[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Fading in the Sunlight, Harry/Draco, R, 1/4
Title: Fading in the Sunlight
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, mentions of other canon background pairings
Content Notes: Horror, torture, gore, violence, angst, drama, dubious consent
Wordcount: This part 6300
Rating: R
Summary: The day that Draco Malfoy sees Harry Potter fade into the sunlight ahead of him as they’re both leaving the Ministry, his life changes. And the hunt is on to find out what really happened to Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: This is another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year, and should have four parts, to be updated over the next few days.
Fading in the Sunlight
Draco sighed as he locked his desk and then his office door. Being an Auror was less fulfilling than he’d ever dreamed, although that might not have been the case if the Head Auror let him do fieldwork once in a while.
But no, they couldn’t “trust someone with a Dark Mark” to come in contact with Dark magic. “Who knows how you might react?” was the way Head Auror Dawlish had phrased it.
Draco shook his head as he paced towards the lifts. Why had they let him through the training program at all, in that case? They might need someone to do the scutwork, but Draco’s magical reputation and the fact that Potter had testified for him at the first trial after the war had kept him away from that.
They don’t know what to do with me and they don’t know how to get rid of me.
The lift arrived with a ding that sounded as tired as Draco felt, and he stepped in and considered, during the trip to the Atrium, quitting, the way he always did. And as he always did, by the time he’d reached the Atrium, he had decided to stick around for at least another month. They’d have to make him quit.
It was late enough that he’d thought there wouldn’t be anyone queuing in front of the fireplaces, but there was one man. Draco curled his lip. Shaggy black hair, polished Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement badge on his robes, too-friendly smile as he looked around over his shoulder and spotted Draco. He seemed to see Potter every time the memories of the trial so much as brushed across his mind.
“Hi, Draco!”
Draco grunted in response. He never knew how to take this friendly Potter. They weren’t friends, but Potter used his first name and asked after his parents and even sometimes joked about when he was going to get married.
Draco wasn’t, because marrying a man still wasn’t legal in wizarding Britain, but that was hardly the kind of thing he would tell Potter.
Potter went through the fire ahead of him, and of course he was going to the same place. Security measures instituted after the war ensured that all Ministry Floos gave out on a limited number of anterooms concealed “cleverly” in wizarding enclaves, rather than someone being able to go wherever they wanted (or come from wherever they wanted) directly from the fire. Both Draco and Potter walked out of the Diagon Alley anteroom, and towards the Apparition point.
“Seriously, though, Draco, I think you would make someone a fine husband.”
Draco shrugged and let Potter natter. If he could ignore the man’s words, he was fine to look at, with the brilliance shining through his eyes and his animated gestures.
Not that Potter would ever have returned Draco’s attraction even if he was interested in men. But Draco’s daydreams remained daydreams and thus didn’t have to take that into account.
“See you around, Draco!” Potter added brightly as Draco stepped onto the Apparition point in front of him.
Draco grunted again, his right hand gripping his wand, his left hand falling to the pocket where-
Where the token that allowed him to pass harmlessly through the Manor’s wards should have been. His father was even more paranoid than the Ministry after the war, and insisted that even his son and wife needed one of the silver tokens if they were Apparating into the house.
Draco rubbed his hand over his eyes and sighed. He’d heard something fall off his desk with a metallic tinkle earlier in the afternoon. That must have been it. He’d have to go back to the Ministry to get it.
He turned, to step off the Apparition point and tell Potter he could have it.
He froze the instant he moved. Potter was turned slightly away from him, facing an empty patch of air as if he was talking to someone under a Disillusionment Charm.
And he was fading.
Draco discovered he was breathing too fast, hoarse and quick, and it sounded much louder than Potter’s words. In fact, he couldn’t hear Potter’s words at all. He opened his mouth and said, “Potter, what the fuck?” He didn’t even care about how much trouble he’d get in if Potter went to the papers with a report of how Draco had talked to him.
Potter said nothing. He didn’t turn to look at Draco. He faded.
He became a tattered line of color in the air and sunlight, and rippled once, and was gone.
Draco stood where he was, glancing back and forth with his eyes only; he couldn’t compel his body to move. The wind whined and whipped past him. Overhead, one early star bright enough to escape being overwhelmed by London’s lights shone. It crossed through Draco’s head, an entirely crazy thought, that he would know what the star was if he had taken Astronomy more seriously.
His stomach twisted, and he wanted to vomit.
Then he went back into the anteroom that held the Floo that led to the Ministry, his steps slow and heavy, to fetch his silver token from the desk, and to prepare a report that he might or might not send.
*
“You’re sure of what you saw?”
Draco leaned back against the chair in the large sitting room that had always been his father’s, and nodded. “Yes, sir. I don’t know-I don’t know what the hell that was, but I’m sure of what I saw.”
Lucius frowned, his hands clasped around his cane, which was no longer an affectation, as he stared into the flames. Draco waited. His father had made enough mistakes that Draco no longer treated him as an automatic source of advice, but in a situation like this, when Draco had no idea what to do, he’d still go to him.
Lucius finally leaned back. “Would you let me see the memory?”
Draco had already been prepared for the request, and nodded. An elf brought the Malfoy Pensieve on Lucius’s command, and Draco carefully removed the memory, starting from the time when he had exited the Floo with Potter, and dropped it into the basin. Lucius leaned forwards enough to dip his face in, chin-first. He had always despised people who “plunged” in.
Draco ran his hand down his face as he waited for his father to revise the memory and wondered what the hell he was going to do. If Potter disappeared and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement became aware that Draco had watched it and done nothing, he would end up in Azkaban for life. On the other hand, if he said nothing, who knew what could be happening to Potter right now?
A sharp tingle raced up the middle of Draco’s spine, and he grimaced and sighed. Of course that would happen. And of course it would mean that he’d have to ignore the advice his father was most likely to give.
Lucius lifted his head again. His face was pale. “That is no method of Apparition.”
Draco nodded. He hadn’t thought it was, but his father knew much more about magical transportation than Draco did. Lucius had even studied it after he got out of Azkaban, and published a small treatise under an assumed name. “So he’s been kidnapped?”
“That would be the most likely result. Perhaps by whoever was hiding under that Disillusionment Charm.” Lucius gripped the cane until the bottom of it skidded sideways on the carpet and hit the bottom of the table where the Pensieve sat. “Leave this alone, Draco. You have no idea what’s going on, and someone powerful enough to kidnap the Dark Lord’s Bane is too powerful for us to handle.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I can’t do that.”
“Are you so eager to die, Draco?”
Draco shook his head and gestured to the corona of golden magic that was gathering around his hair. “No. But I owe Potter a life-debt for saving me from Vincent’s fate during the war. I can’t let this go if he’s in danger.”
Lucius stared at him with parted lips, and then sagged back into his chair. “I thought that was settled with that vow you swore to Potter about never engaging in Dark Arts willingly again.”
“No. I would have sworn that vow regardless.”
“Draco.”
Draco met his father’s eyes and shrugged. “I meant it. I never wanted to have anything to do with the Dark Arts again. But it does mean that because I would have made the vow of my own free will, I didn’t think it was sufficient payment for the debt I owed Potter. So that debt is still unfulfilled.”
