Chapter Sixteen of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- A Madness Most Discreet

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Sixteen—A Madness Most Discreet

“Where are they?”

Lucius winced. “I would prefer that you not shout in my home, Mr. Weasley,” he said, with more politeness than he had ever thought one of Arthur’s children would deserve from him, “no matter how angry you are.”

Weasley whirled around, his mouth contorted in an ugly sneer. For a moment, it seemed possible that he would say something unfortunate. Lucius lifted his chin and his eyebrows. If Weasley wanted to get in a duel, then he should pursue that course.

But Weasley took a deep breath, shuddered once, and said, “Sorry, sir.” Lucius let the emphasis on the title go for now. “But do you have the slightest idea where they could be? We’ve checked most of the Manor, the Quidditch Pitch—“ he glared out the front door at the Pitch as if it were the fault of the wind and the grass that no one was there “—and all the bedrooms. Where else could they be?”

Clucking his tongue softly over the amount of redundancy that Hogwarts did not bother to eliminate from its students’ vocabularies, Lucius put his hand on his wand and closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. He had an ancient tracking charm that he’d put on Draco years ago and rarely activated, because it was powerful enough to alert his son if he used it carelessly. But wherever Draco was, Potter was with him, and Lucius thought that meant he was likely to be too emotionally—and physically—occupied to notice the buzz of the charm around his body.

Lucius waited. And waited. And then opened his eyes with a frown to see Weasley hovering in front of him like a kestrel hovering over prey.

“Well?” Even the tone with which Weasley demanded the answer was sufficient to make Lucius curl his lip. But his conclusion disturbed him enough that he answered in a calm voice.

“I have a tracking charm on Draco. It does not locate them on Manor grounds. They must be far enough away that I cannot feel the echo of the spell.”

Weasley tensed further. Lucius spent a moment feeling sorry for his wife, who had to share a bed with him when he lay awake at night and stared up at the ceiling, and then carefully directed his thoughts away from wives who had no reason to be proud of their husbands. “Could they have Apparated?” Weasley demanded. “If the attacker kidnapped them—“

“We still sensed his use of hostile magic on Potter the other night,” Lucius felt compelled to point out. “I am sure he could not have forced them to come with him sans struggle. And that means that Severus and I would both sense the disruption of the wards.”

Weasley opened his mouth as if he would argue about that, too, and then closed it and nodded curtly. “Could they have taken one of the Floos out?”

“Likewise, I would have sensed them, and one of the house-elves is specially trained to come and warn me of the unauthorized use of Floo powder in my home.” Lucius tapped his first two fingers against his thumb. “I am afraid that it is by broomstick that they have left us. Draco has a rather powerful broom, a Clearstar.”

Weasley leaned against the wall as though someone had hit him in the solar plexus. Lucius suffered a brief shiver of distaste. He hoped that neither he nor Draco were that open with their weaknesses. They could learn many things from the victors in the Second War concerning how to live in this changed world, but that was not a necessary skill.

“And we have no idea what direction to go in, or where they are,” said Weasley. He straightened with a sigh. “I reckon I’ll have to tell Kingsley about this. And Hermione. Neither one will be pleased.”

Lucius smiled. “Or we may turn to other methods to track them.”

Weasley looked up, hope lighting his face like the trail of a comet the night sky. “You have something that’ll work?”

Lucius waited until he judged that Weasley’s desperation had outweighed his inherent distrust of a Malfoy, then inclined his head and swept down the corridor. “Come with me.”

Weasley’s eager footsteps told him he would have all the audience he could desire, and more than he had wanted.

*

Harry did not know how long they had stood there next to the illusion of Draco’s house, with Harry admiring and Draco watching him. He was perfectly content to remain for longer. Though the sun had gone down, the look on Draco’s face warmed Harry. There was a wild peace in his eyes, the most beautiful expression Harry had seen in long years.

Then his stomach rumbled, and broke the calm.

Harry flushed, but Draco chuckled—a sound so light Harry had never thought to hear it out of him—and waved his wand to banish the illusion of the house. Harry mourned its passing, but he understood why Draco had to take it down. Someone else might come past, see the house standing here, and steal his ideas. And Keller might be glad to pay a lesser amount for a design so beautiful.

