Chapter Eleven of 'The Rising of the Stones'- Standing to Fight
Chapter Ten.
Title: The Rising of the Stones (11/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, mentions of Draco/others and some canonical pairings
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, some violence, soulmate markings AU
Summary: Draco Malfoy has become the Ministry’s best Auror. He executes all kinds of unusual assignments, including one to go after the unexpectedly fugitive Harry Potter. But as he chases Potter down, Draco learns a lot more about what the Ministry has been hiding from the wizarding world than he ever wanted to know-secrets that may impact more than just his ability to arrest Potter. Updated every Monday.
Author’s Notes: This will probably be between twenty and twenty-five chapters. It does involve soul-marks, the idea that soulmates can identify each other by corresponding marks on their skin. However, this doesn’t necessarily promise perfect happiness between the soulmates in question.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven-Standing to Fight
“I wish you luck in whatever you want to do about the Minister, Malfoy. But it’s not my fight.”
Draco smiled. He was going to convince Potter if it killed him, and at the moment, Potter should be warier than he looked. He should see the diamond edge to Draco’s smile, or at least recognize it from Hogwarts.
“I only want to go somewhere and hole up and relearn magic,” Potter continued, looking away. His mouth was tense and tight. “All the magic that I could do with a wand…Some of I’ve found substitutes for, like Apparating and the Summoning Charm, but not all of it. It’s bloody inconvenient not to be able to conjure what I want, for one thing. And you destroyed the place I thought I’d be living.”
“How did I destroy it?” Draco asked, struck by the injustice of that accusation. “As far as I remember, you were the one who called up the golem and the other things that might have destroyed the tunnels. I only cast a few spells to defend myself against your traps.”
“I mean that you destroyed the secrecy.” Potter glared at him. “If I want to have privacy, I can’t go back there.”
“Why?”
“Because you know about it.”
Draco winced before he could stop himself. They were sitting at the table in his kitchen, eating the last remnants of a large meal Draco thought Potter required to stop looking like a ghost. “And I’m that bad an enemy, Potter?”
Potter opened his mouth, then seemed to catch the nuances of the tone in Draco’s voice and looked away, frowning. “It’s not because you’re you,” he said. “Or because you’re a-Malfoy, or anything. It’s because you’re the kind of person who will keep coming after me about attacking the Minister. I’m tired of the politics, Malfoy. I want to go away.”
“And leave all your friends behind,” Draco said, in as musing a tone as he could. He made himself relax in his chair-hard, when he wanted to leap out and pace around-and stretch his feet out until they collided with Potter’s chair legs. He rolled his shoulders. “And any chance of getting revenge on de Berenzan.”
“He’s not the one who made me this way. What revenge?”
“He’s the one who’s caused me to pursue you,” Draco said, trying to make his eyes as unblinking as he could. “The one who’s killed children like you in the past, and only let you survive by chance.”
Potter tensed, but kept his head turned away, at so uncomfortable an angle Draco wondered for a moment if he was a masochist. Maybe that was what drove some of his melodramatic insistence on staying away from society as a whole. “Well, he wasn’t the one who made that decision. The Minister when I was born was Bagnold.”
“You still can’t live a normal life because of the attitudes of de Berenzan and people like him in the Ministry.” Draco tried to sound like he was considering it as an abstract problem, a fascinating one of magical theory. It was the way he would have been thought of the earth magic Potter had come up with if he had heard about it from another Auror instead of facing it in one of his own cases. “Don’t you want to change them?”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t you want a normal life?”
“I haven’t had that since I was born, Malfoy.”
Draco paused. “You mean, since the Dark Lord targeted you when you were a baby.”
“No, I mean since I was born without a soul and a soul-mark, and without someone who could love me forever for just the way I am.” Potter slammed his hands into the table and stood up. “Thanks for the meal, Malfoy, and for the company. But I’m going.”
“Look,” Draco said, planting his feet on the floor and ignoring the temptation to get up. He thought Potter would flee if he felt cornered. “You know now that soulmates aren’t people who always ‘love you forever for just the way you are.’ You must have, from as much research as you’ve done on the topic. Will you give up the notion and look forward to improving the life you do have?”
“I could only fight for other people, Malfoy. For the chance to improve it for them. I know what to do with the one I have.”
Draco choked back a laugh. It was too easy, sometimes, amazingly easy when he’d just been thinking that he could say nothing to convince Potter. “Then you do have that chance. Fight for that chance.”
Potter froze with his hand hovering above the doorknob. “What do you mean?”
“I suppose you think the birth of children without a soul-mark will stop now that you’ve made your daring discovery and disappeared to lead your life of pain in the shadows?” Draco refused to call the children “soulless,” even though that was the word Potter used. In part, that was about not gratifying Potter and justifying his martyr act. “They’ll still be born. And if you’re right about the Ministry and the kind of fear they have, then they’ll do what they can to kill those children. I can’t believe that you’ll leave innocents to suffer as the price for the freedom to brood.”
