Still Pools and Starlight- 2/3, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silver_ariel
Dec. 30th, 2007 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenPart two of three.
Harry took a deep breath the moment he stepped out of the Apparition. Even though they were still some distance beyond the gates of Hogwarts, thanks to the spells that prevented Apparition inside the school, he thought he could taste a distinct difference in the air. It smelled like sweat here, spent effort and strength and rich soil and butterbeer and home.
Malfoy pushed past him, his nose in the air, a bored expression on his face, as though he held nothing sacred, not even the years he’d spent inside the school, which were probably still the best ones of his life. Harry scowled and gave chase. Malfoy moved unexpectedly fast for an astronomer, though. Harry had to admit, grudgingly, that perhaps he wouldn’t have to worry about the prat fussing over his robes after all.
Of course, Harry would rather that the question never arose. But he couldn’t just Body-Bind Malfoy and leave him in a secluded place, the way he’d done to Ron and numerous other Aurors. This case was political. And maybe Malfoy did have some extra standing in the eyes of the centaurs that would mean the difference between negotiating with them and fighting with them.
Persuasion it is, then.
“You know, Malfoy,” he called after the rapidly striding bloke in front of him, “you don’t have to do this.”
Harry had to stop quickly when Malfoy halted on his heels and spun around. The man glared at him, a tint of color to that alabaster face now. Harry found himself on the verge of a stupidly giddy grin at the reaction. He suppressed it.
But, damn it, Malfoy got his blood moving in more ways than one. It was good to see that his own teasing and pushing and pressure had some kind of effect.
“What do you mean, Potter?” Malfoy enunciated carefully. “You were the one who told me—who took care to tell me—that we had a little girl to save, and that you would tolerate no interference in that mission. Isn’t this interference? What will you do to punish yourself?”
Harry shrugged. “Nothing. My boss takes care of that well enough.” He grinned at the slight, intrigued lift of Malfoy’s eyebrow, which Malfoy didn’t manage to hold back in time. “And I’m telling you that there’s a way for you to help but not enter the Forest. You’ll still get full credit for having done your part, I promise.”
Those unusually gray eyes gave a blink. Harry found himself edging closer, wanting to make sure of the emotions and the light in them. He experienced a brief moment of startlement, then shrugged. I was standing too far away, he justified himself.
“Why would you—“ Malfoy shook his head, seeming to have decided that his tone was too soft, and adopted a harsher one. “Why would you assume I’d come all the way to Hogwarts only to refrain from entering the Forest? Gathering knowledge is part of my purpose here, Potter. And to do that, I have to talk to the centaurs.”
“I’ll let you put recording spells on me, so that I can carry back their words to you,” Harry promised, breathing more easily as he realized Malfoy had a modicum of reason. He’d worked with people who didn’t. Body-Binds were the only recourse there. “You can transfer your knowledge to me via a Pensieve—“
“You have a Pensieve?”
“Of course.” Harry pulled it, shrunken, from his robe pocket to prove this. “As I said, you can transfer your knowledge to me that way, and I’ll know the right questions to ask. In the meantime, you get all the leisure and none of the work.” He glanced at the purple-and-silver robes. “And you don’t need to damage your clothes, either.” He smiled at Malfoy. “What do you say?”
Malfoy was at least considering the offer. He stood with his arms folded, his head tipped forwards. Harry held his breath and hoped.
*
Draco was thinking that he had underestimated the thread of suicidal recklessness in Potter. The love of danger was there, all right, but so was, apparently, an intense distaste for working with anyone else. Draco had assumed Potter would be the one to urge cooperation on him, believing in noble Gryffindor virtues as he did. He’d been hoodwinked by his own expectations.
Well. No more.
He lifted his head. Potter’s eyes fired with expectation. Draco felt another powerful stirring of interest. He had never met someone so vividly alive.
Well, correction—nothing human. Some of the more intelligent fairies had Potter’s restlessness, but worse brains even than he did. And unicorns were filled with the same half-nervous energy, but even unicorns relaxed sometimes. Potter never did. Trying to stand still and not jig up and down like a small child needing to use the loo, he still radiated more engagement with life than any seven of Draco’s colleagues.
Of course, the answer to his query was always going to be the same. Draco wanted the knowledge the centaurs possessed, and he didn’t trust Potter to represent it to him correctly with all the Pensieve memories and recording spells in the world. Pensieve memories couldn’t tell you the correct questions to ask.
Now there was an extra reason to go along, though. Draco wanted to see that energy at close quarters, touch it and behold it, for the same reason that he yearned to run his hand down a unicorn’s silken mane.
“No,” he said.
Potter reeled back a pace, the disappointment on his face so acute Draco’s breathing quickened. Potter shook his head and snapped to the attack a moment later, though. “Why not? You must see that there are all sorts of advantages to it, especially for you. We both get what we want this way, and we’re not forced to work together.”
“Not true,” Draco said. “I wouldn’t understand the centaur assumptions about astronomy, the patterns they see, any better than I do now. No, Potter,” he said, to check the interruption he knew was coming, “I really wouldn’t. And I’m less anxious to avoid work than you give me credit for.”
He moved a step closer and dropped his voice. Potter naturally leaned in to hear him; Draco’s throat tightened with satisfaction. “Besides,” he whispered harshly, “you have not the slightest idea of how to survive in centaur territory, what the regulations and rules and laws are. I’m not all that sure of them myself, and I’ve been in regular contact with centaurs for five years. You’d die.”
Potter rolled his eyes.
“You don’t care about that?” It was time to find out just how far Potter’s blithe disregard for his own life ran. Draco found it fascinating, but that didn’t mean he’d let it endanger him.
Potter shrugged, open-handed. “Everyone’s got to die sometime, right?” he said, speaking as if he’d memorized a speech on the matter. “I’ve survived so far. I can survive this, I’m fairly certain. And at least, if I don’t, I’ll die free.” The depth of passion behind that word told Draco what part of the problem was: Potter had decided partners were a burden he didn’t want to bear. “I’m the only one who’s affected. No one else is put in danger.”
