lomonaaeren | Part II of 'Siege Mentality'- Tipping Point

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Part II. Tipping Point.

Harry paused in his packing and admired the device that the Department of Mysteries had invented to track Apparitions. It was worth the boring course he’d had to sit through to learn how to use it. Such an elegant thing, and so useful. Harry had never been able to resist useful magical artifacts, and thought people who believed they could were secretly lying to themselves.

It resembled a small cone of silvery metal, but from the top rose a delicate stalk like a strand of seaweed, and on the top of that was a blue ball of something soft and yielding that might be either cloth or rubber. Harry couldn’t tell simply from touching it. If he touched any one of the three parts, the others would bob and sway as if they were all connected by some sort of living tissue. Just looking at it made visions swirl up into Harry’s head. He didn’t know exactly how or why it worked, but he didn’t need to. Reasons had always been Hermione’s province.

At least, reasons outside Dark magic. For some reason, Harry had become extremely proficient at getting inside the heads of Dark wizards and understanding the twisted motivations they had for casting their spells.

Not smiling anymore, Harry carefully packed the Apparition-tracking device inside the crystal case they had given him for it and then leaned one elbow on his desk, staring unseeing at the photographs of his friends and the numerous Orders of Merlin covering the walls. He didn’t reckon that he deserved those Orders of Merlin, anyway. Most of the Dark wizards he tracked had a sort of mania for confronting Harry, as if they thought that finishing the work Voldemort had failed to bring off would cover them with eternal honor and glory. Sure, Harry had saved the world eleven times at the last count, but the world would have been destroyed ten times over if those wizards he’d captured didn’t insist on targeting him like idiots.

Those people, he could understand. There was always a moment in a case when the world twisted, just so, and he could jump inside the head of someone else and ride the twisted and throbbing structures of their minds.

But Draco…

Harry smiled a little, memory returning to him so powerfully that it almost knocked him from his feet.

But Draco.

*

Harry frowned and knocked on Ron’s door again. It wasn’t like Ron to be missing from home on a Saturday morning. Besides, Harry and Ron had started a tradition soon after they began Auror training of going to the Leaky Cauldron at ten every Saturday and spending two hours getting drunk, complaining about their instructors, and criticizing all the Minister’s pets who put their effort into pleasing the instructors instead of studying actual techniques. Ron hadn’t broken that tradition yet in the two years they’d been in training.

And anyway, Harry thought, as he listened to his knocks resound through what certainly sounded like an empty house, Hermione should be home even if he isn’t.

“He’s not there, Potter.”

Harry whirled around and pressed his back to Ron’s door, his instinctive reaction now when he was startled. Auror training is good for something, after all, he thought, as he found his wand in his hand considerably faster than it could appear in Malfoy’s.

In fact, Malfoy, who stood behind him on the path that wound through this section of Hogsmeade, looked a strange mixture of bored, amused, and impatient when he saw Harry’s wand pointed at him. Harry hissed under his breath and kept it aimed anyway. Maybe Malfoy wouldn’t have accosted him in the middle of the street in broad daylight, and so near Ron’s wards, if he meant any harm.

Then again, this was the boy—man—Malfoy who had spat at Harry when Harry offered him the hawthorn wand back and almost refused to take it. He did strange things because of his pride.

“Where is he, then?” Harry asked, when some moments had passed and Malfoy just kept on looking at him like a sphinx and preserved his silence.

“That will take some telling,” said Malfoy. “He knows I know, you see, and I thought that, better than trying to convince him I don’t intend to do anything with the knowledge, I’d tell you. You’ve always been a touch more reasonable than the Weasel.”

“Keep speaking in convoluted sentences like that, and you’ll see how reasonable I am,” Harry said, sneering in a way that made Auror Dogsbody look fierce and which Harry hoped would do the same for him.

Malfoy tapped the heels of his hands together. “Congratulations, Potter, you’ve learned a new word! I’m sure it only took a month or two to stuff that one into your head.” He turned around with a flourish of his cloak that Harry thought, spitefully, he’d imitated from Snape, and then glanced back over his shoulder and cocked an eyebrow. “Well? Are you coming? I’m hungry.”

Speechless and angry and worried, Harry nevertheless followed him. He was sure he was a better fighter than Malfoy, now.

And he was curious about where Ron and Hermione might be.

*

Malfoy led him to the Leaky Cauldron. Tom, still standing behind the bar, gawked at them when Harry came in with Malfoy instead of Ron.

