Chapter Thirty-Six of 'Changing of the Guard'- What Can Be Worked With Will

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty-Six—What Can Be Worked With Will

Draco was glancing far more frequently at Harry than Harry, or the people who thought they had Draco’s full attention, would have been pleased to know. Thus he saw Nusante’s arrival, and snatched several glimpses of the conversation he had with Harry, though of course he couldn’t hear the words over the music and the distance that separated them. Harry bowed his head and kept it bowed for a few moments after one of Nusante’s little speeches. Draco hid his sudden agitation with an emphatic nod to the pure-blood witch who was talking to him, an acquaintance of Pansy’s who was discovering, to her amazed delight, that gay and lesbian and bisexual people were much like normal wizards.

But he fixed the remembrance of Harry’s gesture in his mind. He would have something to speak to him about later.

Then he took his next glimpse, and saw his father standing in front of Harry.

The witch he was talking to hadn’t finished her spiel yet. Draco didn’t want to offend her by suddenly departing, however. He took her hand, brushed a light kiss over the knuckles, and winked, which had the effect of making her blush and shut her mouth. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “There’s a confrontation approaching that I’ve relished happening for a long time. My father is meeting my lover.”

“Oh,” the woman said, her eyes widening. “Of course.” She didn’t have any more words, so Draco gave her one more smile and then turned towards the gap in the wards, forcing himself to walk without hurrying.

Draco studied the relative position of Lucius and Harry’s bodies as he came up behind Harry’s shoulder. Harry was leaning forwards, his hand on his wand, not bothering to disguise his eagerness to have Lucius try something. Lucius had drawn his wand now, but he was tapping it idly against his leg. He looked up and nodded when he caught sight of Draco, as if he wanted to prove that he didn’t need to focus on Harry to defeat him.

“I wondered if you would bother to speak to me again,” he said.

Harry didn’t turn around as Draco came to a stop at his shoulder, but his body went tight. Draco slid a hand slowly up the back of his neck, meaning to reassure Harry but not distract him from his focus on his enemy. Harry was the wiser in this confrontation. If something suddenly changed, Harry could react faster.

“I wondered why you would want to, when you disowned me,” said Draco.

Lucius’s face worked, but if there was really emotion beneath the surface of his coldness, its struggle was brief and doomed from the beginning. The longer he watched his father, the more Draco doubted that emotion was real. Instead, Lucius wanted it to seem as if he were affected by Draco’s words.

Hmmm. Draco let his hand fall away from Harry, into a better position for the both of them—for him if he needed to move fast, for Harry in case he was worried about defending the gap through the wards. What does he want?

“I have figured out your plan now.” Lucius’s voice was soft and careful, as if he were picking his way over uncertain ground. Draco held his face motionless. Even his wanting me to think he is cautious is a deception. I’m certain of it. “You wanted me to disown you so that you could have greater freedom away from me.” His eyes flickered once to Harry. “You chose the surest method you could think of. Of course, if you will not reproduce the Malfoy line, I have no reason to choose you as my heir.”

Draco let his silence speak for him. Lucius’s wand was still tapping against his leg. Draco watched it, but it didn’t flick up or sideways into any spellcasting pattern he recognized.

“I am not the man you thought I was,” Lucius whispered, and his eyes glittered like river stones. “I am cleverer, more perceptive.”

Draco just barely restrained himself from nodding with approval. He had been sure Lucius would speak of his love for Draco, which would have made Draco laugh in his face. But this tactic was intelligent, because it ensured that he could talk a little longer.

“I have carefully studied your past love affairs,” said Lucius. “I know you once slept with women, and one does not lose the taste for that. You can still marry and father heirs for the Malfoy line.”

Draco parted his lips in what he was careful to show as a sigh, though not the type of exaggerated one that would have mortally offended Lucius. “And why should I wish to?” he asked. “When such a sexual relationship would constitute an abandonment of my partner?”

“I refer to ability,” said Lucius. “Not willingness. I have known men too perverted by the way they lay with men ever to tolerate a marriage bed. I make only the point that you are not one of them.”

