The Hard Road
Chapter 5
-/-/-/-/-/-
Ada's light blue eyes glinted in the morning sun. She stopped short in front of the carved granite facade and marveled at the deep embossed lettering. Her bright smile helped drive off some of the feelings of failure that had been plaguing him. A camera was in her hand when she pulled his arm around her waist and snapped a picture. "So, this is really the place you learned about war?"
He nodded. Rows of giant wrought ironwork letters proclaiming The British Library stretched up two stories from the pavement as he took her hand and ambled through. The glass doors swung open into the sprawling atrium and Draco was welcomed by the sweet aroma of books. Of all the strange turns, this had been the place that opened his eyes. It was here that he learned about muggles immense bloodlust. Nowhere in the wizarding world were there manuals chocked full of techniques and strategies for genocide. The very concept was so ridiculous that it was almost unthinkable, yet here in the stacks were giant sections dedicated to military manuals. Whole racks of books contained nothing but troop formations and strategies for dealing with various terrains, equipments, and enemy strengths. Tomes dedicated to the capabilities of every imaginable weapon, vehicle, and defensive work. Volumes offering precise descriptions and analysis of ancient battles going back three thousand years.
The most dangerous and renowned wizards of history, men like Merlin, Grindelwald, and Voldemort barely accounted for a few thousand dead each, while one individual attack within a single Muggle battle could slaughter fifty-thousand. Their most bloody battles tallied over two hundred thousand in one afternoon. Even after leading a failed revolution, he simply could not comprehend that level of violence. Never mind the extermination campaigns which attempted to cleanse the earth of entire ethnic groups to the tune of six or ten million souls in a few short years or revolutions which starved forty-million people in one go...
And then there was their hive mind. While muggles had no magic, they had an immense ability to learn any craft or skill and copy it. Rows and rows of books were dedicated to various types of handwork, craftsmanship, and its practice. He passed through the woodworking section and let his hand drift over the titles. Here were books on making glues, dyes, grounds, and finishes. Every imaginable type of wood and the myriad steel fixings which attached to the various parts. More rows had books about the various tools, how to prepare and use them. Video cassettes contained thousands of hours of instruction pertaining to every nuance of construction.
Ada yawned and twirled a lock of red hair through her slender fingers. He let a long sigh drift out. There was so much to learn. He was spending two days a week in the military manuals, taking notes and preparing for The Legion, yet he never even scratched the surface. That was not why he was here, though. He gave her a smirk. "Where do you suppose they hide the books about electricity in coiled wires?"
She twined her fingers into his. "That would be the physics of electricity and magnetism."
He quirked an eyebrow. He should have known it was an actual subject. Her long, silky hair, red lips, and hourglass figure disguised her intellect. She graduated number three in her high school class and was at university on full scholarship.
Her flats padded down the snaking path, leading him through miles of shelves into the science section. Now, the chase was on. The difficulty was, there were one thousand, four hundred sixty-one books on the physics of electricity and magnetism. Draco groaned. It was likely to take forever. On a whim, he picked one in the middle of the stack and paged through it.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, scratched his head, tapped the lines full of symbols and runes, and said, "Any idea what this is all about?"
She chuckled. "Those are the systems of partial differential equations used to calculate resistor-capacitor-inductor-diode circuits."
More muggle words. "Does that have anything to do with coils of wire?"
"Sort of. These are college level texts. We need to start off with something that presents the concepts without all the math."
"What would you suggest?"
She giggled like a little girl and took his hand. The shelves got shorter and shorter while the books got smaller and more colorful. Shiny banners proclaimed the wonders hidden within the sprawling children's section.
Glittering picture books proved exactly what he needed. First off, the infernal buzz permeating every single inch of the muggle world was caused by something called alternating current. The so called Direct current which came out of things called batteries didn't hum. A few pages later, illustrations demonstrated how magnetic fields formed when coiled wires were subjected to the buzzing alternating current, and a core could be used to concentrate and contain the magnetic flux.
