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lomonaaerenTitle: Corybantes
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, OC character death, profanity, sex, mentions of random fetishes and suicide. Ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: A mysterious death has occurred at Draco Malfoy’s club, Corybantes, which specializes in using magic to make its clients’ deepest fantasies come true. As Auror Harry Potter investigates, he finds himself admiring Malfoy’s courage and determination in achieving success. Which could be a problem, as there’s a fairly large chance that Malfoy is the murderer.
Author’s Notes: Corybantes were servants of the goddess Cybele who worked themselves up into ecstatic trances with drumming and dancing. Though applying to a different kind of ecstasy, it seemed a fairly good name for Draco’s club. This story will be about ten or twelve chapters long.
Corybantes
Chapter One--Fantasy and Reality
It didn’t look like much, viewed from the outside.
Harry considered it with his arms folded in front of him, the hand that held his wand resting along his right forearm. A few of the people passing into the club cocked their heads at him and gaped. Harry didn’t know whether it was his posture, his heavy dark cloak, or the fact that he lingered outside without going in that made them look at him like that. He hardly cared. In the circus that was the corner of Knockturn Alley and Roof Alley, one black-clad stranger was hardly going to stand out.
Lights blazed past him, wandering winged peddlers calling out hoarsely that they had captured fairies for sale. Women whom shifting shadows hid stood in the entrance of small shops, variously advertising phoenix eggs, the latest in completely loyal familiars, or delightful and unexpected perversions to be found with house-elves. The shop two doors down from the building Harry examined disdained all subtlety, flaunting an enormous ruby whip on the door and an image of a man twisting in pain under it, bleeding turquoise blood.
Harry reckoned that helped attract the kind of clientele they wanted, or they wouldn’t have used it. For him, it was hard to imagine anything less attractive.
The building across from him was tame in comparison. Three floors—and an unknown amount of space underground, according to the privileged information Harry had received—it squatted as if ashamed of its height. The stone making it up was grey marble, with smoky veins that wouldn’t become apparent until the observer was close. The door was a modest little arch, decorated around the edge with a thin strip of yellow. Harry knew it was real gold, but he doubted most of the people swirling past him in the streets did.
Malfoy hasn’t done too badly for himself since the war.
Of course, whether he had done badly by others was the important question.
Harry shook himself and pulled away from the façade of the shop he’d leaned against. Fifteen minutes of observation of a strange place was enough—more than he usually did, in fact, but he’d felt compelled to do it both because of the kind of place it was and because of who owned it.
Now he thought he had the measure of the club, if not the owner, and could enter with some confidence.
*
Whatever plainness Malfoy had felt compelled to put on the front of the building, he hadn’t restricted himself when it came to the interior. Harry, adopting the bored mask he generally used when he wanted to keep from gaping, supposed that it could still be called good taste.
Uninhibited, lustful, unrestrained—
Yeah, those were appropriate words, too.
The place was dark inside, due to carefully maintained illusions and glittering nets full of anti-light, the one of the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes that had grown from a trick into a serious tool for use everywhere. The dark clusters of captured midnight, or at least George claimed that was how he made it, threw shadows like torches threw beams. But they hung from clips near the top of the club, allowing more than enough light to fall on the murals that decorated the lower walls.
Next to Harry, shaggy lions with black manes drew a chariot in which a woman with a curving neck like a swan’s perched, her arms folded in front of her, vines wreathing her temples, corn springing up under the wheels of the chariot. The lightest of reins ran from her hand to the lions’ mouths. It was only when looking down at the lions’ legs that Harry noticed leaves as thick as chains confining their every step. Or were the leaves springing up where they touched, like the corn from the chariot’s wheels? Harry shook his head. He wasn’t an art expert; he wouldn’t want to guess a painter’s intentions from his imperfect observations.
On the opposite wall he saw a tribe of dancers in various stages of shedding their clothes, whirling around each other. There were men and women, and people who looked halfway in the transformation between men and women, as if they’d taken the Iphis Potion. There were couples melded together, with four arms and four legs, two mouths, and four eyes. There were people with the legs of goats, the heads of wolves, the arms of monkeys. Harry had to admit it was a good picture. The level of skill wasn’t what made his lip curl. It was what the picture symbolized: wildness, fantasy, magic used to make anything and everything happen.
It might be nice to dream about, but he’d seen the results of plenty of wizards and witches using magic to do anything they pleased in his work as an Auror. They never took the pleasure of their victims into account.
He turned and looked up. Yes, as he had been promised, the name of the club hung suspended above his head, in the middle of half-lit darkness, so that Harry honestly wasn’t sure if it was an illusion itself, or suspended by spells, or supported from the floor.
Corybantes.
At least the name was in keeping with the pictures.
When he lowered his head, he realized that he had attracted attention already. This central room of the club was deliberately quiet and peaceful, filled with chairs where customers could sit comfortably and couches where they could recline. Harry heard the splash of water from distant corners, the gurgle of liquid being poured, the sound of what were probably intelligent and witty words in conversation. None of it could relax him. He understood the message of the murals and the name too well.
But here came a witch wrapped in shadows not unlike the witches who had called their wares outside, her smile pure seduction. Her eyes were a brighter blue than any that Harry had seen, and he realized with an unpleasant shock when she was near that they were sapphires sewn into her skin. She halted in front of him and held out her hand. It was white and smooth as ice on the palm, but Harry could see snake scales vanishing into the shadow of her sleeve.
“Welcome to Corybantes,” she murmured. “You look as if you did not yet know your pleasure. Will you come with me and discover it?”
