"The First Hours Of The Rest Of His Life" (2/3)
Thank you so much for sticking with this thing, written as it was between status calls, part orders and the dissemination of general information to complete morons. I've got DM to finish up for fire_fic, but I won't be able to till I get this 'verse out of my head for at least a few weeks.
I am so tired.
Part one, and other fic in the Prisoner!verse resides here.
The First Hours Of The Rest Of His Life (2/3)
Author: _beetle_
Fandom: HP
Characters: DM, HP, DC
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I had a knut for every time people confused me with JK Rowlings. . . .
Concrit/Feedback: How's my characterization?
Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: AU after OotP. Set post-Hogwarts by eight years. Sequel to The Prisoner Of Azkaban And Harry Potter.
Summary: Back at the old alma mater . . . a vaguely familiar face and answers to some of his questions.
"What--" Draco attempts as they make their way to the Auror checkpoint--bloody grand of Potter to remove the Silencing Charm without telling him-and clears his throat. "What was that all about?"
"What was what all about?" Potter's grimly soldiering onward--marching as to war.
"Weasley's eerily spot-on impersonation of a big girl's blouse, or weren't you paying attention just then?"
Coming from someone who manipulates and hurts his friends with enviable ease, the glare Potter shoots him seems a tad hypocritical.
"That, was my former colleagues in law enforcement having qualms about a serial murderer walking around in the sunshine. Silly of them, really." Potter's tone is only nominally snide. His heart's not in it at all, and something will certainly have to be done about that.
"Well, at least this serial murderer will be walking around in good company, eh?" Draco claps Potter on the back soundly, and he stiffens, his shoulders up and hunched like an alley kneazle. Then he's taking those ground-devouring strides and Draco's hurrying to keep up, fully expecting to be hexed back to muteness at any second.
A subtle clearing of the throat is proof that he's hasn't been, but the conversation, such as it is, has fallen flat, anyways. The cosmos have realigned into their proper order.
The Aurors standing guard duty finally--after checking and rechecking Potter's papers, but not quite going so far as to pat him down, as they do Draco--allow them access to the floor network.
"It's a disgrace, this," the elder mutters as Potter gestures for Draco to proceed him further into the Hall. The younger one--a sharp-featured blonde--doesn't so much as look at Draco after she's done patting him down, only makes a face like she's smelled something dreadful.
She reminds him strongly of his mother.
Ignoring his own sentimentality, Draco glides past the pair like visiting royalty. He can't make out what Potter murmurs as he passes them, but he hears the clipped, too-calm tone, and the older Auror's stammered response of: 'yes, sir, my apologies, sirs.'
Once they reach a fireplace labeled "Hogwarts! Please Enunciate!" Potter stares at cold hearth for a moment, brooding, obviously unhappy, only to shake it off seconds later and reach for the large bowl on the mantle.
Now that the silence is slightly less pointed, if only because Potter's too busy fumbling with the floo powder as if he's never used it before--
"So!" Draco says brightly, startling Potter and causing him to drop floo powder all over the mantle. "If peons like the Wonder Twins, and those two back there are so righteous, why aren't you siding with them?"
"I'm not siding with anyone. I'm doing the right thing." Potter glares at Draco again, who efficiently scoops the spilled powder into his own hand. The ambient light of the Atrium reflects eerily in his eyes. "You knew what it was to do the right thing once upon a time, Malfoy. For a few minutes, anyway."
Draco moves briskly into the fireplace. "Yes, to my eternal lament. Defense Against The Dark Arts office!" He enunciates, dropping the floo powder before Potter can respond. Only then does it occur to him that whoever may be waiting on the other side may have been expecting Potter first, or at least with him.
Although who, besides Slughorn and/or McGonagall would be hanging about the DADA office of an evening? More of Potter's obnoxious, imbecilic friends? Doubtful, if what Draco's seen is indicative of the way he habitually treats them.
Still, Gryffs are nothing, if not tenacious. For all he knows, Granger will be waiting there to smooth poor Potter's hair, then force more Veritaserum down Draco's throat.
C'est la vie, the Lucius in his head hisses, a trifle smugly. Then Draco's stepping out of the fireplace with his usual grace and alacrity (floo being his only reliable recourse for travel with no decent wand these three years). He dusts off his borrowed--but recently Scourgifyed, like himself--robes and looks around.
No remarkable changes about the office, other than the fanatical neatness with which it is now being kept. Unless Potter's changed in other ways than his somewhat more palatable personality and fashion sense, this office rarely sees him in it, despite the enormous pile of scrolls waiting on his desk.
Books that no witch or wizard except Granger has bothered to read since their own schooldays adorn the shelves, dust-free, but obviously unused.
A quick scan of the titles shows no copy of Quidditch Through The Ages, but a pristine copy of Hogwarts: A History that's obviously never been read.
Oh, dear, who cold have gifted our semi-literate champion with that? Draco smirks, but briefly. His attention is rather quickly taken by the door . . . sweet, tempting door. Not that he has any illusions about his chances of evading Potter, or even Weasley and Finnigan. Not wandless, anyway.
But the temptation is there--a tickling curiosity to see not how far he'd get, but just how much more he could fuck up his life before being put out of everyones' misery. . . .
He doesn't even realize he's taken a step toward the door, until his musings and his forward momentum are halted by a cleared throat from the fireplace behind him. Instinctively reaching for the wand he hasn't had in years, Draco whirls toward the noise. Is confronted by a vaguely familiar young wizard leaning against the mantle.
His well-made umber robe is covered liberally in buff-colored dust, and under it he wears a thin, horrendously orange Muggle shirt that reads Billabong. Adding insult to Mugglery, below the eye-watering shirt are faded denim trousers, worn at the knees, and ancient-looking sandals on dusty feet.
Mousy, equally dusty brown hair frames a nothing face--that is saved from complete obscurity only by a pair of sky-blue eyes that seem to glow against his tanned, weather-beaten skin--and hangs to narrow shoulders.
There's a wand pointed at Draco, slender as the hand that holds it. Said hand is steady, as is the cold, electric gaze above it that's tried, convicted and executed Draco in the space of split-seconds.
"Where is Harry?" The wizard asks in a voice that's unexpectedly low and musical, tense and also vaguely familiar. Of all Draco's failings--and he'll be the first to admit there are many, just different from the ones people such as Weasley would name--memory has never been one, until now.
The silence draws out and those sharp, bombardier's eyes snap dangerously.
"Let's try this once more." The wand is now leveled at Draco's right eye. "Where. Is Harry?"
And still all Draco can do is stare blankly at this rag-tag wizard. Stare and catalogue several sudden physical symptoms: the uncontrolled, violent flush spreading across every square inch of skin on his body; the unparalleled and surprising uselessness of brain and tongue in response to this unexpected threat; the accelerated rush of blood in his veins running hotter then colder, then hotter again. . . .
The bottom having completely fallen out of his stomach, only to be replaced by smoldering coals.
Well, that last could easily be attributed to the half-stale bread Potter bespoke from Azkaban's stores, which has done nothing but sit in his gut like a slug of lead.
