lomonaaeren | Chapter Two of "Keep It Simple, Stupid"- That Mad Potter

Thanks again for all the reviews on the first chapter!

Chapter Two—That Mad Potter

The Minister had been no help. Of course, Draco wasn’t really sure why he had expected help from that quarter. Scrimgeour was too busy trying to make sure that his rivals and enemies and friends didn’t swallow him alive in their attempts to “help him run the Ministry better.”

Sometimes, Draco wondered if he was the only Ministry employee who actually cared about his job.

His orders were simply to continue attending the Death Eater meetings and learning what he could about Prince while the “geniuses” in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement labored to invent some way past the protections on the manor house where the Death Eaters met. Draco wrote a short note requesting that he might be informed the moment they located something useful—which they probably wouldn’t, given that they hadn’t managed the task in five years—and then went home.

He wandered slowly up the alley that the broken Ministry phonebox led to, oddly in the mood for grimy alleys and the sight of Muggles. At least it wouldn’t depress him more than he’d already been depressed; he could always pretend that the people passing around him had some semblance of intelligence and exciting interior lives.

He never took the Floo from the Ministry. An unfortunate experience with the Floo in his seventh year at Hogwarts had left him with a small, jagged scar on his elbow and a permanent hatred of whirling round and about.

“Draco! Oi, Draco!”

Draco stifled a sigh. He had thought Potter had left long since. He normally only stayed in the office from eleven to three, didn’t he? And then he would suggest going to a pub, or for “an early dinner,” and one of his pet Aurors would cover for him. It was typical of Draco’s luck that Potter would choose today to accost him twice.

But when he turned around, he saw it was worse than that. Potter was trotting towards him, giving him the slightly mad smile of a Gryffindor who had found the perfect way to make a Slytherin’s life miserable. And he was completely alone. No Aurors followed him, no fans—no one who could witness an attempt on his life and scream loudly to fetch help, much less someone who could lift a wand and defend him if Death Eaters struck.

Draco cursed and cast several temporary wards that would warn him if someone came close with hostile intent. Potter pulled up and gave him an offended stare from beneath puffy eyelids. “Really, Draco. I hear that kind of language from other people in the Ministry all the time. I thought your mother had taught you better manners.”

“You know nothing about my mother—“ Draco began, and then shut his mouth firmly. Really, what would bickering gain him? Potter would only act as though he understood nothing, and flirt with Draco, and call him names. Draco refused to let himself be distracted from what was really important. “You should go back to your own house, Potter,” he said. “It’s not safe for you out in the open, now that the Death Eaters have a plot to kill you.”

“Piffle,” said Potter.

Draco blinked. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Did you just say piffle?”

“And so what if I said piffle?” Potter folded his arms and looked sulky. “I’m sure that you can protect me, Draco. You always do your duty. That’s something I’ve admired about you a lot in the last few years.” His voice grew soft and caressing, and he edged closer, looking like a duelist searching for ways through his enemy’s guard. Draco thought he was looking for a way to touch Draco’s arm or shoulder without immediately having his fingers sting from the hex that would follow.

“You said you hadn’t started wanting to flirt with me until recently.” Draco moved his wand in a slow pattern, covering the angles that Potter might use to approach him from. He knew he probably looked ridiculous. He felt ridiculous.

Well, that seems to be the natural consequence for anyone Potter’s near. His sycophants just agreed to it, that’s all.

“I didn’t notice you were fit until recently,” Potter corrected him. “I’ve admired you for a long time. Draco.” He practically sighed the name, and leaned nearer and nearer until he almost rested his head on Draco’s shoulder, his eyelashes fluttering.

Draco felt a surge of anger. He would have given so much to hear those words in another context that hearing them like this only cheapened them, and reminded him, yet again, of the enormous gap that lay between his world and Potter’s. He was tempted to Apparate home then and there and try to forget about Potter in a bottle of Firewhiskey.

