Chapter Eight of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Realized

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eight—What Draco Malfoy Realized

“This is—sudden.” Kingsley blinked and leaned back, his hands folded across his belly as he studied Harry. “You’re sure about this?”

“Perfectly.” Harry clenched his fingers on the shrunken trunk in his pocket. He’d already been home to pack, in a whirlwind of activity because he was afraid he might change his mind at any moment and decide to remain in England to be near Draco. But his mind was clear now, and he intended to see that it stayed that way. “I’ve even decided where I want to go.”

“Do tell.” Kingsley had a curious expression on his face, as if he thought that Harry wouldn’t be able to come up with a destination and that would show he wasn’t serious.

“Madrid.” Harry leaned forwards and tapped a hand triumphantly on Kingsley’s desk. “They had all that trouble with Dark wizards a month or so ago and asked us for someone to speak on our Auror tactics, didn’t they?”

Kingsley blinked like a lizard, or like the way that Draco did when he was confronted with a disorienting surprise. Harry noticed that, and then told himself to stop thinking about Draco. “So they did,” Kingsley murmured, drawing Harry’s attention back to the problem in front of him. “I didn’t realize you’d remembered that.”

Harry folded his arms and glared. “Well, I did. And just because I didn’t agree to it at the time doesn’t mean I never would.”

“Glad to hear it.” Kingsley reached for a packet of parchment in front of him and wrote Harry’s name on it, then handed it to him. Harry accepted the set of papers with a small smile. He thought that Kingsley had probably planned to send someone to Madrid as soon as possible, and if Harry hadn’t wanted to go there but to Iceland or Germany, Kingsley would have tried to persuade him out of it. “This contains all the information you’ll need to become a guest of the Spanish Ministry and stay out of sight of the Muggles, as well as the translation charm.”

Harry opened the packet and studied the incantation for the charm a minute. As he’d suspected, it was depressingly long and complicated. Oh, well. I’ve done worse things. One just an hour ago, in fact.

After he’d sent his letter to Draco, he’d realized what a fantastically stupid idea that was and what he’d revealed about his identity when he said that he’d killed Dark wizards. But that just caused his half-made decision to get made all the way.

Sympathetic magic had its limits, and, in particular, letters sent with it couldn’t cross salt water. If Harry went to the Continent, he’d put enough distance between them. He couldn’t be tempted to answer those letters if he never saw them.

“You’ll be expected to explain your own particular experiences as well as the general procedures of the British Ministry,” Kingsley droned on. “I’m sure that someone will want to interview you about the Battle of Hogwarts. Emphasize the principles you acted on rather than the methods, please.” He gave Harry a tepid glare. Harry knew that there were still times that Kingsley was disappointed the war had been won with a simple Expelliarmus. “And of course you’ll be standing in as a representative for us. I expect you to act up to the highest standards you know.”

“Of course,” Harry said automatically, though he hadn’t paid much attention to Kingsley’s spiel. It was all obvious. He tucked the packet of parchments into his robe, all but the single sheet that contained the translation charm and directions for his Apparition points, and then turned to leave.

“Oh, and Harry?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”

“I expect to remain in ignorance of whatever is making you flee the country at the moment,” said Kingsley flatly, and then turned back to his paperwork.

Harry marched out, his back stiff with offended dignity. I’m not fleeing the country. I’m just…making a strategic retreat.

But he could be honest with himself in his head, if not with Kingsley. He’d made a lot of mistakes in his attempts to approach Draco. The letters plan had been a stupid one. He’d been equally stupid to assume that Draco would accept Astoria without persuasion, or even with it. He hadn’t counted on what would happen if or when Draco ever came near to discovering who had sent him the letters.

He didn’t blame himself for not realizing that Draco would consider a male lover, though. There had never been any sign of that, and there was only so much that observation could do.

He needed to look at other things, other people, for a while. He needed to be in a place where he could answer normal owls, but not Draco’s spectral ones. He needed to think, without the overwhelming pressure of the emotions that Draco always stirred in him.

