lomonaaeren | Chapter Five of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Thought

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Chapter Five—What Draco Malfoy Thought

Draco left his mother as soon as he decently could, and as soon as he confirmed that one test on the owl’s feather had failed and would afford him no useful information. He retreated into his bedroom, shut the door, and put the letter on the table beside him. He had thought he would stare at it whilst the latest revelation whirled through his brain, but it turned out he wasn’t equal to that after all.

All he could do was tuck his hands behind his head and stare at the ceiling.

His brain barked and flung itself in circles.

A man. A man is writing these letters—why? A man is referring to himself as a woman?

Is this a joke? Did he think I wouldn’t find out?

A great, slow anger began to stir in Draco at that idea. He imagined his writer laughing with friends in a room somewhere, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. His mother told him that it was undignified to actually snarl, but there was no one here to see him right now.

But then he picked up the letter and scanned the words again, and his anger faded, leaving behind it only steady bewilderment.

This is a lot of effort to go to for a joke. Someone would have to observe me for years to accumulate this amount of information, to know what would appeal to me and what would irritate me. And then, if one was to put that amount of effort into a joke…to only use it to write letters, and perhaps to make me go on dates with Astoria? I do not see the point.

Draco laid the letter slowly back on the bedside table. Perhaps he was being foolish, but for the moment, he would continue to think that his writer meant her words seriously.

No. His words. I must think that, now, unless I plan to doubt my mother’s perceptions.

Draco spent some minutes sitting on his bed with his legs curled beneath him, staring out the window. His bedroom was a space of soft green and silver, the colors he still felt most at home among after seven years with them at Hogwarts, and the window gazed over the outdoor gardens to the distant greenhouses. The view drained the agitation slowly from his mind and replaced it with great swathes of calm instead.

And he needed calmness to think about the perception that had come to him now.

Could I accept a man as a lover?

It was a question he had asked himself before, but only in an idle, academic way, the way that everyone must at some point in his life or another, unless he was terrifically unimaginative. And he had thought of the awkwardness stroking another man’s cock would bring on—at least he knew where to put his hands and what expression to wear on his face when he was with women—and mentally compared a few men’s arses with women’s, and then laughed silently and forgotten the whole thing.

But that was before he was confronted with the possible chance of a male lover who knew him extraordinarily well and was content to offer him exactly the sort of challenge he most craved.

Yet here his thoughts ran into another barrier.

He could have written about himself to me openly, or at least in gender-neutral terms, and then begun introducing references to his sex and seeing how I responded. Yet he has gone out of his way to make me think he is a woman. He has gone out of his way to make me think he is Astoria, for that matter.

If he thought that I wouldn’t accept a man as a lover, why write to me at all? If he wants me to date Astoria, why not use terms that could refer more plainly to her?

Unless he thinks I am stupid enough to look no further than the words that intrigue me and decide that the writer must be Astoria after all, with no positive evidence.

Draco showed his teeth to his invisible adversary. He takes a great deal about me on trust.

And that produced another barrier yet. Why would he know so much about me and yet have these odd blind spots? Why would he assume that he could fool me even as he admires my intelligence? And why would he push me towards Astoria if he had the chance of making me want him with his brilliant writing?

Draco shook his head and then smiled suddenly. He had a collection of scattered pieces that, as yet, made little sense.

But his mind was working at a fast pace to solve them. He could pick at the connections, spot the things that didn’t make sense, and work to leap the barriers, to fuse the pieces that at first looked so different together.

He was not bored. He was not looking languidly forwards to nothing more than another date with some pretty girl, who might become the mother to the next generation of Malfoys but was highly unlikely to.

That gift, at least, my writer has already given me.

And he would give more yet when Draco had been able to figure out who he was, and whether he wanted a male lover.

*

Harry stepped out of his office and yawned hugely. He’d been sitting still most of the morning, completing the paperwork that was necessary to life as an Auror, but so boring compared to chasing criminals around. He thought he deserved a holiday.

Even if that holiday is only five minutes away from the paperwork while I fetch myself a cuppa.