Muggle children couldn't do any spells or potions, but every single one was forced to plod through years and years of the maths required to decode the secrets of how a changing electric current creates something called a breakdown field, and calculate how the magnetic flux created in this so called 'B-field' is effected by several factors including...
The
Number
Of
Turns
Of
Wire.
Draco's jaw dropped. He stared at the page in silence as if discovering a long lost treasure map. It was all right here. His arm acted as the inductor's core... Energy had flowed out of the wire and into his body...
Wait... If it's just energy flow... What in Merlin's name does a wand actually do?
Ada looked at him like he was stupid when he asked how all the maths worked. While her schools had never taught a scrap of magic, they all taught that. It was calculus, but this wasn't particularly complicated kind. Not only that, she had done actual labs on this exact subject. He pestered her about magical empowerment while working on these sorts of things, or if anything else worked like a wand. Her answer was simple: Magic around muggles gets you killed. They hunt you down and burn you alive over the mere suggestion. Concealing and suppressing her powers was a constant battle, and one she had become quite adept at.
Unfortunately, like muggles becoming witches, here was another subject Hogwarts had utterly failed him on. He had done plenty of chemistry which included unit analysis, but that was mostly ratios. Stuff like: one pinch of ground mandrake root to three pennyweight of ground boar tusk. He had not learned anything about integrals and derivatives, or calculating areas under the curves, acceleration, position, velocity...
Or electricity.
Luckily, he was not designing muggle electrical things and the concept was simple enough. He was going to have to ponder on this, but Ada was getting bored. He had promised her floo rides and broom lessons, and then, if he played his cards right, she would stay the night. Unfortunately, he had an appointment in St. Mungo's before he could do any of that, but it should only take an hour, and the rest of the day would be theirs.
-/-/-/-/-/-
The baby faced aurorer escorting Draco for his Legion mandated blood work kept stabbing his wand at every rustling leaf and person walking past. The man craned and jumped at every movement, which given London, was slowing down forward progress.
Draco crossed his arms and scowled the third time the wide eyed fellow jerked him into the nook of a fence and eyed the street. "We've already violated every single aspect of the statutes of secrecy, except possibly transfiguration in front of Muggles. I would appreciate you leaving off this nonsense before you get me sent back to Azkaban."
"Sir, one can never be too careful."
Draco groaned. "You do realize that no one else is waving about with wands or darting in and out of hedges. If our goal was to blend in, we're failing."
The man paused, confused, but Draco continued. "If anyone competent was watching, they would have already patterned your swatting around like a fool every third step."
The man's face turned green and his mouth silently opened and closed like a fish. Draco struck while the iron was hot and set off at a fast march. The aurorer stuttered and protested as he gave chase, but Draco stuffed his hands into his pockets and bulled his way through the thronging crowds.
A hundred yards off St. Mungo's front door, the billboard sign stopped Draco in his tracks. It bore a picture of a sweet old woman with her arm wrapped around a doe eyed young girl. The caption made him take a second look.
Let the good in you live on.
Contaminatuo Ritualis.
That's dark.
The aurorer was already back at his nervous antics, rummaging bushes and eyeing every muggle on the street. Draco donned his best Patented Lucius Malfoy scorn-dripping scowl, and let the dry words dribble out. "Third step, every time." The Aurorer stopped short to protest and Draco left him gaping outside the door.
The reception witch eyed him when he asked about the tests for infectious diseases, but eventually pointed him to the sixth floor. He beat the aurorer into the packed elevator and wondered at the menagerie surrounding them. There was a brown haired girl with undulating leeches dripping out of her nose and ears while her harried mother fussed about picking at them. Purple juice leaked out of one man while another scratched at an orange fur ball squirming about where his left eyeball should have been. A pair of identical girls snapped, crackled, and popped silver sparks while a young boy sneezed orange, yellow, and white petunias. All of them eyed him as if he was contagious and edged away.
