Draco and Harry: Escorts

Chapter Three

Draco was gone when Harry woke, but the indentation on the pillow next to him gave evidence that Malfoy had not been gone long. A tray sat on the bedside table with a spelled teapot, teacup, and Harry's glasses. Harry leaned over and set the tea brewing while vaguely wondering where Draco had gone. A twinge of concern wrinkled his brow. Hopefully he had not gone back to Malfoy Manor as threatened.

What if he had? Would Harry abandon his friends and hie after him again? God, Harry would like to think not, but the truth was he wasn't sure.

As he drank his tea, he realized the knowledge did not even bother him any more. His need for Draco had grown out of his control--stronger than anything he had ever felt for anyone. His only concern was not knowing how Malfoy felt. Draco's reluctance to disclose their relationship was both understandable and a bit frustrating.

Harry had always been lucky in one way: The people he loved loved him back. It was something he had grown to count on. Until now.

He got out of bed and put on clean clothes, saving socks and shoes for later. On his way out the door, he stepped on a button. As he picked it up, he smiled and felt a rush of warmth at the memory of the night before. Hell, even if Malfoy didn't love him, at least he wouldn't get bored with Harry any time soon. Harry would make bloody certain of that.

Harry thumped quickly down the stairs hoping to find Draco in the kitchen, but instead he found Lupin and Hermione sipping tea. Harry disguised his disappointment with a grin.

"Good morning," he said brightly. "Where's Ron?"

Hermione poured him a cup of tea.

"He sleeps late these days. I never got out of the habit of rising at the crack of dawn."

"Tonks will sleep until dinnertime if I let her," Lupin said. "And then she wants to stay up all night long. It takes a toll on an old man like me."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You aren't still going on about your age difference, are you?"

"No, she cured me of that, mostly." Remus chuckled.

Harry gulped his tea and wondered if he should send Hedwig after Malfoy. Just to find out where he went. He leaped to his feet to do just that after mumbling some sort of excuse to his surprised friends. He was crossing the front hall to the stairs when the front door opened.

Draco stood there, looking as though he had spent the night elsewhere and decided to drop in for morning tea. He grinned at Harry.

"Did you know there are Muggle stores that stay open all night long?" Malfoy asked excitedly. Harry was stymied.

"You went to a Muggle store?"

"Yes. I remembered my shades were broken. I really missed them yesterday--it was bloody bright out."

"You shopped in a Muggle store? Alone?"

Draco scowled. "Of course alone. I'm not helpless. I took some of that Muggle money you keep in the jar by the..." Bed, Harry finished as Draco trailed off. The silver eyes had shifted and Harry turned to see Hermione in the doorway.

"Malfoy, I was hoping to see you this morning," she said. Harry's jaw fairly gaped in amazement, as she sounded completely sincere.

"Why? New hex you'd like to try out?" Draco asked dryly.

"No, I went over some of those papers Harry gave me yesterday. There are some notes I don't understand. They appear to be written in Greek."

"Most likely. My father wrote his journal in Greek, as well as most of his other private notes."

Hermione sighed. "Damn. It will take me awhile to translate them."

Malfoy hung his black cloak on a peg and absently handed Harry his shopping bag. Harry took it, feeling somewhat like a house-elf.

"Or I could just read it for you," Draco suggested.

"You read Greek?" Harry asked in surprise.

"Read, write, speak. Yes, fluently. The benefit of a classical education. Lucky me to have tutors every summer, eh?"

Another layer revealed. Harry wondered what else he did not know about the enigmatic Slytherin. Volumes, most likely.

"Excellent!" Hermione said. "Perhaps you'll have some insight into your father's writings that I would miss while trying to translate."

"No doubt," Draco said abruptly and pushed by her into the kitchen. Hermione scowled at Harry.

"He hasn't changed a bit," she said, but Harry gnawed his lip thoughtfully. He knew Draco's reasons for not looking through his father's things; it was simply too painful. Harry was surprised Draco had even offered to translate for her.

Harry opened the bag he held and was not surprised to see a dozen pairs of sunglasses in a variety of styles. Malfoy never did anything in half measures.

ooOoo

Draco made an assortment of crepes for breakfast and then retreated to the study with Hermione and Harry to pore over the books and papers from Malfoy Manor. Draco read through the random notes Harry had scooped from his father's desk, skimming for the most part. Lucius had often been cryptic to the point of incomprehensible and his notes frequently cross-referenced other notes using a code Draco thought he might be able to discern, given enough time.