Harry gave her a small, hard smile. At least it made her forehead wrinkle. “I’m here on business,” he said, and opened his cloak enough to show her the golden Auror pendant that the Department had started issuing five years ago, after a ring of criminals had successfully impersonated officials from Magical Law Enforcement. The pendant showed a phoenix, wings spread, clutching a wand. “Auror Harry Potter. I’ve come about the murder.”
The woman took a step back from him, opening her mouth to display teeth too small to be human. “Auror Potter—that is—”
“Let him be, Shadow,” said a familiar voice from the side. “I knew the Department would send him.”
Harry barely turned his head to acknowledge Malfoy, keeping his eyes fixed on Shadow. He’d seen her dart out a flickering tongue, which wasn’t a surprise in and of itself, but a small breath of flame had come with it. Spells that would give human beings the powers of dragons, centaurs, or other controlled magical creatures were definitely Dark Arts.
“Do stop startling my employees, Potter,” Malfoy said, as he slid to a stop near Harry. He stood close to intimidate. Harry turned his head to look at him by slow degrees, wanting to show the man that he had next to no power over Harry.
Malfoy hadn’t changed, except to grow more and more like what he’d always been. His eyes were brighter, and his hair paler, and his features so much like Lucius’s that Harry could have been fooled at a distance, at least if Lucius was still alive. Harry wondered why the man hadn’t used his own fantasy magic on himself to change his appearance to something perfect or more inhuman, since those two qualities had always seemed to be his ambition during Hogwarts. Then he dismissed it as none of his business. He only needed to know as much of Malfoy’s psychology as was relevant to the case.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I had assumed you would have messages warning them I was on my way.” He looked about for Shadow, but she had already retreated back into the darkness. With a shrug, Harry focused on Malfoy. He wasn’t here to investigate Dark Arts spells, and he already knew this wasn’t a place the Ministry was anxious to hear reports on, or they would have sent numerous Aurors here instead of him, the Department’s “confidential investigator.” “Do you have the body available for viewing?”
Malfoy gave him a lazy smile that was the apotheosis of all the sneers he’d ever used. Perhaps he had used magic, after all, Harry thought. “Harry Potter,” Malfoy breathed. “I see that face quite often.”
Harry shrugged indifferently. “I imagine you do.”
Malfoy stiffened. “Oh?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m told on good authority that it’s a common fantasy, to fuck or be fucked by the Chosen One,” he said. “And you’re in the business of fulfilling fantasies, aren’t you?”
Malfoy relaxed all at once, as though he’d won back money that he’d thought lost. “Yes,” he said. Then he raised a curious eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have expected someone as avowedly pure as yourself to know about that.”
Harry sighed. It seemed that Malfoy was determined to be difficult. Harry knew he shouldn’t antagonize him, since Malfoy had power over certain members of the Ministry who’d come here. But he was tired of people who wanted to “banter” with him. The essential lines never changed. They all assumed they should hold more importance in Harry’s memory than they did.
“I learn more than one impure thing in this business,” he said. “I should never have become an Auror if I wanted to stay innocent.” He hoped that would be enough to fulfill Malfoy’s quota of small talk. This place was distasteful. “Now, the body?”
“Softly, softly, Potter,” Malfoy murmured. He slid a step closer. Harry rolled his eyes and slipped into something that most people would see as a slouch of irritation; the cloak he wore helped conceal the battle-readiness of the stance. “I haven’t seen you, the real you, in years. I want to look at you.”
“I imagine that you get hungry for reality here,” Harry said. Malfoy looked startled but pleased this time, as though a rather stupid student had repeated a lesson word-perfect. “Murder should be enough of a dose, however. The body?”
Malfoy regarded him speculatively. “I could have you thrown out for being rude, you know. I have more power than you can estimate.”
“And then someone noisier comes here.”
For long, silent moments, they engaged in a staring contest. Harry didn’t allow the tension that he felt prickling at his shoulders to mount to his face. It was mad that Malfoy should expect a renewal of their rivalry. They were both adults, and their lives no longer mattered to each other’s.
Of course, perhaps he’s the kind of person who expects to matter to everyone, even the ones who have far different walks of life. In fact, I’m sure he’s that kind of person.
Malfoy turned away at last, his tension showing in the stiff way that he carried his hands. “In this direction,” he said, and guided Harry along the edge of the immense dark room.
Harry walked with his eyes straight ahead, apparently seeing nothing but Malfoy’s back, but Auror training had taught him to use his peripheral vision, and there was nothing wrong with his other senses. The carpet beneath his boots absorbed every sound they made. The walls had spells on them that baffled and bounced sound, he concluded when they passed a corner that was full of soft laughter but contained no one. Another mural showed as they passed an angle of wall bending to the right: a group of naked women with streaming hair, tearing a man limb from limb among grape vines. Their mouths gaped open, their eyes closed, their faces blank.
Harry smiled grimly. That seemed a good representation of the kind of fantasies that Corybantes offered. Open your mouth, close your eyes, and do your best not to taste what you were swallowing.
Malfoy guided him down a corridor that opened from the dark room and which was tiled in dark gold. He pushed open a door at last and stood aside. Harry went in past him, though it meant turning his back on Malfoy. He had his wand with him, and the training to deal with whatever locking spells Malfoy might use to turn the room into a trap.
“I assume you will eventually want to see the room where he died,” Malfoy said in an indifferent voice. “This is only the one we have used to store the body.”