The elevator doors slid open with a heavily accented, "Second floor," and more people got on. Two sneezing fire, one with half a dozen arrows stuck in his arm, and three covered in bright red, orange, and blue spots, but he was the one they cut sideways glances at and shuffled half a step away.
The doors opened to the next three floors, piling more and more sick people into their bulging can full of plague and woe, yet they still kept their distance.
The elevator vomited him out with a very polite recording announcing the sixth floor. He peered at the walls, searching for a sign. Unfortunately, the small, white boxes only contained undulating runes that flicked in and out. Beside the boxes hung a shiny poster of a very attractive young girl wrapped in the motherly embrace of an even more attractive, silver haired witch. Bold letters emblazoned across the bottom bore the familiar slogan:
Let the good in you live on.
Contaminatuo Ritualis.
You know, because that is the only good in you...
Without his tittering guide to block forward progress, he marched down the hallway which narrowed into a black abyss at infinity. The dingy white walls were bathed in the same flickering greenish light and stink of industrial disinfectant as Potter's office. As he travelled down the hallway, the walls slowly faded to beige, brown, and finally antique black trappings. A single candle flickered, revealing medieval plague scenes carved into a heavy wooden door. He shrugged and turned the knob. A black cloaked figure decked in a long beaked mask and a matching wide brim hat drummed its fingers on a stained marble work table. The voice was female. "May I help you?"
"I've got a two o'clock dragon pox screening."
She slid a clipboard across. "Fill this out. I'll need to see your identification and proof of insurance."
He groaned at the three-inch thick stack of parchment. "Why would you need to know about my great-grandmother's sexual history to check for dragon pox?"
The cloaked woman crossed her arms. "We perform a thorough analysis for potential congenital conditions."
He snorted. "For a dragon pox screening?"
"Just fill it out."
The endless forms had more questions than on Binn's seventh year history of magic exam. He settled on "unknown" for most answers. The woman didn't even look at the questionnaire when he returned it. She simply stuffed it into a manilla folder bearing his name and racked it into the middle drawer of a beat up green file cabinet. He laid fifty-five galeons, six knuts on the desk and she sent him back to the waiting area. Half an hour later she beckoned him through a curtain of animal hides still bearing their various heads. Two rough-hewn wooden chairs sat beside a blood-spattered table scattered with curved metal implements and horn-handled knives.
The woman tapped on a clipboard and the long snouted mask bobbed. "Before we begin, you must complete a brief customer survey."
"Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I thought they did surveys after."
"It's not that kind of survey. Right then, on a scale of one to ten, how likely would you be to pay more for the service?"
"I... What? Pay more? I don't have a choice."
"So a ten, then. On a scale of one to ten, how much more paperwork could you tolerate?"
"None."
"This assumes it was required to receive the dragon pox screening."
He tented his fingers. This was clearly not that kind of survey. "Lets give it a four."
The beaked mask bobbed as the quill scratched on parchment. "How satisfied are you with your wait?"
"Six."
"I agree. The chairs are far too comfortable, but we're working on that. Please rate your compliance with your phlebotomist's instructions."
"You haven't given me any yet."
"So a four, then?"
"I'm expecting more of a nine."
That got a chuckle out of the woman. She slid a clay tablet across the table. He squinted at the little boxes full of triangular slashes and dots. "Ah, right. Of course it's in cuneiform."
The mask bobbed.
He turned it over and silently thanked Slughorn for the tutoring in ancient scripts. Draco had studied fifteen different languages used in cuneiform, but unfortunately it wasn't any of those. Mmm. Not that kind of survey. "You couldn't have at least done it in Sumerian, Assyrian, Old Persian, or Babylonian cuneiform. Put me down for a one."
The scratching of quill on parchment punctuated the silence. "How satisfied are you with your pain level from the procedure."
"One."
"I haven't even stuck you yet."
"Are you saying it won't hurt."
That drew a chuckle. "And finally, on a scale of one to ten, how honestly have you answered this survey?"
