What Shakes The Elephant

What Shakes The Elephant

Chapter 9 – Mapping A Black Hole

Draco slept fitfully for the seventeenth night in a row. Or perhaps it was the eighteenth. He had lost count of how many nights had gone by where he thought of nothing but his mother’s inexplicably failing health as he chased a psychological salvation for his problems. He found himself running down endless corridors after some unseen cure that he knew, he KNEW must be just beyond his grasp.

And every time, the moment he came close to wrapping his long fingers around the bottle or vial or whatever it was, he found himself running headlong into Potter and crashing down into some misshapen lump, falling through endless sky towards some spiraling darkness.

And each and every time, without fail, he woke up gasping for breath and heaving in a cold sweat. Hydra never rose from her sleep but Draco knew she was paying attention. He knew she paid attention to everything that he did. Far too closely.

But Draco paid no mind to that. He couldn’t yet identify her motives. He had no idea what she was after at this point. He gave her everything she could want already. Except, perhaps, his heart. Yet somehow Draco doubted that she really wanted that.

It didn’t matter. He had more important things to worry about.

He got out of bed, donned his black silk robe and walked out of the bedroom towards his own private study. Once inside, he locked the door and retrieved his favoured bottle of cognac from the shelf and poured himself a glass. If he returned to bed with the stench of alcohol on his breath, he was sure that Hydra would have something to say about it, but at the moment, Draco did not care.

“Fuck it,” he shot hoarsely at no one and downed the whole glass. He let the slow burn of the liquid ravage his throat and settle pleasantly in his stomach before pouring himself another glass.

He stared at the bookshelf in front of him and grimaced at the numerous titles that lined the shelves. “Advanced Guide to Inventing Your Own Antidotes”, “Purebloods and Prejudice”, “The True Meaning of Purity”, “Middle Age Magic: A Guide To Curses Originating From the Middle Ages”, and the list went on to name book after book that he’d scoured and search and to find what?

ALL of them, USELESS.

Draco snarled at the bookshelf and let his head hang, his silver-blonde locks tumbling down in waves before his face. His bare chest heaved as he lay back in the armchair, staring at the books but seeing something far past them.

He was mentally reliving the events of earlier in the week. Reliving everything that had happened since that day that Harry Bloody Potter had decided they should be friends.

Potter had shown up in Draco’s office, bright and early on Monday morning. He was pouring over an old volume about Ancient Pact Magic when Potter waltzed in, much like he had a day prior, as though he owned the damn place. Draco was forced to “accidentally” knock over a stack of papers on his way to greet the man in order to cover the pages he was reading.

“Malfoy, I need your help,” he had told Draco without any prompt or beating around the bush. Draco had nearly allowed his jaw to drop to the floor and ask him to repeat the sentence when Potter continued speaking. “I need to go through the archives of patient history at St Mungo’s for the last century or two.”

At this point, Draco didn’t drop his jaw but his eyebrows, while unattended, made a run for his hairline and widened his eyes much more than he usually liked.

“And why is that, Potter?” he had asked, unable to formulate any of the other questions that were flying through his mind. Potter pulled out a letter form his pocket.

“For my assignment,” he had stated simply. “It’s research. I need to see the records regarding purebloods, specifically. That should narrow it down quite a bit, considering many of the family lines died out more than two centuries ago, at least in respect to their pure blood.”

Draco felt like he was in a dream. Harry Potter was not supposed to know a damned thing about purebloods. Why was he researching this? Why was he asking Draco for help? Why did this matter at all to any investigation the Ministry might have assigned him?

“And what makes you think I can just hand over confidential records?” he had pressed, crossing his arms over his chest. Potter handed him the letter this time.

When Draco opened it, he found himself reading a letter of permission signed by Kingsley Shacklebolt himself. It awarded Potter access to all confidential Ministry files that bore relation to his task.

“I have to investigate the recent deaths of pureblooded wizards,” Potter had finished as soon as Draco looked up. “Many of them have been dying lately, I’m sure you’ve realized. I need to find out why.”

Draco’s heart both fluttered and sank like a poorly proportioned baby bird learning to fly. He had taken quite a few moments to answer Potter’s request. He couldn’t very well refuse the Minister. He was given no choice, but what irked him was that Potter had no reason to reveal his assignment to Draco, yet did so anyway.

“And once I give you access to the vaults,” Draco had begun. “You’ll Obliviate me?”

“No,” he had replied airily, following Draco as he led Potter down to the archives.

“Why not?” he had found himself asking, as though Potter was going to give him a straight answer.