Lucius made a faint, exasperated sound, one hand rising to stroke his face. “Fine. Then you’ll investigate carefully. If Potter was kidnapped and they think you had something to do with it, you’ll be lucky to live to see Azkaban.”
Draco nodded grimly. There had been a period about five years ago when Potter had acted as if he was tired of the Aurors and being the darling of the media, and he’d even said something about quitting. But after a month’s holiday, he’d come back refreshed, and since then he was everywhere: on the front pages of the Prophet, rescuing lost children in Diagon Alley, accompanying a series of dazzling witches to Ministry galas, making a public spectacle out of his adoption of a Kneazle kitten to encourage other people to donate to animal charities. Draco would be gutted by adoring crowds if he let Potter come to harm.
But that mattered less to him than the tingle of the life-debt up his spine, and the gnawing worry about what Potter fading into the sunlight that way had meant.
“I imagine it’ll be all over the papers tomorrow morning anyway. I can gauge the public temper before I go into work.”
*
The papers said nothing about it at breakfast. Draco walked slowly into work, all of his muscles prickling the way his spine had last night when he felt the life-debt stirring in his magic. Perhaps they were keeping it quiet so as not to cause a public panic, and would seize him when he was near the offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
But no one came up to him, or stared at him, or sneered at him-more than usual, anyway. Draco took his seat behind his desk and slid the report he’d written about what he’d seen as Potter faded into the sunlight beneath a stack of paper. Would he need it at all? He didn’t know.
“Hi, Draco!”
Draco looked up, blinking. Potter was standing in the doorway of his office, waving at him. He grinned and winked and asked, “Made it home safely yesterday?”
“Yes, of course,” Draco said. “Although I had to come back to the office to finish something I left undone, which is always annoying.” He was a little surprised that he was answering Potter so effortlessly, but it was a distant, frozen surprise. He managed to smile politely while his brain galloped in panicked circles. “And you?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a date with Ginny last night. You know, Ginny Weasley?” Potter added, as if he thought Draco made a habit of collecting people with the same first name as ones that annoyed him. “I really think we might make another go of it. When we broke up, we were so young and silly…”
Draco sat there and let Potter’s prattling flow over him, while he watched the man from beneath half-lowered eyelids. He really did look as though he was perfectly normal, tilting his head a little to the side as though he suspected there might be reporters with cameras lurking in the corridors and he wanted to show off his best profile. (It wasn’t impossible; it had happened before). Then he said something about having to meet Minister Shacklebolt and went sprinting off.
Draco sat where he’d been left and blinked at nothing before he shook his head and picked up the next report.
Maybe Potter was testing some super-secret new means of magical transportation. Maybe he’d taken the strangest Portkey ever. Maybe Draco had been tired last night and hadn’t understood what he was seeing, which had influenced the Pensieve memory.
He could have believed almost anything, if it hadn’t been for the life-debt that still shifted up and down his spine and buzzed annoyingly behind his teeth.
*
“Potter wasn’t kidnapped after all?”
Mother asked the question, even though both she and Father were at the table. Then again, Father had his eyes closed, which suggested that he was too tired for conversation this evening. Trauma from the Dementors took him like that sometimes.
Draco nodded to her and finished the last of his noodles before he put his fork down. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe he was testing some invention for the Department of Mysteries. He was there and charming everybody as normal.”
Narcissa sat back, her own fork clasped between her hands so that it stood upright, her gaze distant. Draco waited patiently for her to decide what she was going to say, respectfully. His mother had an odd insight that sometimes meant she could pluck the truth out of the air and out of the most innocuous words.
This time, she said, “I would have said that was unusual for Mr. Potter, not normal. He was blunt, as I recall, when he spoke for us at the trials and after the war.”
“Yes, but that was right after the war,” Draco pointed out. “I think someone had a talk with him, or else he realized on his own that people wanted him to be the hero and he decided he would be that. He did want to quit the Ministry at one point, but they let him have a month’s holiday and he came back from it and started charming people. I suppose a month away let him see that he really missed the adoration that comes with the position of the Boy-Who-Lived.”
Draco knew he was sneering, even with the long-ago dissolution of his grudge against Potter, but he couldn’t help it. He would have done so much more with that fame, even if his goals weren’t the same as Potter’s.
“Where did he go during that holiday, Draco? Do you know?”
Draco blinked at her. “Australia, I think. There was something about Granger’s parents having moved there and he went with her to visit them.”
“And he’s not romantically involved with her?”
Draco shrugged. “Not that I ever heard of. I thought he was going to shag Ron Weasley at one time-”
“Draco, don’t use such a crude term in front of your mother,” Lucius snapped.
Draco looked coolly at him and finished. “Just because of how close they were. But from what I’ve read in the papers and what everyone talks about in the Ministry, he’s dating Weasley’s sister. He stopped by my desk today and said something about being on a date with her.”
Narcissa closed her eyes and sat there. Draco, fascinated, watched closely and thought she was swaying slightly back and forth in her seat. He shook his head a little. He loved her, but sometimes she scared him.
“I don’t think the Weasleys would be part of it,” Narcissa said, her voice soft and distant. “If something had happened to Potter.”
Draco wanted to ask what could possibly have happened, when Potter was walking around the Ministry being a hero like usual, but he held his tongue. His mother’s eyes opened and shone with a distant silver color.
“But if something happened to him, it is odd that they shouldn’t sense it, as close as they are,” Narcissa whispered. “What has happened? The door, the door that he walks in by and out by. You should examine the door.”
Then she shivered abruptly, and the upright fork clattered out of her hands and onto the floor. A house-elf appeared at once to retrieve it, and Mother shook her head and glanced back and forth between them. “What did I say?”
“That I should examine the door Potter goes in and out by.” Draco cleared his throat and reached for his pudding, the treacle tart the house-elves had brought in five minutes and a much less strange time ago. “Mother, I’ve never-seen you have such a strong reaction to something like this.”
Narcissa smiled, a sad, hard edge to the expression. “I’ve never sought to learn the fate of someone who owes me a life-debt, either.”
Draco stared at her. “Mother, you said that he paid you the life-debt three years ago. That he came to you and offered you all those old Black artifacts from Number Twelve Grimmauld Place that he didn’t want.”
“He did.” Narcissa’s voice was sharp now, and she had already recovered from whatever kind of strange fit had seized her when the-prophetic trance?-was done. She leaned back in her seat and raised her eyebrows at Draco, who found himself flushing, unsure. “Which means that I should not be feeling the sense of a life-debt owed.”
“You do?” Draco sounded like a prophet himself, the way he breathed that. He swallowed and tried to look down at the table, only to find that he’d made a mess of his treacle tart without even realizing it.
“Yes. Which means there are three possibilities. The artifacts he gave me were not enough to pay the debt, even though I thought they were at the time.” Narcissa’s fingers shredded a napkin. “He decided they were enough and then changed his mind later, and the longer he puts off paying that debt, the more urgent it grows.” She leaned forwards a little and stared at Draco.
Draco fought the urge to rub his own itching spine against the back of his chair, and stared back.
“Or,” Narcissa said softly, “the person who paid that debt was not Harry Potter.”
*
Draco found himself watching Potter over the next few days, and wondering.
