, it was Ginny’s face in the flames.

            “Ginny,” Harry said cautiously, sinking down in front of her. Once he would have demanded to know immediately if Ron and Hermione were okay, because there was no other reason he could imagine that she would call him this late. But since her strange behavior earlier in the case, he felt two opposed kinds of tension singing in him. “What’s the matter? Is everything all right?”

            Ginny closed her eyes and shook her head. “I think you might have been right about Michael,” she whispered. “He contacted me tonight, and there was something—off about him. I asked him if he was all right, and he said he was. But he wanted me to meet him in Paris.”

            “And you decided not to go?” Harry asked quietly.

            Ginny nodded, then opened her eyes again to look at him. “He wouldn’t give me an address. He just kept telling me to go to the Louvre and he would find me there. I didn’t want to, and he cursed at me and shut the Floo.”

            “Did you try to call back?” Harry asked. He realized that he was falling automatically into the pattern of talk that an Auror would use to question a witness, and grimaced a little. But Ginny had made herself a witness by contacting him with this.

            Ginny nodded. “The call wouldn’t go through. I kept getting this recorded message in French—something about no one being there, but I didn’t understand any more than that.”

            Harry frowned and tapped his fingers on his knee. “How did he seem off?”

            “He spoke more quickly than usual.” Ginny ripped her fingers through her hair, a gesture Harry recognized from the beginnings of arguments, and the ends of them. “He laughed in this weird way. Like he was talking into the bottom of a tin can. And his eyes. They were a blue so bright that it looked as though he was casting a spell on them.”

            “It’s good you contacted me,” Harry said calmly, even as he wondered why the blue-eyed twisted would bother luring Ginny away when he could have possessed her. Then again, if he was twisted, who would understand the way his mind worked? “We’ve been dealing with people who have eyes like that, and it means they’re possessed.”

            Ginny sat up. “Then maybe I should have gone, to make sure that poor Michael wasn’t in any danger,” she began.

            Harry shook his head. “If I’m right about that, there’s nothing you could have done to save Michael. He’s completely under the control of the possessor while it happens, and he won’t remember anything when he lets him go. And by now, the possessor might have moved on, when he realizes that he didn’t succeed in trapping you.” He stood up and turned towards the bedroom. “I’ll tell Draco. He might have—”

            “Harry.”

            Harry paused. He knew that sound in Ginny’s voice. Only heard once, but never forgotten, when she had used it to beg him to keep their breakup a secret from her parents. In the end, it had been Ginny who told them, unable to bear their innocent questions about when Harry and Ginny were getting married any longer.

            He knew that he would do almost anything for her when she sounded like that. And he feared what she would ask him to do now.

            “What?” he asked, turning around and trying to swallow through the sick sensations in the back of his throat.

            Ginny leaned forwards until it looked like the ends of her hair would dangle out of the fire, her eyes bright and earnest, green with the light of the flames. “Please don’t tell him,” she said. “It’s—I don’t trust him. And he sounded as though he hated Michael when you talked to me the first time. I don’t want him to know.”

            Harry moved a step back. “I can’t do anything about that,” he said, feeling as though Ginny had slapped him. “This could connect to our case—it definitely connects to the people we investigate who keep getting possessed. I have to tell Draco.”

            “I would prefer that you didn’t,” Ginny whispered.

            Harry wavered for a minute. It was a long time since Ginny had asked him anything like this. Would it cost so much to oblige her?

            Yes, it would. She might not know about the cost, but it didn’t mean that that cost didn’t exist. Harry would lose Draco’s trust, again, if he found out about Harry keeping secrets from him, and they would lose what could be one of their best leads on the blue-eyed twisted, and maybe even Smoke and Mirrors.

            “I’m sorry,” Harry said, as gently as he could. “I don’t have any choice.”

            Ginny drew herself up and looked at him. Her eyes were dry, but her face was set in a way that Harry also knew well. He flinched as if that could protect him from the memories, while her eyes drilled into him as if memorizing him for one last photograph before she destroyed all the other pictures she’d ever taken of him.

            “Thank you for telling me that,” she said, voice devoid of emotion, and then Harry’s Floo connection flared and shut down.

            Harry bowed his head. He sat there for a long time before he turned around and went to wake up Draco.

*

            Draco concealed a yawn behind his hand as Harry knocked on Weasley’s door. He considered this mission a waste of time. Weasley had already told them everything relevant, at least to her, and it seemed enough information for Draco to conclude that the blue-eyed twisted had indeed possessed Corner. What Harry wanted Weasley to do further, confess or apologize, he didn’t know.