Harry concealed his annoyance at the fact that the corpse had been moved. Malfoy would probably shrug and say something about how his club had to make money if Harry protested. “Yes, I’ll want to,” he said, and then moved forwards and looked down at the corpse of Pascal Keatson.
He was a young man, Harry knew from the file he’d read, but he didn’t look like it. His face was bloated, as though he’d drowned himself slowly. The skin along his neck sagged, and deep wrinkles scored his forehead. His eyes, deep blue, looked as blank as the eyes of the women in the mural outside. His hair was straw-blond. Harry raised his eyebrows. He looked almost as Dudley might, if he’d died at the age of twenty-six.
Harry lit his wand—the room had only dim torches with anti-light above them set into the walls—and bent to examine the state of his clothing.
“I assure you that we have not stripped him naked,” Malfoy said.
“I know that,” Harry said, and left Malfoy to make the sufficiently obvious assumption: that he was looking for clues.
It was perfectly clear how Keatson had died; the large slash in his throat would have been difficult to disguise under ordinary circumstances, and everyone agreed it had been murder. But Harry wanted to study the way the blood had soaked down his threadbare robes, and his hands.
He smiled as he crouched down to the side of the cushioned platform that Keatson had been laid on. Yes, he had thought there would be something strange here, and there was. Blood had crusted under the fingernails. So had a fleck of a single bright blue shred. Harry whispered a few detection spells over it, and arched an eyebrow when his third spell identified it. He had cast that particular detection spell almost on a whim, remembering the scales on Shadow’s hand, but now there could be no doubt. The bright blue thing was neither cloth nor skin, but a snake-scale.
“Tell me again how he died,” he said, as he Levitated the bit of scale out from under Keatson’s fingernail and placed it in a glass vial without touching it.
“You know that story.” Malfoy’s voice carried more than a little asperity. His dislike of being made a fool of, as well as his quickness to suspect others’ motives, hadn’t changed either, Harry thought as he straightened.
“But I haven’t heard it from you.”
Malfoy paused, his eyes narrowing and the same lazy smile he had showed Harry earlier taking over his face. Harry bent over Keatson’s legs and wondered what he was thinking.
“Keatson came to us often for fulfillment of his fantasies,” Malfoy began. He made his voice low and sweet, sweeter than Harry had known it was capable of becoming. He frowned at Keatson’s clean robes. His voice and his smile both make no sense. He ought to know that he can’t charm me out of arresting him if I find him guilty of something. “They were ordinary, truly: women to honor him and think of him as the center of the universe. You’re familiar with how the special rooms in the clubs work?” His voice changed again, becoming deeper. Harry felt a prickle of awareness along his neck and changed his target of annoyance to himself.
“Yes,” he said.
“I should not have presumed you weren’t.” Malfoy had noticed the shortness of his answer. Harry berated himself again, and cast a detection spell that made every mark and stain on the robes glow with soft light. Nothing unusual appeared. Keatson had died indoors, as Malfoy claimed—or the person who had killed him outdoors was better with cleaning charms than most house-elves. “Keatson was one of those who needed our rooms. No real women could have given him the mindless devotion he commanded. He would come in, spend some time with our phantoms, and then leave.
“I had noticed that his fantasies had become more violent lately. He required the women to fight with him, to beat him, to scar him with knives.” Malfoy’s voice held everything but judgment. Harry reckoned he had seen much worse in his time. He stood back up and moved towards Keatson’s head again, using a mild Wind Charm to part his hair so that he could examine the state of his scalp. “However, many people’s tastes change over time. I thought nothing of it.”
Malfoy paused. Harry glanced up again and saw him staring at the walls of the room as if dissatisfied. Harry snorted. It’s a little late in the day for him to start thinking that he should get into another business.
“Keatson went into a room as usual at nine-o’clock.” Malfoy took up the tale again, his words more abrupt and jerky than before. “At eleven, his fantasies ended. Shadow came to fetch me when he hadn’t appeared at ten minutes after the hour. The room automatically ejects clients if they overstay their welcome,” he added.
“I’ll want to talk to Shadow, too,” Harry said.
Malfoy barely acknowledged this with a nod before he continued. “The room didn’t respond when I used the spell that should have brought Keatson out. I entered and found him lying on the floor with his throat cut, just as you see him. I Levitated him here, as we had booked the use of the room for another client—”
Harry held back his outburst with great effort. That’s a stupid fucking reason to disturb a murder scene.
“But I did not touch the body.” Malfoy clenched his fists and wheeled around to stare at Harry. “No one entered the room except for him. We have strong spells that prevent anyone from doing so. He brought no weapon with him. We also have spells that would have detected that. We are in the business of fulfilling many fantasies, but those that include violence are conducted entirely by phantoms and not by people of flesh and blood.”
Harry tilted his head back and let Malfoy see the doubt in his eyes. “And all your clients are satisfied by that?”
Malfoy gave him a cold smile. “Our phantasms are quite as good as the real thing. They bleed and scream in the same way, and there are no damages to be paid if they are harmed or even killed. Most of our clients prefer it, in fact. It gives them the scope to do things that they could never do in their daily lives or with paid whores.”
Harry gave a short nod to show that he understood and Malfoy could go on, though his revulsion for the place was growing by the second.
“He died in a room that no one else could have entered,” Malfoy said, “not even me.”
Harry stared at him. “You do that when there’s the chance that something could go wrong with the spells and trap your client in there?”
