Chapter Four of 'Incandescence'- Ire
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Chapter Four-Ire
That was stupid.
Draco sighed and rolled over in his bed, staring at the ceiling and scowling as he lightly kicked at the sheets with one foot. I know that. I don’t need my own brain telling me the same thing over and over again. I’ve thought of nothing else since I left Potter’s office.
Have you considered the implications this is going to have for the story?
Draco sighed again and shut his eyes. He said that he wanted to serve the story, but he had done the worst thing he could as far as that went. After he broke into his office, then Potter would hardly trust him again. Their civilized dinner was a thing of the past. Draco would be lucky if he didn’t get inundated with Howlers tomorrow, or receive several visits from “concerned” Aurors who had heard “rumors” about what he planned to get up to.
Actually, I’m surprised that he didn’t arrest me right away. He has enough clout to do that, and the Ministry probably wouldn’t question it.
Then Draco opened his eyes and shook his head back and forth at himself. “You idiot,” he whispered aloud. “Of course he’s not going to do that. He’s probably worried about what you would tell someone if you did get arrested. You saw that owl arrive in the Fire-Room, and he might suspect that you saw part of the letter itself. All I’d have to do is open my mouth, and the newspapers would find something else to be interested in besides my arrest.”
That changed Draco’s position, although, after a rapid consideration, it didn’t actually cheer him up. Potter would stay away from him with more determination than ever, and probably believe that Draco was just waiting for the chance to betray him. Draco could have wished that Potter would see he had changed since Hogwarts, but because his latest stunt was exactly like one he would have tried to pull during Hogwarts, his hopes in that direction were not sanguine.
I can expect him to regard me as an interloper at best and the parasite he said I was at worst.
Draco sighed. He had rarely apologized to any of his subjects, except when he accidently trod on their most painful memories. This time, though, he knew that he should begin there-although Potter was unlikely to decide that an apology ended the matter. What else could Draco do?
Admit that I’m not the right one to write this book?
His muscles stiffened in rejection, and Draco shook his head, once, twice. No. Leaving this story behind was not an option. He would receive visions of what it could have been for the rest of his life otherwise, and those visions would urge him into attempting it at last. But he would betray his artistic instincts when he tried that, because there was no way the story would be good without input from Potter.
I have to accept that I need him far more than he needs me. He doesn’t seem to need me at all, in fact.
I’ll need to be humble, and I’ll need to begin with an apology, and then I’ll need to do something to make it up to him.
Though I have no idea what that will be yet.
*
Draco surveyed the singed envelope in dismay. Then he looked up at the bedraggled state of Justice’s feathers, and the furious preening the bird was giving himself-something he did only when he’d been severely discommoded-and sighed. It looked as though Potter had cast a fire hex the moment he saw the owl, and so he’d never had the chance to read the carefully penned apology Draco had spent a half hour on that morning.
He’d thought Potter might take some coaxing. He hadn’t expected to simply meet a wall of silence, even after he figured out that Potter was far more concerned with the mysterious letters that he was receiving than Draco.
Draco sat back and ran his fingers through his hair, frowning. Then he shook his head and delved into the proofs of Golden Stories. What had happened between him and Potter was frustrating and it was tempting to sit here and think up solutions until the Muggle Armageddon that Granger had told him about, but he had work to finish. He doubted Angela would be understanding if he told her that he had missed the deadline for the proofs because he was busy breaking into Harry Potter’s office.
Besides, sometimes working on one project put him in the mood to work on another, or at least gave him the chance to think about various ideas subconsciously. The Potter imbroglio was so intractable that that might work this time, as well.
He was in the middle of a story in which he had included Terry Boot as a side character, and pondering the ways that he could show that the character was a bad poet without actually altering one of Boot’s own poems, when he sucked in a deep breath and sat up. Of course approaching Potter as he was at the moment wouldn’t work. His temper burned hot. Draco was inflaming it with each attempt he made to reach him.
Instead, he should begin from another direction. Determine what was and was not common information about Potter, come up with ways to learn what he needed to know, and go from there.
And maybe he could do some research of his own on that mysterious letter.
Draco hadn’t seen that letter for very long, but he was good at noticing details; it was one of the things that made him such an excellent novelist. The writing had been in capitals to make it harder to trace, but, more to the point, it had had two distinct characteristics that probably wouldn’t mean much to someone who didn’t spend the best portion of his life handling ink and parchment.
