Chapter Ten of 'Starfall'- A Hunted Target

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Nine.

Title: Starfall (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, manipulation
Summary: When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies-as Ethan. There’s no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.
Author’s Note: This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten-A Hunted Target

Harry sighed and finally turned away from the window. He supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised he’d received no response to his letter. Maybe he had stunned Malfoy. Maybe he needed time to think about the advice that Harry had offered him. Maybe he was in the middle of having a long talk with Scorpius right now, and he would send thanks in the morning

But since he had always written back almost immediately, it did bewilder Harry a little.

I hope Malfoy and Scorpius are okay, Harry thought as he went into his bedroom and started taking his clothes off.

Then he shook his head. Why wouldn’t they be? They were behind the protection of powerful wards, and except for certain isolated times like today, when Malfoy said that his friend had taken Scorpius to Muggle London, they never ventured out. Malfoy had actually escaped suspicion for a crime or two, because the people who’d reported him breaking into their houses or trying to torture them apparently didn’t know he was practically a recluse. Their stories always broke down when the Aurors investigated.

If anything, I should be feeling sorry for myself, Harry decided drowsily as he slid into bed. All those applications to get through. And all those horrible essays. At least I know I wrote better than that when I was their age. Hermione wouldn’t have tolerated anything less…

He slid into sleep slowly, one part of him still wondering about Malfoy, the rest of him concentrated on those Auror trainee applications that he would have to get through tomorrow.

*

Draco paused one more time before he went into the Leaky Cauldron, making sure that the glamour over his face was perfect. It was connected to the hood of his cloak, which meant that he had a backup; it was unlikely to dissipate unless someone yanked his cloak off first. And he would keep his hood up as much as possible.

But he would have to lower it some of the time to ask for information. That thought made Draco’s guts flutter. He swallowed and kept walking as though nothing was wrong, avoiding two wizards who came in laughing behind him.

The pub was crowded; it seemed that even on a Thursday night, lots of people came here to drink and talk. Draco paused once, then made his way to a small table in a dark corner that was probably unpopular because of the lack of light. In this case, it was perfect. Draco sat down and spent a moment scrutinizing the crowd.

Some were pure-blood wizards he knew; he discarded them as a source of information at once. The chances that they would have heard of a Muggleborn wizard who’d been out of the country during the war were low. Besides, they were the sort who hadn’t shown much sympathy to Malfoys since the war, and although Draco was in disguise, he didn’t want to listen to insults against his family while he investigated.

A large pack of Aurors drinking near the front of the pub also made Draco curl his lip. They hadn’t bothered him much since the first year or two after his trial, but Ethan had made a particular point of mentioning that he led a peaceful life. He wouldn’t be working among them, and they probably wouldn’t know him.

Are you sure about that? Given that he lied about so much else.

Draco shifted restlessly. He noticed then that he was drawing a few curious looks, mostly from some warlocks who sat in the back of the pub, at a table opposite his that was almost blocked by the length of the bar. Draco lifted his chin and glared back. He didn’t know if they could be a source of information or not, but he wasn’t about to look weak in front of them.

The three warlocks spoke in sharp whispers among themselves for a moment, and then one of them stood up and walked towards Draco, stopping about a cloak-length from his table. He was a tall man with rangy muscles and the kind of wild black beard that warlocks favored, and he wore a dingy robe that was still embroidered with moons and stars. Draco sat there in silence and gave him no encouragement.

“Well met, brother,” said the warlock at last.

Draco gave a start. He thinks I’m a warlock?

But his glamour did have a beard, and did wear a robe that had more mystical symbols on it than were common among most wizards anymore, and he had stalked in here and then sat glaring at everyone with no attempt to socialize. He supposed that a warlock was the least strange thing they could think him to be.

And he would go with it. “Brother,” said Draco, cautiously, and let one hand drop behind the table as if he was touching his wand to make sure he still had it. “How are you?”

The warlock paused as if he was studying Draco. This might be the end of the pretense, Draco thought, and the beginning of a duel. If warlocks had any sort of strange code or signs they were supposed to pass between themselves, he didn’t know what it was.

But then the man nodded and said, “My name is Moonstar. Will you join us?”

The similarity of the name to “Starfall” made Draco’s blood jump for a moment, but then he reminded himself that plenty of wizards had that word in their last names. He considered it visibly for a second, then nodded and stood up. “As long as your companions have no objections,” he said, looking at the warlocks in the corner for a second.