“Except Lydia Siddons, in this case,” Draco said.
Potter blinked. “I—“ He stared at the ground, then sighed. “I hate kidnappings,” he commented, randomly.
“Because you have to work on them with partners?”
Potter scowled up at him from beneath tightened eyebrows. “Yeah.”
Draco smiled, because it was impossible not to. “I’m not best pleased to be away from my tower so long either, Potter, nor walking among people who might have killed an innocent student and won’t hesitate to attack an adult wizard.” He couldn’t say that he resented accompanying Potter with any degree of truth, anymore. “But we do need to work on this together. Get yourself resigned to a partner on this occasion. Trust me,” he added, and flavored his voice with suggestion because the impulse was too strong to resist. “I can be very good company.”
He turned to make his way towards the Forest instead of watching Potter’s pupils dilate or his face turn red. Fun as this was, they had knowledge to gather, and a girl to save, if she was still alive.
*
Harry shook his head several times as they worked their way further and further into the Forbidden Forest, though he knew he should be paying more attention to the shadows under trees or the odd way that the leaves moved on the branches, not always with the wind. He couldn’t deny the possibility chasing itself through his mind, however. Each time he tried, it rose like a revenant.
With Draco Malfoy? Really? Are you mad?
Well, according to the majority of his colleagues, there was no doubt of that.
Harry’s gaze went back to Malfoy’s figure forging gracefully ahead of him, displaying a remarkable indifference as to whether his robes were tattered or not. Presumably he had others. His hair seemed to have lightened with his sun-avoiding skin, to the point that it sent out starry gleams into the darkness of the Forest. His hands, which appeared beyond his sleeves to push back the branches and pick leaves out of his hair, were slender, but not weak, Harry thought. This was a different kind of strength, one Harry hadn’t seen in the Aurors or Quidditch players or random shop-clerks he’d tried to date. The lithe, continually twisting strength of a…
Harry smirked to himself. A weasel. Or a ferret.
But still. Malfoy was physically intoxicating. And since Harry had never felt that way about anyone for more than a few brief moments at a time, while this had endured for about ten minutes now, he knew there was something wrong—with him, assuredly—and this could be dangerous.
He shook his head and wrenched his mind back to the job with a snap. Malfoy hadn’t lied when he said it might kill Harry.
At that thought, warmth flooded through his veins. He knew Ron and Hermione thought he was mad, yes, and so did the majority of the people who’d worked with him. Beauchamp thought the same, but put up with Harry acting like a bull in a china shop for the sake of its getting results.
But Harry thought he valued his life more than they did. How could anyone say he really valued his life unless he knew what it was like to be in danger of losing it?
Malfoy halted abruptly and lifted one hand. Harry was lost in admiration of the color of his skin against the red and gold leaves for a moment, even as his body responded to the command and froze without thought.
You, he told himself, when he’d caught his breath again, have a serious problem.
He cast a spell that should allow his voice to travel to Malfoy’s ears without any telltale hiss of whispering. “Centaurs?” he asked.
Malfoy’s head jerked a little in surprise, but he didn’t let it overset him or make any extra noise. Harry’s warmth towards the other man increased, and he promptly rolled his eyes. I think I was happier when I didn’t have a sex drive.
“An outrunner,” Malfoy breathed back. “They usually have at least nine sentries around their camps.”
Harry frowned. Malfoy’s voice had dropped into an odd emphasis on “nine” that he probably wasn’t even aware of. “For the nine planets?”
Again the jerk of the head, but this time Malfoy turned enough to let Harry see the widening of his eyes. “Very good,” he said.
Harry quashed the impulse to preen. They were here on a job. He nodded imperceptibly, as much to say that, yes, he was very good, and Malfoy had just better get used to it. “What angles are they arranged at? Can you tell if this is the first we’ve encountered, or if we might have passed others without noticing?”
Malfoy frowned. “This is the outermost, I’m sure—the one representing Mercury. He’s staring straight at us.”
Harry felt a stab of disappointment, but reminded himself there really was no way to walk silently in an autumn forest. A wizard could control his own noises, but not the noises of the birds who saw him coming, or the danger that a ripple of silence in the forest would signal to other creatures. Besides, this had never been about sneaking into the centaur camp, or home, or meadow, or whatever it was they had, and stealing Lydia back. They needed to negotiate. That was why Malfoy was along.
Harry was of the opinion that negotiations would fail and Harry himself would have to go in and rescue Lydia, because that was what always happened. But he would at least let Malfoy try.
“Do you know the ritual greeting?” he asked.
“Of course,” Malfoy said, and moved forwards. Harry followed, unable to restrain a grin. If his other partners had just been competent, he might have been able to work with them, too.
*
Draco was startlingly aware of Potter at his back, in a way he hadn’t ever been aware of anything except the stars. Or, no, wait, that wasn’t true, was it? He’d always been aware of Potter like that during Quidditch games, and when the Gryffindor was angry and snarling at him across the Great Hall.
The wine of near-arousal coiling throughout his body heightened his senses, and he saw the centaur sentry before he fired a warning arrow. That was very, very unusual. Draco didn’t let Potter know how unusual. The outermost sentries were usually bays or sorrels, which stood a better chance of blending with the colors of the forest, and they were skilled in choosing the best positions to stay unseen.
“The stars shine even in the midst of the day,” he called.
The sentry considered them for long moments. Draco didn’t stop moving towards him. If he hadn’t fired yet, he wasn’t going to.
Of course, they might still get an arrow from the Venus sentry, or the Earth one. Centaurs were bastards like that.
“And the sun shines on the other side of the world during the night,” said the sentry at last. He was a handsome bay, with a long black tail that Draco would have welcomed hairs from if he still regularly brewed potions. His chest was massive, as with all centaurs, and bronzed from long hours in the sun. His hands kept his longbow bent and nocked without effort. As he watched them, a black forehoof scraped thoughtfully across the ground.
