Chapter Thirty of 'Changing of the Guard'- Revolution in the Wind

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty—Revolution in the Wind

“Shacklebolt knows that you’re not as weak as you pretend, Harry.” Draco’s voice was soft and relentless, even though part of the sound of the words was muffled as he raised his teacup to his lips. “Do you know how he might have found out? And what the consequences will be of his knowing it? And if you’re such great friends, why wouldn’t he have contacted you about your possible presence at that meeting?”

Harry stared into the fire Kreacher had lit for them in the study, and said nothing for long moments. This wasn’t a room he inhabited often; the spirit of the old Black family was stronger here than anywhere else in the house, with the scars of spells on the walls and furniture, and a chill even in the hearth that seemed to come from lingering Dark curses. But Draco had asked to come here.

Draco had told him about his meeting with Kingsley, and what the Minister had revealed during it. Harry found himself relieved that at least Kingsley was only guessing about his presence at the meeting. There had been powerful magic, so Harry Potter must have been there. It was little enough to go on, and nothing that would convince either the Wizengamot or many people in the Ministry.

If only because so many people would find it unthinkable that their hero was gay, said the merciless voice. How long have you relied on that protection, that you’re living the life they all thought you would, even if you didn’t get married and have children? How much longer will you rely on it? Don’t you get tired of lying to everyone by omission, even when you’re not playing a persona?

Harry pressed his lips together. He had come to terms with his pretense of weakness, and its likely consequences, long ago. He would not be ashamed of it. And he was not ashamed of the secret of Metamorphosis either, he told himself, only determined to protect it. It was difficult to explain, after all.

You promised Draco that you would stand by his side as yourself. The merciless voice chuckled in his head like a dragon catching a thief in its hoard. You’re heading towards the point at which you’ll need to explore those consequences, anyway.

Harry thrust the thought away. Yes, he was, but at the moment, they had more important things to consider.

“The last time I saw Kingsley was three months ago, at a private dinner for several friends of the Weasley family,” he said quietly. “I thought then that he looked at me a little strangely, but I didn’t connect it to any suspicions of my magic.

“Kingsley was an Auror. It’s possible that he can recognize the relative strength of magic, though not individual magical signatures, when he’s in close contact with someone. It’s one of those things Aurors are supposed to learn but which not many of them actually do.”

“I’m sure Weasley hasn’t,” said Draco, and Harry flinched under the lash of the contempt in his voice. Then he sighed. And Ron despises him, and has told me so. I won’t make them reconcile by scolding Draco.

“So I can’t answer the question about how he started suspecting me for certain, but I think it’s been that way for some time.” Harry leaned back on the couch, stretching his arms above his head. He felt oddly weary, as though someone had beaten him with sticks. Perhaps it came from the lack of sleep last night, perhaps from everything that had happened today. “But I think I can answer the question of why he’s never confronted me about it. Kingsley was—very gentle with me after the war. He seemed sure that it had cost me in evil memories and nightmares, that part of me died with the dead.”

“Was he wrong?”

Harry shot Draco a swift glance, but found his face at its most unreadable: lips and nostrils both shut, eyebrows flat and smooth, eyes shuttered. Harry tried not to feel resentment as he murmured, “Not completely. But I didn’t suffer as much as he thought I did. I—encouraged him to think I did because it was nice to be around someone who didn’t assume I was a resilient hero every day and every minute.”

Draco nodded. Harry wondered uneasily if that was a nod of true understanding, or if Draco had added another incident when Harry lied to his private catalogue of such incidents.

And why would you care, if you are utterly blameless and everything you do justifiable? the merciless voice whispered to him, and laughed the dragon-laugh again.

“So ever since then, Kingsley has been very reluctant to approach me about anything at all that’s hurtful,” Harry said. “He didn’t even accuse me when someone murdered two of the last Death Eaters before they went to trial a year after the war, although it was someone with powerful magic. He kept the press away from me as much as he could.” Harry half-closed his eyes, and forced himself to think only of the time he was talking about and not about all the other happenings of that horrid year. “He’d prefer to find out about something like my presence at the meeting secondhand, if he was forced to notice it at all.”