            No one answered Harry’s frantic knocking, and when he tried to peer into the keyhole, a surge of wards knocked him back. He swore and turned to stare at Draco. “What do we do now?”

            “Investigate her garden,” Draco said, and strolled around to the side, to the stone walls. He had noticed a weakness in the wards the last time they were here, caused by a climbing plant. That happened all the time to people who weren’t Potions masters or Herbologists and didn’t understand that plants were living things experienced at dealing with harsh growing conditions. They could find their way through stone, asphalt, wood, water; they could deal with magic.

            Harry followed him, frowning. “Why?”

            Draco first located the tendril of ivy and wound it with his Enlargement Charm, then stepped back and watched as the ivy expanded and the rent in the wards expanded with it. “Because I saw flowers there last time that no one but a Potions master has any business having, and I don’t think she is one.”

            “What flowers?”

            Again Draco chose to wait to answer, until the ivy and the wards shivered together and the magic collapsed from the outside like a spiderweb unraveling. Draco grabbed the sleek space of cleared stone and hauled himself up, then turned to extend a hand to Harry. “Coming?”

            Harry frowned at him, but after casting a charm at the door that resulted in another flurry of knocks and no answer, he climbed up after Draco. He blinked a little when he was sitting next to Draco. “I hadn’t realized that Ginny had so many flowers.”

            “I saw them when we visited the other day,” Draco said, avoiding a comment about what trained investigators were supposed to notice and what they weren’t, and launched himself from the wall to land gently on the soft earth. There was no reason that Harry should have seen those particular flowers as a problem, given that Draco had the Potions master training and he didn’t. This was one reason that the Ministry assigned Aurors to work together in teams.

            And I can’t believe that I just thought of something about the Ministry as praiseworthy.

            Harry followed him, and then paused and turned his head. Draco paused in return. Though he knew more than Harry about certain specific subjects, Harry’s senses were sometimes keener than his.

            “No, it’s just someone else walking past the house,” Harry murmured, but he did cast Disillusionment Charms on them.

            Draco nodded his thanks, and moved over to one of the giant purple-red flowers, already preparing the Cutting and Drying Charms. Some of the Potions masters had wards up to protect these flowers, the times that Draco had seen them in their gardens, and other times the flowers had been allowed to grow almost wild and so had their own formidable defenses.

            But nothing happened this time. The flower swayed back and forth, but didn’t respond with thorns or lashing vines as Draco cut its roots up from the ground, dried and pressed it with a succession of heavy invisible weights, and then caught it in his hand as it fell. The brilliant color faded a little, but not much. Draco could be incredibly handy with preserving ingredients when he had to; since his parents had exiled him, he didn’t always have the money to buy his own healing potions.

            “What do Potions masters use them for?” Harry asked behind him, sounding as if he would repeat the question until the world fell in.

            Draco sighed and turned to him. “A poison called Snake’s Bane—not because it kills them, but because it poisons people so much more effectively than they do. There’s no known antivenin to counter it.”

            Harry paled and shut his eyes for a moment. Then he said, “Could someone have given them to her as a gift and not told her what they were? And surely they have other uses.”

            Draco shook his head and tucked the flower away in a clean handkerchief in his pocket. “Not really. They make Snake’s Bane, but in most other potions, they’re too unstable and reactive an ingredient. They would make other potions explode,” he translated, when Harry leaned forwards. “The most current research I saw has some Potions masters hoping to use them in potions that replicate Blasting Curses, but the demand for that is small when the spell is so convenient, and they hadn’t succeeded so far.”

            Harry nodded, slowly. “All right. Then do you have any idea how they came here?” He turned his head from side to side, looking at the way the flowers grew in a great cluster near the wall and draped over the stones near Weasley’s window.

            “No,” Draco said, and cast a few charms that wreathed the garden with shimmering golden chains of light. None of the chains blinked, which meant the other illegal flowers he’d been looking for weren’t here. “But it would be interesting to look around her garden and house, when we have time, and find out what else she has.”

            Harry nodded again. “But not right now,” he said. “You said that we needed to go to the Manor and fool your parents.”

            “Yes,” Draco said simply, and left the garden. He regretted the missed chance, because he didn’t know if Harry would be so compliant the next time they visited Weasley.

            But it was more important to get the books on possession out of the Manor, and they didn’t know yet how or if Weasley and Corner’s little mystery connected to the mystery of Smoke and Mirrors, or the blue-eyed twisted. The garden could wait.