It's a plausible enough explanation until those blue eyes narrow, taking the mouth--infernally mobile-looking, despite the hard line it's set in--with it. That smoldering warmth starts to pool and tingle in Draco's stomach before spreading outwards (downwards) at an alarming rate.
Thank all the Malfoys that ever were for the automatic sneer that curls his lips--if not for the horribly clichéd insult that tumbles out of them far too breathlessly. "Aren't you Muggle-born ever taught that you'll catch more flies with--"
"Damnitall!" Comes from the fireplace as Potter tumbles through to land on his stomach, gone sprawling like an oafish, overgrown toddler covered in soot. Draco doesn't bother to stifle a derisive chuckle, nodding at the stranger.
"Does that answer your question?" He lets the chuckle taper into a smirk, inwardly sighing when those eyes remain unwarmed by humor, interest or even disapproval. It occurs to him this stranger must be magnificent in true anger . . . cold and tightly-controlled, the only sign of his rage the flash of those damning blue eyes and the thinning of that mouth--
It's here that Draco pauses a moment to take stock of himself, review the 'symptoms' and add them up. The conclusion he comes to is worse than mental strain and indigestion combined. Worse by far, as he continues to gaze at this unkempt stranger like some lovestruck Hufflepuff.
Something bitter and slow, like rue, begins to twist at his core, creating a desperate urge to strike this man, bloody that mouth and gouge out those eyes--
He needs a distraction, he decides, and anything'll do.
Anything has, in fact, just tumbled tail-over-tea-kettle through the fireplace.
"I've always remarked upon your talent for making a dignified entrance, Potter," he notes, leaning against the bookshelves and crossing his arms. Potter picks himself up efficiently, unabashedly, and dusts off the same way, automatically heading toward his pin-neat desk. He's barely touched the first scroll on the top and half of them tumble to the floor unnoticed.
"Sod off, Malfoy, it's not as if--Dennis!" Potter turns when some sixth sense alerts him to the other man's presence. The look of distracted annoyance evaporates, is replaced by something that's equal parts smile and frown and the scroll he'd picked up drops to the desk. Then the floor to join it's brethren.
"Dennis," he says again, genuine--as far as Draco can tell--pleasure in his voice and leeching into his expression. The wizard's--Dennis's stance doesn't change, or the hard look on his face, but something in the line of him, the stiff breadth of his shoulders, such as it is, relaxes.
He straightens slightly, squaring his spare frame. "Hullo, Harry." Extra bit of basso in his voice, turning it into a mellow rumble that, combined with that steady stare, makes a hot flush creep across Draco's skin.
Who is this person that makes Potter's presence in the same room Draco is in entirely trivial? Who could possibly push such a massively annoying man to the side in Draco's mind?
But memory has finally placed this vagabond wizard: forgettable face, obviously Muggle-born, an air of stillness and focus that'd once been somewhat curious in so young a child--
Dennis Creevey might've done well in Slytherin, if the mile-wide streak of Gryffindor boldness and plain-spokenness could've been tormented out of him. If he weren't so protective of that annoying older brother of his. . . .
If he weren't a Muggle-bo--a Mudblood, he might very well have gone far in the Wizarding World, indeed.
Though Draco certainly is in no position to pass judgment. The House of Malfoy no longer carries the cachet of nobility it once did, thanks to himself and Lucius. Any wizard, even the most persnickety of Purebloods, would sooner cite this Creevey boy as a more favorable match than Draco.
An enraged Hippogriff would rate as a more favorable match than Draco.
"You're back early, aren't you?" Potter is asking, concern coloring his eyes and voice. He takes a step toward the Creevey boy--Creevey man, despite his rather economical build-then hesitates. It's the first sign of uncertainty he's displayed since he brazened Draco out of Azkaban. "Did something go wrong in Corfu?"
Creevey shakes his head once, his suspicious attention partially shifting, at last, to Potter. His eyes and face soften, and a small smile touches the corners of his mouth briefly. It doesn't transform his face, but it adds a glow to those blue, blue eyes that makes the churning burn in Draco's stomach grow more intense.
Creevey still does not lower his wand.
Parts quite a bit south of Draco's abdomen begin to stir.
"After the initial audit, they really didn't need me hanging about, burning through the freelance budget. Bill had me touch down in Burnie for a bit--"
"God, not the zombies, again?" Potter shudders.
"No, thank goodness. No major uprisings since December. Rawhiri, Totorewa, & Alpert is still holding down the fort until the counter-curse can be cast. Another couple of weeks and I'll be heading back with Bill's team to pitch in. But till they need me I'm . . . somewhat at loose ends." This last is said in a soft, hopeful, but not quite prodding tone.
"Oh," Potter says, smiling his relief that all's right with the world. At least the Tasmanian part of it. "Well . . . whatever the reason for you being back so soon, I'm glad to see you, as always." Cue a repellently Dumbledorish twinkle that steps neatly over the question in Creevey's tone. "Especially as it gives me another chance to talk you into guest lecturing my fifth years."
Though the hopeful light in his eyes is shuttered, Creevey doesn't seem too put out by Potter's surely deliberate obtuseness. But there's more than a little self-mockery in his smile, now. "Not this again, Harry--even Arithmancy-geeks like me find it makes for dry lecturing. And a practical application wouldn't be appropriate even for the DADA classroom--"
"Dennis--I'm not asking you to lecture them about Arithmancy! The poor kids get enough of that from Vector." Potter sits and starts poking at the pile of scrolls on his desk again, causing more of them to tumble to the floor. "I'm asking you to come in, talk a little bit about what you do, how you use what you learned in DADA to keep yourself safe, take some questions--"
"And I suppose offer summer apprenticeships to those who show some interest in curse-breaking as a career?" Creevey chuckles when Potter begins to hem and haw, and splutter. "Blimey, Harry, your fifth years aren't the reason I come back to Hogwarts every free moment I get, and you know it."
The silence is expectant and full, but not uncomfortable. Potter seems to be fighting back a smile as he shuffles parchment.
"Mum says she's forgetting what I look like," Creevey goes on, stepping away from the mantle and lowering his wand arm. He still doesn't put his wand away. "And she's even threatening to move to Hogwarts since that's the only way she'll get to see me regularly."
Potter watches Creevey's approach from under his lashes. "What about your dad?"
"Well . . . he'll just be glad of the peace and quiet, won't he?" That earns Creevey a small chuckle, though there are whole other levels of conversation in their eyes, their words--in their silences that Draco can't interpret, only scratch the surfacce of their meaning.
He rolls his eyes and slouches, ignoring the quiet voice urging him to stand up straight like a proper gentleman, shoulders back, and for Merlin's sake, don't glower so. . . !
(It sounds more like his mother than his father, that voice.)
"I really am glad you're back," Potter blurts out, before sighing. "I mean--I missed you."
Such an abysmally plain little declaration, said with no aplomb whatsoever, but it puts that hopeful light back in Creevey's eyes and a new knot in Draco's stomach.
"Look, I promised Vector I'd stop by for a visit, but I won't be long. I can drop by your rooms a little later, and--" Creevey darts a glance at Draco, who smirks in return, though the burning in his stomach has changed focus entirely, is now quite unpleasant. He thinks it might be envy, though it's been so long since he's felt that particular burn, even where Potter's concerned. "Around half-nine, say? And by then you'll have gotten . . . things sorted?"
