Knives Out

The leaves dappled the clearing, confusing the bright day with a verdant glow. When the wind picked up, the flora broke the silence with a subtle susurration. The trio plus Hagrid stood together; Hermione mouthed the words of the clues she'd picked up about the Horcrux. "Wait in the silence of the third clearing of the forest forbidden. Only the pure among you shall pass the test."

Ron's fingers flexed over his wand. Pure. Ron was the only pureblood amongst them. He was more frightened than he would let on, but ground his teeth to bear it.

When the proud, ivory beast's golden horn first struck out from amongst the bushes, Hermione gasped. "Surely not."

Harry looked between his friends and then back to the unicorn. Voldemort had fed on the blood of these creatures, and he was using them to guard his prize. Helga Hufflepuff's cup. Or so he wagered it would be. It was the last that was left. What an ironic twist that someone so vulgar would leave his soul with something so untainted as a unicorn-- something that he'd preyed upon to extend his life. He supposed it had been a last-ditch attempt to leave something of him at least close to the school.

How he'd goaded a unicorn to protect it was beyond Harry. It was a secret that died with him.

Stepping forward, Ron tried the greeting he knew would work with Hippogriffs. He bowed and waited. Hagrid kept unusually silent. Ron took it for a tacit agreement that he was doing the right thing. The bow was not returned. Instead, the animal stepped forward and pressed its horn to Ron's sternum, forcing him to stumble back.

"Pure," Hermione whispered. She looked nervously at Harry and then up to Hagrid, who nodded back down to her. Blushing faintly, she placed her hands on Ron's shoulders and pulled him back.

"What?" Ron looked alarmed and then down at Hermione, furrowing his brows. "I'm a pureblood!"

"It's not that kind of pure, Ron. It meant virginal." Hermione's flush radiated.

Ron gestured helplessly to Harry, and felt his own face light up. "But I'm..."

Hagrid cleared his throat. "Needs to be a maiden. Er... a girl, ye know."

"Oh." Ron stepped out of the way and next to Harry. Neither boy looked at one another.

Hermione tiptoed closer to the unicorn. The beast lowered its head to her, sinking to the weedy undergrowth in a proud bow. When her fingers first touched the silken, slightly damp nose, there was a flash of light and on the ground sat the untarnished cup of Hufflepuff. "Thank you," Hermione whispered, patting along the animal's elongated snout. She knelt down and picked the cup up.

There were a series of loud cracks and standing before them was none other than Voldemort, flanked by several masked and hooded followers. Immediately, the unicorn raised and turned its head to the serpentine man. Its eyes went wild before it lowered its head to charge for him, aiming its spiral horn to true to drive him home.

Though regular magic did not work on magical beasts, Voldemort defied magic, defied explanation, defied death itself-- at least today. His spidery hand rose up and then curled in a crushing motion. The movement halted the charging unicorn. It reared up in defiance, legs flailing uselessly before it tipped sideways, silvery foam pouring from its mouth. "Collect them, and my prize," his high, cold voice barked.

Hagrid charged at the Death Eaters as Ron and Harry pulled their wands at the ready. Harry had already spun out two stunner spells before he began shielding himself. He mouthed the words to his spells, but managed to keep them silent and still potent as he dueled one of the masked intruders.

Ron had one of his own fighting with him, but he kept looking to Hermione, who appeared somehow entranced.

Voldemort was staring intently at her, his hand pointed at her. She was staggering closer to him in a daze, her face screwed up with concentration. Hermione was fighting. One arm clenched around the cup, her other hand twitched and tried desperately to move to her wand.

After felling the unusually tall blond man that he had been dueling, Harry turned his attention fully to her struggle. "Hermione!" He pointed his wand at her, only to have a stocky Death Eater trundle away from Hagrid to battle him.

Hearing her name seemed to spur her. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth formed voiceless words. With a hard jerk, she flung the cup towards Harry. It was her last act of defiance before the Imperius took hold and she finished her steps to Voldemort.

Catching the oversized, golden cup, Harry clutched it to his chest. The Death Eater he was fighting sent another wild, purple hex at his chest that was shielded by Voldemort himself. "You fool!" the Dark Lord shrieked. He glared at his minion and then at Harry. His arm tightened around Hermione and all fighting ceased to watch the confrontation. "Give that back if you value your friend's life as much as you claim."

