Chapter Three of 'The Bard of Morning's Hope'- Winding the Wards
Chapter Two.
Title: Bard of Morning's Hope (3/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa
Warnings: Minor character death, violence, angst, gore
Rating: R
Summary: The Bard of Morning's Hope is a seemingly unstoppable murderer stalking former Death Eaters and former Slytherins, enacting vengeance on them in an untraceable way. In the wake of Lucius Malfoy's savage death, Harry Potter becomes the Auror assigned to guard Draco and Narcissa Malfoy from a similar fate.
Author's Notes: This is based on a prompt by Kain, who requested, among several other things, Harry being hired to guard Draco and Narcissa from a killer who was murdering Death Eaters in revenge, Harry having a good relationship with the Weasleys, and a slow-burn romance between Harry and Draco. This story should be somewhere between twelve and twenty chapters, and will be updated every Saturday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three-Winding the Wards
“You are going to protect the Malfoys.”
“That’s right,” said Harry, and used his cloak to buff his wand. “It’s a hard job, and it’ll be almost beyond my capacities. But,” and he spun around and pointed a solemn finger at Ron, who was standing behind his desk and looking utterly lost, “someone has to do it.”
Ron didn’t smile, not that Harry had much expected him to. He only leaned forwards and stared hard at Harry. Harry sighed-well, he couldn’t always make his best friend laugh-and went back to reading the file that contained details on the Bard’s past victims, all neatly summarized and tucked in the same few sheets of parchment. He had left the Malfoys at their Manor under Grimstone and Adbar’s guard, to pack up what they wanted to take with them.
“But Malfoy hates you,” Ron said.
“I think we can get along when I’m in my professional persona,” Harry replied, not looking up.
“You hate him.”
“See above answer.”
Ron rolled his eyes. Harry knew that without even looking up at him, because they were close like that. “You’re taking this too personally, you know,” Ron finally said. “Just because Kingsley won’t take your suspicions on one case doesn’t mean that he would refuse to listen to you if you came up with a theory about the Bard. And the problem with the other case is all the political shit, anyway. It’s not because Kingsley distrusts you.”
Harry sighed, the tension between his shoulders loosening. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear someone else say it, even though he had told it to himself a hundred times a day. He turned around so he could meet Ron’s eyes.
“I know that,” he said. “As far as the smuggling case goes, I mean. But I also told the team that’s spending most of its time on the Bard murders about a theory I had on that case, and they looked at me askance and said they would take it under consideration. I’ve never received any sign that they will.”
Ron blinked. “What is that theory? Does it concern the Muggleborn Legion?”
Harry took a moment to add some Locking and Silencing Charms to the door of their office, noticing the way Ron’s gaze sharpened. He didn’t call Harry paranoid, though. He knew as well as Harry that some people approved of the Bard and thought he was dishing out justice that should have come long since.
“No,” Harry said, turning back to him. “It concerns the Battle of Hogwarts. All the people who have died participated in that battle, whether or not they had the Mark on them. And plenty of people who had the Mark on them haven’t died. But those people were all working in the Ministry or imprisoned or injured at the time.”
Ron could figure it out easily enough from there. Harry watched as his mouth tightened, and he looked around once himself.
“Do you suspect an Auror?” Ron whispered.
Harry shook his head. “Not that many Aurors were at the battle, you know. And I know that I have alibis, and everyone else I can think of who was there and an Auror is someone I trust. Like you.”
Ron gravely lifted his fingers in front of his face, and peered through them at Harry. “You never know,” he said, in a deep, spooky voice. “I could have a secret side as the Bard of Morning’s Hope, and you would never know.”
“Yes, but Hermione would have figured it out and had you arrested by now,” Harry pointed out peacefully, and read the last detail that he needed to on the Yaxley case before he put the file back on his desk. It would grow, with the Malfoy case to be added, but Harry could ask the remaining Malfoys if he really needed to know something about that. “You’ll visit, I hope? I’m going to rely on you for unbiased information.”
