Chapter Eighteen of 'Sanctum Sanctorum'- In the Search
Chapter Seventeen.
Title: Sanctum Sanctorum (18/?)
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 Eighteen-In the Search
Draco leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The back of his mind was nothing but lightning and black cloud, and the roar of distant waves.
He had needed that information about what Moonstone and Schroeder-if they were the ones behind everything concerning the Muggle children-were doing. But he could have wished it undiscovered, if only because of the agitation it had caused Potter.
He paced through Draco’s kitchen at the moment with no concern for the lateness of the hour or Draco’s exhaustion. His face was flat, almost peaceful, but Draco had seen him truly relaxed this evening, and would not mistake one state for the other again. His hands were locked together behind his back, but they twisted through each other, fingernails rustling and scraping, then driving into unshielded skin. Draco felt distant echoes of the pain in Potter’s mind through the potions bond, although not as if it had happened to his own body. Instead, Potter felt the tiny pricks and added them to his dream of vengeance against the murderers.
Or conquerors, Draco added, in the back of his own mind. They had conquered a problem, if they had, that had baffled many of the greatest Dark wizards in history. How to take magic from one body and make another accept it.
Of course, the price was too high. Draco quite agreed with Potter on that. The Muggles would eventually notice the disappearance of their children, especially if Moonstone and Schroeder succeeded and stepped up their kidnapping. That could lead to disastrous results for the wizarding world. It would be best if the separation between the worlds was maintained as far as possible.
But Potter, with his notions of saving the innocent and preserving freedom for others, if not himself…
A single thought emerged like a rock rising from the sea in the back of Potter’s mind. The waves parted around it, and it gleamed when Draco closed his eyes, silver and black as the blade of an obsidian knife in the light.
Revenge.
“You fought the beast down earlier, Potter,” Draco said, his eyes still closed. He would begin this confrontation with softness, not a stare, and see if that made any difference. “Will you let it free now?”
“I can hunt them down and kill them without using Dark Arts.” Potter’s voice had a sleepy tone to it. So an alligator might look sleepy, in the moment before it lunged and snapped the leg off a deer.
“You might use other spells that are as dangerous, and ones that would allow the Ministry to track us,” Draco said, and slumped further in the chair. Keep his hand away from potions and wand; look unthreatening. Someday he might not be able to control Potter through the methods he had used so far, and he wanted to make sure that he had others. “Some of the spells you created. How much power do they give off?”
“What do you mean?” Potter snapped, and Draco knew that Potter had come to a halt in front of his chair. The rock was closer, the roar of the waves louder, the soft snarl of magic a rumbling growl by now. “The Ministry has wards to detect the Dark Arts, but they don’t have any that are going to tell them about my spells, because they’re new. You can’t track something you don’t know exists.”
Draco snorted, and did open his eyes now. Better for him as well if he was able to meet Potter’s gaze head-on, and show that he was not afraid of anything Potter might do in his slightly madder moments. “You really think that? The Ministry also has wards that track the magical power most spells give off as they’re cast, Harry.” The use of his name jolted Potter back on his heels, and let Draco rise from the chair and face him without making it seem as if he were starting to his feet out of fear. “The power sends flickers-you might think of them like the sparks from a fire-through the air. Now, most of the time, such wards aren’t active, because constantly detecting all the common household cleaning charms in England and the Healing spells at St. Mungo’s would be a waste of the Ministry’s time and effort. But they would find a powerful spell, and if it was one they didn’t recognize, they would send Aurors. For something like that, they always have time.”
“I never heard of wards like that,” Potter snapped, and ran a hand through his hair. Draco felt his hand twitch, and had to dart a look through the kitchen door at Weasley, still asleep in the chair in the other room, to restrain himself. It was a miracle that Weasley hadn’t yet woken up through all of Potter’s ranting; with Draco’s luck, he would wake in the one moment Draco was trying to smooth Potter’s hair down. “Why wouldn’t they tell me about them? I was an Auror, after all.”
Draco shook his head. “So it comes down to this. The Ministry manipulated you as much as it manipulated anyone else, Potter. If they didn’t assign you to a case like that, then it means that they thought you’d be more valuable on cases like tracking known Dark wizards and finding kidnapping victims. And you are, aren’t you? Your temper drags you on like a chain. You’re pushed into doing so much more for the Ministry than you would on your own.”
“That’s not true,” Potter said, but his voice flickered and wavered like the spells Draco had been describing.
“They choose to put you where you can do the most good,” Draco said. “You could argue that, because you are good at what you do. But you’re also dangerously unrestrained at what you do. The Ministry won’t use you for delicate operations that involve what could be seen-what someone who was a Gryffindor could see, for example-as efforts at subjection.”
