lomonaaeren | Chapter Forty-One of 'Changing of the Guard'- Lent Strength

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Chapter Forty-One—Lent Strength

Harry grinned as he watched from an obscure corner of Diagon Alley. The post owls he and Draco had hired would be leaving their perches at any moment now; currently they were roosting along the roofs and corners of the shops, indistinguishable from the other birds taking a mid-afternoon nap. It had taken some time to convince the owls that Harry and Draco only wanted them to fly over the alley and drop the letters instead of delivering them to a specific person, but the result would be worth the work.

Harry himself wore one of his most ordinary disguises, as Jessica Porter, a painfully thin half-blood woman who made her living running messages between points that post-owls couldn’t approach because of their paranoid owners’ wards. She wrapped her arms around herself at all times and huddled as close to any source of heat as she could get, so no one would look twice at the girl sitting on a bench in the sunlight. Harry kept his head bowed and watched from between the strands of Jessica’s long dark hair.

Madam Malkin had become prosperous enough in the past few years to afford a little ostentation. She now had a large gold clock sitting on the roof of her Robes for All Occasions, modeled after the Muggles’ Big Ben and keeping time with sonorous clicks. Most of the clicks went unheard, given the bustle in the Alley, but when it struck four, it did so in tremendous fashion; four was often the hour Madam Malkin closed her shop nowadays.

Harry counted seconds under his breath as he watched the clock’s hand turn, majestically, nearer and nearer to the required number. He exhaled hard when it reached it at last, and looked up at the roofs.

Cling, sang the clock in a high, sweet voice. The owls spread their wings and took flight, swooping across the alley. There were more than thirty of them, and they got the desired attention. People halted in the middle of their errands and tilted back their heads to watch, wrinkling their foreheads and pointing the birds out to the slow.

Clang, said the same voice, low this time, and calm. The owls opened their beaks and let the parchments go. They spiraled down like heavy leaves into the middle of the alley, stray breezes carrying them straight into the hands and faces of some unlucky wizards. Harry grinned again as he watched them pluck the parchments loose and frown, their eyes running automatically over the words.

Tick, said the clock, as the first startled sounds began rising from the mouths of the “letters’” recipients.

Tock.

Harry rose to his feet and made his way in a leisurely fashion past an older woman and a thin man, perhaps her son or perhaps a chance bystander, huddled together and sharing a single sheet between them. Long years of training had made it easy for him to pick up slight noises; he needed no special concentration to hear what they were saying.

“It’s a joke, isn’t it?” the man asked.

“I don’t know,” the woman said stiffly. “It’s not surprising that people who spend so much of their time concentrating on perverts would turn out to be perverts themselves, if you ask me.” She sniffed.

Harry walked a little faster. He could hear arguments breaking out now, and snickers, and laughter. A few people had drawn their wands and cast Incendio on the parchments, or placed their hands protectively over their children’s eyes, but there were still plenty of letters and readers to go around.

The parchments contained the sexual fantasies that the illusions of Caroline Garrett had pulled from the minds of the attackers at the party and the Quick-Quotes Quills had recorded. At the top, in a hand that Harry had taken care to remove all distinguishing features from, was the legend, The Fantasies of Those Who Wish to Persecute Homosexuals.

Harry took one more step and then Apparated out with a crack. Everyone was much too busy to pay any attention to him.

*

Harry tensed when the knock on the door came. Draco hadn’t expected him to do anything else if such a thing happened. The most probable candidates for visitors at the moment were his friends, whom he still wasn’t ready to reconcile with, and the Healers, in case some had believed Granger’s wild story. Draco rose to his feet from the couch where they’d conducted their strategy session and glanced over his shoulder at Harry.

“I’ll just answer that, shall I?” he murmured.

Harry glanced up at him and nodded gratefully, then returned to staring at the map in his hands. It marked all the properties, both houses and lands, that Harry owned in Britain. Draco had been stunned by how many there were, and under how many different aliases—including, in some cases, people Draco had heard of.

He shook his head as he crossed the entrance hall. He was glad the secret of Metamorphosis didn’t look likely to travel any further. It would have changed the face of British society in ways unfavorable to the rebellion and made that many more people have unrealistic expectations of Harry.

Speaking of unrealistic expectations of Harry, he thought, when he opened the door and found Raymond Nusante standing on the front step. Of course, the man had been Apparated directly here, so it only made sense that he should know how to reach the house again, but Draco was regretful, both for the necessity of the Apparition in the first place and because he couldn’t let the wards snap to and destroy the idiot.

Draco hadn’t forgotten what the man had said when Harry had come out in front of his little group of friends. And from the strained courage in his face, he was about to say something else stupid. Draco let one hand rest on his wand and mustered all the cool contempt he had to shine straight at Nusante.