“I know a place we can eat.” Draco was holding out a hand towards him, his voice soft and his face edged with—Harry didn’t know what to call it, because the names his hope wanted to give that emotion were too soft. “I don’t go there often, and you’ll see why, but for your sake I’m minded to risk it.”

“Draco, if it’s a place that will leave us vulnerable to the imposter’s attack—“ Harry began, alarmed. The last thing he wanted, given how much he cared for Draco, was for him to get hurt. The wound along his side twinged unpleasantly, but so what? He would willingly go through that for Draco.

“It’s not.” Draco shook his head. “I doubt that more than a hundred wizards in Britain know it exists.”

Harry blinked. “How does it make enough money to stay open, then?” Automatically, he accepted Draco’s hand, and let Draco steer him back to the Clearstar, which was already hovering obediently over the edge of the cliff. Harry felt a faint envy. If he still played Quidditch, he would have given a lot to own a broom like that.

“Because it’s hideously expensive, of course.” Draco murmured the answer near his ear, and distracted Harry from worrying that Draco would spend too much money on him by tightening his arms around his waist. “How much do you trust me, Harry?”

Harry’s mouth dried out. Draco was using his first name, and willingly. Yes, something had changed between them, and he couldn’t give credence to Ron’s idea that Draco was only doing this out of some twisted revenge plot. Perhaps it was the way Harry had shown honest admiration for Draco’s craftsmanship. He must not be able to show his artistry to many people who would appreciate it. Lucius was mad and Snape too involved in his own research, his own brand of artistry.

He leaned back and shut his eyes as he murmured, “More than is sensible.”

Draco’s kiss brushed the corner of his mouth like a whip of fire, and then he backed up and flung Harry over the edge of the cliff.

Harry couldn’t even describe the emotions with which he fell. His head was dizzy with them, his arms flapping in midair because of them, but they remained nameless. He was more conscious of the wind cutting through his fringe and stroking his flushed cheeks to coolness. And there was space beneath him and space above, and he fell reeling between the stars and the sea, and any moment Draco would catch him.

He did. The Clearstar came up beneath Harry as if it had always been there, a part of the shore and the headland, and Draco’s arms took their place at his waist again. Harry leaned back against his chest and resumed the posture he’d been holding before they landed the first time. He knew he was smiling, and also knew he must look like an idiot, but he wasn’t about to open his eyes and confront the expression on Draco’s face yet.

“You did very well, Harry.” Draco’s voice was low, and perhaps even impressed. He nuzzled his way into Harry’s hair, resting his cheek against Harry’s for a moment, and tapping Harry’s scar with his index finger. “Tell me, how did you know that I would catch you? I made an implicit promise that I would, but no explicit one.”

“I know,” Harry sighed, and licked Draco’s jaw. They were close enough that he could aim with his eyes shut and still be fairly certain of guiding his tongue to the right target. From the way Draco gasped, he’d succeeded. “And the answer is that I trusted my own inclinations in your direction even more than I trust you. I knew what I wanted and I knew how much I wanted it to come true, and I couldn’t think that, if you were going to kill me, you would do something as simple as tossing me over a cliff.” Draco’s arms tightened on his waist, effectively saying, Yes, that’s true. “Part of what I accept in you is what I want to accept in myself. I would be a lesser person if I didn’t trust you as much as I do.”

Draco was silent for long moments, and they flew in circles until Harry thought Draco had given up his plan to take Harry to this restaurant, wherever it was. But then he crushed Harry with a ferocious embrace and leaned down to whisper hoarsely into his ear, “I don’t ever want anyone else to have you. I don’t want you to give that acceptance to anyone else.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Harry breathed. “It’s wedded to you, and I couldn’t imagine giving it to anyone else.”

Draco immediately urged the broom upwards, as though he half-regretted what he had said. But Harry knew it was the truth. He could feel it in the press of the arm against his waist and groin, and he pressed the heel of his hand hard into Draco’s forearm in answer.

He wondered if he was touching the Dark Mark.

*

A drop of dragonfly blood.