“He may be forced to.”

Harry nodded. “In any case, I don’t think he would permit the kinds of Dark curses those Aurors involved in the raid were trying to use.” He opened his eyes and returned to another, major point of the conversation with some relief. “So there are at least two parties involved in this. The existence of the raid couldn’t be kept from Kingsley, but I’m sure the informant behind it and the real purpose was.”

“Even though he doesn’t like homosexuality?” Draco balanced the cup of tea in the palm of his hand and gazed steadily at Harry.

“Even then. He hates Death Eaters and anyone associated with them, and yet he was polite to you, wasn’t he?” Harry waited for Draco to nod. “He has abstract standards of justice. He has to treat criminals well even if he’d like to see them dead as a private citizen. And he would treat people fomenting revolution well even if he felt nothing but disgust for their cause. That may be one reason he’s trying so desperately to find out more about this, in fact, so that worse doesn’t happen.”

Draco inclined his head. His face was still closed, but his nostrils were quivering now, and his eyes had a light moving back and forth in them, comforting Harry. He was interested in the subject they were discussing and actively trying to create strategies for dealing with it, at least. “And you said that you’d owled Nusante and others in his group about the next meeting?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Only Nusante knows where the meeting will actually be held, and he has the wrong Apparition coordinates; I’m having him show up in an isolated area of Diagon Alley instead, and I’ll meet him there to escort him here.”

“In what disguise?”

Harry gave him a smile, wondering if he had imagined the touch of jealousy in Draco’s voice. “It depends,” he said. “I might as well use the Longbottom one, since he’s already associated with the cause because he came to your rescue. Or I could use the Brian one. But that might imply that you’re involved more closely than you want to be.”

“I’m going to be involved no matter what,” Draco said. His voice was calm, but his eyes glittered. “And I want to show everyone what I can do, now that Lucius is no longer holding me back.”

Harry cocked his head to the side. He wanted to ask a question, but he didn’t know if Draco wanted to answer it.

Ask it, the merciless voice commanded. Draco is not so weak as to do something that would compromise him merely to earn your favor.

“Do say whatever you’re meditating on, Harry, and stop circling around the fact like a curious puppy,” Draco said, his voice warm again and his eyes open and filled with light.

Harry flushed, but complied. When both the merciless voice and Draco agreed on something, it seemed like a good idea. “Would you have joined yourself to a revolution like this normally? I mean, if you had got free of Lucius and then Nusante contacted you and asked for your help because you were publicly gay...would you have thought it was worth the risk? I know you can sleep with women, too. Does that make this cause less urgent for you?”

Draco smiled slightly and stared into the fire for long moments. Then he said, “I find it hard to answer this question, because my plan for winning free of Lucius has included a stranger from Metamorphosis for months now. And my life has changed so much in the last few weeks that I find it very hard to imagine it without you.”

Harry shuddered all over, but it was the good kind of shudder, the one that might come from someone brushing his cheek with light fingertips.

“But no, I don’t think I would have associated myself with this revolution so openly,” Draco continued. He sat back and tilted the cup of tea—still balanced in the middle of the palm—until it reached his lips. “Contributed money, yes. Perhaps provided legal help if there was real danger of someone being sent to Azkaban. But not attended the meetings or stood by anyone’s side. And it’s more than the fact that I can sleep with women, too, if I choose to. I don’t see myself as part of the group Nusante wants to represent. Even though I am, if you define it in the broadest terms.”

Harry nodded. “So. Do you want me to wear the Brian disguise, or the Longbottom one?”

“On the one hand, anything that infuriates my father further whilst building my public reputation with other factions of society is a good thing,” Draco said. “On the other, I want you to attend in a different guise altogether.”

Harry slightly narrowed his eyes. “Even though I’ll have to talk swiftly to convince Nusante why I know where this house is?”