Potter finally nods, that small smile back, a little color in his cheeks. "Half-nine, if you wish. That chess game we started is still waiting. I expect you'll trounce me, like always."
Oh, whom do you think you're fooling? Draco wants to demand--sick of watching yet again as Potter gets everything with no more expenditure than a soulful look and a wistful smile--when Creevey sits on the edge of Potter's desk. His hand covers Potter's, stilling it.
"I remember exactly where we left off, too," he murmurs softly, though not softly enough for Draco, who's had more than enough.
Do you know your boyfriend can cast Legilimens any time he wants, without wand or words, Creevey? Do you know he's probably taken up residence in your deepest thoughts, and knows more about how you feel than you do? Not that he'd have to use Legilimency with your feelings made so blatantly apparent. Draco's stomach is turning into pâté de foie gras, and he has to look away from this--this. If only to calm the sudden pounding in head and chest. If Potter chose to, he could force you to feel whatever he wished you to feel, including every yearning, insipid, hormonal emotion you're no doubt experiencing right now.
When he looks up again, Potter's staring up into Creevey's eyes intently--too intently, as far as Draco would be concerned if he cared. Which he doesn't. Still, he clears his throat before Creevey can do more than ghost rough fingers across Potter's cheek. "Will I be meeting with Professor Slughorn sometime before the Leaving Feast? Or am I to be subjected to even more hackneyed attempts at seduction?"
Two sets of eyes, shift to Draco and--having secured their attention--he straightens up as if to leave, fully aware that he has no place to go without Potter's input or permission.
"Oh, shut it and have a seat, Malfoy," Potter says with more amusement than rancor. "You don't have to worry about going anywhere or doing anything for at least another twelve hours. That includes meeting with Slughorn."
"Fine. And I never worry," Draco says, and Potter rolls his eyes. Creevey has stood up and gone back to the mantle, retrieving some sort of dusty, sooty canvas carry-all. He hefts it onto his shoulder and turns back to Potter, that glow back in his eyes and face even stronger than before.
"I'll see you tonight, Harry," he says softly. He nods politely--if nigh imperceptibly--to Draco on his way out the door. "Good evening, Mr. Malfoy.”
In the moments Draco takes to conjure up a suitably scathing and dismissive reply, the door's already swung shut leaving him and Potter alone but for the faint, lingering scent of sand and salt, water and stone.
It's strangely . . . appealing.
Draco watches Potter continue to push scrolls aimlessly--distractedly, and with a ridiculous little grin on his face--about his desk for a minute before taking the seat opposite him. "The Creevey boys never were much to look at, but the other one, at least, had a certain puppy-ish, sycophantic charm. . . ."
This one has practically nothing to recommend him, Draco means to add, but closes his mouth on it. If one can't tell a lie convincingly and well, one shouldn't tell it at all. Rare, but sound advice from his late mother that he's always taken to heart.
And Draco's rather leery of upsetting Potter too much.
But far from flustered or angry, Potter merely 'hmms', making it obvious he hadn't really heard a word Draco said. Whatever equilibrium seeing Weasley and Finnigan had upset, Creevey has somehow put right with little more than a smile and a caress.
"So what does Weasel think of his competition? Can't imagine he's too happy about this--or does he even know that you're a shirt lifter?"
(Though not quite as clueless as Finnigan, it still wouldn't surprise Draco a bit if Weasley had no idea which team his supposed best friend was Seeker for. By the same token, neither would it surprise him if Weasley were queer and had been equally clueless about it until Potter, ahem, brought it to his attention.
It would certainly explain the 'Hermonald' split.)
Potter finally looks up, blinking quizzically. "Ron is both aware of and not even remotely invested in my sexual preferences, not that that's any of your business. But as our lives are going to be bound together for some time, and you're probably one of the few people in the Wizarding World who didn't know about me--"
"I've always known!" Potter's utter disbelief causes Draco to cross his arms again. "Suspected, anyway. How else to explain the sought after Harry Potter escaping Hogwarts with his virginity intact--and don't bother to deny it, either. Half the girls in our year were in love you--the ones that didn't have the good taste to be desperately in love with me, anyway-so unless you were ashamed of some . . . shortcoming or other. . . ."
A quirky, light-hearted smile that should seem out of place on this new, even more humorless Potter . . . but doesn't. "Oh, I've never had any complaints."
"You wouldn't, would you?" Draco sneers. "Who's going to tell The Boy Who Lived that's he's a complete wash between the sheets?"
"Malfoy, do find something else to twit me about, or I'll start to think you fancy me."
Not even under Imperius. Draco thinks, then realizes that if Potter chose to, he could impel Draco to do any number of unsavory things, the least of which might be climbing into Potter's bed and liking it. "Tempting, though you are, I must demure. Far be it from me to come between the inestimable Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Creevey."
Potter laughs-of all things-even snorting a little. "Nice shot."
"I rather thought so," Draco admits with overdone modesty. Then: "I find your relaxed attitude to my drubbing contemptible, not to mention personally insulting."
"Best learn to live with it, hadn't you?"
"If only to avoid the alternative." Draco catches himself about to slouch again like some work-weary Muggle laborer, and sits up ramrod straight before letting his body recline gracefully.
And Potter's still pawing through the pile of scrolls like a crazed dog.
"Oh, what are you rummaging for, you disorganized savage?" Draco finally asks, allowing mild interest to color his irritation.
"Your contract. Could've sworn I left it on top of the pile--"
"--the top half which you knocked to the floor?" Draco inquires, and a lumos finally comes on above Potter's head. Then he's disappearing below desk-top to root about on the floor like a pig for truffles. Draco sighs. "I, for one, am comforted that my life has been placed in your capable hands."
"All I did was pull your arse out of the frying pan. It's up to you to keep it out of the fire. Your life is in your own hands now, Draco." Potter drops an armful of parchment on the desk and glares at it as if trying to make it catch fire. Which isn't beyond the realm of possibility where this particular wizard is involved.
"So, what are the terms of my indentured servitude to be, then?"
"It's a pretty standard apprenticeship contract; with a few added provisos due to your . . . circumstances. You can review the contract yourself tonight--if I ever find the damn thing-and address any issues you may have with your goblin--"
“Wait--” Draco blinks. "I have a goblin?"
"Of course you have. I hired you one, didn't I? Dravdok, the Punctillious." Potter shakes his head. Draco, meanwhile, is still fighting off a more than mild case of shock.
"You. Hired me a goblin."
"It's not as if you can just go about signing random bits of legalese without protecting your interests. Well--you can, but you really shouldn't," Potter admonishes as if Draco doesn't already known this. He knows, he's simply surprised Potter also knows and agrees.
Times have changed when this most Gryffindor of Gryffindors starts spouting platitudes like a portrait of a Malfoy great-uncle.
"Dravdok expects you and Slughorn in his office by eight sharp. He'll go over the terms with you separately and together, and I'll pop in to a be a witness to the signing. Unless there's someone else you'd rather. . . ?"
