Come Hither

Chapter 14

Manipulation & Machination

"No, you're not! Harry, are you crazy? You can't just go to the Malfoys' manor!"

Hermione appeared with Ron and Dumbledore out of nowhere. Snape was absent. Harry really didn't need his nagging friends and Dumbledore's increasingly irking presence at the moment.

"Besides, you're not welcome, amongst other things," Lucius tossed over his shoulder.

Unshaken, Harry made to follow them but was stopped by a firm hand - Dumbledore's. He swatted it off and silently glared back at the infuriating eyes of brightest blue.

Hermione looked beside herself with incredulity at this show of disrespect, and the unannounced wake of which had Ron squinting in every other way in discomfort.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, looking down at him. "You cannot let your emotions decide for you right now. We have to go about this logically."

Harry detested Dumbledore's calm voice. "So I'm emotional now?"

Dumbledore kept his steady look at him and allowed a moment of silence to pass so it could answer Harry more eloquently than he ever could, but Harry pursed his lips defiantly at it and maintained his glare at Dumbledore.

"Harry!" Hermione beseeched in a hushed whisper. Ron was grimacing as he tentatively peered up at Dumbledore, plainly expecting severe repercussions for this.

But Dumbledore didn't punish anyone. "If you follow the Malfoys, you risk all three lives by allowing them to be seen with you. What is more, you will risk capture by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. If he's capable of such atrocities as you have personally witnessed to the ones closest to him, I daren't imagine what he may do to you - his arch nemesis."

Harry's blazing eyes shifted from one side to the other, staring into the space in front of him, trying to find a reasonable loophole in all of this. He knew Dumbledore was right, but he didn't have to like it. But... Draco was being hurt... "I can't just stay here knowing he's suffering, I have to do something!"

Dumbledore laid a hand on his shoulder, which he didn't have the courage to deny even in this emotional state. "And the best of which is getting the memory from Professor Slughorn."

Harry couldn't even look into Dumbledore's eyes when he said that; if only he knew how spectacularly he had failed at that. He received a commiserating look from Dumbledore.

"Professor Slughorn handed me his Leaving Letter only moments after the two of you left my office this morning," Dumbledore said, his beard twitching slightly. "However, I managed to persuade him to stay just a few more days." One blue eye twinkled at him.

Harry tried to refute how calming, even a little, Dumbledore's demeanour was, but he couldn't - the twinkling eyes and the generally light countenance of Dumbledore was homily familiar and grounding. Dumbledore was full of surprises, he was perceptively precautious, he was cunning, he was... manipulative - he took his mail without giving it back, he promised Draco refuge but Draco was still suffering at Voldemort's hands, he sent him away with old men with fat fingers and greedy faces so he could do his biddings, and now he was letting the Malfoys leave to grapple with their own devices to alleviate Draco's desperate predicament.

Instantly, emerald orbs were relit with lingering defiance that was quickly gaining heat. "That's it? Just get a memory while Draco is under the Cruciatus Curse? Why can't you just perform Legilimency on Professor Slughorn?"

Dumbledore's face hardened, and all kindness was extinguished from eyes. "Harry, you're speaking of very intrusive magic that I have made a personal oath not to entertain. I am most ashamed to be - forgive me - rather extremely proficient at it than most men, and as skilled as I am in it, I will never use it for my gain without the express permission of the person on whom I wish to perform it."

Harry couldn't believe his ears. Total hypocrisy! "This is war and you're having moral conflicts? Aren't we supposed to do everything besides kill and torture to win? We have to win, right?"

Hermione shook her head woefully as she looked on at Harry with disappointment shining in her eyes.

Dumbledore gave a short sigh, looking into Harry's eyes sadly. "No, Harry, we do not. We are not like them and thus shouldn't employ their devious practices. Don't let this battle destroy you, Harry. You can still be good and survive. This is the exact reason I was desirous for you to be proficient in Occlumency - you are emotionally vulnerable as long as you house that connection with Voldemort."

Ron and Hermione flinched at the name.

Harry set his jaw. He was being beaten at every avenue he explored here. In a defeated, unguarded, low voice, he said, "I just want to save, Draco. I just want him safe. Can't I have that?"

Dumbledore gave him a wan smile. "I know, Harry, I know. But I have to affirm that you cannot afford to be seen at Malfoy Manor. Harry, listen to me, listen to me very carefully." Dumbledore's countenance was suddenly serious.

Despite himself, Harry piqued at this, Dumbledore's mood making him wary. He looked up at the bittersweet image of his mentor. He was still feeling extreme dislike and irritation at him at the moment, but he could still appreciate this unusual urgency about him; Dumbledore was seldom serious.

"I might soon have to give you information that is going to be vital in defeating the Dark Lord in light of my shortening time."

