Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Nine--Immortal

            "We appreciate that you decided to come back early from your holiday, Harry."

            Harry nodded in silence. He was busy watching Kingsley, he realized, as Malfoy, who had been left behind in Harry's office under a Disillusionment Charm, might have watched him if he was here. He was looking for signs of fawning, some indicator that Kingsley would drool on Harry if Harry gave him the chance.

            He honestly couldn't see it, no matter how he stared. Kingsley met Harry's eye in a forthright manner and didn't seem excessively upset or grateful or cringing. Harry half-shrugged. He had come here to play a certain role, and if he seemed less like a professional Auror than he should, it would hurt Malfoy's cause, not help it.

            "I was bored," he said, which was true for every day except the last one. "And you told me that you had a suspect I needed to look at?" He doubted that it would be a lead-in to Lucius's case, but at least he could get the possibility out of the way right at the beginning, and possibly make Kingsley more open to questions that he wanted to ask about Azkaban guards.

            You could use your name to get that information. The way Malfoy was all but encouraging you to do.

            Just because Malfoy thought things worked that way, though, didn't mean they did. And Harry had no intention of doing something wrong on the basis of mistaken assumptions and thus getting himself in ever more trouble. That kind of thing was for his past self, who had done stupidity at the drop of a wand, and for Voldemort. And for Bellatrix, he supposed, but at least she had served as an object lesson to the rest of the world. No one would ever underestimate Molly Weasley again.

            "We have him," Kingsley said, and pushed his chair back from his desk. "If you'd come this way?"

            Harry wondered for a moment whether Kingsley would personally escort anyone else to look at a suspect, and then tried to throw the thought off a high building. Now that Malfoy had told him that, he was going to spend months analyzing perfectly innocent interactions to death, wasn't he?

            I don't have to. I'm only doing it because I think I have to. But I should remember that I've got another job, too, and keep my mind on that just as much.

            Kingsley escorted him far deeper into the Auror Department than Harry expected, far enough that he worried that he might not get back to his office in time before someone opened the door, found Malfoy after all, and dropped dead of a heart attack in sheer surprise. Everyone knew that Harry Potter was a Model Auror. He didn't fuck suspects or former Death Eaters.

            And I'm the paranoid one, assuming that everyone who looks at Malfoy and then at me is going to think we're fucking. They're far more likely to assume that Malfoy is taken. I mean, look at him.

            The daydreams those thoughts produced satisfied Harry until they arrived at the holding cell Kingsley had been aiming for. The door was a plain one, more likely to lead to an office at first glance than a cell, and Harry recognized the subtle shimmer of wards that wouldn't activate until someone was close. He nodded his admiration, while his curiosity increased. It was a rare case that could surprise him now. Maybe he had found something that would.

            "You said he was giving you riddling answers?" he asked Kingsley, telling himself that his instinctive flinch at the word "Riddle" was really something that would have to be dealt with by a professional Mind-Healer if it didn't stop soon. "What kind of answers?"

            Kingsley only shook his head, as though he doubted Harry would understand the magnitude of what he was facing without evidence, and opened the door. The wards snarled out towards him, then relaxed as they recognized the touch of his skin, and the door clicked ajar.

            Harry saw the prisoner first. He was sitting at the simple table in the center of the room, looking through the enchanted window in the wall that reflected a tempting vision of singing birds and sunshine. He was a small, slim man, with dark hair and a neatly-trimmed moustache that made Harry blink. Most wizards affected beards or went bare-faced, a fact Harry hated because it meant that his rugged stubble wasn't accepted even when he tried to pass it off as heroic.

            Then the man turned towards him, and Harry hissed a little under his breath. The man's eyes had slit pupils. Only certain kinds of Dark magic made someone look like that, and magic that tried to recreate Salazar Slytherin's spells was among them.

            Kingsley might have pulled him in more for his understanding of Parseltongue and experience with these kinds of cases than for his truth-telling abilities. That made Harry relax, a little, and he nodded to the man and tried him out in Parseltongue. "Can you understand what I'm saying to you?"

            The man stared at him with a blankness that Harry didn't think was feigned. He sighed and turned to Kingsley, ignoring the slight grey tinge to his boss's skin. Most people reacted like that to hearing him speak Parseltongue. "I'll take it from here."

            Kingsley left, the door shutting behind him with the same quiet click. It didn't disturb Harry. The wards would let him out again if he asked, and given his Auror instincts, one move by the prisoner would probably result in said prisoner being plastered against the wall with actual plaster between his teeth. Harry was used to being more dangerous than anyone else he met.