First, the parchment was the kind that Draco used to compose his manuscripts, and that most of the writers he knew used as well. Thicker than normal, it was intended to stand up to a lot of blotting, scribbling, and crossing out. Sharpened quills could occasionally poke holes in ordinary paper; the creators of Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets had decided against letting that happen.
Second, the ink looked dark on first inspection, but Draco had tilted the letter to the light, and there was a deep lavender tint in it.
Draco didn’t know offhand of anyone who used lavender ink, but he didn’t think it would be that common. And he thought he could probably find it in the same sort of shop that would sell Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets, though he hadn’t looked.
If I can find out who’s sending the letters to Potter, then at least he might see me or write to me out of gratitude. I admit that’s not the best beginning, and it’ll take a long time to solve the mystery and then to sit around waiting for him to decide how he wants to respond.
But Draco was hardly going to starve in the meantime. He had Golden Stories coming out as soon as he and Angela finished a few more rounds of “mistakes-mistakes-who’s-correcting-the-mistakes” and he could always start work on the novel about Ollivander if he must. He was willing to wait as long as it took for the chance to see Potter again and apologize in a way that couldn’t be mistaken as self-serving.
Draco narrowed his eyes as he realized the direction of his thoughts. Since when do I sit around desperately waiting for my subjects to come to me and wagging my tail in pathetic gratitude if one of them glances my way?
It was the rightness that was the answer, of course. The rightness when he watched Potter move in the corridors of the Auror Department. The expression on Potter’s face as he bent over the letter he’d received in the Fire-Room, and how complex those emotions were. Even the way that he looked when cursing Draco’s tongue and how Narcissa had defended him over her own son.
It’s right to wait for Potter. He’s always been unique, after all.
Draco sat there a few more minutes, until he had the courage to admit the truth to himself. And I’ve never messed up as badly with one of my subjects as I did with him.
Strangely, that admission seemed to remove a mental barrier that had been between him and his work, and after that he knew exactly how to adjust the character based on Boot.
*
“Are you ready?” Draco asked Justice, who sat on his shoulder with his body slightly hunched and his feathers fluffed out in protest against the light rain falling. Draco had cast an Impervious Charm almost the moment they stepped out the door, but Justice wasn’t forgiving him for the few drops of rain he’d caught before that. The owl didn’t enjoy Apparating, either. Draco thought he had several bloody bruises under his robes.
Justice gave him a long-suffering glance and then hunched further. Draco said, “You’re to look for a small golden owl. It’ll be heading for Harry Potter. You remember Harry Potter? He was the one who cast a curse at you.”
Justice turned and blinked at him, interest showing.
“Yes,” Draco said, and spent a moment scanning the area in front of him. He was just outside the Ministry, and it wasn’t impossible that someone would catch him. But no one had appeared so far, and Draco didn’t think anyone would. It was shortly after lunch, so everyone would be back at their desks trying to show how industrious they could be. “I want you to capture the little owl and bring its letter to me. You’ll anger Potter by interrupting his post. That would satisfy your desire for revenge, wouldn’t it?” He always made sure to use a gently coaxing tone with Justice, as if the great horned owl were a delicate kitten.
Justice wriggled his tail feathers in excitement. Draco nodded and pressed his gloved hand to Justice’s breast. He stepped up to Draco’s wrist, then launched himself into the air. Draco didn’t think anyone would notice one more owl circling the Ministry, but he Apparated home anyway.
As he settled into the tower, he sent a mental apology to Potter, but he doubted that there was another way to get hold of a letter, especially after he had broken into Potter’s office. If he tried to communicate with Potter-assuming an owl could reach him at all-he would only be certain that Draco was in a conspiracy with the writer, who sounded a nasty bloke.
Draco needed a letter to examine if he was to prove certain theories he had about the possible identity of the writer, who he probably knew, as he knew most people in wizarding Britain’s literary community. So he would use the method that was almost guaranteed to fetch him one without distressing Potter further.
Besides, Potter’s shown no inclination to seek outside help for finding the writer on his own, Draco thought reasonably, as he leaned back and linked his hands together behind his head. He could if he really wanted to. And he probably doesn’t want to receive those letters anyway, as depressed as they appear to make him.