Ron wrinkled his nose. “I have to visit Malfoys?”
“And me, you git,” Harry told him. “I can be in one room, and the Malfoys can be in the other, connected to be me by a Monitoring Charm.”
Ron paused, and eyed him sideways. “Monitoring Charms,” he said, in a soft, wondering voice. “You are taking this seriously, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Harry said flatly, and met Ron’s eyes. “No one else in that family is going to die. I might not be able to do a lot if the Bard strikes elsewhere, but I am going to save the remaining Malfoys’ lives.”
“Do they know they’ve become part of one of your crusades?” Ron asked, and a small, unholy smile of glee crept up his mouth.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Harry primly, and swirled his cloak the rest of the way around him, then checked inside his desk. He found a few of the toys that he had sometimes had to take along on cases, and tucked them into his pockets.
“Those crusades where you make a vow and then keep it.” Ron circled around his own desk and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “The kind of vow that you didn’t make when you were working on the smuggling case, and I’m glad, because by now their choices would have been to arrest Dennis or arrest you.”
“You know that I only do what I’ve promised to do when I don’t think other Aurors can solve the case or there’s not a better way.” Harry raised his eyebrows at Ron. “And who helps me in those little ‘crusades?’”
“My other secret side,” Ron said promptly. “The one Hermione knows all about and scolds me for indulging. The one that still wants to go on adventures and learn secrets even after all the times at Hogwarts that we faced danger doing that.” His face softened, and he gave Harry’s hand a hard wring. “You’ll tell me if you need help.”
“Of course,” Harry said quietly. He and Ron didn’t always work together now, even though they had desks in the same office; Kingsley had said that he didn’t want them “reinforcing each other’s bad tendencies,” which in practice meant Harry ran off to break the rules and Ron followed. But he knew he could call on Ron for anything, even coming over to a creepy old house to help him guard Malfoys, and Ron would answer the call. That was the kind of friend he was.
“Good.” Ron looked him in the eye one more time, then stepped back with a salute and a nod. “Then go knock them dead. Or at least the Bard.”
Harry smiled back, turned, and walked out with his determination gathering around him like an invisible stormcloud. The Bard would find Harry waiting for him no matter how hard he tried to come into the house.
And not just because of the wards, either.
Harry put his hand on his pocket, and smiled.
*
“You don’t think we’re going to stay here, do you?”
Draco wrinkled his nose and looked around the kitchen. He wasn’t going to complain aloud, like his mother was currently doing, but he didn’t think he needed to. Potter would be able to see the disdain written openly on Draco’s face, after all.
The kitchen had blank, bare walls. Draco supposed that they might once have been papered or paneled, but all of that was gone. Now there was only utterly bare wood, or plaster, or whatever lingered behind the walls of most normal houses. Draco knew it would have been marble at Malfoy Manor, but then again, he’d never lived in a normal house. Thank Merlin.
“Of course I don’t expect you to stay in the kitchen,” said Potter, in a slightly scandalized tone that made Draco look immediately, and suspiciously, at him. Potter handed his cloak to a house-elf who appeared and disappeared so fast that Draco didn’t get a good look at it, and smiled blandly at Draco’s mother. “I have a space upstairs that’s prepared in a way I hope you’ll like. I did some protection spells, but Kreacher did the vast majority of the cleaning.”
“Kreacher is your elf?” Narcissa rearranged the shawl over her shoulders in a way Draco knew well. His mother had started wearing a shawl during the war, when so many rooms of the Manor seemed so cold and empty even when the Death Eaters weren’t in them, but she had kept it after the war because it was so useful for making a point. She was going to make a big point, from the way she was shuffling it now.
Potter nodded. “And most of the rest of the house is well-kept. This is just a renovation project I started and haven’t got around to finishing.” He waved his hand at the kitchen.