"No, Harry!" Hermione's brown eyes unclouded and she shook her head violently at him.

Ron took the break in action to stun the Death Eater in front of him and his eyes darted between Voldemort and Harry, his expression anguished.

Harry's fingers flexed over Hufflepuff's cup. Glaring into the red eyes and then down into Hermione's frightened brown eyes, he pulled the cup away from his chest, ready to throw it. But even as he tried, it wouldn't budge from his hand. It remained as if glued. "A foolish ploy from a foolish boy," hissed Voldemort. His spidery hand squeezed around Hermione's neck, and the other slid over the top of his head.

"No, you don't understand. I'm not... wait!" Harry cried. His eyes caught on a slight movement from one of the Death Eaters, one with beady, black eyes and a curtain of black hair. "WAIT!"

It happened in an instant. Something green emanated from Voldemort's hands and the light faded from Hermione's wide, open eyes. Ron screamed. A white-haired Death Eater gasped and Disapparated. Harry's arm was still outstretched with the intent to throw the cup back to Voldemort. It hung there stupidly as Harry gazed in shock at his best friend dropping to the ground.

Even now, he was too stunned with the swiftness of her end to think anything beyond that she'd died a virgin.

Voldemort was but a precious few paces from him when a blur of white streaked across Harry's vision. Then his arm was dragging him until his hand hit something solid. There was a loud crash, the crunch of wood and metal and Voldemort was again screaming and then he was gone with a loud crack.

Harry looked up his arm. It held an unnatural angle. The cup was crushed against the trunk of the tree, his hand under it. Poking through it was the spiraled, golden horn of the unicorn. The animal sputtered one last time, and then its body collapsed, held up like a morbid marionette by its horn that had destroyed Voldemort's Horcrux.

After a series of loud cracks that signaled the exit of the remaining Death Eaters, Harry was surprised to hear shouting coming from Ron. Who was he arguing with? Though his mind and body were in shock, he managed to fix his sight on Ron. He held an unmasked Death Eater by the front of his robes. Theodore Nott-- a classmate. Ron's face was a livid red and glistening with flowing tears.

Nott was smirking, laughing-- mocking him. Harry could barely hear what was being shouted, but the last thing he remembered coming from Nott were the words, "Filthy Mudblood."

Of all the Unforgivables, the Killing Curse was the most final and irreversible of the lot. In one instant with a flash of wand and the intent to kill, everything changes. First Hermione, now Nott. He'd watched Nott's face go from malice to shock to a bewilderingly absent expression before he crumpled to the ground.

Harry held his hand up, feeling the swirl of magical water around his hand. He shouldn't have gone back this far into this memory, he'd stowed them away for a reason; they hurt. They brought him back to this time and place where the grass smelled so fresh and new and yet the promise of the sickly sweet death curled at the edge of his senses.

Fast forwarding through the tears, Ron releasing him from the tree, hysterical with loss and terror over what he'd done, he paused briefly over his one-armed embrace with Ron, glaring at the expression on his own face. That moment, the wretched, traitorous moment where he thought that perhaps he had a clear path to pursue Ron-- he'd never hated himself more than at that moment. That wasn't what he was here for, though. Waving his hand, he moved hastily past the awkward kiss and Ron's fit to when they moved on what they would do about Nott.

He watched himself start and whirl around. He went back to watch that moment again, wondering what he was reacting to. A sound in the forest? But that could be anything. He moved the memory back and kept his eyes on Nott from the time he fell back to this point. The body didn't so much as twitch. No, Nott was dead, most definitely dead.

Then came the portion of the night that was truly grotesque. The forest was silent but for the shouts of Diffendo as he and Ron magically dismembered Nott's body and then scored it deep into the earth in several places. By the end of it, he and Ron were sodden in blackish strips of dead blood, blood that someone thought was worth fighting over, but it looked the same to him. Ron was ghoulishly mollified by this task; something that terrified Harry as much as he envied him his certainty. If he'd only known how uncertain Ron really was, maybe it would've been different.

