Chapter Ten of 'The Auror Method'- Observing the Observer
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Chapter Nine.
Title: The Auror Method (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco (mostly pre-slash), mentions of past Draco/others
Warnings: Manipulation, slight angst, slight violence
Rating: R
Summary: Draco has constructed the perfect cover for his activities as a con-man specializing in thefts from a distance: Draco Malfoy, the redeemed Death Eater and Recluse of Malfoy Manor. But now there’s evidence that some people are onto him, and as a consequence of the death threats issued to him, he gets an assigned Auror guard. Maybe Harry Potter, their leader, could be a problem when it comes to Draco’s latest con. Although how could he, when he’s getting all distracted by Draco’s fluttering eyelashes?
Author’s Notes: This is a mostly humorous story that will probably be between twelve and fifteen chapters.
Chapter One.
Chapter Ten-Observing the Observer
Draco stroked his chin and gave the fireplace a hard smile. He wasn’t surprised that his call for Jared had gone unanswered. If Jared knew that Draco was after him, he wouldn’t come to the Floo. If the goblins who were sending these curses after Draco had caught him, they wouldn’t let him come to the Floo.
But Draco had his own ideas about the kind of things that were appropriate for a co-conspirator of his, and he didn’t intend to give up yet. He cast another handful of Floo powder into the fire and murmured, “Raven’s Crossing.”
The flames did something complex and dark that made them sway back and forth. Draco waved an impatient hand. This always happened. Killian’s sense of the dramatic.
There was a long pause before the face of Ernest Killian appeared in the flames, framed by a fall of chestnut hair that Draco had found attractive, in the days before Potter came into his life. His eyes were blue, although not a particularly striking blue. Draco held his gaze and raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Killian, and shook his head. “You know as well as I do that you can’t make me any more indebted to you than I already am.”
“I could always save your life again,” Draco said sweetly, and watched as Killian grimaced. “How would you like to clear up a little of the debt you owe me?”
Being Killian, he watched Draco with a distrustful face and didn’t move. Apparently he thought Draco should already know when he was interested, and not make him say it.
Draco laughed aloud, and nodded. “If you want to be that way, be that way,” he muttered. “I was planning a strike with the help of a half-goblin named Jared Mirrormask. He’s stopped responding to me, and I have goblin magic attacking me through my wards. I need you to find out what happened to him.”
“Rather stunning to hear the master thief admit any sort of need,” muttered Killian, but his eyes were already distant, thinking, and his heart wasn’t in the barb. Draco knew he would have still been reeling otherwise. “Very well. I presume that he works at Gringotts?”
Draco nodded. “And he lacks self-confidence. Even if someone found him and told him that I was only using him for his connections and his knowledge of the bank, then he would probably be more crushed from that, not less, and easier to appeal to.”
Killian sniffed. “I’ll need a little more information than that. What clan does his goblin parent come from?”
Draco snorted back. “He says that his mother never knew. Apparently she took a goblin as lover and found it ‘mysteriously exciting’ not to look into his background.”
Killian paused. Then he said, “Malfoy, you fool.”
Draco closed a hand into a fist down by his side, but made himself respond mildly. He didn’t deserve to be called a fool by a fence who had once taken poisoned jewels to trade, but he would keep that to himself for now. “What are you talking about? I had the story from Mirrormask himself. Mirrormask is his mother’s name, by the way.”
Killian shook his head hard enough that his hair whipped around his face as if in a windstorm. “He wouldn’t be working in the bank if no one knew who his father was. They only give positions like that to half-goblins whose clan lineages they know, to keep an eye on them and see if any likely talents emerge in them.”
“Not likely, with this one,” Draco said, but his attention was caught. “If he’s valued, he never told me.”
“He might not know it himself, if they’re observing him from a distance and seeing how he turns out. But you should have known that, Draco. Goblins are all about clan, even for their half-blood kindred.”
Draco shifted. He still didn’t like being told he was stupid, even if the person doing it might have been some justification for it. Even if the person doing it was related to him, or a lover. He pictured Potter doing it, and that image was painful.
He kept his voice restrained, though, because getting upset when he could do nothing was truly stupid. “Tell me if you can help me or not, Killian.”
“I should be able to, if you give me a day.” Killian reached a hand up and toyed with his hair, as if he wanted to call Draco’s attention to it, and make him envious. Draco refused to shift his demanding posture, and Killian sighed hard enough that it would have hurt Draco’s throat if he tried it. “Fine, fine. Half a day. But you’ll have to firecall me back later today, or be able to accept an owl.”
“I can do that.”
Killian squinted at him, and made an attempt to look sly for the first time in the conversation. “Even with those Aurors you have staying with you?”
Draco lifted his chin and felt something inside him freeze and crack. “What would you know about that?”
“That you were receiving death threats, and had Aurors over to stay with you.” Killian’s lips barely moved, but Draco knew from the shine in his eyes that he was enjoying this. “That you had finally met some threat too great for you to handle. And I wonder what it was from? If what you told me is true, then I wonder if it’s because you didn’t do more research on goblins. How interesting.”