Draco looked his father in the eye and ignored the way Harry was shifting restlessly next to him. He would not let himself be bothered by the word “perverted”; he had heard worse things from Weasley’s mouth, and from some of the people here tonight. “You disowned me,” he said. “You can’t convince me to crawl back to you, and you won’t suddenly make me your son and heir again. You’re too proud.”

Lucius lifted his wand. Draco tensed, but Lucius only drew it gently from his heart to the base of his throat. Draco thought the gesture odd; still, though, it was no motion of a spell he knew, and Lucius’s left eye tended to twitch when he was using a nonverbal incantation. That didn’t happen this time.

“Think on it, Draco,” Lucius said. “You could have back your old life. You could have—“

Harry whirled around and Apparated from between them with such an economy of motion that admiration stunned Draco speechless for a moment. He knew what that meant, of course. There was a large disturbance at some other point in the wards. Lucius’s presence at this one was probably just a distraction.

“You won’t convince me to come back to you,” Draco said. He had not recovered from the sudden shock of Harry’s disappearance, but he didn’t think Lucius could notice that in his voice. He also had no intention of moving or going after Harry. That would leave this gap undefended, and Lucius or his friends could come through. “I chose the course most calculated to irritate you. I gave up the lands and the money that I expected to possess, and I’ll have a life without many of the luxuries I’ve always enjoyed because of that. Do you really think I’ll come back when I was willing to risk that?”

Lucius drew the wand smoothly up over his throat to his brow. He was still holding it oddly, but Draco thought now that was only for dramatic effect. His father could become quite invested in pointless gestures at moments of extreme tension.

“Luxuries are not as important to you as your own will,” Lucius said. “Do not think I have not noticed that, Draco. And so I propose a compromise. Do the one thing I wish you to; come back to the family and promise to marry. You may do anything else. You can retain your Potter lover and send your money to whatever rebellious groups you desire.”

“I won’t do it.” Draco made his words as rough as possible, containing all his disgust, as a deliberate contrast to his father’s cultured voice.

Lucius said, “Alas,” without any expression in his voice, and paused. He had slipped his wand back into his sleeve, but Draco didn’t allow himself to relax. Lucius watched him unblinking for a moment more, than added, “Your chosen bride is Alice Moonstone.”

“Better her than her sister,” said Draco. “But you should find a different heir, one who would love her.”

“You can love her,” said Lucius, and gave him a wolf’s smile. Then he vanished, with that silent Apparition he could master when he wanted. He rarely cared to put forth the effort, of course.

Draco forced himself to look thoughtfully at the spot where his father had stood for some moments, and not to show any open sign of frustration. Then he drew another ward up that enclosed the gap Harry had been standing in, and would alert him instantly of anyone approaching, by Portkey or Apparition or broom.

Only then did he dare to turn his back and seek Harry with his eyes.

*

The attack was coming at the point where Harry had suspected it would come, a “corner” where several wards joined and were weaker for that reason, as power passed from spell to spell. He’d made it noticeable and attractive, a joining point for five wards instead of the more usual three, and then layered an alarm ward behind it the way he’d often layered glamour under glamour. Unless the witches and wizards serving in Counterstrike or among the bigoted Aurors had received certain very specific training, then they wouldn’t see the alarm even if they looked carefully.

Harry appeared beside the corner, behind an oak tree ornamented with swaying pink lanterns, with a small grim smile on his face. He suspected the attackers hadn’t come far enough yet to unravel the wards, which meant that Counterstrike or the Aurors hadn’t yet discovered his special surprise.

He swept the potential battlefield with swift eyes. As he had ordered them to do, the wizards and witches watching the border of the wards had sent off distress signals of red sparks and then herded away the curious, the fearful, and the terminally fearless. Harry didn’t want targets in the way, and he didn’t know any of the watchers, mostly from the core of Nusante’s group, well enough to feel comfortable with their fighting at his back.