Harry's eyes sank down to Dumbledore's blackened hand. He had to believe it someday. He nearly hissed, 'Don't say that!' in his already agitated mood, but he knew it would be futile. Besides, he was still holding onto the last few vestiges of his anger towards Dumbledore.

"That is, if my suspicions are correct. The memory. Harry, right now, just focus on getting the memory - that is all I ask of you. Then, and only then, can we see where we can go. Until then, we should not approach Lord Voldemort. This will be a crucial time in your life, as well as the Wizarding world, because then we will finally know if indeed Voldemort (flinches) is truly immortal or not. Had we been certain of this, I would surely have accompanied you, together with Mr and Mrs Malfoy to their residence. It all relies on this one memory, Harry. I deeply lament charging you with this, but I have no other choice; I do not wish to approach anything remotely close to Voldemort's (flinches) wicked ways. I have shared with you that he may be the world's greatest Legilimens."

Harry remembered Peter Pettigrew's desperate whisper: "...The Dark Lord... you have no idea... he has weapons you can't imagine." Harry inherently knew all of this - that one shouldn't sacrifice one's morality for victory, but he thought, 'It's just reading someone's bloody mind! It's just a quick in and out! Who cares if we go just slightly devious in order to win?'

Harry at least had the mind to reel at this one. He took an inward breath to realize just the dark nature of his words. What was he turning into? He couldn't afford to change. The Dark Lord was influencing him more and more as each day passed; he was slowly controlling his life and smothering his freedom. First, it was the depression he fell into back in the summer, and then it was... Draco's... just him and Draco, and now it was his heart, his morals, his very ethics. He couldn't let this vile, insidious force continue to spread in him. He needed vaccines, and those were Occlumency and the memory.

He swallowed thickly, and he looked down at the unyielding, unsympathetic, dispassionate cobblestone floor. He felt Dumbledore squeeze his shoulder.

"Harry, we will get through this, we just have to do what we have to."

Harry didn't know whether or not the voice expected a reply. He nodded once without looking up, resigned, and felt the hand slip off his shoulders.

"I believe it is time you three get yourselves into bed for a rest of a good night's sleep ahead of today. Sleep well."

It was a dismissal with an expectant and sympathetic eyebrow. Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned around slowly and set off up the corridor while Dumbledore ascended the spiralling stairs and returned to his office. Only then did Ron's and Hermione's presence reach a critical threshold of Harry's awareness, but at the moment, he didn't care much to calculate how much they had heard, how much he had revealed, and how far they were to actually piecing things together.

They started making their way back to Gryffindor Tower in silence, each quiet for a different reason.

Then, a shadow passed over Harry before he suddenly took off, stomping ahead, his hands fisted on his sides. This took Ron and Hermione aback - they exchanged looks - but they quickly followed.

"Harry, mate, what's with you?" Ron asked tentatively, as his long legs easily kept up with Harry's swift strides.

"Harry, what are you thinking of?" said Hermione sternly, a shrewd glint flashing in her eyes, and then they widened to the size of a Bludger. "You can't honestly be thinking of..."

"That's exactly what I'm thinking of, Hermione," Harry said in a calm, conversational manner as though he weren't stomping down a hallway and his jaw weren't clenched. He turned around and looked back at the empty hallway. Malfoy and his wife couldn't be far. He turned back and started running.

Hermione stared wordlessly at Harry's back for a few moments, speech and motion abandoning her.

Ron was looking at her confoundedly, not sure what to do - follow Harry and risk her wrath or stay with her and still risk her wrath.

"...Harry, you can't be serious, you'll get yourself killed!" Hermione hollered before breaking into a run, Ron keeping up behind her.

"Constant Vigilance!" Harry yelled at the snoozing Fat Lady. "Hey! Wake up, lady, and let me through!"

Ron and Hermione caught up, and Hermione wasn't finished with him. "Harry, you're not going to the Malfoys' manor! I can't believe you pretended like that!" She spoke as though she had thought Harry had never shown any capability to deceive, and perhaps Harry might not be as straightforward as he used to be.

Harry thought if Dumbledore could be manipulative then so could he. He spun around so swiftly, it caught both Ron and Hermione by surprise, and with his green eyes gleaming with a spirited, unwavering determination, they both appeared as though they knew it was all lost before Harry even opened his mouth.

"I'm going to Malfoy Manor whether you're coming with me or not." He turned around again and banged on the surface of the portrait, right on her fat face. "Constant Vigilance!"

The Fat Lady mumbled something before a suspicious sound came from her portrait after she moved a little in her sleep, at which Hermione's jaw dropped at her lack of modesty, something which she clearly thought should have been observed even during sleep and in such ghastly hours.