Draco waves a hand dismissively. "You'll do." There's no one he'd rather--no one else period. Certainly no one alive that he can trust more than he trusts Potter.
Not that he'd ever, even in his most innocent days, resorted to something as trivial as trust when leverage was so much more practical.
"And my other master?" Draco drawls the word just to see the thinning of Potter's already thin lips. "What of him? Will he be bound by this contract, or am I to be dependent solely on his good will for peace of mind and protection?"
Potter doesn't answer him for several minutes, and then only to say, "here" a second before he tosses the scroll. Draco catches it but doesn't unroll it, holding Potter's gaze expectantly.
"Right, then. I'm willing go you one better, Draco. An oath-blood oath, if you like." He leans down to open the right bottom drawer of his desk, and quickly comes up with a bottle of Ogden's Old, followed a second later by two large, plain glasses. "Will you feel your interests adequately protected with me under a geas?"
Despite his returning control of his facial expressions, Draco cannot stop the fractional rise of one eyebrow. However, Potter suggesting a heathen-style blood-binding--while obviously settling them both in for a bit of a drunk--makes that eyebrow forgivable, in his opinion.
"That would depend upon the geas, would it not? And I don't imbibe," he says primly. But Potter's already shoving a glass across the desk-heedless of his students' no doubt lackluster papers. Perhaps the Ogden's Old is useful as a grading aid. "But let us say you take this oath . . . what would I have to swear in return?"
"Not a thing." Potter shrugs at Draco's unvoiced, unexpressed skepticism, deftly uncorking the bottle and pouring a fifth into Draco's glass one handed, with the ease of long practice. "You have nothing I need or want, and the one great secret I have, you already know. And it comes complete with a Ministry sanctioned Secret-keeper."
And Draco can guess who the Secret-keeper is.
"You don't have to make up your mind about everything right now," Potter adds, mistaking Draco's silence, but not completely. He takes a deep swallow of his firewhisky and nods at Draco to do the same.
Sighing, Draco ventures a sip. Then another that burns even more than the first.
"I'm offering to become your mentor in autonomancy, but that is not a condition of your release." Potter leans back in his chair and swings his feet up onto his desk, somehow missing the scattered scrolls. His eyes are pensive, watchful. "It's also not an easy road. You may think you despise me now, but if you decide to learn what I have to teach, you will plumb new, burning depths of hatred just to get through our sessions."
A sneer seems appropriate now, but Draco can't remember where he placed his. Maybe Creevey took it with him when he left.
He unconsciously takes another sip, letting the heat of it warm him, make Potter's words a bit more palatable.
"Of course . . . you're free to tell me to take my tutelage and sod off right now. I'll hold you no ill will--and you'll certainly see less of me during the course of your probation." A tired smile, and self-deprecating toast. "But once you're my apprentice--once I've taken whatever oaths you deem necessary to give you your peace of mind, there's no going back."
Potter's gaze burns as much, if not more than the firewhisky, and Draco looks away, fingers clenching on his glass. He knows little enough about heathen magic, and even less about blood oaths. Malfoys rarely made promises they intended to keep, and so never resorted to any ritual oath-taking aside from marriage.
But more than the dubious safety of binding Potter in some heathen oath, Draco wants wandless magic. Wants to be the source of his power and the focus of it. He's never wanted anything so much in his life.
He knocks back the rest of his fifth in one fiery swallow, meeting Potter's glaze without blinking, despite the tears that springs to his eyes. When he doesn't blink them away, they run down his face freely.
Potter smiles grim approval and pours Draco another, toasting him again.
"Nothing too elaborate for the geas though, Malfoy. I don't fancy having to stagger into Pomfrey's office short a pint of blood and having to explain why I'm covered in runes and sigils," he mutters, tossing back his own shot before pouring himself a double. It's telling that he doesn't so much as grimace at the burn, when there are still tears springing to Draco's eyes.
"Why?" He asks after collecting his thoughts for a moment, sipping steadily, letting the second glass stoke the burn ignited by the first. "Why me? Why not Weasel, or Granger, or even bloody Longbottom?" Why not lover-boy Creevey?
"The idea of performing magic without a wand is simply inconceivable to most wizards. Especially Purebloods. Besides which, Ron tends to need the focus of a wand, and Neville. Well." Potter sighs, and puts his glass down on an essay. "I find it impossible to be critical of him, so whatever his capacity to learn, I would be utterly pants at teaching him. Hermione . . . chose not continue her Autonomancy studies some time ago."
'Chose not to continue. . . .' Draco files yet another interesting tidbit away for later consideration, leaning back in his chair. He feels flushed and slightly too warm--sleepy, though he's been too wound up to sleep for days.
"As to why you . . . Autonomic Magic is based upon will. The will to effect change, the strength to bear the responsibility and the burden of every change you make--all of which you have in spades.” Potter shrugs.
His words ring true enough, but Draco's certain he's not hearing the whole answer. Of course he's not Potter learned to dissemble and obfuscate from the best, after all.
“You'll find that most, if not all the spells you can perform with a wand can be performed autonomically." That half-lidded thoughtfulness is back, and Draco manages not to squirm under Potter's bold, unapologetic perusal. "Initially, I'll train you to tap into the very emotions that you insist on letting weaken and control you. Show you how to use them to reshape the the world--small pieces of it, anyway. When you've gained control and focus, you'll be ready to learn true autonomancy: magic powered by your will alone."
Draco laughs, a little too loud and too long--or so it seems. He looks at his now empty glass, distracted into wondering how in the Harrowing Heath that'd happened so fast.
Luckily, his mouth seems able to work without his input and Potter seems inclined to pour without prompting. "Have you forgotten, Potty, that I'm not a Gryffin-bore? Can you really trust that I'll use this newfound power for the good of unicorns, puppies and Mudbloods? Who's to say I won't go around killing and maiming who and whatever crosses my path for fun."
Now Potter's the one who laughs, jaded and almost apologetic. It sounds off . . . like something one might hear drifting out from the more heavily warded areas of St. Mungo's. And his face looks as if it's in the middle of some sort of transformation.
Were-Potter? Draco thinks, with an uncomfortable giggle that mayn't be entirely mental.
"You may use the power however you choose, Malfoy," Potter says, his lips pursing to hold in more of that eerie laughter. "If you've the will to do so, and the strength to bear up under the consequences, then suit yourself and paint the world in blood. Fay çe que vouldras--do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
“Poppycock.” Coming from Potter, this credo is appalling and quite repellent. It's water running up hill: conceivable, but wrong, and unnatural. Disturbing. But Draco again finds himself believing, even though Potter is surely leaving some crucial bit of information out.
Granger chose not to continue training with this drunken lunatic. Mudblood or not, she was never stupid. . . .
This voice sounds neither like his mother nor father, but like himself, which makes it an easier voice to ignore, in some ways.
Draco knocks back the fifth Potter just poured for him, frowning when another isn't immediately forthcoming. But before he can dredge up something sensibly snarky Potter's put the bottle away, finished off his own glass, and magicked it and Draco's to . . . the kitchens, one imagines.
An almost companionable silence reigns over them both until:
"Since Creevey's obviously the one wearing the robes in this relationship, that would make you the pillow-biter, wouldn't it?"