Just looking at his father's flowery script was enough to make him nearly ill with a sense of loss. He avoided Harry's gaze completely, because Potter's empathy was the last thing Draco needed in Hermione Granger (Weasley's) presence.

Hermione flipped through a book of dark magic, shuddering now and again at some of the spells therein. Draco had intentionally given her one of the more horrifying tomes.

Ron wandered in and made a short pretense of helping out until Draco suggested Weasley would be more helpful up in the attic cleaning up owl pellets, after which Hermione had to drag her frothing mad husband from the room.

"Is that absolutely necessary?" Harry asked when Ron and Hermione were out of earshot.

"Taunting Weasley? Yes, it is."

Harry sighed. "Why are you doing this? I know you hate research--I've been trying to get you to help me with it for a month."

"I hate research when I could be shagging you instead, but that doesn't seem to be an option at the moment."

Harry's cheeks visibly pinked and Draco laughed. Damn, but Harry was alluring at times. Like now, when he was barefoot with his form-fitting Muggle jeans and pale blue button-up shirt open at the neck; his hair delightfully rumpled, as usual, and his bloody glasses making those bright green eyes look even wider and more innocent--combined with that damned sweet blush of his...

Draco groaned and put his head in his hands.

"Isn't there somewhere you can go today?" Malfoy asked suddenly. "If you seriously want me to research this damned Apparition problem. Can't you take the Weasel out and buy him a decent set of clothes?"

"You want me to leave?" Harry asked, sounding surprised.

"You're damned distracting!" Draco burst out and Harry's eyes widened in surprise before he grinned. Hermione returned at that moment and sighed.

"I swear, we haven't been here a single day and already Ron is pacing like a caged animal. It's a pity there is nowhere for him to play Quidditch. It would get him out of the house."

"I think I'll take him to Diagon Alley to visit Fred and George," Harry suggested. Hermione threw him a grateful look.

"Would you, Harry? I hate to give this up, now that we've started. I promised Tonks I'd shop with her, but she's not even awake yet, so that can wait until this afternoon or tomorrow."

Harry nodded, gave Draco a farewell grin and went out.

Granger--Draco gave up completely trying to think of her as a Weasley--took up the book she had been thumbing through.

"Have you found anything at all useful?" she asked. He blinked at her for a moment, trying not to say something scathing, for once. Gryffindors. Bloody impatient, the lot of them.

"Potter has been searching for a month. Do you really think we're going to find the answer in a couple of hours?"

She sat down heavily. "No, I suppose not."

Draco relented. He supposed she was only trying to help, in her own annoying way.

"Look, I was still a semi-official Death Eater back when Voldemort was planning this madness. I wasn't paying much attention at the time, since I was scrambling to save my own skin. However, I know the spell took a group to cast--it wasn't something Voldemort did alone."

"That should be ritual magic, then."

"Which Potter and I suspected, anyway, considering that it seems to be self-sustaining. None of the spells vanished when Voldemort did. It also seems to be able to adapt."

"Adapt?"

Draco sat back and steepled his fingers with the absent recollection that Lucius used to make the same gesture. "In the past year, I've run across a lot of wild magic and it all seems very different on the surface: nullification fields, darkness zones, choking mist, and far worse. However, I believe the root is the same."

"You think a single spell is responsible for all of the rampant dark magic?" Hermione seemed surprised.

"A single spell, cast several times in different areas, of course. They would set it free, so to speak, and allow it to wreak havoc where it would. A handy consequence, of course, was its effect on Apparition. If the wild, dark magic gets wrapped up in an Apparition spell--on either end--the result will be unpredictable and often deadly"

"So if we can locate the original spell, we might be able to reverse it!"

"Possibly. Unfortunately, Voldemort did not leave a handy booklet outlining the process."

"No, but maybe Lucius did," she said sagely.

Draco nodded. "Maybe." It was more than possible, since Lucius had no real fondness for his role as a Death Eater. Draco should have looked for the solution before now; he simply hadn't had the resolve.

Hermione said, "We'll just have to keep looking then, and hope."

Hope. A primary Gryffindor trait. Right behind bravery and impatience.

"Malfoy?" Hermione added. Draco met her brown eyes and raised a silver brow. "It's nice to be spoken to as a fellow human being."

"Don't get used to it," he warned dryly, but he grinned when he said it. In truth, most of his pureblood ideals had been shattered in the war. And then there was Harry, whose blood Draco had once thought tainted. Now he would die before allowing a drop of it to be shed. Then again, everything in Draco's life could trace back to Harry one way or another.