"Ten."
"We don't accept answers higher than a four on this question."
She scribbled some more, then racked the survey into the middle drawer of the old file cabinet. "Ready then?"
He nodded and she slid a thick leather glove off, revealing bony fingers webbed with purple veins. Her jagged fingernails scratched up his arm and his body stiffened against the hard chair. He tried to shift against the splinters and boards, but was now paralyzed.
She jabbed the thick needle deep into his arm. His eyes went out of focus as she rooted around in his elbow. He tried to grit his teeth and pull away, but he was locked in place. Ten minutes and four stabs later, she had the small vial filled with a perhaps a teaspoon of blood.
The world swirled half a turn as he stood. Thick drops of crimson drizzled past the knotted gauze bunched into the crook of his throbbing elbow and dripped off his fingers. He was holding as much pressure as he could muster, but still left a puddle on the woman's desk. He shuddered when her translucent-skinned finger wiped through the middle of the pool and disappeared under the mask.
"I suppose I'm negative, then?"
She twiddled the small vial between her fingers and wiped another finger through the blood before smacking under the mask. "Mmm... You'll receive your results in seven to ten business days."
The nurse shooed him away and he slumped into one of the waiting room chairs. He hadn't bled like this since Potter Sectumsempra'ed him. Snape's counter curse quietly repeated under his breath as his sticky fingers rubbed a figure eight over the punctures.
A woman grumbling under her breath banged through the door and slumped into the chair beside him. Her bushy hair rustled as she griped, "Oi! You're bleeding on my pants."
He muttered out an apology. "Can't get it to quit."
An orange spark sizzled up his wrist and snaked under the bandages. His eyes went out of focus and his jaw locked as jolts of electric fire stabbed through him. The second half of Snape's Counter-curse came out of her mouth and the blood stopped dripping through his fingers. The bushy haired woman muttered, "It never fails. The blasted lab vampires get more blood on my clothes than they do in the vial."
His eyes came back into focus and who should be standing over him but a very put out Hermione Granger scourgifying the crimson splatter off her white trousers. He was mumbling out a thanks when the door banged in against its frame three times. The fourth time, it swung out and his aurorer burst in, wand drawn.
Granger whipped her wand with a slashing Diffindo. A flare of white ripped up the aurorer's dragon skin cloak and sliced his face open. Her wand whirled down and another slashing curse hit the man's hand. A third fiery bolt snaked up inside his sleeve before screeching heaps of chains blasted out and wound all over him. One quick kick sent him careening back out the door, but her wand was now trained on him.
He rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, and waited for her to pester him about betrothal talks and whether she would receive an invite. His mother had not exactly been keeping it a secret, but instead got, "What the hell are you doing here?"
He turned on his best Lucius Malfoy Patented bored sneer and deadpanned, "Getting sent back to Azkaban by the looks of things."
"He was here for you, wasn't he?"
He pushed to his feet and found himself looking down on a bushy haired swot who was significantly shorter and more fit than he remembered. She proudly wore exactly the same sour, "I hate everything about you," scowl he knew all too well. He blew a bored sigh. "With is the operative word. The Ministry's best always accompany me. Come on, let's obliviate the stupid git before I get blamed for all this too."
The chains screeching and wrapping the aurorer in the hallway had sucked all the wind out of his sails. His heart was pounding in his throat as his eyes flicked across the room. He needed to get out of here without rusty manacles on his wrists or the foul stench of Dementors breath blasting into his lungs. He formulated the plan in a split second, but he needed her cooperation.
Her eyes narrowed, but her humming wand never wavered off his chest.
He cracked a smirk. "Aunt Bella's wand suits you. She would be proud."
Her lip curled into a snarl. "What the hell are you up to?"
He pushed her wand down. "This may come as a surprise, but I am in no hurry to return to Azkaban."
He knelt over the man and recited the healing chants to staunch the bleeding on the aurer's face, but the gashes went through the bone. He shook his head. "It's your word against mine."