3
I'll answer the feedback for this part and the previous part Sunday evening. You guys rock the hardcore patience 24.7.
I am so tired.
Part one, and other fic in the Prisoner!verse resides here.
The First Hours Of The Rest Of His Life (2/3)
Author: _beetle_
Fandom: HP
Characters: DM, HP, DC
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I had a knut for every time people confused me with JK Rowlings. . . .
Concrit/Feedback: How's my characterization?
Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: AU after OotP. Set post-Hogwarts by eight years. Sequel to The Prisoner Of Azkaban And Harry Potter.
Summary: Back at the old alma mater . . . a vaguely familiar face and answers to some of his questions.
"What--" Draco attempts as they make their way to the Auror checkpoint--bloody grand of Potter to remove the Silencing Charm without telling him-and clears his throat. "What was that all about?"
"What was what all about?" Potter's grimly soldiering onward--marching as to war.
"Weasley's eerily spot-on impersonation of a big girl's blouse, or weren't you paying attention just then?"
Coming from someone who manipulates and hurts his friends with enviable ease, the glare Potter shoots him seems a tad hypocritical.
"That, was my former colleagues in law enforcement having qualms about a serial murderer walking around in the sunshine. Silly of them, really." Potter's tone is only nominally snide. His heart's not in it at all, and something will certainly have to be done about that.
"Well, at least this serial murderer will be walking around in good company, eh?" Draco claps Potter on the back soundly, and he stiffens, his shoulders up and hunched like an alley kneazle. Then he's taking those ground-devouring strides and Draco's hurrying to keep up, fully expecting to be hexed back to muteness at any second.
A subtle clearing of the throat is proof that he's hasn't been, but the conversation, such as it is, has fallen flat, anyways. The cosmos have realigned into their proper order.
The Aurors standing guard duty finally--after checking and rechecking Potter's papers, but not quite going so far as to pat him down, as they do Draco--allow them access to the floor network.
"It's a disgrace, this," the elder mutters as Potter gestures for Draco to proceed him further into the Hall. The younger one--a sharp-featured blonde--doesn't so much as look at Draco after she's done patting him down, only makes a face like she's smelled something dreadful.
She reminds him strongly of his mother.
Ignoring his own sentimentality, Draco glides past the pair like visiting royalty. He can't make out what Potter murmurs as he passes them, but he hears the clipped, too-calm tone, and the older Auror's stammered response of: 'yes, sir, my apologies, sirs.'
Once they reach a fireplace labeled "Hogwarts! Please Enunciate!" Potter stares at cold hearth for a moment, brooding, obviously unhappy, only to shake it off seconds later and reach for the large bowl on the mantle.
Now that the silence is slightly less pointed, if only because Potter's too busy fumbling with the floo powder as if he's never used it before--
"So!" Draco says brightly, startling Potter and causing him to drop floo powder all over the mantle. "If peons like the Wonder Twins, and those two back there are so righteous, why aren't you siding with them?"
"I'm not siding with anyone. I'm doing the right thing." Potter glares at Draco again, who efficiently scoops the spilled powder into his own hand. The ambient light of the Atrium reflects eerily in his eyes. "You knew what it was to do the right thing once upon a time, Malfoy. For a few minutes, anyway."
Draco moves briskly into the fireplace. "Yes, to my eternal lament. Defense Against The Dark Arts office!" He enunciates, dropping the floo powder before Potter can respond. Only then does it occur to him that whoever may be waiting on the other side may have been expecting Potter first, or at least with him.
Although who, besides Slughorn and/or McGonagall would be hanging about the DADA office of an evening? More of Potter's obnoxious, imbecilic friends? Doubtful, if what Draco's seen is indicative of the way he habitually treats them.
Still, Gryffs are nothing, if not tenacious. For all he knows, Granger will be waiting there to smooth poor Potter's hair, then force more Veritaserum down Draco's throat.
C'est la vie, the Lucius in his head hisses, a trifle smugly. Then Draco's stepping out of the fireplace with his usual grace and alacrity (floo being his only reliable recourse for travel with no decent wand these three years). He dusts off his borrowed--but recently Scourgifyed, like himself--robes and looks around.
No remarkable changes about the office, other than the fanatical neatness with which it is now being kept. Unless Potter's changed in other ways than his somewhat more palatable personality and fashion sense, this office rarely sees him in it, despite the enormous pile of scrolls waiting on his desk.
Books that no witch or wizard except Granger has bothered to read since their own schooldays adorn the shelves, dust-free, but obviously unused.
A quick scan of the titles shows no copy of Quidditch Through The Ages, but a pristine copy of Hogwarts: A History that's obviously never been read.
Oh, dear, who cold have gifted our semi-literate champion with that? Draco smirks, but briefly. His attention is rather quickly taken by the door . . . sweet, tempting door. Not that he has any illusions about his chances of evading Potter, or even Weasley and Finnigan. Not wandless, anyway.
But the temptation is there--a tickling curiosity to see not how far he'd get, but just how much more he could fuck up his life before being put out of everyones' misery. . . .
He doesn't even realize he's taken a step toward the door, until his musings and his forward momentum are halted by a cleared throat from the fireplace behind him. Instinctively reaching for the wand he hasn't had in years, Draco whirls toward the noise. Is confronted by a vaguely familiar young wizard leaning against the mantle.
His well-made umber robe is covered liberally in buff-colored dust, and under it he wears a thin, horrendously orange Muggle shirt that reads Billabong. Adding insult to Mugglery, below the eye-watering shirt are faded denim trousers, worn at the knees, and ancient-looking sandals on dusty feet.
Mousy, equally dusty brown hair frames a nothing face--that is saved from complete obscurity only by a pair of sky-blue eyes that seem to glow against his tanned, weather-beaten skin--and hangs to narrow shoulders.
There's a wand pointed at Draco, slender as the hand that holds it. Said hand is steady, as is the cold, electric gaze above it that's tried, convicted and executed Draco in the space of split-seconds.
"Where is Harry?" The wizard asks in a voice that's unexpectedly low and musical, tense and also vaguely familiar. Of all Draco's failings--and he'll be the first to admit there are many, just different from the ones people such as Weasley would name--memory has never been one, until now.
The silence draws out and those sharp, bombardier's eyes snap dangerously.
"Let's try this once more." The wand is now leveled at Draco's right eye. "Where. Is Harry?"
And still all Draco can do is stare blankly at this rag-tag wizard. Stare and catalogue several sudden physical symptoms: the uncontrolled, violent flush spreading across every square inch of skin on his body; the unparalleled and surprising uselessness of brain and tongue in response to this unexpected threat; the accelerated rush of blood in his veins running hotter then colder, then hotter again. . . .
The bottom having completely fallen out of his stomach, only to be replaced by smoldering coals.
Well, that last could easily be attributed to the half-stale bread Potter bespoke from Azkaban's stores, which has done nothing but sit in his gut like a slug of lead.
It's a plausible enough explanation until those blue eyes narrow, taking the mouth--infernally mobile-looking, despite the hard line it's set in--with it. That smoldering warmth starts to pool and tingle in Draco's stomach before spreading outwards (downwards) at an alarming rate.