Draco’s eyes slipped shut, and he hummed. “If there’s one thing you’re much better at than I ever thought you could be, Harry, it’s talking swiftly.”

That was true, Harry admitted reluctantly to himself. And there was a part of him that really did want to show off his personas to Draco, to see Draco looking at him with fascination and awe. What else did he have that could keep Draco’s interest and attention?

It would take too much time to list them all, said the merciless voice.

But the merciless voice was only a persona, after all, if a clever and persistent one. Harry knew he had personas who would fit the occasion. His desires and Draco’s coincided enough that it was no problem to nod and say, “I’ll do it. Meanwhile, I’ll have watchers at the locations where the other owls said the meeting would be. If Aurors show up at one of them, we’ll have a good idea of where the leak started.”

“And of course you’ll have Nusante Floo those people from this house and invite them here if they’re home, without enough warning to contact Aurors,” Draco said.

Harry smiled and found himself relaxing. It took him a moment to realize why. It was a relief, in many ways, to have someone with him who did not require endless explanations to follow every movement.

“And what will you do in the meantime?” he asked Draco.

“Meet with my friends,” Draco said, rising to his feet. Harry loved to watch him in motion. He walked and sat and stood still with practiced grace, but the practice had lasted all his life, and so the grace had become part of him, in the way his dancing was, not an artificiality or a superficiality.

He tells some of the truth about himself with his body, the merciless voice said. As you do not.

Harry ignored the objection, because he didn’t think it was an interesting one. If he did not lie with his body, Metamorphosis would not have lasted as long as it had. “And try to persuade them to your point of view?” he asked.

“Yes.” Draco turned to look at him. “Blaise won’t be difficult. Pansy, a little more so. And I’ll expand the circle of my influence outwards. There are even some of my investors who owe me favors and may be interested.”

“How influential can they be?” Harry asked. He hadn’t paid much attention to that part of pure-blood life that dealt strictly with business, which was one reason he hadn’t heard of Malfoy’s Machineries before he met with Draco. He knew enough to keep from embarrassing himself in conversation, and that was all he needed. His battlefields were usually the drawing room and the dance floor.

And sometimes the bedroom, said the merciless voice. Though no more, unless it’s with Draco.

“Not influential in the way you’re probably thinking of, wherein they charge in and stop the Aurors from arresting anyone,” Draco said, his voice dry as Aunt Petunia’s toast. “What they can do is slowly spread around the idea that gay people aren’t all that different from straight people.”

“But that isn’t always true,” said Harry.

Draco rolled his eyes. “I know, but it depends on what people want to believe, doesn’t it? And I think a great many of Nusante’s group will be more like those pure-bloods than otherwise—and more like their children than they realize.” His voice softened, and Harry wondered absently if there was some sort of despair in his eyes that merited that tone. “I know you’ve had bad experiences with people like my parents, Harry, and all those you met when you were pretending to be their sons’ or daughters’ true loves. But I honestly think some of them will change their minds or relax their standards if the other option is losing their children. After all, if they have a threat to hold over our heads—the money and property we stand to inherit—we also have a threat to offer them. If we don’t have children, their precious lines don’t continue. And it’s much easier to refuse to have children than to go through the formal process of disowning.”

Harry smiled in spite of himself. Draco narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“You did speak about yourself as if you were part of Nusante’s group, just now,” Harry said.

“So I did.” Draco gave a little nod. “I do hope that we won’t be keeping count of all the little battles lost and won between us, Harry. That could get tiresome quickly.”

“So it could,” said Harry, and then stepped towards Draco and said something that was his own, though perhaps if he had waited a moment more, the merciless voice would have suggested it. “But I hope we won’t ever lose that edge of tension, either. I like fighting with you, Draco, when it’s a game we can keep playing, and there’s no possibility of an ultimate win or loss.”

