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Chapter Twenty-Eight—Final Preparations
Harry was watching when the letter came. It helped that both he and Draco were eating in the dining hall, and neither Ron nor Hermione had appeared yet. Ventus had been there talking to them, but she had had an idea in the middle of the conversation and wandered off to investigate it.
The owl came soaring silently across the tables and landed right in front of Draco, on his plate, staring at him with unblinking eyes. Of course, all owls flew silently and all had unblinking eyes, but Harry thought those facts were more ominous than usual just now. He put down his own toast, untouched, and turned towards Draco, waiting for him to open the letter.
Draco's face was paler than usual, but he put down his fork and reached for the envelope as if he had no doubt about what was in it. Harry, meanwhile, drew his wand and began casting detection charms that should reveal the most basic curses and hexes. No one would think it was strange for him to do that, given how much caution the instructors had encouraged the trainees to have towards their post.
I hate the way Nihil makes us live. Harry scowled and tried to remember if he had lived like that during the war with Voldemort. Not really, but he had been younger then, and also more prone to believe that living cautiously wouldn't do much good when he and Voldemort were going to clash anyway.
Draco stuck his finger beneath the seal when Harry nodded that it was safe and pulled out a crisp, many-times-folded sheet of parchment. He spent a moment inhaling a fragile fragrance that rose from the page, which Harry couldn't identify. Harry tensed, just in case that fragrance was potion fumes that were meant to control Draco. Harry had learned, thanks to some history that Davidson had mentioned in Concealment and Disguise, that pure-bloods could turn practically anything into a weapon.
Draco opened the letter and studied it. Harry wished he could do something other than sit there like a lump and smile hopefully, but he thought Draco would feel crowded if he leaned in over his shoulder and tried to read the letter right now.
"He'll do it."
So intense was the atmosphere around them as he waited for Draco to say something that Harry thought he had mistaken the words at first. He blinked and looked up. "He will?" he asked stupidly. After we spent so much time worrying, he'll really do it? And he doesn't suspect anything?
Draco nodded shortly and stood up. "But he wants to bargain," he murmured. "Another letter, and he wants control of the time and day when we meet. I have to write back quickly. No telling when he'll change his mind and decide that there's some trap here, or what he might send instead of the glamour." He dropped a kiss on Harry's forehead, seemingly oblivious of the avid eyes watching him. "Do you mind covering for me in classes today? Tell Morningstar that I've been feeling sick and won't be in."
Harry's chest tightened. He didn't like leaving Draco by himself while he wrote the letter. "Are you sure? If you waited to write it until this evening, I could be—"
"Urgency, remember?" Draco shook his head, eyes fastened on Harry now with what looked like a glimmer of disappointment in them, as if he thought Harry hadn't been listening properly when he spoke. "I have to do this, Harry. Please don't tell me that you're going to turn your back on me now."
"This has nothing to do with that!" Harry snapped. "But I don't like the thought of you bearing this burden by yourself."
Draco's face softened, and this time his kiss was on Harry's lips and more lingering. "I promise I'll be all right. Cover for me." He turned and ran for the door of the dining hall, one hand clapped over his mouth as if he were about to throw up. Harry had to admit that he did a convincing charade.
Harry closed his eyes. He had to admit that at that moment he felt as if he had a lot more to worry about than whether Morningstar believed him.
But Draco was depending on him, and Ron and Hermione were walking towards him with determined strides now and curious faces, so Harry would have to stop looking so faint. They didn't know that Draco's "powerful" friend was Lucius. Harry smiled, made his smile less shaky than he was sure the first one was, and stood to greet them.
*
Dear Father:
Draco stopped and considered the salutation. Was that too informal, or too formal? Would Lucius suspect that Draco was rushing into the bargain too quickly when he looked at the words?
Draco shut his eyes. The plain truth was, he didn't know. His father had written the kind of letter back that Draco had expected—sly, teasing, seeking to control their interaction—but Lucius might have known Draco would expect that and written exactly that kind of letter to provoke Draco's own expected response.
His heart danced in his chest. His throat tasted like dust, and at that moment, he heartily wished that he had accepted Harry's suggestion to go to class and write the letter later, when he could think about it more.
But he also doubted that the pressure of time would make the task easier.
In the end, Draco kept the salutation and wrote on past that.
I wonder if you know what I felt when I saw your response? Incredible relief. Sadness that it must have come to this. Resentment, that you would presume I would not only surrender but let you dictate the terms of that surrender.
