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Chapter Five—Masters of Their Fates

“It’s grander than I expected,” Potter said, craning his neck back to stare at the ceiling.

Draco busied himself with brushing imaginary soot from his robes; the house-elves kept the Manor’s fireplaces free from any such inconveniences, but Potter could not be expected to know that. “Some of my ancestors had rather a fetish for grandeur, yes,” he said in a bored tone. He sneaked a look sideways at Potter and rolled his eyes. The fool was still gaping at the ceiling, tilting his head back until Draco knew he would fall over and slam his head into the mantle. “I would have done a better job if I had designed this house.”

Potter turned towards him, shaking his head like a Crup awakened from a dream. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “A vault like this is impressive in its own way.” He gestured again to the ceiling of the entrance hall, which rose above them in a perfectly smooth silvery dome, without ripple or mosaic to soften it. “And I can see the influence in the ceiling of that hall at Palliser House.”

Draco paused for a moment. To be honest, he had not expected Potter to be that observant, or to have learned as much about architecture as it seemed he had, paying attention to Draco’s job.

Still, being observant about architecture didn’t mean he was observant about anything else. Draco smiled at Potter and watched his face soften. He never noticed the emotions lurking behind Draco’s smile, that was clear.

“We haven’t yet discussed where you should stay at night,” Draco said, and opened the door between two nearby pillars. Potter blinked and followed him through with a few wondering glances at the doorframe. At least he hadn’t noticed that, Draco thought with a sense of relief he immediately had to sneer at. What, was he actually worried Potter would see the trap closing in around him before he was snared? Don’t be ridiculous. You know Potter better than that. “I can conjure a second bed in my room, there’s enough space for that, but I don’t know if you would feel comfortable sleeping next to me.”

He lowered his voice as he spoke the words and had the satisfaction of seeing the alert turn of Potter’s head, as he scanned the room for possible threats, falter. He swallowed and then looked back at Draco. “I—I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “It would be more effective at preventing an attack in your own chambers than my guarding you outside the door would.”

Chambers? Really, Potter. I suppose Granger taught you that word specifically for the purpose of spending time with people smarter than yourself. “That’s true,” Draco said. “But we still don’t know how the attacker slipped into the Palliser party.”

“That’s true,” Potter echoed. He folded his arms over his chest, seizing on the topic to distract himself from speculations about where he should sleep and what, Draco thought, he might sleep in. “We’ll have to talk to Tudor Palliser. If your imitator received an invitation for the party, at least we have a name, even though it’s likely to be a false one. If he didn’t, then we’ll learn something about his ward-breaking skills.”

Draco felt a whisper of disquiet for a moment, but he managed to banish it. Malfoy Manor had wards that would make Palliser House moan and collapse under the weight of the magic. No imposter would find him here, which meant he could concentrate on torturing Potter. “Better to let someone else question him,” he said. “He’s so shy of your fame that he nearly fainted when I suggested inviting you.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot.”

Potter sounded resigned. Draco wondered how long it would be before Potter relaxed enough to let his real, arrogant self out. Maybe Draco should give him some hints that hearing Potter talk about his fame would not weary him.

“I reckon it does,” he said. “But you must know you deserve your reputation.”

Potter gave him an irritated glance. Draco prevented himself from frowning, but it was a near thing. What had he done wrong?

*

Harry had felt discomfort from the moment he stepped through the fireplace. The manor houses Malfoy built were obviously nothing compared to the one he’d been born in. Harry tried to recall the memories of how this place had looked the last time he’d been in it, during the Battle—walls shattered like eggshells, ceilings open to the sky, fire and smoke gripping every piece of expensive furniture—but it appeared to have been repaired exactly as if it had never been damaged. Of course, the Malfoys probably still had the original plans from which their ancestors had constructed it.

And then Malfoy had to start talking about his fame.

Harry accepted his fame in the same way he would have accepted an ugly disfigurement: it was there and he had better use it for anything it was good for, but having people regard it as the most important thing about him got old very quickly. He had assumed Malfoy would ignore his reputation out of sheer arrogance and obsession with himself. It was disheartening to realize that he wouldn’t have that escape.