Logically, of course, his mother had to be right. There was no need for their life-debts-the one Draco owed, the one owed to her-to be acting up if they’d been paid. Draco, though, had assumed that his hadn’t been paid simply because he would have made the oath to leave the Dark Arts alone anyway, and so there was no way it was a sacrifice.
But it had lain dormant for long years while Potter pranced around and dated people and rescued kittens. Why should it itch now?
If he’s in trouble. If he needs me. Even if he doesn’t know it.
There seemed to be no way that Narcissa’s suspicions could be true, though, the more Draco thought about it. Potter was immune to the Imperius Curse, which meant he was immune to all the lesser mind-control spells as well (and if he was immune to the Dark Lord’s Imperius-no matter what Lucius said about it being right after the resurrection and so the Dark Lord having been weak-there was certainly no one in the British wizarding world now who could control him). How could someone else be making him do what they wanted?
Potions? Maybe, but as Narcissa said, the Weasleys would never have been on the side of Potter taking potions, and they would have noticed. The same with Polyjuice. And both would have required regular doses. Potter didn’t have the habit of drinking from a silver flask the way the fake Moody at Hogwarts in fourth year had. Someone would have noticed.
He hadn’t changed his behavior suddenly, either. Potter wasn’t that good an actor. If someone had threatened him to get him comply-and with what?-then he would have betrayed himself at some point.
Frowning, Draco looked up from his desk as Potter sauntered past his office door, heading to lunch in the company of several Aurors. Potter caught Draco’s eye and winked. He ran a hand through his hair as he did it, and seemed to exude self-deprecation.
He’d told Draco one day last year that he thought Draco had a crush on him, and it didn’t matter, because everyone was a little in love with the Chosen One at some point in their lives. Draco had sneered and stomped away.
It was true that he could find Potter attractive, and sometimes did, with his insouciant manner and his bright eyes and his strength, magical and physical. But there was still-something missing.
Draco sat back abruptly, eyes closed, and chased the thought. Yes, there was something missing. He had to figure out what the something was, and he had to abandon work to do it, or he was afraid the thought would never come back to him.
The intensity.
Draco opened his eyes and pounded his hand down on the desk, then wished he hadn’t as his palm stung and someone in another office yelled in irritation. But even as he rubbed the heel of his hand, he thought it was worth it.
Yes. Potter at school had been moody as hell. Never worse than fifth year, true, and Draco hadn’t been around him that often during what would have been their original seventh year. But even after the war, he’d snapped out insults, used sarcasm, initiated duels, and refused to put up with what he saw as nonsense or injustice.
The Potter who had been around the Ministry in the past five years was…perfect. He didn’t initiate duels. He talked down people who had tried to hurt him. He only fought in defense of someone else, and then only when he had to, with a rueful shake of his head and a sigh that suggested he would much rather have spared them. He wasn’t sarcastic in the least, even when he told Draco that he wouldn’t have been able to help falling in love with the Chosen One.
(Not that it was love. It had been a crush, on Potter the way he had looked the day he’d defeated the Dark Lord. And it had faded in the last five years, too).
Even if someone had sat Potter down and had a serious talk with him about the way they needed him to appear to the public, Draco would have seen him let his guard down somewhere. In the Ministry when it was only other employees around. In a darkened corner of a party where he would have drunk Firewhisky and laughed at the stories DMLE flunkies were telling. With a prisoner who had killed or hurt children or someone he cared about.
Even when Potter had captured Fenrir Greyback right after the werewolf had bitten a young Muggle boy who would have a difficult time fitting in in either world, he had only shaken a head at Greyback more in pity than anger. And he’d stopped an Auror who wanted to kick Greyback. And that was the werewolf who had scarred a Weasley and bitten that werewolf professor Potter had been so fond of.
Draco sat back, closing his eyes again. Potter had argued for Greyback not to get the Kiss. Well, that might have made sense, because the Potter Draco had remembered was terrified of Dementors.
But he’d stood back without a word when Greyback was thrown through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Even though, at least if rumors confirmed by Draco’s father were true, that was also the way Potter had lost his godfather. It didn’t make sense for him to argue against one punishment and not the other.
Except that the Wizengamot and the public had been in favor of the Veil. Potter seemed to give up, and give in, any time public opinion might have been against him.
Still, that was only dim, drifting speculation. Perhaps Potter had known something about the trial or Greyback that Draco hadn’t-or about the Veil-that made that seem the appropriate punishment.
But still, the idea that Potter would never oppose what the public wanted was both the key and the biggest difference from the Potter he had known in school, Draco was sure. The one he owed that life-debt to.
He thought about it a few minutes more, then rose and walked down the corridor to the lifts. He thought he remembered the events of two years ago accurately, but he hadn’t been close to any of the people involved. He would have to access the archives and see if what he thought he remembered was true.
“Auror Malfoy!”
Draco turned around with a polite smile. “Head Auror.” John Dawlish was a stolidly-built man who Draco would have suspected of bearing the Dark Mark if his father had ever hinted at it. He swept up to Draco and looked him up and down for a long moment.
Draco bore with it patiently. Probably Dawlish was about to send him on some errand. Well, his own errand to the archives wasn’t urgent.
“I want to make something clear to you,” Dawlish said, and his voice bristled with his version of malice. “You are to leave the Department of Mysteries’s secrets alone.”
“Pardon, sir? I haven’t been near the Department of Mysteries in quite some time.”
“I think you know what I’m talking about, Malfoy.”
Draco had learned to lie from the best, though, and one of the main reasons he had likened Dawlish to a Death Eater was because so many of them hadn’t. Draco sighed a little and shook his head. “Sir, I know there are people who want to get me in trouble because of my father’s-affiliations during the war. However, I don’t believe the same things he did, and I’ve gone out of my way to show it. Will I ever get any trust for that? Or will I always be suspect because of my name?”
Dawlish spent a few seconds blinking. Then he said, “Well, I had a report that you were near one of their secrets.”
So either whoever told him this didn’t dare to be more specific for fear that he would start spreading gossip around, or he was told almost nothing. It might not even be associated with the Department of Mysteries. Draco kept his eyes on the floor as he sighed a little. “Remember, sir, there are people who hate me because of things my father did.”
“They should, Malfoy. What with him being a Death Eater during both wars.”
“Surely, if he was, then the blame lies with the people who accepted his excuse of being under the Imperius during the first war,” Draco said earnestly. “People in the Ministry, if I’m not mistaken.”
His gamble paid off. Dawlish was always more anxious about the accusations of corruption and bribery that the Ministry weathered on a regular basis than he was about something as vague as the accusation of coming near a secret. He gulped, his eyes going wide. “I wasn’t in charge then, Malfoy.”
“Of course not, sir.” Dawlish had only taken over as Head Auror after Gawain Robards had retired.
Dawlish wavered, then leveled a finger at him. “You still aren’t to discuss what we discussed here with anyone, mind.”
And he turned and strode away as if he was strutting across a stage. Draco smothered his laughter and tapped his finger against the button for the lifts. If someone thought he was going near the Department of Mysteries just because he was going down, that was their problem.
*
“What is it, Draco? You look thoughtful.”
“What, and I’m never thoughtful? How insulting, Mother.”
Yet Draco couldn’t muster up a smile, and from the way Narcissa swished her robes around her as she came into the small sitting room, he knew she’d noticed. Narcissa took a seat on the small green couch opposite Draco, blocking his view of the fire. Draco sighed and reached for the glass of cool wine the house-elves had brought him.
