Chapter Nine of 'Ragnarok'- Jab

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eight.

Title: Ragnarok (9/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Heavy violence, gore, sex, angst, manipulation, discussion of suicide, arguably Dark versions of both characters. Ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Draco Malfoy, at thirty, is the youngest member of the Wizengamot. He thinks he has achieved the highest political power of which he’s capable—until he learns the secret of Ragnarok, the elite corps of wizards who deal with “unsolvable” problems for the Wizengamot.
Author’s Notes: This will be, I think, a fairly short story, somewhere between 12 and 15 chapters, and perhaps even shorter than that. It involves fairly cynical versions of the characters. The title is the name of the event that, in Norse mythology, was supposed to kill the gods.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Nine—Jab

“How are we going to modify their memories?”

Draco blinked in pleasure, though he doubted that Potter could read the signals. Potter was sitting on a couch in front of his two friends, studying them with darkened eyes. Now and then a flick of magic, colored scarlet or gold, crept down his arm or through his fingers. It always faded again, and so far Draco had seen no scorch marks on the material of the couch. He saw no need to scold Potter until he did.

“We’re going to use a combination of lies and truth that we should prepare beforehand, so that we can feed it into their ears while they’re still groggy and suggestible from the Obliviate,” Draco said. “Did you know that that period, the period when someone will listen to you and implicitly believe everything you say, is much shorter than generally acknowledged? I know any amount of people who have been caught because they believe that they can babble on for half-an-hour and still fool someone whose wits have returned long since.”

Potter nodded, but not as if interested in that incredible statistic. “We’ll have to tell them about my magic, I reckon. That’s something that will probably return to them anyway when they see us go public if we don’t.”

Draco tilted his head in respect this time. “That’s not something many people know.”

Potter gave him a brief smile without humor. “You forget that I’ve had to execute victims of the Obliviators who had poor training or were in haste. The Memory Charms, when they don’t apply them properly, slice up the mind. People have different memories at different times, and if something reminds them of one, it tends to show up no matter how deeply the magic should have buried it. Ron and Hermione might suddenly remember the whole conversation when they see me if we’re not careful.”

“I would never apply Memory Charms improperly,” Draco said.

Potter ignored the dangerous tone in his voice. “I know that. But sometimes the charms work like that with the best degree of skill in the world. And someone like Hermione, who makes every effort just to find a word that she can’t remember, is particularly prone to suddenly having the memories you thought she’d suppress.”

Draco nodded slowly back. He reckoned that he should listen to Potter if he was going to have his help. “Very well. They have to know about your magic. That will be the reason that you avoided contacting them for this long. Should they know about your imprisonment by the Wizengamot?”

Potter stared at him. “You’re leaving that element of the decision up to me?” he muttered. “How generous.”

Draco shook his head in irritation. “You’re the one who knows your friends. Would they accept that with the same dreamy belief that we need them to accept everything else, or would they simply reject it or use it as the basis for more investigation?”

Potter grimaced as though he’d swallowed a piece of rotten meat. “Use it as the basis for more investigations, almost certainly. Ron really took to the Auror training that tells you to memorize and check into anything suspicious. And I think Hermione was born that way. We’ll leave the idea of my avoiding them up to my guilt. After all, if we’re going to leave them the memory of my having changed my magic with the ritual, we can leave them the memory of my killing those Aurors.”

He looked so pained about it that Draco stood up and moved across the room to him. “You have a strange sense of guilt, Potter,” he murmured. “Here we are, ready to take over the wizarding world, and those deaths still bother you? It’s not as though you knew what you were doing or could control your magic.”

Potter was silent for some time, eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, though now and then Draco caught a glitter of green from beneath his eyelids. Then he took a quick breath and said, “This is going to sound strange, but I think of my life as divided into two parts. Before the ritual, I was one of the most moralistic people you could find, and so I still feel guilt about the deaths I caused then. But living under the Wizengamot killed something in me. I can do things now that the old me would have felt guilty about. But the old memories continue to live in me.” He lifted his head. “Does that make sense?”

Draco bent and kissed him, tongue leisurely exploring Potter’s mouth, hand tightening on the back of his neck. Potter resisted after a moment, so that Draco couldn’t force him back and pin him against the couch as he would have liked to. Potter’s tongue was darting out, his eyes brilliant with lust and anger, and he surged up against Draco’s restraint, taking control of the kiss.