"Constant Vigilance!" Harry roared, and finally the Fat Lady jumped out of her uninhibited nap, sweeping open as she harrumphed about obnoxious and wanton teenagers. Harry immediately flew into the common room and up the stairs, Ron right behind him, but Hermione got as far as the foot of the stairs, where she dug her heels into the carpet and crossed her arms across her chest. Her lips were pressed upon each other so hard that they seemed to disappear altogether.

"Harry James Potter, you are not going to Malfoy Manor! It's too dangerous, Harry, why do you have to always save some damsel who's always in distress!"

Harry proceeded into the fifth year boys' dormitory, catching a growl of frustration from Hermione below, and went for his trunk.

Ron hovered between Harry and the door. "Harry, mate, you can't be serious. Malfoy Manor? It's probably a bloody gothic manor with chains and dungeons and its own lightning and ghosts and house-elves and...! Look, you don't have to do this, Dumbledore will sort all of thi--"

"Don't you dare tell me about Dumbledore right now!" Harry hissed furiously, as his hands threw item after item out of his trunk, uncaring if he woke the others. Then his arm froze abruptly behind him in throwing Useless Magic over his shoulder, and he looked up at Ron. "Are you coming with me?"

Ron's face vacillated for a few seconds before a resigned sigh pushed his shoulders down.

Harry didn't even need to hear the answer, but he continued searching for what he was looking for in his trunk while out of the corner of his eye seeing Ron preparing himself as well. His heart then gave a constricting thump; hey were actually doing this. Now that his adrenaline level was slightly lowered by his throwing things out of his trunk with satisfying carelessness and at the duration of Ron's silence as he decided whether or not to come with him, it actually hit him what he was deciding to do.

They could be killed. They actually stood a chance to face Lord Voldemort. Harry felt a slight whisper of fear ghost around his throat, and he tried to shake it off. Could he risk his friends and himself dying for Draco Malfoy, 'snot-rag git' who had taunted them relentlessly for the teachers' supposed favouritism towards them, as well as their very bloodlines and overall worth, all in a very colourful language, mind? Draco might have been refined in his more sedate moments, when Harry and friends weren't within his vicinity, but Harry knew he could still wield a good stock of expletives upon notice and still readily throw his head back in laughter at someone's expense.

These sedate moments were mostly when he was not surrounded by his fellow Slytherins. In the rare occasion when they found him alone, Draco would then seem to be less... expressive, less obvious, less... less Malfoy, Harry guessed, and more... more like the Draco of his dreams. It hit him just like that as he thought about it. He had never seen it like that.

In the few times he and Ron would accompany Hermione to the library, Malfoy would sometimes be there, and he wouldn't even look their way to dignify Ron's scowl and his own admittedly similar expression. What about the Saturday when he and Ron were going down to the Quidditch pitch and found Malfoy just sitting there, looking at who knew what? He hadn't said anything to them, much less looked at them.

Furthermore, perhaps less rarely, when Malfoy had traversed the corridors alone, he would scarcely approach them - which was probably an automatic thing to do, subconsciously as well, possibly - without his bodyguards. Most of the time he'd toss a particularly stinging remark across his shoulders them as they passed, and this would undoubtedly elicit a reaction from them, and in that brief exchange, Draco seemed to be... to be... to look smaller, finer, smoother. He would be more... he would be sharper - his eyes would be ready, silver bullets, his stance would be more forward, more engaging, and his speech would be more subtle, articulate, and clipped. Perhaps this was when Draco was himself the most, perhaps it was when he was the least guarded (pun intended), perhaps there were two different people there, or perhaps Harry was just hoping for all of that...

Reinvigorated by this new revelation, incurring its accompanying embarrassment, and feeling that he was doing something somewhat more honourable, Harry pulled out his Invisibility Cloak and Sneakoscope. They were going to save Draco, then, not Malfoy; they were going to save that almost insultingly beautiful boy from that disgusting thing that was a definitive insult to humanity. Before shutting the lid, his eye was shaved by a silver gleam - he lifted the lid up again and reached down the trunk to grasp around the hilt of Sirius' dagger. He studied the ornate weapon with hasty awe, not really knowing how it would play a role in his mission. He claimed it either way and quickly shut the lid of his trunk.

He came to his feet, and his adrenaline-soaked blood surged back to his legs again. He urgently strode to his bed and plucked his wand out from under the pillow he hadn't the mind to grab before going to Dumbledore's office for some reason. He was developing a dangerous tendency to do that, he realized, but he couldn't mentally berate himself because at that moment, his brain began diligently producing harrowing images of Draco's alabaster, marble body being defiled in the sickest of ways.

As though on cue, Ron finished his packing at that moment as well. He was carrying his wand, cloak, and a few useful items from Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. Their paths converged as they made to the door. Harry took the lead and powered down the stairs, determined to ignore and pass Hermione when he got to the bottom.

