eutychides (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} eutychides) wrote,@ 2005-12-05 09:02:00 |
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FIC: Things That Change, 3/?
Title: Things That Change [3/?]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3]
1.
It takes a week before the healers at St. Mungo’s give him his discharge papers and another solid week of long evenings spent in the file room before Harry finds a list of every single landlord in Diagon Alley and the surrounding ten blocks, every direction, in London. Of course, most of these landlords are sketchy, shady creatures with too many cats and too much time; and only some of them disclose the names of tenants when Harry shows them his Auror papers.
If ever he could use a Marauder’s Map of Diagon Alley, now would be it.
There is simply no record of Draco Malfoy, not past 1998, when he was spotted in Lincolnshire in the company of a sallow, dark-haired man Harry knows was Snape. Beyond that, absolutely nothing. The Ministry has vague warrants and proclamations for him to appear before a Wizengamot tribunal, but seeing as no one knows where he is or if he is dead or not, nothing has been done.
Harry is doing something about it now. The Niffler pulls on its leash, making a sort of snorting whine at him. He sighs and tugs it, saying quietly, “I hope this is it”. He had to go through papers for another week before the Department of Alternate Uses of Magical Creatures for the Purposes of Good (a whole of one aging witch) allowed him to borrow the tracker Niffler.
There is no door here. The last three places in this derelict building were useless. A hag who threatened to hex his balls off, an old man who asked how much the chocolate bars were (Harry isn’t selling any that he knows of) and a girl with a baby on her hip and a toddler on her apron strings who strongly reminded him of Daphne Greengrass from Hogwarts and he hopes it wasn’t her, but somehow, he thinks it was.
“I don’t know about this,” he whispers to the Niffler, which looks up at him, eyes shining. He cuts a square in the air with his wand and murmurs the incantation. It bounces back behind his ear, buzzing down the stairwell with a crash.
“Well,” he says, “I see there’s a ward here.” He hands the Niffler a small gold ring from his pocket. The Niffler jumps up and catches it in its jaws, crunching like a dog on its bone. “I suppose you were right.”
He uses a welding spell on his wand and cuts through the wall, jagged edges and dust flying up. It’s a rough job and lengthy and he sweats enough to burn his eyes with salt, but he forces his way through into a room.
This is a good sign.
However, hearing the wail of a baby, Harry realizes that this is not a good sign. At all. His heart plummets. He’s awful at putting his auror skills into real-life situations. He’s sliced his way into a poor witch’s flat all because he thought-
There is blood, everywhere. All over the cheap carpets. Strands and streaks across the flooring, dried brown and dark. Everything in this flat smells of blood, and shit, too. Harry breathes in and it almost overwhelms him.
The tracking Niffler sits on its hinds legs and whimpers. It starts to wiggle its rump, as though it’s backing up, away and out of this…this murder scene.
He goes cold inside. He draws his wand and lets the leash drop. He casts a quick shielding spell on the flat and patches up the hole in the middle of the flat wall. He suspects there is a door there of sorts, but that it’s hidden under magic. By the looks of things, it could be quite dark.
There are always wizarding criminals out there and there are still a couple Death Eaters on the loose. Amycus Carrows. Rabastan Lestrange. And now, Harry has seen the reports, quite possibly Draco Malfoy.
He tiptoes around the flat, following the blood smears. A body has been dragged at some point. From the smell, Harry suspects it was recently. His eyes shift continuously as he moves, sweeping back and forth before he makes his silent steps, just as in training. His pulse races and his heart pounds. There is no rush like the first field job, they say, and this is near as close as he’s been to that yet.
The sound of a baby crying grows louder, too. Harry tries not to focus on the wailing- the pitch is strange, very…unlike the sounds Bill and Fleur’s daughter makes, and she’s nearly one. What sick bastard kidnaps children and tortures them like this? His guts churn. The coppery stench of blood is heavy. The floors creak under Harry’s weight. He walks up to a closed door. The blood tracks continue under the doorway.
He takes a deep breath in and pushes the door open.
2.
It is immediately apparent that this, this is the place where the bastard took the body. Harry staggers back at the scent of shit, piss, unwashed bodies and blood, blood, blood. There is something else, too, under the smells. Something that makes Harry think of talcum powder from the Weasley’s bathroom at the Burrow.
This is where the bastard has the baby, too. As soon as Harry pushes the door open with a swift kick, the crying starts, a keening wail, that only seems to grow louder. “Fucking bastard!” Harry shouts, lunging in and-
He nearly falls back over and trips on the mess of bloodied sheets crumpled up on the floor.
Malfoy is lying on the bed, curled up small and greyish in a nest of towels and more bloodied sheets and he’s holding a baby in his arms. The baby’s arms flail about, red and ruddy, a stark contrast to how pale Malfoy is, how washed out his gaze is when he blinks slowly and takes in Harry.