Draco laughed into his mouth, and Potter pulled back, partly offended, though with the way his gaze kept returning to Draco’s lips, Draco thought the anger was cut through with other emotions.

“Listen to me,” Draco said. “I won’t give you validation for your guilt. I can understand what you mean, and I can offer you power and pleasure, but my faculty for sympathy has declined through lack of use. If you work with me, then you’ll have to be the person you became under the Wizengamot, and live as that person for the rest of your life.”

Potter was silent and meditative. Then he said, “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” Draco demanded incredulously. “You have the power to destroy anyone who criticizes you, to turn them into less than ashes.” He still burned hot with envy for that particular power, he had to admit. Simply performing the rituals wouldn’t grant it to him, since the disastrous ritual had made a change in the nature of Potter’s magic itself.

“But I need the criticism,” Potter said. “Or I thought I did. Or I’m only slowly growing used to the notion that I don’t. I don’t know.” He had a bright, peculiar smile on his face, and he was touching his brow as though a headache was coming on.

Draco had offered understanding, but he was not sure that he understood this particular problem. “You’ve left the need for criticism behind now?” he hazarded. “You think that you’re leaving your conscience behind?”

“I felt that die when I agreed to modify Ron and Hermione’s memories,” Potter said impatiently, as though Draco should have been in his head and known that. “But yeah. I feel frightened to go without the criticism, but I won’t turn back now.”

Draco decided that was good enough, and kissed Potter again. Potter twisted beneath the kiss like a serpent, doing his best to bring his tongue into play, his eyes hotly gleaming.

Draco would have liked to have him on the floor, but they had the Memory Charms to apply. After a few more questions to Potter to make the story straight in his head, he raised his wand and released Granger and Weasley from the hypnosis charm that had so far kept them motionless.

As they blinked and looked up, he whispered, “Obliviate.”

His strength was great enough that the single spell hit both of them, and their jaws dropped open and their faces softened. Draco waited precisely three heartbeats after that happened—research had been done that showed the most powerful part of the suggestible period didn’t begin until then—and then he murmured, “You met Potter today after ten years of silence. He explained the ritual that corrupted his magic, making it more powerful but only destructive, and how he avoided you because of the guilt he felt over killing Aurors when his magic ran free. It’s guilt that leads him to avoid you now.”

Three sentences, packed with information, the kind they could handle. Draco paused and watched their faces twitch and bound until they had absorbed the information and looked as if they would think that was reality from now on. Draco nodded in satisfaction. It was true that he had left out a few of the details, such as why and how they had met Potter, but he had found it was best to leave holes. The mind would fill them in later and make the false memories seem stronger.

He Stunned Weasley and Granger just when they reached the point where they might have been able to ask questions, and then turned to Potter as their bodies slumped over each other. “We’ll be returning them to their homes?”

“Yes,” Potter said. He was staring wistfully at his friends, and Draco could see the flicker in the back of his eyes where he, possibly, wanted things to be different.

But the flicker burned out, and Draco was satisfied by the determination that took its place, though it was a bit too self-consciously cold, as if Potter was acting the way he had heard ruthless people should act rather than because he felt ruthless himself.

They were committed now.

*

Harry was asleep when the summons came.

A loud iron bell clanged right beside his head, and Harry sat up immediately, obedient to that sound although it seemed a long time since he’d last heard it. The door to his room was already opening, and he blinked and started pulling on his trousers; he usually slept in his pants and shirt.

“Mr. Potter?” Madam Gilfleur’s voice was tight and throbbed at the edges, as though she was on the verge of a heart attack.

Harry swallowed. This is about Malfoy. And we’re not prepared. The only other strategy he and Malfoy had agreed on tonight was to perform a ritual tomorrow—that was, later today. They wouldn’t rebel yet, not until they could be sure that they had a chance of winning against the Wizengamot.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and sat up, trying his best to smooth the tangles out of his hair and the wrinkles out of his shirt. But when Gilfleur came pounding across the floor and into the light of the fireplace, Harry decided she probably wasn’t going to notice such things anyway.

Her hair was fuzzy with magic, sparks popping and flaring out before they hit the floor. She wore not the elegant robes he had seen her in a few days ago, but brilliant red-gold ones that were thinner than normal. Harry thought she must have gone to sleep in them and not bothered to change them before she sent the summons. Her eyes had a kind of frantic anger in them, and Harry decided again that this was about Malfoy.