Draco felt Potter tense, ready to attack. Luckily, though, he didn’t. This was the first stage of many delicate ones, and Draco needed the sentry’s full trust and cooperation. Otherwise, they were unlikely ever to see another centaur beyond this one, much less rescue the Siddons girl or gain the knowledge Draco was after.
“What is time to one who knows the heavens?” he murmured, leaning an elbow on the tree nearest him and offering the sentry a smile.
The heavy human head turned, while the centaur’s ears twitched like a horse’s under his thick dark hair. He must have been startled at Draco’s knowledge of the second level of greetings, which most wizards never reached. “Time may still be much,” he answered. Then he swept into an elaborate bow, one foreleg bending beneath him like a parade mount, his head touching the ground briefly. “My name is Orian.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. Good a sign as the name-gifting was at this point, the bow was not. It usually signified mockery, since centaurs rarely bowed to any but their own leaders. “My name is Draco Malfoy,” he said. “I am, like you, a lover of the stars and a seeker of their truth.”
Orian took a step forwards. Draco wouldn’t have thought it possible that Potter could become tenser, but he could feel it happening behind him.
“But it is not truth that you have come here seeking,” Orian said, his voice descending into an ominous rumble. “And you have not introduced your companion to me. Why is he marked with lightning on his brow?”
Draco felt free to turn his head and look at Potter then. Potter stood in a poised stillness, his attention so perfectly focused on Orian Draco felt a bit left out. His eyes had banked some of their fire, but weren’t the less deadly for that. Draco’s legs trembled under a wash of desire.
“His name is Harry Potter,” he replied. “Forgive me. I did not conceive that he needed an introduction.”
Potter’s head twitched towards him, but only a short distance, despite the incredulity he must have felt at Draco’s pronouncement. He still stood ready to repel an attack from the centaur. Draco let a smile reign in his mind, since it couldn’t touch his face. Good, Potter. Very good.
Orian had drawn himself up with the name, so that he was almost sitting on his haunches. His eyes, a stunning blue, narrowed, and then he snorted. “Much is now explained,” he said. “The coming together of the stars and the lightning…we did not know.” A hint of excitement threaded through his bugle-like tone as he lowered the arrow from the string of his longbow at last. Draco breathed a little more easily. Hopefully, Potter wouldn’t notice. “Come.”
And he whirled and trotted away into the forest, the fallen leaves crackling beneath his hooves like fire, apparently in perfect confidence that they would follow; he never once looked back.
“What was that all about?” Potter whispered, voice soft and shallow. “The coming together of the stars and the lightning?”
“I don’t know,” Draco replied. His skin was on fire, and he had to swallow several times before he could breathe normally. “Nothing bad, or he would have killed us where we stood.” Something I don’t know! This was the closest he had ever been to the deeper centaur secrets.
“That’s comforting,” Potter muttered.
Draco turned to scowl back at him. Potter had somehow contrived to fold his arms and lounge against a tree in the meantime. His eyes raked over Draco’s body as though estimating his strength for a coming contest and finding him wanting, and then traveled up to his face and locked with Draco’s gaze.
The force of their meeting eyes was almost audible. Draco’s chest went tight. He felt energy assaulting him from all sides, striking from the air like miniature arrows and crackling up through the soles of his boots.
“We have to follow Orian right now,” he whispered. “But don’t think this is finished, Potter. We have things to discuss when we leave the forest.”
For just a moment, blank surprise destroyed the challenging look on Potter’s features. But then glory was in his eyes, and he gave Draco a smile of surprising sweetness. “You’re on.”
Draco smiled back, drinking in the way Potter’s eyes shone and his hair lay—or didn’t lie—on his head, and then turned to follow the centaur.
*
Harry had never thought in detail about what the centaurs did in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. If asked, he would have said, “Er. Gallop about? Look at the stars? Brood on the wrongs wizards have done them? Shoot intruders?”
He wasn’t the world’s most eloquent speaker.
But he doubted that descriptions would have helped him understand. He could barely understand what his eyes were telling him as Orian led them past a guardian ring of trees and into the middle of a vast clearing.
Wizards would have used the space to rear a tower. Muggles, from what Harry understood of their building practices, would have cut down the trees first, smoothed the slight hillocks from the ground, and turned the entire thing into a scraped place of cement and steel.
The centaurs curved.
Half-circles of strangely flattened oak and birch, beech and pine, extended around parts of the clearing’s edges, always positioned so that they left as much open space as possible and even seemed to enhance what was already there. When Harry peered closely at the wooden “walls,” he realized that they were still living trees, with roots sunk deep in the earth and ragged remnants of leaves fluttering along the edges.
From the tops of the walls and into the air extended long, twisting ramps that turned back on themselves like the figures in a dizzying Muggle painting Hermione and Ron had in their drawing room; Harry’s eyes always crossed trying to look at it. Some of the ramps were wood, some stone, but none were supported by anything. On them, centaurs walked calmly along, or galloped—but sideways and upside-down as often as upright. Harry watched a chestnut centaur with strong features rush along a “normal” section of the pathway, then turn perpendicular to the ground and go on trotting as before. He shook his head, dizzy.
The centerpiece, or centerpieces, of the ramps were a series of large wooden balls with doors in their sides, dodging and looping and floating around the ramps. Harry could make out two very small ones, which looked barely large enough for a single centaur to pass inside without ducking; three that seemed of medium size; and four mighty ones that cast shadows over the clearing as they zoomed past. The number alone would have told him the truth, but there were gleaming parti-colored rings around one of the large ones, just for confirmation. The centaurs had constructed models of the planets and lived inside them.
“What keeps them up?” he asked, barely able to force the question past numb lips.
A laugh startled him. He looked at Malfoy to find him with his head tossed back, his eyes fastened hungrily on the revolving wooden models.