Harry forced himself back out of the memory and stood in front of the Pensieve, staring at the swirling mist of him and Ron cleaning up and collecting Hermione's body to take back to her parents. Stirring his wand into the mixture, he culled the memory back and poured it back into the phial and set it in amongst the rest of the war memories he'd removed. He set the rack of phials back into the dusty cardboard box and placed the box amongst the other myriad unopened boxes in his flat.

--

Draco pulled on the cassock and fiddled with the fussy Roman collar. It wasn't unlike formal robes and Harry had a fleeting thought about Draco's formal robes for the Yule Ball. Watching Draco push the tunic down over his thin frame, Harry couldn't help but gape at the mirror image of stoic beauty of his artificial cleric.

"Stop staring at me like a love-sick altar boy, it's unnerving." Draco turned around and smirked at Harry.

"That's not usually how it works, you know." Harry leaned against the doorway and leered.

"Oh, did I put it on wrong?" Draco looked down at the buttons. "I feel like I should do a Snape impression. Fifty points from Gryffindor, for gaping!"

Harry stifled a giggle and rolled his eyes. "No, it's on right. I just meant that usually it's the clergy molesting the altar boys, not the other way around. So, are we going to reenact someone else's bad fantasy about what I might let Snape do to me if he and I were left alone? Are you going to bend me over your desk and take me like a naughty Gryffindor, Professor?"

Draco sniffed, appearing haughty. "And here I thought all of that unresolved sexual tension was just for me."

"Only the terribly deluded would think that I would have anything to do with that foul, greasy git." Harry leaned in, wrapping his arms around Draco's frail waist and kissed along his jaw line. He tried not to think about how odd it was that Draco was with Snape that way. The thought was repellant. The man had clearly taken advantage of Draco and dragged him into this situation that had left him at odds with the Ministry.

Furthermore, he'd probably really killed Dumbledore in cold blood, but had Draco so twisted up with thoughts of-- "You're thinking about him right now, aren't you?" Draco huffed.

"He wishes." He had to restrain himself from mauling Draco on the spot; perhaps thinking of Snape really was a good idea. Harry pulled back and looked over Draco's pallid face.

"Don't flatter yourself. He got someone much prettier than you."

Harry had a hard time determining whether Draco was teasing him or behaving like a jealous ex-lover. Either way, it ended his fascination with the Draco-as-vicar look, and Harry dropped his arms and stepped back. "You don't hear me complaining."

Draco looked apologetic. Then he brushed past Harry to the living area. "Anyway, I need to sneak in and see if there's anyone I can Polyjuice into there. I'm entirely too pretty to just walk in like this. They'll know I'm not clergy right off."

"You have Polyjuice?"

"Oh yes, loads of it, and several glamour spells if I get stuck." Draco somehow managed to get paler, looking as if he'd said something he shouldn't have.

Harry looked suspicious, but before he could say anything, Draco kissed him hard and toyed with the front of his pyjama pants. "I won't be gone long. I'm just going to nip down and be back quickly. This'll keep for me, right?"

"I can go with you," Harry whispered, canting his hips into Draco's palm.

"Only one cassock. Besides, they'll be looking for us together. It's minimal risk, I'm not even going to go in. If I can't get a proper sample outside of the church, then I'll just nick some Muggle's hair." Draco snuck his hand under the elastic and Harry's breath caught at the smooth but chilly hand gliding over his cock. He'd encircled it and twisted his wrist as he moved his hand up and down the shaft.

"You said you were going undercover today..." Harry groaned and rested his weight against Draco.

"I'm not ready yet, obviously. I need hair samples before I can do this. I promise you, this is just a short trip. I'll go in more fully next week."

"Still sounds... risky... fuck." Resting his forehead against Draco's Harry tried not to be seduced into letting him go alone. He had just decided to return the favour to Draco to see how he liked having to make decisions with a brain drained of blood when he felt the flat of Draco's palm circling over the tip of his cock. Harry grabbed Draco's shoulders for balance at the flurry of feeling.

"I am a risky fuck." Draco's breath was warm against Harry's ear, almost as effective as the two way massage on his cock.

"I want to fuck you." Harry squeezed Draco's shoulders, and he tried to steer him to the bed, but Draco's footing was surer than his, so he simply leaned forward to avoid being moved.