But the enormous git was still his responsibility, at least until he managed to convince him to go back to the house he had inherited from Black. Shacklebolt would never let Draco hear the end of it if he left and then Potter was ambushed by Bellatrix and Jugson.

Besides, it wasn’t the right thing to do, to leave someone as careless as Potter to his own devices when there was a threat to his life.

Damn it.

Draco still cursed the day he’d grown a conscience. Life would have been so much easier if he could have gone on behaving like an arrogant and spoiled schoolboy.

“Listen, Potter,” he said as calmly as he could, “you have to go home. If all the Death Eaters attacked at once, then I wouldn’t be sufficient protection. And you don’t want to disappoint your friends and admirers by dying, do you?”

“I would hate to disappoint you.” Potter’s eyes were fixed on him with a hopeful adoration that Draco knew couldn’t be the real thing, because the real thing would have made his breath catch with wonder, and this just made him irritated and tired.

“Then go home,” Draco ordered.

“But you would know if they were going to attack me, right?” Potter edged nearer again, looking pleased with himself. “After all, you attend the meetings, and they wouldn’t make plans without you. It sounds like they can barely think unless you’re there to prod them.” He dropped his voice into that purr again, which definitely did not affect Draco in any way and which Potter was pathetic for attempting. “I wouldn’t mind thinking if you prodded me.”

Draco bit his tongue, glad for the fact that he didn’t stand immediately next to any of the alley walls, or he would have pounded his head on them and damn the consequences. “Stop it with the stupid innuendo, Potter, first of all,” he snapped.

“Oh, but it’s only innuendo if it teases and taunts and doesn’t promise, Draco,” Potter said. He tried to take Draco’s hand. Draco rapped his palm with the wand. Potter blinked at him, then said, “Ow. That hurt. Did you know that hurt?”

Draco ignored him as best he could. The more he participated in this conversation, the longer Potter would stay beyond safe walls and the longer Draco would have to spend dealing with him. “Second, I know Prince doesn’t trust me. He might have instructed the others to meet without notifying me, or created plans that don’t rely on my presence. So I can’t be absolutely sure of what Jugson and the rest intend any more. Any margin of uncertainty is too small where your life’s concerned.”

“I knew it,” said Potter, looking as happy as a small child who had been offered ice cream.

Draco frowned. “Knew you were in danger? Then I don’t understand why you haven’t gone home already—“

“Gryffindors don’t run from danger,” said Potter, with a stupid flourish of his cloak. “We face it.” He wore an insufferably smug expression when he dropped his cloak and beamed at Draco. “And I knew that you had some feelings for me! You want me safe. That’s so sweet.” He tried to pat Draco’s cheek again.

Draco snapped his teeth at Potter’s reaching fingers this time. Potter blinked. “I might almost say that you’re annoyed with me, Draco,” he murmured. “What did I do?”

“I am annoyed with you,” Draco said, deciding that he had nothing to lose. They were outside the Ministry, and there was no one to hear him speak to the sainted Harry Potter like this. “Goddamn it, Potter, I know full well that you’re only flirting with me because you’re bored and this is a game to you—“

“It is, Draco,” Potter said, and his face was flushed and his voice hopeful. He leaned into Draco’s personal space, making Draco’s wand hand twitch. “The most important game. I want to make you love me, because I already love you so much, and it’s only fair that you should love me back.” He ran his fingers caressingly over Draco’s shoulder.

That was enough. Draco cursed Potter with boils and Apparated home. The minute he arrived at the Manor, he sent an elf directly to Shacklebolt’s house with a note warning him that Potter was wandering around alone—it was faster than an owl—and then went to ransack the cellar for Firewhiskey. He would drink himself into oblivion, or at least as much as he could manage on a Monday night when he had to be in to work at nine in the morning.

*

Draco could feel the change in the Ministry the moment he arrived. Currents of conversation that were usually still at this time of the day flowed madly along the corridors. Aurors nodded at each other with significant looks. Draco heard Potter’s name mentioned more than once, and now and then people gave him pitying glances.