“Ma’am?” he repeated gently when she halted in front of him and stared, keeping his feelings under iron control.

Gilfleur latched onto the title and waved her wand, transforming her thin robes into more standard ones. Harry felt his nostrils flare as the rush of magic swept past him. It was more powerful than it should have been, with an edge that he had felt only twice before. He smiled grimly. She was another user of the rituals.

“Listen to me,” Gilfleur said. “It is important that you understand every word I am about to say and take them extremely seriously. There is a threat to the wizarding world’s safety that depends on your immediate cooperation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said. Those were two of the four most useful words ever invented, he thought, the other ones being, “Yes, sir.” It sounded as though you were swearing obedience when you were really just acknowledging that you heard someone else. He thought of trying for an encouraging smile and decided against it. Gilfleur might calm down and think that was suspicious.

“I thought we had more time before we must deal with this,” said Gilfleur, apparently to herself. “But I should have known better.”

“Ma’am?” Harry made sure that he seemed as alert, courteous, and deadly as possible, considering that he was still sitting in bed with bare feet and hair that probably looked like it had been through a war.

Gilfleur pulled herself back together with a visible jerk and took a breath that seemed to vibrate through her body. “I need you to execute someone,” she said. “You will need to destroy powerful wards to reach him and make sure that you don’t alert anyone else. His house is not near any Muggles’, luckily, so you won’t have to shield against their notice.”

Keep your face still, Harry snapped to himself, and hoped that he really was. He had never been as good at controlling his expressions and emotions as Malfoy seemed to think he should be. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What’s the name?”

“Draco Malfoy.”

It’s coming. It’s here. The only question now is whether I pretend to go along with her crazy plan and then go and warn Malfoy so we can figure out what to do next, or whether I make sure that she doesn’t get the chance to propose something like this again. Harry knew the Wizengamot had other enforcers, though not ones as deadly as him, and Gilfleur might have decided to send extra people against Malfoy since, from what he had said, she was aware of his extra magic.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and gave up the option of an immediate kill. He simply didn’t know enough. Maybe other people on the Wizengamot wanted Malfoy dead, too, and would be suspicious if Gilfleur didn’t reappear. “Give me time to get dressed, and I’ll go.”

Gilfleur’s fear, and the dulling of her senses and mind by her fear, seemed to have worn off. She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “What…” she began, but answered her own question before she got that far. “Why do you not need directions to Malfoy Manor?”

Harry gave her a wide smile. “I was there during the war, ma’am. Bellatrix Lestrange tortured one of my best friends there, and another friend, a house-elf who helped us, died in the escape. I’m not likely to forget.”

“Ah.” The cloud on Gilfleur’s brow eased. “Of course.” Then it bent down again. “But you should need directions in how to destroy wards.”

“I’ve done that plenty of times, ma’am,” Harry said, still smiling, and hoping that the edge he thought was creeping into his tone really wasn’t. “And as powerful as I remember the wards on Malfoy Manor being during the war, I haven’t found anything yet that can stand up to my magic.” He extended a hand in demonstration, although he didn’t lift it high enough for her to feel threatened, and destroyed part of the mantle above the fireplace. So close was he and so precisely focused was his magic that the mantle simply blinked into nonexistence, rather than going through a cloud of dust or ashes first.

Gilfleur nodded, but she left the room with several suspicious glances backwards. Harry stayed sitting in the bed until she was gone. He wasn’t going to rise to his feet in front of this woman when he had no trousers on.

He paused in surprise when he realized that, though. A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have cared. What did he have to be modest about? With no lover in ten years and with employers who thought of him as a thing, not a human being, he probably could have danced naked through the room without a concern about who was in it.

But I have a lover now.

Harry offered another grim smile up to the empty air of the room and the force of his own thoughts, and then rose to dress.

*

A tremble of magic, a wedge driven through his wards, woke Draco in a hurry. He had prepared emergency measures for what might happen if one of his enemies attacked long ago. He only had to flick his wand once to dress himself and then reach his hand out to clasp the enchanted knife on the bedside table.

As his hand came to rest on the hilt, however, he tasted a familiar flavor to the magic and narrowed his eyes. Who could have convinced Potter to change his allegiance to them in a single evening?

Potter appeared in his bedroom a short time later. Draco saw no reason to move, although he had undressed himself with another flick of his wand. Nakedness could be advantageous with this particular foe, and the knife would be in reach if he could not persuade Potter otherwise.