“Because you are going to help me,” the man admitted. Draco had stopped dead in his tracks to actually look at his former-enemy, just to assure himself that it was not, in fact, a dream.

“Potter,” he had whispered. “That is quite against the rules of your post, you realize.”

“I do,” Potter had told him determinately. “Though you should know better than anyone, Malfoy, that I set no particular store by the rules.”

Draco had no way to argue that and found himself wanting desperately to smirk and laugh. But it was not the moment. It was not time for them to get closer. It was a business affair and business was not meant to involve socializing.

So Draco had led Potter down into the archives and stopped in the massive, cavernous room, lighting the whole thing at once for effect. It was stacked as high as it could possibly go with filing cabinets along filing cabinets full of hundreds of years’ worth of patient history. Draco smirked at that moment while he watched the overwhelmed expression draw itself gradually on Potter’s face as his eyes followed the line of the rows.

“Bloody hell,” he had said. “The Ministry really should have invested in computers.”

“What was that?” Draco had asked, unable to understand the cryptic comment Potter had made.

“Nothing, never mind,” he brushed it off. Potter had begun wandering down one of the aisles like a lost child in a grocery store. He had craned his neck back so that his eyes could attempt to trace the tops of the filing cabinets. “How the hell am I supposed to get through all of this?”

Draco loved this part.

“You don’t,” he sighed as though it must have been obvious. “These are just the hard copies of the files. For several purposes. There is a magical database over here.” Without waiting for Potter to join him, he had walked down to the right of the aisles and stopped in front of a curved table with ornate legs and a sprawling blackboard upon its top. There was a Quick-Notes Quill off to the side of the table with a stack of parchment.

“What’s this?” Potter had asked, looking at the different objects.

“The database,” Draco had told him. “You tap your wand to the chalkboard and verbally identify your search. It will bring up the documents you need.”

“Sounds like the internet,” Potter had murmured but Draco found it best to ignore incomprehensible comments like these.

Potter tended to make a lot of them.

“In any case,” he went on. “Just name the family you wish to start with and it will bring you a list of the records for whatever dates you need.”

“Great,” he had exclaimed excitedly. “Let’s get started.”

“Let’s?” Draco had repeated, stunned and rather unimpressed. He would have thought that divulging this little resource to Potter might convince him that he did not need Draco’s help after all. He was wrong.

“You are going to help me,” he had stated calmly, brushing some of his unruly black hair from his face. “I don’t necessarily know what I’m looking for and I’m sure you know your own department better than I do.”

“I find myself longing for the days when you insulted me,” Draco had told him listlessly. “Rather than feed me empty compliments to bribe me into helping you.”

“I’m sure we’ll get back to that eventually,” Potter had replied without looking up. “You and I never stay civil for too long.” He tapped his wand to the chalkboard and it sprang to life, a white word scrawling along the top to read ‘Query?’ Potter turned back to Draco. “Something about Gryffindors and Slytherins just isn’t compatible, I think.”

Draco said it before he could bite his tongue.

“Usually,” he hissed darkly. “The saying goes ‘opposites attract’, I believe.”

Potter had given him a brief and very unusual look that Draco could not manage (even now) to decrypt.

But he had sat himself down to help Potter, nonetheless.

“Is your mother doing any better?” Potter had asked a few minutes into their research. Draco shook his head.

“No, still the same,” he found himself answering mechanically as though it was the most natural conversation in the world.

And through that, despite what Draco might have told himself, Potter had instigated more conversations into their personal lives and they had slowly begun to treat one another as friends.

Slowly. And sort of.

Friends who still refer to one another by their surname, anyway.

That was two weeks ago and about the time the dreams started plaguing Draco’s sleep.

They had started by looking at the records of the Black family. “Because of Narcissa’s current state”, Potter had told him. They went through years of deaths and causes and everything and tried to link together the typical and atypical patterns that they found, but Draco knew it was pointless.

He knew details of what was similar between the deaths and what was different so well because he’d done this before. So many times, he’d done the research to see if it had somehow changed and wishing, every time, that he had missed something.

And through the research, Draco found himself desperately looking forward to going to work every day. He found that he didn’t care about the other tasks that he would occasionally have to steal himself away to deal with. He wanted to do nothing more than stay in that dusty old room looking over death and medical records with Potter for hours.

When Potter was alone, he was different. He was humorous and coy and he was easy. He bent himself nicely to Draco’s moods and they managed to learn little details of one another in just two weeks. Just two weeks.

They still fought, but even when they did, Draco found himself inexplicably drawn to Potter. He relished in the rows and almost found himself purposely causing them.