House-elves. He grimaced. That only reminded him of his Potter problem.
“You found something out on the Potter front?” Narcissa prompted.
Draco nodded. “I went to the archives because I thought I remembered something about a news story from two years ago, and I wanted to see if I was right.” He swallowed a little more wine, not drinking as much as he would have if he was by himself. Honestly, with his mood at the moment, that was probably a good idea rather than otherwise. “This was a story published in Messenger Owl and a few international papers as well as the Prophet. I suppose Potter’s celebrity carries over even abroad.”
Narcissa only nodded. “And what happened?”
“Granger proposed a bill that would improve the treatment of house-elves. It stalled in the Wizengamot. Some people were just opposing it based on Granger’s blood status, from the implications in the papers. Potter could have moved it forwards by speaking a few well-timed words. The kind that he’s never hesitated to speak.”
“Both because Granger is his friend and because it would benefit those whom he believes would be suffering,” Narcissa said, accurately picking up his thoughts.
Draco nodded. “And he stood back and said nothing. More to the point, when a reporter from the Prophet tracked him down at home and asked him why he wasn’t supporting Granger, he said that he thought she was an interfering busybody who should have studied the issue of house-elves more carefully before she proposed a bill about it.”
Narcissa choked, her eyes wide. “What-why did no one make more of a fuss about that at the time?”
Draco sighed. “Because the story came out in the Messenger Owl the day after the bill failed that Potter was only joking. He gave some brief statement about how you could never trust anything the Prophet said, and the like. And then he made jokes until the audience was laughing.”
Narcissa stared at him. “Well, maybe that was true. I can’t see Granger being friends with him still if he called her a busybody.”
“I can,” Draco said, with a mental shake to remind himself that he’d known Granger far better than his mother. “She barely had any friends at Hogwarts, and she clung to Potter and Weasley like they were the source of her magic. She didn’t give up on them no matter what they said or did. She forgave Weasley for insulting her in first year, even, in a way that she never would have if she was as proud as I am. I think she could have forgiven Potter.”
“That doesn’t prove it was real and not a joke.”
“No. But he undeniably did stand back and not support the bill. I can’t see Potter doing that, either.”
Narcissa clasped her hands together tightly. “It isn’t the kind of proof that you could take before the Wizengamot.”
Draco snorted, and ignored the way that his mother raised her eyebrow. “I was never looking for proof up to that standard, Mother. But there is something wrong, and you can feel it for the same reasons I can.” He shifted his shoulders a little, and the life-debt stung him again. It was exactly like having an itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t reach with his hands or his wand.
“Did you find the door?”
“What?” Draco blinked, brought back from his thoughts too suddenly to grasp what she was saying.
“The door your father said I spoke of. The door he comes in and leaves by.” Narcissa leaned forwards a little. “I think you have to find it, and then all will be made clear.”
“Not why Potter would betray Granger and people would just excuse it,” Draco muttered, but his words were self-deprecating as much as anything else. He hadn’t noticed that particular slip, either. In fact, he’d felt some satisfaction that Potter had finally decided his Muggleborn friend was self-righteous and inserting her opinion where it wasn’t wanted. “But I’ll look for the door, Mother.”
“As much as you can without endangering yourself.”
“You think there is danger, then?” Draco asked quietly. “From the Department of Mysteries?”
“I don’t know.” His mother looked directly at him, her eyes a soft grey flecked with blue that seemed to tremble now. “I think danger exists, though.”
Draco touched her hand. “And I will be as careful as I can. I don’t want the life-debt to pull at me longer than I can help, but I wouldn’t do Potter any good if I was dead or injured, either, and the magic knows that.”
His mother’s eyes fluttered again, but this time shut. She nodded, and her hand tightened on his until his wrist bones creaked.
Draco found he couldn’t mind.
*
“Draco! What are you doing?”
Draco turned around with a faint smile. He could use Potter’s own perfect nature-whether that was charmed, or compelled, or bargained for-against him now. “I was going to lunch. Isn’t that something people do every day in your world?”
Potter blinked at him, and Draco stared back. If he hadn’t been so close to Potter, and hadn’t had so many reasons to study him, and hadn’t had so many years behind him at school urging him to memorize the exact color of those eyes, he suspected he wouldn’t have seen it.
For an instant, Potter’s eyes had been grey, not green.
The Polyjuice theory is looking more likely, despite everything against it, Draco thought, as his heartbeat picked up speed, and waited for Potter to make up some excuse and dart off in pursuit of his next draught. When someone’s true eye color started showing through, they were an instant away from turning back.
But Potter just scowled at him and snapped, “You’re stalking me is what you’re doing.” And his eyes were undeniably green again.
Draco turned away a little before he could be accused of staring, and shrugged. “I don’t see how. I was walking down this corridor when you accosted me. I was on my way to lunch. There’s a witch who sets up outside the visitors’ entrance to the Ministry each day, and-”
“You were taking the track that I take when I come into the Ministry each day.”
The door. You were right, Mother. Draco did his best to smile disarmingly at Potter, who didn’t look as if he was buying it. “Okay, but it’s not as you own this corridor, is it, Potter? And I was on my way to lunch. Let me go now, before my favorite witch leaves.”
Potter glanced around. Draco let his eyes travel with Potter’s. The corridor remained empty, the grey stone the Ministry was in all the places where no one had any reason to charm it a different color. There were no windows or offices that were in regular use here.
And, despite the fact that it wasn’t the best-traveled corridor in the Ministry, it was still a public one. Potter didn’t own it. And Draco did in fact travel it when he went to the witch who served the most delicious fish he had ever tasted. Just not every day.
Potter leaned in. “I know Dawlish warned you, Malfoy,” he said, and there was a rasp to his voice that Draco hadn’t heard since Hogwarts. “I’m doing it now. Stay away from this.”
Draco rolled his eyes and ignored the way the life-debt had begun to hum down his spine, as if it thought that the angrier Potter was, the more he needed Draco’s help. “Yes, he said something vague about the Department of Mysteries. Don’t worry, Potter, I don’t intend to go probing into that. And I will stay away from your very important corridor after this. I’m sure you own every stone in it.” The lift had finally arrived, and Draco stepped into it.
“Good, Draco. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”
And that didn’t bear the tone of a threat, Draco thought, staring stunned as he watched the doors of the lift shut on Potter’s abrupt, shining smile. It sounded as if he was actually concerned for Draco, and trying to protect him from the nasty things in the corridor the way the students in Hogwarts during Draco’s first year had been warned away from the third-floor corridor.
What the hell?
Draco shook his head briskly as the lift began moving downwards, and tried to focus his thoughts for the moment on the fish he was going to eat in a few minutes’ time, just in case the rumors of the Ministry having a Legilimens on hand who randomly scanned employees’ thoughts was true. When he was cradling the warm roll of paper-wrapped fish in his hands and heading back up towards his desk, he focused his mind on something else.
He had undergone a brutal but effective training in Occlumency with his dear aunt Bellatrix. By the time he was sitting at his desk and eating the fish again, he was sure.
Potter had been turning away when the lifts shut, but not in the manner of someone intending to walk back down the corridor. Instead, he had been walking briskly towards one of the disused offices.