He paused when he heard voices speaking around the corner. One was a voice he knew very well, because he’d heard it most days of his life since he was eleven years old: the voice of his best friend, Ron Weasley.

The other was Draco Malfoy’s voice.

Harry sucked in a soft breath through his teeth and crept forwards until he could see around the corner. Draco stood with his feet planted beneath him as if he were about to meet a charging dragon, staring at Ron. Ron was staring back at him, red in the face, but more bewildered than anything else. Harry licked his lips. That was something, at least, if Ron wasn’t about to beat up Draco and Harry wouldn’t find himself compelled to intervene. If he met Draco right now, Harry couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t slip up in front of him.

But he also couldn’t ignore the conversation, and so he had to remain where he was, even as the risk of Draco seeing him.

“I don’t remember,” Ron said. “And even if I did, why would you want to know something like that?”

“Because it concerns me,” Draco said, his voice clipped and quiet in the way it always was he said something distasteful to him, “and it was as the result of your careless tongue that the word spread. Now. Try again, Weasley. Tell me where you were and who heard you when you talked about my being turned into a ferret. Think hard.”

Ron scowled at him, but apparently the unexpectedness of the request was too strange for him to get angry. He rolled his eyes in the next moment and said, “Um. I know it wasn’t that long ago. If someone’s taunting you about that, then just tell me who it is, and I’ll deal with it.”

It is the letters, Harry thought, as he watched Draco’s back stiffen. There’s no other reason that he would be so reluctant to give out names.

“An exact date would be appreciated,” Draco said coldly. “And as for disciplinary action, I doubt this individual is someone the Ministry could touch.” He wrote something down on a piece of parchment and handed it across to Ron, who took it, shaking his head all the while, as if getting Malfoy’s Floo address was the strangest predicament he had ever found himself in.

Draco started to turn around.

Shite! Harry ducked out of sight and crept back into his office with all the skill and quiet he could muster. I don’t care how fascinated I am with him, that’s still cutting it too close.

He shut the door almost all the way, and stood behind it, one eye to the crack, as he watched Draco stride down the corridor. Draco moved with the smoothness and ease of a shark in its natural environment. He didn’t look from side to side, the way he usually did, probably because he assumed there was no one in the Ministry that he wanted to impress. It wasn’t a place for pure-bloods these days.

Harry let out a soft breath and stepped back from the door, frowning. He knew Hermione had told Draco that Ron had been talking about Draco’s transformation into a ferret—which he had—to throw him off the scent, but he hadn’t thought Draco would talk to Ron. Come near a Weasley? He would scald his own skin off first.

But perhaps I don’t know Draco as well as I thought I did.

And if he didn’t, Harry knew, then he could be in for a lot of fucking trouble.

But even as he sat down to his paperwork and tried to consider soberly what his next response should be, there was a flaring of glee in his chest. Draco was intrigued enough with the mystery of “his writer” to come to the Ministry and speak to Ron. He was intrigued enough, in other words, to put something before his pride, since it was his pride that would have kept him away.

He could be giving some of it up. He could be becoming the perfect partner—

Harry caught his breath a moment later, because his mind was turning in a direction that he didn’t like.

For Astoria, remember, he told himself sternly. You’re courting him for Astoria. And it’s a good thing that he has less pride, because she wants someone who can actually see her.

It didn’t matter how much of a pained edge his smile had, Harry thought. His plan was working, and that was what he wanted.

*

Draco cursed as another tiny piece of the owl feather winked out of existence in the middle of a blue potion without changing anything. Either Grimoire was well-defended against magic, or Draco himself wasn’t using the sympathetic magic the right way.

It has to be the latter, he thought, pushing his hands through his hair and pacing around the potions lab. At bottom, my writer wants me to find her—him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have mentioned that ferret incident or given the name of his owl. He’s not playing a perfectly cool and collected game, any more than I am. This matters to him too much, and so he’s giving away little subconscious clues. He won’t be perfectly protected, because his mind and his soul, which is reaching out to mine, won’t let him be.