“You had something to say?” he asked, when the silence had continued for some minutes and he’d seen Nusante take a single small, fidgeting step.

Nusante audibly breathed in, which amused Draco so much he had trouble keeping his mouth under control, and then scowled at him. “I had something to say to Potter alone,” he said. “Just fetch him, if you will.”

Draco’s left hand, safely out of sight behind the doorframe, closed into a fist. He’d never been fond of someone else treating him like a house-elf. He managed to maintain his temper by imagining how Nusante would crumple if he learned about Metamorphosis, but it was hard when he remembered that this man had neither bloodlines nor wealth nor Harry’s skill to be proud of. Perhaps he was an artist and a leader, yes, but that meant little outside of certain small arenas.

“I will not,” Draco said. “Whatever you meant to say to Harry about the rebellion or the party the night before last, you can say to me, and I will escort you to him if it’s important enough. And if you have something else to say, I think it best you speak those words to my face, not his.”

Nusante’s expression changed, but Draco knew how fragile the fury filling it was. He had shown the same kind of emotion when he demanded a toy from his father that he knew Lucius wasn’t about to give him. Nusante knew he couldn’t win, but he would try to make other people miserable in the process of acknowledging it.

“I don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at,” Nusante hissed, taking a step forwards. “But the confrontation with the attackers at the party was not of the kind I had imagined would prove him to us. He didn’t face them wand-to-wand; he did not battle, as some of us have done, openly and proudly for the right to meet and associate as we liked. Instead, he used tricks and jokes and any means of avoiding combat that he could.” His face was almost purple with suppressed rage by now, giving Draco a new appreciation for the cold pallor Lucius would employ in a situation like this. “It makes him the wrong leader for this type of rebellion. We are locked in a war. We need a leader who is a warrior—not one who acts like a schoolboy on a lark.”

Draco had intended to let the man speak until he fell into silence of his own accord. On the other hand, he had never realized Nusante would say something so senseless. He raised an eyebrow and sharpened his stare, and the man dropped his eyes in spite of himself.

“Multiple explanations,” Draco said, his voice hardly louder than the sound a nundu’s footstep would make as it stalked its prey through a jungle, “have been given to you of why Harry did what he has done. He remained in hiding until the moment came when he could face his past and the scrutiny of the wizarding world. He used ‘tricks and jokes’ as you name them to avoid heavy casualties, on either our side or among those who oppose us. He was a warrior when you were still a child. He’s lived more lives than you can imagine.” He drew himself up slowly, never once releasing Nusante from the pinning effect of his gaze. “What, exactly, does he owe you now?”

Nusante was panting with rage. I am glad that we displaced him as leaders of the rebellion, Draco thought, cocking his head to one side so he would give the effect of looking down his nose. A leader needs to be able to hold the reins not only when things are going well but when people are arguing with him or when a potentially powerful rival arises. And the rebellion would have self-destructed around us if we had relied on Nusante.

“He’s received more from the wizarding world than he gave,” Nusante said in a low, savage voice. “The constant adulation, the attention to his slightest move, the offers he received when he killed You-Know-Who—no one could possibly be worthy of all that. But others would at least have tried to disclaim it and explain the true scope of their accomplishments, so they could be honored as they deserve. Instead, he cowered inside his house for a decade, and then he hid beneath yet another identity when he ventured into public again. And what did he assume that identity for? Not to help others, but because he wanted to date his boyfriend and not let anyone know he was gay. All the sacrifices he made are twelve years old now. He hasn’t known a day’s hardship in his life since then, at least not without more than enough coddling to take away the sting, and now—“

Nusante couldn’t speak further. Draco had moved his wand and cast a temporary silencing charm. As Nusante touched his throat and opened his mouth in what was probably a murderous shriek of rage, Draco cast another spell, though he murmured the incantation so softly Nusante had no chance of making it out.

For now, let him be without guilt, not only angrily denying it. Let him froth and spew his useless rubbish if he wished when he departed from the house. The only people who would listen to him would be the imbeciles whom Harry’s and Draco’s strategies stood no chance of convincing in any case.

But when the moment came that he really understood how much Harry had sacrificed, then the guilt would crush him like a tumbling wall. He would barely be able to stand up under the weight of it, and he couldn’t dismiss the emotion until he had worked through it. Draco hoped the experience might wring a true apology out of the git at last, though the spell did not guarantee one.

The curse had once been used to “encourage” confessions from prisoners by freeing them from guilt about their crimes, so that they might brag about them more easily. When the guilt returned, it punished them more effectively than many older wizarding laws had been able to, at least in the case of crimes that didn’t merit a stint in Azkaban.