“I’ll talk to Palliser tomorrow,” he said, determined to change the subject.

Malfoy smirked at him, the temporary tightness around his temples vanishing. “I don’t think you’ll have time,” he said. “Tomorrow I have a meeting with an old and valued client, and I’ll need your company at the office. Some other Auror will have to fill the plebeian role you’re planning to take on.” He picked an imaginary bit of lint from his shoulder. “Besides, won’t delegating someone to interview Palliser be fairly easy for the Head Auror to think of?”

Harry exhaled in annoyance. Yes, of course Kingsley would think of that. Harry had grown too used to being in the thick of this case, that was all, to the point that sending someone else to handle even the minor details made him twitchy.

Kingsley would say that was a sign he should enjoy his holiday with the Malfoys. But Harry carefully turned his mind away from the conversation in Kingsley’s office, when Kingsley had seriously tried to argue him into giving up the duty of guarding Malfoy to someone else, or even several people. He was worried about Harry’s “obsession,” as he chose to term it. Harry hated rowing with his friends. He had something else to worry about; there was always something else to worry about, in this job. “Will your father mind that I’m staying here?”

Malfoy raised his eyebrows. “I doubt it. He stays in the western wing most of the time, which is a distance from my rooms—and yours.” He chuckled, as though Harry’s sleeping in his rooms pleased him, though he’d been the one to suggest the course. Harry worried the corner of his lip thoughtfully. He obviously didn’t know everything about Malfoy, especially about his quirks.

But that was all right. It only made sense that Malfoy would act differently in private life than he would in front of the cameras.

“Of course, Severus might object,” Malfoy added, pulling Harry’s mind abruptly back to the conversation.

Harry stared. “Fuck!” he said. “I never would have come here if I’d known.” To call his relationship with Snape strained was like saying volcanoes got a bit hot sometimes. Snape had played an integral role in the war, but all his actions were ones that, revealed, might bring the vengeance of Death Eaters or disappointed Voldemort supporters down on him. He had been given the Order of Merlin, First Class, in a private ceremony with the Minister, but Harry knew that wasn’t enough for him. He had told Harry bluntly the last time they’d met that Harry didn’t deserve any public honor, that it should have gone to someone who did more than cast a few curses at Voldemort, and that Harry was still a careless child who had no idea how much Snape had sacrificed for him. Snape had fulfilled the debt he thought he owed Lily and Dumbledore to protect Harry, so from now on he would hate him in peace.

Malfoy chuckled. “Do all Aurors learn skills in swearing when they’re admitted to the training program?”

Harry flushed. He had not, in fact, meant to swear aloud in front of Malfoy like that. He cleared his throat. He wanted Malfoy to see him as sophisticated and calm, a man of the world—as he had felt he was, until he stepped into the Manor and began insulting the décor, the taste of the Malfoy family, and the man who probably still served as Malfoy’s mentor. “No, that was my own stupidity. Are you, er, sure you want me here, if Professor Snape would object?”

“Of course,” Malfoy said, leading the way up a spiral staircase that twisted so tightly Harry was amazed Malfoy could walk up it without getting a broken neck. “It’s not his house, and he’s only a guest here.”

“An older guest than I am,” Harry pointed out quietly. Malfoy would like courtesy to his Potions professor. And it was professional for an Auror be polite to everyone involved in a case like this. That last reason was the most important, of course, and should have come first in his mind.

Without benefit of the ring, his conscience could still sound like Hermione. Are you sure you can maintain a professional demeanor in regards to this case, Harry? Might it not be better to back up and let another Auror handle this?

But Malfoy said he trusted me to protect him because I’d already done it. Better for him to have me around, with all my false steps and gaffes and leering, than no protection at all.

“I treat all my guests the same,” Malfoy said, and then stopped not far from the top of the staircase to fling open a door that looked to be made of a solid sheet of jade. Harry doubted that even the Malfoys could afford such luxury, though. Probably. “You have as much right to sit at my table and eat my food as he does.”