*

            Harry touched the shaft of his broom and took a deep breath. He could do this. And he didn’t really think that he needed to have any reservations about taunting Draco’s parents. They had done far worse than that so far, including direct and indirect manipulation to try and wrench him and Draco apart.

            So why the nervousness?

            In the end, Harry shook his head and rose, hurtling towards the outer gates of Malfoy Manor. Draco had said that he would know when the wards had engaged because he would see a blue flare in the sky ahead of him—

            There. Harry pulled up and coughed a little, then cast the Sonorus Charm on his throat. Draco hadn’t told him what to say, only specified that it needed to be arresting enough to keep his parents’ full attention.

            Well. Harry wasn’t sure he could do arresting outside his Auror career, but he could sure as fuck do vulgar.

            “Do you know how many times Draco and I have given each other blowjobs?” he casually asked the wards. He could see some shimmers of gold and red running together, collecting in a pool at the base of the wards that sloped towards him. He assumed they were listening wards, meant to extend the owner’s senses and tell them more about who hovered outside their gate.

            Silence. But the red and gold shimmers might have grown more threatening.

            “Lots,” Harry said. While not strictly true, he could supply the missing details from his own fund of fantasy about Draco. “I love going down on him. There’s this scent from his skin—it’s deliciously salty. I always wondered if pure-bloods would taste different from Muggleborns, and now I know.” The Malfoys probably believed all the rumors about him having multiple lovers down the years; he doubted they would know how limited his experience really was. “They do. It’s this sharper taste, as if their blood is coming through the skin.”

            He saw a door in the side of the Manor open, but from this distance, and with the wards in the air between them, he couldn’t make out whether the figure standing in it was Lucius or Narcissa. He decided that he didn’t have to care, and half-shut his eyes as he began a detailed fantasy.

            “And then there’s the way that he looks at me when he’s ready to feel my mouth on him. This glance from the corner of his eye, as if even now he feels it’s too dirty to mention directly. But he loses all his inhibitions when he lounges on the bed. He leans back and commands me with his eyes like a king, but his hips are begging—”

            “Mr. Potter. You will cease this dreadful and disgusting display.”

            That was Lucius, and his voice didn’t have the booming echo of Sonorus, but was plenty loud enough for Harry to hear. Harry grinned at him and shook his head.

            “Why should I, when you’re under such delusions as to our relationship that you think you can split us apart with a simple trick?” he asked. “It’s amusing, you know, the way that you still expect Draco to leap to do your bidding when you cut off all contact with him for seven years. People change in that time, and have new hot buttons. Like the way that my hair curls at the back of my neck. Draco tells me that he loves that.”

            Lucius took a step down the gravel pathway towards him. Harry looped his broom back a cautious glide, but he couldn’t stop smiling. He’d seen the icy expression on Lucius’s face done better by Okazes.

            “It’s all right,” Harry told him consolingly. “I know that I’m not everything you hoped for for your son. I’m not pure-blood, and I’m a man, and I’m not someone that you think of as having a lot of money. But I’m the one who fucks him best and makes him happiest, you know. You’d think that would count for more in your eyes. I reckon it doesn’t.”

            Lucius came to a halt with his hands resting delicately on the gates. He’d probably meant to embarrass Harry with the way he moved and touched them, but Harry could make out the white knuckles, and smiled at him.

            “You will leave,” Lucius said.

            “No, I won’t,” Harry said, and flew in a loop, looking coyly over his shoulder towards Lucius.

            Another person came walking down the path, and of course it was Narcissa. If they had anyone else living in the Manor besides portraits and house-elves, it was news to Harry. She halted beside her husband and gave Harry a chilly nod. “Did you come simply to act childish, or is there a deeper purpose to this visit?” she asked.

            “Oh, both of course,” Harry said, and placed a hand over his heart. “I hope you know that love for your son sometimes make me giddy and stupid.”

            Narcissa leaned forwards. That silver necklace Harry had seen her wear when she contacted him in the Floo flared bright. “You could better his life by leaving him,” she whispered. “It is not love when you degrade his heritage and name his private behavior in the bedroom aloud for all to see.”

“Hear,” Harry corrected. “It would be hard for someone else to see words.” He met Narcissa’s gaze and shrugged a little. “I know that you’re quite a stickler for semantics. Anyone who could think of someone who saved the world as not worthy enough for their bloodline would be. I thought I’d help.”

Narcissa turned away and spoke to Lucius, not lowering her voice. Harry couldn’t decide if she wanted him to hear or simply wanted to pretend he didn’t exist, which required speaking the way she normally would. “Dismiss him, Lucius.”