He drew his wand when he discovered a witch in heavy dark robes—nondescript, and not made of the special cloth that indicated Aurors—had cut through three of the wards at the corner. It was nearly time to bring up the special spell he’d set, which was different from the other magic on the party field merely encouraging good cheer and peaceful conduct. If he had left this spell out in the open from the beginning, then most of their enemies would have sensed it and not attacked. And Harry had wanted an attack, to show how their group responded to violence.

It would not be by bringing more violence.

The witch had probably recognized him, because she sped up the Severing Snake that was chewing through the wards. A moment later, the strands of the guard spells parted with a crack like tent ropes releasing a stake, and then the witch and several other dark-robed companions piled in.

Harry made the threefold pass that triggered his special spell, hissing the incantation under his breath. The chance was small that any of the attackers would know this spell, yes, but still, he would prefer that it not be turned against him at some later date. “Veritas absoluta!”

A wind tossed the hoods covering the attackers’ faces back, and a flash of lightning in the next moment burned their clothes away without touching their flesh. Several of them stumbled to a stop, and Harry heard loud, confused cries. Some were clutching at their crotches or their breasts, as if that would really prevent anyone from looking. Harry heard a few Apparitions, but most were scrambling for dropped wands.

Marks on their bodies began to glow brilliantly—tattoos, scars, freckles, moles, anything unusual that might identify them. Harry laughed as he noticed a small phoenix tattoo just above the buttocks of the witch who had sawed through the wards. She’d obviously tried to cover it up with layered glamour spells, but it was stirring now, as though the light of the spell were life to it. It spread its wings and beat them, and then flames cut across the witch’s skin. Though they obviously hadn’t hurt her, she whirled away from Harry, her face brilliant with embarrassment.

Harry whistled.

A figure stirred under the oak tree, where he’d been standing with a carefully applied Disillusionment Charm covering him. Therris lifted his camera and began to take pictures of the wizards and witches who had thought they could get away with raiding the celebration of a group of people who had never done them harm. Click, click, flash, flash, and the scrambling of the victims grew more and more desperate. A few more of them had found their wands and Apparated away, but still not many. There were also five or six who seemed to think that screaming at Therris would make him stop.

Harry laughed again, and then felt a tug at his awareness. Another strike was going on at the second weakest place in the wards, concealed behind a large bush where the intruders must have felt confident no one would see them come in. He nodded to Therris—though he thought the reporter was having far too much fun to notice him—and Apparated. He had relaxed the wards for himself as well as Draco, a few minutes after the trickle of visitors had slowed. No sense in tearing his own protections to pieces or moving so slowly that he might arrive only after someone had been injured.

And no one was going to be injured tonight. He had meant it when he told Garrett and Draco that he wouldn’t let anyone in the party retaliate with violence, or be hurt. That meant the Counterstrike members or Aurors had to be protected as well, from Nusante or friends of his who might have had enough of silent suffering.

The bush rustled as Harry landed next to it, but the small group of wizards filing through the hole in the wards only had time to look up before they found themselves each confronted by an illusion of Caroline Garrett. Like the spell that had started the Weird Sisters music for the dancing, this was a time-delayed piece of magic, and it also utilized a very simple principle of Legilimency. It located whatever sexual memory the victim found most embarrassing, and then the illusion of Garrett began to explain gravely what sexual disease or perversion the memory was symptomatic of.

“Obviously, sir, you’ve been repressing fantasies of bestiality all your life—“

“How interesting, madam! I never would have thought that someone as highly important as you are could have advanced so far in the Ministry without someone suspecting her tendency towards pedophilia—“

“Did you know that those who dream often of sex with their mothers may actually have inherited a tendency towards incest?”

Harry let the illusions speak for only a moment before he swept his wand around in a circle and called, “Accio leaves!”

The leaves on the bush blew off, revealing several parchments with branches stuck through them. Over each parchment traveled a busy Quick-Quotes Quill, transcribing the words the illusions spoke.

Harry winked at the nearest horrified face, then raised a block that would prevent them from coming any further into the camp even if they managed to break away from the charmed rapport before the illusions—Garrett, when she agreed to let her image be used, had suggested adding a bit of hypnotism to the magic—and Apparated again. A third attack was coming in a fairly daring point, near the gap in the wards he had been guarding, and he had no specific trap set up to receive it.