“You’ve heard of spell-nets?” Malfoy leaned forwards, lowering his voice again. “If something goes wrong with one part of the fantasy, everything stops at once and the wards fall. But as long as the illusion is perfect, there is no need for me to intrude.”
That’s all you’re selling, Harry wanted to say. Illusions. One touch of daylight and you’re burn like the vampire you are.
But he wasn’t here to air his private opinions. Kingsley had told him in strictest confidence that Malfoy had asked for Harry himself, because he knew his discretion and wanted the odor removed from his club as soon as possible. He spoke calmly. “The solution seems simple to me. His fantasies killed him.”
Malfoy shook his head. “The fantasies can’t harm the clients, Potter.”
Harry blinked. “That seems a poor return on the price, if they pay to be whipped and beaten and nothing touches them.”
“The damage feels real,” Malfoy said. “It looks and smells real. It isn’t. It would also end the moment something went wrong with the spell-net. Everything from beginning to end is ghostly. We pleasure the minds of our clients more than their bodies, and that’s true no matter how many orgasms they have.”
“You’re absolutely certain of this?” Harry demanded.
Malfoy smiled. “I can give you the pseudonyms of our clients who have the most violent fantasies. They won’t mind speaking to you, not when the possible consequence is Corybantes having to be shut down. They will tell you that they have had their throats cuts, their heads bashed in, their bodies drowned and thrown from high cliffs, and yet have always awakened healthy and whole.”
Harry spent some moments studying him. He had taken an entire course devoted to the detection of lies, and he could see nothing of them in Malfoy’s proud chin and utterly direct stare, his still hands and his pure throat.
“I’d like to examine one of these rooms—not the one Keatson died in—and study the spell-nets, all the same,” he said, turning towards the door.
Malfoy’s laugh rattled like diamond shards. “Why, Potter,” he said, “didn’t you enjoy your close look at one?” He raised his hand and gestured around the room they stood in. “This is one of them.”
Harry cast a slow, careful look about. “I don’t sense the spell-nets,” he said.
“They’re buried. Breaking the clients’ suspension of disbelief is the fatal thing to a show like ours.” Malfoy stepped forwards, and his eyes were bright and hot.
“Still,” he murmured, “the room should show pale phantoms of a client’s desires when he steps into one. Even a casual client, even one who isn’t sure what he wants yet.”
Harry stood still. He couldn’t say You bastard and maintain his composure, but he let his face look it.
Malfoy laughed again and moved closer still. His hand twitched with suppressed desire, probably to punch Harry in the face.
“You would have seen them, too,” Malfoy breathed. “Instead, no phantoms emerged. You seem to have a clean and empty subconscious, Potter.”
Harry released a carefully controlled breath and moved to step past Malfoy. He stopped when the bastard wrapped his hand Harry’s wrist. His fingers were warmer than they should be and seemed longer than normal as well; Harry could have sworn they wrapped three times around his arm.
“Or perhaps your desires are in such confusion,” Malfoy whispered, “that no single one can emerge. Those are the most interesting cases to me. It is always a delight to watch their hearts emerge into knowledge of pleasure.”
Harry stared into Malfoy’s face and smiled. Malfoy released him and stepped back, mouth jagged and uncertain.
“You might want to examine your spell-nets, Malfoy,” Harry murmured, and ducked out of the room. “And summon Shadow so that I can speak to her, as well as show me the room Keatson died in.”
The uncontrolled huff of exasperation from behind him was worth all the bollocks he’d put up with that night.
Chapter Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, OC character death, profanity, sex, mentions of random fetishes and suicide. Ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: A mysterious death has occurred at Draco Malfoy’s club, Corybantes, which specializes in using magic to make its clients’ deepest fantasies come true. As Auror Harry Potter investigates, he finds himself admiring Malfoy’s courage and determination in achieving success. Which could be a problem, as there’s a fairly large chance that Malfoy is the murderer.
Author’s Notes: Corybantes were servants of the goddess Cybele who worked themselves up into ecstatic trances with drumming and dancing. Though applying to a different kind of ecstasy, it seemed a fairly good name for Draco’s club. This story will be about ten or twelve chapters long.
Corybantes
Chapter One--Fantasy and Reality
It didn’t look like much, viewed from the outside.
Harry considered it with his arms folded in front of him, the hand that held his wand resting along his right forearm. A few of the people passing into the club cocked their heads at him and gaped. Harry didn’t know whether it was his posture, his heavy dark cloak, or the fact that he lingered outside without going in that made them look at him like that. He hardly cared. In the circus that was the corner of Knockturn Alley and Roof Alley, one black-clad stranger was hardly going to stand out.
Lights blazed past him, wandering winged peddlers calling out hoarsely that they had captured fairies for sale. Women whom shifting shadows hid stood in the entrance of small shops, variously advertising phoenix eggs, the latest in completely loyal familiars, or delightful and unexpected perversions to be found with house-elves. The shop two doors down from the building Harry examined disdained all subtlety, flaunting an enormous ruby whip on the door and an image of a man twisting in pain under it, bleeding turquoise blood.
Harry reckoned that helped attract the kind of clientele they wanted, or they wouldn’t have used it. For him, it was hard to imagine anything less attractive.
The building across from him was tame in comparison. Three floors—and an unknown amount of space underground, according to the privileged information Harry had received—it squatted as if ashamed of its height. The stone making it up was grey marble, with smoky veins that wouldn’t become apparent until the observer was close. The door was a modest little arch, decorated around the edge with a thin strip of yellow. Harry knew it was real gold, but he doubted most of the people swirling past him in the streets did.
