Chapter Thirteen of 'Sanctum Sanctorum'- In Control
Chapter Twelve.
Title: Sanctum Sanctorum (13/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex, torture, violence, child abuse, gore, angst, ignores the epilogue.
Summary: The new Divination professor predicts that Harry and Draco will someday live together, with a family. Horrified, Harry goes to Draco to warn him that someone might spread rumors about this. It only takes one pebble to begin the avalanche.
Author’s Notes: While this starts out as a light-hearted fic, it gets dark fairly quickly. Also, please heed the warnings. I don’t yet know how long it’ll be, though I estimate between twenty and thirty chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirteen-In Control
“You must know it grieves me to see you here, Campion.”
Schroeder’s voice was gentle, and had an undertone of steel. Harry bowed his head in penance, or what he thought Campion might think it looked like. Campion had struck him as arrogant enough not to be very familiar with the gesture.
“But it puzzles me more.” Schroeder had taken a stool, gently rebuffing the guards’ attempts to bring him something more suitable. Harry watched it and understood, silently. This was the kind of “humble” gesture he would use to make it look as though he understood the plight of the common wizard. It wouldn’t have fooled anyone with a working brain, but Harry knew not as many of his fellow Aurors had those as was commonly believed. “Why in the world did this happen? Is this a prank?”
Harry ducked his head and whinged. At least his voice was Campion’s, and he’d had the chance to hear plenty of his whinging during Ron’s interrogation of the little git, so he knew how to do this convincingly. “I told you, I don’t remember.” That still seemed safest. Ron and Malfoy would presumably be along to tell him what he ought to do at some point, but they hadn’t come in yet. And he was determined not to fuck up again.
“And I told you, that’s not an answer.” Schroeder didn’t move, his ankles dangling in front of him and still lightly crossed, but his voice had an undertone, a vibration, that didn’t promise well for Campion. “What were you doing immediately before you arrived here?”
“I,” said Harry, and then turned his head away and stared at the far wall. No, there was something he could do after all, and it might pollute the story Campion would try and tell his uncle when he arrived. “You’ll be angry at me for it.”
“When am I ever angry at you, Campion, except for when you deserve it?”
That didn’t sound promising, but at least the undertone in his voice had changed. Harry swallowed and stared down at his hands again. Smooth hands, he noticed, without the calluses that Harry had expected to have by the time he was nineteen, after all those years of gripping either a broom or a wand.
He controlled his disgust, because being disgusted at himself-or the form he wore now-was not productive to his plans, and what was productive to his plans had to be most important. “I met with,” and he took a breath as though to steady the air in his lungs more than to brace himself for what he wanted to say to his uncle, “Arianna Turnlong.”
There was such silence in the room that Harry could hear his heartbeat. He sneaked a look at Schroeder’s face and then ducked his head again.
“I see,” Schroeder said mildly. “How long have you seen this-young woman?” The pause was perfect, Harry had to admit. Schroeder used his voice as the tool of his politics, making speeches and consulting in private conversations, and he knew how to weight his words to make it seem as if he had hesitated a long time before choosing a polite epithet.
“For,” Harry said, and pause and breathe and gulp and swallow, “a while.”
“And you never thought to inform me?” Schroeder leaned back on his stool, seeming to remind himself at the last moment that it was a stool, and that tripping headlong onto the floor behind him was not his goal. “You know of my political rivalry with Madam Turnlong, Campion. Her niece has many of the same…opinions that she does. Meeting with her because you are attracted to her is beyond foolish.”
“I’m not just attracted to her!” Harry jerked his head up and did his best to remember the square way Campion had held his body when confronting Ron and Harry with what he thought was evidence of their mistreatment. “You don’t understand!”
“Ah, yes, the cry of youth everywhere,” Schroeder said, and his lip curled. “Campion, you know the political ambitions I have, how I gave up on having sons of my own partially so I would be able to provide better for my nephew-”
That had the dusty sound of a speech often taken out of a cupboard and displayed, and Harry struck back against it with a temper that he was sure Campion had, even if he had to hide it from his benefactor. “I can do things on my own! I don’t need you! And Arianna proved it to me!”
He surged to his feet, and then, as Schroeder held the silence and looked up at him with no change of expression, let his shoulders sag. He sank back onto his own stool and stared at his balled-up fists in front of him as Schroeder began to speak.
“You know better than that. You know what you are, and who you are, and why you are. You will have everything I do someday, the political power and the allies and the luxuries, but only if you do as you’re told. You’re very young, younger in mind than you are in years of the body. You cannot tell me what I do and do not understand. What I know is that when I was your age, I worked much harder than you do now, and was grateful for the opportunities that fate handed me…”
And then there are times I’m grateful that chance left me with no family of my own, Harry thought, struggling to hide his revulsion.