“Do all your guests sleep in your room?” Harry blurted and then wanted to cover his mouth and die of mortification in the same instant, though he could only do the first.

*

Draco turned to Potter and made sure the smile on his face was calm and coaxing. Potter’s inquiries had thrown him off-balance at first, but beneath them was the man Draco had known was there, honest and forthright and unable to lie to save his life. Such a man could be good prey, but never a challenge to the world of lies Draco would escort him into.

“Of course not,” Draco said. “But Severus never asked such a question. You did.” He lowered his eyes and peered at Potter from under the lashes, as if he were too shy to state what he was thinking.

Potter smiled back. His cheeks were still a brilliant red, but the overall look was not unattractive, Draco thought critically. He should have had someone trim that hair and put permanent enchantments on it long ago; he should have emphasized the scar instead of trying to hide it. Ducking under his fringe made him resemble a nineteenth-century urchin caught out and asked to recite the alphabet. His eyes were his best natural feature, and he insisted on hiding them, too, under thick glasses. Hadn’t he ever heard of an Eagle’s Sight Charm? That would have corrected his vision as well as made his eyes shine.

But he doesn’t care about such things. He would probably assume it was poncey to care about them.

Draco’s tactics were all the more likely to score points, then, when he said, as if in a tone of soft wonder, “I’m surprised that you still have so many problems with your fame. Looking at your face, why does anyone remember to look at your scar?”

Potter looked as though he didn’t know whether to be suspicious, surprised, flustered, or pleased. He cleared his throat several times before he muttered, “My face has become just as familiar as my scar with the stories in the Prophet this last year.”

“I don’t know about that,” Draco said, but Potter settled on a suspicious look, and Draco decided to back off for now. “Why don’t you come into my room and we can decide where to put the second bed?”

Potter stepped through the door. Draco leaned against it, his eyes lingering on Potter’s arse for a long moment before he lifted his head to watch the other man’s reaction to the room.

It glittered on every level. Narcissa had decorated the room in a time when she favored strong jewel colors, and Draco, initially skeptical, had come to applaud his mother’s taste. Green walls, blue curtains, and a silvery four-poster bed with black curtains went together instead of clashing, though how she had done it Draco never knew. He was better at choosing colors for walls and ceilings than he was at choosing them for furniture, and he had become good at clothing only with his mother’s long and patient instruction.

“It looks so alive,” Potter muttered, and then turned and faced Draco with a concerned expression. “Are you sure that you want to put another bed in here? It might spoil the symmetry of the room.”

How amusing. He thinks I live every part of my life by the rules of architecture. Draco shook his head. “Company never ruins the symmetry. As for the colors, I won’t allow Gryffindor red and gold, but feel free to choose whichever else you like.”

“Colors imitating yours are fine,” Potter muttered, and Draco drew his wand and conjured a bed without pausing. That was another useful trick he’d learned during his months among the Death Eaters with Severus, when even Severus didn’t care where he slept as long as he did. After a few glances back and forth from his bed to Potter’s, he adjusted the colors so that the blank tablet of the new bed became a replica of his own.

“I’m rather tired,” he said, and yawned. He was, but the real reason he wanted to sleep was that he could feel his rising eagerness to torment Potter, and he didn’t want to go too far, too fast, in one night. “I hope you don’t mind my going to sleep on you right away. And I usually sleep naked, so…” He let his voice trail off and looked at Potter expectantly.

Potter stared at him for a few moments, then flushed and turned away. Draco felt a stab of both relief and disappointment. Potter had a slower brain than he expected, or was more easily stunned by the splendors of life in Malfoy Manor. Draco would have given much to have a worthier opponent.

But then, wasn’t that the whole point of Potter? That he was ordinary under the mystique, but Draco was one of the few people who could see that?