Harry stared, captivated again. Malfoy with amusement on his features had been no great sight in school; the sneer of sardonic laughter was not much different from the sneer of vindictiveness. But this was a genuine half-smile, and the glow in his eyes spoke more of wonder and delight than spite at someone else’s expense. And then Malfoy turned that smile on him, and Harry would have stumbled if he hadn’t been a trained Auror with both feet planted quite sturdily.
“It’s centaur magic,” Malfoy whispered intensely. “A feat no wizard could duplicate. We can’t make trees grow like that. Not even Herbologists can, because we manipulate them too much.” He nodded at the rounded, rooted trees. “The centaurs persuade. It’s clear to me now. And as for how the ramps and the planets are kept aloft…” He looked up longingly. “That, I still have to learn.”
Harry spent a moment debating how he could get that attention focused back on him, and then he snapped to alert as a centaur paced towards them. He kept his wand in his sleeve, however, and a moment later was glad that he had, as eight centaurs stepped forwards to flank the central figure, all holding longbows or jagged knives.
Harry studied the centaur in the middle. Black hide, for the most part, but vivid red stripes ran down his flanks from the spine, following the curves of the muscles. Harry wondered if that was natural, or perhaps the result of an injury.
Or a wizard’s spell, aimed to stop a charging centaur.
He was taller than the others, his eyes severely gray, his hair brown and shaggy. He halted so close to Harry that all Harry’s instincts stood up and screamed at once, begging for him to draw his wand. Harry ignored those instincts, and instead held still as a hand reached out and pushed his fringe back from his forehead, revealing the lightning bolt scar.
“Yes,” the centaur said, in a voice deep enough Harry could feel it in his bones. “The lightning.” He wheeled lightly on his back hooves—so lightly Harry shuddered, imagining the speed he could probably build up in a run—and faced Malfoy, studying the symbols on his robes. “And the stars.”
Malfoy gave an imperceptible nod. “The girl?” he asked, voice so polite Harry thought absurdly they were at a society tea for a moment, never mind the trees and the hovering wooden ramps and the goddamn centaurs.
“Safe.” The centaur tossed his head as he spoke, and Harry wondered what that meant. Was he lying? At any rate, Harry wasn’t inclined to believe any word about Lydia until he saw her safe with his own eyes.
Malfoy seemed inclined to, though. “Very well,” he said. “What matters the coming of the stars and the lightning? You took Lydia to make us arrive, and arrive together, I suppose.”
How can he know that? Harry tried to scowl over the centaur’s shoulder, to indicate that Malfoy should be sharing any sources of mysterious knowledge with Harry, but Malfoy ignored him serenely, looking the black centaur in the eye all the while. It surprised Harry how much he hated being ignored.
He was just about to make some remark that might be unfortunate but at least would cause Malfoy to look at him, when the black centaur said, “Yes. My name is Magus, and I have been Hogwarts’s Astronomy Professor. Whether I return to my post, and what happens to you, and what knowledge you leave here with, will depend on what you do next. The eternal stars hold all wisdom, but humans do not know them as well as we do, and are often poised to resist their courses.”
“What must we do next?” Malfoy had become a statue again. Harry wasn’t sure whether he liked the look of him that way, too, or whether he wanted to smash the mask to pieces and take Malfoy in his mouth and—
Whoa. Harry blinked such thoughts away. He would have shaken himself violently, but he didn’t think sudden movement was a good idea right now. Where had that come from? Attraction was one thing, but he should have been thinking of kissing, at the most, not sex.
Had he been that hard up?
“Give us your wands,” Magus said.
Harry bared his teeth. At once eight longbows were trained on him. Harry kept still, but noted that baring teeth was apparently a predator signal to centaurs.
“No fucking way,” he settled for saying instead.
“Why should we?” Malfoy still stood with his hands folded in his sleeves and his voice perfectly calm, damn him. “What have the eternal stars decreed for us, that we should endure tests?”
“Three,” Magus said, his hoof scraping in the dirt with a slow, hypnotic pattern. He had leaned forwards to study Malfoy’s face now. Harry wondered irritably what he was looking for. Perhaps centaurs became dazzled from staring at the stars for so long and Magus was just looking for a complementary glaze in Malfoy’s eyes. “One is a test that you will undergo together, a trial of trust in us. The second is for the lightning bolt, a test of courage. The third is for the starlight, a test of moderation.”
Harry could feel himself relaxing, a little. He supposed that wasn’t so unreasonable to demand. The centaurs had shown trust in the wizards by inviting him and Malfoy into their sanctuary, and now they wanted trust in return. And of course courage was something he should have no trouble enduring, and Malfoy looked as though he could teach a glacier lessons in moderation.
If only they didn’t have to surrender their wands.
He glanced at Malfoy, only to find that the other man had apparently been waiting for the eye contact. And once again, as with the moment before they followed Orian, the air stretched tense between them. Malfoy cocked his head and touched his tongue lightly to his lips.
“Trust me, Potter,” he whispered.
Harry shivered. Tremors coursed through him, tremors of worry and caution and excitement so strong he thought he might throw up. This would have been enough of a risk alone, but with the need to rely on a known (past) enemy and without his wand to defend himself—
The risk was so seductive Harry knew he couldn’t say no to it.
“Yes,” he said, so softly he saw Magus turning his head to listen. “I will.” He drew his wand out of his sleeve, ignoring the creaking of the longbows that resulted, and tossed it into the dust at Magus’s hooves. Malfoy’s followed a moment later.
Magus nodded, and came as close as Harry had ever seen a centaur come to smiling. He scooped up the wands in one smooth movement. Harry couldn’t keep his gaze from following them, but they were hidden from sight in a braided leather belt hanging on the centaur’s waist.
“Bring them,” Magus commanded.
Half his guard came forwards to lead Harry and Draco away. Harry swayed, caught between striking out and surrendering, and only gave in to surrender by the nearest of margins. If this was dangerous, trying to fight without a wand after he had given his word not to was even more so.
But though death sang like a siren, he did want to see what would happen. So he went limp and allowed himself to be dragged.