But that didn’t matter. He had his magic, surging and seething around his shoulders as if it were excited to be used for something beyond Transfigurations and glamours, and he had his presence. That would work.

The moment he landed near a ragged entrance cut in the wards, the spell that alerted him to the presence of fabric in Auror robes twinged hard across his chest. Harry breathed as if he were about to dive underwater. The other attackers could have included Aurors, but if so, they had been probably unofficially associated with Counterstrike. These would be men and women who had the Minister’s permission backing them up.

But why should he let that change things? He had informed Kingsley, along with everyone else in wizarding Britain who possessed the ears to listen, of what he planned to do, and he wouldn’t hurt the Aurors. Nor were the spells he had planned to use on them illegal, and Harry himself would watch to see that they didn’t cause unintentional harm.

He stepped forwards and blocked the Aurors’ path into the grounds, smiling a little. “I own this land,” he said, tilting his head to make sure that the light of the bonfire fell across his face and revealed his scar. “Do you have a reason for trespassing? I’m assuming you’re trespassers, understand, and not legitimate visitors, because otherwise you would have used the front entrance.”

He expected many things, including the anger and disdain and worry that swept through the Aurors staring at him. He didn’t expect the convulsive movement from the middle of the line, or Ron’s voice calling, “Harry! Mate!”

Harry held still. He kept his arms folded as Ron hurried towards him, stopping maybe five feet away and scanning his face with a desperate eagerness that wrung Harry’s heart. It would have been easier if Ron had showed up hating him and calling him names. But Harry had long since become resigned to the fact that his life would never deserve the adjective easy, whatever else he might choose to call it.

“Thank Merlin we found you!” Ron’s eyes were shining. He fumbled for his wand, not seeming to notice the way the motion made Harry take a step to the side. “I know that you wouldn’t have agreed to this of your own free will. Malfoy must have enchanted you. And Hermione gave me a charm against the most powerful mind-controlling enchantments.”

Harry found his tongue. “Ron,” he said, as gently as he could. His heart wavered and vibrated as if it were a glass balanced on the edge of a table and stroked by a breeze. “You’re making a mistake. Listen to me.”

“I know that you wouldn’t betray us like this,” Ron was babbling on. He had his wand free now and was waving it straight up and down in broad passes Harry wasn’t familiar with. “You would have told us if you were seriously considering being open about your homosexuality, let alone dating Malfoy. I know you would.” He smiled at Harry.

“Ron, I love Draco,” Harry said strongly. “I was waiting for an owl from you before I came to you, but I—“

“It’s all right, it’s almost done,” Ron said soothingly. “Apsolvo mentem!”

Harry winced. It felt as though someone had tossed a stinging puff of sand into his eyes. He staggered, coughing, and winced again as his head began to ache. He put a hand up and massaged his temples. He didn’t think there was any change, but at the same time, that had been powerful magic. Ron was by no means a weak wizard; it was his temper and his emotions that got in his way.

And that’s about to happen again, Harry thought. For a moment, just a moment, he was shaking like a newborn fawn. Here was one of those moments he had begun Metamorphosis in the first place to avoid. He didn’t want to choose between his friends and living a life that was exciting and fun for him. He didn’t know if he could bear it. He knew that something in him would shatter irrevocably at the look of betrayal on Ron’s face.

He plunged himself into Brian’s courage and opened his eyes.

Ron was smiling at him hopefully. “Say it now,” he urged. “Say now that you love Malfoy, or that you’ll really prevent us from arresting anyone who’s engaging in public displays of homosexuality here.”

Distantly, Harry knew he was twisting apart, wrung with pain as exquisite as a snakebite. He managed to smile, though, because it was Brian and not Harry who was moving behind his eyes now. “No,” he said quietly, his voice deepened into Brian’s. “I still love Draco. And I still won’t let you hurt anyone here. Including yourselves.”