Potter whirled away from him and faced the far wall. Draco was reminded of a Muggle clockwork toy come to life, described in one of his wizarding children’s books. He smiled and braced his chin on his fist, waiting.
Potter had yielded more than once to Draco’s good sense, including accepting the bond the second potion had forced on him. He would yield again, Draco was sure, if Draco only had the patience to wait and see what happened.
*
How dare he sit there and tell me that I’m a loose weapon, charging around at all hours, not to be trusted-
Because that’s what you are. To him. What reason have you given him to think differently? Twice tonight you’ve already come near to doing something that would have damaged him, or Ron, or put them in danger.
Harry closed his eyes and began to pull himself inwards, a meditation technique he had learned in Auror training. He hated feeling this way, this constant storm of emotions, spiraling out of control and drowning humor and gentleness and common sense until he could see nothing clearly. If he had an enemy in front of him, it wasn’t so bad, because he could strike out and repay the debts that the enemy may have accrued. But without one, his body twitched, his muscles ached from the force of containing his mind, and his mind hurt from the force of shattering itself against his barriers.
The sea could go on striking rock forever without any impact or pain at all, but Harry was not the sea. He concentrated so hard that he could feel one of his teeth crack, and loosened his tongue from behind his clenched jaw to tap it. A minor hurt. He could fix it with a healing spell tonight, if he had the clarity of mind to do so.
Slowly, the maelstrom he pictured in his mind, rotating and greedily sucking up the emotions that dominated him, spun itself into nothingness. Harry leaned one hand against the kitchen door and made himself feel the texture of wood against his palm, the smooth ripples that threaded through it, the grain here and there that might have come from a tree in its prime or a young one; Harry really wouldn’t know.
He opened his eyes and turned to face Malfoy, making himself take a chair across the kitchen table from him. Malfoy watched him with raised eyebrows. He was beautiful in the light like this, Harry realized suddenly, his face stark and sharp-but Harry relished things like that, because he liked weapons. Malfoy’s fingers curled as if he thought about reaching into a pocket for a potion, but Harry shook his head and held up his hand. He wondered if Malfoy had heard the thought he’d just had, but decided it didn’t matter. Malfoy was too intelligent to feel flattered by the desire of someone like Harry.
“All right,” he said. “Thank you for being the voice of reason. Now. What do you think we should do with this information?”
*
What happens the day that he can’t hold the storm back anymore?
Draco shuddered, and tried not to let the thought show on his face, because for all he knew Potter had some telepathic means of picking up on such things, lack of a potions bond flowing his way or not. Draco had certainly picked up on some…interesting thoughts during the last few minutes when Potter was trying to tame his storm.
“We should leave everything until tomorrow,” he said. “It’s already late at night. We’ll get nothing done now if we rush off and try to make decisions on the spur of the moment.”
Potter looked into his face. Draco had felt weighed and judged by those green eyes before, but it had never seemed to matter as it did now, with Potter studying him and Draco clenching his hands into the table so that he wouldn’t flinch away.
Potter turned his head in the other direction and shrugged, at last. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll wake Ron, and we’ll go.” He started to stand.
“How do you deal with it on a day-by-day basis?” Draco burst out. The question escaped his careful control before he could think about it with the consideration it deserved, like a rat escaping from the cage where it was destined to become Potions ingredients. “It must-how can you handle that rage? You would need something more than the potion I used to connect myself to your mind, because you don’t have that all the time. How do you do it?”
“I thought I told you,” Potter said. “The Retrovoyance curse exaggerated the effects-”
“Come off it,” Draco said, and rose to his feet, shoving his chair back from the table hard enough to make the legs scrape on the floor and wring an annoyed-sounding moan from Weasley in the other room. “I know you’ve used the curse more than once. How did you deal with these emotions then?”
Potter studied him through fathomless eyes for a moment, and then said, “You’re right. Sometimes I could unleash my fury on the criminals who had done this immediately. Other times I worked the case day and night, and used the energy that way. Sometimes I cast spells in one of the Aurors’ practice rooms.” He hesitated.
“And other times?” Draco leaned forwards. His breath came fast, as though poised on the edge of a cliff. His head danced with a dizziness greater than vertigo would cause.
“Once,” Potter said softly, “I found a Muggle girl who was feeling the same way I was, and we fucked each other senseless.” He shrugged. “I don’t have anyone who I could do that with on a regular basis, though. As you’ve pointed out.”