Hermione's jaw dropped. "You're actually serious..." she breathed as they passed her, apparently having expected them to remain upstairs. Snapping out of her dream-like state of disbelief, she followed them to the portrait hole. "Harry, Ron! What on earth has gotten into you two! Ron!"

Harry would have felt bad for Ron being torn apart like this right now, but he really wasn't thinking straight, and his thoughts were strictly on Draco and getting him away from Voldemort, Just... just get him away, get him safe... please. For one, stunning moment before he broke into a run without warning Ron, he thought about why on earth he was actually doing this, how much he was risking, and just what he was actually doing, and in that same instance, he had all the answers to those questions.

The shorter, raven-haired figure hurtled down the corridor, the other, taller redhead keeping up with long, gangly legs. As the two ran past each portrait, the faces cursed with increasing creativity along the corridor.

"Harry, Ron! Wait! I'm coming!"

Even from this far, Harry could hear the furious muttering that followed those words, which probably went to the tune of, "Can't believe I'm actually going on this futile rescue operation! Honestly! Three school kids! Ridiculous!"

Ron held back a little for her, shooting a covert glance at Harry, who, however, wasn't going to wait - he streaked down the corridor, his dark school robe billowing snappishly behind him in a manner of which Snape would have been proud... or perhaps not... From behind him, he heard Ron hissing something behind him to Hermione. Then, in apparently renewed haste, her footsteps stomped louder and faster in the hallway. Harry was immensely tempted to snarl secretively at her right them. The two of them, Harry and Ron, turned corner after corner before slowing down near the Entrance Hall. Sneaking up to the doors, Harry and Ron were finally joined by Hermione, together with her heavy, irritating pants; why didn't she just do some lung exercises with those huge tomes of hers?

Harry pushed the large doors open, and there, an unmistakeable beacon - in the black distance, the tell-tale sign of platinum-blond hair, now swinging furiously from side to side in Malfoy's haste. A dizzying wave of relief slammed into him, but it was soon survived by panicked urgency, as the two small figures were rapidly approaching the school gates. "Let's go!" he hissed at his friends, before running down the grounds in a crouch, and he heard their footsteps following him from behind. Before diving behind the glass wall of one of the greenhouses, to say he was overwhelmed by panic would be an understatement when he saw just how close the Malfoys were to the gates; heart arrested mid-beat, Harry flung all reason out of the window and ran for the two bobbing heads of blond hair into the low distance.

"Harry!" he heard Hermione hiss behind him, possibly about his new, reckless abandon. He didn't care - he needed to get to those two. As he ran in a half-crouch, he pulled his Invisibility Cloak and whipped it around himself, but remembering the times when he used to do this with his friends, all three of them hiding under this Invisibility Cloak, his feet faltered contritely, and his body twisted around. Ron was catching up with him quickly, and Hermione was trailing behind but keeping up next to Ron.

Harry slowed down minutely. He didn't know why he was being this independent that night. Perhaps he was going through a personal, internal process. And he also didn't know why he didn't want to talk either. He wished his feet would just get him to the Malfoys already.

Finally, both Ron and Hermione caught up; Harry threw the Invisibility Cloak around them all, and they ran down under it on the stooping pathway in tenuous synchrony to the school gate.

Their collective necks swivelled to the dark, empty hut of Hagrid's as they moved along quickly. They didn't speak about this in the anxiety that suddenly arose at this sight but continued jogging in a crouch, having just enough time to slip out of the school gate after Lucius had opened it to step through with his wife.

They then watched the two Malfoys stand in the road. Lucius Malfoy's gloved hand delved into a pocket of his robes and pulled out what looked to be a thick hairpin with glittering diamond twirling around it from a pearl head, his wife's arms hooked to his one arm.

"Portkey," they all whispered at once.

They very slowly approached and found themselves stepping into an aura of high-class society where it was sometimes overwhelming enough to have one actually believe for a moment that one wasn't worthy of their presence. Harry dismissed this entirely.

However, as fate was never on one's side, they heard the faint beginning of a drawled mutter; Harry's eyes widened in alarm. His hand dived to the hook of Lucius' other arm, damning the consequence of possibly being seen, and his Sneakoscope fell to the floor. Instantly, he felt the pull behind his navel and the accompanying nausea. He felt his lungs being squeezed together with his entire mass and saw the world give way.

Hurtling through a colourful kaleidoscope of blurring structures and whipping scenery, Harry soon found himself in front of huge, wrought iron gates with two 'M's overlaying each other at the top, and a wording under them written in some language. The air was dark and cool, crisp and suspicious. He stared through the gate at the large edifice that graced the earth there:

Malfoy Manor.