“Why not, Potter?” Draco managed to find his voice. “I would think the kitchen would be a particularly important room for you.”
“Why’s that?” Potter twisted his head and glared at Draco with narrowed eyes that made Draco feel he’d scored a point, although he didn’t know much about why.
“Because you’re not good at potions, and you probably require far more than one try at good cooking,” said Draco coolly. “Or did some explosion here necessitate removing the paper, rather than your renovation project?” Yes, Draco was almost certain it had been paper on the walls, and not something else.
But Potter only laughed and shook his head. “Kreacher does my cooking for me,” he said, and began to lead the way towards the far door out of the kitchen, his head twisted back as if he wanted to make sure that Draco and Narcissa were following instead of lingering in his precious ripped-up room. “I don’t spend a lot of time here, anyway.”
Draco caught up with Potter easily. His mother was walking slowly, probably looking at changes in the walls and doors that Draco didn’t know about and wouldn’t care about if he did. “And yet, you strengthened the wards and proposed to bring us here,” he muttered to Potter.
Potter shrugged. Draco was beginning to wonder what it would take to make a dent in his armor. “I did strengthen the wards back when I was living here all the time and not spending so much time at the Ministry. And it’s a safe place. I don’t mind staying here while I guard you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m so glad.”
Potter finally did stop at the base of a set of stairs that looked as though they’d last been scrubbed some time in the nineteenth century, and faced him. “I was unaware that I’d done anything particularly bad to you since school, Malfoy,” he said, and folded his arms. “Why are you lashing out like this?”
“Because my father was bloody murdered, and you aren’t acting normal?” Draco snarled back. “I just want one thing that’s normal.”
A second later, he winced. He hadn’t really meant to reveal that, or not so bluntly.
Potter’s eyes softened, though, and he nodded. “I reckon I can see why you’d want that,” he said, and touched a quick hand to the wall by Draco’s hand, although he didn’t actually touch Draco. “Well. Come on, then, and I’ll be a little more brusque.”
Against his will, Draco smiled. Potter escorted him upstairs, pausing to point out the library and a bathroom. Then he nodded to a door near the end of one corridor and said, “That’s my room. It was my godfather’s. I’m going to put you in there. I’ve enlarged it and added a second bed.”
“Where will you sleep, then?” Draco looked around. There were plenty of other doors. He had been sure that Potter would choose separate bedrooms for them. “And why not put us up in some of these rooms?”
“It’s easier if you stay together,” said Potter. His eyes hardened. “The Bard seems to attack his victims when they’re alone, most often. I’d rather not hear a scream and be guarding the wrong person. This way, I’ll be equally close to both of you.”
Draco winced again, but in silence. He hadn’t thought Potter would lay it out that bluntly.
A second later, Potter winced, too, and glanced guiltily at him. “And anyway,” he added, “the room’s bigger, now. I can sleep on the floor.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “No third bed for you?”
“Not that big,” said Potter, and his tone was a little brusque. Draco thought it was on purpose. “Not that I’ll be doing that much sleeping, at first. Anyway. Come see.” He flung open the door of the room.
Draco stepped in and turned around, blinking. The room was large and well-lit, the sun flooding through windows that he’d had no idea existed. Of course, one could do wonderful things with wizardspace…
He turned to Potter and cocked his head. “Did you put these windows in?”
Potter nodded. “When I enlarged the room, yes.” He crossed it and lifted one of the panes, then knocked on something Draco couldn’t see. “And shutters that take part in the strengthened wards. Draw your wand and fling a spell at it.”
Draco drew his wand, but hesitated. “If I get knocked down because the spell bounces back at me, the Ministry will have a lawsuit on their hands.”
“I know that,” said Potter, and stepped aside. “That’s not the effect the wards have. You can see if it you just fling the spell.” And then he locked his hands behind his back and looked at Draco with patient attention, as if he wanted to see what Draco was going to do next as a kind of experiment.