"I know you do, and I want you to... when I get back." Draco kissed Harry deeply, his hands speeding up, rolling the tip of his prick at the foot of his palm; his other hand pulled faster, reading Harry's whimpering pleas.

Harry explored Draco's mouth, testing teeth, tasting the musky sweet of tea on his tongue. He huffed into Draco's mouth as he felt the stirring of his body, each nerve on edge, needing, wanting release. He opened his eyes, watching Draco's face, pinched with determination as he kept his motions consistent. The effort brought Harry off as much as that look did.

He was relenting, caving to Draco's demands, but surrender felt sweet as his pyjama pants became warm and wet and stuck against him when Draco's hands shifted. Draco smirked at Harry in that cocksure way that nearly infuriated him into another erection. But Draco's hands were slowing and stilling and soon after were withdrawn altogether.

Draco held up his sodden palm and after giving the sort of naughty look that would fuel wank fantasies for the rest of Harry's life, he cupped his tongue along his hand to scoop up as much of Harry as he could. He let his tongue linger a moment to show the full measure of come he'd licked up and then retracted it and swallowed.

Harry was more than mesmerized by the performance and was about to comment when Draco lapped up another stripe. There was a moment of hard pressure on the back of his neck before Draco was again invading his mouth, this time swishing Harry's come freely. He was already twitching to get hard again, but Draco backed up and smirked as he grabbed a towel to clean his hands. "You won't even be recovered by the time I get back. That's how fast I'll be."

Helplessly, Harry nodded and watched him go, debating whether to toss off while he was gone or to let Draco get him hard again when he got back. The second option sounded more fun.

--

Draco hadn't been gone long when he heard a tapping at one of the windows. Peering outside, he saw the dull grey owl that the Ministry favoured for delivery. He opened the window after snatching some treats from the cupboard. Finally, word from Tonks. He broke the binding seal, and the magic recognised Harry and resolved to a proper letter.

Harry,

I have not been able to secure a face-to-face with Nott. He's been rather sketchy and difficult to get a hold of lately. He said he was going deep undercover, whatever that means. I realize it's futile to ask you again why you are so anxious to meet with him, but let me just say this; he is one of the good guys, Harry. I know you've had your doubts when people have said this to you, but whatever happened to him in the Death Eaters really changed him.

Hope that helps,
Tonks

Harry had to pause to roll his eyes. Yes, changed him from alive to dead. Glancing the rest of the pro-Nott missive, he set it aside to think. Something was niggling at him, creeping in on the corners of his consciousness. He thought about Draco's admission to having Polyjuice just moments before. But how would that help, really? To use Polyjuice, you had to have hairs from the person you were going to turn into. He and Ron hadn't left bits of Nott around, and besides, no one knew that Nott was dead but them. Still, he had a gut feeling, and those... were often wrong, but were nearly always worth investigating.

Feeding the owl another treat to keep it there, he wrote Tonks back asking her to meet him for lunch at the deli they'd gone to before. It would mean putting off his sexcapade with Draco for an hour or so, but he rationalized that Draco would need rest after his adventure anyway. Draco would keep, but Harry promised himself to keep this meeting with Tonks as brief as possible.

--


"Oi, you're rather knives out today, aren't you Harry?" Tonks toyed with her salad. Her hair was a brilliant blood-orange red, but fell to her shoulders in an otherwise unremarkable hairdo.

"It just doesn't add up." Harry blew on his soup and then took a bite.

"You just have to see it from the Ministry's perspective. Malfoy did give us loads of key information regarding who was and was not a Death Eater; he refused to cooperate when it came to Snape."

"But isn't it throwing the baby out with the bathwater to believe him on all counts by one? To allow that to keep him from employment? Or believability?"

Tonks speared some lettuce and brought it to her mouth but then dropped it again. "Harry, Snape killed Dumbledore. That little fact alone has been enough to get you arsed off enough to leave the room when it was brought up in the past. It still gets certain members of the Ministry riled, and that's why Malfoy has no viability within it. Whatever reasons Malfoy has for not testifying against him just don't fly there. I wouldn't think it would fly with you, either. We all hate that Snape's not only gotten away with it, but has now taken over Hogwarts. I think many people blame Malfoy for that happening. I know you did in the past, too. What happened?"

