Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Writ on Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3958 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Title: Writ on Water

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco, mentions of Ron/Hermione

Rating: R

Warnings: Angst, violence, gore, possibly sex, ignores the epilogue.

Summary: Harry and Draco’s new relationship is tested by a new case, the appearance of people Draco would have been happy to forget, and the mysterious notes that appear everywhere around them. Who or what is the morning star?

Author’s Notes: This is the eighth story in the Cloak and Dagger series, about Harry and Draco as Auror partners hunting Dark wizards. The previous stories are “Invisible Sparks,” Hero’s Funeral, “Rites of the Dead,” Sister Healer, “Working With Them,” This Enchanted Life, and “Letters From Exile.” This one probably won’t make much sense if you try to read it on its own. Its title comes from Keats’s epitaph, and it will probably be twelve or fifteen chapters. As with the previous stories in the series, it will be updated every Wednesday.

Writ on Water

Chapter One—Silence in the Darkness

            Harry woke with a gasp. In the silence of the night, a collar of invisible, hissing serpents seemed to surround his throat.

            Harry reached up and tore at the air with one hand, while fumbling for his glasses with the other. He paused with another sharp gasp when he realized there was nothing in the air around his neck, and only skin under his hands.

            After a few moments during which he hushed his breathing as much as possible, he realized no one was near. He found his glasses, shoved them on his face, winced as the eyepiece of one nearly poked him in the ear, and then found his wand. He blinked as the Lumos Charm sprang to life, both because it was slow and because it filled his vision with painful images.

            Maybe I ought to start sleeping with a torch in my room, if only because it would make me wake up faster.

            He leaned against the pillow and looked around. He knew he would have felt different sensations if the wards had awakened him, but sometimes strange things happened, either thanks to his curse scar or being hit so much with Dark magic during his youth, and if he kept quiet and still, he might figure it out.

            Nothing moved, and no one spoke. But then Harry felt a sensation deep in his belly, tugging like a fishhook buried in his intestines. And he had encountered one of those once, when hunting a particularly clever and ruthless Dark wizard with Ron. Harry grimaced and turned on his side, trying to ease the pull.

            It seemed to float up his body and compensate for the new direction. Harry frowned. Now it felt more like the tug of a Portkey. He had never heard of someone able to Portkey someone out of their houses without an object, but a few years ago, he would also have argued against forcible Apparition, or people who could turn others into their slaves without the Imperius Curse.

            He stood up, and the pull moved around his body again, this time located more in his chest. It also started to get more painful again the longer he stood there. Harry shook his head. He doubted he would get back to sleep if he didn’t go and see what the pull wanted.

            He took a few moments to shove his feet into Auror boots and his awkward arms into a dressing gown, and then he gritted his teeth and created a timed Patronus, which would go to Draco in case he didn’t return within half an hour. He probably should have gone to summon Draco, but the pull didn’t feel like it would go in that direction, and Harry didn’t want to wait longer, in case it ripped his heart out of his chest or something.

            In the end, the jerking was strong enough that Harry simply whirled in place and Apparated, trusting it to take him where he needed to go.

            He arrived in a dim and dusty room with a wobbly gasp, and looked around at the walls in some suspicion. He relaxed a little when he recognized that it was one of the upper rooms in Grimmauld Place. Behind his own wards, he could hold off anyone who tried to attack, even if they had come up with this clever way to lure him here.

            The tug came to life in his right shoulder this time, and Harry turned upstairs. The dust puffed up around him as he walked, and he cast charms that cleared his throat and settled it with a slight shower from Aguamenti . The corridors around him seemed to sigh now and then, settling from the unexpected weight of a wizard tramping along them.

            By now, Harry was wondering if someone had managed to break in and steal a Black heirloom. That would explain the tugging sensation; he had been summoned as head of the Black family to deal with the crime.

            But instead of the cabinets or dusty attics still crowded with things Harry had never looked through, the tugging led him straight to the tapestry. There, it vanished. Harry, who had braced himself against the pull, blinked and rested one arm against the wall to hold himself up while he yawned and studied the tapestry.

            It looked the same as it always did. Harry studied the line that drew Narcissa Black’s marriage to Lucius Malfoy first, and yes, Draco was there, his name glowing reassuringly safe and familiar. Next, he looked at Sirius’s black mark, right under his parents’ names, and nothing had changed there, either. Harry spent the longest time looking at that part; it made sense that the message would be especially urgent if anything had happened to the man he had inherited the house and its responsibilities from.

            But nothing looked different, and no matter how long Harry waited, the tugging didn’t come back. He frowned and shook his head, reaching out to run his fingers down the tapestry. The cloth felt the same, too, and no magical beast lunged out of it to bite him.