Draco snorted with exasperation and aimed his wand. He had heard his mother arrive in the doorway behind them, but he didn’t see the need to turn around and look at her. She would have heard most of Potter’s words, and he knew she would probably like sleeping in the same room as him rather than alone. “Lawsuit,” he reminded Potter, and used a Blasting Curse on the center of the window, where Potter had knocked on the invisible shutter.
He made the spell nonverbal, just to test how strong Potter’s wards really were. They wouldn’t be much use against the Bard, who used magic that no one even knew how to classify, if they didn’t stop nonverbal spells.
Draco tensed as the magic shone in the middle of the shutter for a moment. Despite Potter’s reassurance, he was still ready to dive aside, and he watched in confusion as, instead, the spell only surged back and forth in the middle of the shutter, forming a shape that looked oddly like the lightning bolt scar on Potter’s head.
Then it faded away.
Draco glanced at Potter, who smiled back at him. “The tension I told you about, between the sun and the moon, tugs at the spells that hit the wards until any power is shredded to pieces,” Potter explained.
Draco nodded slowly. Whatever caused it-and he wasn’t entirely sure he believed Potter’s explanation, which he could be using to protect an even greater secret-the effect was a great one. Now he felt a little better about being here, and having his mother with him as well.
“We will need cupboards for our clothes,” said his mother, her voice calm and cool in a way that Draco envied. “And we will need a place to put the photographs and other treasures we brought.”
Draco sighed a little. He knew what she meant. She had brought several photographs of Lucius, since they had no portrait. She would want to put them up and look at them.
And why not? He was alive this morning. Now he’s…not.
Draco had to sit down abruptly on the bed that stood nearest the door, because he was shaky. Potter cast him a soft glance, but Draco glared back before he lowered his face into his hands. He meant what he’d said about Potter acting stupidly and making things harder for Draco when he did.
“I left the trunk at the foot of the stairs,” said Narcissa.
Draco sighed. He knew why she was saying that, and he thought even Potter might be grateful to her as he nodded and slipped out the door. Draco lay back limply on the bed and sighed towards the ceiling. His mother sat down on the bed next to him, and there was silence for a moment.
“Did Potter share with you his suspicions regarding the Bard’s nature?” Narcissa asked abruptly.
“No,” said Draco, blinking at her. He wondered what suspicions Potter could possibly have. He didn’t have the special training that the Aurors who had investigated his father’s bedroom did. By Potter’s own admission, he was trained as a bodyguard, and nothing else. Draco reckoned that would impress some people, but Draco didn’t think it would lead Potter to find someone who had killed so many.
“He thinks all the deaths are linked back to the Battle of Hogwarts.” His mother took off her shawl and deposited it carefully on the bed.
Draco thought about it. Yes, he reckoned he could see that. And that meant…
“Someone could follow the trail back and find out who was there and unaccounted for,” he murmured.
“I promised Potter that I would not seek out vengeance,” said Narcissa. “He said it would make his job of guarding us harder. And you know that your father would not want us to try and seek revenge at the expense of staying alive and preserving the family name.”
Draco nodded absently, but his mind was ranging ahead. He wondered what in the world the person who sought revenge on the Death Eaters was blaming them for. A specific death? Being there at all? Destroying Hogwarts?
“I won’t do anything that could place me in danger,” he said. “Owl a few people. Ask for newspapers that print the full list of the dead. We might be able to figure out from last names which relatives are still alive.”
Narcissa gave him a smile cold and bright as the moon. “Yes,” she said softly. “I knew you would have some ideas.”
Draco took a deep breath and sat up. So. He had a plan. He had something he could do. His fate wasn’t completely dependent on Potter. It wasn’t that Draco really distrusted Potter, but he did want to have a way to be independent of him.
And find this bloody Bard.
Father, I promise you. We are going to find him.
Chapter Four.
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