“So you’ve found me,” he says, slow and lethargic, almost as though he’s on sedatives. His eyes droop, heavy purple bags under them. He shifts a little, adjusting his arm around the swaddled baby.
“You fucking bastard- whose baby did you kidnap?” Harry seethes. He stalks up to Malfoy, pointing his wand at Malfoy’s throat. “Tell me now or I’ll send for backup.”
Malfoy doesn’t seem too disturbed by the wand pressed under his chin. Instead, he starts to chuckle, a dry, hoarse cough coming from cracked lips. He shifts again, sitting up higher, and wincing. “I wondered how long it would take the Chosen One to find me.”
Harry jabs the wand harder, enough to make Malfoy jerk back and sneer. “I’ll fucking call for backup if you don’t hand the kid over, Malfoy, so I can return it to the parents you murdered.”
And then is when everything goes horribly awry.
Harry subconsciously expects Malfoy to curl his lip and utter some curse, some nonverbal something perhaps, pick up his wand with an Accio and duel, chuck the kid away, maybe bash its brains into the wall and Apparate off, like the last time Harry saw him. The pity he once had for Malfoy, turned to anger, only resurfaces when Malfoy instead bursts into tears.
He straightens his back, feeling his resolve start to waver at the uncomfortable sight of Malfoy, with tears streaking down his pale face, sniveling and sniffling and clutching the baby close to his chest. “All right- Malfoy, I’ll make you a deal. Give me the baby and I won’t call backup.” Harry takes a step closer.
“It’s- mine,” Malfoy sniffles.
“What?”
His eyes are red-rimmed; tears dribble down his cheeks and chin. “I said- it’s mine.”
“What?”
“Baby- she’s bloody well mine, Potter and-” Malfoy hiccups. The baby starts to scream louder. Malfoy rocks it in his arms, but the arms flail and the mouth wails. The bundle of fabric against his chest wiggles more as he tries to calm with choked words Harry can’t understand.
“You-” Harry shakes his head, looking around the room, at the blood, everywhere. “But- who would- with you? What did you do, murder the mother?”
He finally gets a reaction he wants from Malfoy, who looks up at him with a wavering smirk. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you, Potter?”
“I think you’d better come down to the Ministry with-”
“NO!”
The lamp behind Harry shatters. He ducks, but the shards prickle the back of his neck and he can feel the blood start to bead, like sweat. The sound rings in Harry’s ears, above and beyond the baby’s crying. Malfoy murmurs to it, whispering things and Harry feels suitably uncomfortable. He shifts on his feet.
“So it’s yours?” he asks. “Then why is…there blood everywhere?”
Malfoy looks up and blinks slowly, his eyes heavy-lidded and exhausted. He’s stopped crying, but he sniffles. “Can’t you guess?” he drawls, but his voice cracks midway and Harry strains to hear him.
“What are you talking about, Malfoy?” he says, sighing. If he has grown since leaving Hogwarts, defeating the Dark Lord and getting a real job, Malfoy has stagnated as a complete prat. Except one that makes Harry’s insides tug with a reluctant pity.
Malfoy puts the baby down on the bed beside himself. He moves his legs, crossing them under a pile of blankets, and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Harry can see his breath in the air and he feels cold himself. Outside, he can hear the claws of the Niffler clacking as it wanders the rest of the flat. “Do you think that anyone would sleep with me now? God, I’m a fucking criminal now and the world knows it! I’m wanted by the Ministry, if you haven’t noticed, Potter.”
Harry refrains from jinxing Malfoy for the comment. “And give me one reason I oughtn’t tell them about you right now?”
His eyes dart to the baby. His fingers move across the bundled blankets he’s wrapped it in and he looks up at Harry slowly, his eyes watery and dark. “She’s all I have now, Potter,” he whispers. “The rest of my family- please…”
Harry walks close enough that his legs brush the side of the bed. It smells strongly here, of piss and blood. “Then why,” he says carefully, “is every corner of your flat bloody?”
“Oh, the far side of the kitchen is all right,” Malfoy offers, smirking a little.
“Malfoy-” Harry warns through his teeth.
Malfoy stares at him for the longest while. His face is set, his lips a thin, pale line and his jaw tight. His chest rises and falls and his Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallows. “Because it’s my blood,” he says at last.
The Wizarding World is known for strange things. Unnatural things, even, to happen to humans who know who to wield magic and spells, and even to those who don’t. Harry, however, has mastered much of that magic over the years, Hogwarts teaching him a lot, the real world teaching him more.
What is doesn’t teach him is how to react when Malfoy adds, “Because who would touch me?” because he knows, he knows about the blonde woman in his dreams, the night at the Bat’s Beak and he can count himself, the roughly nine months it’s been since then.