He arrived at his office and was unsurprised to find a memo from Scrimgeour summoning him to a meeting. With a heavy sigh, he went, only taking a moment to cast a spell that would clean any forgotten dirt smudges from his face and any ruffled tangles from his hair.

Draco’s gut twisted the moment he stepped through the door of Scrimgeour’s office. Potter, disappointingly free of boils, was lounging in a chair already, only two of his usual protectors sitting primly behind him. When Draco entered, Potter twisted around and beamed up at him.

“Draco! You came.” A lazy smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Would you like to make a regular habit of that?”

It took Draco a moment to understand the innuendo. When he did, he had to choke back his outrage. He’d worked hard to make people in the Ministry respect him for who he was after the war, and now Potter’s companions were sniggering and even Scrimgeour seemed to have difficulty holding a straight face. It wouldn’t be hard for Potter to undo everything he’d labored for.

Draco sat down in his own chair and kept his eyes fixed sternly ahead. It still meant that he had to watch Scrimgeour cough his way through the laughter, but at least he didn’t have to look at Potter—

Who was making an attempt to intertwine his fingers with Draco’s between their chairs. Draco folded his hands firmly in his lap and said to Scrimgeour, “Sir. What is this about?”

“A threat,” said the Minister, and his face finally cleared. “A very large and public one. The first public threat from the Death Eaters since the end of the war, in fact.” He folded the Daily Prophet, which had been lying in front of him, and slid it across the desk to Draco, tapping the photograph on the front page helpfully.

Draco restrained his comments about how the Ministry wasn’t even alert enough to get there first and take its own photographs, and examined the picture. It showed the Dark Mark—and didn’t that put a shiver, of both disgust and remembrance, up his spine—hovering above a small house that Draco thought might be on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. The door to the house hung open, and two of the front windows were broken. Draco grimaced and scanned the article. He recognized Avery’s work; he had always thought it particularly threatening to break glass, for some reason. Draco suspected he just liked the sound it made when it shattered.

DEATH EATERS BACK? the headline bleated. Draco squinted. Had they actually used dark green ink for the letters? It seemed they had, probably trying to match the shade of the Dark Mark. Draco shook his head and passed the paper back to Scrimgeour.

“I knew nothing about this,” he stated plainly. “It may show that Prince doesn’t trust me and is already encouraging the others to act outside my supervision. Or he may have done it himself, in order to show Jugson and the rest that there will not be immediate retaliation for any act that announces Death Eater presence. The second one would be my guess. I think even Avery would require more convincing than one day’s worth.”

“So you say,” muttered Scrimgeour, surveying him skeptically.

Draco ground his teeth, but he had long since mastered the art of doing so without letting any sound slip into the outside world. He kept his face and tone both flat and calm as he said, “If you no longer trust my expertise on this case, sir, remove me from it. I’m sure that I could find some other and better way to serve the Ministry.”

“No one said anything about that,” said Scrimgeour, and this time pursed his lips at Draco, as if he had demanded to be taken off the case and sent on some less dangerous mission. “You’re our resident Death Eater expert. If you insist that they wouldn’t move so soon, of course we’ll have to believe you.”

“I believe him,” Potter spoke up unexpectedly. “I think that you should give Malfoy immediate and complete control of all aspects of this case. He’s the one most likely to uncover evidence that the rest of us won’t, simply because he knows all the free Death Eaters and how they think from years of exposure.”

Draco stared at Potter warily. There surely must be consequences for this support.

And there were. Potter sent him a sideways leer, and added brightly, “I’m the second most knowledgeable expert on Death Eaters. I suggest that Malfoy and I partner for however long it takes to bring all of them in.”

“No,” Draco said, putting all the denial, refusal, and utter conviction he was capable of mustering into that single word.