Draco stripped off his clothes, making sure to stumble once or twice in his “weariness,” just to watch Potter’s reaction. His back twitched with suppressed longing to turn around, but he didn’t do it. Draco hung his robes leisurely over the board at the end of the bed—one of the house-elves would find and clean them before morning—and then climbed into the sheets, sighing in pleasure as the velvety cloth closed around him.

“Good night, Potter,” he muttered, closing his eyes.

Potter’s reply was a bit of mumbled breathiness that could have meant anything. Draco was more interested in the sense of him he experienced just before he fell asleep, a strongly pounding heart and a buzzing warmth of blood in his body, all of it oriented towards him. Potter wasn’t good at disguising his interest or his attention to Draco.

Imagine how open the defeat will be on his face, Draco thought, and fell asleep.

*

Harry waited until he heard the regular sound of Malfoy’s breathing before he tiptoed over to his bed. It felt real and solid enough when he ran his hand across it, and anyway, he didn’t think Malfoy would have conjured one that would tip him out on the floor or vanish halfway through the night. He would have stayed awake to enjoy the show if he had.

But Harry could hardly bring himself to sit on it. He was still in a daze that he was here, in Malfoy Manor, of all places, a few feet from the man he’d spent the past five years dreaming about, investigating, and defending from his friends.

He looked towards Malfoy. The room had several large windows, but a charm was in effect that Harry recognized from the holding cells at the Ministry; it dimmed light to a level that would permit one to navigate through a dark room with difficulty. The Ministry used such tactics to keep the criminals disoriented when Aurors or Hit Wizards came to visit them. Here, Harry supposed, Malfoy simply didn’t want to be bothered by the moon or stars, or maybe the sunset, if he was decadent and went to bed early.

I don’t know if he’s decadent. I don’t know anything about what he’s like in private.

Harry didn’t need the ring or Hermione to let him know that was a problem, if he was going to spend the next several days around Malfoy.

After several stumbles on the corners of furniture and attempts to keep his muffled cursing quiet, he managed to find a door that led into a loo, fancier than the one in his own home but recognizable. After he’d relieved himself, he used a toothbrush and put on a pair of pyjamas from a bag he’d thrown together hastily on a side-trip to his home from St. Mungo’s. He’d returned as quickly as he could to accompany Malfoy through the Floo to the Manor, but Malfoy had still managed to raise one perfect eyebrow and make Harry feel like a fool.

This is a job, just a job, like hundreds of others you’ve done. Harry ran a hand through his hair and stared at his face in the mirror; the loo had hidden lights that had come on when he opened the door. Remember how nervous you were when you first ventured out of the Ministry after training? And then you got sick on Stokesbury’s feet because you couldn’t calm your stomach down? This is nothing to that.

Harry gave his reflection a reminiscent smile. Yes, chasing an assassin all over Stokesbury’s confusing home, with the pure-blood wizard bellowing at him to mind the lamps and the curtains, was more difficult than this.

He wouldn’t hope too much. He wouldn’t think that just because Malfoy trusted Harry to protect him, that meant he wanted to go to bed with him. Or even that he wanted to hold his hand and touch him the way he had in Palliser House before the attack happened. For all Harry knew, Malfoy only flirted like that in public where there were other eyes to give him a charge.

Harry shut the door of the loo, dimming the lights as well, and stumbled back to the new bed. He only hit one chair with his thigh, and Malfoy’s breathing never changed.

*

A tremendous crash shattered Lucius’s sleep. War-trained reflexes grabbed him, and he was on his feet and halfway across the room, wand in his hand and robe tucked around his waist out of the way, before he opened his eyes.

He kept moving, because he heard the squeals of terrified house-elves. For such sounds to penetrate this far into the western wing, a huge object must have fallen. Perhaps the chandelier in Abraxas’s Hall, which Narcissa had always told him had a weak chain.

But the moment he stepped through the entrance that connected the western wing to the great hall in the center of the Manor, he realized something quite different was happening.

Draco ran frantically from the arched doorway that led to the eastern wring, then spun on his heel with a graceful ease Lucius was proud to see he hadn’t forgotten in the easy years since the war and shot a curse behind him. The curse hit an alabaster carving of a dragon instead and shattered it. Lucius frowned. Draco would never be so careless as to break the treasures of the house, and he had a better aim.

