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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
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Chapter Nine--This Is The Worst

            "Auror Malfoy, are you sure that you should be taking the lead on this case? I understood that Aurors Jenkins and Warren were more experienced."

            Harry could see the muscle ticking in the side of Draco's jaw, and knew it would get worse before it got better. So he intervened, stepping between Elder and Draco and smiling as he said, "Why don't you get bent, Elder?"

            Warren and Jenkins both gave him sharp looks from over the copy of the map from Ernhardt's house that they'd made. Harry didn't care. If they wouldn't do anything about Elder's sniping, which could seriously hurt their team and thus get one of them hurt, then he would. There was no difference between what he was saying and what Elder was except that Harry’s voice was louder.

            "I thought Auror Malfoy could stand up for himself." Elder folded his hands in front of him like a priest, and smiled.

            "He doesn't have to," Harry said instantly. He'd spent a few hours the other day looking at old dueling codes, trying to find something that the Malfoys would accept in place of the destruction of Draco's soul. He learned useful information that way, at times. Not often, but days like this made up for the useless time. "He can appoint a champion to act on his behalf, to combat any accusation you make. Do you want to take me on in a duel, Elder?"

            Elder stared at him. Long and searchingly, as if he had no idea why Harry might want to step in the way of insults hurled at Draco. Then he shook his head. "My quarrel isn't with you, and you aren't the one who should suffer."

            "No one should suffer," Rudie said, chopping the air between them with a swift hand. "The only one who should is Ernhardt. Shut up, Elder. We need to concentrate on the case." And she turned back to face the map.

            "You heard the lady," Harry said, and turned his back, crossing the open Socrates office to stand beside Draco. He put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed for a few seconds.

            Draco nodded once. The ticking muscle had calmed down. Now he looked as though this was a boring meeting and his mind had already moved on to what he would do next. Harry didn't like that look, but it was better than some of the others Draco might have had in Elder's presence, so Harry would put up with it.

            "We think Ernhardt has a house in the Forbidden Forest," Warren was saying when Harry paid attention again. "Or a sanctuary, at least, like the one we found at Cuthbert's Corner. We need to go there."

            "If he's not there?" Rudie trembled like light in water. Harry had to look closely to see that her fingers were closed on her wand, and that grip, at least, was absolutely steady.

            "Then we'll look for any clues he's left behind that might tell us where he's moved." Jenkins twisted her neck to look at her. "The same way we looked for clues to tell us what he intends at Cuthbert's Corner."

            "But Aurors Potter and Malfoy participated in that expedition," Elder said. "And we know that Auror Malfoy covers up what he shouldn't. Any evidence you might have uncovered from there is tainted."

            Harry really would have drawn his wand, but Rudie said, in the kind of tone someone wouldn't contradict, "Shut up, Elder. If these people can lead me to Nicolette and help me in setting her free, I don't care what else they do. If they can't, then I'll strike out on my own and find her. Either way, you aren't helping."

            "Yes, you aren't helping," Jenkins said, exactly as if she hadn't spent an entire afternoon expressing doubts about Draco and Harry, too. "We need to trust and rely on each other to survive Ernhardt."

            "But how can you trust someone who's a Dark wizard?"

            "Do you know what?" Harry asked Warren's back. "I used Unforgivable Curses during the war. I cursed someone just for insulting a person I liked. I went into the woods to die when there were probably easier ways to do it. I defeated the Darkest wizard in history with a lucky coincidence, and I've lived through cases that I couldn't have lived through without using Darker magic. So I'm the same as him, Elder, and you should arrest me, too."

            Elder turned to him. His smile had vanished, leaving his face looking pale and unprotected. "But you're Harry Potter," he said, as though that excused him.

            "What does that matter?" Harry demanded.

            "You can't be tainted in your soul," Elder said simply. "Your partner could, though, and he could have fooled you. Your innate good nature means that you wouldn't recognize the deceptions he presented to you."

            A little silence settled over the Socrates office. Harry knew that Rudie hadn't paid any attention, and Draco still stared off to the side as though nothing concerned him more than the construction of the office walls, but Warren, Jenkins, and Harry stood together, looking at Elder, and Harry wasn't sure which of them would curse him first.

            "You're the one who's misunderstood," Warren said at last. "Anyone can be fooled, but an Auror can also use Dark magic to survive an investigation. You'll find, Auror Elder, that working in the Socrates Corps is different from working with Lucretius or Aristotle or wherever you were before. We hunt the Darkest wizards alive. We kill them more than we capture them. There is no room for untainted goodness in a Corps like that. And Harry Potter is one of the most successful Socrates Aurors since the Corps began."

            Elder blinked at her like a turtle coming from out of its shell. "Do you mean that Auror Malfoy has fooled you, too? I had no idea. I think--I think that I'll have to be very careful to guard Isla's back when we go into this house."