Harry turned away, uncomfortable. Of course the prat would have led him here. He probably intended specifically to mock Harry’s Saturday ritual with Ron.

But insulting Malfoy at the moment was unlikely to make him more honest, so Harry restrained himself, nodded to Tom, and said, “A mug of Firewhisky, please.”

Malfoy turned around neatly on his heel, as if he had been waiting for the moment Harry would say those words, and gawked at him like Tom had. “At ten-thirty in the morning, Potter?” he said. “Do you want to die an early death?”

“When you drink alcohol has no effect on your health,” Harry said, irritated into answering an objection he knew was stupid.

“You’re not going to die because of liver complications,” Malfoy said. “You’re going to be beaten to death by devotees of good taste.” He nodded briskly to Tom, who by this point was leaning forwards, elbows on the bar, and watching them as if he thought them bloody good live entertainment. “Cancel that. Instead, we’ll take two plates of eggs, ham, toast, fresh fruit—apples and those small delicate oranges they’ve been importing from Spain lately—and two cups of tea.”

What annoyed Harry the most was that Tom turned away to get the plates just as if Harry wasn’t standing there, and hadn’t ordered something quite different.

Harry opened his mouth, and then shut it. On the one hand, Malfoy had no right to order for him, or treat him as if Harry had suddenly vanished, when he had been the one who sought Harry out and promised to explain.

On the other, there was really no point in causing a scene when Malfoy was the only one who seemed to have information about Ron and Hermione. Harry was hungry, though he usually waited until after noon on Saturday to eat. And the minute he had the information he needed in his possession, then he could go back to insulting Malfoy. In the meantime, he’d have a good breakfast.

So the finish of it all was that he kept quiet and followed Malfoy to a corner table. For some reason, Malfoy looked terribly pleased with himself as he sat down and tapped his hands together. Harry leaned forwards, bracing his elbows on the table—he ignored Malfoy’s shudder when he did that—and glaring as menacingly as he could. “Talk.”

“Please, Potter,” said Malfoy, and drew out a white rose that, for some reason, he’d been carrying up his sleeve, to sniff it. “No one civilized talks about business before breakfast.”

So Harry had to wait, fuming, whilst Tom brought the breakfasts and Malfoy sent his back because the toast was a bit burnt, and then whilst the breakfasts were brought again and Malfoy tasted his and hummed. He bit savagely into his own eggs, but it didn’t hurry Malfoy. He did look up and raise a disgusted eyebrow when Harry gulped his tea. Then he gave Harry a stern look when he started to leave the fruit, both apples and oranges, on his plate. Harry glared back, but Malfoy had somehow acquired the knack of chiding him without even opening his mouth. Harry sighed and began to eat his apples. Malfoy returned to his own meal with every evidence of enjoyment.

At last he pushed his plate back, folded his hands behind his head, signaled lazily for more tea, waited until Tom had brought it, sipped from the cup, and then said, “Weasley did something stupid, Potter, and I saw it. He saw me, and I reckon he thinks I’m going to blackmail him, so he’s probably trying to convince Granger they need to flee the country.” He gave Harry a wide smile so full of amusement Harry blinked; he hadn’t realized Malfoy could look that human. “She probably went with him to indulge him, but I think they’ll only be gone until she can persuade him back. Still, there’s a chance the word might get out. You need to let him know the word won’t get out through me, and that I’ll work to suppress it if anyone else does think it worthwhile to tell the story.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Harry burst out. “You’ve never liked Ron, or me.”

Malfoy made a sharp, cutting motion with his hand that seemed to signal Harry to keep his voice down, and then lowered his own voice impressively. “Because the person he did the stupid thing to thoroughly deserved it.”

Harry, about to yell something else, blinked and sat back in his chair. “I’m listening.”

“You remember Cormac McLaggen?” Malfoy was watching his face intently, as if, at the slightest hint that Harry didn’t, he would decide Harry was working for the enemy.

It took Harry a moment to grasp the name, but then he nodded. That lump of a Gryffindor seventh-year who, in their sixth year, had done his very best to date Hermione and take Ron’s place as Keeper on the Gryffindor team. “He was the one Ron—did something to?” Harry didn’t think he had enough details to be sure of what his best friend was guilty of yet.