But Scrimgeour, of course, because it was the way Draco’s life worked, was nodding thoughtfully. “I believe that an excellent suggestion, Auror Potter,” he said. “You can protect Mr. Malfoy—“

(Even in the midst of the hell that his life had become, Draco took the time to note that Potter apparently merited the title he had worked for, while Draco was addressed as if he were a member of the general public).

“And he can run his decisions on the Death Eater case past you, sharing information that might impact your safety with you as soon as possible.” Scrimgeour picked up the Daily Prophet and tapped it on his desk to align the corners as if it were a sheaf of important paperwork. “Very well, gentlemen. I wish for you to travel to Aurora Westerling’s house as soon as possible, and learn what really happened there. Look for clues they might have left behind. Interview neighbors. Leave no stone unturned, even if it is a pebble.”

If he could come up with less stupid metaphors, and if he could stop telling me how to do my job, I might like him more, Draco thought.

Then Potter tried to take his hand again, and Draco had to forcefully slap his wrist.

And if he hadn’t assigned me to work with Potter, of course.

The Minister will receive certain…interesting…gifts from the Weasels’ joke shop this year.

*

Draco prided himself on his ability to work as an Auror. He was good at seeing small discrepancies—missing objects, unimportant twists of wording, and strange hesitations—which usually proved to be more reliable clues than what was present. He could put such emptiness together and make it produce something. Even the instructors who hadn’t liked him had commented on it when they were testing him for his fitness to become an Auror.

He had to admit, grumpily, that Potter was better at talking to people, though.

Potter smiled at Westerling’s neighbors and turned his head to the side a bit, so they could get a glimpse of the famous scar through the fringe. That was all it took. Their faces blossomed with—Draco thought it was joy, to his intense disgust. Let them have Potter’s company all day, every day, and see how much they liked it.

Of course, that was the advantage of a celebrity for an ordinary witch or wizard, he thought, arms folded and mouth shut as Potter asked the most intrusive questions and was answered, eagerly. They assumed that famous people would remain distant from them, and when one did appear, they were too thrilled to notice his rudeness. And then he would go away again, and they would probably treasure the experience for the rest of their lives.

Potter even signed an autograph or two when asked, and let a few people admire his wand—“the wand that had killed You-Know-Who,” as the Daily Prophet was fond of calling it. That made Draco blink. He had heard that Potter maintained his guard of Aurors partially so he wouldn’t ever need to do stupid favors like this for anyone.

Maybe he could be good-natured about it when they weren’t around.

Draco doubted it, though. It was probably part of Potter’s master plan to seduce him. Show Draco what a good little boy he could be, how nice, how accommodating, and he assumed Draco would melt like butter in a hot sun. After all, how could anyone resist the charming Saint Potter?

The wizards and witches of Hogsmeade couldn’t, that was for certain. But Draco was around Potter most days of the week, even if it was only passing him in the Ministry corridors and wishing he and his cronies were somewhere else. He knew the man. Everything Potter might do in relation to Draco was false. A game to him, as he had said. Give him three days, and he would be interested in someone else and chasing him or her just as fiercely.

That might bother Draco all it liked. Not that it did, of course. But he couldn’t change Potter, so what was the point of hoping that things might be different?

Potter jogged back to him after an interview with a particularly giggly older witch, who looked at Potter as if she would have liked to drag him into her house and have her way with him. The git didn’t notice, of course. Or maybe he just took such attention as his due, Draco thought sourly. That was the most likely explanation. “She said that Westerling left for a holiday three days ago. No one was in the house when it was attacked.” Potter shrugged. “The others all agree on the same thing. So at least we have no casualties.” His smile flashed, and he leaned in, destroying the small amount of professionalism he’d begun to build up. “Shall we take advantage of the opportunity to isolate ourselves from public view, Draco?”

