Memoirs of a Male Escort

Authors Note: Many, many many thanks to my beta Laurel, who is in just as much suspence as you all will be by the end of this chapter. I've already started writing the next one though, so maybe I won't keep everyone on the edge of their seats for too long.

Chapter 20 Shock and Awe

Preparation is the key to success. You have to be prepared for any surprises or problems that may arise. Learn to adlib, learn to keep your cool and learn to maintain a constant air of nonchalance.
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“He’s a boy, he’s just a child and my son’s lover at that,” Narcissa chastised herself silently as the Harry Potter, Minister for Magic and hero of the wizarding world stood nude before her in the parlor. She repeated the words like a mantra while trying to avoid letting her gaze drift lower than Harry’s face.

She kept her lips pursed so as not to let her mouth break into a girlish grin at the sight before her. Not even Lucius had ever stood so casually confident and nude in front of her this way and here was Harry, a virtual stranger by all accounts just standing there in all his naked glory and waiting for her to respond.

A response, yes, but what had he even said?

“Too naked,” she mused to herself. “Harry, why don’t we get you a robe?” she offered and rushed off to fetch him one. She could feel him following behind her and was thankful for the fact that she might escape the day without having seen too much of Harry Potter’s genitalia.

“Here you are,” she cooed, pulling a very feminine black silk and lace robe from her closet and handing it over to Harry, who thankfully put it on right away.

“The wards, Mrs. Malfoy,” Harry repeated from his earlier request. “Did you notice anything off about the wards on the house or on the property?”

“No, no I didn’t, though to be honest when I changed them over to allow you and Draco to share a room they felt a little… fragile. I was going to check on them in the morning, but I should have done it right away it seems,” she lectured herself. The panic of Harry’s words was finally sinking in now that she wasn’t preoccupied by a naked man in her parlor.

Draco had been taken from right under her nose. What kind of terrible mother was she?

“Did anyone else know we were here?” he asked hurriedly as he went into the guest room he and Draco had occupied earlier that night with Narcissa trailing behind him.

“Not a soul. I didn’t even send an owl to Lucius as I usually do so that I wouldn’t be tempted to mention it,” she said. “I knew how important it was that your stay was kept a secret.”

Harry nodded a little more curtly than he normally would have to someone who was allowing him to stay in their home, but he was frantic to find Draco and didn’t know how long he had to rescue him. “I need to get him back, so I need you to search the house and let me know if anything is out of place or moved.”

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As Narcissa rushed off to check the house, Harry went straight for the bed he and Draco had shared, looking for the note Draco had said he left on the pillow. He had thought little of it at the time because it was so plausible he had knocked the note off the bed in his haste to find Draco, but when he had woken up alone in the field, it was one of the first things he thought of once the panic of Draco actually being missing set in.

After a thorough check of the bed and the area surrounding the bed and even two separate summoning spells with a borrowed wand, he still didn’t have a note… which meant that someone else did. Someone had been looking for Draco in their room and instead found a note telling them exactly where he’d be. But why wait until Harry had joined him?

The fact that they waited and probably watched them together was unsettling to him, not because of the voyeurism as much as what it meant that they waited. Either they had significantly underestimated Harry, which would work to his favor, or they had some other connection to him and Draco, which he thought was more likely the answer since no one knew about their staying with Narcissa except a couple of key people in the Ministry.

Harry paced for a moment as he thought through his next move in light of the fact that he couldn’t trust anyone.

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Draco felt awash with a new sort of terror as the hooded figures circled him.

He was bound firmly to a cold wooden chair in the center of a dank and moldy smelling room. There was very little light, but he could faintly make out several oddly shaped boxes stacked against most of the walls. He could see only one rickety staircase leading upstairs, which led him assume that he was in a basement of some sort.

So far he hadn’t been hurt, just stunned into unconsciousness to awaken here, but his clothes had not been returned to him and the way he was tied to the chair left little to the imagination. He got the feeling from the look of the ominous robed forms circling him like a pack of hungry sharks that his time of not being harmed was quickly running out.