Schroeder went on with the explanation so long that Harry wanted to scream, and then Longwatch stepped into the room and coughed gently. “Member Schroeder? Auror Weasley has brought Potter in.”
It was interesting to watch Schroeder gather himself, his eyes filming cold, his chin lifting and his hands clenching in front of him as though he wanted to take a chain in them and wrap it around Harry’s throat. “Has he?” he said, and all around him Harry imagined stone freezing to ice and Aurors taking prudent steps back-not that any of them had remained in the cell when Schroeder ordered them out. Wizengamot membership had its privileges and its perks. “Then tell him to come here.”
Ron came in, and Harry slumped over on his stool and peeked at them sullenly from beneath Campion’s tangled hair. He could only hope Ron wouldn’t give them away, since Ron sometimes had trouble controlling his emotions when Harry was in danger. But Ron stared straight ahead at the far wall, and only shook Campion now and then when he whined too loudly in protest.
Remarkable, Harry thought, in fascination he took care not to show. Malfoy’s potion had done its work well. Campion had Harry’s eyes and scar-which had always been the hardest thing to feign when someone else tried to glamour themselves up as Harry in the past-and his scruffy hair and his Auror robes. Harry swallowed a giggle when he thought of how people must have reacted to his appearance, wherever he had been.
Then Ron marched Campion over so they stood halfway between Schroeder’s stool and Harry’s, and Harry smelled the Firewhisky on him. Even better. Campion would protest, of course, but he didn’t have the mental clarity he needed to make his lies absolutely plausible to Schroeder.
And if Harry and Ron spun it right, he would never have the chance again, since they could disgust Schroeder enough to make him leave.
“So this is Potter.” Schroeder turned around and nodded as though he was appreciating a new wine that someone had set before him. “What was he doing when you caught him, Auror Weasley?”
Ron snapped to attention and used a salute that Harry knew for a fact he had never used when they were merely reporting to the Head Auror. Someone who knew him well would sense the sarcasm inherent in every movement, but there was no reason to suspect Schroeder knew him well. “Sir! He was in a pub, drunk on Firewhisky.” He let his eyes linger on Harry for a moment in no friendly way, then turned back to the disguised Campion with a sigh and a shake of his head. “People started screaming when he landed there among them.”
“When his appearance changed, you mean,” Schroeder said, and he looked at his nephew, too, with a face like steel. “It is plain that he has been impersonating my nephew for some time. He would not be drunk if he had merely appeared there.”
Harry held his breath. Was Schroeder going to convince himself? Did they dare hope?
It was plain that Ron didn’t intend to leave the convincing up to chance, though. He licked his lips and said, “Well, sir, a glamour-I mean, of course he could have kept the glamour up for a time, but there were people who said that they’d seen him acting exactly like Campion Fipps in the last few days-”
He paused when Schroeder rose to his feet. “And are you saying that my nephew regularly behaves like a common drunk, Auror Weasley?” he asked. Harry thought even George, who made a career of not caring what people thought, would hesitate at the air Schroeder was managing to project around him.
“Not what I meant!” Ron stammered, and he’d got his ears to turn red, too. Harry felt a fierce glow of pride as he watched. Ron was a much better Auror than he sometimes let people think, and Hermione scolded him about hiding his potential, but he didn’t much listen to her. “I meant that, well, people said they’d seen him around in different places. He couldn’t have acted for that long, could he have? It couldn’t be a long-lasting impersonation?” He let his voice trail off in the face of the glance Schroeder gave him. That glance was steady, and that was about its only virtue, Harry thought.
“I understand your desire to protect your partner,” Schroeder said, and one could have thought he was talking about something praiseworthy-or something he thought was praiseworthy-from the way his voice trailed gently off. Someone who thought that wouldn’t have been Ron. He tensed like a kitten caught clawing up a piece of new furniture and stared at Schroeder.
“But it cannot stand,” Schroeder said. “The impersonation must have continued for some time, because getting drunk in public, at this hour of the day, is not something my nephew would do. And Auror Potter has more skills at acting than you give him credit for.” A short, flickering look came back at Harry.
Harry held his breath, and said nothing. This was working. Schroeder wouldn’t let on to Ron-or at least he thought so-about how rattled and disgusted he really was. He couldn’t do so, because he had to protect his nephew’s reputation. What really had to happen was that he got Ron away and then interrogated Harry and Campion alone.