The warlock snorted a little and turned to walk Draco over to the table. “They’ll learn to keep it to themselves, if they do. They’re young, and still apprentices.” He flashed Draco a grin that Draco thought was edged as a knife. “I command here.”

Do you? Draco just nodded, though, and continued following Moonstar back to his table. There was a long moment before he sat down when the other two warlocks bristled at him, but they looked back and forth between him and Moonstar, and subsided in a few seconds. Draco could see that one of them had sandy hair and a long beard, and the other dark hair and no beard, but that was all he could make out. They kept their hoods pulled up, just like he had.

“Take a seat, brother, and tell us your name,” said Moonstar, tugging out a chair for Draco.

Draco sat down, felt Moonstar nudge the chair back towards the table, and frowned a little. He thought he would still have plenty of space to get to his wand and back from the table if he needed to, but he was no longer sure. He did his best to keep his face calm and an expression of slightly superior disdain on his features.

“My name is Cometborn,” said Draco, fabricating as he went along. He had thought of a different name for his glamoured self, but it wasn’t one that would fit in well with warlocks. He remained silent after that, glancing from face to face.

Moonstar shrugged a second later, his smile easy. “I can’t blame you for wanting to know names. These are my fellows Shadowskill and Velvetmask.” The sandy-haired one and the dark-haired one nodded in turn. “What have you come here seeking?”

The answer was on the tip of Draco’s tongue, and it was actually one that fit well with the persona he had adopted. “Vengeance.”

Moonstar smiled a little more broadly and waved a hand towards the front of the pub. Several tankards floated over; Draco didn’t know the foaming drink inside, but it was light brown and glinted with flecks of something dark floating near the top. Moonstar gave him the tankard and gestured for him to drink. Draco cast a nonverbal spell that would turn some of the drink invisible, and lifted it to his lips.

“On someone hard to find?” Moonstar asked, and Draco nodded, mouth busy with the small amount of the drink he had swallowed. “Well. You came to the right place, brother. Vengeance is our specialty.”

“I know his name,” said Draco, and put down the tankard in front of him. He thought Velvetmask smiled when he saw how much of the drink was apparently gone. If he was ignorant enough not to notice the spells Draco had used, that was a good thing, Draco told himself, and ignored the little thrill of danger that came from knowing Moonstar had definitely given him that big a mug on purpose. “But I do not know his current location, and even the name may be a lie. He wrote to me offering help with a problem. His advice did not work as he said it would.”

“And you are left with the chaos of the problem to clean up?” Moonstar folded his hands and regarded Draco thoughtfully. “That can be a hard thing.”

“In this case,” said Draco, and he knew his voice was sufficiently grim to convince them when Shadowskill leaned a little away from him, “it might have rendered the problem unsolvable.”

“Tell us the name, then,” said Moonstar. “Even if it is false, so many people leave clues and traces in their false names of their real ones. They seem to be unable to resist using the same initials, or including a reference to their real names that they think is clever.”

Draco smiled tightly. This was the part where he had to take a risk. He thought that Starfall hadn’t revealed the truth about Draco’s trouble with Scorpius to anyone, or it would be in the papers already, but so much about him was a lie. Draco had only his instincts, which had turned out to be less than reliable.

On the other hand, he also had his desire for vengeance, and so he murmured, “Ethan Starfall.”

No instant recognition sprang into the eyes of the warlocks, at least. Moonstar looked inquiringly at his “brethren,” who both shook their heads.

“The name makes him sound like a pure-blood,” said Moonstar, and glanced at Draco. “Have you begun in that direction?”

Draco laughed, and let his bitterness color it. “I have some knowledge in that direction, yes. What I know is that no pure-blood family named Starfall exists. Of course, that does not mean that he is not a pure-blood.” He had to suspect and doubt the most basic facts about Ethan, he was seeing now, however well-established they had seemed. “He did tell me, however, that he was unfamiliar with some aspects of pure-blood life, and that he had been out of the country during the war.”

“That will make him easier to track down.” Moonstar nodded, his gaze abstracted. Then he turned to Draco, and his face was as sharp as anyone could wish. “If we help you, there is the matter of payment.”

Warlocks were mostly outcast wizards who had become alienated from regular wizarding society because of the extent to which they pursued Dark Arts, or poisons, or experimental breeding of magical creatures. Draco knew that the hard part of the task wouldn’t be paying them, but finding something that they would accept he had a good reason for having.