“Why are you late?” he would ask Potter when he arrived a few minutes past the usual eight o’clock. “Did your wife pop out another child?”

It was harsh and insulting and Draco never actually meant it the way he said it but he knew it would get a rise out of Potter and he loved to argue back and forth.

Eventually, Potter took to shooting back equally insulting comments just to even the score.

“At least I can still bed my wife, Malfoy,” he would sneer. “Perhaps Hydra is just afraid to get pregnant because of what you might name the child. What’s the next name on the list? Ursa Major or Ursa Minor?”

And Draco loved it. He inexplicably sought it all the time and when Potter was gone he felt bored and disinterested.

And yet he could not deal with the dreams. He did not want to get this close to Potter. This was far too close. He was at a distance where he felt as though he was toeing the line between friendship and something further. Something that Draco simply did not feel for anyone.

He had no intention of jumping headlong into uncharted waters but spending all this time with the Potter that he wished he had known in school was making things hard.

What was worse is that Draco continued an inner battle with himself. It raged again and again, every moment they sat before the magic chalkboard and looked at the same dates of death and causes day after day. Harry could find little to link them. He would ask for Draco’s opinions over and over but every time Draco bit his tongue.

Because he knew exactly what it was that linked them but he fought himself on the rights to tell Potter.

A part of him wanted to throw caution to the wind and offer up the information as a kind of gift, hoping that if he did, Potter would revere him for it and seek more closeness. Hoping that if he could give it to him, perhaps Potter would smile at him the way he did when he talked of his family. Or perhaps he could share in that close friendship that the Weasel had taken for granted for so many years.

He wanted to be in that inner circle where Potter believed that he could trust Draco with anything. Trust him enough just to speak his name.

And then the other part of him would rage and fight back tooth and nail to shake some sense into him. That part would remind Draco that he was acting like a foolish schoolboy and letting his flawed fantasies run away with him. Life couldn’t be like that. It never would. Why should he keep dreaming?

He should be the one to find the solution. It was part of his job. It was for his own honour. It was for his career, for his reputation, but most importantly, for his mother. And he would not let Potter steal his thunder once again and make himself into the revered hero that the world worshiped. He would take the title for once, friendship and deepest desires be damned.

Then, again, the other voice would speak and throw Draco into a never ending spiral of anger and self-loathing. And again he would pick up the bottle and take another drink. Why? Because it seemed like the adequate thing for a thirty-six year old man in politics to do when trying to deal with stress.

“But it’s not the right thing for a human being to do,” he whined to himself, in a voice unlike his own. “And I’ve run from the right thing so many times before because it didn’t favour me in the way I wanted it to. Maybe it’s about time I stopped running and actually grew up.”

But that side of him never won and he would go to work the next day and keep his mouth shut. He would keep his mouth shut even when he saw the frustration written on Potter’s face and took note of the weariness in his green eyes and even noticed the way he seemed to look more and more weathered with every passing day.

Something was weighing on Potter’s shoulders far more than just his assignment and Draco wanted to be the one he turned to for help. He wanted to help.

Because, contrary to what people often believed, when someone important to Draco was in trouble, he did seek to give them all the support he could.

But no one had ever gotten close enough to Draco for that. His parents were the only two in his life but he only ever supported them once before… in court, at the Ministry after the war.

And after that there was only Scorpius. But Scorpius was a much stronger child than Draco had ever been. At least, he liked to hope.

Even now, Draco didn’t know if he was willing to admit that Potter was meaningful enough to him for that kind of sacrifice.

But Potter would never share crucial details about his family life with Draco. Never. He would share them with Weasley and Granger (who no longer went by that name but Draco found it hard to distinguish her when he said Weasley and Weasley). He would turn to his precious friends who could offer no more help than a toadstool simply because they were there.

Draco growled loudly and hunched over, leaning his head into his hands on his knees and tempting himself to pull out the gossamer tresses that made him recognizable. He almost found tears stinging his eyes when he realized that there was an intensely bright blue-white light in front of him. He sat bolt upright and reached for his wand when he realized it was a shining stag, standing before him.

“Meet me tonight at eight, same place as last time,” the stag said in Potter’s voice before prancing off to disappear into the wall.

Draco looked at the magical grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was five in the morning.

“Guess he hasn’t been sleeping either.”

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A/N: very iffy about this chapter, but hopefully you’ll like it anyway. I like the random snarky comments they make to each other. I’m not sure why. Those comments also happen to be something of my own internal monologue when thinking about the epilogue but anyway, that’s a story for another day.

Hope you enjoyed it! Next chapter in a few hours I think! Love for reviews!!