Potter made a slow noise Draco didn’t recognize at first. Then he realized it was Potter clenching his teeth. Draco smiled, pleased. He sat up and said, “I knew you wouldn’t. I knew I only had to mention the children, and you’d change your mind.”
“I should walk away just to spite you,” Potter whispered. His hand wrung white over the doorknob.
Draco sighed. “Now, when have you ever been that kind of person, Potter? Just because you’ve changed the kind of magic you’ve used doesn’t mean you’ve changed in your-” He stopped a second before he would have said “soul.” “Essence.”
The way Potter’s eyes narrowed showed that he understood what word Draco had almost spoken, but he nodded instead and took his hand off the knob. “Fine,” he said. “I concede that I won’t leave soulless children to the fate the Ministry wants to inflict on them. But there’s nothing we can do, Malfoy. Revealing the truth will make the Minister come down on us at once.”
“And that’s all you’re afraid of?”
“It’s not a matter of fear,” said Potter. He had his head bowed, and Draco could hardly see his face. Still, his tongue darted out to moisten his lips as Draco watched. “It’s-what will we say, Malfoy? Who would believe us?”
“If you showed them the same book and evidence that you have me, then they’ll believe you.”
Potter snorted and shook his head. “That only works on an individual level, Malfoy. I can’t keep going up to individual people and saying they should read a whole book or listen to my story of trekking through the archives. And now that the Minister’s sealed my birth records, we can’t get to the best evidence.”
Draco found himself watching Potter with a little smile. It was so strange to him to see the courageous Gryffindor he’d known at Hogwarts reduced to this. He stretched his hands out lazily and murmured, “You’re underestimating your power.”
“I don’t know any earth magic for convincing people, either-”
Draco tired of the game abruptly. It was one thing when Potter was acting all shy and innocent, but actual ignorance was irritating. “I mean your name, Potter. Announce that you have something to say against the Ministry and everyone will flock to hear it. de Berenzan might manage to shut you down a time or two, but he’s politically astute enough to know that would only increase their fervor to hear what you have to say.”
Potter’s lips pinched shut, and he looked mulishly in the other direction. Draco had to closed his eyes in response. So now he was coming up against Potter’s famous reluctance to use his fame?
Draco had thought, when he first heard about that, that Potter was only hoarding the impact of his brief public appearances and interviews. Yes, if he gave too many, he would become a common commodity and others were less likely to ask to talk to him. But this was the cause when he should have sacrificed the hoard, if he had it.
Draco said, with as much patience as he could muster, “You don’t want-what? To tell people the truth?”
“To tell them what to think. To have them think it just because I’m Harry Bloody Potter.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “The wizarding public is fickle, Potter. Better you telling them what to think than de Berenzan, or Rita Skeeter.”
“But they should have the right to make up their own minds.” Potter’s voice was low. “Both de Berenzan and Skeeter wanted those jobs-I mean, jobs that involved telling people what to think. They’ve done things to earn that notice. Campaigned, or written articles. All I did was be born.”
Draco rolled his eyes again, hard enough that he thought he might frighten Potter off. A second later, though, he realized Potter hadn’t even seen it. He was staring broodingly at his feet, or his hands, and didn’t pay attention to Draco.
“You’ve done a lot more than be born, Potter,” Draco said. He hoped he wouldn’t have to recite a list of all Potter’s accomplishments. They would be here all night, not to mention that Draco hated the thought of pandering to Potter’s false modesty like that. “You defeated the Dark Lord. You ended the war.”
Potter looked up, his face distant. “And you know why that happened. That tangle of coincidence about the wands. You were part of that yourself.”
Draco rubbed his forehead. He didn’t have a headache right now, but much more of this business of dealing with Potter, and he thought he would. “Fine. But you did it, and how doesn’t much matter. Especially to the wizarding public.”
“These are the people who turned on me before,” Potter said. “Usually the instant someone else had a new perspective. I can’t trust them to stay true.”
Draco smiled. This was one objection he had anticipated, and he had the satisfaction of seeing Potter’s eyes glow a little as he watched Draco.
“You didn’t have someone on your side who knew the press and how to manipulate them as well as I do,” Draco said. “I might not have chosen to follow in my father’s steps when it came to Death Eater beliefs, but he taught me well when it comes to staying on the good side of public opinion.”
“Fine,” Potter said. “That doesn’t mean you can control the way that people tend to react to my name, or de Berenzan’s response.”
Draco shook his head. “It’s not about control. It’s about channeling. I may not be able to make people stop screaming hysterically at the sound of your name, but I can teach you how to make them be quiet so they can hear what you have to say.”
Potter was looking at him with a new light in his eyes now. Draco felt as though some old wound had eased when that happened. Or stopped hurting. Perhaps what he always wanted was Potter to look at him that way, as if he was a trusted adviser.