The door. Find the door.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, mentions of other canon background pairings
Content Notes: Horror, torture, gore, violence, angst, drama, dubious consent
Wordcount: This part 6300
Rating: R
Summary: The day that Draco Malfoy sees Harry Potter fade into the sunlight ahead of him as they’re both leaving the Ministry, his life changes. And the hunt is on to find out what really happened to Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: This is another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year, and should have four parts, to be updated over the next few days.
Fading in the Sunlight
Draco sighed as he locked his desk and then his office door. Being an Auror was less fulfilling than he’d ever dreamed, although that might not have been the case if the Head Auror let him do fieldwork once in a while.
But no, they couldn’t “trust someone with a Dark Mark” to come in contact with Dark magic. “Who knows how you might react?” was the way Head Auror Dawlish had phrased it.
Draco shook his head as he paced towards the lifts. Why had they let him through the training program at all, in that case? They might need someone to do the scutwork, but Draco’s magical reputation and the fact that Potter had testified for him at the first trial after the war had kept him away from that.
They don’t know what to do with me and they don’t know how to get rid of me.
The lift arrived with a ding that sounded as tired as Draco felt, and he stepped in and considered, during the trip to the Atrium, quitting, the way he always did. And as he always did, by the time he’d reached the Atrium, he had decided to stick around for at least another month. They’d have to make him quit.
It was late enough that he’d thought there wouldn’t be anyone queuing in front of the fireplaces, but there was one man. Draco curled his lip. Shaggy black hair, polished Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement badge on his robes, too-friendly smile as he looked around over his shoulder and spotted Draco. He seemed to see Potter every time the memories of the trial so much as brushed across his mind.
“Hi, Draco!”
Draco grunted in response. He never knew how to take this friendly Potter. They weren’t friends, but Potter used his first name and asked after his parents and even sometimes joked about when he was going to get married.
Draco wasn’t, because marrying a man still wasn’t legal in wizarding Britain, but that was hardly the kind of thing he would tell Potter.
Potter went through the fire ahead of him, and of course he was going to the same place. Security measures instituted after the war ensured that all Ministry Floos gave out on a limited number of anterooms concealed “cleverly” in wizarding enclaves, rather than someone being able to go wherever they wanted (or come from wherever they wanted) directly from the fire. Both Draco and Potter walked out of the Diagon Alley anteroom, and towards the Apparition point.
“Seriously, though, Draco, I think you would make someone a fine husband.”
Draco shrugged and let Potter natter. If he could ignore the man’s words, he was fine to look at, with the brilliance shining through his eyes and his animated gestures.
Not that Potter would ever have returned Draco’s attraction even if he was interested in men. But Draco’s daydreams remained daydreams and thus didn’t have to take that into account.
“See you around, Draco!” Potter added brightly as Draco stepped onto the Apparition point in front of him.
Draco grunted again, his right hand gripping his wand, his left hand falling to the pocket where-
Where the token that allowed him to pass harmlessly through the Manor’s wards should have been. His father was even more paranoid than the Ministry after the war, and insisted that even his son and wife needed one of the silver tokens if they were Apparating into the house.
Draco rubbed his hand over his eyes and sighed. He’d heard something fall off his desk with a metallic tinkle earlier in the afternoon. That must have been it. He’d have to go back to the Ministry to get it.
He turned, to step off the Apparition point and tell Potter he could have it.
He froze the instant he moved. Potter was turned slightly away from him, facing an empty patch of air as if he was talking to someone under a Disillusionment Charm.
And he was fading.
Draco discovered he was breathing too fast, hoarse and quick, and it sounded much louder than Potter’s words. In fact, he couldn’t hear Potter’s words at all. He opened his mouth and said, “Potter, what the fuck?” He didn’t even care about how much trouble he’d get in if Potter went to the papers with a report of how Draco had talked to him.
Potter said nothing. He didn’t turn to look at Draco. He faded.
He became a tattered line of color in the air and sunlight, and rippled once, and was gone.
Draco stood where he was, glancing back and forth with his eyes only; he couldn’t compel his body to move. The wind whined and whipped past him. Overhead, one early star bright enough to escape being overwhelmed by London’s lights shone. It crossed through Draco’s head, an entirely crazy thought, that he would know what the star was if he had taken Astronomy more seriously.
His stomach twisted, and he wanted to vomit.
Then he went back into the anteroom that held the Floo that led to the Ministry, his steps slow and heavy, to fetch his silver token from the desk, and to prepare a report that he might or might not send.
*
“You’re sure of what you saw?”
Draco leaned back against the chair in the large sitting room that had always been his father’s, and nodded. “Yes, sir. I don’t know-I don’t know what the hell that was, but I’m sure of what I saw.”
Lucius frowned, his hands clasped around his cane, which was no longer an affectation, as he stared into the flames. Draco waited. His father had made enough mistakes that Draco no longer treated him as an automatic source of advice, but in a situation like this, when Draco had no idea what to do, he’d still go to him.
Lucius finally leaned back. “Would you let me see the memory?”
Draco had already been prepared for the request, and nodded. An elf brought the Malfoy Pensieve on Lucius’s command, and Draco carefully removed the memory, starting from the time when he had exited the Floo with Potter, and dropped it into the basin. Lucius leaned forwards enough to dip his face in, chin-first. He had always despised people who “plunged” in.
Draco ran his hand down his face as he waited for his father to revise the memory and wondered what the hell he was going to do. If Potter disappeared and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement became aware that Draco had watched it and done nothing, he would end up in Azkaban for life. On the other hand, if he said nothing, who knew what could be happening to Potter right now?
A sharp tingle raced up the middle of Draco’s spine, and he grimaced and sighed. Of course that would happen. And of course it would mean that he’d have to ignore the advice his father was most likely to give.
Lucius lifted his head again. His face was pale. “That is no method of Apparition.”
Draco nodded. He hadn’t thought it was, but his father knew much more about magical transportation than Draco did. Lucius had even studied it after he got out of Azkaban, and published a small treatise under an assumed name. “So he’s been kidnapped?”
“That would be the most likely result. Perhaps by whoever was hiding under that Disillusionment Charm.” Lucius gripped the cane until the bottom of it skidded sideways on the carpet and hit the bottom of the table where the Pensieve sat. “Leave this alone, Draco. You have no idea what’s going on, and someone powerful enough to kidnap the Dark Lord’s Bane is too powerful for us to handle.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I can’t do that.”
“Are you so eager to die, Draco?”
Draco shook his head and gestured to the corona of golden magic that was gathering around his hair. “No. But I owe Potter a life-debt for saving me from Vincent’s fate during the war. I can’t let this go if he’s in danger.”
Lucius stared at him with parted lips, and then sagged back into his chair. “I thought that was settled with that vow you swore to Potter about never engaging in Dark Arts willingly again.”
“No. I would have sworn that vow regardless.”
“Draco.”
Draco met his father’s eyes and shrugged. “I meant it. I never wanted to have anything to do with the Dark Arts again. But it does mean that because I would have made the vow of my own free will, I didn’t think it was sufficient payment for the debt I owed Potter. So that debt is still unfulfilled.”
Lucius made a faint, exasperated sound, one hand rising to stroke his face. “Fine. Then you’ll investigate carefully. If Potter was kidnapped and they think you had something to do with it, you’ll be lucky to live to see Azkaban.”