The drop fell, and the surface of the potion shuddered once and then lay smooth and quiescent. He bent closer to it, examining the blue color it had turned, noting with satisfaction that he could see light stabbing through the surface as he might through the surface of a shallow sea. The drop of blood had done its clarifying and purifying work.

Crystallized drops of bicorn blood.

This time, the potion rippled and a white bubble swelled up along the sides like a fungus. He dipped a silver spoon into it and broke the surface tension, twice. There was a ringing, bell-like sound, and the bubble disappeared.

Scales from a night monarch’s wing, collected on a full moon night when the enormous black-purple butterflies visited the moonflowers he had planted in one of Lucius’s gardens for just such a purpose.

The scales floated for long moments, longer than they naturally should have, before sinking and changing. Clear tornadoes formed in the middle of the potion, stirring up the tattered shreds of ingredients dropped in before them. He exhaled as two of the scales stuck to the sides of the cauldron, but he had judged the mixture accurately. They settled to the bottom of the cauldron in the next moment, and the others followed them down. The potion turned as dark as they were.

He stepped back from the cauldron. He had to leave the potion to cool for five minutes now, and no more than that.

As his mind rose out of the trance that complicated brewing always put it into, Severus recalled first his own name, and then the circumstances Lucius had communicated to him an hour ago—Potter and Draco missing from the house—and then the circumstances that had never been far from the forefront of his thoughts since he had read Potter’s mind.

Severus felt the corner of his mouth crimp. Sometimes he had been sure that learning Legilimency had caused him more trouble than it had saved. At times like this, he was certain of it.

Potter.

The name was a well of loathing for Severus, and he had long since given up hope that it would ever be anything else. Sometimes he thought he could see a trace of his beloved Lily—

(Lily. His life had been a temple of mourning for her, and always would be).

--in her son, but always it turned out to be a delusion of his own, or a possibly good trait tainted and sullied by his father. It was as if someone had told the boy how much he resembled his mother already and he had deliberately set out to cast every one of those resemblances into the rubbish bin.

He was not a hero. He was an attention-seeker, someone who had received unfair advantage after unfair advantage, someone honored by the world when the world should have honored Severus Snape instead. It was true that Severus had made mistakes in his life, but he had atoned. Was that never to be taken into consideration? Was destroying a Dark Lord with a flare and flash of fire really so much more impressive than discovering new potions and carrying on the spy work that had made that destruction possible in the first place?

Yes, it was, Severus knew, to his bitterness and his sorrow. The people whom the glamour of spying attracted were not the ones who could give him an Order of Merlin, and not those people whose good opinion he would wish to have in any case. And there were precious few who would listen to his tales with any graciousness or believe them. Even Lucius tolerated Severus’s presence in his home mostly as a favor to his son, and not because he believed that Severus had contributed to the war effort.

The ghost of Narcissa hung between them—

(Narcissa. Perfect and pale. He honored her for the son she had borne, the most competent Potions student he had ever trained, but he could not honor her for her stupidity in the matter of her death. What did she think Bellatrix would do, driven by jealousy?)

--and always would.

And between him and Potter—

Severus snarled. One hand flexed, the fingers digging into the edge of the table. He did not jolt the cauldron, because Potions masters who made such elementary mistakes did not live to make more. But he needed some outlet for his feelings, and with no one in the same room as him, he would indulge himself.

He knew the truth about Potter, and Lily’s tainted legacy, and the boy who had pried into his Pensieve in his fifth year and inherited a life of sunlight from that, whilst Severus found himself condemned to the shadows still.

But the mind he had read the other day was not the mind of someone who basked in the attention he had attracted undeserved. It was the mind of someone who flinched from it and clung to the shadows, someone whom Severus might have said would be glad to change places with him, save that that was so ridiculous he knew he must have misinterpreted the thoughts he read.

But it was the mind of someone who carried an enormous lode of love for Draco Malfoy, close-packed and gleaming like buried gold.

Severus did not know what to make of a Potter who could appreciate the grace and cleverness that was Draco. How could Lily’s son love Narcissa’s?

A sharp chime sounded from the potion, and at once Severus lifted his head and plunged back into his work, leaving behind thought.