“I don’t fuck in the field,” Draco replied coolly, and strode past Potter to examine the inside of the house. Incredibly, the broken windows and unhinged door appeared to be the only damage. There weren’t even any scorch marks on the walls. Draco frowned and began a long, slow examination. He couldn’t really believe that the purpose of the attack had only been to leave the Dark Mark hovering over the house. Even if Westerling had been a secret supporter of the Dark Lord and this Prince wanted her to know he had found out—the most far-fetched explanation that had occurred to Draco—he would have been stupid to warn her he was moving ahead of time.

“Ah,” said Potter from behind him, sounding incredibly pleased. “That must mean you fuck in the office instead. I knew you couldn’t as snobbish as you looked!”

Draco began to study the walls. He saw nothing unusual. Westerling appeared to have atrocious taste in portraits and photographs, but then, that didn’t surprise Draco. She would have been living somewhere other than Hogsmeade if she had good taste.

A hand clasped his shoulder. The warm shiver that traveled straight down his spine did surprise him, but only until he remembered it had been six months since his last sexual encounter of any kind. He turned around, catching Potter’s wrist and squeezing it hard enough to draw a gasp of surprise out of the prat.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, “unless you’d like me to cut off your fingers, shove them down your throat, and watch you choke to death.”

“You make good threats,” Potter told him. His eyes were shining. Draco couldn’t make out all the emotions behind that shine, but was sure that one of them was amusement. “I knew you could speak eloquently. See? You don’t have to curse to impress me, Draco.”

The temptation to hit him was very strong. Draco knew no proper Malfoy solved a dispute with fists, the Muggle way. It was wands or hired muscle, who would not be degraded by using their fists.

But it would have felt so good.

Draco flung Potter’s hand away and went back to his search. The man chattered behind him, saying further inane things, but this time Draco didn’t permit himself to hear them. Of course Potter whinged soon enough that there was nothing to find and they should return to the Ministry, but Draco went all the way around the house twice before he would admit to that. It was only the ordinary residence of an ordinary witch, and if the Death Eaters hadn’t broken her door and windows, Draco decided the most exciting thing happening here would have been the moment when she returned and unlocked it.

Reluctantly, he left, taking a moment to study the door and windows closely so he could put the memory in a Pensieve later. It seemed as though this had been an attack by Prince to show the Death Eaters that the Dark Mark still had some power after all. Two Aurors going to investigate it, one Harry Potter himself, would just prove that to people like Avery and Bellatrix. And Prince would use that confidence to urge them on to newer and better crimes.

Of course, they couldn’t have left it uninvestigated, either. Draco just hated playing into his enemies’ hands.

“What do you think, Draco?” Potter asked.

Draco should have known better than to fall for the trap of the softly respectful tone in Potter’s voice, really he should have, but it sounded so reasonable that he answered before he thought about it. “I’m thinking that Prince is more clever than this. He could take vengeance on you by himself, if he wanted to. So he must want the Death Eaters for something. What, though? They can’t provide him with anything that he couldn’t get elsewhere.”

Potter gave a long, pursed-lip sigh. “Not about that. What do you think about coming back to my house?”

Draco waved him off and strode off to find an empty Apparition point. He was already planning his report in his head. He would suggest that at least a few Aurors be assigned to research Prince’s background. A powerful Dark wizard just didn’t appear from nowhere. He had to have a provenance, and anyone strong who had vanished within the last few months could be a good candidate.

And, in the meantime, he would make it an official recommendation that Potter have a guard of Aurors around him at all times.

“You’re smiling,” Potter said quietly. “That’s good to see.”

Draco rolled his eyes and took the fool’s arm for a Side-Along, since he couldn’t trust Potter to arrive at the same destination if he were left to manage his Apparition on his own. Potter leaned on him as if he were drunk and sniffed his neck. Draco controlled his shiver expertly and Apparated them away from Hogsmeade.

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jamafanta.livejournal.com

Oh my GOD is Harry irritating! I've known people like that - people who think they're flattering, while actually encouraging disrespect and condescension. Poor "Mr. Malfoy"!

This story is great fun!

From:

Chapter Two of "Keep It Simple, Stupid"- That Mad Potter

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