Draco nodded grimly. There had been a period about five years ago when Potter had acted as if he was tired of the Aurors and being the darling of the media, and he’d even said something about quitting. But after a month’s holiday, he’d come back refreshed, and since then he was everywhere: on the front pages of the Prophet, rescuing lost children in Diagon Alley, accompanying a series of dazzling witches to Ministry galas, making a public spectacle out of his adoption of a Kneazle kitten to encourage other people to donate to animal charities. Draco would be gutted by adoring crowds if he let Potter come to harm.
But that mattered less to him than the tingle of the life-debt up his spine, and the gnawing worry about what Potter fading into the sunlight that way had meant.
“I imagine it’ll be all over the papers tomorrow morning anyway. I can gauge the public temper before I go into work.”
*
The papers said nothing about it at breakfast. Draco walked slowly into work, all of his muscles prickling the way his spine had last night when he felt the life-debt stirring in his magic. Perhaps they were keeping it quiet so as not to cause a public panic, and would seize him when he was near the offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
But no one came up to him, or stared at him, or sneered at him-more than usual, anyway. Draco took his seat behind his desk and slid the report he’d written about what he’d seen as Potter faded into the sunlight beneath a stack of paper. Would he need it at all? He didn’t know.
“Hi, Draco!”
Draco looked up, blinking. Potter was standing in the doorway of his office, waving at him. He grinned and winked and asked, “Made it home safely yesterday?”
“Yes, of course,” Draco said. “Although I had to come back to the office to finish something I left undone, which is always annoying.” He was a little surprised that he was answering Potter so effortlessly, but it was a distant, frozen surprise. He managed to smile politely while his brain galloped in panicked circles. “And you?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a date with Ginny last night. You know, Ginny Weasley?” Potter added, as if he thought Draco made a habit of collecting people with the same first name as ones that annoyed him. “I really think we might make another go of it. When we broke up, we were so young and silly…”
Draco sat there and let Potter’s prattling flow over him, while he watched the man from beneath half-lowered eyelids. He really did look as though he was perfectly normal, tilting his head a little to the side as though he suspected there might be reporters with cameras lurking in the corridors and he wanted to show off his best profile. (It wasn’t impossible; it had happened before). Then he said something about having to meet Minister Shacklebolt and went sprinting off.
Draco sat where he’d been left and blinked at nothing before he shook his head and picked up the next report.
Maybe Potter was testing some super-secret new means of magical transportation. Maybe he’d taken the strangest Portkey ever. Maybe Draco had been tired last night and hadn’t understood what he was seeing, which had influenced the Pensieve memory.
He could have believed almost anything, if it hadn’t been for the life-debt that still shifted up and down his spine and buzzed annoyingly behind his teeth.
*
“Potter wasn’t kidnapped after all?”
Mother asked the question, even though both she and Father were at the table. Then again, Father had his eyes closed, which suggested that he was too tired for conversation this evening. Trauma from the Dementors took him like that sometimes.
Draco nodded to her and finished the last of his noodles before he put his fork down. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe he was testing some invention for the Department of Mysteries. He was there and charming everybody as normal.”
Narcissa sat back, her own fork clasped between her hands so that it stood upright, her gaze distant. Draco waited patiently for her to decide what she was going to say, respectfully. His mother had an odd insight that sometimes meant she could pluck the truth out of the air and out of the most innocuous words.
This time, she said, “I would have said that was unusual for Mr. Potter, not normal. He was blunt, as I recall, when he spoke for us at the trials and after the war.”
“Yes, but that was right after the war,” Draco pointed out. “I think someone had a talk with him, or else he realized on his own that people wanted him to be the hero and he decided he would be that. He did want to quit the Ministry at one point, but they let him have a month’s holiday and he came back from it and started charming people. I suppose a month away let him see that he really missed the adoration that comes with the position of the Boy-Who-Lived.”
Draco knew he was sneering, even with the long-ago dissolution of his grudge against Potter, but he couldn’t help it. He would have done so much more with that fame, even if his goals weren’t the same as Potter’s.
“Where did he go during that holiday, Draco? Do you know?”
Draco blinked at her. “Australia, I think. There was something about Granger’s parents having moved there and he went with her to visit them.”
“And he’s not romantically involved with her?”
Draco shrugged. “Not that I ever heard of. I thought he was going to shag Ron Weasley at one time-”
“Draco, don’t use such a crude term in front of your mother,” Lucius snapped.
Draco looked coolly at him and finished. “Just because of how close they were. But from what I’ve read in the papers and what everyone talks about in the Ministry, he’s dating Weasley’s sister. He stopped by my desk today and said something about being on a date with her.”
Narcissa closed her eyes and sat there. Draco, fascinated, watched closely and thought she was swaying slightly back and forth in her seat. He shook his head a little. He loved her, but sometimes she scared him.
“I don’t think the Weasleys would be part of it,” Narcissa said, her voice soft and distant. “If something had happened to Potter.”
Draco wanted to ask what could possibly have happened, when Potter was walking around the Ministry being a hero like usual, but he held his tongue. His mother’s eyes opened and shone with a distant silver color.
“But if something happened to him, it is odd that they shouldn’t sense it, as close as they are,” Narcissa whispered. “What has happened? The door, the door that he walks in by and out by. You should examine the door.”
Then she shivered abruptly, and the upright fork clattered out of her hands and onto the floor. A house-elf appeared at once to retrieve it, and Mother shook her head and glanced back and forth between them. “What did I say?”
“That I should examine the door Potter goes in and out by.” Draco cleared his throat and reached for his pudding, the treacle tart the house-elves had brought in five minutes and a much less strange time ago. “Mother, I’ve never-seen you have such a strong reaction to something like this.”
Narcissa smiled, a sad, hard edge to the expression. “I’ve never sought to learn the fate of someone who owes me a life-debt, either.”
Draco stared at her. “Mother, you said that he paid you the life-debt three years ago. That he came to you and offered you all those old Black artifacts from Number Twelve Grimmauld Place that he didn’t want.”
“He did.” Narcissa’s voice was sharp now, and she had already recovered from whatever kind of strange fit had seized her when the-prophetic trance?-was done. She leaned back in her seat and raised her eyebrows at Draco, who found himself flushing, unsure. “Which means that I should not be feeling the sense of a life-debt owed.”
“You do?” Draco sounded like a prophet himself, the way he breathed that. He swallowed and tried to look down at the table, only to find that he’d made a mess of his treacle tart without even realizing it.
“Yes. Which means there are three possibilities. The artifacts he gave me were not enough to pay the debt, even though I thought they were at the time.” Narcissa’s fingers shredded a napkin. “He decided they were enough and then changed his mind later, and the longer he puts off paying that debt, the more urgent it grows.” She leaned forwards a little and stared at Draco.
Draco fought the urge to rub his own itching spine against the back of his chair, and stared back.
“Or,” Narcissa said softly, “the person who paid that debt was not Harry Potter.”
*
Draco found himself watching Potter over the next few days, and wondering.
Logically, of course, his mother had to be right. There was no need for their life-debts-the one Draco owed, the one owed to her-to be acting up if they’d been paid. Draco, though, had assumed that his hadn’t been paid simply because he would have made the oath to leave the Dark Arts alone anyway, and so there was no way it was a sacrifice.