Draco held up his hands. “Next time, I won’t underestimate them. And next time, I won’t bother saving you when you’re dangling over a drop because of your own greed.”
Killian’s eyes narrowed, and he vanished from the fire. At least Draco knew he would keep his word about sending the information. Killian owed Draco too much, and hated the owing of the debt too much, to be slack about that.
Draco sighed, and stood, and made sure that no revealing dust from this distant room clung to his robes. Now it was time to go back to bed, and he hoped he could spend some time with Potter the next morning that would ease the memory of what he had gone through today.
*
But it wasn’t to be. Although Potter showed no sign of knowing that Draco had cast a sleeping spell on him, he avoided Draco’s eyes and kept blushing in a tiresome way, and Draco sat down to breakfast thinking with relief of the end of the case, when Potter found the goblins who had been bothering him, or Killian did, and Draco could go back to his normal thieving life.
“Oh,” Draco said, and looked up. He pretended that the question had just occurred to him, although he had been really waiting for an appropriate time to ask it. “Did you remove the exemptions from the wards that Greengrass-Rosier had?”
Potter nodded at him grimly. “The Ministry did that the minute I took him back into custody there. I’m the only Auror who can get inside now.” His eyes flicked from wall to wall as though he was thinking of the other people or creatures who might get past the wards, and he frowned vividly.
“You’re the only Auror I want inside,” Draco said in a voice he made as sultry as he dared. Any hotter might make Potter bolt from the room. Draco looked at him with a melting smile from under his eyelids.
Potter fumbled at his glasses for a second and made a sound like erk. “Of course,” he said, and then coughed and cleared his throat. “I’ll go and patrol around the wards and make sure that the goblin spell from last night didn’t leave any scorch marks there, shall I?”
He bolted from the room after all. Draco sighed and leaned back in his chair. Scorch marks on the wards, indeed.
Another owl appeared above, an unfamiliar tawny one, soaring towards him.
Draco drew his wand. It was true that this might be the bird bearing the promised information from Killian, but it also might be another one with a spell that could destroy him. He used a Capture Box Charm, which made a brilliant box of blue light form around the indignant owl, to stop it well short of him. Then he Summoned the message from its beak, making the owl shriek and batter its wings against its prison.
Ignoring it, Draco examined the letter, and astonished himself with a thin smile. It was from Killian, and it was quick work indeed. Draco broke the seal, generously deciding that he would forgive two life-debts instead of one.
There was a genealogy in the letter, one that showed Jared Mirrormask’s name connected to a goblin called Breakrock. And his father’s clan was Shatterstone. Draco shook his head after searching his memory for a moment. No, the names meant nothing to him.
But Killian’s note, written at the bottom of the genealogy, did.
Malfoy, whatever you’re attempting, back off. You have no idea how powerful the Shatterstone clan is, or how miserable they can make your life.
“I might,” Draco muttered, winding the letter into a tight roll of parchment. “I might.”
“What’s that you have there?”
Draco couldn’t deny that Potter’s coming back into the dining room like that had startled him, but he managed to turn around and, he thought, play it off well, fluttering and simpering at Potter. “A message from someone who wanted to warn me about the goblins.”
“Then someone else might know where the problem is coming from? Which rogue goblin it is?” Potter was prowling towards Draco with a delicacy that made Draco laugh a little, so unwarranted was it. Of course Draco was going to tell him everything the way his persona would.
Or at least he was going to tell him every bit of the invented story that he had thought of to account for this situation.
“They said they could tell me the clan but nothing else,” Draco said, and held open the parchment in front of him, tapping his wand against it. The letters whirled and scrambled, then unfolded into the words that he wanted them to form. That was a useful spell he’d learned his first year of being a professional thief. He drooped a little at Potter’s expression. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t have been able to read the original anyway. It was in code that was spelled to bedazzle the eyes of anyone except me who tried.”
Potter accepted Killian’s letter without speaking, and scanned it through. Draco leaned back in his chair and watched Potter with what he knew came off as anxious hope, instead of amused contempt.
Potter was so many contradictions all at once, Draco thought. A good Auror, but someone who found it impossible to get along with other Aurors. Someone who could come up with a plan of seduction aimed at someone he suspected, but then balk at implementing it. Someone who enjoyed a certain kind of roughness in bed, but blushed so much that Draco wasn’t sure how much enjoyment he had got out of it. It was so strange, and Draco didn’t know exactly how to classify him. He supposed that Potter might have an easier time of it. Draco’s persona wasn’t deep or hard to manipulate.
Then Potter abruptly crushed the parchment in his fist and stared at Draco. Draco blinked back, not sure what Potter was doing, or what he had done to earn that look.
“Shatterstone?” Potter whispered. “You’ve angered the Shatterstone clan?”
“That was what the message said,” Draco muttered, and let his eyes widen innocently. “What is it?”