Thank all the Malfoys that ever were for the automatic sneer that curls his lips--if not for the horribly clichéd insult that tumbles out of them far too breathlessly. "Aren't you Muggle-born ever taught that you'll catch more flies with--"
"Damnitall!" Comes from the fireplace as Potter tumbles through to land on his stomach, gone sprawling like an oafish, overgrown toddler covered in soot. Draco doesn't bother to stifle a derisive chuckle, nodding at the stranger.
"Does that answer your question?" He lets the chuckle taper into a smirk, inwardly sighing when those eyes remain unwarmed by humor, interest or even disapproval. It occurs to him this stranger must be magnificent in true anger . . . cold and tightly-controlled, the only sign of his rage the flash of those damning blue eyes and the thinning of that mouth--
It's here that Draco pauses a moment to take stock of himself, review the 'symptoms' and add them up. The conclusion he comes to is worse than mental strain and indigestion combined. Worse by far, as he continues to gaze at this unkempt stranger like some lovestruck Hufflepuff.
Something bitter and slow, like rue, begins to twist at his core, creating a desperate urge to strike this man, bloody that mouth and gouge out those eyes--
He needs a distraction, he decides, and anything'll do.
Anything has, in fact, just tumbled tail-over-tea-kettle through the fireplace.
"I've always remarked upon your talent for making a dignified entrance, Potter," he notes, leaning against the bookshelves and crossing his arms. Potter picks himself up efficiently, unabashedly, and dusts off the same way, automatically heading toward his pin-neat desk. He's barely touched the first scroll on the top and half of them tumble to the floor unnoticed.
"Sod off, Malfoy, it's not as if--Dennis!" Potter turns when some sixth sense alerts him to the other man's presence. The look of distracted annoyance evaporates, is replaced by something that's equal parts smile and frown and the scroll he'd picked up drops to the desk. Then the floor to join it's brethren.
"Dennis," he says again, genuine--as far as Draco can tell--pleasure in his voice and leeching into his expression. The wizard's--Dennis's stance doesn't change, or the hard look on his face, but something in the line of him, the stiff breadth of his shoulders, such as it is, relaxes.
He straightens slightly, squaring his spare frame. "Hullo, Harry." Extra bit of basso in his voice, turning it into a mellow rumble that, combined with that steady stare, makes a hot flush creep across Draco's skin.
Who is this person that makes Potter's presence in the same room Draco is in entirely trivial? Who could possibly push such a massively annoying man to the side in Draco's mind?
But memory has finally placed this vagabond wizard: forgettable face, obviously Muggle-born, an air of stillness and focus that'd once been somewhat curious in so young a child--
Dennis Creevey might've done well in Slytherin, if the mile-wide streak of Gryffindor boldness and plain-spokenness could've been tormented out of him. If he weren't so protective of that annoying older brother of his. . . .
If he weren't a Muggle-bo--a Mudblood, he might very well have gone far in the Wizarding World, indeed.
Though Draco certainly is in no position to pass judgment. The House of Malfoy no longer carries the cachet of nobility it once did, thanks to himself and Lucius. Any wizard, even the most persnickety of Purebloods, would sooner cite this Creevey boy as a more favorable match than Draco.
An enraged Hippogriff would rate as a more favorable match than Draco.
"You're back early, aren't you?" Potter is asking, concern coloring his eyes and voice. He takes a step toward the Creevey boy--Creevey man, despite his rather economical build-then hesitates. It's the first sign of uncertainty he's displayed since he brazened Draco out of Azkaban. "Did something go wrong in Corfu?"
Creevey shakes his head once, his suspicious attention partially shifting, at last, to Potter. His eyes and face soften, and a small smile touches the corners of his mouth briefly. It doesn't transform his face, but it adds a glow to those blue, blue eyes that makes the churning burn in Draco's stomach grow more intense.
Creevey still does not lower his wand.
Parts quite a bit south of Draco's abdomen begin to stir.
"After the initial audit, they really didn't need me hanging about, burning through the freelance budget. Bill had me touch down in Burnie for a bit--"
"God, not the zombies, again?" Potter shudders.
"No, thank goodness. No major uprisings since December. Rawhiri, Totorewa, & Alpert is still holding down the fort until the counter-curse can be cast. Another couple of weeks and I'll be heading back with Bill's team to pitch in. But till they need me I'm . . . somewhat at loose ends." This last is said in a soft, hopeful, but not quite prodding tone.
"Oh," Potter says, smiling his relief that all's right with the world. At least the Tasmanian part of it. "Well . . . whatever the reason for you being back so soon, I'm glad to see you, as always." Cue a repellently Dumbledorish twinkle that steps neatly over the question in Creevey's tone. "Especially as it gives me another chance to talk you into guest lecturing my fifth years."
Though the hopeful light in his eyes is shuttered, Creevey doesn't seem too put out by Potter's surely deliberate obtuseness. But there's more than a little self-mockery in his smile, now. "Not this again, Harry--even Arithmancy-geeks like me find it makes for dry lecturing. And a practical application wouldn't be appropriate even for the DADA classroom--"
"Dennis--I'm not asking you to lecture them about Arithmancy! The poor kids get enough of that from Vector." Potter sits and starts poking at the pile of scrolls on his desk again, causing more of them to tumble to the floor. "I'm asking you to come in, talk a little bit about what you do, how you use what you learned in DADA to keep yourself safe, take some questions--"
"And I suppose offer summer apprenticeships to those who show some interest in curse-breaking as a career?" Creevey chuckles when Potter begins to hem and haw, and splutter. "Blimey, Harry, your fifth years aren't the reason I come back to Hogwarts every free moment I get, and you know it."
The silence is expectant and full, but not uncomfortable. Potter seems to be fighting back a smile as he shuffles parchment.
"Mum says she's forgetting what I look like," Creevey goes on, stepping away from the mantle and lowering his wand arm. He still doesn't put his wand away. "And she's even threatening to move to Hogwarts since that's the only way she'll get to see me regularly."
Potter watches Creevey's approach from under his lashes. "What about your dad?"
"Well . . . he'll just be glad of the peace and quiet, won't he?" That earns Creevey a small chuckle, though there are whole other levels of conversation in their eyes, their words--in their silences that Draco can't interpret, only scratch the surfacce of their meaning.
He rolls his eyes and slouches, ignoring the quiet voice urging him to stand up straight like a proper gentleman, shoulders back, and for Merlin's sake, don't glower so. . . !
(It sounds more like his mother than his father, that voice.)
"I really am glad you're back," Potter blurts out, before sighing. "I mean--I missed you."
Such an abysmally plain little declaration, said with no aplomb whatsoever, but it puts that hopeful light back in Creevey's eyes and a new knot in Draco's stomach.
"Look, I promised Vector I'd stop by for a visit, but I won't be long. I can drop by your rooms a little later, and--" Creevey darts a glance at Draco, who smirks in return, though the burning in his stomach has changed focus entirely, is now quite unpleasant. He thinks it might be envy, though it's been so long since he's felt that particular burn, even where Potter's concerned. "Around half-nine, say? And by then you'll have gotten . . . things sorted?"