“Little talent and less sense,” Draco told the wall of the kitchen. “To expose a Muggle to that? I’m surprised that they haven’t created brand-new clauses in the Statute of Secrecy simply for your sake.”
Potter gave him a faint, twisted smile, and nodded. “All right. We’ve spent long enough talking about why the Ministry wouldn’t trust me with something like this, how stupid I am, and how I shouldn’t have brought Muggles into this to begin with. Is there something else that you would like to say to me, or can we get on with the course of deciding what we’re going to do with the information?”
Draco opened his mouth. There were so many things he wanted to do, things he wanted to say-
And he could find no reason, looking at Potter’s calm, closed expression, to say any of them. Of course not. He had asked questions, and Potter had answered them. But they had possible information on the case that was more important than any of the half-asked questions in Draco’s head, more important even than the thought that had flickered and darted through Potter’s head when he looked at Draco, something about beauty.
He sat down and looked into the drawing room. “Do you want to wake Weasley up?”
“Of course,” Potter said, and leaned sideways and said in a careful, piercing tone, “You’re wanted, Ron.”
Weasley opened his eyes in a single second, and gave Potter a startling smile. Draco found himself grinding his teeth for no reason, and sat still until Weasley stretched and yawned and mumbled away his sleep, and came to join them at the kitchen table.
When his hands were wrapped around a mug of tea, Draco began, carefully avoiding Potter’s eyes. He could say it was to watch Weasley, to fill him in on the information that Potter might keep from him through sheer carelessness, but he knew it wasn’t.
Weasley didn’t know that, though, and there might be no reason for Potter to know it, either, when he lacked the link to Draco’s mind that a potion applied the other way would have given him. Draco buried his own churning emotions in the work, deciding that he could borrow one of Potter’s techniques after all.
*
Harry glanced down at the list in his hand and sighed as if disconsolate. He was wearing the guise of a Potions master, a thick, hooded robe, with the glamour of a considerably older man’s face underneath it. And he was walking slowly down the center of Knockturn Alley, continually looking up from the paper in his hand and scanning the numbers of the houses and shops on either side of the street.
The normal denizens of the alley watched him, but didn’t come near him. Harry didn’t think that they sensed he was really an Auror; the robe carried enchantments that forced Harry to walk with shorter steps than he usually employed, and the glamour came from a potion and would not fade in an hour like Polyjuice. Instead, they wanted to know yet if he was victim, predator, or absurdly short-sighted newcomer who would become the first very shortly.
There it is.
Harry felt the blood in his veins shout and sing, but he kept his head bowed and his steps wandering and weak, his voice a querulous murmur. Yes, he had seen the gold 66 above the shop on the right and a few meters down, but that didn’t mean he wanted to reveal his destination. He came to a stop, in fact, squinted, and turned the paper he held completely upside-down.
“Help you, sir?”
It seemed the first few words of the sentence had been swallowed by the gulping, snapping mouth of the man in front of him. Harry thought he looked like an anglerfish, though perhaps that was an insult to that efficient predator. This man had enough grime under his fingernails and enough hunger in his eyes to show he didn’t catch his prey that often.
“It depends,” said Harry, and let his own words fade away at the end of the announcement. He straightened his sheet with a final sigh and handed it around to the man. “Can you tell me where Master Eelhard’s shop is? Or is that Eelhardt?” he added, and coughed. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
The man didn’t bother looking at the sheet, precise directions charmed to look like imprecise ones. He watched Harry’s face instead, and his shoulders lifted and then fell. “You would be for the Eel, wouldn’t you?” he mumbled piteously. “Always takes clients away from the honest ones, he does.”
“You have the skin of a starfish flayed at the new moon?” Harry let his voice pick up, and leaned forwards.
The man in front of him darted backwards, not letting the shadow of the hood fall over him. Harry relaxed one muscle in his back, which wouldn’t show under the robe. Good. The man obviously took Harry for someone he shouldn’t challenge. Not seriously, at least. That would save Harry a bit of expectation when it came to escaping.
“Not me, not me,” the man said, and rubbed his chin, which had stubble of so iron a grey that Harry had taken it for a metallic decoration at first. “But it might be I know someone who does. Could you wait?”
Harry gave a mournful little sound and shook his head. “Not today. Not past today. Must have it today.” And he turned and glanced forlornly up and down the alley again.
No one was looking at him now. Whether they assumed he would find what he needed with the man who had claimed his attention or they didn’t have starfish skins to sell, Harry didn’t know. He only cared that there were no eyes on him except that of the anglerfish, who was now doing his best attempt at a wise and knowing look.
Harry drew his wand, but kept in concealed in his sleeve. “And you can’t point me to Master Eelhardt?” he whined one more time.