But you are right. I have little choice. I need this glamour, and you are the one who can best construct it.
I feel myself bound in cords, trying to be an Auror still, as well as a dutiful Malfoy son. Pray only remember that my duty to the family line will be best secured by dealing with me as an adult, and not by obligation and coercion.
Draco stopped for a moment and felt as though the pounding of his heart would make his throat shut.
Something brushed against his ankle, and he nearly screamed. When he looked down, though, he recognized Politesse, who was staring up at him with fierce concentration, teeth slightly bared and scorpion tail slightly vibrating.
Draco picked up the little dog and buried his face in the short, smooth fur. Politesse wriggled around so that he could watch over Draco's head into the corners of the room, looking for danger. His growl made him quiver, and Draco supposed he would have looked ridiculous to someone who didn't know what he could actually do.
"I'm sorry," Draco whispered. "I've been neglecting you." It was true. His life had lately been filled with the whirl of classes, which Politesse wasn't allowed to accompany him to, and his fights with Harry, which he'd kept Politesse away from because he might have attacked Harry. He had only played with or touched the small dog when he was in his rooms, which wasn't very often.
Politesse licked his face once and turned his head around to look at the door. Then he looked down at the letter, and his tail swayed forwards as if he thought he could get rid of the danger it represented by stinging it.
Draco gave a choked laugh and set Politesse on the table. "Nothing so simple, I'm afraid," he said. "I'd like it to be, and I'll let you know if you can do anything for me. But not right now."
Politesse gave him a single intelligent glance, then jumped off the table and curled up in Draco's lap. Draco touched his hair and listened to his heartbeat slow before he turned to finish the rest of the letter.
I will try to become your son once more. And I agree to a meeting of your choice—if you send the glamour to me in your next message.
Draco Malfoy.
There was nothing else that he could say.
*
"Harry, can I talk to you?"
Harry glanced up, surprised. He was in the library with Draco, and they'd been discussing their latest assignment from Lowell and Weston, which involved casting through each other's wands in combat, without exchanging them physically. Harry had enjoyed watching Draco's eyes light up with pleasure and the tight line of his mouth relax, and he hadn't thought about anything else in hours.
Now he winced and cast a quick glance at Draco, but Draco had already sat back in his seat and folded his arms. "Of course you need to go, Harry," he drawled. "Your duty is calling for you."
"Don't be like that, Malfoy," Hermione promptly snapped. "It's not such an imposition for me to want to talk to Harry when you've had him for most of the morning—"
"I don't see why it has to be a problem," Harry interrupted. "Why don't I stay here and you can talk to me?" He reached out and laid a steadying hand on Draco's arm. Draco took a deep breath, his eyes flashing shut and then open. He nodded brusquely to Harry a moment later, and Harry pulled back his hand. Draco wasn't going to admit to needing that much support in front of other people.
Hermione put her hands on her hips. "It's really important that this be a private conversation," she said, stressing the word while she looked at Draco as if she suspected him of not knowing what it meant.
Harry sighed. "Hermione—"
But Draco turned his back and resolutely gathered up their notes, so Harry reckoned he had no reason to linger. He got up and grumpily followed Hermione, all the same. He had just got Draco's mind off the letter to his father and the glamour, which Lucius hadn't yet sent. Now it would go back, and Harry would get minor grunts from Draco as answers to his talk for the rest of the day, if he was lucky.
"What do you want?" Harry asked, as they walked through the library aisles to a table near the back.
Hermione took a quick breath and gave him a hurt look. But she didn't say anything, instead sitting down at the table and pulling out a book so thick Harry was surprised to see it didn't have a title. When she opened it, though, he understood. It was one of Hermione's notebooks, and she had the habit of simply conjuring more paper inside one of them when she filled it up, instead of moving on to a new one and losing a potentially instant source of information.
Harry sat down across from her and prepared to be reluctantly interested.
"I've been reading a lot about the influence of Dark spells on one another, and the influence of Dark Arts practitioners on each other, since you told us about the Mortal Affinity spell," Hermione said, and then paused and looked at him expectantly, as if she thought that he would know what she was talking about.
"So?" Harry said.
Again the hurt look, but Harry squashed down the guilt. Occasionally, the guilt he felt about doing necromancy and hurting Draco was useful. It meant he could ignore the more minor wounds he inflicted on people.
"I was just wondering," Hermione said. "If there's any way that Malfoy…" She paused delicately. "We know he did Dark Arts in the past."