            He leaned his chair back, therefore, hooking his feet under the table, and nodded companionably to the prisoner. "I've known all sorts of people like you," he said. "People who thought they were heirs to Slytherin's greatness. People who thought they had the right to command snakes. People who thought to equal one of the Founders of Hogwarts with a little research."

            The man leaned forwards, hands on his knees. "My name is Alexander Immortal," he whispered.

            Harry laughed at him. Immortal jerked back as if stung, and raised his hands in front of him. Harry shook his head and restrained the further chuckles he wanted to give.

            "I'm sorry," he said. "I've had bad experiences with people who choose some pretentious name based on qualities they think they have, rather than qualities that they actually have."

            "But I've discovered Slytherin's spells for raising the dead," Immortal insisted. "The real ones. The ones that people have ignored over the years because they were scribbled in small and forgotten books, and they thought the books that contained them should look grander."

            Harry eyed him. That answer seemed straightforward to him, and no red light of a lie had surrounded Immortal. He wondered if it was simply that Immortal was more willing to talk to a Parselmouth than he was to most Aurors. "Have you?" he asked mildly. "Well, that's different than the people who think they've raised themselves from the dead, I suppose. Though you're pale enough for that to be true."

            Immortal shook his head. "You aren't listening to me. Shacklebolt promised to bring someone who would listen to me, and you aren't doing that. Raising the dead, I said. Not necromancy."

            Harry blinked. The red light had appeared briefly, then winked out like a comet when he continued speaking. Harry nodded. The second statement he had made was a lie, but he sincerely believed the rest.

            "Shacklebolt didn't promise that," he said, and watched Immortal start back from him, his hands once again flying up as if they could protect him. "But that you believe the rest of it--that's interesting. What's the difference between raising the dead and necromancy? Usually people think of necromancy as the art of speaking to the dead and making them live again."

            Immortal smiled dreamily. "You asked the right question," he said. "Shacklebolt promised to bring me people who would ask me the right questions."

            No light of a lie, this time, but all that meant was Immortal believed it had happened, not that it had. Harry was starting to see what Kingsley had meant by riddling answers. Immortal was insane, and pathetic, and probably didn't deserve as much attention as Harry was giving him. Harry sighed wearily.

            I would much prefer to be paying attention to Malfoy.

            The intense bolt of longing that traveled through him when he had that thought stunned him. He had to shake his head and put it aside in order to concentrate on Immortal. "I don't think he did," he said, but let his voice sound a little more uncertain than before. "But you were about to explain to me the difference between raising the dead and necromancy."

            Immortal leaned forwards. “I’ll tell you,” he whispered, “if you’ll promise not to tell anyone else.”

            Harry nodded earnestly and leaned towards him in turn, even reaching out to clasp Immortal’s hands when it seemed for a moment as if he would hesitate. Immortal licked his lips and closed his eyes, his mind reaching out for a way. Harry waited.

            A slight breeze shivered past him, and Harry had the feeling that someone else had entered the room. There were observation wards that gave that feeling, so for the moment, he didn’t glance up or show that he had noticed. He only kept his eyes on Immortal, and felt the man relaxing in front of him, going deeper and deeper, until Harry thought he might be in a trance. He barely breathed, anyway.

            “You know that raising the dead can mean making them live again,” Immortal whispered. “But think of the different things it can mean. We speak of the dead living in their children, in their portraits, in their deeds. What is so different about Slytherin’s magic that we want it, when we have ways of continuing our lives if we want to?”

            “That’s what I want to know,” Harry said, nodding and continuing to nod when Immortal opened one eye to glare at him.

            “You don’t know,” Immortal said, seeming to satisfy himself of this with an examination of Harry’s face, and then he closed his eyes and continued. “What is different is that the survival of the dead, in his magic, is not metaphorical. We can give them a name and a face and a body, again.”

            Harry felt his mind arc and come down at a conclusion. Kingsley had scolded him about that, and it was true that Harry had come to some wrong conclusions in his time. But when it felt like this, when his mind moved smoothly and sweetly along the path of another’s thought and touched it like this, he knew he was right.

            “You’re talking about bringing someone back in another person’s body,” he said. “Giving the spirit the body to possess, but bringing them back intact with their memories and their lives, so that they can live again.”

            Immortal lurched backwards, but Harry had hold of his hands and wouldn’t let them go. Auror instinct told him not to. He had made a connection with the man at the physical and mental level, but he would have to build it back up if he released him now.

            “You know I’m right,” Harry whispered, as soft as he could, as dazzling and lulling as he could. “And no one else knew. Am I right? They were all looking in the wrong direction, looking at necromancy and the means of giving the dead person back their original body. You were the only one who looked in the right direction, and showed everyone that you knew what to do, that you were the original researcher and the people who came after you didn’t know what they were doing.”