Then Harry Potter hurtled out of the doorway, and Lucius realized the man who’d flung the curse wasn’t Draco at all. His son preferred “subtle” revenges on Potter to hurting him with magic, and he’d spent a great deal of time meditating on them. This must be the imposter who had attacked at Palliser House earlier that evening.

Except that Lucius had no idea how he’d got through the wards, which were attuned to the Malfoys alone. Even guests like Severus had to have special permission to pass through them.

Potter leaped across the flagstone floor towards the intruder, using strides that his training in the Aurors must have taught him; they looked more like the kind of steps one would have used on stairs. The imposter recoiled, a look of fear distorting his Draco-like features, and bent to one side. Potter’s spell landed beside him and shattered stone. Potter showed no sign of disappointment that his magic had failed, his face locked in the cool mask Lucius remembered from the last few battles of the war. He whipped his wand in a circle instead, a complex, sonorous chant parting his lips.

The imposter leaped backwards, swearing. His voice was eerily similar to Draco’s, pronouncing his vowels with that clipped drawl Narcissa had also had.

The thought of his dead wife, and what she would have said to see him standing here and staring like an idiot when his home had been invaded, made Lucius shake his head and step forwards to help.

His motion drew the intruder’s attention to him. He snarled, his hands clasping his wand so tightly for a moment that Lucius had some hope he would snap it. Lucius aimed at his knees to disable him. He wanted this one alive.

Potter finished his chant in that moment, and a silvery loop of light swung out from the tip of his wand, aimed at the man’s waist.

The imposter shrieked in fury and frustration, and vanished, Apparating at last. Potter managed to snap back his spell before it touched Lucius, but he had to wrestle with it for a moment before he could tuck the power back into his wand. Then he blinked and shook his head.

“How did he get in?” Lucius asked, deciding that was the more pressing question at the moment than why Potter was here.

“I don’t know.” Potter’s voice contained several layers of crushed emotions, but he differed from his wartime self in one respect after all: he was controlling them. “I recognized the bloodline wards when I followed your son into the house, Mr. Malfoy. The likeliest explanation is an unknown relative.”

Lucius nodded. Some years ago he would have said that that was impossible; Malfoys existed only in the direct line. But Narcissa’s death had taught him how blind he might really be, how little his knowledge really encompassed outside the immediate domain of the Manor. “And why are you here?”

Potter bowed his head and ran his hand through his hair. “Your son invited me to stay the night,” he said quietly. “And longer than that. He wanted Auror protection after an attack he suffered tonight, but I’m the only Auror he would trust.”

No, you’re the only Auror he wants, Lucius thought. But that halts here and now. “Have you considered what other motives my son might have for inviting you here, Potter?” he asked.

Potter stared at him keenly for a moment. Then he said, “I think he’s grown past his schoolboy days. I trust him not to deliberately hurt me.”

“He does want to hurt you,” Lucius said harshly. He disliked being this honest to anyone who was not Draco or Severus, but the situation warranted it. “He’s been dreaming for years about how to get back at you. Half his fame is based on attempts to get you to notice him.”

Potter paused. Lucius waited for an outburst, a demand for further details, a laughing denial that anyone Potter considered so far beneath him would find a way to attract his attention—any of those.

Instead, Potter said gently, “I understand the loss of your wife has been very difficult for you to bear, Mr. Malfoy. But simply because you’ve chosen the life of a recluse instead of one in the world as Draco has, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, or wants to hurt me.”

Draco’s poisoned the well, Lucius thought. Probably convinced him I’m mad. Well, he had not expected this to be so easy. He tucked his wand into his sleeve and said, “You are welcome for all of me. I will begin the genealogical research necessary to track down the relative who might have done this. I suggest you stay out of Professor Snape’s way.”

And he turned and went into the southern wing, where the vast libraries of the Manor stood, not caring to look again on Potter’s pitying expression.

Chapter Six.