Chapter Three of 'Corybantes'- Comparisons and Contrasts

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Corybantes (3/10 or 12)
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.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Comparisons and Contrasts

“Are they the same?” Harry asked, trying to peer over the Potions master’s shoulder.

“Will you step back and let me see?”

Harry moved away, abashed. The Potions master he regularly worked with, Adela Pole, was his choice because she cared about nothing outside her work, and so she wasn’t likely to blather any secrets. But she did have a frozen manner of speaking, her voice very low, that made Harry miss Snape. At least Snape had given signs of knowing that Harry was alive now and then. Adela didn’t know that anything except test vials and certain ingredients existed.

Now Pole held the vial up in front of her face and blew gently on it. That had no effect on the silvery, near-invisible liquid inside it, as far as Harry could see, but she cocked her head as if she had expected it to, and then gave a kind of disappointed grunting sound and laid the vial down on the table in front of her.

“Nothing?” Harry asked, glancing at the first vial. It had a faint sediment of blue on the bottom, all that remained of the scale he’d taken from Shadow’s wrist after Pole finished analyzing it.

“What?” Pole turned and stared at him vaguely. “No. They’re exactly the same. It’s boring.” She sighed and moved away from the second vial, which had contained the scale Harry found under Keatson’s fingernails, as if it had ceased to interest her.

“But that’s good news,” Harry muttered, leaning in to look at the vials. To his admittedly amateur eye, the blue sediment on the bottom of the vials did look exactly the same. He leaned back and exhaled softly. “I may have a suspect, based on the work that you’ve done for me,” he told Pole. “Thank you.”

“They weren’t interesting,” Pole said, in a voice that would have done credit to a mourning ghost, and then drifted away from Harry among the racks of her tubes and vials and bottles and flasks and silver instruments that were quite as mysterious as Dumbledore’s, though Harry knew they were used for different things.

Harry hesitated, but picked up the vials in the end and tucked them in his pockets. They might be useful, and he didn’t think that Pole would return to them. She was easily bored and had an excellent memory, so she didn’t see why she should repeat an experiment that had already worked once.

He looked up, wanting to say thank you again, but he couldn’t see her. A sad noise of scraping and crushing and mortaring came out from among the vials.

Harry crept out, feeling as though he’d left the den of a melancholy dragon.

*

“Good evening, Malfoy.” Harry was proud of himself. His voice wasn’t only neutral; it held a trace of warmth.

Malfoy might not have noticed. He inclined his head to Harry, his eyes distant, and then turned back to the desk in front of him, which was crowded with paper. Shadow had met Harry at the door of the club and led him straight here. Malfoy apparently couldn’t stop work for a moment, not even when Harry might have important information about the crime for him.

Harry narrowed his eyes with anger. The next moment, he felt like laughing. How many times had he waited in some office crowded with paperwork for someone to notice him? There had been Snape, and McGonagall, and Umbridge—who had liked to make him wait to try and “prove” that he was worth nothing—and then Kingsley, though most of the time Kingsley didn’t do it on purpose.

Harry found a seat against the wall. It was comfortable, of course. Harry would be surprised if sharp edges or utilitarian pipes and knobs were allowed anywhere near Corybantes. He sat down and tried not to wrinkle his nose at what felt like the crush of carpet against his arse and legs.

Malfoy rustled on through the paperwork, now and then mumbling something violently under his breath. Unlike most mumblers that Harry had met, though, he didn’t say the words aloud; he moved his lips fast instead. Probably too concerned to betray secrets even now, Harry thought idly, watching him.

The longer he watched, the more his conjecture of the night before, that Malfoy had changed since Hogwarts, rang true to him. Yes, he had grown into his features and resembled his father, but his movements were abrupt and violent, not controlled, whatever measure of control he might have over his words. He misplaced things, if the way he fumbled through papers was any indication. Now and then he lifted a parchment and stared at the desk as if he couldn’t imagine where something had gone. The behavior was familiar to Harry for all sorts of reasons, and he could feel the tug of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

Malfoy glanced up and saw him smiling.