            Immortal bit his lip and opened his eyes. They were very dark. “How did you know that?” he whispered. “No one else has ever.”

            “I know,” Harry said, and swung their clasped hands back and forth. “But no one else has cared enough to look, either. They heard about your research, and they snorted and said that Slytherin must have meant something else, something grander, and they went on to look for things they said were less paltry. But this is so simple that it’s genius. Of course you can’t just get a ghost to possess a body, because the body’s original owner would win the contest. And you can’t resurrect a body that’s crumbled to dust. But you could give the ghost a new body, if you figured out a way to destroy the owner’s soul.”

            “How did you know?” breathed Immortal, sounding as though the words came from his magical core.

            Harry shook his head at him, smiling gently and not showing his revulsion. One didn’t show it, to someone like Immortal whom he had persuaded to trust him in the first place. “I’ve done my own research,” he said quietly. “And I speak Parseltongue. There are secrets of Slytherin’s that only a Parselmouth could penetrate.”

            Which was even truth, just not in a way that connected with what Immortal was talking about. He nodded eagerly anyway and ran his hand down Harry’s arm, making him shiver a little. “Yes, yes, you know. And you understand why I must escape this place as soon as possible. I have managed the ancient spells.”

            Harry leaned back a little and raised his voice, to make sure that the wards on the cell would record what he was about to say. “You know how to destroy a soul?”

            Immortal nodded again.

            Well, that’s torn it. Harry was just as glad that he wouldn’t be involved in the rest of the investigation of this case. All soul-destroying magic that he had investigated so far involved Dementors, and he wanted to stay as far away from them as he possibly could.

            He leaned further back, taking his hands away from Immortal’s. “Then I wish you luck,” he said. “Because you’re going to need it, when the full might of the Aurors falls on you.” He stood up and turned for the door.

            “But you said—you implied—you would help me,” Immortal said, and his voice was deep and bewildered enough that Harry glanced over his shoulder. Again he thought he saw a flicker of motion, and grimaced. They had probably sent someone in here, Disillusioned, to watch the way he handled Immortal. It wasn’t that Harry resented being used as a model of a Good Auror, not really. He just wished Kingsley would talk to him about it more often, instead of doing it and then praising him as a model. Someday, he would mess up, and it would be in a situation where his mistakes would stand out more than his good actions up to that point had done. That was only inevitable, when you looked at someone with his fame and his lack of political skills.

            “I implied it,” Harry said. “I never outright told you, you know. You ought to listen to yourself and your utter insanity. Why would I want to help you destroy souls?”

            Immortal sat there, blinking. Harry stepped out of the cell and waited a moment with the door open so that whoever had accompanied him could get out, too. Then he shut the door and sighed, shaking his head.

            So he had discovered what Immortal was up to, and now the Aurors who were in charge of the case could look over his research with a more critical eye, if they hadn’t done it so far. That didn’t change the tension thrumming in his shoulders, really. But it might win more tolerance for the questions he wanted to ask, and that meant more tolerance for Malfoy, and that meant he would get to spend more time with Malfoy and do something for him by possibly finding his father. So it worked out to his benefit, in the end.

            “Impressive.”

            Harry spun, wand pointed at Malfoy’s heart as he removed the Disillusionment Charm on himself. Harry hissed and cast it again, as much as he hated seeing that particular face dissolve into whirling particles and then the shape of the wall. “What are you doing here? I told you to wait in my office.”

            “And miss this?” Malfoy swept his hand up and down as though they were still in the cell. “I got to see you interrogate someone, got to see where your skills and limits lie.”

            And that was it, really, Harry thought. The Unspeakables had proven that the red of a lie would show even through a Disillusionment Charm, so Malfoy wasn’t lying. Harry still slumped back against the wall behind him and rubbed his face, letting out a groan. “So you don’t trust me to find the information that leads to your father on my own?”

            “I wanted to see,” Malfoy said, and let his face appear for a brief moment with a fierce grin on it that Harry didn’t understand. “Because I wanted to know more about you, in the hopes of making a decision of my own.”

            He moved past Harry, his hand touching his arm. Harry shivered at the intense contact there, and for the half-second or so that Malfoy’s face remained visible, he looked into Harry’s eyes.

            The look there told Harry exactly what decision Malfoy was trying to make.

            Grinning, Harry followed him back towards Kingsley’s office, suddenly much more cheerful. I knew he was too sensible to regret the sex forever.

*

            polka dot: It may be a while yet.

            unneeded: I thought Harry deserved the chance to be the practical one for once.

            ReadsReligiously: Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

            Nightlo: Draco has been taken by surprise, and he doesn’t approve of that.
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