He let his mind drift to Harry, who had still been sleeping soundly when they captured him. They had held Harry in his sleeping state with a blackout spell they had cast on him when he nearly stirred awake in time to catch them stealing his lover. No doubt he was worried sick by now and trying to find a way to rescue him, but would he be able to find him? And even if he did, would he get there in time?

The first of the seven crimson robed figures stepped forward, breaking from the circle. “State your name for the Code’s records,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Draco remained silent, looking back and forth between the shadowed forms hoping to glean the identity of even one of them, but he found it impossible to make out any of their faces.

“He asked you to give us your name, Malfoy,” spat another voice; this one was more familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.

“Malfoy?” Draco asked, trying to keep his voice calm and neutral. “I think you have the wrong bloke. My name is Leo, Leo Black,” he told them firmly, though he was fairly certain he hadn’t fooled any of them.

The familiar voice scoffed and slammed a fist into Draco’s jaw, making the former Slytherin rock in his chair as the fear of lasting damage assaulted him. “Always the presumptuous fer-“ he began, but another cloaked figure pulled him back.

“You weren’t supposed to talk,” someone hissed, another unfamiliar voice.

“But,” the other man began to protest until finally sighing and slinking back into the ranks.

“Draco Malfoy,” a new voice continued as if nothing had happened. “You are hereby charged with the murder of Albus Dumbledore, the attempted murder of Ronald Weasley, the maiming of Bill Weasley, the torture of Hermione Granger and the deaths of countless innocent victims, how do you plead?”

“I never did any of that, I’ve never killed anyone!” he protested desperately.

“It may not have been your wand that dealt the killing blow, but those people died because of you and what you believed in. You are a bane on mankind and your life should be snuffed out,” came yet another voice, this one he couldn’t place, though he thought he might have heard it before.

“The entire Malfoy name will be wiped from existence,” another added.

“Might be,” someone else corrected.

“It’s for the judge to decide,” another concurred.

“Still,” said the man who had punched Draco in the jaw. “I feel pretty confident that you’ll hang before the night is over.”

The rest of the group seemed to agree and they began to file out of the room, all but the man who had hit him. “Not a word,” the last of the Code hissed as they left, a warning that the other man waved off casually.

“I can’t believe Harry Potter lets you fuck him,” the man mused out loud. “What is the world coming to when our hero takes it up the arse by a Death Eater?”

“I’m not a Death Eater,” Draco protested. “And I love Harry.”

A sharp sting accosted his cheek as the other man slapped him viciously, sending painful currents through his already throbbing jaw. “What do you know about love?!” he demanded. “What can a foul little git like yourself possibly know about love?”

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Harry knows I love him and he’s the only one I need to prove it to!” Draco spat.

“Are you sure about that?” the man asked mockingly as he leveled his wand at Draco’s chest; Draco only glared back defiantly.

“Bardus Infindo,” the man shouted and a hot beam of red light shot from the wand’s tip penetrating Draco’s flesh, slowly ripping and tearing at his pale skin.

He bit into his tongue drawing blood to keep from screaming out; he didn’t want to give his attacker the satisfaction of hearing him. It took all of his willpower as the spell sliced deep patterns into him that he would have considered elegant had they been decorating something besides his own body.

The cloaked man directed the spell higher and higher until it began to cut into Draco’s throat. He worried momentarily that the man might be intending to bleed him to death right there, but then his concealed attacker moved the slicing charm up to his face and he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.

Draco screamed, releasing a hollow and empty sound that rang through the basement and battered against his own ears as the man with the wand laughed.

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Harry typically avoided Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like being in the school, far from it, he enjoyed walking its expansive halls just as much now as he had when he’d attended classes there. But since the war he always felt that something about the castle haunted him and refused to fade away. It lurked like an evil pestilence in the back of his mind, beckoning him back, but the longer he refused to visit Hogwarts, the easier it was to ignore the draw.

The Elder Wand called to him from Dumbledore’s tomb, and each time he had to visit the school, he managed to evade the pull of it, but today didn’t intend to resist.

He marched up to the tomb with his hand extended and took what was, by an ancient magical right, his property. “Accio wand,” he whispered firmly and when he opened his eyes the weight of the thin pale wand was in his hand. There was no need to desecrate Dumbledore’s grave as Voldemort had done, although it was clear that being the owner of the wand helped him to retrieve it with such ease.