Harry didn't have to blink at her for very long before what she was proposing occurred to him. He shoved his chair back from the table with such violence that someone in another corner muttered at them. "You're suggesting he influenced me?" he demanded, voice low. "That he's the reason I made my stupid decision?"
"Doing that isn't like you, Harry!" Hermione stood up, eyes dark and passionate, reaching one hand out towards him as if she assumed she would need to restrain him from rampaging through the library. "Perhaps he didn't mean to do it, but some of the books said the influence can be subtle and unconscious—"
"Oh, please," Harry said, so contemptuous that Hermione flinched. "You just need some way to account for this that blames him."
"It's not like you," Hermione said again.
"It's exactly like me," Harry said, calming down now. He knew what she was saying, why she seemed to need to believe this, but the understanding still made him want to spit. "Exactly like my ridiculous guilt complex and the devotion I have to people I cared about and all the obsession I have with people I can't help. I might have started doing it on my own even if I was never an Auror or there was never a Nihil. I didn't consider anyone else when I made this decision. I jumped straight into it. And you should have seen Draco's face when he discovered what I was doing. He was shocked and disgusted, Hermione. He would never have done this himself. And that makes him a better person than I am, in some ways."
Hermione backed a step away from him. Harry could see the wavering uncertainty in her face that meant a new suspicion was dawning in her.
"You're not…" she said, and her voice trailed off, but that didn't matter, not when Harry knew the next words she would have spoken as if she had already voiced them to him.
"Not blameless? Not perfect?" Harry folded his arms and glared mockingly at her. "No, I'm not. I'm sorry if that upsets your notions about what kind of person I am, but all that means is that those notions were wrong. Draco didn't have anything to do with it. I did. It was all me. If I'd listened to him, or to the promptings of my conscience, and told him in the first place, then this could have been avoided."
Hermione turned away from him slowly, catching herself with one hand on the table as if she didn't see it. "I have to think," she whispered.
"Good luck with that," Harry said, and then turned and walked back towards Draco. His emotions were churning around his belly and throat and head, and he had no idea what else he could say. Hermione had not only dragged him away from Draco, she had done it for a stupid reason.
How could she blame Draco? Harry had thought she had forgiven him easily because their friendship was so old, and that she was stubborn and cold towards Draco because she believed that he had somehow encouraged the "Dark side" of Harry that yearned towards necromancy. But he had no idea that it was something like this.
She didn't really forgive me, Harry seethed to himself as he walked around a shelf that held a stack of large, dusty old books that didn't look as if they'd been moved in years, she just made up a version of reality where it was Draco's fault, and then she found the "evidence" she needed to substantiate her theory and—
Hands caught him. Harry looked up sharply, but his sense of Draco had told him who it was, and he relaxed before he could touch his wand.
He didn't resist when Draco bore him back into the bookcase and loomed close to him, looking at him with fierce eyes. Then Draco bent down, face hard with passion, and whispered, "I heard."
Harry eyed him. Draco didn't look as upset as Harry would have thought he'd be over Hermione's accusations. "Then you know—"
"I heard all of it," Draco interrupted, and forced Harry into a kiss that tasted of sweat and passion and left him gasping soundlessly after air before Draco pulled back. Draco had only retreated to get some air of his own, and he came back again in seconds.
This time, Harry met him mouth to mouth, and rejoiced in the way their tongues swirled around each other and their teeth clacked together, almost catching a hold of those elusive, darting tongues but never really managing.
Draco stepped back at last, one hand resting on Harry's chest and a small, mean smile touching the edges of his lips. Harry would never have assumed that he could find such an expression attractive—it was the way Draco had looked in Hogwarts, really—but all that smile did now was make him want to kiss it again. He waited, though, because he doubted Draco would have broken the snog they both wanted unless he had something important to say.
"I trust you more than I ever have right now," Draco said, voice charged with crackling electricity. "So don't fuck it up."
And he took Harry back to their table in the library for more studying.
Harry could hardly believe it at first. They had shared a kiss like that and Draco wanted them to study?
But when Draco sat down, carefully arranged himself, and shot Harry a glance full of promise, Harry understood the theory, however much he disapproved of the practice. Draco wanted the smolder to build between them until it broke apart in a flame of new intensity. Probably he couldn't think of any other way to break the long drought of affection between them than to wait until they broke it because they couldn't stand it anymore.
Harry grinned back, sat down, and picked up his book, already imagining the moment when Draco wouldn't be able to wait any longer, and would seize him, and throw him against the wall, and—
He shifted, and Draco sniggered.