He paused, his nostrils quivering, as if he wanted to decide whether Harry was being offensive or not. Then he pushed his papers out of the way, folded his hands in front of him, and said, “I can give you two minutes.”

“Strange to say to the Auror who’s investigating the crime that might get your club shut down,” Harry said. He kept the hardness out of his voice on purpose. He thought something else was troubling Malfoy, given the way his eyes kept darting different directions, refusing to settle on Harry’s face. “I have a suspect now, and I need as much information as you can give me.”

Malfoy’s eyes widened with something like relief then, and he stared straight at Harry. “A suspect?” he asked. “Who?”

“Shadow.”

At once Malfoy’s mouth contorted into an ugly sneer. “Ridiculous, Potter. I know that you don’t like people who use magic to alter themselves, but to carry your prejudice so far as to suggest that one of my most trusted employees is capable of murder—”

“I found one of her scales under the fingernail of Keatson’s right hand,” Harry said. “I compared it with a scale from her wrist, and they’re exactly the same.” He drew out the vials from Pole’s lab, glad now that he had brought them. Malfoy had been good at Potions, and this kind of evidence would impress him. “A Ministry Potions master used the same process to test them.” He passed the vials across the desk.

Malfoy took them and studied them in silence. His eyes got narrower, his mouth got smaller, but he made no sound before he returned the vials to Harry. Harry took them, still watching Malfoy’s eyes. He looked as though he had just sustained an unexpected blow, and no wonder. Harry had felt like that when it turned out several Aurors had betrayed the Ministry and lied their way successfully into high positions. He’d worked beside those people for years, believing them, trusting in the integrity of the Ministry.

It hurts to have your dream taken away from you.

“What are you going to do?” asked Malfoy, in a voice that held no expression.

“Talk to her,” Harry said. “Simply talk to her. There may be an innocent explanation for this.” Though I can’t imagine what it is. Especially since the first scale was in the position it could have been if Keatson was clawing with his hands at someone who had a knife against his throat. “Then I’ll make an arrest if I trust that I have enough evidence. I may ask her to undergo Veritaserum interrogation, but it’ll depend on the answers I get.”

Malfoy surged to his feet. “I want to be present.”

“Of course,” Harry murmured, standing up. If Malfoy thought Harry was prejudiced against people who altered their bodies, then he would want to ensure Shadow’s safety, and if the interrogation revealed incriminating facts, Malfoy would want to know them. “Do you have a private room, fantasy-free, that we can use to confront her?”

“Don’t use the word confront, Potter,” Malfoy said, his voice abstracted and his eyes focused inwards. “It’s vulgar. We’ll talk to her.”

Harry kept his peace about the fact that he had used those words before he used “confront,” and nodded Malfoy out the door.

However, Malfoy had only taken two steps before he whirled around again and gripped Harry’s wrist in the way he had held it the last time Harry was in Corybantes. “I’m glad you’re here, Potter,” he whispered. “So glad it was you.”

Then he dropped Harry’s hand and hurried down the corridor. Harry followed him slowly, one eyebrow raised.

*

“I simply want to know how your scale got under Keatson’s fingernail,” Harry said. “There has to be some explanation for that, and I want to know what it is.”

Shadow darted an anguished look towards Malfoy. Malfoy, sitting in a chair beside Harry, regarded her with folded arms and a cold face. Even Harry, who had had practice in looking through more than one “closed” expression, couldn’t read a trace of what he felt in his eyes or his mouth now.

He was reading other things from Shadow, though, things that disturbed him more and more.

Whatever the secret is that she was going to tell me the other day, I think Malfoy knows about it. She seems to fear speaking without his permission, or maybe she fears betraying him even if she doesn’t speak.