“Shatterstone is one of the most powerful goblin clans,” Potter said, and began to pace back and forth, dumping the crumpled letter on the table. Draco surreptitiously picked it up, smoothed it out, and stuck it back in his pocket. There was information on there about Jared’s genealogy that he might want later. “They control so many of the deep places that they undermine almost all the places where other goblins live. You have to give respect to someone who can attack through your floor at any second.”
“I didn’t think goblins were much for mining,” Draco said, and allowed his persona’s confusion to blend with his real personality’s. “I mean, I always heard that they just looked to keep gold and silver and copper, not actually dig it up.”
Potter shot him a keen look, as though he had heard the change in the persona’s voice. But if he was that sensitive and successful an Auror, he would have arrested Draco already, Draco thought. He maintained his innocent expression, and Potter turned away from him with a small snort and went back to prowling.
“That’s not what I meant. Undermine as in be beneath.”
“It still sounds like mines to me,” Draco retorted, and let himself pout deliciously, curving his hand beneath his chin. Not many of his other lovers in the past had been able to resist him when he did that. He thought Potter would probably find himself caught in the same trap.
Incredibly, Potter didn’t even look at him, just waved what seemed like an irritated hand and went back to pacing. “Again, not what I meant. The goblins rely on status that comes from working with money, but that’s only some of them that we see. Other goblins stay home and tend the clan caves. The deep places, that’s what they call them. Caverns leading all the way down to where there’s only lava instead of rock.”
“But the world can’t really be like that,” Draco said, something he had read long ago coming back to him. “Not full of caves. It’s solid. Otherwise houses would be falling into the holes all the time.”
That got him another sharp glance, but this time, Potter answered without pausing. “No, they wouldn’t. Not when the goblins carve out and support their caves with magic of their own. I told you their spells take a long time, but they live a long time. When it’s something that doesn’t have a particular time limit, like carving out the caves where they live and expanding them and guaranteeing their safety, they’re going to put in all the days, weeks, months, years they need.”
“What’s the significance of the Shatterstone clan?” Draco asked, deciding that he would be better off pursuing that line of inquiry. Sometimes, it was a pity that his persona was so stupid, as it limited how much he could expect to get done with one question.
“They’re the ones who first went down and carved solid stone into caves,” Potter said, and paced in another complete circle before he continued. “Thus the name. The earth did used to be like what you were talking about, but they made it into a honeycomb of tunnels, in so many places. And thus they get the honor of living the deepest, and controlling the most territory, and having the most prestige.”
Draco cocked his head thoughtfully. He wondered how a goblin from that clan had even had cause to sleep with a human and produce Jared. It sounded like they would stay in their caves all the time and avoid contact with the people on the surface.
“Not all of them stay there, though?” he asked, because Potter was pale now. “Or do they stay there? And that’s the reason that you can’t stop them, because their spells are taking place in those deep caves where we can’t reach them?”
“That’s not the reason,” said Potter. “Some of them do come to the surface. But those spells are the more powerful because there are more goblins willing to help them, just for the prestige of saying that they’re the ones working with the Shatterstone clan.”
Draco was silent, thinking. He wondered what he could say that would counter the fear on Potter’s face. He wondered if he should be more afraid himself. Both Potter and Killian seemed to think he should be.
Then again, Killian thought that he was stupid in the first place for interfering with the goblins, and Potter knew nothing about thieving and wouldn’t be sympathetic to Draco if he did. Draco couldn’t really trust their opinions.
“Draco, please tell me the truth.”
Startled, Draco looked up. Potter was kneeling on the floor in front of him, and his eyes were wide and his hands outstretched. Draco tried to shake his head, but he was left without words-and not only because Potter had called him by his first name-as Potter went on.
“I know that something else is going on. Some contact with the goblins that you haven’t told me. You have to tell me, no matter what it is. You could have insulted them, and Shatterstone will kill for that where the other clans wouldn’t, because they think that their dignity is the most important thing they have and it’s greater than any other clan’s. Or maybe Greengrass-Rosier did write you that letter and they tracked you down somehow, but I think it’s more than that. It has to be. They haven’t sent any ward-breaking spells after him, and he was the primary instigator. Please, tell me.”
Draco hesitated one moment. If anyone could have persuaded him to tell the truth, it was Potter.
But then what would happen? Potter would only arrest him and take him away, and while he might be safe behind Ministry wards from the Shatterstone goblins-he doubted it, though-he would lose his freedom and his chance at not only the Gringotts money but any kind of a normal life.
He put on his weakest smile and shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Sorry, Potter. Harry,” he added, when Potter stared at him as though Draco had crushed his dreams. “I’m trying, but I really can’t think of anything. Sorry to be disobliging.”
Potter stood up with his eyes closed and turned his head away. He walked out of the room. Draco watched him go, and wondered whether he would have let Potter’s plea move him to honesty, if their past had been different.
Probably, though?
Probably not. Because that’s the way things are.
Chapter Eleven.
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