Title: Things That Change [3/?]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3]
1.
It takes a week before the healers at St. Mungo’s give him his discharge papers and another solid week of long evenings spent in the file room before Harry finds a list of every single landlord in Diagon Alley and the surrounding ten blocks, every direction, in London. Of course, most of these landlords are sketchy, shady creatures with too many cats and too much time; and only some of them disclose the names of tenants when Harry shows them his Auror papers.
If ever he could use a Marauder’s Map of Diagon Alley, now would be it.
There is simply no record of Draco Malfoy, not past 1998, when he was spotted in Lincolnshire in the company of a sallow, dark-haired man Harry knows was Snape. Beyond that, absolutely nothing. The Ministry has vague warrants and proclamations for him to appear before a Wizengamot tribunal, but seeing as no one knows where he is or if he is dead or not, nothing has been done.
Harry is doing something about it now. The Niffler pulls on its leash, making a sort of snorting whine at him. He sighs and tugs it, saying quietly, “I hope this is it”. He had to go through papers for another week before the Department of Alternate Uses of Magical Creatures for the Purposes of Good (a whole of one aging witch) allowed him to borrow the tracker Niffler.
There is no door here. The last three places in this derelict building were useless. A hag who threatened to hex his balls off, an old man who asked how much the chocolate bars were (Harry isn’t selling any that he knows of) and a girl with a baby on her hip and a toddler on her apron strings who strongly reminded him of Daphne Greengrass from Hogwarts and he hopes it wasn’t her, but somehow, he thinks it was.
“I don’t know about this,” he whispers to the Niffler, which looks up at him, eyes shining. He cuts a square in the air with his wand and murmurs the incantation. It bounces back behind his ear, buzzing down the stairwell with a crash.
“Well,” he says, “I see there’s a ward here.” He hands the Niffler a small gold ring from his pocket. The Niffler jumps up and catches it in its jaws, crunching like a dog on its bone. “I suppose you were right.”
He uses a welding spell on his wand and cuts through the wall, jagged edges and dust flying up. It’s a rough job and lengthy and he sweats enough to burn his eyes with salt, but he forces his way through into a room.
This is a good sign.
However, hearing the wail of a baby, Harry realizes that this is not a good sign. At all. His heart plummets. He’s awful at putting his auror skills into real-life situations. He’s sliced his way into a poor witch’s flat all because he thought-
There is blood, everywhere. All over the cheap carpets. Strands and streaks across the flooring, dried brown and dark. Everything in this flat smells of blood, and shit, too. Harry breathes in and it almost overwhelms him.
The tracking Niffler sits on its hinds legs and whimpers. It starts to wiggle its rump, as though it’s backing up, away and out of this…this murder scene.
He goes cold inside. He draws his wand and lets the leash drop. He casts a quick shielding spell on the flat and patches up the hole in the middle of the flat wall. He suspects there is a door there of sorts, but that it’s hidden under magic. By the looks of things, it could be quite dark.
There are always wizarding criminals out there and there are still a couple Death Eaters on the loose. Amycus Carrows. Rabastan Lestrange. And now, Harry has seen the reports, quite possibly Draco Malfoy.
He tiptoes around the flat, following the blood smears. A body has been dragged at some point. From the smell, Harry suspects it was recently. His eyes shift continuously as he moves, sweeping back and forth before he makes his silent steps, just as in training. His pulse races and his heart pounds. There is no rush like the first field job, they say, and this is near as close as he’s been to that yet.
The sound of a baby crying grows louder, too. Harry tries not to focus on the wailing- the pitch is strange, very…unlike the sounds Bill and Fleur’s daughter makes, and she’s nearly one. What sick bastard kidnaps children and tortures them like this? His guts churn. The coppery stench of blood is heavy. The floors creak under Harry’s weight. He walks up to a closed door. The blood tracks continue under the doorway.
He takes a deep breath in and pushes the door open.
2.
It is immediately apparent that this, this is the place where the bastard took the body. Harry staggers back at the scent of shit, piss, unwashed bodies and blood, blood, blood. There is something else, too, under the smells. Something that makes Harry think of talcum powder from the Weasley’s bathroom at the Burrow.
This is where the bastard has the baby, too. As soon as Harry pushes the door open with a swift kick, the crying starts, a keening wail, that only seems to grow louder. “Fucking bastard!” Harry shouts, lunging in and-
He nearly falls back over and trips on the mess of bloodied sheets crumpled up on the floor.
Malfoy is lying on the bed, curled up small and greyish in a nest of towels and more bloodied sheets and he’s holding a baby in his arms. The baby’s arms flail about, red and ruddy, a stark contrast to how pale Malfoy is, how washed out his gaze is when he blinks slowly and takes in Harry.