            Jenkins turned her wand over in her hand. Warren smiled at her, and Harry felt a vast ripple of silent communication pass between them. He had no idea what it meant, but it comforted him all the same. He knew Jenkins and Warren would act together, if necessary, to prevent Elder from being worse than annoying.

            "We're going to discuss other things now," Jenkins said, very softly and very clearly. "Not your obsessions, Auror Elder. Don't try to steer the conversation around to them again, or we shall be...displeased. Do you understand?"

            Elder was quiet, but Harry didn't think he did. He was obsessed with Draco being evil and tricking everyone, and now he shifted his shoulders back and forth, glancing from face to face. Harry had seen that look in the mirror more times than he wanted to count. He shuddered a little and turned back to Rudie.

            "I know one part of the Forbidden Forest well enough to Apparate to it," Rudie was saying. "Nicolette and I conducted a search for lost artifacts there. It's here." Her finger fell on what, as far as Harry could tell, was a meaningless area of forest, but not far from Ernhardt's house. "We should begin there."

            "If she was on the case, Ernhardt can touch her memories," Draco said, speaking for the first time in the conversation. "He might have baited the area with traps."

            "We're six fully armed Aurors," Rudie said, turning around to stare at him. "If we can't evade traps like that, then no one can."

            Her hand was on her wand again, her eyes wide and clear, and Harry knew a different kind of shiver than the one Elder had provoked. She really was going to follow her lost partner anywhere, and give her peace by her own measure, and no one would stop her. Probably the best they could do was keep Rudie from getting herself killed in the process.

            "I agree," Warren said, and rolled up the map with a little nod. "We should go while the news that we're all working together hasn't spread around the Ministry yet."

            "But why do you fear the Ministry knowing what we're doing?" Elder asked. "If it's legitimate, no one would try to stop us, and if it isn't, then it's their duty to stop us."

            Warren and Jenkins exchanged another of those glances. Harry understood the feeling. He wanted to strangle Elder, or shake him, or wave his hand up and down in front of his eyes.

            It didn't make sense that someone like Elder would have "earned" an assignment to Socrates Corps in the usual way, by being on a case involving a twisted and probably learning dangerous secrets that the Ministry wanted to keep them from blurting out. It made more and more sense to think someone had assigned him there to stop Draco.

            And we have to find out who, in addition to everything else.

            If it hadn't been for the solid, warm stance of Draco at his side, Harry thought he might have collapsed in exhaustion. But partnered Aurors didn't do that, and when Warren walked out the door, they all followed, Harry making sure to stay between Draco and Elder at all times.

*

            Draco wanted to kill Elder.

            It was a quiet, cold knowing, a desire that slithered through his brain and into the back of his mind and lay there waiting for him to notice it. He didn't know how to talk to Harry about it. Harry might say he understood, but Draco didn't know if Harry had ever felt rage like this, this deep, this persistent.

            Elder believed what he was saying. He thought Draco was lying to everyone, and he would probably try to prevent Draco from casting any spell he considered Dark. On this case, it could be fatal.

            It could be fatal to Harry.

            Draco walked with his muscles relaxed on the surface but tensed underneath, adrenaline whispering and then roaring in his ears. He could draw his wand and kill Elder before anything happened. It would make his allies abandon him--except for Rudie, who probably wouldn't care, and for Harry, who would linger to ask him why--but at the moment, he thought that a small price to pay for guarding his partner and his own life.

            Elder was trailing him, so close to Draco as they walked through the Ministry corridors that Draco could feel his breath. He stopped once and stepped back as a high-ranking secretary crossed their path, so that Elder had to scramble and almost hit a wall. When they started walking again, though, he was right back in the same place, and Draco knew that he would ignore the rebuffs and insults. Someone like Elder, with a sincere belief in Light and Dark magic and the need to arrest wizards who practiced Dark Arts, would always keep coming back, as stubborn as a mosquito.

            Yes, Draco wanted to kill him. And if he had a chance during the investigation and thought no one would suspect him, he would do it in a heartbeat.

            Harry stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they made their way to a hidden Apparition point and Rudie told them the coordinates she'd memorized. He knew something was wrong, Draco thought, but not what.

            He didn't have the words to tell him. He leaned on Harry instead, briefly, as Harry reached out to Side-Along Apparate him. He didn't dare stay leaning for long. Jenkins and Warren would think him weak. Elder would decide that it was part of a plot and bring it to everyone's attention.

            From the way Harry briefly squeezed his arm, at least one person saw, and knew, and understood.

*

            The clearing Rudie had described to them was a dim one, hidden from the sun by the thick branches arching overhead. Those branches were mostly dead, without leaves, but it didn't matter; they were in the middle of a thicket, and anything could be hiding here. Harry drew his wand openly a second after he and Draco landed from the Apparition.