He slowed his breathing down, then turned around and gave the blue potion a calm deadly glare.

I suppose this means that I have accepted the idea of having a male partner, or I would have given this research up as too much of an effort.

But once again, Draco had to admit that he really didn’t know. The challenge his writer offered was teaching him new things about himself even in the absence of taunting letters. He didn’t know yet whether this man was worth the effort, and he doubted he would until they met face-to-face.

With all that irritating clutter about Astoria out of the way, and some idea of his motives. If I get the chance to write another letter, then I must find some way to convince him to shed part of his disguise, to respond honestly. Yes, I have some honest responses, but I was exaggerating when I said I knew everything about him. I don’t yet know what’s honest and what isn’t.

Still, Draco knew he wouldn’t trade this confusing existence for the boring one he had been living such a short time ago.

I’m on the verge of something big. I can feel that. And it doesn’t matter that Weasley hasn’t contacted me with that list of names. It could be someone he didn’t notice, someone who was listening on the edges of the crowd and chose that story for an entirely personal reason. I would almost rather it were that way. Perhaps I’ll manage to discover him for myself.

Wings beat suddenly above his head. Draco looked up, his wand in his hand, though he didn’t consciously remember commanding his fingers to make that movement.

Grimoire hovered there, twisting his head from side to side as if he disapproved of the way that Draco stared at him. Then, with an equally disapproving hoot, he dropped to Draco’s nearest table and extended his leg.

Draco edged towards him, heart beating fast. But though the owl opened his beak in a click of disdain, he didn’t move, even when Draco reached towards his head. A quick motion, and Draco had both the letter and a feather torn loose from Grimoire’s neck.

The great horned owl spread his wings and leaped at Draco’s face, talons out as if he were striking at a mouse. Draco ducked, and then dropped flat to the floor and rolled under the table when he realized that Grimoire had merely turned in midair and come back at him. This time, the owl had to fly over the delicate potions equipment, and Draco had the chance to aim his wand and cast a Confining Spell. Grimoire gave a defiant hiss as the conjured cage bars closed around him, and spread his wings to test the limits of his freedom. When he discovered that they could extend only just to their full length, he folded them again and fixed Draco with the full force of his unimpressed stare.

“Sorry,” Draco whispered, wondering if the owl could actually understand him. “But I can’t take the chance that you’ll get away before I manage to give you a reply. Your master is going to listen to me, whether he likes it or not.” And then he tucked the new feather safely under a mound of heavy scales and opened the letter. He was disgusted to see that his fingers were shaking. At least he had no audience but a mute owl, and even then, his fingers had other reasons to shake.

My Lord High Idiot,

I would be amused, if I did not pity you so strongly. These are the devices that you take to find me out? Really? Visiting the Ministry, and asking a variety of simple questions, the answer to any of which is not worthy to occupy your mind even in idle hours whilst you’re sipping wine?

I would be more disappointed than I am, but I must only sigh as another illusion is shattered.

Draco paused. His writer knew about his conversation with Weasley, that was plain. But how? Had Weasley told him? But that would mean Weasley had known all along, and somehow managed to lie during his face-to-face confrontation with Draco.

Draco would give himself credit for many kinds of blindness, since he hadn’t recognized that his writer was a man in the first place, but he would not claim that he was ignorant of emotions on Weasley faces. No, Weasley had not known why in the world Draco wanted the information about who had heard his ferret story.

That left the writer overhearing the conversation himself. And yet, Draco had been sure there was no one else in the corridor with them, and especially no one hiding under privacy wards or a Disillusionment Charm.

A strange feeling crept over Draco, a shudder in the skin over his spine almost like the one he had experienced the first time he saw a Mudblood. But it spread to his arms as well, and then the back of his neck, and he scratched lightly at the skin along his ribs before he caught himself. It was a thrill of pleasure.

My writer is clever enough to keep me from detecting him. At least I can be sure that his intelligence is real, then, and not simply a fluke resulting from the chance arrangement of his words, which I’ve made more of than it’s worth.