Ron’s face crumpled. Harry saw tears in his eyes in the moment before he unleashed the spell he’d decided to use on them.

It was the same enchantment that Dumbledore had used on Ron and Hermione in Harry’s fourth year when he’d put them to sleep under the lake. They’d wake when someone who worked for the Ministry touched them, and not before. For now, they fell to the ground, snoring. Ron’s face washed clean of anguish and sorrow as he tumbled, and moments later Harry could have imagined that he was seeing his friend asleep on his own pillow at home, with nothing more than dreams of an argument with Hermione to trouble him.

Harry turned around and began vomiting uncontrollably. He leaned forwards enough that it didn’t drop onto his robes or his shoes or his legs. The persona named Gerald whom he’d used for bodyguard work, as fierce and wary as a wild cat, flickered into existence in his head and kept watch even as some distant part of him expelled every bit of food he’d taken in that day. When he was down to dry heaves, Gerald pulled him back to his feet and forced his stomach to stop spasming with a muttered spell. Whilst he was busy being weak, someone else could have sneaked past his defenses and into the party.

But when he listened, there was nothing but the music and the chattering from the dance floor. Slowly, he relaxed. The party hadn’t been disrupted; some of the attendees would leave certain that no one had even tried to invade. He had preserved the peace and the lives of those involved. No one could ask for more.

Then he turned and saw one who could striding towards him. Draco’s hair was brilliantly colored in the light of the lanterns he passed beneath, now straw, now gold.

Gerald tensed. There was no way he could allow Draco to realize who had come here. He would probably insist on casting some spell on Ron that would make things worse between them, or on making Harry talk about it. And Gerald had already made some important tactical decisions. For one thing, Harry had betrayed his friends and would have to atone for it somehow. That made a confrontation with them as soon as possible inevitable. If he wanted to preserve their friendship, he would need to explain. Confronting them in Draco’s company was impossible, since it would only result in shouting and a wider rift. Therefore, Harry would have to do it alone, and lying to Draco by omission was a necessity.

For another, Draco would not be pleased that Harry had had to call on personas to survive the aftermath of Ron’s accusations. He was so joyful that he was getting the real Harry, as he would call it, back. Should Gerald allow the happiness of the person most important to Harry to be disrupted, when he had gone to such lengths to preserve the happiness of relative strangers?

No, he thought not.

There had been one disastrous year with failure after failure. There would be no more.

Gerald closed his eyes and folded himself into the back of Harry’s mind as Draco came closer and closer. It would have to be Harry who met him; Draco would accept no less. But Harry would have the silent strength of hundreds of others backing him up.

And as soon as ever he could, he would get away and make arrangements to contact his friends.

*

Draco thought Harry was rather pale and quiet when he came up to him at first, but almost immediately he understood it must have been a trick of the light. Harry smiled at him and reached out to embrace him, bowing his head and sighing deeply. Draco stroked his back.

“Everything’s all right?” he whispered.

“Everything,” Harry said, and then looked up at him, his eyebrows rising. “Unless you left the gap in the wards unguarded.”

“Garret is watching it,” said Draco. “And I put up blocks of my own, secured with both certain spells I know and a potion, which no one is going to get past without a Potions mastery. You deserve to have some food.”

“And to dance?” Harry asked. “I’d like that.”

Draco relaxed. The action against the attackers must really have gone well. Harry wouldn’t put his own pleasure ahead of duty. “Of course,” he said, and hooked a hand under Harry’s elbow, and led him towards the dance floor.

Chapter 37.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! In this case, he thinks embarrassment is a better means of defusing the attacks than violence, which would get people on the opposite side of the rebellion quite quickly. And he has the magic to ensure that if any serious attack does get started, he can stop it with such methods.

And yes, I think a lot of it is Harry's fault. There's probably even more that's no one's fault (the homophobia of the wizarding society, the dynamics of the relationship between Harry and his friends after Hogwarts), but Harry could have told Ron that he was going to date wizards and Ron had better accept it. He was absolutely terrified of being forced to choose between his friends and his sexuality, though, so he didn't do it.