After a moment of thought, he had it. “I have access-secret access-to a natural patch of bloodraven,” he said. “I have changed my interests and no longer use the spells or potions that require bloodraven. Would that be enough payment?”

Moonstar tried to avoid the way his eyes widened, Draco thought, but it happened anyway. “It would indeed,” he said, after a brief choke. “I didn’t know there was any natural bloodraven left.”

Draco smiled. Bloodraven was a combination of plant and stone, colored like a raven’s wings, and only growing where the blood of a wizard had been spilled by a Muggle. It was an incredibly powerful Potions ingredient, and could sometimes be used to construct plague spells. Most of it had been claimed already, and while it could be made by means of another potion, artificial bloodraven was never as powerful as the real thing.

“I suspect that my ancestors treasured the secret on purpose,” said Draco. “This is a secret I have by inheritance and truce, not through discovering it on my own.” That much was true, since the bloodraven grew in a distant corner of the Malfoy grounds. “They never needed the wealth it could provide, preferring the power of the stone itself. But they are dead now, and I need my revenge more.”

Moonstar nodded, but his eyes had sharpened again. “Then you are pure-blood yourself.”

“Does that mean you will not make a bargain with me?” Draco let his voice grow cool. He had thought it wouldn’t be a problem, since not many warlocks were Muggleborn, but if it was, and Moonstar had prejudices of his own…

“No,” said Moonstar. “For the sake of bloodraven, there is little I will not dare.” He leaned forwards. “We need to know more of this Ethan Starfall, and what else you have done to locate him. Something he has touched would be best.”

“I left the letter he sent me at home,” said Draco, which was true. He didn’t have the last one, the one he’d torn up, but he did have all the others Ethan had sent him. “If we arrange a second meeting, however, then I’ll bring it with me.”

“We need any other details that you can give us, in its place,” said Moonstar. “If we are to start tracking him and bring you the revenge you desire as soon as you desire it.” His eyes burned at Draco.

Draco swallowed breathlessness. He had come here of his own free will, and made the alliance with the warlocks of his own free will. He couldn’t back out now because he was beginning to suspect that the warlocks might do something…permanent to Ethan.

But he could at least make sure that he was there to watch the permanent thing. “I want his location,” he said. “More than anything, I want to look into his lying face before I hurt him. I want the vengeance to be up-close and personal.”

“We’ll find him, then.” Moonstar didn’t look displeased, so Draco must not have thwarted the deep desire for violence that he thought Moonstar had. “But I can understand why you want to see him. Other details.”

Draco settled down to tell them what he knew: the names of Ethan’s wife and his children, little details about his hobbies and activities, the way that Ethan had spoken of his family, how he had first contacted him. He did not reveal details of the problem that had led him to contact Ethan in the first place, because that was private and his own. Besides, the warlocks might stare at him if they heard that he’d sought advice on child-rearing.

Moonstar did look up once in the middle of writing down what Draco told him, and murmur, “This concerns your family?”

“It does,” said Draco, and stared him down.

Moonstar only considered him for a second, and then turned away, with a twitch of his lips that looked satisfied. Draco didn’t know if he was happy because he thought Draco would be more likely to pay them if the matter was personal, or for some other reason.

It didn’t matter. Not if they found Ethan for him. Not if Draco could use up this anger swirling around in him. He couldn’t drive his friends and family away from him; he knew, when he calmed down, that they would still be there, and that he would need their help to raise Scorpius.

He didn’t need Ethan’s help. He didn’t need anything from Ethan except the truth, and then a slow, crumbling repayment.

That part, he was looking forward to.

*

Harry slumped back on the couch and shook his head over the scribbled mess of an essay he was reading. It was hopeless, really. He had read essays by other second-years at Hogwarts, when he was a second-year, that had been written better.

He placed the essay in the steadily growing pile of rejected applications, and then sighed, stood up, and walked over to the cabinet in the corner where he kept his store of wines and whiskeys. Hermione would sometimes cock a disapproving eyebrow at him when she visited, but that was mainly because Ron did all his drinking out of her sight, Harry thought.

And Ron hadn’t had as much time to drink since the arrival of his children. There was that.

It was a problem Harry would be glad to share.

He shook off the thought, and took out a bottle of golden wine that he’d received as a gift for proving that a stuffy pure-blood witch was actually innocent of the necromancy charge she’d been arrested for. Her note had said that it was wine made by fairies, brewed under full moons and to be saved for a special occasion.

Harry hesitated. Then he opened it anyway. This wasn’t a special occasion, but it was as close to one as he thought he would get for a long time.