It was one firm rock to cling to in a sea of sinking chaos. Draco continued to read feeling a bit more steady than he had so far.

I have been growing more disillusioned of late, and believe that I am almost used to the condition. You are not as intelligent as I had thought you were. You are more prideful. You want different things than I do.

I have always known the last was true, of course. At first I told myself that it didn’t matter. We still shared enough common ground that we could live together. And sometimes the most fervent debaters are the ones who are the strongest and most loyal friends.

Draco narrowed his eyes. Was his writer proposing a friendly relationship, then? It didn’t fit, not after the specifically sexual language of the last letter.

But he told himself that his interpretations were not always up to the mark, and read on.

But lately, I have wondered at how perfect your mask is. Perhaps it has hidden the real you from me, the one person who was persuaded I knew you best of all. Perhaps you really are nothing but pride and conceit down to the bottom, the cleverness I thought I saw restricted to your political plans, your compassion reserved for the members of your family.

Perhaps you are not my equal, only a squealing, puling little boy.

Draco heard the creak of wood. It took him a moment to realize that he still held his wand, and that he was squeezing it hard enough to bring out ominous sounds.

That would be…unfortunate. I would so hate to feel that I have wasted my time. Years of observation, in this case. Years of wondering and planning what it would take to make you notice me. I have moved in your circle for so long, and yet you won’t glance twice in my direction. I assumed the fault was in me, and I hit on the approach of the letters as the one most likely to win your interest and give me a fair chance.

Draco hesitated. Was that a lie or not? His writer could have been in his circle, though Draco was convinced that it wasn’t Astoria. And that statement about the real purpose of the letters sounded as if it could be true.

But this time, he had no certainty.

Lies piled on lies. Possibilities multiplying endlessly. It’s like looking into a mirror set up in front of a whole line of mirrors. Draco snarled and actually permitted himself to run his hand through his hair recklessly. It’s like facing myself, or someone as clever and skilled with teasing words and lies of omission as I am.

That gave him pause, and this time he actually had to catch the edge of the table against the thrill of pleasure spreading over him.

If the likeness was strong enough to be reality, if this person was Draco’s equal in some skills as well as in the ill-defined way that the last letter had called for…

I must not let him get away. I don’t know yet if I could take a male lover, but for someone like that, it wouldn’t matter. I would keep him until I learned to like taking a male lover.

The letter continued, and Draco started reading hungrily now, having to continually slow down because he was reading too fast and skipping words.

I find myself unwilling to think of the possibility of failure and wasted time without more proof that I have failed and it was wasted. There are few ways to see beneath the mask, but I happen to know one of them.

I want to meet with you.

“Yes,” Draco whispered, his eyes drifting shut. “I knew he couldn’t want to give me to Astoria. I knew that this would come, sooner or later.”

His writer appeared in his mind as an ill-defined figure, but one with a suitably trim body and hair that would be soft to the touch; Draco hoped it wasn’t coarse and shaggy, because he didn’t want someone too different from a female lover at first. The man’s face was in shadow, but his voice recited the words of the letter with a mocking touch.

Draco felt the thrill reach his groin, and gave a breathless little laugh of surprise and delight. Perhaps he could get used to the notion of a male lover after all, then. Or perhaps this blazing personality was enough to attract him, regardless of what the body looked like.

Draco licked his lips and read on.

Come to the restaurant called Merlin’s Tor on the evening of the seventh, at seven-o’clock. I wrote my first letter to you at seven in the evening. I find I like the symmetry. Come with nothing more than your wand. I’ll bring the Veritaserum, and you’ll bring the charmed parchment.

I will prove to you that I am your writer by writing a letter in front of you, on parchment that won’t permit a lie.

Until then,
A sincere friend.

Draco licked his lips again. Oh, yes.

It was the sort of challenge that he never would have contemplated answering ordinarily, because of all the things that could go wrong with it. But the difference from any of his usual habits was part of what attracted him now. To go to a restaurant that he knew well but not well enough to have any special friends among the managers, to take only charmed parchment as a literal paper shield, to submit to Veritaserum…

It was the kind of reckless thing he hadn’t done since school, when he had begun to weigh his every action for the kind of repercussions it might have on the Malfoy family. And that merely increased the attraction.