Perhaps there were some thoughts that weren't appropriate for a library.
*
Go in quickly, without thought. Thought would only slow him down.
Draco closed his eyes, counted to ten under his breath, and then opened them and started to move smoothly and naturally down the corridor, as if he had every right to be there.
Only one trainee passed him, and she kept her eyes on the book in her hands the entire way. Draco did tense, because though he wore a weak glamour—the only kind that wouldn't set off the wards the Ministry had enhanced since Nihil's attack last year—someone who looked up with enough suspicion might recognize him.
But she communed with her book, as blind as Granger to anything outside the pages, and Draco arrived unsuspected at the door of Pushkin's lab and lightly pushed it open.
Harry had wanted to come with him, but Draco had pointed out he knew Pushkin's labs better, having visited them several times when he was dissecting Nemo's beasts. And then Granger had pointed out that someone would suspect the truth if they both disappeared at the same time, and Harry would be better off appearing in public with "Draco" (a glamoured Weasley) on his arm in case the theft was discovered.
Draco had ground his teeth against Granger's implication that of course the theft would be discovered and against his temptation to protest—agreeing with Weasley—that no one who knew Draco would be fooled by his impersonation. Granger had snapped back that it was just a precaution and they should take care to be in front of people who didn't know them well, and in the end Weasley had meekly agreed.
Just like he'd agree to everything his girlfriend told him, Draco thought as he stood at the door of the lab and waited.
He had wagered his ability to come this far on his knowledge of Pushkin. Pushkin was the Observations instructor, and faithful to his subject—to a fault, in fact. He wouldn't want to set traps that someone could figure out their way around. Instead, he would capture a perfect picture of his lab, remember it, and then compare that picture to what he saw when he returned. Draco had to be careful to change nothing.
He whispered a small spell that most of the Ministry didn't know existed, and his feet rose a few inches off the floor. He swooped forwards in response to the impulse of a second spell, changing neither the faint covering of dust nor anything else that Pushkin might have left lying about.
The room where Pushkin had dissected the creatures had its door half-open. Draco paused, calmed his breathing and his impatience, and forced himself to see what was really there, as Pushkin had insistently taught them last year, rather than what he thought or wished to be there.
He smiled when he saw the glistening arc of a spiderweb extending from the edge of the door. Most other people would have cleaned that up, but Pushkin knew the value it held as an indicator. Draco cast a few sticking spells, carefully detaching the web from the wall and fastening it more strongly to the door, and made sure he memorized its original pattern before he moved the door.
Within the lab itself, there were other spiderwebs, and hairs, and patterns of condensation from cold mugs. Draco drifted through them. He couldn't know that he saw all the things Pushkin would, but he had got the best mark in his class that Pushkin had given in years. He was fairly sure that their minds worked the same way.
And there was the glass case that held the bit of bone Draco had instructed his father to copy. Draco grinned. Pushkin had bothered with a lock for this one, but he had never read the books in Malfoy Manor that Draco had.
Draco held out his wand and performed a complicated circling pass that it had taken him a month to learn. "Resurget," he breathed.
The magic seemed to rip itself out of his body; it took more power to cast this spell than most of the War Wizards' unsubtle efforts, Draco thought with justifiable pride. He couldn't imagine how much it must have taken to create the spell in the first place.
Once free, though, the force was gentler than a sunbeam. It reached out and stroked the lock. The lock fell to dust and ashes.
The glass case swung open.
Draco studied the specific molding of the white cushion inside it, and then reached down and enchanted the bit of bone to rise from it. The glamour that he took out of his pocket floated down and took the original bone's place.
No traps clanged; no wards sprang into life and shrilled to let Pushkin know what was happening here.
Then Draco gestured with his wand again, repeating the circling motion he had done earlier backwards.
And the lock returned, dust and ashes springing back into the original shape as if nothing had ever happened to it. The lock drifted forwards, and the glass lid came down to meet it. The case looked exactly as it had before it was disturbed.
Draco smiled. He'd like to see Pushkin try to figure out the Resurrection Spell, when he couldn't even suspect its existence.
He flew out of the lab, put the door half-ajar with the spiderweb in the right place, and ghosted back to the original door, where he spent some more time studying the floor and the doorway to make sure he'd missed nothing. When he was back in the corridor, feet where they belonged and the bone in his pocket, the smile faded from his face automatically.
He had promised his father to be in Wiltshire two days from now, at nine in the evening.
And he would be in Wiltshire on that day. Just rather earlier, and with a different purpose in mind.