“Listen to me,” Draco said. “The wizarding world has not honored Harry enough, as far as I am concerned. And he did what he could to refuse those attentions, but if you had paid attention to the implications of your own complaints, you would have known that no single man could stop the tide of praise they insisted on pouring on him. He did not enslave himself with guilt about not being worthy of the praise. Instead, he dared to live his own life for a decade, and to only emerge when his principles and his love moved him to do so. You are a poor representative of an artist, Raymond Nusante, if you cannot understand the heroism and the sacrifice inherent in his actions.”

Nusante turned his back and walked away from the doorstep. Draco laughed at him, making sure he heard, and then closed the door.

When he got back to the couch, Harry lifted his head and gave him such a dazzling smile that Draco hesitated for a moment. “What?” he asked.

“You did that for me,” Harry murmured, and rose to kiss Draco on the cheek. “Yet you don’t look at me as if you think me weak for not being able to deal with visitors on my own right now.” This time, he kissed Draco on the lips.

Draco kissed him back, then pulled away with a small shake of his head. “You’re too much absorbed in your own weakness,” he said. “That could become tiresome. Think more often of your strength and the other reasons I am with you.”

Temper shone in Harry’s eyes for a moment. Draco grinned. He enjoyed seeing that more than the humility. Yes, Harry had made sacrifices, and as far as Draco was concerned, it was time that he started enjoying the rewards instead of refusing them with flushed cheeks or downcast eyes.

“Now,” said Harry, deflecting the argument by picking up the second map they were consulting that morning, “tell me again about the plan of Pansy’s house upstairs.”

*

“And of course you didn’t think to ask me before you volunteered my home for this ridiculous purpose.” Pansy didn’t look back at him as she led the way up the spiral staircase, but Draco could read the set of her back. It was stiff with exasperation that could become true anger if she wasn’t soothed.

“Your home was the safest place I knew of, after Malfoy Manor,” Draco said, pausing with a hand on the banister. “And I didn’t want my father gaining access to one of Harry’s safehouses. God knows what he would do with the information.”

Pansy turned to face him and gave him a perfect sneer—the one, in fact, he had modeled his own after during the stage in his early twenties when he was obsessed with separating himself from his father. “His gaining access to my house, meanwhile, is not something you need worry about.”

“I know you can defend yourself,” Draco said softly, refusing to back away. Backing away on stairs was a tricky business, as he had learned when he confronted Harry on the steps at Grimmauld Place. “Besides, you’re part of a social world that my father respects. He’s less likely to do stupid things to you for the sheer pleasure of doing them.”

Pansy smiled at him, if one could call a twist to that sneer a smile. “Someday you won’t have the perfect response, Draco, and on that day I think my words will gut you.”

“Oh,” Draco said, waiting until she turned and began climbing again so he could follow, “but I try not to worry about the future until it arrives.” I try to plan for it instead, so that when it arrives, I have no need to worry.

He and Harry had come an hour early, Harry in his disguise as Gerald, a persona he said he had done bodyguard work in the past. If Lucius had spies watching—and Draco thought the chances better than even—he would be reassured that his son feared him enough to need expert protection. Harry had stayed below, carefully examining the corners of Pansy’s house where danger might be hiding, whilst Draco went upstairs for the meeting.

When Harry was done familiarizing himself with the lower rooms and casting such small spells as would warn him of danger and keep Pansy from ever knowing how thorough his investigations had been, he would retire to the gardens. There was a large expanse of flowerbeds immediately beneath the enormous window in the back of the house, the room of which Draco had chosen for the meeting. Harry would be within the range of a loud shout if needed, and Draco could not yet pretend that he would get out of this afternoon unscathed.

Harry had touched his arm before he went up the stairs, and looked steadily at Draco for long moments with his own eyes before he turned away and became Gerald. The memory of that look was a warm gift for Draco to carry with him. No matter what happened, Harry would protect him in the single-minded way that he would only ever protect someone he loved.

*

Harry had to admire whoever had built Pansy’s house. It had an aura of privacy, with numerous small rooms and alcoves, but it was possible to survey any room from the doorway, and most of the alcoves from the start of a corridor. Some of the credit also had to go to Pansy herself, of course, because she hadn’t chosen furniture that would block the line of sight or provide a good hiding place for anyone who wanted to ambush someone moving through the house. Harry was smiling by the time he stepped out into the gardens. His alarm spells were planted, and would detect a drawn wand as well as hostile curses and several kinds of blades—but he wasn’t sure they would be necessary.

The gardens were more plebeian than he had expected, or else Pansy only liked white flowers. Daisies, white roses, and narcissus surrounded a tall stand of lilies, by which Harry lingered for some moments. Perhaps it was silly to feel such a connection to the flowers that his mother had been named after, but he had few other connections to her. He had searched out and questioned everyone who had known her and might have memories to share shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts. Those memories were thin variations on a theme; Lily Potter was brilliant at Potions, hot-tempered when she needed to be, and not afraid to stand up to other people in her House when someone from another House required defending. No other heirlooms beyond the photos Hagrid had given him had ever turned up. Harry had to take his solace where he could find it.