“So you’ve found me,” he says, slow and lethargic, almost as though he’s on sedatives. His eyes droop, heavy purple bags under them. He shifts a little, adjusting his arm around the swaddled baby.
“You fucking bastard- whose baby did you kidnap?” Harry seethes. He stalks up to Malfoy, pointing his wand at Malfoy’s throat. “Tell me now or I’ll send for backup.”
Malfoy doesn’t seem too disturbed by the wand pressed under his chin. Instead, he starts to chuckle, a dry, hoarse cough coming from cracked lips. He shifts again, sitting up higher, and wincing. “I wondered how long it would take the Chosen One to find me.”
Harry jabs the wand harder, enough to make Malfoy jerk back and sneer. “I’ll fucking call for backup if you don’t hand the kid over, Malfoy, so I can return it to the parents you murdered.”
And then is when everything goes horribly awry.
Harry subconsciously expects Malfoy to curl his lip and utter some curse, some nonverbal something perhaps, pick up his wand with an Accio and duel, chuck the kid away, maybe bash its brains into the wall and Apparate off, like the last time Harry saw him. The pity he once had for Malfoy, turned to anger, only resurfaces when Malfoy instead bursts into tears.
He straightens his back, feeling his resolve start to waver at the uncomfortable sight of Malfoy, with tears streaking down his pale face, sniveling and sniffling and clutching the baby close to his chest. “All right- Malfoy, I’ll make you a deal. Give me the baby and I won’t call backup.” Harry takes a step closer.
“It’s- mine,” Malfoy sniffles.
“What?”
His eyes are red-rimmed; tears dribble down his cheeks and chin. “I said- it’s mine.”
“What?”
“Baby- she’s bloody well mine, Potter and-” Malfoy hiccups. The baby starts to scream louder. Malfoy rocks it in his arms, but the arms flail and the mouth wails. The bundle of fabric against his chest wiggles more as he tries to calm with choked words Harry can’t understand.
“You-” Harry shakes his head, looking around the room, at the blood, everywhere. “But- who would- with you? What did you do, murder the mother?”
He finally gets a reaction he wants from Malfoy, who looks up at him with a wavering smirk. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you, Potter?”
“I think you’d better come down to the Ministry with-”
“NO!”
The lamp behind Harry shatters. He ducks, but the shards prickle the back of his neck and he can feel the blood start to bead, like sweat. The sound rings in Harry’s ears, above and beyond the baby’s crying. Malfoy murmurs to it, whispering things and Harry feels suitably uncomfortable. He shifts on his feet.
“So it’s yours?” he asks. “Then why is…there blood everywhere?”
Malfoy looks up and blinks slowly, his eyes heavy-lidded and exhausted. He’s stopped crying, but he sniffles. “Can’t you guess?” he drawls, but his voice cracks midway and Harry strains to hear him.
“What are you talking about, Malfoy?” he says, sighing. If he has grown since leaving Hogwarts, defeating the Dark Lord and getting a real job, Malfoy has stagnated as a complete prat. Except one that makes Harry’s insides tug with a reluctant pity.
Malfoy puts the baby down on the bed beside himself. He moves his legs, crossing them under a pile of blankets, and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Harry can see his breath in the air and he feels cold himself. Outside, he can hear the claws of the Niffler clacking as it wanders the rest of the flat. “Do you think that anyone would sleep with me now? God, I’m a fucking criminal now and the world knows it! I’m wanted by the Ministry, if you haven’t noticed, Potter.”
Harry refrains from jinxing Malfoy for the comment. “And give me one reason I oughtn’t tell them about you right now?”
His eyes dart to the baby. His fingers move across the bundled blankets he’s wrapped it in and he looks up at Harry slowly, his eyes watery and dark. “She’s all I have now, Potter,” he whispers. “The rest of my family- please…”
Harry walks close enough that his legs brush the side of the bed. It smells strongly here, of piss and blood. “Then why,” he says carefully, “is every corner of your flat bloody?”
“Oh, the far side of the kitchen is all right,” Malfoy offers, smirking a little.
“Malfoy-” Harry warns through his teeth.
Malfoy stares at him for the longest while. His face is set, his lips a thin, pale line and his jaw tight. His chest rises and falls and his Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallows. “Because it’s my blood,” he says at last.
The Wizarding World is known for strange things. Unnatural things, even, to happen to humans who know who to wield magic and spells, and even to those who don’t. Harry, however, has mastered much of that magic over the years, Hogwarts teaching him a lot, the real world teaching him more.
What is doesn’t teach him is how to react when Malfoy adds, “Because who would touch me?” because he knows, he knows about the blonde woman in his dreams, the night at the Bat’s Beak and he can count himself, the roughly nine months it’s been since then.