Potter finally nods, that small smile back, a little color in his cheeks. "Half-nine, if you wish. That chess game we started is still waiting. I expect you'll trounce me, like always."
Oh, whom do you think you're fooling? Draco wants to demand--sick of watching yet again as Potter gets everything with no more expenditure than a soulful look and a wistful smile--when Creevey sits on the edge of Potter's desk. His hand covers Potter's, stilling it.
"I remember exactly where we left off, too," he murmurs softly, though not softly enough for Draco, who's had more than enough.
Do you know your boyfriend can cast Legilimens any time he wants, without wand or words, Creevey? Do you know he's probably taken up residence in your deepest thoughts, and knows more about how you feel than you do? Not that he'd have to use Legilimency with your feelings made so blatantly apparent. Draco's stomach is turning into pâté de foie gras, and he has to look away from this--this. If only to calm the sudden pounding in head and chest. If Potter chose to, he could force you to feel whatever he wished you to feel, including every yearning, insipid, hormonal emotion you're no doubt experiencing right now.
When he looks up again, Potter's staring up into Creevey's eyes intently--too intently, as far as Draco would be concerned if he cared. Which he doesn't. Still, he clears his throat before Creevey can do more than ghost rough fingers across Potter's cheek. "Will I be meeting with Professor Slughorn sometime before the Leaving Feast? Or am I to be subjected to even more hackneyed attempts at seduction?"
Two sets of eyes, shift to Draco and--having secured their attention--he straightens up as if to leave, fully aware that he has no place to go without Potter's input or permission.
"Oh, shut it and have a seat, Malfoy," Potter says with more amusement than rancor. "You don't have to worry about going anywhere or doing anything for at least another twelve hours. That includes meeting with Slughorn."
"Fine. And I never worry," Draco says, and Potter rolls his eyes. Creevey has stood up and gone back to the mantle, retrieving some sort of dusty, sooty canvas carry-all. He hefts it onto his shoulder and turns back to Potter, that glow back in his eyes and face even stronger than before.
"I'll see you tonight, Harry," he says softly. He nods politely--if nigh imperceptibly--to Draco on his way out the door. "Good evening, Mr. Malfoy.”
In the moments Draco takes to conjure up a suitably scathing and dismissive reply, the door's already swung shut leaving him and Potter alone but for the faint, lingering scent of sand and salt, water and stone.
It's strangely . . . appealing.
Draco watches Potter continue to push scrolls aimlessly--distractedly, and with a ridiculous little grin on his face--about his desk for a minute before taking the seat opposite him. "The Creevey boys never were much to look at, but the other one, at least, had a certain puppy-ish, sycophantic charm. . . ."
This one has practically nothing to recommend him, Draco means to add, but closes his mouth on it. If one can't tell a lie convincingly and well, one shouldn't tell it at all. Rare, but sound advice from his late mother that he's always taken to heart.
And Draco's rather leery of upsetting Potter too much.
But far from flustered or angry, Potter merely 'hmms', making it obvious he hadn't really heard a word Draco said. Whatever equilibrium seeing Weasley and Finnigan had upset, Creevey has somehow put right with little more than a smile and a caress.
"So what does Weasel think of his competition? Can't imagine he's too happy about this--or does he even know that you're a shirt lifter?"
(Though not quite as clueless as Finnigan, it still wouldn't surprise Draco a bit if Weasley had no idea which team his supposed best friend was Seeker for. By the same token, neither would it surprise him if Weasley were queer and had been equally clueless about it until Potter, ahem, brought it to his attention.
It would certainly explain the 'Hermonald' split.)
Potter finally looks up, blinking quizzically. "Ron is both aware of and not even remotely invested in my sexual preferences, not that that's any of your business. But as our lives are going to be bound together for some time, and you're probably one of the few people in the Wizarding World who didn't know about me--"
"I've always known!" Potter's utter disbelief causes Draco to cross his arms again. "Suspected, anyway. How else to explain the sought after Harry Potter escaping Hogwarts with his virginity intact--and don't bother to deny it, either. Half the girls in our year were in love you--the ones that didn't have the good taste to be desperately in love with me, anyway-so unless you were ashamed of some . . . shortcoming or other. . . ."
A quirky, light-hearted smile that should seem out of place on this new, even more humorless Potter . . . but doesn't. "Oh, I've never had any complaints."
"You wouldn't, would you?" Draco sneers. "Who's going to tell The Boy Who Lived that's he's a complete wash between the sheets?"
"Malfoy, do find something else to twit me about, or I'll start to think you fancy me."
Not even under Imperius. Draco thinks, then realizes that if Potter chose to, he could impel Draco to do any number of unsavory things, the least of which might be climbing into Potter's bed and liking it. "Tempting, though you are, I must demure. Far be it from me to come between the inestimable Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Creevey."
Potter laughs-of all things-even snorting a little. "Nice shot."
"I rather thought so," Draco admits with overdone modesty. Then: "I find your relaxed attitude to my drubbing contemptible, not to mention personally insulting."
"Best learn to live with it, hadn't you?"
"If only to avoid the alternative." Draco catches himself about to slouch again like some work-weary Muggle laborer, and sits up ramrod straight before letting his body recline gracefully.
And Potter's still pawing through the pile of scrolls like a crazed dog.
"Oh, what are you rummaging for, you disorganized savage?" Draco finally asks, allowing mild interest to color his irritation.
"Your contract. Could've sworn I left it on top of the pile--"
"--the top half which you knocked to the floor?" Draco inquires, and a lumos finally comes on above Potter's head. Then he's disappearing below desk-top to root about on the floor like a pig for truffles. Draco sighs. "I, for one, am comforted that my life has been placed in your capable hands."
"All I did was pull your arse out of the frying pan. It's up to you to keep it out of the fire. Your life is in your own hands now, Draco." Potter drops an armful of parchment on the desk and glares at it as if trying to make it catch fire. Which isn't beyond the realm of possibility where this particular wizard is involved.
"So, what are the terms of my indentured servitude to be, then?"
"It's a pretty standard apprenticeship contract; with a few added provisos due to your . . . circumstances. You can review the contract yourself tonight--if I ever find the damn thing-and address any issues you may have with your goblin--"
“Wait--” Draco blinks. "I have a goblin?"
"Of course you have. I hired you one, didn't I? Dravdok, the Punctillious." Potter shakes his head. Draco, meanwhile, is still fighting off a more than mild case of shock.
"You. Hired me a goblin."
"It's not as if you can just go about signing random bits of legalese without protecting your interests. Well--you can, but you really shouldn't," Potter admonishes as if Draco doesn't already known this. He knows, he's simply surprised Potter also knows and agrees.
Times have changed when this most Gryffindor of Gryffindors starts spouting platitudes like a portrait of a Malfoy great-uncle.
"Dravdok expects you and Slughorn in his office by eight sharp. He'll go over the terms with you separately and together, and I'll pop in to a be a witness to the signing. Unless there's someone else you'd rather. . . ?"
Draco waves a hand dismissively. "You'll do." There's no one he'd rather--no one else period. Certainly no one alive that he can trust more than he trusts Potter.