But it had lain dormant for long years while Potter pranced around and dated people and rescued kittens. Why should it itch now?
If he’s in trouble. If he needs me. Even if he doesn’t know it.
There seemed to be no way that Narcissa’s suspicions could be true, though, the more Draco thought about it. Potter was immune to the Imperius Curse, which meant he was immune to all the lesser mind-control spells as well (and if he was immune to the Dark Lord’s Imperius-no matter what Lucius said about it being right after the resurrection and so the Dark Lord having been weak-there was certainly no one in the British wizarding world now who could control him). How could someone else be making him do what they wanted?
Potions? Maybe, but as Narcissa said, the Weasleys would never have been on the side of Potter taking potions, and they would have noticed. The same with Polyjuice. And both would have required regular doses. Potter didn’t have the habit of drinking from a silver flask the way the fake Moody at Hogwarts in fourth year had. Someone would have noticed.
He hadn’t changed his behavior suddenly, either. Potter wasn’t that good an actor. If someone had threatened him to get him comply-and with what?-then he would have betrayed himself at some point.
Frowning, Draco looked up from his desk as Potter sauntered past his office door, heading to lunch in the company of several Aurors. Potter caught Draco’s eye and winked. He ran a hand through his hair as he did it, and seemed to exude self-deprecation.
He’d told Draco one day last year that he thought Draco had a crush on him, and it didn’t matter, because everyone was a little in love with the Chosen One at some point in their lives. Draco had sneered and stomped away.
It was true that he could find Potter attractive, and sometimes did, with his insouciant manner and his bright eyes and his strength, magical and physical. But there was still-something missing.
Draco sat back abruptly, eyes closed, and chased the thought. Yes, there was something missing. He had to figure out what the something was, and he had to abandon work to do it, or he was afraid the thought would never come back to him.
The intensity.
Draco opened his eyes and pounded his hand down on the desk, then wished he hadn’t as his palm stung and someone in another office yelled in irritation. But even as he rubbed the heel of his hand, he thought it was worth it.
Yes. Potter at school had been moody as hell. Never worse than fifth year, true, and Draco hadn’t been around him that often during what would have been their original seventh year. But even after the war, he’d snapped out insults, used sarcasm, initiated duels, and refused to put up with what he saw as nonsense or injustice.
The Potter who had been around the Ministry in the past five years was…perfect. He didn’t initiate duels. He talked down people who had tried to hurt him. He only fought in defense of someone else, and then only when he had to, with a rueful shake of his head and a sigh that suggested he would much rather have spared them. He wasn’t sarcastic in the least, even when he told Draco that he wouldn’t have been able to help falling in love with the Chosen One.
(Not that it was love. It had been a crush, on Potter the way he had looked the day he’d defeated the Dark Lord. And it had faded in the last five years, too).
Even if someone had sat Potter down and had a serious talk with him about the way they needed him to appear to the public, Draco would have seen him let his guard down somewhere. In the Ministry when it was only other employees around. In a darkened corner of a party where he would have drunk Firewhisky and laughed at the stories DMLE flunkies were telling. With a prisoner who had killed or hurt children or someone he cared about.
Even when Potter had captured Fenrir Greyback right after the werewolf had bitten a young Muggle boy who would have a difficult time fitting in in either world, he had only shaken a head at Greyback more in pity than anger. And he’d stopped an Auror who wanted to kick Greyback. And that was the werewolf who had scarred a Weasley and bitten that werewolf professor Potter had been so fond of.
Draco sat back, closing his eyes again. Potter had argued for Greyback not to get the Kiss. Well, that might have made sense, because the Potter Draco had remembered was terrified of Dementors.
But he’d stood back without a word when Greyback was thrown through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Even though, at least if rumors confirmed by Draco’s father were true, that was also the way Potter had lost his godfather. It didn’t make sense for him to argue against one punishment and not the other.
Except that the Wizengamot and the public had been in favor of the Veil. Potter seemed to give up, and give in, any time public opinion might have been against him.
Still, that was only dim, drifting speculation. Perhaps Potter had known something about the trial or Greyback that Draco hadn’t-or about the Veil-that made that seem the appropriate punishment.
But still, the idea that Potter would never oppose what the public wanted was both the key and the biggest difference from the Potter he had known in school, Draco was sure. The one he owed that life-debt to.
He thought about it a few minutes more, then rose and walked down the corridor to the lifts. He thought he remembered the events of two years ago accurately, but he hadn’t been close to any of the people involved. He would have to access the archives and see if what he thought he remembered was true.
“Auror Malfoy!”
Draco turned around with a polite smile. “Head Auror.” John Dawlish was a stolidly-built man who Draco would have suspected of bearing the Dark Mark if his father had ever hinted at it. He swept up to Draco and looked him up and down for a long moment.
Draco bore with it patiently. Probably Dawlish was about to send him on some errand. Well, his own errand to the archives wasn’t urgent.
“I want to make something clear to you,” Dawlish said, and his voice bristled with his version of malice. “You are to leave the Department of Mysteries’s secrets alone.”
“Pardon, sir? I haven’t been near the Department of Mysteries in quite some time.”
“I think you know what I’m talking about, Malfoy.”
Draco had learned to lie from the best, though, and one of the main reasons he had likened Dawlish to a Death Eater was because so many of them hadn’t. Draco sighed a little and shook his head. “Sir, I know there are people who want to get me in trouble because of my father’s-affiliations during the war. However, I don’t believe the same things he did, and I’ve gone out of my way to show it. Will I ever get any trust for that? Or will I always be suspect because of my name?”
Dawlish spent a few seconds blinking. Then he said, “Well, I had a report that you were near one of their secrets.”
So either whoever told him this didn’t dare to be more specific for fear that he would start spreading gossip around, or he was told almost nothing. It might not even be associated with the Department of Mysteries. Draco kept his eyes on the floor as he sighed a little. “Remember, sir, there are people who hate me because of things my father did.”
“They should, Malfoy. What with him being a Death Eater during both wars.”
“Surely, if he was, then the blame lies with the people who accepted his excuse of being under the Imperius during the first war,” Draco said earnestly. “People in the Ministry, if I’m not mistaken.”
His gamble paid off. Dawlish was always more anxious about the accusations of corruption and bribery that the Ministry weathered on a regular basis than he was about something as vague as the accusation of coming near a secret. He gulped, his eyes going wide. “I wasn’t in charge then, Malfoy.”
“Of course not, sir.” Dawlish had only taken over as Head Auror after Gawain Robards had retired.
Dawlish wavered, then leveled a finger at him. “You still aren’t to discuss what we discussed here with anyone, mind.”
And he turned and strode away as if he was strutting across a stage. Draco smothered his laughter and tapped his finger against the button for the lifts. If someone thought he was going near the Department of Mysteries just because he was going down, that was their problem.
*
“What is it, Draco? You look thoughtful.”
“What, and I’m never thoughtful? How insulting, Mother.”
Yet Draco couldn’t muster up a smile, and from the way Narcissa swished her robes around her as she came into the small sitting room, he knew she’d noticed. Narcissa took a seat on the small green couch opposite Draco, blocking his view of the fire. Draco sighed and reached for the glass of cool wine the house-elves had brought him.