And who knows? he thought, as he chanted the translation spell and then memorized the Apparition coordinates. He would have to hop several times, once onto a small scrap of land in the Channel, since intercontinental Apparition was impossible. Maybe it’ll be a holiday in more ways than one. Maybe I’ll find someone there who takes my mind off Draco entirely. That’s not likely, but I really have to consider how much I love him, if I could pull something like this and then not know he refused to consider an equal partner.

*

Draco took a deep breath and forced himself to spend a few minutes thinking of nothing, gazing in front of him at the plants in the garden. The fronds of the ferns were swaying; the marigolds were brilliant; the lilies and the narcissus that his father had planted long ago in honor of his mother shone in the sunlight. If he sat there long enough with his mind blank, then he would have to accept the peace into his soul.

Or that was the theory.

But the plants, growing in contentment, satisfied with their lot, only reminded him of how miserable he was. He hadn’t been able to contact his writer for a fortnight. Every spectral owl he sent out failed to come back, and he’d received no letters.

Draco doubted that his writer had suddenly learned a miraculous self-control. Rather, he seemed to have moved himself into a place where sympathetic magic no longer worked. Draco thought that he wasn’t in England any more.

But where he might have gone…there were too many places, too many choices. Draco had not the least idea.

He raised his head and let his hands clench into fists on the bench beside him. If he could not banish his anger, then he would accept it and work with it. He would not let it get the better of him, as it had of his writer when Draco sent the baiting letter. It would become a weapon in his arsenal and not a weakness.

There were ways he could find out where his writer had gone, given the collection of torn pieces of parchment floating in vials in his lab, locked under a preservation charm that kept their contact with his writer’s skin vital and burning. He had wanted to wait to use the parchment pieces until he understood more about sympathetic magic, so that he wouldn’t waste them. But then he had still anticipated responses to his letters, unguarded communications that would reveal more about his writer and perhaps enable Draco to discover him even before he felt ready to use the parchment.

There had been a particularly revealing line in the last letter, about killing Dark wizards. It was likely that his writer was an Auror. Draco could at least try to find out which Aurors had been sent away from the country in the last weeks.

Except that someone will wonder why you want the information. The Ministry workers had not, for the most part, fallen to his charm. They had been closer than most to the front lines of the war, since the Dark Lord had taken over the Ministry so decisively. Someone would, at the very least, report Draco’s interest in Auror movements to the Minister, and then Draco might find himself questioned regarding every unsolved crime that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had on their records.

No, sympathetic magic it was. Draco would simply have to force his mind and understanding to work faster, so that he would grasp its essence and not waste the parchment when he was ready to cast his spell.

He had not realized until now how dependent he was on the letters from the writer, on the knowledge that his writer was out there, regretting and impatient and in love, doing everything he could to evade identification and capture. Draco pictured the man without a face who still became daily more and more defined in his imagination, and pictured him taking someone else’s hand, stepping into a new life, or simply ignoring Draco for the rest of his days.

It sent a pang of what felt suspiciously like panic through him.

Draco disliked that. This was a chance connection in his life, with a casual beginning, and he did not enjoy the suspicion that his writer, so eager to make contact at first, was now freer of the need for that contact than he was. But he thought it might be happening, and if so, the only way around that was to show his writer how much of the other man’s attention he, in fact, deserved.

He stood up and retreated inside to spend time with his sympathetic magic books once more.

*

“Would you like to come with me to hear a concert, Harry?”

Harry grinned and swung the satchel he’d taken to carrying with him over his shoulder. He felt like he was back in Hogwarts, with everyone in sight handing him parchment—suggestions for further contact with the British Ministry, mostly, but also some testimony about Dark wizards that could be useful if this particular group ever showed up in England. “That’d be great, Rodrigo.”

Rodrigo José López Martínez grinned at him and fell into step beside him as they left the Spanish Ministry. Harry felt a calm, deep contentment spread over him. Rodrigo matched him without appearing to notice what he was doing, walking as fast as Harry did and keeping up with him when he showed off his dueling skills. And he had a sense of humor, which Harry couldn’t remember Draco ever having.