That was the part Harry feared. He could keep up the mask better than Campion could as long as Campion was drunk, and he had spun a story that would give Schroeder pause, because Madam Turnlong, the devastating Arianna’s aunt, was his worst enemy on the Wizengamot. But in the end, he would, of course, try his best to find the truth, and he had access to Veritaserum if he wanted it.
I hope you have something planned for this, Malfoy, Harry thought, and tried not to feel how much the thought was like a prayer.
*
Draco leaned back against the wall in his flat with a smile. Weasley hadn’t known why Draco wanted to attach a small mirror to the sleeve of his Auror robe that morning, but then, Weasley, while not an idiot, didn’t have much expertise in the branches of magic that Draco intended to exploit.
Draco let his fingers rub against the mirror he carried, smaller and rounder than the one Weasley had but otherwise its twin, and breathed across it. His breath created a mist that cleared in seconds, and left him a clear view of Potter’s cell. He had told Weasley to keep his wand drawn at all times, because a wand stuffed in the sleeve would obscure Draco’s view.
He had no trouble doing that, it seemed. Of course, Draco should have known that he wouldn’t. Potter-the real Potter, disguised as Campion-sat on a stool. Schroeder stood in front of him, mostly obscuring him, so Draco wouldn’t have been sure about who was back there if he was an idiot. Weasley was present mostly as flashes of sleeve from the corner of the mirror and flashes of red hair even further away from the sides, and the disguised Potter occupied the whole of Draco’s vision.
Schroeder was making points and asking questions that would lead to the truth if he made them and asked them long enough. Draco wouldn’t let that happen, either. He dug his teeth into the cork of the vial he held and spat it out.
He had worked more experiments than anyone he knew with mirror potions, using a glass to influence what happened from a distance in a reflection. There was no reason that it should not work as usual with a potion containing Potter’s blood.
Well. Except there was one difference he was hoping would appear, one special difference all of this depended on.
He poured the potion over the surface of the mirror, drop by drop, watching the way they shimmered before the mirror absorbed them. He could feel his heart in his ears, and his breath in his lungs, and every drop of his own blood moving through his body. This was the way it always was, all the time, when he used his potions. His own creations, at least, not the routine love philters that he brewed for more clients than he cared to count.
This was life. This was living.
The surface of his mirror smoked for a few minutes, and then cleared. The potion was gone. Draco was glad that he hadn’t told Weasley the time limitation on this one, because it was more uncertain than the potion Campion had swallowed. He leaned back in his chair and waited.
Still his heartbeat and his breath and his body filled the present, and he gloried in it. He could feel the tingle of power around him. He had made the potion well, and that was part of it, but he knew that Potter’s blood sang with the raw version of the magic he used through his wand on a daily basis, and that was the other part.
The fool. He could do so much if he was in control, instead of flailing around in the midst of chaos. I will have to show him that, show him that having power is no good if one does not have someone to guide it.
*
Harry looked up as Schroeder sounded like he was nearing the end of his speech about how his nephew was the innocent victim in this situation, and how he would thank Ron not to spread the news. They could not keep the news of Potter escaping from spreading, of course, and he understood how hard that was for Ron when Potter was his partner, but…
There was something happening.
A wind, Harry thought, his nostrils quivering as he tried to draw in the scent and failed. Or perhaps a scent only, so thin that no wind would carry it to him? Perhaps someone else could feel it, someone else could touch it-
But no one else would sense it in the same way he did, a shine beneath the skin, a note beneath the level of awareness. Harry clasped his hands and tried to sit upright on the stool and do nothing else, because if he moved he thought he would start laughing out loud for joy, and that would surely make Schroeder alert to the fact that something was wrong.
“I understand, sir,” Ron was mumbling, nodding and bobbing his head as though he was the mindless puppet Schroeder wanted him to be. Or had reduced him to be, Harry thought, and anger cut through the joy, that Ron should ever have to do something like this, should have to pretend to be stupid when so many people wanted to think he was already. But it would avail him little if he burst out with that now, so he bowed his head and waited for the moment the power building in the air would break.
“Do you.”
Schroeder sounded distracted, and didn’t make it a question. Harry looked up and saw the way his head turned, his eyes focused on air that didn’t move. Did he sense the magic, too? Could he do something in time to counteract it? Harry’s muscles tensed. He could still throw himself at Schroeder’s legs and knock him down if he had to, and he would, if the bastard attacked in a way that hurt Ron or Malfoy.
No. Wait. Listen.
The voice might have been Malfoy’s from the way it compelled him, but Harry didn’t think it was. It was a bit much to think that Malfoy could make a potion that would allow him to speak to Harry from a distance like that, based only on impulses he hadn’t expressed yet, however much of a genius he might be in other ways. But Harry could make his decisions, and he could decide that he wanted to trust Malfoy, and he could wait and react if that was what would make the most sense.