Malfoy hasn’t done too badly for himself since the war.
Of course, whether he had done badly by others was the important question.
Harry shook himself and pulled away from the façade of the shop he’d leaned against. Fifteen minutes of observation of a strange place was enough—more than he usually did, in fact, but he’d felt compelled to do it both because of the kind of place it was and because of who owned it.
Now he thought he had the measure of the club, if not the owner, and could enter with some confidence.
*
Whatever plainness Malfoy had felt compelled to put on the front of the building, he hadn’t restricted himself when it came to the interior. Harry, adopting the bored mask he generally used when he wanted to keep from gaping, supposed that it could still be called good taste.
Uninhibited, lustful, unrestrained—
Yeah, those were appropriate words, too.
The place was dark inside, due to carefully maintained illusions and glittering nets full of anti-light, the one of the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes that had grown from a trick into a serious tool for use everywhere. The dark clusters of captured midnight, or at least George claimed that was how he made it, threw shadows like torches threw beams. But they hung from clips near the top of the club, allowing more than enough light to fall on the murals that decorated the lower walls.
Next to Harry, shaggy lions with black manes drew a chariot in which a woman with a curving neck like a swan’s perched, her arms folded in front of her, vines wreathing her temples, corn springing up under the wheels of the chariot. The lightest of reins ran from her hand to the lions’ mouths. It was only when looking down at the lions’ legs that Harry noticed leaves as thick as chains confining their every step. Or were the leaves springing up where they touched, like the corn from the chariot’s wheels? Harry shook his head. He wasn’t an art expert; he wouldn’t want to guess a painter’s intentions from his imperfect observations.
On the opposite wall he saw a tribe of dancers in various stages of shedding their clothes, whirling around each other. There were men and women, and people who looked halfway in the transformation between men and women, as if they’d taken the Iphis Potion. There were couples melded together, with four arms and four legs, two mouths, and four eyes. There were people with the legs of goats, the heads of wolves, the arms of monkeys. Harry had to admit it was a good picture. The level of skill wasn’t what made his lip curl. It was what the picture symbolized: wildness, fantasy, magic used to make anything and everything happen.
It might be nice to dream about, but he’d seen the results of plenty of wizards and witches using magic to do anything they pleased in his work as an Auror. They never took the pleasure of their victims into account.
He turned and looked up. Yes, as he had been promised, the name of the club hung suspended above his head, in the middle of half-lit darkness, so that Harry honestly wasn’t sure if it was an illusion itself, or suspended by spells, or supported from the floor.
Corybantes.
At least the name was in keeping with the pictures.
When he lowered his head, he realized that he had attracted attention already. This central room of the club was deliberately quiet and peaceful, filled with chairs where customers could sit comfortably and couches where they could recline. Harry heard the splash of water from distant corners, the gurgle of liquid being poured, the sound of what were probably intelligent and witty words in conversation. None of it could relax him. He understood the message of the murals and the name too well.
But here came a witch wrapped in shadows not unlike the witches who had called their wares outside, her smile pure seduction. Her eyes were a brighter blue than any that Harry had seen, and he realized with an unpleasant shock when she was near that they were sapphires sewn into her skin. She halted in front of him and held out her hand. It was white and smooth as ice on the palm, but Harry could see snake scales vanishing into the shadow of her sleeve.
“Welcome to Corybantes,” she murmured. “You look as if you did not yet know your pleasure. Will you come with me and discover it?”
Harry gave her a small, hard smile. At least it made her forehead wrinkle. “I’m here on business,” he said, and opened his cloak enough to show her the golden Auror pendant that the Department had started issuing five years ago, after a ring of criminals had successfully impersonated officials from Magical Law Enforcement. The pendant showed a phoenix, wings spread, clutching a wand. “Auror Harry Potter. I’ve come about the murder.”
The woman took a step back from him, opening her mouth to display teeth too small to be human. “Auror Potter—that is—”
“Let him be, Shadow,” said a familiar voice from the side. “I knew the Department would send him.”
Harry barely turned his head to acknowledge Malfoy, keeping his eyes fixed on Shadow. He’d seen her dart out a flickering tongue, which wasn’t a surprise in and of itself, but a small breath of flame had come with it. Spells that would give human beings the powers of dragons, centaurs, or other controlled magical creatures were definitely Dark Arts.
“Do stop startling my employees, Potter,” Malfoy said, as he slid to a stop near Harry. He stood close to intimidate. Harry turned his head to look at him by slow degrees, wanting to show the man that he had next to no power over Harry.
Malfoy hadn’t changed, except to grow more and more like what he’d always been. His eyes were brighter, and his hair paler, and his features so much like Lucius’s that Harry could have been fooled at a distance, at least if Lucius was still alive. Harry wondered why the man hadn’t used his own fantasy magic on himself to change his appearance to something perfect or more inhuman, since those two qualities had always seemed to be his ambition during Hogwarts. Then he dismissed it as none of his business. He only needed to know as much of Malfoy’s psychology as was relevant to the case.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I had assumed you would have messages warning them I was on my way.” He looked about for Shadow, but she had already retreated back into the darkness. With a shrug, Harry focused on Malfoy. He wasn’t here to investigate Dark Arts spells, and he already knew this wasn’t a place the Ministry was anxious to hear reports on, or they would have sent numerous Aurors here instead of him, the Department’s “confidential investigator.” “Do you have the body available for viewing?”
Malfoy gave him a lazy smile that was the apotheosis of all the sneers he’d ever used. Perhaps he had used magic, after all, Harry thought. “Harry Potter,” Malfoy breathed. “I see that face quite often.”