Draco stared at him for a long moment. He kept staring as Harry lifted his hands, put them around Draco’s neck and cheeks, and kissed him. Harry made the kiss lighter and gentler than the exploratory one they had shared last night, because he didn’t think he was quite ready to invite the intervention of the magical bond yet. They had to get to know each other outside the bedroom at some point.

Draco drew back at last, and he was smiling, an absent gesture, with only the left side of his mouth lifted. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, I really do have to visit Pansy. Blaise is already there, I’m certain, and with the stories he’s probably told her, I’m sure she’s formed half-a-dozen twisted theories of her own.”

“I’d hate to see what she would do with twisted theories,” Harry said gravely.

Draco shuddered. “I spent most of my fourth year suffering from one of them,” he said, and raised a hand when Harry opened his mouth to ask the question. “Later, Harry. I enjoy talking to you too much.”

Harry was smiling like an idiot when Draco Flooed away, but he thought he might be allowed.

*

“Master Draco Lucius Malfoy,” said Pansy’s house-elf when she opened the door, and bowed stiffly to Draco. “Ritty is happy to see Master Draco Lucius Malfoy.”

Draco kept from rolling his eyes with an effort. This was Pansy’s “subtle” way of letting him know she was annoyed with him. “If you’ll escort me to your mistress, I’d appreciate it, Ritty,” he said, and gave his cloak into the elf’s hands. The elf whisked it away neatly, then turned her back and strode up the stairs that began just inside the door. She managed to convey clear disapproval with the set of her back muscles.

Draco looked around as he climbed. The house Pansy owned had once belonged to a Muggle family, and then to a wizarding family who seemed to have had the idea that they’d hold on to their money long enough to actually live here. They hadn’t, and Pansy had bought the house for a paltry sum of Galleons. But it was a beautiful place, the walls an odd smirched color sandwiched between gray and white, the actual hue shifting depending on whether the enchanted windows showed a rainstorm at the moment or not. Pansy was dramatic.

The staircase spiraled in three tight turns like a unicorn’s horn before it finally came out on the upper floor that Pansy had colonized; she had always believed in leaving the ground floor to the house-elves and “other people who can’t help it.” The corridors were all carpeted with enchanted rose-petals that barely covered the marble, but were luckily also enchanted to warm the feet. The walls themselves held many small alcoves, each containing one of Pansy’s treasures—a statue made in imitation of Memnon that sang with each dawn, a feather from the wing of a phoenix, an umbrella stand made from a mooncalf’s foot—and few doors.

The corridor opened out at the end into a massive room that Draco knew was the reason Pansy had actually chosen the house; she had always envied the enormous room that occupied the back of Malfoy Manor. This one was done in shades of blue, carefully chosen so that they blended subtly into each other, but Draco’s eye never got tired of looking at any particular one. The window looming over them, so large that only courtesy and the lack of a balcony kept Draco from calling it a door, was crafted of glass sheer enough to make it seem as if one were looking through pure air. But pure air had never been that clear, or sparkled now and then with a rainbow chaser to the viewer’s vision, either.

Two stuffed chairs stood alone in the middle of the room, arranged as two points of a triangle; when Draco approached, Pansy waved her wand and conjured the third one, next to Blaise’s chair and opposite hers. Her face was set and white. Draco checked a sigh. He should have visited her before this if he didn’t want a confrontation. Pansy would try to drag every nuance of the truth from him.

Blaise rose to his feet and watched Draco come with an appreciative smile he did nothing to disguise. Draco grinned back. Blaise had changed from the rather nondescript clothes he’d worn in the Ministry earlier; he wore blue robes to match the room now, but studded with enough gold bangles and green patches to make him look like a peacock. Blaise, of course, didn’t care about that. He just liked the clothes, so he wore them, and most of the time he managed to make them look stylish.

There had been a time when Draco was absolutely convinced their relationship would be one for the record books, a romance to last the ages and defy his parents over. It hadn’t worked out that way, but he held that emotion tightly for all of a week, and he still valued Blaise for making him feel like that.