            At last, after staring at it some more, Harry gave up and turned back to go to bed. Sometimes he didn’t like the inheritance Sirius had left him; for one thing, he would have given it all up any day to have his godfather back. Or given it up to Draco, if he’d ever showed any sign of wanting it. But he didn’t think Draco would ever take charity.

            But this was the weirdest thing yet, he thought drowsily, when he was back in bed, comfortable and warm and with his head resting at just the right angle. All right, so the Black magic had thought something was wrong with the tapestry. But how could it be, when Sirius and Narcissa and even Sirius’s awful mother were in the right place? And those were the only Blacks that he might have noticed vanish from the tapestry.

            He yawned, and pressed further into the pillow, and fell asleep still half-braced for the mysterious tugging to begin again.

*

            “One for you.”

            Draco raised a hand and caught the tossed file without bothering to look up from the other one he was reading. He was friends—of a sort—with Auror Macgeorge, but it never did to give her an idea that she was more important than whatever you were doing at the moment.

            He reached the end of his first file and rolled his eyes. This wasn’t a potential twisted; it was a fantasy made up out of too much toadweed and someone’s clever glamour charm. He scribbled the recommendation for a pair of Hit Wizards to go and soothe the woman who believed she had seen the dead get up and walk on her street, and wished he could scribble the recommendation for someone to rap her hand smartly with a wand, too. It was too bad there was no such charge as “wasting an Auror’s time.”

            “How do you do that?”

            Draco glanced up. He had assumed, when she made no more noises for attention, that Auror Macgeorge had gone for tea, but no, instead she leaned against her desk and watched him with a fascination that, frankly, made him a little uncomfortable. He covered it by leaning down until he could place the file into the drawer that would Vanish them for the present, and call them back when they were wanted—that was, when someone happened to be walking in the general direction of the Head Auror’s office.

            “Catch things without looking?” He sat back up and crossed his legs, smiling at her in a way that didn’t use his eyes. “I was a Seeker, you know.”

            “Not like Potter was one,” Macgeorge said, and stretched as lazily as a cat in the sun. “I heard of him even though he never played professionally.”

            Draco snorted. “And he probably couldn’t play now, with as many old wounds and enemies as he had. Someone would shoot a Stunner from the crowd, and that would be the end of him.”

            “Why do you follow him so?”

            Draco raised a second eyebrow to join the first. “Pardon? I don’t know what you mean. If someone told you that Potter controls me, or anything else similar, then they’ve misled you. There is nothing tame about me.”

            Macgeorge gave him her own non-smile. “No one has to tell me what’s plain on your face to see. The way your eyes follow him. The lost way that you’ve looked for his letters during his holiday. The way you orient on him the moment he walks into the room.” She paused, staring at the wall, and then added generously, “Of course, he does the same sort of thing to you, so you can at least argue there’s a mutual regard there.”

            Draco wanted to freeze, or at least crumple one of the endless sheets of parchment on his desk. So someone had noticed. Well, he shouldn’t have thought that his partnership—more than assigned partnership—with Harry could remain secret for long.

            Macgeorge was studying him with a cool curiosity that made him think she wouldn’t immediately report their mutual infatuation to Okazes and demand reassignment for one of them, at least. And it would be silly to deny what she had seen, especially when they were the only ones in the bloody huge Socrates Corps office for the moment.

            Draco leaned forwards and lowered his voice. Macgeorge drifted imperceptibly closer. Good. “I don’t know if you’ve paid attention to him—” and you shouldn’t pay too much, said the sharpened claws in his smile “—but he’s fit.”

            Macgeorge nodded. “And if you only ever watched his eyes or his arse, I might believe that,” she murmured. “But you watch his face, as well, and the way he walks, and you always know what he looks like even when you don’t glance up from your desk. I guarantee you that even Isla has noticed it, and she doesn’t notice a lot.”

            Draco tilted his head. “And you’re not afraid that your partner’s lack of observational skills will get you killed someday?”

            Macgeorge shrugged. “We’re not on a case at the moment. She’s not here to be offended. I want to know.”

            “Are you surprised because he’s not a pure-blood?” Draco asked, switching tactics. So, he couldn’t deflect her, and she wouldn’t believe an attraction on the physical level alone. Well, if he was her, Draco might not, either. But her surprise still seemed excessive. “Or because it seems such a common fantasy, to be with the Boy-Who-Lived? Or because you believe that he’s not a good Auror, and you know that I can’t stand incompetence?”

            Macgeorge’s smile was knife-edged. “I didn’t know that last about you, but I’m not surprised. But knowing it does make me curious. Potter is in trouble continually with Okazes and with the press, and even with bloody St. Mungo’s. How can you stand to be around him, knowing he might drag your own career down?”

            “Have you noticed,” Draco said, deciding that he might as well shift the ground under her feet, too, “that we don’t have as many visitors or cases here as some of the other Corps do? As far as I’m concerned, this is where my career landed me, and there’s no other place that I’m likely to go. What I did in certain numbers of my cases made the Ministry wary of me, and I think the same thing can be said of Potter.”