Malfoy nodded back. “Apparently, he’d been sending Granger lovestruck letters. He’s done the same thing to various other women throughout the Ministry and the pure-blood circles he travels in.” Malfoy’s lip curled. “Broken up several relationships that I know of, because, somehow, he can make himself charming on paper.”

Harry said nothing, but he was privately certain that Malfoy’s relationship must be one of those McLaggen had broken up. Not that a woman would need much reason to want to leave Malfoy.

“Weasley confronted him on that new Quidditch pitch they’ve set up outside London,” Malfoy said. “I was there to practice, but I stayed hidden and watched once I realized what was going on.”

“Why?” Harry demanded, his suspicions rising again. It just seemed too good to be true that Malfoy had witnessed whatever had happened between Ron and McLaggen but didn’t want anything for it.

“Because it looked like it would be entertaining, of course,” Malfoy drawled. “Does your impeccable judgment find me virtuous enough to continue?”

Harry wavered for a moment, but had to admit that that sounded like a Malfoy motive, and not one he could really fault, since he’d done the same thing in his time. He nodded and gestured for Malfoy to go on.

“Thank you.” Malfoy clasped his hand over his heart. “This moment of your approval is one that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.” He continued before Harry could do more than growl impatiently. “So. Weasley threatened McLaggen. Of course, McLaggen said that he could make Granger choose him over Weasley at any time. That enraged Weasley enough that he cast the Detonator’s Curse.”

“He didn’t,” Harry gasped. They’d studied the Detonator’s Curse in Auror training, of course, but only as one they needed to know so they could defend against it, never as one to cast. The curse burst the bones in the limbs of the target and left small pockets of explosive magic behind, so that any attempt to repair the bones for at least six months would result in their bursting in the same way.

“Of course he did.” Malfoy lifted a finger as if he would tap Harry on the nose, but then lowered it again. Harry was glad. They might be sitting here and having a civil conversation under duress, but they were not close enough that Malfoy could touch him without being invited. “Why would I make that up?”

“To get Ron in trouble,” Harry said automatically.

Malfoy threw himself against the back of his chair, which made Harry start because it didn’t fit in with his collected, cool persona so far, and sighed through pursed lips. Then he began speaking as if his impatience were barely under control. “I’ve grown up, Potter, unlike you. I don’t drink alcohol at ten in the morning. I no longer pin my heart on winning impossible Quidditch games against an opponent who outmatches me. And I’d appreciate it if you could acknowledge that I’m above getting people in trouble simply to get them in trouble. McLaggen displeased me because he realized that he had no chance of breaking up my relationship, so he sent me threatening letters instead of charming ones. I was glad enough to see him hurt that I never even considered reporting Weasley, all right?”

Harry blinked several times, trying to think about all the admissions that Malfoy had just made at once, and then managed to seize on the fact that most interested him at the moment, which didn’t concern Malfoy acting adult or reasonable. “Why couldn’t McLaggen break up your relationship?”

Malfoy bared his teeth, or smiled; they were the same thing with him, Harry thought. “He only dates women,” he said simply.

Oh. Oh. Harry stared at Malfoy, who yawned widely and said, “If you plan to spring to your feet and run out of here screaming that I covet your lily-white arse, at least try to wait until after I’m done with my story.”

Harry kept a cautious eye on him, but kept silent, too, mostly because he couldn’t think of a bloody thing to say. That seemed good enough for Malfoy, who went on, “Weasley realized what he’d done the moment he did it. He panicked. Or haven’t they taught you the spells that conceal magical signatures yet? Or perhaps they know better than to give trainee Aurors that kind of information. At any rate, the best thing he could think of to do was to Memory Charm McLaggen. And then he Apparated, I would presume home to his wife. No doubt he babbled out the relevant part of the story to her and they’re off somewhere having a good hearty argument about what they should do.”

“But you said he saw you?” Harry asked. He might not know what to say all the time, but he did remember Malfoy saying that was the catalyst for his seeking Harry out in the first place.

Malfoy smirked, a bit, but even that didn’t seem to be as offensive as the sneers he’d used in the past. Harry reckoned he had to consider that Malfoy might have changed. A little. “I stepped out into the open because I had more faith in him than he deserved. Weasley’s first attempt to Apparate failed, and so he saw me, and then he shrieked and Apparated out. Tell him from me that he screams like a girl.”

“I’d rather not, thanks,” Harry said. “And you—you really don’t want him to go to Azkaban?” Use of the Detonator’s Curse carried a six months’ sentence at least. Harry knew he would be anxious to protect Ron from that, and even Hermione would, after a struggle with her sense of justice, but he couldn’t comprehend Malfoy joining them among that small but select number.