The wand felt both all wrong and so right in his palm as the magic he had been fighting against for years penetrated him. The Code would regret sending him to these extreme lengths and, if he had his way, the Elder wand would spill blood that night, but hopefully only the blood of Draco’s attackers and not the blood of Draco’s murderers.

“Are you certain you know what you’re doing, Harry?” a stern, yet concerned voice asked from behind him.

He turned to lay eyes on his old Transfiguration professor, who was now the Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “No, I’m not. But I have to do something and this seemed to be one of the better options.”

Minerva smiled and pulled Harry into a hug. “I’ll refrain from asking questions and just tell you to be careful. If I hear about you getting hurt…” she shook her head as her words trailed off and she stepped away from Harry and smoothed out his hair.

It was clear that she still saw a small orphan boy when she looked at him, and Harry would always have a warm spot for the motherly Professor McGonagall. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“And I’ll expect you to return that when you’re done,” she remarked, nodding toward the wand. “A thing like that is best kept out of magical hands, whether they be good or evil.”

Harry nodded and turned to leave, waving once last time to his old professor before walking down to the front gates and apperating to his Ministry office.

The door to his office opened at almost the same moment that Harry arrived and Dennis strode in with his clipboard in hand. “Mr. Potter? Is everything alright?”

Harry gave Dennis a calculating stare as he aimed the Elder Wand at his head and performed Legilimency. He probed into the boy’s mind for any clue that might indicate he had anything to do with the Code or Draco’s disappearance, but found nothing.

He sighed in relief. “I’m really sorry about that,” he told the stunned looking boy. “Draco’s been captured and I had to know for certain if I could trust you.”

“How, when?” Dennis asked, ready to scribble down any notes that might later be of help to them.

“He was stolen from me at Narcissa’s house in the middle of the night,” Harry replied, leaving off the bit about actually being in the yard, and being naked and not having been a terribly good protector.

“But that’s… that’s impossible!” Dennis shouted.

“I need to know who knew about our location, I need a list, and we need to narrow it down and quickly,” Harry rattled off.

Dennis sighed and collapsed into Harry’s armchair. “That won’t be necessary sir,” he groaned.

“What? Why?” Harry asked, rounding on him as if he might shake the information from Dennis’s body.

“There was only one other person who knew of your whereabouts,” he sighed. “So I know exactly who it must be.”

“Who?” Harry shouted, clearly not happy with the game of ‘lets only give Harry a fraction of the answer at a time’ that Dennis seemed to be playing.

Dennis grimaced against the upcoming lash of screaming that was bound to come and he squinted up into the ceiling lights, trying to find a way to relay the information to Harry without causing too much damage.

“You’re not going to like it,” he muttered at last, and Harry sat down at his desk, awaiting the bad news.

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It felt like a jolt of lightning had stabbed through Draco’s skull waking him from his coma-like state as two of the hooded figures propped him back up. He could feel a string of drool hanging from his lip and wanted to wipe at it, but clearly the cloaked strangers had no intention of unbinding his hands.

Draco took note of the hushed silence in the room. He thought it must have been due partially to the damage he sustained to his ears during his tortured stay and partially because the robed assassins were being much less vocal than before.

“The Judge has arrived,” a familiar voice announced and the rest fell to one knee as an eighth figure approached.

The new arrival was clothed in similar robes made primarily of the same crimson material as the others, but the cowl and collar on these were a rich black silk with thorny red vines embroidered into the fabric rather than the unadorned crimson of the others. The judge immediately broke the circle and strode toward Draco with gliding steps, halting just shy of him and running a finger across Draco’s pale and bloodied cheek.

Draco could almost see their face, but the darkness was much thicker than the light and he couldn’t quite make it out.

The cloaked figure stepped from the shadows and dropped their deep black cowl, smiling wickedly at their prisoner as Draco’s face clouded over from shock.

“I had a lot of ideas of who could want me dead, but you?” Draco shook his head, blood soaked tendrils slapping against his face. “I never thought you had it in you.”

Authors Note: Let the speculation and the hate mail pour in. Laurel has threatened to count up all my cliffhangers to point out how mean I am. hehehe