He waited some more, and Schroeder lifted his head and turned in a complete circle, hand reaching up as if to grasp something. Harry thought he saw a scarlet thread of blood gleam in his hand for a moment, and wondered if Malfoy had sent something into the cell.
Campion, who had remained silent until that moment out of what seemed like a mixture of surprise, despair, and Firewhisky, looked up, too. “What are you doing, uncle?” he asked, with Harry’s intonation and the drink’s slur.
Schroeder’s rapt look vanished, and he dropped his hand. If he had held a scarlet thread, Harry thought, it was ripped out of existence now, but nothing crumbled from his fingers when he moved them apart.
“Take my nephew out of here,” he said sharply, and fixed his eyes on Campion’s face. Harry’s face, really, and Harry hoped that Malfoy had something that could reverse this potion for him without getting rid of Campion’s own disguise, because otherwise looking into a mirror would get disconcerting. “I have something to say to Mr. Potter.”
“Yes, sir,” Ron murmured, and stepped forwards, one hand reaching for Harry’s arm. Harry let himself be jerked off the stool, because he knew Ron would never have done it if he hadn’t thought it necessary to convince Schroeder.
The way that Ron glared at him as he pulled him along seemed more realism than necessary, though, and Harry knew his luck had run out when Ron began to hiss at him in a low voice as they traveled past Longwatch’s indulgent eye.
“Harry, you idiot. Why did you let him bait you? Because I know that’s what it was, and you don’t need to lie otherwise.”
“That’s what it was,” Harry said, keeping his head down as if ashamed and barely moving his lips. He was sure Ron would hear him. They had heard each other before, in more trying circumstances. “No excuses. He meant to provoke me into attacking him so he could lock me up, and I fell for it.”
Ron was silent for a few minutes as they left the holding cells and entered the long, blank, well-guarded corridor outside it. Then he shook his head. “At least you can admit it,” he said.
“What, slightly stunned?” Harry lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “There’s no need to be. I had time to think about it, after all. I realize you were right. I’ve been letting my temper run away from me, and that’s a detriment to my work as an Auror. We’re here to solve the cases and make sure the perpetrators find justice and the victims mercy. I forgot that in my own desire to be right.”
Ron was silent for so long that Harry wondered if his astonishment at this was overcoming his astonishment at Harry’s initial admission. Then he said, “Nothing about using Dark Arts, I see.”
If they were alone, Harry would have asked him outright about the tone in his voice, but they had to pass a cluster of Aurors at the moment, who stared at them and burst out into loud, obnoxious talk as soon as they passed. When they were safely back around a corner, Harry sighed and said, “The Dark Arts influenced my temper. And that Retrovoyance spell influenced my investment in the cases. So, yeah, they contributed to me being out of control. And that’s something that needs to stop.”
“I wish,” Ron said, and then shook his head. “Something I don’t have words for.” He went on before Harry could question him. “Malfoy is waiting. I think he has something that can give you back your normal appearance again without making Campion look like himself.”
“Good.” Harry nodded. “Do you know what it was that he did to Schroeder in the cell? I wouldn’t have thought he could influence him from a distance. I know he must have had Campion drink something to switch our appearances, of course.”
“Of course,” Ron said, again with an odd tone in his voice, and again his voice surged on before Harry could question it. “The only thing I know is that he gave me a mirror to let him see into the cell, and told me not to act surprised by anything that might happen, at least with Schroeder. Oh, and he told me that he needed some of your blood for a potion.”
“You managed to acquire some?” Harry didn’t leave his blood lying casually around his flat, where he knew Malfoy probably would have got the ingredients for the potion that had made them switch appearances.
“Well,” Ron said. “Um. You know how you sometimes spill blood at a crime scene and it’s still on a piece of evidence?”
Harry smiled in spite of himself, because Ron’s embarrassment made him have to. “Yeah. So you gave that to him?” He made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, as some of his Potions theory reading came back to him. He might be pants at the practical part, but he needed to know about poisons and healing potions at the least, and that had led him elsewhere. “It sounds like he might have used a potion that convinced Schroeder to think what he most wanted to think about me. And that’s that I was exactly the kind of recalcitrant troublemaker who would break out again and be stupid enough to get caught, thus making all sorts of trouble for myself. Malfoy would have sent the potion through the mirror.”
Ron stared at him over his shoulder, then frowned. “Well. Maybe. It seems strange.”
Harry nodded, but couldn’t suppress his smile.
Malfoy. We have things to talk about.
And things that involve me listening to you, whether or not you’ll remove this potion you have on me.
Chapter Fourteen.
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