The thought made Harry wince. He didn’t want Malfoy to be guilty of obstructing justice or murder or conspiracy to murder. Malfoy had begun to impress him, or at least seem human. Harry rarely got to have sympathy with people in his cases, because most of the people he met were Dark wizards or people trying to protect the Dark wizards; their victims were often dead, the families and relatives held away from the investigation for their own good.

Harry could appreciate, all over again, the way he had chosen to operate in the last few years, distant from most emotional ties. It certainly made cases like this easier.

Shadow finally swallowed, lowered her eyes, and said, as if she had decided to answer honestly, “It got there when I was moving him. His fingernails scratched against my arm, and a scale came off.”

That was the sort of simple explanation Harry had thought might be true, and the reason he had been reluctant to call Shadow a suspect from the beginning. But he would need proof. It wasn’t easy for a hanging hand—especially the hand of a dead man, that couldn’t move of its own free will—to tear skin off, after all. “May I see?” he asked, and lifted his wand in the open this time.

Shadow bared her wrist with pathetic eagerness, her eyes darting to Malfoy again. He had turned his head slightly and was peering into a corner of the room. Studying the construction of the spell-nets, Harry hoped, and not thinking up a deception.

The spell he cast created a replica of his fingernail, and he scraped it gently against Shadow’s wrist. A scale tore off at once, embedded under the nail in exactly the same way as Harry had seen it embedded under Keatson’s.

He sighed. Well, now Shadow was probably innocent, but he didn’t have a suspect. “Damn,” he said.

“Can I go now?” Shadow was on her feet, all but wringing her hands. Harry wanted to shake his head in amusement. It was a long time since he had encountered a criminal so nervous, if only because Dark magic gave most of its practitioners the confidence that they would never be caught.

“Yes, you can,” Harry said. He’d asked all the questions he could think of that might have revealed her to have some part in Keatson’s death, and received only that anxious silence or blistering denials. He watched as she ducked out of the room, and made up his mind slowly. He didn’t think she was lying. It would help if he could have more proof, but the chances of that were small, since the body had been moved and the bloodstain destroyed.

Unless…

It was not something Harry would have asked ordinarily. But nothing about this case was ordinary, even by his standards. Malfoy and Shadow seemed like liars, but everything they told him appeared to be true. So Harry turned to Malfoy and asked, “Would you be willing to put your memories of the body into a Pensieve?”

Malfoy turned to look at him. His eyes were enormous, like moons, his pupils blown. Harry arched an eyebrow. He wondered for a moment if Malfoy was drugged. Perhaps the vices of Corybantes’ clients extended to the owner.

But Malfoy blinked and was himself again. “If you think it would help,” he said.

“It would have helped for you not to clean up that room,” Harry snapped. “But given that you did, this is the next best thing. I need to see what the blood looked like and exactly how the body was lying.”

Malfoy gave him a condescending smile. “Corybantes is devoted to helping people fulfill their fantasies,” he said, with odd emphasis on several of the words. “We had to have the room ready so that we could put another client into it. Otherwise, we would have delayed the fulfillment of that man’s fantasies or turned him away, and either is unacceptable.”

“This crime could mean that Corybantes is shut down,” Harry said. “Isn’t that risk greater to you than the one that you might disappoint someone?”

“Maybe in an ordinary business, it would be,” Malfoy said unrepentantly. “But I know that no one in this club killed Keatson. And I don’t think you heard me. We need to fulfill fantasies.”

Harry stared at him, and studied the wide eyes again. “You mean that you need to,” he said. “I doubt that Shadow and your other employees care that much.”

“Yes,” Malfoy said. “You are beginning to understand now. I founded Corybantes to do something that I wanted to do.” He leaned forwards, and Harry found himself leaning in in response before he thought about the consequences.

But Malfoy didn’t try to poison him or punch him or spit in his face. He was speaking in a voice as intense as his gaze, and with an awe in the back of his tone that fascinated Harry. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Malfoy sound reverent about anything. Smug was the closest he’d come to it.