Harry shrugged indifferently. “I imagine you do.”
Malfoy stiffened. “Oh?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m told on good authority that it’s a common fantasy, to fuck or be fucked by the Chosen One,” he said. “And you’re in the business of fulfilling fantasies, aren’t you?”
Malfoy relaxed all at once, as though he’d won back money that he’d thought lost. “Yes,” he said. Then he raised a curious eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have expected someone as avowedly pure as yourself to know about that.”
Harry sighed. It seemed that Malfoy was determined to be difficult. Harry knew he shouldn’t antagonize him, since Malfoy had power over certain members of the Ministry who’d come here. But he was tired of people who wanted to “banter” with him. The essential lines never changed. They all assumed they should hold more importance in Harry’s memory than they did.
“I learn more than one impure thing in this business,” he said. “I should never have become an Auror if I wanted to stay innocent.” He hoped that would be enough to fulfill Malfoy’s quota of small talk. This place was distasteful. “Now, the body?”
“Softly, softly, Potter,” Malfoy murmured. He slid a step closer. Harry rolled his eyes and slipped into something that most people would see as a slouch of irritation; the cloak he wore helped conceal the battle-readiness of the stance. “I haven’t seen you, the real you, in years. I want to look at you.”
“I imagine that you get hungry for reality here,” Harry said. Malfoy looked startled but pleased this time, as though a rather stupid student had repeated a lesson word-perfect. “Murder should be enough of a dose, however. The body?”
Malfoy regarded him speculatively. “I could have you thrown out for being rude, you know. I have more power than you can estimate.”
“And then someone noisier comes here.”
For long, silent moments, they engaged in a staring contest. Harry didn’t allow the tension that he felt prickling at his shoulders to mount to his face. It was mad that Malfoy should expect a renewal of their rivalry. They were both adults, and their lives no longer mattered to each other’s.
Of course, perhaps he’s the kind of person who expects to matter to everyone, even the ones who have far different walks of life. In fact, I’m sure he’s that kind of person.
Malfoy turned away at last, his tension showing in the stiff way that he carried his hands. “In this direction,” he said, and guided Harry along the edge of the immense dark room.
Harry walked with his eyes straight ahead, apparently seeing nothing but Malfoy’s back, but Auror training had taught him to use his peripheral vision, and there was nothing wrong with his other senses. The carpet beneath his boots absorbed every sound they made. The walls had spells on them that baffled and bounced sound, he concluded when they passed a corner that was full of soft laughter but contained no one. Another mural showed as they passed an angle of wall bending to the right: a group of naked women with streaming hair, tearing a man limb from limb among grape vines. Their mouths gaped open, their eyes closed, their faces blank.
Harry smiled grimly. That seemed a good representation of the kind of fantasies that Corybantes offered. Open your mouth, close your eyes, and do your best not to taste what you were swallowing.
Malfoy guided him down a corridor that opened from the dark room and which was tiled in dark gold. He pushed open a door at last and stood aside. Harry went in past him, though it meant turning his back on Malfoy. He had his wand with him, and the training to deal with whatever locking spells Malfoy might use to turn the room into a trap.
“I assume you will eventually want to see the room where he died,” Malfoy said in an indifferent voice. “This is only the one we have used to store the body.”
Harry concealed his annoyance at the fact that the corpse had been moved. Malfoy would probably shrug and say something about how his club had to make money if Harry protested. “Yes, I’ll want to,” he said, and then moved forwards and looked down at the corpse of Pascal Keatson.
He was a young man, Harry knew from the file he’d read, but he didn’t look like it. His face was bloated, as though he’d drowned himself slowly. The skin along his neck sagged, and deep wrinkles scored his forehead. His eyes, deep blue, looked as blank as the eyes of the women in the mural outside. His hair was straw-blond. Harry raised his eyebrows. He looked almost as Dudley might, if he’d died at the age of twenty-six.
Harry lit his wand—the room had only dim torches with anti-light above them set into the walls—and bent to examine the state of his clothing.
“I assure you that we have not stripped him naked,” Malfoy said.
“I know that,” Harry said, and left Malfoy to make the sufficiently obvious assumption: that he was looking for clues.
It was perfectly clear how Keatson had died; the large slash in his throat would have been difficult to disguise under ordinary circumstances, and everyone agreed it had been murder. But Harry wanted to study the way the blood had soaked down his threadbare robes, and his hands.
He smiled as he crouched down to the side of the cushioned platform that Keatson had been laid on. Yes, he had thought there would be something strange here, and there was. Blood had crusted under the fingernails. So had a fleck of a single bright blue shred. Harry whispered a few detection spells over it, and arched an eyebrow when his third spell identified it. He had cast that particular detection spell almost on a whim, remembering the scales on Shadow’s hand, but now there could be no doubt. The bright blue thing was neither cloth nor skin, but a snake-scale.
“Tell me again how he died,” he said, as he Levitated the bit of scale out from under Keatson’s fingernail and placed it in a glass vial without touching it.
“You know that story.” Malfoy’s voice carried more than a little asperity. His dislike of being made a fool of, as well as his quickness to suspect others’ motives, hadn’t changed either, Harry thought as he straightened.
“But I haven’t heard it from you.”
Malfoy paused, his eyes narrowing and the same lazy smile he had showed Harry earlier taking over his face. Harry bent over Keatson’s legs and wondered what he was thinking.