Her eyebrow quirked. "You didn't have anything to do with this."
"Nobody would believe you did this, even if you swore to it in front of the Wizengamut."
Her eyes narrowed. "If?"
He continued. "But my family does employ an inordinately large number of lawyers."
She shrugged. His eyes met hers. It was like looking into the soul of a shark - the world was simply meat. There was not a single scrap of concern for the situation or compassion for the fellow lying in a pool of blood. She couldn't possibly be this dense. "I suppose I am the only Slytherin in the room... I propose a parley to resolve this predicament to our mutual satisfaction."
Her head tilted slightly and her posture softened. "Go on."
"Someone else attacked me and this fellow was wounded trying to protect me. You ran them off and saved the day. We obliviate the git and agree on the story. The Malfoy family will set great store in your defense of my life. If the Ministry challenges your account, which they won't, our lawyers will provide legal assistance to smooth everything over. Your reputation and career isn't ruined, and I don't go to Azkaban."
The gears in her head meshed incredibly quickly. "OK. There's only one problem."
"Problem?"
"You've got no wand. You'll have to sustain some injuries to make it look plausible."
"Think you're up to the task?"
A wide smile bloomed on Granger's face and her brown eyes positively glittered.
There was that split second pause before his stomach knotted. She shouldn't have agreed so quickly or been so happy with the idea of cursing him senseless, but there was simply no other way. The stupid Aurorer git was laying there, unconscious in a growing pool of blood. There was not a single soul who would believe The Golden Girl attacked the fellow, and if not for the dragon hide cloak, would have hacked his head completely off. Hermione Granger was the wizarding world's heroine of the war. Famous. The model of witches who suffered and sacrificed all to defeat evil.
No. They would blame the only death eater in the room. They would test his aunt's wand and find the cutting curses and chains, and that would be that.
Five minutes later, a groan rumbled out of the aurorer as he rolled and clutched his chest. Blood drizzled out of his mouth as he pushed onto his knees. The fellow gaped at Draco who was nowcurled in the doorway, nursing broken ribs and broken nose while Granger helped him to his feet. She played the part to perfection with just the right amount of urgency and concern in her voice. "Come on, we've got to get Malfoy up before they come back."
The man stammered and winced when she braced under his shoulder. Draco pushed halfway up and then slumped against the wall, leaving a bloody smear on the dark wall. Pain stabbed electric jolts through his ribs. It hurt a whole lot worse than he would ever admit in front of her.
Granger shook the Aurorer. "You ok? Did you see which way they went?"
"Huh? Who?"
"The three attackers in black hoods. You must have run them off when you saved Malfoy."
Draco clambered to his feet, wobbled, and bounced against the wall again, sending a fresh round of pain shooting all the way down his legs. His tongue probed his throbbing jaw and snagged the shards of a broken tooth. A bloody handprint smeared across the door as he groped for a solid purchase. "They came out of nowhere. Did you get a look at them?"
The aurorer shook his head and rubbed a smear of crimson across his face and through his hair. Granger tugged at his cloak. "Come on. We've got to get both of you down to the second floor."
Draco's chest burned, his jaw ached, and his arm was bleeding again. The endless trudge back down the hall would have gone a lot better if he wasn't actually nursing broken ribs. On the upside, he got eight extra hours of freedom from the manor. On the downside, all of it was spent in a rusty folding chair in the waiting area of St Mungo's emergency ward.
-/-/-/-/-
Wednesday's sunrise broke over the hedges behind Buckingham palace. Potter called out the count while Draco ground pushups in the dewey grass. Three hundred sit up's and a mile and a half mile sprint left them with their hands crushed into their sides. Mischief bloomed in Potter's eyes. "So... What actually happened at St Mungo's?"
"I gave an official statement."
"Granger already got her medal and Alanson got a commendation."
"And you have a question about...?"
"Between us girls, he couldn't defend his way out of a wet paper bag with the Elder Wand, and Granger was all giggly."