Draco wrote a flourishing answer on a piece of parchment that he fastened to Grimoire’s leg with a complicated series of spells that involved him standing back from the cage, and then leaving the potions laboratory before he dissolved the cage that held the bird. The answer was not long. It didn’t need to be.

My writer,

I will be at Merlin’s Tor on the evening of the seventh, and bring everything I need with me to make you admit to my cleverness, my carefully chosen compassion that can indeed be directed to people outside the family when appropriate, and my fitness as a partner for you.

That is, I will bring everything I need with me to make you admit that you, too, are mine.

Willing to become yours,
Draco Malfoy.

*

“Are you mad?” Astoria really looked as if she would tear her hair out for a moment, making Harry blink. He’d always thought that saying was melodramatic rubbish that didn’t actually happen. “Why would you offer to tell him the truth on charmed parchment? Why would you offer to meet him?”

Harry grinned at her. The sharp tone of jealousy in her last words said that she still wanted Draco. Good. I’d hate to put all this work into things with no result. “You’re going to be the one who meets him,” he said. “And if I didn’t have a way to fool charmed parchment, do you really think I would have suggested it?”

Astoria stared at him over the top of Draco’s letter. “I didn’t consider that,” she said. “I didn’t think it could be fooled. Isn’t that the kind that senses any lie in the mind of the writer and forces her hand to write the truth instead?”

Harry nodded. “But the Aurors figured out a way to fool it,” he said. “We’ll construct a limited telepathic bond between you and me, such that the parchment is sensing my thoughts and not yours, but it’s still your hand doing the writing. That bond will also allow me to dictate the letter to you, so we’ll convince Draco that, actually, you are that brilliant on paper, as well as face-to-face.”

Astoria exhaled slowly through her nose. “You’ve done this before?” Harry nodded. “It works?” Harry nodded again. “You think this test will convince him?”

This time, Harry grinned. “I know it will,” he said. “This is a romance conducted almost entirely by letter, remember—entirely by it if we don’t count your one date. He doesn’t possess enough information to make a decision otherwise. Ron told me that he ripped up Draco’s request for information about the ferret story and won’t consider answering it, because Draco’s still a Malfoy. Everything he knows and believes and wishes were true about ‘his’ writer—” Harry rolled his eyes “—comes from the letters. He’ll have to believe after he sees you writing one.”

Astoria looked half-convinced, half-questioning. “I would like to become his wife,” she admitted. “I just don’t think it’s possible.”

Harry leaned over and put a hand on her wrist. “You’ll be his. And then you can make him yours, and show the possessive bastard what’s what. Remember that you’ll be questioning him under Veritaserum, too.”

And then Astoria finally smiled, and Harry used the smile to put paid to the uncertainty that curled around his own heart.

Draco can’t really suspect or know. And after he sees Astoria write that letter, he won’t want to.

I may be manipulating him, but it’s for his own good. And he’ll probably even enjoy it, since he manipulates so many people himself.

But either way, he’ll be happy. Isn’t that what matters?

Chapter 6.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

vesperagain.livejournal.com

Harry really has gone loopy, hasn't he? I mean...I may be manipulating him, but it’s for his own good. And he’ll probably even enjoy it, since he manipulates so many people himself.

But either way, he’ll be happy. Isn’t that what matters?

WTF? Does he even hear himself? How can he decide what makes another person happy and force it down his throat? And the very fact that Astoria is going along with it, albeit slightly reluctantly, should tell him that she doesn't love Draco truly. What he needs is a strong dose of Hermione, neat, with a few hexes thrown in to dust the rosy, shining cobwebs from his mind.

Brilliant chapter once again.

From:

jtsbbsps-dk.livejournal.com

omg I COMPLETELY agree with you!
This: How can he decide what makes another person happy and force it down his throat? is SO true!!!

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Chapter Five of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Thought

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