“You could wait one day,” the man said. “Wait one more day and I’ll have it at half the price the Old Eel would sell it for, how about that?”
Harry sighed to the point that he thought he’d get light-headed from all the air he was expelling. “No,” he said. “I don’t have a choice. I have to have the skin of a starfish flayed at the new moon, and I have to have it now.”
The anglerfish stepped back from him, and then went, looking back over his shoulder, as though he imagined Harry would change his mind and scramble wildly after him when he saw his chance at a cheaper skin escaping. Since the skin was not really what Harry had come for, he remained still, and the man vanished around a corner into Diagon Alley in the next moment.
Harry turned-
And saw Eelhardt in the door of his shop, beneath his gleaming golden numbers, waiting for him.
There was no doubt that it really was Eelhardt, Harry thought. Malfoy had described him as having a face that an elephant had stepped on, and that was an accurate description. Splayed forehead, wide and melancholy grey eyes, fingers that picked and tore and picked again at the thick cloth of his robe, and a chin that went on forever until it disappeared into a straggling beard-it was all there.
“The skin of a starfish flayed at the new moon,” Harry said, and focused on him, though when Eelhardt tried to look into his hood, Harry took a step back. “You have it?”
The man surveyed him with the gloom of a thousand centuries for a few minutes, and then nodded and turned to vanish back into the shop. Lack of a definite invitation or not, Harry followed him. He was getting tired of standing around in Knockturn Alley, but controlled his impatience with a small jerk inside his mind and nothing more. If Malfoy was right, they could find a true lead on the case here, and he wouldn’t do anything to endanger that, not when he had already held himself back so far.
The shop was dark inside, a darkness that seemed to come from more than the lack of light and the gloomy brown wood of the walls. There was smoke here too, and grime, and an atmosphere of lost hope. Eelhardt stumped his way over to the counter that stretched across the room except for a short gap facing the door, and crossed behind it, and sat down and stared at Harry. Harry lifted an eyebrow and came close enough that he could listen to Eelhardt whisper if he needed to.
“I have the skin,” Eelhardt said. “But I need to know who told you about it. Not many people know.”
Know the code word, Harry thought, with a faint smile that Eelhardt wouldn’t have been able to see even if he had peered under the hood. The skin of a starfish flayed at the new moon was a code word begging certain privileges from the apothecaries attuned to it, not a real ingredient. Malfoy had been the one who told Harry to come here, and given him the password, and warned him that Eelhardt had no particular reason to trust someone Malfoy sent, but even less reason to trust the Aurors.
“His name is Malfoy,” he said, and watched Eelhardt’s eyes bulge in and out for a moment, and dark little things that could have been the ghosts of starfish dart back and forth in them.
“He is-not my best customer,” Eelhardt said, carefully turning over a glass vial on the counter in front of him. Harry was aware of the shimmer of power from the corner of his eye, and how the turning of the vial cast a web of silence in front of the door. Well, that was fine. He had enough power to escape if he needed to, but he didn’t think Eelhardt would try and do him harm, given the expression on his face. “I find it hard to imagine he would mention that ingredient unless he had a reason.”
“And I have the reason,” Harry said, and added the rattling hiss of breath at the end of the words simply to disguise, as much as possible, his voice in case Eelhardt ever tried to remember where he had heard it. “I need to find a way to transfer, and hold, as much magic as possible.” He pushed a piece of parchment across the counter. It contained a drawing of the inscriptions from the ring, the ones that Malfoy had found in his book on Galen and which he said were used to control children.
For a moment, Eelhardt sat still. Then he looked up, and Harry warmed to the fear in his ears. At least that proved he had not come here pursuing a phantom.
“I-cannot help you with this,” Eelhardt said, articulating his words as though he imagined someone would be listening in.
“You can’t?” Harry arranged his voice in earnest lines. “That’s a shame. Because I know I would take more than I could hold. I want the magic only for a Healing, a simple Healing, the smallest Healing in the world.” He reached out and put his hand on top of the parchment, beginning to pull it gently backwards. “I could share the rewards for someone who helped me.”
Eelhardt hesitated, then shook his head. “I cannot,” he said. “The information is not mine to give or withhold.” But he hadn’t taken his eyes from the parchment. “But since you know so much already…”
“Yes?” Harry leaned in and made his voice as coaxing as he could.
“I could take a message.”
To Moonstone and Schroeder, or whoever else is behind this.
Harry swallowed a savage mixture of bile and fire, and smiled at the apothecary. “That would be acceptable.”
Chapter Nineteen.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/415705.html. Comment wherever you like.