Lucius nodded, and lifted his wand. Harry saw the wards quiver as the end of his wand touched them, spreading out to resemble ripples in a pond. The last traces of blue faded; it was all gold and red.

“Gryffindor colors!” Harry chirped. “For me?” He reached forwards as if he would touch them with his empty hand, and wasn’t surprised when they coalesced into a fist of light and punched towards him.

            Even if he hadn’t recognized the modified Transfiguration that Lucius used on the wards, though, he would have been able to avoid the fist. It moved too slowly. He looped again, and he was out of its reach. He shook his head at Lucius. “You have to do better than that, to kill the Chosen One. It’s something you should have learned from your Lord.”

            The fist of light came at him faster this time, and less coordinated. Harry flung himself backwards, and felt it brush over his bristles. He came back up and bowed to Lucius. “More respectable, but still clumsy. Do you think that you might have Muggle blood yourself, somewhere back down the line? I know that you share a common ancestor with some of the Weasleys.”

            And this time it was the fastest of all, but Harry had spent some of yesterday flying in preparation. He wasn’t a Quidditch player anymore, but his natural talent was flying, after all, not just playing the game. He arched up and dropped down, and then did it again, just to be special, as the fist passed back beneath him.

            “Is that the best you have?” he asked Lucius, and let his eyes flicker sideways to Narcissa. “Maybe you could manage a more creative defense. I know Draco could. Are you sure that— ”

            He didn’t even get to finish the implication, which didn’t matter when he was reasonably sure he had angered both the Malfoys to the point that they wouldn’t be paying attention to any other part of the wards. This time, multiple fists came from all directions, closing in on him like a pack of wolves.

            Harry closed his eyes and dropped.

            It was a faster fall than any he had ever managed with a Wronski Feint. He could feel the ground pressing closer and closer to him, the hunger of the grass and earth for his flesh. Harry almost smiled when he had that thought. Here, closer to Malfoy Manor than he had been in years, that impression had the greater likelihood of being true.

            He pulled out of it hard enough and late enough that he bruised his knee on a stone. He flew back up and fled from the fists that were pursuing him, then looped back towards the house and cast a Blasting Curse that he knew the wards would catch.

            They did, flaring green to do it, and Narcissa, who had been in the path of the curse more by accident than by design, gave Lucius a little nod again.

            This time, Harry recognized the motion of Lucius’s wand, and knew he was in trouble. The air around him tightened and froze. Lucius was trying to imprison him in a moment of solidified time, where he could keep Harry as long as he liked and deal with him at his leisure, and for Harry it would always be the same second—until he was released.

            But that was Dark Arts, and Harry had done his own study in the years since he had become an Auror. Well, in the years since he had lost Ron to the joke shop, really. Without a trustworthy partner at his side except for the first few months he had worked with Lionel, he had to guard his own back more often.

            Harry lifted his own wand and snapped out the counter, and the ward broke and fled before him. Lucius watched him with a motionless face, and Narcissa reached out and rested a hand on his arm.

            Lucius promptly stepped back, inclining his head. Harry wondered why he had never seen him do that before, but then, he had rarely seen Lucius and Narcissa together as husband and wife—at the Quidditch World Cup and after the Battle of Hogwarts was about it. He pulled up and hovered as Narcissa leaned forwards and aimed her words through the gates.

            “You came here for another purpose than making us waste our magic on you. What is it?”

            Harry hovered closer and lowered his voice. “You really want to know? You think that you can bear the knowledge?”

            “We bore with the obscenities that you shouted about our son,” said Narcissa, and looked as if she wanted to sneeze from the vulgarity. “Yes, I do.”

            Harry sighed. He and Draco hadn’t thought it would come to this, but as long as he was still being a good distraction, then he knew what he had to do.

            “I want a promise of safe conduct for as long as I’m in the Manor,” he said. “I don’t think this should be said aloud.”

            Both the Malfoys stared at him again, but now, Harry could see some of the lines around their mouths becoming gentler. They were impressed that he knew about the safe-conduct promise, he thought, which had used to be a tradition pure-blood wizards used when communicating with one another about the terms of duels.

            “You have it,” Narcissa said. “I promise not to harm you in any way while you are in the Manor, on my blood.”

            “I make the same promise,” Lucius said, “on mine.”

            Harry held his breath as the wards lowered and he flew cautiously in. Draco, fetch those books out soon.

*

            SP777: Thank you! I think the mystery will become even more interesting in the future, and in the last few stories in the series.

            unneeded: Thanks! Keep in mind, though, that the blue-eyed twisted presumably has a body of his own somewhere and can retreat to it.
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The Library of Hades