“I’m sorry I had to do that to your wards,” Potter said, which rather put paid to the idea of his having changed loyalties. Draco smiled and took his hand off the knife. Potter’s eyes followed the movement, but he didn’t ask for reasons. “But I had to convince anyone watching from the Wizengamot that I had actually destroyed them, and that I was coming here to destroy you.”

Draco nodded. “Gilfleur came to you and requested a formal execution?”

“Yes. And she was suspicious as to why I didn’t need directions to the Manor or instructions on how to burst through your wards. The disruption of the wards is for her.” Potter tilted his head to the side, eyes so wild that Draco almost felt the need to rise from the bed and calm him. But Potter would be of no use to him without some elementary self-control, so he stayed still. “What do you want to do?”

Draco closed his eyes and thought. He was in no position to begin the rebellion at this moment; he needed more rituals performed to heighten his magic, and Potter needed, at the very least, a ritual to give him more restraint. They could, perhaps, perform those tonight, but they would be rushed and hasty, and Potter was a living example of what could happen when a ritual went wrong because of a mistake—and lucky to be a living one, at that. No, there was no way it could be done.

The best solution was to lean on what he knew of the precautions Gilfleur had taken to conceal her magic, and, with it, doubtless the source of her enmity to him. Without revealing her heightened power, she had only weak excuses to offer Risidell, such as Draco enjoying his new position too much or his feud with Kellerston. That meant Risidell and other Wizengamot members were unlikely to have agreed that Potter should kill Draco.

“We turn her trap back on her,” he murmured. “We kill her. Tonight.”

Potter’s silence made Draco open his eyes. Potter was staring at him, body so still that Draco felt the stillness as a painful lump in his own belly. Then Potter’s eyes melted back into some of their brilliance and wildness, and Draco could breathe more easily. He frowned, wondering if that stillness was a mark of the weapon the Wizengamot had tried to make Potter into. He already knew that he would do a great deal not to have to see it again.

“So you want me to act as executioner,” Potter said. “As I did for them.”

“You need a course in grammar,” Draco snapped, and slid fluidly from under the sheets of the bed. Potter’s eyes widened. Draco turned his back deliberately and conjured pants and robes that would cover him. He saw no need to wear more than that on such a short expedition. “Pronouns are important. I said we are going to kill her.”

“Oh,” Potter said.

Draco shook his head and refused to turn around until he was completely dressed and had smoothed the wrinkles out of his robes. Then he smiled at Potter, and didn’t care it was the kind of smile Potter knew well enough to flinch from. “What? Did you think that I would let you go alone? That I would use you as they did?”

Potter gave him a look as sarcastic as his smile. “I think you’re certainly capable of it.”

“Ah,” Draco said. “But I want you as an ally. Using you as a weapon would hurt that aspect of our relationship.”

Potter muttered something that Draco couldn’t hear clearly, and gave him a dubious look. “Do you think we can kill her tonight? She may be prepared if I return too early—or what she thinks is too early—and if she sensed your magic when you didn’t mean her to. She might feel us coming.”

“I think we can,” Draco said, and reached out to put a hand on Potter’s arm, calling his magic up as he had done other times. Potter’s eyes became those of a lazy cat who had seen a mouse dart across the floor once too often. Draco smiled and flexed his fingers, sending individual jabs of magic like lightning deep into Potter’s veins. It was a trick he had used on one lover previously, but that man hadn’t had anything like Potter’s power or sensitivity to power. These results should be entertaining.

Potter gasped, his lovely eyes opening wide enough to satisfy Draco’s deepest dreams of drowning in that green, and then shutting again. A low sound made its way out of his throat. Draco didn’t know whether it was a growl, a purr, or something fiercer than either. Potter leaned nearer and fastened his teeth in the shoulder that Draco’s robes left exposed.

Draco had to shut his eyes. The rush he felt from feeling those teeth lock home was hard enough to make him hard, the blood surging, dancing, rearing up in a cascade of sparks and then falling like colored rain over his head.

“Do that again,” he whispered, “and we won’t make it out of here.”

Potter stepped back. Draco opened his eyes in disbelief, and found the bastard smirking at him.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to do that,” Potter said. “Since we do have a Wizengamot member to kill and all.”

And he turned, and walked away with his smugness trailing behind him like a banner.

Draco decided that the most effective way to get what he wanted was simply to pick his jaw up and follow. The sooner Gilfleur was dead, the sooner he could go to bed with Potter.