Draco did manage to choke down some of the foolish things he might have said in response, and nodded. “I think I can show you how, Potter.”
“Won’t some people question our alliance more than they’ll question de Berenzan?”
It took Draco a moment to realize what he was probably referring to. Then he snorted. “It’s been a long time since I was only a Death Eater, Potter. No, at this point my word will lend strength to yours, and your word will lend strength to mine. Separately, people might feel free to discount us. Not when they see us together.”
Potter wandered slowly back and forth. He was considering it, Draco could see, although probably putting thoughts through a filter that would stain and twist them.
Soon enough, Potter said, “But you could still lose your reputation if it turned out the Minister was cleverer than we were. What’s in it for you? Revenge, but the revenge might not work out the way you want it to. And I know you’re not soulless.” He studied Draco skeptically, as though he would rip a mask off his face and reveal he was de Berenzan any moment.
Draco shook his head slowly. “Some things I can’t explain, Potter. At least not so you would understand them.”
Amusingly enough, Potter accepted that, only shifting his shoulders as if the information was a new burden to put on them. “And the other reasons?”
Draco thought of de Berenzan practicing his web-weaving in the Minister’s office, the way he panicked and got angry simultaneously at the thought of anyone challenging him, how he took credit for Draco’s victories and deplored the means of attaining them. A slow fire moved through his veins.
“Some of it because the Minister has used the same tactics on you and me,” he said. “You happened to have the power to make things uncomfortable for him, for the reasons you told me. I built up that power. I won’t let him take it away.”
Potter watched him with a pinched brow, as if wondering how killing soulless children would erode Draco’s power, but nodded. “Okay. Then what do we do first?”
“Not go to your friends, Potter, I have to tell you,” Draco said, standing with a surge of energy. “They can’t keep quiet enough. Maybe in a few weeks, when we have enough backing, we can have Granger write some speeches for us.” Draco had never bothered to attend any of the demonstrations Granger set up in favor of Muggleborn rights or creature rights, but he’d heard they could strike the listeners like lightning.
“Ron and Hermione will understand,” Potter said. “Is there anyone among your friends who would keep the secret?”
Draco shook his head, regretting, for the first time, that he’d made the decision to work essentially as a lone Auror, refusing the partners the Ministry tried to assign. A partner whom he’d manipulated to stay loyal and docile to him would have been an asset right now. “Either because they wouldn’t keep the secret or because it’s you. Many of them still don’t remember you very fondly.”
“Then where, O Wise Master of Knowledge?”
“I like it when you call me ‘master,’” Draco said, and grinned as Potter hissed. “And I think it should be Elphias Doge.”
Potter blinked a few times. “Who?”
“Dumbledore’s old friend,” Draco said patiently. “Also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, from what I remember. Since the war, he’s taken up writing articles that are meant more or less as counters to the ones that Skeeter used to write. She’s moved on to books,” he added, as Potter continued to watch him with a dazed look in his eyes. “Other people have taken up her mantle now.”
“Oh.” Potter tilted his head back and frowned at the ceiling. “You think he’d help me just because of the Order connection?”
“More than most other people working at the papers would, yes.” Draco sighed a little. This explanation would be easier if Potter had simply kept up with politics and the press since the war. “And besides, he’s always talking about injustice and how the Ministry needs to be reformed. This kind of cause would be right for him.”
Potter nodded slowly, his eyes unfocused. “He’s more likely to believe us, too.”
“Exactly.” Draco didn’t speak his real thoughts about Doge, which was that the man was a paranoid bastard who saw conspiracies in things like the distribution of letters in the headlines of the Daily Prophet. “But he still has enough friends and a good reputation that people trust what he writes, and he knows what to do with a juicy tidbit.”
“What about Luna?”
It took Draco a moment to connect the name with a face he knew. “Lovegood? No one pays attention to the Quibbler any more, Potter. They did back in our fifth year just because you were in it. Maybe we can go to her when we’re a little more established, but right now, it would only make us look bad. And we don’t want it to be easy for de Berenzan to label us as crazy.”
“I still want to involve Luna.”
“In a while,” Draco said. “Not right now. Hell, Potter, we don’t have a movement yet. We have an angry Auror and a man who was planning to disappear into the wilderness and live off his earth magic. We need support that more people will listen to.”
Potter hesitated for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. “I want to keep talking to Luna open as an option.”
“That’s fine.” Draco pulled his chair forwards. As far as he was concerned, they were going to involve all of Potter’s friends sooner or later, and which ones got involved when was a matter of indifference to him. “Now, let’s think about how we’re going to do this…”
Potter’s eyes flickered and took fire again as Draco talked, and Draco felt an odd satisfaction in his belly. Maybe that was one of the things he’d been aiming to do, in insisting that they should have a strategy meeting.
Except why would I care what Potter’s eyes look like?
That was an interesting question…to be dealt with later.
Chapter Twelve.
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