            Elder came out of it with Rudie and pointed a finger at them. "What do you think you're doing, Auror Potter? Do you see any enemies here yet?"

            “They might be all around us, and we wouldn’t see them,” Harry said calmly, and kept his wand out. He turned to scan the trees, moving in a complete circle that kept his body between Elder and Draco at all times. Draco kept silent, which Harry knew meant he didn’t object, and since only Draco’s opinions were important… “Who’s taking the lead here?” He glanced from Rudie, who had chosen the Apparition point, to Warren, who had mastered the map.

            Warren looked at Rudie for a moment, too, but Rudie directed a burning gaze into the depths of the forest as if she would sear away all the trees that stood between her and her former partner, and said nothing. Warren sighed and took a step forwards. “I will.”

            Jenkins moved to back her up. Harry watched her watching him. She smiled when she caught his eye, and tilted her head at the wand.

            “Personally, I think an open threat is always a good idea,” she said. “It’s the only language that some of the creatures here understand.”

            Oh, good. We have her tacit approval, then. Harry wasn’t sure that the tacit approval of someone like Simone Jenkins was always a good thing, but he trusted her more than Elder. “Too many of them,” he said to her, with a grave nod, and as she fell in behind Warren, he fell in behind her. Draco was right beside him, obviously and pricklingly unhappy about turning his back on Elder. Harry turned and dropped back a few steps to shield him.

            “You don’t have to do that.”

            Elder was loud enough to scare birds away in a dozen directions. Harry saw Jenkins’s head tilt, listening. He hissed under his breath. Since Harry had made dealing with Elder his business, that meant Jenkins wouldn’t interfere unless Harry proved he couldn’t handle him.

            “Keep my wand out?” Harry smiled at him, and wondered what it looked like when Elder gave him a wounded look. Defensive, maybe. Elder understood so little that almost anything would make him react with those doe-eyes. “Auror Jenkins just explained why it was a good idea.”

            “You’re keeping it out to defend against me. I’m not going to do anything except prove to you why Auror Malfoy is untrustworthy.” Elder folded his arms, nodding to himself. “And I think you’d be grateful to be proven wrong.”

            Harry thought about all the times that other Aurors had accused him of being unsubtle and not understanding politics, and wished that they could be here now, so they could apologize to him. “Why grateful?”

            “Because it would mean that you were nurturing a serpent in your bosom, and you could cast it out.”

            “Were you raised by Muggles?” Harry asked. He couldn’t think of a polite way to ask what he needed to know, but then, screw being polite when Elder was involved.

            “No. Why do you ask?” Elder pranced along now, his gaze on Harry instead of any of the trees or shadows. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.

            “Because that sounded like a Muggle quotation,” Harry said. “From a book called the Bible.”

            “I’ve heard of it, of course,” Elder offered. “In Muggle Studies. Which is a subject I think any well-educated wizard should take, and—”

            “You need to be quiet,” Jenkins said, appearing out of nowhere right beside them. Harry was glad that Elder’s jump and startled flinch likely hid his own reaction. “You don’t want to alert Ernhardt before we get close to him, and I don’t care about your grudge against Auror Malfoy. Ernhardt is more dangerous.”

            She melted away again, and Elder turned back to Harry with a faint frown. “Are you sure that we can trust her?”

            “I tried to tell you before,” Harry said. “All of us have used Dark magic. All of us are committed to this hunt, and when we get there, we’re going to kill Ernhardt.” He’d thought of trying to soften the blow, but again, politeness was useless with Elder.

            “You can’t.”

            Elder turned away from him, then, and walked towards the front to catch up with Rudie, and Harry could relax and go back to watching out for the threats that would only try to kill them, instead of trying to get them killed.

            “Do you think Ernhardt assigned him to us from beyond the Department so we would die?” Draco murmured. “Or are people who worked for him and are still influenced by his agenda behind it?”

            Harry laughed aloud, then muffled it to a cough as Jenkins appeared from the shadows, glared at him, and melted away again. “I don’t think either,” he said at last. “It could be a coincidence. Or it could be that wherever he worked before, the people who had to work beside him were so fed up with him that they jumped at the chance to send him to another Corps.”

            “I wish we could know which.”

            Harry found and squeezed Draco’s hand. “I know.” Elder didn’t seem competent enough to be an Auror, but then, Harry knew people who would say the same of him. It could be difficult to know what an Auror’s best skills were when you were watching from the outside.

            He and Draco walked the rest of the way in silence, and the others did the same, though Harry heard Elder try to start a conversation several times. He fell quiet each time, though. Speaking to Rudie’s burning purpose was just intimidating enough, Harry supposed.