Stop thinking about Draco. Harry would much rather think about Rodrigo, who had dark hair and odd eyes—brown in one light, greenish-hazel in another—and the unselfconscious grace of someone who’d been trained in the Spanish Aurors’ style of fighting.

Like Ron, he was comfortable company. Thanks to the translation charm, they understood each other perfectly, though Rodrigo teased Harry that his Spanish had a British accent. And Rodrigo had been able to tell Harry about international politics in a style that actually made it interesting, unlike the times he’d tried to learn anything about it from Hermione or Kingsley.

Harry wasn’t prepared to say that he’d forgotten Draco, yet, but the holiday had been the mental vacation that he’d anticipated, and more.

They came out of the Ministry into a street that looked bigger than it should, thanks to the huge, billowing pavilions that had replaced most of the buildings. Harry gave them a rueful look. When he’d heard about the Spanish problem with Dark wizards, he had assumed that a small group of them had murdered enough high-profile people to cause news and maybe a panic. He hadn’t anticipated a group larger than the Death Eaters that had destroyed half the wizarding section of Madrid.

“It was close,” Rodrigo said, following his gaze. “At one point, we were backed up to the Ministry itself and fighting, with the Minister prepared to Portkey out at any minute.”

“And you never found out what they wanted?” Harry asked in interest as they started to walk down the middle of the steep street, avoiding the architects who zoomed around the pavilions on brooms, measuring and arranging and arguing.

“The ones I fought told me it was revenge for what the Spanish Empire did in America and Europe centuries ago,” Rodrigo said, and rubbed his face. “Which means, if that was true, that they’ll never stop. There’s no way to undo those atrocities, and if we kill everyone who comes after us for them, we’ll only end up causing more bad feeling.”

Harry nodded. He’d spent years listening to Hermione talk about British Muggle history and the way that pure-bloods abused house-elves; some of that had sunk into his skull even if the international politics hadn’t. It was a huge knot of useless guilt and useless resentment on the part of those who felt “attacked” for the deeds of their ancestors and productive efforts stymied by hatred on both sides.

Rodrigo briskly shook his head and straightened his shoulders as if throwing the burden of the attacks off. “But I don’t think that was true,” he said determinedly. “I think that was just something the bastards tried to use, so that we would blame the wrong people and not look for them in the shadows. We’ll find them yet.” He smiled at Harry. “And I think I’ve spent enough time brooding on the subject. Come along.”

Harry followed easily, but Rodrigo slowed to wait for him without even seeming to notice that he’d done it. Harry grinned again. He appreciated the consideration, and though so far Rodrigo had shown no inclination to flirt beyond a few smiles and interested glances, Harry wouldn’t be adverse to seeing if any attraction bloomed between them.

Consideration is so different from what I would get with Draco.

Harry shoved the thought out of his head again. There were other reasons to admire Rodrigo, beyond the fact that he was very different from Draco. He had fought in wars in much the same way Harry had—not the same war, but that hardly mattered. Spain was battered by persistent Dark wizards, some of them working with Muggle terrorist groups, which meant that even the pure-bloods had to be more aware of the Muggle world than was the case in Britain. His background was more like Harry’s, therefore, than most of the people he tended to work with on a daily basis.

Harry liked feeling he had something in common with someone besides Ron and Hermione.

And Rodrigo had asked questions about the war against Voldemort and Harry’s defeat of him, but in the learning-oriented way that one soldier would ask questions of another, not in the fawning way that people tended to do at home. When he’d got the answers he wanted, he nodded and switched the subject. And he didn’t keep returning to it obsessively, either.

He was someone who had walked through the shadows, like Harry, but who hadn’t allowed those shadows to taint him. Harry liked to believe he was free of the taint, though he wasn’t sure he was.

If he had to find someone to fall in love with to replace Draco, surely he couldn’t choose much better than someone like this.

So he and Rodrigo went to a small restaurant and then to the concert, whilst the sunset blazed overhead and declined slowly into the dark, and Harry’s thoughts stayed resolutely away from a certain Manor in Wiltshire.