House-elves. He grimaced. That only reminded him of his Potter problem.
“You found something out on the Potter front?” Narcissa prompted.
Draco nodded. “I went to the archives because I thought I remembered something about a news story from two years ago, and I wanted to see if I was right.” He swallowed a little more wine, not drinking as much as he would have if he was by himself. Honestly, with his mood at the moment, that was probably a good idea rather than otherwise. “This was a story published in Messenger Owl and a few international papers as well as the Prophet. I suppose Potter’s celebrity carries over even abroad.”
Narcissa only nodded. “And what happened?”
“Granger proposed a bill that would improve the treatment of house-elves. It stalled in the Wizengamot. Some people were just opposing it based on Granger’s blood status, from the implications in the papers. Potter could have moved it forwards by speaking a few well-timed words. The kind that he’s never hesitated to speak.”
“Both because Granger is his friend and because it would benefit those whom he believes would be suffering,” Narcissa said, accurately picking up his thoughts.
Draco nodded. “And he stood back and said nothing. More to the point, when a reporter from the Prophet tracked him down at home and asked him why he wasn’t supporting Granger, he said that he thought she was an interfering busybody who should have studied the issue of house-elves more carefully before she proposed a bill about it.”
Narcissa choked, her eyes wide. “What-why did no one make more of a fuss about that at the time?”
Draco sighed. “Because the story came out in the Messenger Owl the day after the bill failed that Potter was only joking. He gave some brief statement about how you could never trust anything the Prophet said, and the like. And then he made jokes until the audience was laughing.”
Narcissa stared at him. “Well, maybe that was true. I can’t see Granger being friends with him still if he called her a busybody.”
“I can,” Draco said, with a mental shake to remind himself that he’d known Granger far better than his mother. “She barely had any friends at Hogwarts, and she clung to Potter and Weasley like they were the source of her magic. She didn’t give up on them no matter what they said or did. She forgave Weasley for insulting her in first year, even, in a way that she never would have if she was as proud as I am. I think she could have forgiven Potter.”
“That doesn’t prove it was real and not a joke.”
“No. But he undeniably did stand back and not support the bill. I can’t see Potter doing that, either.”
Narcissa clasped her hands together tightly. “It isn’t the kind of proof that you could take before the Wizengamot.”
Draco snorted, and ignored the way that his mother raised her eyebrow. “I was never looking for proof up to that standard, Mother. But there is something wrong, and you can feel it for the same reasons I can.” He shifted his shoulders a little, and the life-debt stung him again. It was exactly like having an itch in the middle of his back that he couldn’t reach with his hands or his wand.
“Did you find the door?”
“What?” Draco blinked, brought back from his thoughts too suddenly to grasp what she was saying.
“The door your father said I spoke of. The door he comes in and leaves by.” Narcissa leaned forwards a little. “I think you have to find it, and then all will be made clear.”
“Not why Potter would betray Granger and people would just excuse it,” Draco muttered, but his words were self-deprecating as much as anything else. He hadn’t noticed that particular slip, either. In fact, he’d felt some satisfaction that Potter had finally decided his Muggleborn friend was self-righteous and inserting her opinion where it wasn’t wanted. “But I’ll look for the door, Mother.”
“As much as you can without endangering yourself.”
“You think there is danger, then?” Draco asked quietly. “From the Department of Mysteries?”
“I don’t know.” His mother looked directly at him, her eyes a soft grey flecked with blue that seemed to tremble now. “I think danger exists, though.”
Draco touched her hand. “And I will be as careful as I can. I don’t want the life-debt to pull at me longer than I can help, but I wouldn’t do Potter any good if I was dead or injured, either, and the magic knows that.”
His mother’s eyes fluttered again, but this time shut. She nodded, and her hand tightened on his until his wrist bones creaked.
Draco found he couldn’t mind.
*
“Draco! What are you doing?”
Draco turned around with a faint smile. He could use Potter’s own perfect nature-whether that was charmed, or compelled, or bargained for-against him now. “I was going to lunch. Isn’t that something people do every day in your world?”
Potter blinked at him, and Draco stared back. If he hadn’t been so close to Potter, and hadn’t had so many reasons to study him, and hadn’t had so many years behind him at school urging him to memorize the exact color of those eyes, he suspected he wouldn’t have seen it.
For an instant, Potter’s eyes had been grey, not green.
The Polyjuice theory is looking more likely, despite everything against it, Draco thought, as his heartbeat picked up speed, and waited for Potter to make up some excuse and dart off in pursuit of his next draught. When someone’s true eye color started showing through, they were an instant away from turning back.
But Potter just scowled at him and snapped, “You’re stalking me is what you’re doing.” And his eyes were undeniably green again.
Draco turned away a little before he could be accused of staring, and shrugged. “I don’t see how. I was walking down this corridor when you accosted me. I was on my way to lunch. There’s a witch who sets up outside the visitors’ entrance to the Ministry each day, and-”
“You were taking the track that I take when I come into the Ministry each day.”
The door. You were right, Mother. Draco did his best to smile disarmingly at Potter, who didn’t look as if he was buying it. “Okay, but it’s not as you own this corridor, is it, Potter? And I was on my way to lunch. Let me go now, before my favorite witch leaves.”
Potter glanced around. Draco let his eyes travel with Potter’s. The corridor remained empty, the grey stone the Ministry was in all the places where no one had any reason to charm it a different color. There were no windows or offices that were in regular use here.
And, despite the fact that it wasn’t the best-traveled corridor in the Ministry, it was still a public one. Potter didn’t own it. And Draco did in fact travel it when he went to the witch who served the most delicious fish he had ever tasted. Just not every day.
Potter leaned in. “I know Dawlish warned you, Malfoy,” he said, and there was a rasp to his voice that Draco hadn’t heard since Hogwarts. “I’m doing it now. Stay away from this.”
Draco rolled his eyes and ignored the way the life-debt had begun to hum down his spine, as if it thought that the angrier Potter was, the more he needed Draco’s help. “Yes, he said something vague about the Department of Mysteries. Don’t worry, Potter, I don’t intend to go probing into that. And I will stay away from your very important corridor after this. I’m sure you own every stone in it.” The lift had finally arrived, and Draco stepped into it.
“Good, Draco. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”
And that didn’t bear the tone of a threat, Draco thought, staring stunned as he watched the doors of the lift shut on Potter’s abrupt, shining smile. It sounded as if he was actually concerned for Draco, and trying to protect him from the nasty things in the corridor the way the students in Hogwarts during Draco’s first year had been warned away from the third-floor corridor.
What the hell?
Draco shook his head briskly as the lift began moving downwards, and tried to focus his thoughts for the moment on the fish he was going to eat in a few minutes’ time, just in case the rumors of the Ministry having a Legilimens on hand who randomly scanned employees’ thoughts was true. When he was cradling the warm roll of paper-wrapped fish in his hands and heading back up towards his desk, he focused his mind on something else.
He had undergone a brutal but effective training in Occlumency with his dear aunt Bellatrix. By the time he was sitting at his desk and eating the fish again, he was sure.
Potter had been turning away when the lifts shut, but not in the manner of someone intending to walk back down the corridor. Instead, he had been walking briskly towards one of the disused offices.
The door. Find the door.
Part Two.