Part 3.
Harry took a deep breath the moment he stepped out of the Apparition. Even though they were still some distance beyond the gates of Hogwarts, thanks to the spells that prevented Apparition inside the school, he thought he could taste a distinct difference in the air. It smelled like sweat here, spent effort and strength and rich soil and butterbeer and home.
Malfoy pushed past him, his nose in the air, a bored expression on his face, as though he held nothing sacred, not even the years he’d spent inside the school, which were probably still the best ones of his life. Harry scowled and gave chase. Malfoy moved unexpectedly fast for an astronomer, though. Harry had to admit, grudgingly, that perhaps he wouldn’t have to worry about the prat fussing over his robes after all.
Of course, Harry would rather that the question never arose. But he couldn’t just Body-Bind Malfoy and leave him in a secluded place, the way he’d done to Ron and numerous other Aurors. This case was political. And maybe Malfoy did have some extra standing in the eyes of the centaurs that would mean the difference between negotiating with them and fighting with them.
Persuasion it is, then.
“You know, Malfoy,” he called after the rapidly striding bloke in front of him, “you don’t have to do this.”
Harry had to stop quickly when Malfoy halted on his heels and spun around. The man glared at him, a tint of color to that alabaster face now. Harry found himself on the verge of a stupidly giddy grin at the reaction. He suppressed it.
But, damn it, Malfoy got his blood moving in more ways than one. It was good to see that his own teasing and pushing and pressure had some kind of effect.
“What do you mean, Potter?” Malfoy enunciated carefully. “You were the one who told me—who took care to tell me—that we had a little girl to save, and that you would tolerate no interference in that mission. Isn’t this interference? What will you do to punish yourself?”
Harry shrugged. “Nothing. My boss takes care of that well enough.” He grinned at the slight, intrigued lift of Malfoy’s eyebrow, which Malfoy didn’t manage to hold back in time. “And I’m telling you that there’s a way for you to help but not enter the Forest. You’ll still get full credit for having done your part, I promise.”
Those unusually gray eyes gave a blink. Harry found himself edging closer, wanting to make sure of the emotions and the light in them. He experienced a brief moment of startlement, then shrugged. I was standing too far away, he justified himself.
“Why would you—“ Malfoy shook his head, seeming to have decided that his tone was too soft, and adopted a harsher one. “Why would you assume I’d come all the way to Hogwarts only to refrain from entering the Forest? Gathering knowledge is part of my purpose here, Potter. And to do that, I have to talk to the centaurs.”
“I’ll let you put recording spells on me, so that I can carry back their words to you,” Harry promised, breathing more easily as he realized Malfoy had a modicum of reason. He’d worked with people who didn’t. Body-Binds were the only recourse there. “You can transfer your knowledge to me via a Pensieve—“
“You have a Pensieve?”
“Of course.” Harry pulled it, shrunken, from his robe pocket to prove this. “As I said, you can transfer your knowledge to me that way, and I’ll know the right questions to ask. In the meantime, you get all the leisure and none of the work.” He glanced at the purple-and-silver robes. “And you don’t need to damage your clothes, either.” He smiled at Malfoy. “What do you say?”
Malfoy was at least considering the offer. He stood with his arms folded, his head tipped forwards. Harry held his breath and hoped.
*
Draco was thinking that he had underestimated the thread of suicidal recklessness in Potter. The love of danger was there, all right, but so was, apparently, an intense distaste for working with anyone else. Draco had assumed Potter would be the one to urge cooperation on him, believing in noble Gryffindor virtues as he did. He’d been hoodwinked by his own expectations.
Well. No more.
He lifted his head. Potter’s eyes fired with expectation. Draco felt another powerful stirring of interest. He had never met someone so vividly alive.
Well, correction—nothing human. Some of the more intelligent fairies had Potter’s restlessness, but worse brains even than he did. And unicorns were filled with the same half-nervous energy, but even unicorns relaxed sometimes. Potter never did. Trying to stand still and not jig up and down like a small child needing to use the loo, he still radiated more engagement with life than any seven of Draco’s colleagues.
Of course, the answer to his query was always going to be the same. Draco wanted the knowledge the centaurs possessed, and he didn’t trust Potter to represent it to him correctly with all the Pensieve memories and recording spells in the world. Pensieve memories couldn’t tell you the correct questions to ask.
Now there was an extra reason to go along, though. Draco wanted to see that energy at close quarters, touch it and behold it, for the same reason that he yearned to run his hand down a unicorn’s silken mane.
“No,” he said.
Potter reeled back a pace, the disappointment on his face so acute Draco’s breathing quickened. Potter shook his head and snapped to the attack a moment later, though. “Why not? You must see that there are all sorts of advantages to it, especially for you. We both get what we want this way, and we’re not forced to work together.”
“Not true,” Draco said. “I wouldn’t understand the centaur assumptions about astronomy, the patterns they see, any better than I do now. No, Potter,” he said, to check the interruption he knew was coming, “I really wouldn’t. And I’m less anxious to avoid work than you give me credit for.”
He moved a step closer and dropped his voice. Potter naturally leaned in to hear him; Draco’s throat tightened with satisfaction. “Besides,” he whispered harshly, “you have not the slightest idea of how to survive in centaur territory, what the regulations and rules and laws are. I’m not all that sure of them myself, and I’ve been in regular contact with centaurs for five years. You’d die.”
Potter rolled his eyes.
“You don’t care about that?” It was time to find out just how far Potter’s blithe disregard for his own life ran. Draco found it fascinating, but that didn’t mean he’d let it endanger him.
Potter shrugged, open-handed. “Everyone’s got to die sometime, right?” he said, speaking as if he’d memorized a speech on the matter. “I’ve survived so far. I can survive this, I’m fairly certain. And at least, if I don’t, I’ll die free.” The depth of passion behind that word told Draco what part of the problem was: Potter had decided partners were a burden he didn’t want to bear. “I’m the only one who’s affected. No one else is put in danger.”