*

Draco stared down at the scraps of parchment spread in front of him on a map of Europe, soaked with sea-salt and creating a rough half-circle. Inside them lay another half-circle of torn pieces, these smaller in both their spread and the size of each individual piece. They’d been touched with Draco’s own sweat and saliva, creating a link to him that was similar to the link the rest of the parchment had to his writer.

He’d used every piece of the parchment except a few ragged corners with no ink on them, which he’d judged his writer less likely to have touched. If this test failed, then he wouldn’t have enough left to conduct another trial.

Draco took a deep breath, falling into habit despite the fact that deep breathing hadn’t worked at all this evening to calm him down. If he failed, then he would find a way to get another letter and conduct another trial. It was possible that every single one of the original letters together could be as powerful as this one.

There were all sorts of things that could go wrong. He might have misread the books of sympathetic magic, or misjudged the strength of the spells he was going to use. He might have saturated the second half-circle too much with his own body fluids, which, being more recent, would be stronger than the older link with his writer. His writer might not be in Europe. That last was the strongest and the worst possibility.

But Draco refused to second-guess himself continually, as much as he refused to allow his writer to escape him.

Draco Malfoy deserved the best. He’d always known that. But he’d had a very limited notion of best until his writer had shown him new depths to the word.

He’d pictured someone who would obey him. But most of the women he’d dated had only been too happy to try that in the hopes of getting into his good graces, and he’d become bored with them. That should have told him something right there, but it hadn’t, because he wasn’t used to paying attention to his own signals and was too infatuated with the old picture of perfection.

He’d imagined that best would include beauty. Yet looks couldn’t satisfy him without a corresponding personality. Astoria was among the better-looking women in his social circles. And still he grew hard for his writer, whose face he wouldn’t recognize if he passed him in the street, because of the spirit and the will that shone through his words.

He’d once declared proudly that he could never date someone who opposed him during the war. His writer had as good as declared back that he’d fought on Dumbledore’s side. And here Draco was, preparing to seek him out anyway.

He could change, if his writer demanded that of him and the changes were within reason. He’d already changed in the past fortnight, studying magic that he normally considered beneath him and spending time and effort on a person he didn’t know.

If there was a way to hold his writer, Draco would find it, and then he would adopt it. He would enjoy engaging with that fierce pride more than he would dismantling it.

Because I deserve the best, after all. And doesn’t that include the best entertainment?

He smiled faintly and held up his hands. His wand was in his right one, but he wouldn’t be using it for the first few passes. As sympathetic magic depended on the touch of skin or blood, on toenail clippings and locks of hair, it was his bare palms that would begin the process of connection between him and his writer.

“I call myself,” he said. “I acknowledge the bond.” The books had made it clear that it didn’t matter what words were used, as long as they were simple and offered some form of acknowledgment. Sympathetic magic worked badly when people resisted it.

The half-circle of torn parchment soaked with his sweat and saliva glimmered. Draco, watching it intently, waited until it had achieved a soft, uniform blue glow the color of frost. Then he touched his wand to his left palm and breathed, “Diffindo.”

A cut opened, across the furrow that hand-readers called the life line, and his blood flowed out. Draco twisted his hand so that most of the blood would fall directly on the shining pieces of parchment.

The blue light flared when his blood hit it, and the color changed until it was the green of foxfire.

“I acknowledge the bond,” Draco whispered again. “This is blood, freely and willingly shed, with the intent of bringing me to a person whom I feel companionship for.” The spell would have been stronger if he could have claimed love, but the books had warned him that a false statement was worse than having the spell be a bit weaker. Falsehood could destroy sympathetic magic altogether.

The green light twisted, and became red—the color of his fresh blood, the color of a beating heart. The light started to reach out lazy, waving tendrils like seaweed’s towards the other half-circle of parchment, and then stopped.