He wondered if Draco would understand that. They hadn’t yet spoken of Harry’s parents, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he was ready to share what he had discovered in Snape’s memories even with Draco.

He looked up at the window of the room where Draco had told him the meeting would take place, and smiled absently. Draco was used to houses with enormous glass panes and plenty of sunlight—neither a quality which Number Twelve Grimmauld Place could boast. Harry wondered if that would be a change he would need to make, should they live together.

Or would he move out of that house and into another with Draco? Except for Kreacher, Harry couldn’t think of a single thing in the place he had much attachment to. He had always spent more time in his offices at Metamorphosis, both when handling paperwork and when constructing his personas. His business had been his life in more ways than he had found the time to name to Draco.

He heard a sudden slight movement behind him, but didn’t permit himself to turn just yet. That would make it seem as if he were startled. He did pivot when the motion sounded closer, and his wand came smoothly up in his hand.

A young woman stopped with a hand across her mouth, probably to prevent herself from yelping. She stared at him for long moments, shaking, and Harry had the time to recognize her: Alice Moonstone, the sister of that bint Marigold who had tried to convince Draco at his birthday party that it was impossible for one man to love another. Harry remembered Alice as being more intelligent than her sister, and that meant she would probably wonder how a strange man—Harry wore Gerald’s scarred features and heavy beard—knew her name.

Harry pointed his wand and said, in an absolutely level and uninflected voice, “I’m Gerald Handler, Draco Malfoy’s hired bodyguard. Who are you? What are you doing here? These gardens should have been free of anyone else’s presence.”

Alice smoothed one hand down her robes, gaining time; when she looked at him again, her eyes had become clear and piercing, and she lifted her head with ease and pride. Though she was roughly the same age as Nusante, Harry could only marvel at her greater maturity. Perhaps she was one of the young pure-bloods who had paid attention to the spirit and not just the style of their instruction.

“I could ask the same of you,” she said. “Mr. Malfoy did not tell me there would be a bodyguard present. I was to come into these gardens whilst he met with his son, and remain until he brought his son down to meet me in turn.”

“Quite often, those who feel threatened do not find it advisable to tell those threatening them that they are hiring bodyguards,” Harry said, and gave her Gerald’s humorless smile. If he knew how to smile with anything other than bitter irony, he’d never revealed it to the man who came up with him. “And I still need your name, and I still need to know why you think you’ve been brought here. If you are part of the threat my client faces, I will have no hesitation in destroying you.” He twisted his wand to the side.

Alice fell back a step. Not stupid in any way, Harry thought approvingly. If Draco had been content to remain within the embrace of straight pure-blood society, he could have done much worse for a bride.

“My name is Alice Moonstone,” she said at last. Smart enough not to lie before a drawn wand, either, Harry noted. “I—don’t know why I was brought here, exactly. It’s common knowledge that Mr. Malfoy’s son has rebelled against him, but he seemed to think he had a solution to that. He did tell me that by the time he came into the gardens with his son, I would be the next acknowledged Mrs. Malfoy.”

“And are you looking forwards to that with all your might, when you must know your marriage would rest on treachery?” Harry asked.

Alice fisted her hands in her robes. “I highly doubt that someone like you can understand the obligations my society requests me to put up with in exchange for its graces and sanctions,” she snapped, “and men almost never understand the responsibilities of women. No, I would not want to enter a mansion built on ground that shaky. But why should it be? Mr. Malfoy managed to persuade his son to obey him for thirty years. This is only a temporary rebellion.”

If it had been anyone other than this woman he faced, Harry would not have taken the chance. But she was still young enough not to be practiced in the kind of deception that made Narcissa Malfoy’s face hard to read, and Harry thought she was telling the truth. Best if he could turn her against Lucius in the same way Draco already was.

“My client brought me here precisely because he thinks his father will use magic to try and force him into marriage,” Harry said gravely. “I can’t understand the graces and sanctions you speak of, but surely it would be an insult to the Moonstone family if your husband was compelled to marry you because of a spell?”

Alice’s lips settled into a thin smile. “At least you know better than to mention love to me,” she murmured. “Love comes after the ring is slipped onto the finger, not before. The metal teaches the heart.” Harry recognized the proverb from one of his earliest lessons in pure-blood socialization, though right now he was doing his best to look blank. She looked gazed at him. “Yes, if you can offer me proof that Mr. Malfoy was lying through his teeth, I would refuse to wed Draco.”

Harry just restrained himself from a laugh of triumph. An attack was coming at Lucius from two fronts, and he would never see the second in time.

Chapter 42.