“Keatson came to us often for fulfillment of his fantasies,” Malfoy began. He made his voice low and sweet, sweeter than Harry had known it was capable of becoming. He frowned at Keatson’s clean robes. His voice and his smile both make no sense. He ought to know that he can’t charm me out of arresting him if I find him guilty of something. “They were ordinary, truly: women to honor him and think of him as the center of the universe. You’re familiar with how the special rooms in the clubs work?” His voice changed again, becoming deeper. Harry felt a prickle of awareness along his neck and changed his target of annoyance to himself.
“Yes,” he said.
“I should not have presumed you weren’t.” Malfoy had noticed the shortness of his answer. Harry berated himself again, and cast a detection spell that made every mark and stain on the robes glow with soft light. Nothing unusual appeared. Keatson had died indoors, as Malfoy claimed—or the person who had killed him outdoors was better with cleaning charms than most house-elves. “Keatson was one of those who needed our rooms. No real women could have given him the mindless devotion he commanded. He would come in, spend some time with our phantoms, and then leave.
“I had noticed that his fantasies had become more violent lately. He required the women to fight with him, to beat him, to scar him with knives.” Malfoy’s voice held everything but judgment. Harry reckoned he had seen much worse in his time. He stood back up and moved towards Keatson’s head again, using a mild Wind Charm to part his hair so that he could examine the state of his scalp. “However, many people’s tastes change over time. I thought nothing of it.”
Malfoy paused. Harry glanced up again and saw him staring at the walls of the room as if dissatisfied. Harry snorted. It’s a little late in the day for him to start thinking that he should get into another business.
“Keatson went into a room as usual at nine-o’clock.” Malfoy took up the tale again, his words more abrupt and jerky than before. “At eleven, his fantasies ended. Shadow came to fetch me when he hadn’t appeared at ten minutes after the hour. The room automatically ejects clients if they overstay their welcome,” he added.
“I’ll want to talk to Shadow, too,” Harry said.
Malfoy barely acknowledged this with a nod before he continued. “The room didn’t respond when I used the spell that should have brought Keatson out. I entered and found him lying on the floor with his throat cut, just as you see him. I Levitated him here, as we had booked the use of the room for another client—”
Harry held back his outburst with great effort. That’s a stupid fucking reason to disturb a murder scene.
“But I did not touch the body.” Malfoy clenched his fists and wheeled around to stare at Harry. “No one entered the room except for him. We have strong spells that prevent anyone from doing so. He brought no weapon with him. We also have spells that would have detected that. We are in the business of fulfilling many fantasies, but those that include violence are conducted entirely by phantoms and not by people of flesh and blood.”
Harry tilted his head back and let Malfoy see the doubt in his eyes. “And all your clients are satisfied by that?”
Malfoy gave him a cold smile. “Our phantasms are quite as good as the real thing. They bleed and scream in the same way, and there are no damages to be paid if they are harmed or even killed. Most of our clients prefer it, in fact. It gives them the scope to do things that they could never do in their daily lives or with paid whores.”
Harry gave a short nod to show that he understood and Malfoy could go on, though his revulsion for the place was growing by the second.
“He died in a room that no one else could have entered,” Malfoy said, “not even me.”
Harry stared at him. “You do that when there’s the chance that something could go wrong with the spells and trap your client in there?”
“You’ve heard of spell-nets?” Malfoy leaned forwards, lowering his voice again. “If something goes wrong with one part of the fantasy, everything stops at once and the wards fall. But as long as the illusion is perfect, there is no need for me to intrude.”
That’s all you’re selling, Harry wanted to say. Illusions. One touch of daylight and you’re burn like the vampire you are.
But he wasn’t here to air his private opinions. Kingsley had told him in strictest confidence that Malfoy had asked for Harry himself, because he knew his discretion and wanted the odor removed from his club as soon as possible. He spoke calmly. “The solution seems simple to me. His fantasies killed him.”
Malfoy shook his head. “The fantasies can’t harm the clients, Potter.”
Harry blinked. “That seems a poor return on the price, if they pay to be whipped and beaten and nothing touches them.”
“The damage feels real,” Malfoy said. “It looks and smells real. It isn’t. It would also end the moment something went wrong with the spell-net. Everything from beginning to end is ghostly. We pleasure the minds of our clients more than their bodies, and that’s true no matter how many orgasms they have.”
“You’re absolutely certain of this?” Harry demanded.
Malfoy smiled. “I can give you the pseudonyms of our clients who have the most violent fantasies. They won’t mind speaking to you, not when the possible consequence is Corybantes having to be shut down. They will tell you that they have had their throats cuts, their heads bashed in, their bodies drowned and thrown from high cliffs, and yet have always awakened healthy and whole.”
Harry spent some moments studying him. He had taken an entire course devoted to the detection of lies, and he could see nothing of them in Malfoy’s proud chin and utterly direct stare, his still hands and his pure throat.
“I’d like to examine one of these rooms—not the one Keatson died in—and study the spell-nets, all the same,” he said, turning towards the door.
Malfoy’s laugh rattled like diamond shards. “Why, Potter,” he said, “didn’t you enjoy your close look at one?” He raised his hand and gestured around the room they stood in. “This is one of them.”
Harry cast a slow, careful look about. “I don’t sense the spell-nets,” he said.
“They’re buried. Breaking the clients’ suspension of disbelief is the fatal thing to a show like ours.” Malfoy stepped forwards, and his eyes were bright and hot.
“Still,” he murmured, “the room should show pale phantoms of a client’s desires when he steps into one. Even a casual client, even one who isn’t sure what he wants yet.”