“This parchment comes from the companion I would reach,” Draco said, in a loud, clear voice this time. “I believe him to be somewhere within this area.” He scattered his blood across the map of Europe, glad that he had taken the time to phrase his statement carefully. At least it wouldn’t be a falsehood if it turned out his writer was in America or Australia, and so he wouldn’t suffer from backlash. “I shed blood willingly, freely, and claim the touch of his hand on material sent to me willingly. I ask to be connected with him.”

The red light embraced the parchment his writer had touched without hesitation this time, and then shot out in several separate arches to touch the blood scattered on the map. Draco gasped as he felt his own heart begin to labor in sympathy with the throb of the light.

There might be more reasons than one that this kind of magic isn’t used often, he thought, and blinked the sweat of effort and concentration out of his eyes.

The magic swirled outwards, forming several cyclones on the map. When he squinted, Draco could see that each one centered in a different country. They grew brighter and brighter until it looked as if he’d chosen to paint his potions lab scarlet.

Draco would have laughed if he could have around the noise of his heartbeat, which was taking all his strength. As if I would ever choose such a color.

Then all the cyclones but one winked out. Bending closer, staring out of one eye, Draco could make out that it was hovering above Madrid.

And then the magic formed into a single glowing chain that led from his heart to the cyclone, and his hands tingled, and the bond tightened, yanking him through time and space to his writer’s side.

*

“—and then I got to say, ‘I told you so.’ For the second time that night!”

Harry laughed aloud and stepped into the room he’d taken in a tiny house not far from the Ministry. The owners had been happy to have a lodger who could give them money to help them rebuild their other property that had been destroyed by the Dark wizards. “And his face was something to see, I take it?”

Rodrigo dropped his jaw and stared straight ahead in a good imitation of shock. Harry laughed again and moved back a little so that he could accept the implied invitation into the room, if he wanted.

Rodrigo did. His glance flickered sideways at Harry for a moment, and his lips curved up in a pleased smile. Harry grinned back, exhilarated. He’d never taken this kind of risk—Draco was the only man he had ever been attracted to, and of course Harry hadn’t tried to come closer to him. But at the moment, with a man who matched him in experience and who had a sense of humor about others as well as himself, he wanted to try.

Harry shut the door and moved forwards, giving Rodrigo plenty of time to slide sideways and let matters sink back into casual again. But Rodrigo muttered something that sounded like, “Wondered when you would get the nerve” and was probably even more insulting in Spanish, and reached up to grip his chin.

The air seemed to explode, and Rodrigo was propelled backwards. Harry jumped and whirled around, his hand already on his wand. His first thought was Dark wizards!

It had nothing to do with Draco Malfoy, who was standing in the center of the room staring at him. In fact, seeing him made Harry realize he hadn’t thought about Draco all evening.

Not that it mattered. Draco’s eyes were wide and fixed on Harry; he didn’t look at Rodrigo, who could as easily have been the one writing to him. His face grew paler and paler as he stared, until Harry thought he would pass out.

“Potter,” he said, and his voice was thick with many complex emotions, but there wasn’t enough of the ones Harry wanted to hear most, regret and anger—the ones that might have indicated Draco was thinking about walking away.

Harry’s own anger and regret and frustration whirled up in him, and he pointed his wand at Draco, choosing the only spell he could think of that would remedy the situation. “Obliviate!” he snarled.

Draco ducked out of the way, and rose to his feet with a breathless laugh. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not so easily.” He flicked his wand idly at Rodrigo, and Rodrigo vanished out of the room, forcibly Apparated. From the curses Harry heard through the window, he’d gone no further than the street below.

But it was the sheer nerve of Draco’s daring to do anything about Rodrigo at all that infuriated him. His emotions clouding his mind and rapidly tipping towards rage, his heart pounding with the injustice of Draco showing up when Harry had done his best to forget him and wasn’t good for him anyway, Harry attacked.

Draco, who’d been casting locking and anti-Apparition spells, met him wand to wand, and the battle was joined.

Chapter 9.

Comments

[ura-hd.livejournal.com]

Harry behaves a little bit crazy... Are they going to kiss in the next chapter?

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Yes, because he feels like fate is just taunting him at this point.

And we'll see. :)