Setting down his spoon, Harry furrowed his brows. "All right, I'm not saying that he made the right choice. But if he has evidence of another dark uprising, I don't understand why the Ministry would ignore it just because it came from Malfoy."

"Because the Ministry doesn't understand why he'd go from disinterest in justice when it comes to Dumbledore's murder to wanting to save Muggles-- he would have nothing to gain by doing that sort of detective work."

Harry perked a brow. "And Nott does?"

"Nott is hoping to mitigate his war crimes and avoid time in Azkaban. The Ministry understands that reasoning. Sudden altruism coming from the man keeping secrets about a cold-blooded murderer is a harder sell." Since Harry fell silent, Tonks picked her fork up and dug into the salad again.

"It doesn't strike you as odd that Malfoy came to you with this same information first?" Harry continued with his soup slowly as he worked this out in his head, the same information from two dark wizards, the email to Tonks that Draco tried to blow off...

"The Notts and Malfoys were on par with one another. Family friends. Maybe Malfoy shared the information with Nott and Nott saw a way to use it to his advantage." She shrugged.

Except that Theodore Nott is dead. "That's all well and good, family friends and such, but answer me this, why would Malfoy tell Nott about it if he weren't concerned? And why would he bother gathering the information in the first place if it wasn't to his advantage?"

Tonks paused and furrowed her brows. "I... don't know."

At least now Harry knew why Draco was transforming into Nott to do this. Now it just became a matter of how he managed it since Nott was long gone.

--

Harry decided to walk most of the way back to Draco's flat, mulling what he'd learned and just what he was going to say about it. It hurt that Draco hadn't trusted enough to tell him what he was up to with being Nott, but then, he kept circling back to how it didn't seem to matter.

He was no stranger to how ineffectual the Ministry was, but a church full of zombified Muggles seemed pretty compelling. Yet, beyond assigning Tonks to take the information, they didn't appear to be interested.

He was no stranger to how easy it was to bribe Ministry officials either.

While the matter of Polyjuice was easy enough, what stuck in Harry's mind, what he intended to ask Draco, was how he was getting hair for the potion. It might require him revealing just how dead he knew Nott to be-- unless he wasn't. Outside of Ron murdering someone else who was using the potion, he didn't see how it was possible.

But then, Nott was missing pretty much from that day on. Could Nott have been so wily as to allow someone else to become him for that short time and then remained consistently hidden since then? Sadly, Harry couldn't remember that much about Nott to know if he was even capable of such sophisticated deception. Nott was truly undistinguished when it came to schooldays. Only Draco could answer that question.

That one and how he managed to change from Nott to himself so quickly in the club bathroom. Was Nott alive and doubling with him sometimes, or did the potion wear off at a lucky moment? Then again, given the shock of what he saw and how overwrought he'd been at Draco shagging someone else, he couldn't say for certain that he'd looked hard enough to detect glamours.

Yes, he had loads of questions for Draco, and he wasn't going to allow him to slip out of answering this time.

Harry burst into Draco's flat and shouted for him. There was no acrid scent of bile, so at least he wasn't sick. He was pleased that he would be able to give Draco a proper questioning, even if he had to wake him.

Except that Draco wasn't in his bed, nor was he at his computer, in the kitchen or the bathroom. The flat looked untouched since he'd left it to talk to Tonks. No food was missing as far as he could tell. Harry checked the linen closet in the bathroom and felt something curdle in his stomach. His potions were all there, including a fresh row of Polyjuice. Wherever Draco was detained, he obviously hadn't meant to be gone this long.

He stared at the closed door. Draco had gone to the church to pluck a hair from an Inferi. He'd gone to the church for a quick trip that theoretically shouldn't have taken more than a couple of hours and he still wasn't back. Throwing open the door again, he grabbed as many of his curative potions, praying that Draco was still alive to take them. He left some in the closet in case he was overreacting and Draco would be home soon. He shoved them into his right pocket and then a few Polyjuice potions into his left in case he could infiltrate the church.

Draco had left in the cassock. No matter, he'd deal with a disguise when and if it came to that. He was still a decent dueler (he hoped) and could probably force his way out if he had to. Harry was going to find out where Draco was, and if someone had taken his life prematurely, they would pay. He shoved out the door, slamming and hexing it shut.