Harry stood still. He couldn’t say You bastard and maintain his composure, but he let his face look it.
Malfoy laughed again and moved closer still. His hand twitched with suppressed desire, probably to punch Harry in the face.
“You would have seen them, too,” Malfoy breathed. “Instead, no phantoms emerged. You seem to have a clean and empty subconscious, Potter.”
Harry released a carefully controlled breath and moved to step past Malfoy. He stopped when the bastard wrapped his hand Harry’s wrist. His fingers were warmer than they should be and seemed longer than normal as well; Harry could have sworn they wrapped three times around his arm.
“Or perhaps your desires are in such confusion,” Malfoy whispered, “that no single one can emerge. Those are the most interesting cases to me. It is always a delight to watch their hearts emerge into knowledge of pleasure.”
Harry stared into Malfoy’s face and smiled. Malfoy released him and stepped back, mouth jagged and uncertain.
“You might want to examine your spell-nets, Malfoy,” Harry murmured, and ducked out of the room. “And summon Shadow so that I can speak to her, as well as show me the room Keatson died in.”
The uncontrolled huff of exasperation from behind him was worth all the bollocks he’d put up with that night.
Chapter Two.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:12 am (UTC)The reason I think you've thought of for why Draco sees Harry's face often is not one that would occur to Harry. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:51 am (UTC)I like cool controlled Harry, and I can't wait to see what other tricks Draco is hiding up his sleeves
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:12 am (UTC)Harry is much more controlled in this story than usual. You find out next chapter how controlled.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 02:30 pm (UTC)I enjoyed all the spells' talk, you always come up with original concepts. Looking forward to next chapter!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:41 am (UTC)Harry is definitely harder than usual. He's been through a lot in his Auror career in this story, and he is no longer impressed or confused by some of the things that would have impressed or confused his younger self.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 05:17 pm (UTC)Will this be a Harry-POV-only story? I'd love to hear from Draco, but that would kind of kill the intrigue and mystery, I suspect. Or, we'd find out that Draco is confused as Harry about the murder.
The ability to not have a real weapon confounds every theory I try to come up with, unless fantasies can turn your fingernails into razor blades.
Can't wait for more!
-Jolene
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:17 am (UTC)Harry-POV only, yes. Draco's POV would reveal too much about Corybantes as well as about the murder.
And thank you again.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 06:25 pm (UTC)Can't wait for more!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:18 am (UTC)Harry explains why Draco can't see his desires in the next chapter, which should be posted the day after tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:18 am (UTC)Though most of the fantasies that Corybantes fulfills are sexual, not all are. Harry gets to see this first-hand in a while.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:23 am (UTC)Draco may have deeper feelings for Harry, but since we don't get his POV, it will take a while for Harry to learn if that's so.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 09:55 pm (UTC)Potter not having fantasies now alludes to him having many later. Eager to see what they are and how they are exploited.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:23 am (UTC)Malfoy is going to find it harder to exploit Harry than he hoped, if that's really his goal.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:24 am (UTC)Honestly? A lot of them come from dreams, and combinations of ideas that won't work on their own.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:44 pm (UTC)Please update soon.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:24 am (UTC)The next chapter should be posted on Tuesday.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:25 am (UTC)Harry is irritated at Malfoy's doing that. Of course, he has to accept and work with what he finds, instead of wishing it was different.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 02:28 am (UTC)You've set Harry and Draco up for a variety of levels of conflict. And Draco is right; it will be a delight to watch Harry over the course of this story.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:27 am (UTC)The desires aren't just sexual, either, though at the moment Harry is looking at them that way. But either way, they disgust Harry, for reasons that he reveals in the next chapter.
Hope you like the next chapter! It should be posted on Tuesday.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 02:09 pm (UTC)being off holiday meant that I was waaaay behind in reading all the new fic(woe! will have to catchup soon) and updating your masterlist, which I've now finished doing(it's too big to put in just one post/entry now, but I hope you like the results!)... let me know what you think? and hey, feel free to say if you don't want me to continue updating it okay? <- if not, again, I'm more than happy for you to link directly to my entry so you don't have to continuously html-format and update a masterpost yourself...
lomonaaeren's Masterlist (http://soft2smooth2000.livejournal.com/34561.html)
*tentative look* you like? it's still under filtered post, so only you and I can see it. pleeeeeaaase let me know what you think when you have the time?
it's just that, seeing as I was the one who begged you to allow me to put together a MasterFicPost in the first place, I have this urge(responsibility?) --call it professional and perfectionist pride I guess- *sheepish look* to ensure it continues to be updated, and look nice and shiny for you and your other numerous readers. huh. silly Su, I know. *blushes*
And now? I'm off to some well-earned fic-catching up starting wiiiiiii...th, hmn, 'Rejoicing in Their Strength' I think! :-)
Su xx
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:30 am (UTC)Did you want me to go ahead and add the updates to the masterlist, or can you send me the code?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 09:40 pm (UTC)Such a creepy place you've created!
And I really like this version of Malfoy!
It is always a delight to watch their hearts emerge into knowledge of pleasure OH! That line sounds VERY promising! I hope we get to "see" that! ^_^
Sounds like an exciting murder case!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:30 am (UTC)Draco is going to try and make sure Harry doesn't have the opportunity to 'just' investigate the murder.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-31 05:44 pm (UTC)I wonder though, what it means that the spell nets provide anything for Harry. Draco I think is perfectly content with having the real thing in front of him. :)