He hadn’t written in his journal in days. Those were all the days he’d spent waiting for Malfoy’s return letter. Apparently, writing as Ethan to someone else, letting Ethan out into the world even as just a name and a few details from his life, had drained the impulse that prompted Harry to practice being him.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. It’s not like I couldn’t have passed on Malfoy’s letter to someone who had real experience raising children.

But he had experience with Teddy and Rose and Hugo, at least. He had lied because it was necessary to lie, because he had concealed even from most of the public who knew him as Harry Potter that he was now infertile, and who knew whether the person he could have given Malfoy’s letter would stay sympathetic once they found out who they were writing to?

I probably just did the best I could, and for a limited part that Malfoy needed me to play, Harry told himself firmly as he poured the fairy wine into a glass. Or maybe he hated my advice and he’s never going to write to me again. Either way, it’s his life and his son. And Ethan’s life, if you want to think about it that way.

Not mine. Never mine.

Harry tilted his head back and drained most of the glass at a gulp. At least the wine was indeed as sweet as the witch had promised him it was.

*

Draco had spent most of the time since he’d returned home wandering around the Manor, frowning into odd corners. It had taken him hours to realize what he was searching for.

Scorpius. Life. Noise.

But Scorpius was with his parents, as agreed, for the next few weeks, so that Draco could be left free to hunt down Ethan Starfall. Not that his parents knew that, either. They only knew that Draco was focusing on something other than Scorpius and getting out of the Manor, and they were too relieved-or wise-to ask further questions.

Draco whirled and strode for the history library. What Moonstar had said about the false names people often adopted was burning in his mind. Maybe he could find something that resembled “Ethan Starfall” or an anagram of it among the genealogies his ancestors had collected.

This particular library had white shelves full of books that sparkled with silver and gilt on the spines, and windows that shed soft light on the chairs and the mantel there. Draco walked past the comfortable chairs and the ladder that could have brought him closer to the high shelves. He felt like doing everything by magic today. He held up his wand and muttered, “Accio genealogical books.”

The shelf right above his head jumped, and then a huge cascade of books came down. Draco jumped hastily back, cast a spell to shield his head, and then started arranging the books. Most of them were old, but bound in thick leather, reinforced by charms, that would have prevented them taking any harm when they landed.

He looked first in the books that held the pure-blood names, of both living and dead families, beginning with S. It was true that Ethan had said he wasn’t a pure-blood, and that Starfall wasn’t a family name Draco was familiar with. It was also true that basted children sometimes despised their birth families with a passion, and that even some pure-blood names had died out and wouldn’t have been part of Draco’s regular education.

There had been a Starmirror family, cousins of the Blacks. There had been a Stargrass, but that had lasted just three generations, before the only child born to the family had been a Squib and the parents had exiled her to hide their disgrace. There were Starborns and Stargraces and Starmoons, which made Draco linger for a moment, as he wondered what references a certain warlock might be hiding with his name. Then he shook his head impatiently and passed on.

No Starfall. Not so much as a rumor or a trace or a breath of one. Draco sat back, frowning. Ethan’s name must be real, then. Either that, or it had been a lie from the beginning and there was so such thing as a wizarding family named Starfall.

Draco searched a few other books, but desultorily. No, nothing there.

Well, none of the books were recent. If a Muggleborn family had been started in the past generation or two, the books wouldn’t have recorded it.

But there was a place that would have, even if that family, too, had been only a brief flourishing. And the same place kept records of emigrations out of the wizarding world, and petitions for entrance or re-entrance into Britain’s wizarding community, and marriages. Ethan’s marriage and wife couldn’t be a lie. Draco knew that he spoke, at least, from the long experience of raising children. Maybe Draco could find a record of his children if not of the man himself.

He returned the genealogical books to their shelves and went back to his study. He needed to write a letter to the Ministry Records Division, and make it both intriguing enough that he would receive permission to read the records and non-threatening enough that they wouldn’t carry his story to the Aurors or the newspapers. Few people visited the Records Division. Most pure-bloods had the stories of the only marriages, deaths, and births that mattered to them on their own shelves or in their heads. Most Muggleborns didn’t care. Most historians needed more than the bare facts that the Division stored for their research.

But right now, Draco thought they might be his salvation.

Ethan. If you’re still out there, under whatever name, I’m going to find you. And I’m going to ask you why the fuck you bothered to write to me in the first place.

And then I’m going to do some other things.

Chapter Eleven.

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