A mouse’s head that had passed undigested through an owl’s body.

*

“This is blood magic.”

“I do believe that you have said that more than once since we walked through this door, Mr. Weasley,” Lucius murmured, bending over the lens and frowning. It was a large, tilted piece of glass, convex and flashing with brilliant slashes of blue and green. A drop of his blood ran back and forth about the middle of it, swirling and darting in sudden slashes, but refused to do as it should and show him visions of the place where Draco and Potter were now. Lucius shook his head. The only answer was that Draco had protected himself against detection via this kind of blood magic, and that was something Lucius had thought he would not have the foresight for. “As it is not your blood, I do not see why complaints are needed.”

A rustle of cloth and a deep huff showed that Weasley had crossed his arms. Lucius smiled absently and cut his arm again. A second drop of blood fell to join the first. Even if Draco had set up protections against this kind of detection, enough blood should manage to overpower it.

The second drop of blood mingled with the first, and for a moment they touched like small animals bumping noses. Then they began to race around the center of the lens, and the blue and green flashes grew deeper and more brilliant in color. Lucius leaned nearer the lens, and heard Weasley drawing near on the other side. He was muttering under his breath, but stopped when he saw the behavior of the blood, perhaps because he really would do whatever he needed to in order to bring Potter back, perhaps in reluctant fascination.

The blood circulated until Lucius felt a dizzy, throbbing headache break out behind his eyes. He clenched one hand down on the edge of the lens and hissed. Spiderweb cracks radiated through the glass, and Lucius leaned cautiously backwards, wondering if he should Vanish the second drop of blood. Too much power would—

The lens flew apart into glittering shards, and Lucius barely put his arm over his eyes in time. The rain of glass made Weasley curse in a way that testified to his mother not using enough power behind the wooden spoon Lucius imagined she threatened her children with in private. Lucius waited until the tinkling noises had ceased, and then lowered his arm and stared at the hollow ring where the lens had been.

“What the fuck happened?” Weasley demanded, waving his wand over his face to heal small wounds inflicted by the flying glass.

Lucius shook his head, unable to respond. There were only two things that should have caused the glass to crack like that. Either Draco’s protection spell was mightier than the charm that tried to pierce it and had turned Lucius’s magic back on itself—

Or the person Lucius was trying to find was not in this world.

For a moment, a third possibility teased his mind, one that said something about it not being possible to locate twins using this spell, but the thought fled when Weasley’s impatient voice said, “Well, what are we going to try next?”

*

Potter was impressed, of course. Draco had been certain he would be, or he would not have risked bringing him to Avalon.

Much more than a place to eat, this was a secret sanctuary for those pure-blood wizards who had not abandoned their traditions and sought to cringe with fear and awe before the Muggle world. Draco could feel himself relax as they passed inside the wards. Everything here would be done by magic, and that particular truth resonated within his muscles and bones.

He and Potter had soared through a door in the air that looked like a normal shaft of moonlight, but in fact functioned as a combined Portkey and Apparition point, transferring them into a wide wizardspace. Or perhaps it was some impossibly beautiful place in the real world. Draco had never known, and the owners of Avalon were not about to tell.

He lifted his head, blinking away the silvery afterimages, and heard Potter gasp. Draco smiled smugly. He blinked harder, because he wanted to get rid of the bloody afterimages soon in order to appreciate Potter’s expression.

He had no need to look up, because he could see the reflection of their surroundings on Potter’s face. They were hovering above a wide expanse of dark purple sea, touched by pinpricks of silver stars that didn’t match any constellations Draco knew. A full moon hung low in the western sky. It was always full, no matter what the behavior of the moon in Britain. Its light spread a shimmering wake on the sea, which pointed like a path straight at an island.

At first, as they flew towards the island, it appeared as a dark bulk of undifferentiated stone. Then they whirled around on a permanent wind current placed stationary to the east of the shore, and Potter gasped again. Draco looked down himself at that point. He hadn’t seen this sight often enough to get tired of it.