“Except Lydia Siddons, in this case,” Draco said.
Potter blinked. “I—“ He stared at the ground, then sighed. “I hate kidnappings,” he commented, randomly.
“Because you have to work on them with partners?”
Potter scowled up at him from beneath tightened eyebrows. “Yeah.”
Draco smiled, because it was impossible not to. “I’m not best pleased to be away from my tower so long either, Potter, nor walking among people who might have killed an innocent student and won’t hesitate to attack an adult wizard.” He couldn’t say that he resented accompanying Potter with any degree of truth, anymore. “But we do need to work on this together. Get yourself resigned to a partner on this occasion. Trust me,” he added, and flavored his voice with suggestion because the impulse was too strong to resist. “I can be very good company.”
He turned to make his way towards the Forest instead of watching Potter’s pupils dilate or his face turn red. Fun as this was, they had knowledge to gather, and a girl to save, if she was still alive.
*
Harry shook his head several times as they worked their way further and further into the Forbidden Forest, though he knew he should be paying more attention to the shadows under trees or the odd way that the leaves moved on the branches, not always with the wind. He couldn’t deny the possibility chasing itself through his mind, however. Each time he tried, it rose like a revenant.
With Draco Malfoy? Really? Are you mad?
Well, according to the majority of his colleagues, there was no doubt of that.
Harry’s gaze went back to Malfoy’s figure forging gracefully ahead of him, displaying a remarkable indifference as to whether his robes were tattered or not. Presumably he had others. His hair seemed to have lightened with his sun-avoiding skin, to the point that it sent out starry gleams into the darkness of the Forest. His hands, which appeared beyond his sleeves to push back the branches and pick leaves out of his hair, were slender, but not weak, Harry thought. This was a different kind of strength, one Harry hadn’t seen in the Aurors or Quidditch players or random shop-clerks he’d tried to date. The lithe, continually twisting strength of a…
Harry smirked to himself. A weasel. Or a ferret.
But still. Malfoy was physically intoxicating. And since Harry had never felt that way about anyone for more than a few brief moments at a time, while this had endured for about ten minutes now, he knew there was something wrong—with him, assuredly—and this could be dangerous.
He shook his head and wrenched his mind back to the job with a snap. Malfoy hadn’t lied when he said it might kill Harry.
At that thought, warmth flooded through his veins. He knew Ron and Hermione thought he was mad, yes, and so did the majority of the people who’d worked with him. Beauchamp thought the same, but put up with Harry acting like a bull in a china shop for the sake of its getting results.
But Harry thought he valued his life more than they did. How could anyone say he really valued his life unless he knew what it was like to be in danger of losing it?
Malfoy halted abruptly and lifted one hand. Harry was lost in admiration of the color of his skin against the red and gold leaves for a moment, even as his body responded to the command and froze without thought.
You, he told himself, when he’d caught his breath again, have a serious problem.
He cast a spell that should allow his voice to travel to Malfoy’s ears without any telltale hiss of whispering. “Centaurs?” he asked.
Malfoy’s head jerked a little in surprise, but he didn’t let it overset him or make any extra noise. Harry’s warmth towards the other man increased, and he promptly rolled his eyes. I think I was happier when I didn’t have a sex drive.
“An outrunner,” Malfoy breathed back. “They usually have at least nine sentries around their camps.”
Harry frowned. Malfoy’s voice had dropped into an odd emphasis on “nine” that he probably wasn’t even aware of. “For the nine planets?”
Again the jerk of the head, but this time Malfoy turned enough to let Harry see the widening of his eyes. “Very good,” he said.
Harry quashed the impulse to preen. They were here on a job. He nodded imperceptibly, as much to say that, yes, he was very good, and Malfoy had just better get used to it. “What angles are they arranged at? Can you tell if this is the first we’ve encountered, or if we might have passed others without noticing?”
Malfoy frowned. “This is the outermost, I’m sure—the one representing Mercury. He’s staring straight at us.”
Harry felt a stab of disappointment, but reminded himself there really was no way to walk silently in an autumn forest. A wizard could control his own noises, but not the noises of the birds who saw him coming, or the danger that a ripple of silence in the forest would signal to other creatures. Besides, this had never been about sneaking into the centaur camp, or home, or meadow, or whatever it was they had, and stealing Lydia back. They needed to negotiate. That was why Malfoy was along.
Harry was of the opinion that negotiations would fail and Harry himself would have to go in and rescue Lydia, because that was what always happened. But he would at least let Malfoy try.
“Do you know the ritual greeting?” he asked.
“Of course,” Malfoy said, and moved forwards. Harry followed, unable to restrain a grin. If his other partners had just been competent, he might have been able to work with them, too.
*
Draco was startlingly aware of Potter at his back, in a way he hadn’t ever been aware of anything except the stars. Or, no, wait, that wasn’t true, was it? He’d always been aware of Potter like that during Quidditch games, and when the Gryffindor was angry and snarling at him across the Great Hall.
The wine of near-arousal coiling throughout his body heightened his senses, and he saw the centaur sentry before he fired a warning arrow. That was very, very unusual. Draco didn’t let Potter know how unusual. The outermost sentries were usually bays or sorrels, which stood a better chance of blending with the colors of the forest, and they were skilled in choosing the best positions to stay unseen.
“The stars shine even in the midst of the day,” he called.
The sentry considered them for long moments. Draco didn’t stop moving towards him. If he hadn’t fired yet, he wasn’t going to.
Of course, they might still get an arrow from the Venus sentry, or the Earth one. Centaurs were bastards like that.
“And the sun shines on the other side of the world during the night,” said the sentry at last. He was a handsome bay, with a long black tail that Draco would have welcomed hairs from if he still regularly brewed potions. His chest was massive, as with all centaurs, and bronzed from long hours in the sun. His hands kept his longbow bent and nocked without effort. As he watched them, a black forehoof scraped thoughtfully across the ground.