            And you, rang the words in the clear air of the huge office without having to be said.

            Macgeorge took a step towards him, but just then, her partner came in, complaining about the flavor of the tea, as usual. Macgeorge turned to soothe her, but kept her eye on Draco, and her focus never wavered from him.

            Draco shrugged and turned back to his paperwork. That was as close as he intended to come, at the moment, to sharing with her what he and Harry had discovered about twisted on the Alexander case. He might have said more, but her hostility at the moment, no matter its origin, wasn’t something he particularly wanted to confront.

            Then the door opened, and Harry stepped in. He was yawning and scratching that mop he called hair back into place. Draco felt his heart beat faster to see him, and it could even have been because of those gestures, not in spite of them.

            He sat up straighter, and caught Macgeorge smirking from the corner of his eye. Draco ignored her. If she tried to wield this knowledge against him, he knew something about her that she didn’t realize he knew, and he could crush her pretensions with little more than a flick of his tongue.

            “Good morning, Draco, Nicolette, Isla,” Harry said. He had taken to first names all around lately, as if he imagined that would keep the fact that he called Draco by his first name from the notice of their co-workers. Macgeorge snorted into her cup and turned back to her work, shaking her head. Harry, now rooting through papers on his desk the same way he had rooted through his hair, didn’t notice.

            What caught Draco’s eye was Rudie’s faint smile that she lifted her teacup to cover. Did she really know something? Draco had not realized how fast and far word of his liaison with Harry Potter might spread.

            Of course, possibly he and Harry had been putting out signals that others had simply picked up on first. Draco knew that Harry was not the most subtle of people, and Draco sometimes felt he was becoming less so as he worked with him.

            “Have a case,” Harry said, succinctly, and extended a file across the space between their desks. Draco, damning the audience in his mind, reached over and took it, and let his fingers brush against Harry’s on the way.

            Harry caught his eye, and flushed. Draco smiled back, and his smile could convey half a dozen meanings at once, before he opened the file. Public relationships had some few advantages, it seemed.

            The photographs in the file did not depict bodies, as he had expected. Most of the time, they weren’t called in on cases without murders, as twisted were mad and tended to reveal themselves that way. Instead, the pictures showed a series of neat, hand-written notes, none of them with the words large enough to read. Draco murmured an imprecation against Ministry photographers in general and tapped his wand against the pictures, enlarging them enough to read.

            Harry was still chattering on. “All of them reference the morning star. The woman whose house they’re in, Karina Jourdemayne, doesn’t know why. She says they’re in her handwriting, but she can’t remember writing them, and she’s strengthened her wards with no result.”

            Draco leaned back in his chair. “I see. And why have they assigned this case to Socrates Corps?” He lowered his voice and the file at the same time, and, when Harry looked up, forced eye contact.

            Harry’s eyes widened, and then the lids lowered over them in a way that Draco thought a dead man would have found sensual. Luckily enough for him, he didn’t think Harry was interested in anyone else, and Draco was certainly not interested in letting others have time to find Harry and attract his attention.

            “The f-file says,” Harry said, and paused to swallow. Draco heard the distinct neighing sound of Macgeorge’s snicker. Harry must have heard it, too, because he lifted his head and narrowed his eyes, but then turned back to Draco and spoke in a firmer voice. “Jourdemayne had a twisted in her family. Her sister. She fears that she might be going mad herself, or that the ghost of her sister has somehow come back to haunt her.”

            “Mmm.” Draco turned back to the file, satisfied that at least Harry couldn’t ignore the tension that hovered between them. “And it seems she has a connection to the Head Auror as well. Donated to him when he had problems cleaning his house up from a Boggart infestation?”

            “I would never presume to suggest that that had anything to do with it,” Harry said, in a screechy, innocent tone.

            “Of course not,” Draco said, and stood, nodding to Macgeorge and Rudie. “See you later.”

            Apparently because she had decided that they were no longer interesting, Macgeorge had turned back to her work, but Rudie looked up and waved to watch them go. Draco met her eyes with what he only knew later was a challenge, probably, instead of the calm and cool gaze that he would have wished to show.

            Rudie dipped her head and spread her hands, and then faced her work, as well. Draco told himself he was getting paranoid, and left the office in stride with Harry. When they weren’t thinking about it, he had discovered, it was actually easier to fall into, this apparently perfect match, march for march and step for step.

            “What is Macgeorge smirking at us for?” Harry murmured, when they were in the privacy of a lift heading down to the Atrium.

            “I believe she thinks I have a plot of some kind,” Draco said, and folded his arms, shaking his head until Harry looked at him again. “Why else would I put up with a partner who’s not only not pure of blood but continually in trouble?”