Not that he'd ever, even in his most innocent days, resorted to something as trivial as trust when leverage was so much more practical.
"And my other master?" Draco drawls the word just to see the thinning of Potter's already thin lips. "What of him? Will he be bound by this contract, or am I to be dependent solely on his good will for peace of mind and protection?"
Potter doesn't answer him for several minutes, and then only to say, "here" a second before he tosses the scroll. Draco catches it but doesn't unroll it, holding Potter's gaze expectantly.
"Right, then. I'm willing go you one better, Draco. An oath-blood oath, if you like." He leans down to open the right bottom drawer of his desk, and quickly comes up with a bottle of Ogden's Old, followed a second later by two large, plain glasses. "Will you feel your interests adequately protected with me under a geas?"
Despite his returning control of his facial expressions, Draco cannot stop the fractional rise of one eyebrow. However, Potter suggesting a heathen-style blood-binding--while obviously settling them both in for a bit of a drunk--makes that eyebrow forgivable, in his opinion.
"That would depend upon the geas, would it not? And I don't imbibe," he says primly. But Potter's already shoving a glass across the desk-heedless of his students' no doubt lackluster papers. Perhaps the Ogden's Old is useful as a grading aid. "But let us say you take this oath . . . what would I have to swear in return?"
"Not a thing." Potter shrugs at Draco's unvoiced, unexpressed skepticism, deftly uncorking the bottle and pouring a fifth into Draco's glass one handed, with the ease of long practice. "You have nothing I need or want, and the one great secret I have, you already know. And it comes complete with a Ministry sanctioned Secret-keeper."
And Draco can guess who the Secret-keeper is.
"You don't have to make up your mind about everything right now," Potter adds, mistaking Draco's silence, but not completely. He takes a deep swallow of his firewhisky and nods at Draco to do the same.
Sighing, Draco ventures a sip. Then another that burns even more than the first.
"I'm offering to become your mentor in autonomancy, but that is not a condition of your release." Potter leans back in his chair and swings his feet up onto his desk, somehow missing the scattered scrolls. His eyes are pensive, watchful. "It's also not an easy road. You may think you despise me now, but if you decide to learn what I have to teach, you will plumb new, burning depths of hatred just to get through our sessions."
A sneer seems appropriate now, but Draco can't remember where he placed his. Maybe Creevey took it with him when he left.
He unconsciously takes another sip, letting the heat of it warm him, make Potter's words a bit more palatable.
"Of course . . . you're free to tell me to take my tutelage and sod off right now. I'll hold you no ill will--and you'll certainly see less of me during the course of your probation." A tired smile, and self-deprecating toast. "But once you're my apprentice--once I've taken whatever oaths you deem necessary to give you your peace of mind, there's no going back."
Potter's gaze burns as much, if not more than the firewhisky, and Draco looks away, fingers clenching on his glass. He knows little enough about heathen magic, and even less about blood oaths. Malfoys rarely made promises they intended to keep, and so never resorted to any ritual oath-taking aside from marriage.
But more than the dubious safety of binding Potter in some heathen oath, Draco wants wandless magic. Wants to be the source of his power and the focus of it. He's never wanted anything so much in his life.
He knocks back the rest of his fifth in one fiery swallow, meeting Potter's glaze without blinking, despite the tears that springs to his eyes. When he doesn't blink them away, they run down his face freely.
Potter smiles grim approval and pours Draco another, toasting him again.
"Nothing too elaborate for the geas though, Malfoy. I don't fancy having to stagger into Pomfrey's office short a pint of blood and having to explain why I'm covered in runes and sigils," he mutters, tossing back his own shot before pouring himself a double. It's telling that he doesn't so much as grimace at the burn, when there are still tears springing to Draco's eyes.
"Why?" He asks after collecting his thoughts for a moment, sipping steadily, letting the second glass stoke the burn ignited by the first. "Why me? Why not Weasel, or Granger, or even bloody Longbottom?" Why not lover-boy Creevey?
"The idea of performing magic without a wand is simply inconceivable to most wizards. Especially Purebloods. Besides which, Ron tends to need the focus of a wand, and Neville. Well." Potter sighs, and puts his glass down on an essay. "I find it impossible to be critical of him, so whatever his capacity to learn, I would be utterly pants at teaching him. Hermione . . . chose not continue her Autonomancy studies some time ago."
'Chose not to continue. . . .' Draco files yet another interesting tidbit away for later consideration, leaning back in his chair. He feels flushed and slightly too warm--sleepy, though he's been too wound up to sleep for days.
"As to why you . . . Autonomic Magic is based upon will. The will to effect change, the strength to bear the responsibility and the burden of every change you make--all of which you have in spades.” Potter shrugs.
His words ring true enough, but Draco's certain he's not hearing the whole answer. Of course he's not Potter learned to dissemble and obfuscate from the best, after all.
“You'll find that most, if not all the spells you can perform with a wand can be performed autonomically." That half-lidded thoughtfulness is back, and Draco manages not to squirm under Potter's bold, unapologetic perusal. "Initially, I'll train you to tap into the very emotions that you insist on letting weaken and control you. Show you how to use them to reshape the the world--small pieces of it, anyway. When you've gained control and focus, you'll be ready to learn true autonomancy: magic powered by your will alone."
Draco laughs, a little too loud and too long--or so it seems. He looks at his now empty glass, distracted into wondering how in the Harrowing Heath that'd happened so fast.
Luckily, his mouth seems able to work without his input and Potter seems inclined to pour without prompting. "Have you forgotten, Potty, that I'm not a Gryffin-bore? Can you really trust that I'll use this newfound power for the good of unicorns, puppies and Mudbloods? Who's to say I won't go around killing and maiming who and whatever crosses my path for fun."
Now Potter's the one who laughs, jaded and almost apologetic. It sounds off . . . like something one might hear drifting out from the more heavily warded areas of St. Mungo's. And his face looks as if it's in the middle of some sort of transformation.
Were-Potter? Draco thinks, with an uncomfortable giggle that mayn't be entirely mental.
"You may use the power however you choose, Malfoy," Potter says, his lips pursing to hold in more of that eerie laughter. "If you've the will to do so, and the strength to bear up under the consequences, then suit yourself and paint the world in blood. Fay çe que vouldras--do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
“Poppycock.” Coming from Potter, this credo is appalling and quite repellent. It's water running up hill: conceivable, but wrong, and unnatural. Disturbing. But Draco again finds himself believing, even though Potter is surely leaving some crucial bit of information out.
Granger chose not to continue training with this drunken lunatic. Mudblood or not, she was never stupid. . . .
This voice sounds neither like his mother nor father, but like himself, which makes it an easier voice to ignore, in some ways.
Draco knocks back the fifth Potter just poured for him, frowning when another isn't immediately forthcoming. But before he can dredge up something sensibly snarky Potter's put the bottle away, finished off his own glass, and magicked it and Draco's to . . . the kitchens, one imagines.
An almost companionable silence reigns over them both until:
"Since Creevey's obviously the one wearing the robes in this relationship, that would make you the pillow-biter, wouldn't it?"
3
I'll answer the feedback for this part and the previous part Sunday evening. You guys rock the hardcore patience 24.7.