Draco felt Potter tense, ready to attack. Luckily, though, he didn’t. This was the first stage of many delicate ones, and Draco needed the sentry’s full trust and cooperation. Otherwise, they were unlikely ever to see another centaur beyond this one, much less rescue the Siddons girl or gain the knowledge Draco was after.
“What is time to one who knows the heavens?” he murmured, leaning an elbow on the tree nearest him and offering the sentry a smile.
The heavy human head turned, while the centaur’s ears twitched like a horse’s under his thick dark hair. He must have been startled at Draco’s knowledge of the second level of greetings, which most wizards never reached. “Time may still be much,” he answered. Then he swept into an elaborate bow, one foreleg bending beneath him like a parade mount, his head touching the ground briefly. “My name is Orian.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. Good a sign as the name-gifting was at this point, the bow was not. It usually signified mockery, since centaurs rarely bowed to any but their own leaders. “My name is Draco Malfoy,” he said. “I am, like you, a lover of the stars and a seeker of their truth.”
Orian took a step forwards. Draco wouldn’t have thought it possible that Potter could become tenser, but he could feel it happening behind him.
“But it is not truth that you have come here seeking,” Orian said, his voice descending into an ominous rumble. “And you have not introduced your companion to me. Why is he marked with lightning on his brow?”
Draco felt free to turn his head and look at Potter then. Potter stood in a poised stillness, his attention so perfectly focused on Orian Draco felt a bit left out. His eyes had banked some of their fire, but weren’t the less deadly for that. Draco’s legs trembled under a wash of desire.
“His name is Harry Potter,” he replied. “Forgive me. I did not conceive that he needed an introduction.”
Potter’s head twitched towards him, but only a short distance, despite the incredulity he must have felt at Draco’s pronouncement. He still stood ready to repel an attack from the centaur. Draco let a smile reign in his mind, since it couldn’t touch his face. Good, Potter. Very good.
Orian had drawn himself up with the name, so that he was almost sitting on his haunches. His eyes, a stunning blue, narrowed, and then he snorted. “Much is now explained,” he said. “The coming together of the stars and the lightning…we did not know.” A hint of excitement threaded through his bugle-like tone as he lowered the arrow from the string of his longbow at last. Draco breathed a little more easily. Hopefully, Potter wouldn’t notice. “Come.”
And he whirled and trotted away into the forest, the fallen leaves crackling beneath his hooves like fire, apparently in perfect confidence that they would follow; he never once looked back.
“What was that all about?” Potter whispered, voice soft and shallow. “The coming together of the stars and the lightning?”
“I don’t know,” Draco replied. His skin was on fire, and he had to swallow several times before he could breathe normally. “Nothing bad, or he would have killed us where we stood.” Something I don’t know! This was the closest he had ever been to the deeper centaur secrets.
“That’s comforting,” Potter muttered.
Draco turned to scowl back at him. Potter had somehow contrived to fold his arms and lounge against a tree in the meantime. His eyes raked over Draco’s body as though estimating his strength for a coming contest and finding him wanting, and then traveled up to his face and locked with Draco’s gaze.
The force of their meeting eyes was almost audible. Draco’s chest went tight. He felt energy assaulting him from all sides, striking from the air like miniature arrows and crackling up through the soles of his boots.
“We have to follow Orian right now,” he whispered. “But don’t think this is finished, Potter. We have things to discuss when we leave the forest.”
For just a moment, blank surprise destroyed the challenging look on Potter’s features. But then glory was in his eyes, and he gave Draco a smile of surprising sweetness. “You’re on.”
Draco smiled back, drinking in the way Potter’s eyes shone and his hair lay—or didn’t lie—on his head, and then turned to follow the centaur.
*
Harry had never thought in detail about what the centaurs did in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. If asked, he would have said, “Er. Gallop about? Look at the stars? Brood on the wrongs wizards have done them? Shoot intruders?”
He wasn’t the world’s most eloquent speaker.
But he doubted that descriptions would have helped him understand. He could barely understand what his eyes were telling him as Orian led them past a guardian ring of trees and into the middle of a vast clearing.
Wizards would have used the space to rear a tower. Muggles, from what Harry understood of their building practices, would have cut down the trees first, smoothed the slight hillocks from the ground, and turned the entire thing into a scraped place of cement and steel.
The centaurs curved.
Half-circles of strangely flattened oak and birch, beech and pine, extended around parts of the clearing’s edges, always positioned so that they left as much open space as possible and even seemed to enhance what was already there. When Harry peered closely at the wooden “walls,” he realized that they were still living trees, with roots sunk deep in the earth and ragged remnants of leaves fluttering along the edges.
From the tops of the walls and into the air extended long, twisting ramps that turned back on themselves like the figures in a dizzying Muggle painting Hermione and Ron had in their drawing room; Harry’s eyes always crossed trying to look at it. Some of the ramps were wood, some stone, but none were supported by anything. On them, centaurs walked calmly along, or galloped—but sideways and upside-down as often as upright. Harry watched a chestnut centaur with strong features rush along a “normal” section of the pathway, then turn perpendicular to the ground and go on trotting as before. He shook his head, dizzy.
The centerpiece, or centerpieces, of the ramps were a series of large wooden balls with doors in their sides, dodging and looping and floating around the ramps. Harry could make out two very small ones, which looked barely large enough for a single centaur to pass inside without ducking; three that seemed of medium size; and four mighty ones that cast shadows over the clearing as they zoomed past. The number alone would have told him the truth, but there were gleaming parti-colored rings around one of the large ones, just for confirmation. The centaurs had constructed models of the planets and lived inside them.
“What keeps them up?” he asked, barely able to force the question past numb lips.
A laugh startled him. He looked at Malfoy to find him with his head tossed back, his eyes fastened hungrily on the revolving wooden models.