“There were so many things I didn’t get to do during the war,” Malfoy whispered. “I felt the desires burning in me, torturing me. The desire to survive, the desire to be free, the desire to make sure that he could never hurt my parents again. And then, when the war ended, there was still not enough of what I wanted. My father was imprisoned. My mother…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t join them. I had to go out into the world and work, because the Ministry also took most of our Galleons. And the only thing I wanted all the time was a way to fulfill my desires and to go on doing that.

“I thought about this club the second day I was sitting in a miserable room with people looking at me doubtfully because I didn’t have any provable skills except ones that were illegal. Why shouldn’t I create a place that would allow me to provide desire-fodder continually? It would give me power. It would give me freedom. It would give me money.

“And it gave me kindred, Potter. It gave me those who were as eager to find fulfillment for their desires as I was, and as outcast from society because no one thought their wishes worthwhile. A fantasy is an effervescent thing, but while it burns, it makes you look at the world through flame. The aftereffects are more important than the immediate impulse. Satisfied people pay good money and lead happier lives.”

Harry licked his lips. His Occlumency would prevent his own fantasies from creeping out in response to the spell-nets, but he could still think about them, and he knew what Malfoy meant. The desire for a change, for a rest, for someone who would trust Harry and be worthy of trust sometimes ached in him as if he had a chronic disease.

Of course, his common sense came back in the next moment and rescued Harry. Malfoy’s eyes shone with a fanatic’s luster. He might have a purpose that seemed praiseworthy, but he himself couldn’t be trusted. If he thought that fantasies were that important, what might he not do to fulfill them and keep the club open? Hiding evidence and lying would be nothing to him.

And Harry wasn’t a client.

“Thank you for telling me that,” he said pulling back and giving Malfoy as polite a smile as he could. “It at least explains why several clues that would have assisted me vanished. Will you give me permission to view your memories?”

Malfoy smiled quietly. The fervor had passed out of his voice as if it had never come. He studied Harry now, and then he rose from his chair and circled behind him. Harry tensed. While he was reasonably sure he was more talented with his wand than Malfoy, it never paid to underestimate an enemy, and Malfoy probably knew more Dark magic than he did.

On the other hand, showing fear when he didn’t understand Malfoy’s motives would be stupid. So Harry continued to stare straight ahead, and he made sure that his voice was calm when he spoke. “The memories?” he asked.

Malfoy bent down towards him, resting his chin on Harry’s shoulder. His hands descended at the same time, one of them pressing on Harry’s other shoulder, the second on his spine. Harry ground his teeth. Malfoy was so close that he couldn’t miss the sound, and he might take it for the warning it was and back off.

“Before I give you an answer,” Malfoy whispered, “I want you to give me one. What are your fantasies? I know that they exist now. Tell me. I would give much to fulfill them for you.”

“Why should I?” Harry held still because the force of his resentment was so strong that the only other option was leaping out of the chair and away from Malfoy’s touch. “They have nothing to do with this case.”

“I told you,” Malfoy said, and now his voice sounded like a lover’s, and Harry gritted his teeth again, this time in resentment at himself for even thinking of that comparison. “I find my kindred in those people whose fantasies I can fulfill. I want to know what yours are. It makes me uneasy to have someone in Corybantes whose wants I don’t know, who I can’t do something for. And then, you’re volunteering your time and talent to solve a death that could get us shut down. It’s only right to repay you.”

“The Ministry pays me.” Harry kept his voice steady as he stood and walked away from Malfoy, pretending to examine an ugly gold decoration on the wall. Corybantes seemed to do advertising even in the back rooms that most clients would never see. Harry wondered idly who would be persuaded by gold decorations of heads covered with snakes. He turned around and studied Malfoy when he thought he had himself under control. “You don’t need to do anything extra. If you refuse to give me your memories, then I’ll ask for those of Shadow or another witness.”