As they turned majestically, purple and silver light elongated over the island, as if it were coming out of an eclipse. Some of the mass of rock revealed itself as slender silver towers, and other parts as spires of amethyst. Arched windows shone with complicated patterns of blue and green light in the towers, but there were no doors that Draco had ever seen. Chains and walkways too thin for any but trained acrobats to walk led from tower to tower. Branches of enormous trees twined about the walkways. So close did the trees stand to the spires, and so deep were the colors of their bark, that it was hard to tell which part of Avalon was grown from roots and which part from stone.

Potter was panting now, as if he couldn’t get enough breath. Draco urged the Clearstar down with a whispered word and let Potter see into the heart of the island, as trees and towers parted around a central clearing designed to be visible to someone from flight. Draco wondered idly for a moment how it looked from other parts of the island, then dismissed the idea. The immense magic that had created Avalon would not find it difficult to arrange matters so that it blazed with beauty from every angle.

Dark purple and silver roots gave way to dark green grass, a shallow bowl of it delving down in gentle slopes that made the clearing resemble a ring of ripples made from tossing a stone into water. White flowers crouched about the slopes to echo the stars in the sky above, and a long inlet of shallow water dominated the center of the clearing, reflecting a finger of moonlight. There was a smaller island in the exact middle of that inlet, complete with miniature towers and trees, which resolved themselves into a table and chairs as they hovered closer. Draco heard Potter sigh, and knew it for the moment when he discerned the mirroring effect.

Phoenix song rose to greet them as they descended, and Draco shut his eyes in spite of himself as pure serenity breathed along his hair and into his face. There were no human servitors here, no house-elves. Everything was done by magic alone, enchantments layered and piled until they took on their own awareness from sheer density.

Potter was whimpering now, and they hadn’t even landed and had anything to eat yet. Draco chuckled into his ear. He would feel Avalon’s magic calling out to the magic in him, and he would feel at home for the first time in his life. It was possible to feel a shadow of this sensation in Hogwarts or Hogsmeade, long-settled areas of wizarding Britain soaked in generations of practitioners, but neither of them had the presence that this place did. Muggles had walked in them perhaps a thousand years before. No Muggle had ever walked in Avalon.

They landed, and Draco seated Potter carefully in a silver filigree chair before a table carved of a single large amethyst. Potter leaned back as a whirling cascade of moonlit motes darted past him, already forming into the food he would like to eat best and which would best match his internal mood and power—the magic, in tune with him now, needed no speech to understand that—and his expression was intense and open at the same moment, joyful and free.

Draco sank more slowly into his own chair. His gaze clung to Potter’s face.

I want to see him look that way, too, for as long as possible.

Draco frowned a little. He did not understand that desire of his. It seemed to have less to do with revenge than his desire to maintain Potter’s admiration.

But then Potter smiled at him, and Draco remembered that no one else had ever seen Potter look at him with those softly shining eyes. Rarity was reason enough to value it.

Chapter 17.

Comments

[tray-la-la.livejournal.com]

great chapter! i adore ron and lucius teaming up!

the moment between harry and draco looking at the keller home was quite sweet and touching, and pushing him off the cliff was brilliant.

But then he crushed Harry with a ferocious embrace and leaned down to whisper hoarsely into his ear, “I don’t ever want anyone else to have you. I don’t want you to give that acceptance to anyone else.”

this was was so perfectly, impulsively draco. i dare not hope, but his feelings for harry do seem to be getting the better of him (or, rather, harry's feelings for him seem to be getting the better of him).... :)

the section from snape's pov was gorgeously written, though i'm a bit sad that harry hasn't risen in snape's esteem as i'd hoped. this was such a wonderful line:

(Lily. His life had been a temple of mourning for her, and always would be).

so lovely.

the results to the blood magic are very interesting indeed. i don't know what to think, but i'm definitely nervous!!!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That chapter was so odd to write for me. It's a team I never thought would happen, so I had no idea how they would interact at first.

Draco does seem to have changed his mind a little bit, doesn't he? Of course, well, he did just throw Harry off a cliff, so we'll see.

Snape has kept himself from any objective consideration of Harry that might have changed his mind, on purpose. Maybe he can change his mind now that he's seen evidence in Harry's mind Harry doesn't know he saw and couldn't have fabricated.