Draco pursed his lips. "Good to know my pain brings someone joy."
"I suppose a man ought to be good at something."
They laughed and joked as they ran off towards The Leaky Cauldron and jumped the Floo to Malfoy Manor. His mother setting up Potter with his own room was a strange twist. Potter owned a bunch of property, but all of it was still wrecked, rotten, or tied up in court. The Ministry had confiscated everything good and only grudgingly returned the leavings. The arrangement wasn't all bad. He was the only one who really understood.
Today's lesson was Occulemency. Snape had bragged to The Death Eaters when he had been selected by Dumbledore to "tutor" Potter. Draco's old potion master went on and on about how he was actually softening Potter's mind for attacks by Voldemort. Potter seemed disappointed at that revelation, but he made quick progress in the hands of an actual teacher. Today, though, Draco bored into Potter's mind and was greeted by Daphne Greengass's spectacular breasts bobbing as she ground her hips into Harry. His eyebrow raised. "Seriously? You're stuck on shagging my ex-fiancee?"
Harry flicked a wicked wink. "Yeah, well, you have to admit, there's worse things to be stuck on. Why wouldn't you tell me about Hermione hacking up that idiot Alanson and how you talked her into roughing you up to cover the tracks. Didn't think you fancied her."
"Bald faced self preservation. They would have sent me straight back to Azkaban."
"I doubt it. I knew something was up. Granger was in the best mood she's been in all year."
He bowed with a flourish. "Draco Malfoy at your service. So, you and Daph?"
Potter nodded. Whatever they were doing, it must have been at one of his own properties. No matter, he had Ada for however long it lasted. She more than made up for any pain he might have felt about losing Daphne. As Goyle had said over and over, maybe it was better. At least this way, you didn't have to worry about all the strange congenital curses catching hold of too-close kin.
Potter was prattling on about some flavor of Gryffindor gossip and mentioned that people hardly saw Granger outside of work. She had completely withdrawn from everything social. She had been shuffled through half a dozen entry level posts within The Ministry via their new Leadership Development program, but it only seemed to be making her more jaded.
Draco chuckled. "Another crusader was sacrificed on the altar of bureaucracy."
Harry sighed. "Yeah. She really believed she could change things."
It was so ridiculously ironic in a sick, twisted way. He had set out for revenge and changed all sorts of things because it was the easiest path to achieving it, but he never actually cared whether any of it stuck. That was never his goal. Then, he went to war against the ministry, not because they were destroying people's lives, but because his own team lost the script and went all stupid. He was trying to block their efforts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Of course, he couldn't say any of that out loud, so he shifted gears. "Granger's been having trouble since the war's over?"
"I don't know a soul who isn't. Daph cries in her sleep. She betrayed all her Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff friends and was forced to help torture them. None of them will talk to her now."
She's sleeping with him here? Oh, right. When I'm with Ada.
Potter had left off reminding him that he was the one who forced Daphne to sell out most of her non-Slytherin acquaintances, and he was also the one responsible for most of their torture. His sixth and seventh year antics seemed buried under a thick fog, but His ex-fiancee's so called Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff "friends?" She had never claimed any of them, to him at least, but thinking back, that's when their relationship changed. Daph grew more distant. The good natured teasing, innuendo, and friendly flirting was replaced by polite conversation when he initiated it.
Potter continued, "And her little sister is dying of some sort of family curse, but her father sent the girl away."
Daphne was fit to be tied when her father pulled Tori out of Hogwarts in her second year. Last he heard, she had been stuffed into St. Mungo's, but that was six or seven years ago. "What's she up to now?"
"Apparently shipped off to some sort of medical charity. Daph sees her maybe once a year. She spent a couple years in Bosnia and then got sent to Afghanistan after the civil war broke out."
Draco shook his head. Why would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to that sort of abuse? Do-gooding had never exactly been his forte. War was war, and hospitals made ready targets.