Malfoy’s eyes were distant for a moment, looking over Harry’s head. “McLaggen should have got at least that for the letters he sent to me,” he said quietly. “But because I am—who I am, and McLaggen has powerful connections, he didn’t. I’m willing to protect the person who avenged me, however indirectly.” He looked at Harry again and raised a familiar sardonic eyebrow. “It’s just our misfortune that Weasley happened to be that person.”

Harry hesitated, then held out his hand. Malfoy looked at it as if he might have invisible rat dung smeared on it.

“Come on, Malfoy,” Harry said. “You’ve done my friend a good turn, and I do believe you won’t blab, given what you just told me about McLaggen.” Besides, though Harry didn’t know if Malfoy knew this, witnessing the use of a curse as Dark as the Detonator’s Curse and not reporting it at once could cause one to be arrested as an accomplice, so there was that extra bit of security. “Shake on it?”

“There are some gestures I don’t need, at this point in my life,” said Malfoy, and rose and stalked away, as much on his offended dignity as a cat whose owner had just tried to put it in the bath.

Harry dropped his hand and blinked after Malfoy. It took him long moments to remember that time on the train when he’d turned away from Malfoy’s hand in the same way.

He supposed the boy who had become the man might still have some of the boy’s pride.

Strangely, Harry liked him better for it.

*

Harry came back to himself and smiled a little, shaking his head. He’d met with Malfoy several times after that, seeking to understand him as well as working out the protection of Ron’s secret with him. Malfoy had continued to be that strange mixture of polite and prideful, adult with the child’s vulnerabilities. He was one of the most real people Harry knew, because, in a way, one of the most unguarded. He had decided that he couldn’t deny who he was or what he’d done during the war, because too many people already knew about it, and so instead he lived with it, which was more than Harry managed some days.

Harry had wanted to know him, and, finally, Draco had let Harry do so. They’d spent time together in serious conversation—Draco was the one who had taught Harry to have some taste in art and music, as well as patiently correcting his impression that he was the first person in the world to wonder about the meaning of life—but also in drunken midnight Quidditch races and, once Harry accepted that he liked to look at men himself, in appreciations of the way that certain men in Hogsmeade dressed, danced, and acted. And then Draco had moved to France and they’d stopped talking as regularly as before.

Harry stood straight and jammed a sheaf of papers, the reports of the cases that the dead Aurors had read, in the bag he was taking with him. He’d often enough felt inferior to Draco at certain specific things, but if there was something he was good at, it was understanding Dark curses and unraveling mysteries. And he was going to save Draco. He didn’t believe Draco had cast a curse like this. He was probably as much a victim of it as the rest of the dead or injured people around him.

*

Draco sighed and leaned back against the wall of the shower. This was more like it. The water sluiced across him, hot and welcome, washing away not only the sweat but most of the aches that had sprung up in his muscles from running.

But what was he running from? That was the part that bewildered him. He couldn’t remember, even though he’d been running from—it or them—for what felt like months.

Draco rubbed an arm tiredly across his face, then cursed as a few soapsuds got in his eyes. He’d try to remember later. For the moment, all he wanted was to tumble into bed. Even food could wait. He was weary of sleeping on roots and waking up with leaves in his hair.

Suddenly, the force and direction of the water changed. Draco gasped and stared up. He’d never known his shower to malfunction so badly.

And then he realized that he stood under a waterfall, next to a rocky cliff down which it splashed, and up to his ankles in a foaming pool it created. He backed up, looking around wildly. Yes, there were the heavy, shaggy trees looming on every side, the crooked roots tearing up the earth, the dark green leaves rustling menacingly—

Just the way he’d imagined it.

Draco felt a sob rising up his throat. What was happening to him? Was he going mad? Or if his enemies really were chasing him, who would drag him across the world to torment him?

And then he heard the creaks and snaps that told him the pursuers were hurtling through the forest towards him, as large as bears, as swift as wolves.

He scrambled out of the pool and began to run, dripping and naked, hungry and tired and terrified out of his wits.

And alone, so alone.

Part 3.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

glored13.livejournal.com

oooh, interesting! I can't wait to find out what you've got planned for Draco and Harry in this one! Your plots are always so complex, original and fascinating!

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Part II of 'Siege Mentality'- Tipping Point

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