*

            Draco paused and lifted his head. Part of it was the nagging itch in his left arm, but the rest of it was just general sensitivity. They were entering a part of the Forest where powerful Dark spells had been used, and recently.

            Elder was silent up ahead. Draco hoped that those spells included one to make a stupid man wake up and pay attention, but he doubted it. He bowed his head and whispered in Harry’s ear, not wanting to make more noise than he could help.

            “I think we’re drawing near the center of a recent ritual. That’s what it feels like. If I’m right and Ernhardt fed his blood to other twisted to make them his slaves, he might have started to draw them together.”

            “As Jenkins would say, we have no idea if that would work,” Harry muttered, but his voice was a gentle buzz, and his hand squeezed Draco’s.

            “With Ernhardt, the worst thing we can imagine is generally true,” Draco pointed out. “So we’ll have to make preparations to deal with it.”

            Harry took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Right. So what should we do?”

            “Prepare to kill anyone we find there,” Draco said. “I don’t think we can let Rudie have her revenge, and we can’t pause to let Elder decide that it would be better to arrest everyone. If Ernhardt has an army of slaves, he can send them after us, and if we leave one person alive, he can escape in their body.”

            Harry was silent again as they walked over leaves and through dells. Draco winced from the amount of noise they were making, but they couldn’t make less without lighting brighter lights than the Lumos Charms on their wands, and he thought that would be an even worse idea.

            Then Harry said, “But he could switch from body to body during the battle, and then flee anyway. I don’t want to slaughter a bunch of idiots. There has to be a way to trap him inside Macgeorge’s body and keep him there.”

            “What is it, then?” Draco snapped. “Because we tried our best when we confronted him in the Head Auror’s office, and you know that didn’t do a bloody bit of good.”

            “There has to be something we can do other than mass murder.”

            Draco frowned fiercely in front of him, at the shadows that darted under their feet, at the Dark magic that was drawing closer and closer to them. “If you’re about to begin another prattle about how this means that the twisted are misunderstood and not evil and don’t deserve to be killed…”

            “Not precisely that,” Harry said. “But if there are other people there, how can we know they’re twisted? Or innocent victims that Ernhardt possessed and pulled here? We can’t. If we murder the innocent, then we really are no better than him.”

            Draco groaned silently. He should have known that now was the time Harry’s conscience would pick to reappear, when they were approaching what could be the most dangerous battle of their time in the Socrates Corps. “Don’t start comparing yourself to him. The lives he’s destroyed and the people he’s killed are far worse than anything you could do.”

            “Or you?”

            Draco winced. “I’m thinking of something higher than that,” he said. “Of the damage those twisted could do if they are Ernhardt’s slaves and we allow them to escape. Didn’t you say once that Dumbledore fought for the greater good?”

            “Yes, and he used me as a tool to do it,” Harry said, his voice empty. “Would we be using their deaths?”

            Draco shook his head and didn’t say anything more. It seemed that things would have to fall out as they had before, when they had confronted individual twisted on their cases. Eventually, one of them would try to kill him or Harry, and Harry would strike back in self-defense before he thought about it.

            The corridor of trees narrowed in front of them, and then widened out. It didn’t take Rudie’s hiss to tell Draco that that wasn’t natural. Warren slowed, and Jenkins with her, but all of them could still see into the “clearing” formed by the pulling back of the trees.

            And I thought the rotted hippogriff at Cuthbert’s Corner was bad.

            Bones lay everywhere on the ground, carpeting it so thickly that Draco knew they would find no normal soil if they tried to walk here. Flesh hung in shining curtains from the trees, turning towards them as if sensing their presence. Red and white gleamed starkly, and purple, the color of exposed muscle. Draco swallowed as the smell hit him. He thought he could see blood running on the ground, but it was hard to make it out between everything else.

            “He couldn’t have built this,” Warren said, her voice breaking some of the sick enchantment that held them at the edge of the clearing. “It isn’t his flaw.”

            “But it is Nicolette’s.” Rudie was standing tall, staring through the clearing at something else. “She always said that she knew more about necromancy than anyone had before. I think she was right.”

            Draco followed her gaze. There was a house there, yes. For a moment, he wondered if it was made of bones, or if Ernhardt had simply turned the stone walls into bone. It possibly wasn’t beyond Macgeorge’s skill.

            Then he realized that the entire building had the appearance of a giant skull, and swallowed.

            “Come on,” Rudie said, and set out to cross the shifting ground.

            Draco felt Harry’s presence at his side, quiet and warm and solid and alive, and determined that they both remain so.

It was the only thing that gave him the courage to take the first step.

*

Seiren: I think you’re going to get your wish.

SP777: Well, harder to divide and conquer when all the Aurors are together.
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A Reign of Silence