            “And likely to be in more trouble later,” Harry said. “So. What did you tell her?”

            “Oh, some rubbish,” said Draco, and reached out and let his fingers trail down Harry’s elbow. “Nothing like the truth.”

            Harry turned the most becoming color. His face tended to be pale with exhaustion or dark with anger; Draco preferred this blooming red, which was more of the shade of life, at least.

            “Thanks,” Harry said, turning his head away.

            He didn’t say whether he was thanking Draco for the touch or the words or the defense from Macgeorge, and Draco didn’t care which it was. He kept his hand in place on Harry’s arm until the lift jerked to a stop and its doors opened, exposing them to many, and too-curious, eyes.

*

            “I’m just so worried.”

            Harry was telling himself that some people couldn’t help it if they were born with annoying voices, and that the woman in front of him had good reason to be worried. Notes appearing out of nowhere, with unknown references and no echo in his memory, might make him think he was going mad, too.

            But couldn’t she do it a little more quietly?

            Jourdemayne paced the center of her drawing room, a large, warm place she had shown them into when they first arrived, and which they hadn’t yet left, although Draco had tried several times to suggest that they go and tour the rest of the house. Portraits crowded the walls, some of them with features only mildly similar to Jourdemayne’s; here and there stood stuffed animals, sleek and shining greyhounds and what Harry recognized as a Grim. The furniture had been chosen for cost and not comfort, and no one with an eye to color had advised her that bright green and that particular shade of blue didn’t go together. In other words, everything about her room screamed “Half-blood trying to claim pure-blood status.”

            Jourdemayne herself was a tall woman with black hair who might have been striking if she wasn’t in the middle of a fit of fear. Her hair flowed behind her in thick tangles that reminded Harry of Bellatrix, and she wore a set of silky pyjamas and a wool blanket—the only thing on her bigger than her hair—draped over her shoulders. She hadn’t offered to go get dressed, either; she had only paced back and forth, both hair and makeshift cloak flying, and recited all the details they already knew from the file.

            Harry looked at Draco. Draco pursed his lips and looked back, and for a moment, they had a silent row about who exactly was going to try and direct the witness’s attention to what they were really here for, new details. Harry tried to tell Draco with his eyes that he was pure-blood and she would probably like attention from him better, and Draco replied that Harry was half-blood, like her, and the Great Harry Potter besides.

            That last argument settled things. Harry sighed, turned to Jourdemayne, and tried to make his voice as pleasant as possible when all he really wanted was for her to sit down and stop making him dizzy. “Ms. Jourdemayne. I’m sorry to cause you distress, but I have to know. Have you done research on the morning star references yourself? That’s one thing the file didn’t mention.”

            “Of course I have!” Jourdemayne came to a halt, looked between them, and then seemed to finally decide that Harry’s attention was a fine enough compliment. “I’ve looked in dozens of books, and found references to planets—especially Venus—and gods and weapons and Lucifer. Of course, I haven’t looked in many Muggle books,” she added a moment later, as if realizing what the last word might reveal.

            Harry nodded. “And you can’t remember your family having a feud with anyone by the name of Morningstar?” He thought that was the simplest explanation, really, and it sounded like it could easily be a pretentious pure-blood name.

            Jourdemayne opened her mouth to respond, and then shrieked and pointed a finger. “Look! Look! There’s another of them! That wasn’t there when you walked into the room!”

            Harry spun around and aimed his wand, and sure enough, a scrap of paper fluttered from a table near the fire that had been empty a few minutes before. After a glance with Draco and a trembling nod from Jourdemayne, Harry ventured towards it. He still cast several spells before he picked it up.

            But it was an ordinary piece of parchment, like all the other notes that Jourdemayne had allowed them to see and handle. And it looked like them, too, in that it had the distinctive flourishes on all the letters like g’s and b that Jourdemayne seemed to typically put in her writing.

            This one had a variation of the message that had already become wearily familiar to Harry after a few hours of investigation: Beware the morning star. Appearing here seems strange, but it has a deeper purpose.

            Harry shook his head. “Could ‘appearing here’ refer to the appearance of the note?” he asked, turning to Jourdemayne. “Do you think a version of yourself from another world or time could be sending these notes to you?”

            Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Draco roll his eyes, but Jourdemayne latched on eagerly to his explanation and began talking about it, and that had been all Harry wanted. He was feeling a stirring of excitement and interest despite himself. If someone had used Dark magic to transport the note into the room, Draco’s flaw should have reacted, and if someone had intended to kill Jourdemayne soon, Harry’s should have. And Dark magic and murderous intent were two of the most common marks of the twisted.

            This might not be a twisted. It might be just an ordinary, if intriguing, mystery. Harry was looking forward to one of those.

            And if we don’t have to kill anyone this time, I will be very relieved.
- 1
- 2
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Writ on Water