“I see our silent communication is still as good as ever,” said Blaise, and pretended to kiss Draco’s cheek.

Draco dropped into the chair Pansy had conjured for him, deftly avoiding Blaise’s gesture, and raised his eyebrows. “Where else would you go? Your mother might accept you, but then she’d try to steal your hair for Polyjuice and drug you so you’d agree to marry some young witch. And Pansy’s parents would stare at you hotly enough to brand your skin, even if they wouldn’t actually throw you out.” Blaise had done something indiscreet at Pansy’s house the summer after the war ended. Draco had never learned any more details than that it involved three white mice and a number of sticky red lozenges.

Blaise shrugged, looking unrepentant. “It’s not my fault that you’re only thinking in terms of accepted pure-blood households,” he murmured. “From what Pansy has told me in the past half-hour, I do think you’re about to get over that.” And he sat back, hands folded over his stomach, and looked pleased with himself.

“About that.” Pansy folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes were hot and steady, and she was wearing mauve robes. Draco mentally increased the amount of time he’d have to spend pacifying her. The mauve robes only came out when she was deeply threatened and felt like announcing the imminent end of their friendship—thus, about four times a year. “Have you considered what you’re doing, Draco?”

“Of course he has, Pansy,” Blaise said, and tossed back the small glass of wine he held. “He’s throwing all that manky money and that crumbling old manse over for true love. Can’t you see the beauty of that?”

“You don’t know this Brian Montgomery.” Pansy’s voice was very soft. “I’ve done some research, Draco. He’s not real. He exists on a few scattered pieces of paper, and that’s all. At best, he’s some foreigner come to ravish you for his own amusement. At worst, he’s part of a revenge plot.”

Draco checked his sigh. “I can promise you he’s real, Pansy,” he said.

“Yes,” Blaise agreed at once. “Draco’s felt his cock up his arse. How much more real does someone have to be to satisfy you?” He frowned severely at Pansy.

Pansy waved her wand without looking away from Draco. She would have cast a Silencing Charm on Blaise, Draco knew. It was standard for conversations like this. On the other hand, she didn’t usually cast one so early.

She’s worried for me, he realized in astonishment, finally translating the tight lines around her mouth and eyes correctly. Not just angry I didn’t tell her about Harry earlier.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I can tell you he’s real, Pansy. But he’s masked.”

“So it is a revenge plot,” Pansy said. Blaise was waving his wand at his own mouth with resignation; it always took him ten tries or so to get the nonverbal countercharm to work.

“Not unless you want to count it as my revenge plot on Lucius,” said Draco. “He’s a real person. I know who that real person is. I’ve made him promise to step forwards eventually and let other people know he’s dating me.”

Pansy had relaxed a bit. Draco could tell she’d expected neither the answer nor the absolute level of conviction in his voice. “Eventually,” she repeated.

Draco nodded. “I know I can trust him,” he said. “And not just because I’m well on my way to falling in love. His real identity is someone I knew before I met him masked like this. He has the reputation of keeping his word.”

“But Draco,” Pansy whispered, “is this really worth getting disowned? Changing everything we’ve always believed in?”

And Draco heard the pleading behind her question, and knew he would have to pour more of himself into promoting the rebellion than he’d thought.

Harry’s right, he thought wryly. I am part of Nusante’s group, whether I want to be or not. I just hope he realizes the same thing.

“You haven’t believed in what your parents do for a long time, Pansy,” he said quietly. “Neither have I. I’m just the first of us to decide to do something about it. And if we fight hard enough, then I believe we’ll create a world where I can walk with Brian freely, and where you have a better chance of bringing your Muggle into polite society.”

Pansy closed her eyes, as she always did at any mention of her lover she didn’t bring up herself. Blaise had sat up and was staring at Draco. Draco returned his gaze calmly. His heart was beating fast, but he was centered in himself, serene at the bottom.

We are going to do this.

Finally, Pansy opened her eyes and murmured, “Tell me how.”

Chapter 31.