He considered Hermione again. Draco no longer thought of her as a Mudblood; merely as an idealistic, overbearing, know-it-all, do-gooder. Which was quite bad enough.

The front door clicked shut on Potter as he and the Weasel departed. Draco rubbed his temples in annoyance when he realized he missed Harry already. Love was a bloody nuisance at times.

ooOoo

Fred and George were amazingly easy to differentiate when they got to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Fred was an intense shade of burgundy with greenish hair and George was a somewhat mottled purple, though his hair was its normal shade of red.

"Still using yourselves as test subjects?" Ron asked.

"Dare I even ask what you're working on?" Harry added.

"Chameleon Creams."

"To blend in with your surroundings. Sort of like a temporary Invisibility Cloak."

"So far they aren't working too well."

"I don't know, you'd blend with that huge tapestry of Godric Gryffindor at Hogwarts," Harry said. Ron guffawed.

"Yeah, you'd only have to put a potted palm in front of it for the hair."

"Don't laugh at scientific research," Fred huffed.

"Or you'll be sorry next time you come eat at our place," George added in a warning tone.

"I'm always sorry when I eat at your place!" Ron protested.

George grinned. "Well, maybe it was a bit unfair to put Liplocker Paste in your pudding."

"A bit? I couldn't eat for two days!"

"Yes, well now we have an antidote, so you don't need to worry about that one any more," Fred said airily. Ron glowered at him.

"Did you find Malfoy?" George asked Harry.

He nodded, recalling that it had been Fred and George that directed him to Borgin and Burkes.

"Tortured him good when you found him, I hope," Fred added. Harry swallowed and thought quickly of Flobberworms, Thestrals feeding on live animals, and Dolores Umbridge--anything to get his mind off of what he had done to Draco once he'd located him. He managed to keep from blushing scarlet, thank goodness.

"Tortured him. Oh yes," Harry said hoarsely. He forged on, a bit frantically. "Have anything new and interesting for sale?"

Fred walked over to a shelf and picked up a coin-sized disk.

"We were working on this for the Ministry back in the day," he said.

"Portable silence chamber," George clarified. "Works better than a Muffliato because it's completely soundproof."

"But it's only large enough for two."

"Until now," Fred said with a grin. He picked up a larger disk--this one was about the size of a flattened tennis ball.

"This will enclose a three meter circle."

"We can fit a dozen people under this."

"Shapely people," George added.

"Soft people," Fred agreed.

"Girl people," they said in unison and sighed collectively.

"That was a fun experiment."

"Research isn't always difficult."

Harry chuckled, picturing the twins sandwiched into a large group of women. Ron sighed enviously.

"I went into the wrong business," he said.

"That reminds me," said George. "We have something here for you, little brother."

"Or, actually, for Hermione," Fred said with a smile. His teeth looked brilliantly white against his burgundy face. The twins wandered to a back corner of the store. George lifted a ceramic jar from a shelf and handed it to Ron, who read the label.

"Salacious Salve."

"We were trying to invent custard that caused hives or boils."

"It didn't quite work as expected."

"Works better as a body cream, actually."

"It is edible, though."

"And tasty. We used Mum's old vanilla custard recipe as the base."

Ron recoiled. "Why would I want a cream that causes boils?"

"I told you, it didn't turn out as intended."

George shook his head. "What it does do is increase sensitivity."

"Works great."

"That was a fun one to test," George murmured.

"Angelina still comes by once a week to see if the formula needs more tweaking."

"Angelina Johnson?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, she's a great test subject," Fred said dreamily with a faraway look. Harry thought Fred might have blushed if he weren't already wine-colored. Harry picked up a jar with a thrill of anticipation.

George cocked a brow at him.

"Got someone special in mind, Harry?"

Ron stared at him in surprise, but Harry shook his head.

"Thought I'd get one as a gift for Tonks and Lupin," he lied smoothly. He could always claim to have forgotten it. He picked up one of the Silence Chambers, also, thinking it could be useful for the business. Sometimes he and Malfoy had conversations that clients did not need to be privy to.

The twins, as always, refused to even consider taking Harry's money and even gave Ron a jar free of charge.

"Frankly, this stuff sells so well we're considering making a whole line of marital aids."

"I think you're just looking forward to the next test phase," Ron grumped.

George grinned and clapped Harry on the shoulder.

"Call us if you want in, mate."

"It'll do you good."

Harry didn't bother to mention he already had more "good" than he could handle.