Harry stared, captivated again. Malfoy with amusement on his features had been no great sight in school; the sneer of sardonic laughter was not much different from the sneer of vindictiveness. But this was a genuine half-smile, and the glow in his eyes spoke more of wonder and delight than spite at someone else’s expense. And then Malfoy turned that smile on him, and Harry would have stumbled if he hadn’t been a trained Auror with both feet planted quite sturdily.
“It’s centaur magic,” Malfoy whispered intensely. “A feat no wizard could duplicate. We can’t make trees grow like that. Not even Herbologists can, because we manipulate them too much.” He nodded at the rounded, rooted trees. “The centaurs persuade. It’s clear to me now. And as for how the ramps and the planets are kept aloft…” He looked up longingly. “That, I still have to learn.”
Harry spent a moment debating how he could get that attention focused back on him, and then he snapped to alert as a centaur paced towards them. He kept his wand in his sleeve, however, and a moment later was glad that he had, as eight centaurs stepped forwards to flank the central figure, all holding longbows or jagged knives.
Harry studied the centaur in the middle. Black hide, for the most part, but vivid red stripes ran down his flanks from the spine, following the curves of the muscles. Harry wondered if that was natural, or perhaps the result of an injury.
Or a wizard’s spell, aimed to stop a charging centaur.
He was taller than the others, his eyes severely gray, his hair brown and shaggy. He halted so close to Harry that all Harry’s instincts stood up and screamed at once, begging for him to draw his wand. Harry ignored those instincts, and instead held still as a hand reached out and pushed his fringe back from his forehead, revealing the lightning bolt scar.
“Yes,” the centaur said, in a voice deep enough Harry could feel it in his bones. “The lightning.” He wheeled lightly on his back hooves—so lightly Harry shuddered, imagining the speed he could probably build up in a run—and faced Malfoy, studying the symbols on his robes. “And the stars.”
Malfoy gave an imperceptible nod. “The girl?” he asked, voice so polite Harry thought absurdly they were at a society tea for a moment, never mind the trees and the hovering wooden ramps and the goddamn centaurs.
“Safe.” The centaur tossed his head as he spoke, and Harry wondered what that meant. Was he lying? At any rate, Harry wasn’t inclined to believe any word about Lydia until he saw her safe with his own eyes.
Malfoy seemed inclined to, though. “Very well,” he said. “What matters the coming of the stars and the lightning? You took Lydia to make us arrive, and arrive together, I suppose.”
How can he know that? Harry tried to scowl over the centaur’s shoulder, to indicate that Malfoy should be sharing any sources of mysterious knowledge with Harry, but Malfoy ignored him serenely, looking the black centaur in the eye all the while. It surprised Harry how much he hated being ignored.
He was just about to make some remark that might be unfortunate but at least would cause Malfoy to look at him, when the black centaur said, “Yes. My name is Magus, and I have been Hogwarts’s Astronomy Professor. Whether I return to my post, and what happens to you, and what knowledge you leave here with, will depend on what you do next. The eternal stars hold all wisdom, but humans do not know them as well as we do, and are often poised to resist their courses.”
“What must we do next?” Malfoy had become a statue again. Harry wasn’t sure whether he liked the look of him that way, too, or whether he wanted to smash the mask to pieces and take Malfoy in his mouth and—
Whoa. Harry blinked such thoughts away. He would have shaken himself violently, but he didn’t think sudden movement was a good idea right now. Where had that come from? Attraction was one thing, but he should have been thinking of kissing, at the most, not sex.
Had he been that hard up?
“Give us your wands,” Magus said.
Harry bared his teeth. At once eight longbows were trained on him. Harry kept still, but noted that baring teeth was apparently a predator signal to centaurs.
“No fucking way,” he settled for saying instead.
“Why should we?” Malfoy still stood with his hands folded in his sleeves and his voice perfectly calm, damn him. “What have the eternal stars decreed for us, that we should endure tests?”
“Three,” Magus said, his hoof scraping in the dirt with a slow, hypnotic pattern. He had leaned forwards to study Malfoy’s face now. Harry wondered irritably what he was looking for. Perhaps centaurs became dazzled from staring at the stars for so long and Magus was just looking for a complementary glaze in Malfoy’s eyes. “One is a test that you will undergo together, a trial of trust in us. The second is for the lightning bolt, a test of courage. The third is for the starlight, a test of moderation.”
Harry could feel himself relaxing, a little. He supposed that wasn’t so unreasonable to demand. The centaurs had shown trust in the wizards by inviting him and Malfoy into their sanctuary, and now they wanted trust in return. And of course courage was something he should have no trouble enduring, and Malfoy looked as though he could teach a glacier lessons in moderation.
If only they didn’t have to surrender their wands.
He glanced at Malfoy, only to find that the other man had apparently been waiting for the eye contact. And once again, as with the moment before they followed Orian, the air stretched tense between them. Malfoy cocked his head and touched his tongue lightly to his lips.
“Trust me, Potter,” he whispered.
Harry shivered. Tremors coursed through him, tremors of worry and caution and excitement so strong he thought he might throw up. This would have been enough of a risk alone, but with the need to rely on a known (past) enemy and without his wand to defend himself—
The risk was so seductive Harry knew he couldn’t say no to it.
“Yes,” he said, so softly he saw Magus turning his head to listen. “I will.” He drew his wand out of his sleeve, ignoring the creaking of the longbows that resulted, and tossed it into the dust at Magus’s hooves. Malfoy’s followed a moment later.
Magus nodded, and came as close as Harry had ever seen a centaur come to smiling. He scooped up the wands in one smooth movement. Harry couldn’t keep his gaze from following them, but they were hidden from sight in a braided leather belt hanging on the centaur’s waist.
“Bring them,” Magus commanded.
Half his guard came forwards to lead Harry and Draco away. Harry swayed, caught between striking out and surrendering, and only gave in to surrender by the nearest of margins. If this was dangerous, trying to fight without a wand after he had given his word not to was even more so.
But though death sang like a siren, he did want to see what would happen. So he went limp and allowed himself to be dragged.
Part 3.