Malfoy rose slowly to his feet and moved backwards until his face was in shadow. The anti-light was on the walls in here, too. It made it far too easy for enemies to hide. Harry waited, his eyes attuned to Malfoy’s movements. If this was an ambush, no one would find it easy to surprise him.

“You act as if you would be attacked in the middle of my club,” Malfoy said. He sounded aggrieved, of all the strange things. “Why? What makes you act this way?”

“You act as if you want to treat me like a client one moment and an Auror the next,” Harry said. “Why?”

Malfoy moved back into the light, scowling as he tilted his head and his pale hair slipped down his neck. It made him look as if he were standing under an icy waterfall. “I already explained my reasons to you, Potter,” he said, “far more reasons than most people ever hear from me.”

“I don’t need to know them,” Harry said. He was master of the situation again, and could resist the impulse to lash out with magic or with a fist. Malfoy had given him enough time to recover, thank Merlin. “I didn’t ask for them. I only ask for certain things that I need to help me in the case, and you demand strange bargains in exchange for them or refuse them altogether. While I’m trying to do my job, you act as if you didn’t want the case solved.”

Malfoy took a sudden step back, and tried to conceal it by turning around to examine the walls himself. But Harry had seen it. He’d remember it.

“One of my fantasies was always having your friendship,” Malfoy said, his voice muffled. “And you’re going to deny me the chance to fulfill it.”

Harry sighed, because if he didn’t release some of his frustration, he was going to explode. “If we had met outside a case, and I was willing, maybe we could go some distance towards fulfilling it,” he said. “As it is, you’re preventing me from doing my job. That’s more important than an imaginary friendship.”

“Not to me,” Malfoy whispered.

I was wrong about how much he’d changed, Harry decided in disgust. Even if he’s more open and more courageous than I thought he was, he’s still acting like a spoiled child by demanding what he wants exactly when he wants it.

“Will you let me have your memories, or should I ask someone else?” he said. This was the last time he would make the request. He froze himself and waited, half-thinking that Malfoy would just stand there in sulky silence and let him walk out of the room without a further word.

Instead, Malfoy turned around and stalked back over to him. Harry held his position easily. He wasn’t afraid of this overgrown boy.

Not even when Malfoy pushed him up against the wall and grabbed his wrist—his favorite target—again did Harry feel his heart beating much faster. He met Malfoy with a stare of calm and clear-eyed scorn and waited.

“I’ve wanted more of you than you can know,” Malfoy whispered. “Friendship. Notice. Attention. The Snitch, when we still played Quidditch opposite each other. Your presence in my club, during the time when we first became popular and I thought that even the Chosen One might need a place to relax. And again and again, you must disappoint me.” Those last words sounded threatening instead of sulky this time.

“Have you listened to yourself, Malfoy?” Harry asked. “You want something of me, which is another way of saying from me. You’re not getting upset because you asked for a gift and I refused you. You’re upset because you wanted to profit off me or triumph over me in some way, and I wouldn’t let you. What makes you different from all the people who’ve wanted me to endorse their products, or give them exclusive interviews, or let them kill or fuck me?”

Malfoy staggered back, his face stricken. Harry frowned at him. He knew he wasn’t that good with words. Malfoy shouldn’t have acted as though he’d just received a Killing Curse to the heart.

“I’ll give you the memories,” Malfoy said in a voice like dust. “Come with me.”

And he left, leaving Harry to trail behind him, and then hurry so that he didn’t get left behind altogether by Malfoy’s rapid strides.

I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to repeat the things we did when we were children, Harry thought, staring at Malfoy’s back and the way he hunched his shoulders as if it was raining on him. I just wish he would stop acting like I’m here for some reason other than my job, and give me what I need to solve the bloody case.

Chapter Four.

Comments

[daftfear.livejournal.com]

Ooo I don't even know what to expect next! I feel sad for Draco. There is so much unsaid here and I can't wait to find out what all of it is. :D I can't wait for more. ^^

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!