He felt a tiny twinge of guilt, but he buried it by turning back to the last few pages of Golden Stories and patiently replacing all the sentences that Angela had taken out which were really essential to the story.
*
Justice swooped in not long after noon, a letter held firmly in his talons. There were golden feathers scattered around his beak, and as far as an owl could be said to look smug, then he did.
Draco, of course, praised him excessively and gave him two whole mice to eat. Justice ate them and then sat on the windowsill, preening himself and saying in silent bird-language that all was well with the world.
Draco spent some time examining the envelope, but in the end, he had to regretfully shake his head. It was one that could have come from everywhere. Maybe the writer thought he was leaving too many clues to his identity if he used everything from the same shop, or maybe plain envelopes were the ones he happened to have on hand.
He turned the letter over, and smirked slightly when he realized that the flap was sealed with saliva, instead of wax. There were interesting things you could do with saliva with you knew a bit of Dark Arts. He opened the envelope with his wand, and the parchment inside slid out and onto the table.
It was shorter than Draco remembered the other letter being. No paragraphs, at least, but simply two lines set far apart from each other, as if the writer wanted to emphasize each of his ideas separately.
HAVE YOU GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO WHAT THE WIZARDING WORLD WILL DO WITH A MAD HERO?
YOU DID NOT REALLY SEE THEM. IF YOU SAW THEM, THEN YOU MUST BE SEEING THE THINGS YOU ARE NOW.
Draco bit his lip and sat back in the chair as he studied the letter. Yes, the purple ink and the parchment were the kind he had thought them, but for the moment he was more concerned with the first part of that last sentence. Who were “them?” Why should Potter seeing or not seeing “them” be a matter of concern to the writer?
In fact, not a lot of this makes sense. I reckon that Potter’s worried about going mad and that’s why he doesn’t want anyone else to see the letters, but then that begs the question of how the writer learned about this in the first place. And who are “they?”
Draco knew himself well enough to realize already that the last question was the one that would torment him.
After some more minutes of staring and not coming up with anything, Draco turned back to what he thought he could prove. The ink was purple, and, when he sniffed it delicately, smelled of lilac. Draco smiled. That practically proved that it was Hell’s Fields Ink, which the owners of several small shops sold for the romantically-minded. One shop assistant had explained to Draco enthusiastically that the name of the ink came from the poppies that supposedly littered the fields of hell. Draco had refrained, with heroic strength, from pointing out that poppies were red.
He felt the parchment carefully, and nodded. Yes, that was Scrooge’s Self-Strengthening Sheets, all right. It would take some doing to tear, and Draco recognized the slight crease under his fingers that was meant to correct and straighten the writing of those whose words wandered in wavering lines across the paper.
So that cut some of his suspects down. He was looking for someone who used Hell’s Fields Ink. Whether they had bought it to throw off suspicion or because that was actually the kind of person they were was irrelevant. They had access to it.
So he would go to the several small shops that sold it, and snoop in plain sight. He always had an infallible excuse to ask questions-well, at least he had the right to ask questions of people who weren’t Potter.
Research for his next novel, of course.
*
“And your name is Bertha.” Draco nodded and wrote the name down, as if he were likely to forget how to spell it between one moment and the next. He looked up and fluttered his eyelashes at the shop assistant who was “helping” him “write his book.” It was no hardship, since she kept fluttering hers at him. “Right. How many bottles of the ink would you say that you usually sell in a week?”
Bertha smiled. She had the palest skin Draco had ever seen outside of his own family and thick dark hair that dangled around her face in untidy strands held in place by magic. Her eyes were wide and blue and elfin, and Draco might have been tempted by her if mere beauty could have called and held his attention. But he needed depth and fire, and Bertha resembled a butterfly who would burn away when the flame intensified.
“Probably only six or seven,” Bertha said, with a light shrug of her shoulders. “I think that Mr. Comfrey wants to get rid of it, but then every so often someone comes in and asks for it. And the people who make the ink do sometimes appear and inquire about their sales in these loud officious voices.” She dropped her chin and frowned fiercely at the air next to Draco’s left ear. “And how many bottles of Hell’s Fields do you need to replenish your stock, my good man?” she asked in a booming voice.
Draco laughed, the way he was meant to, and because he was genuinely amused, for once. “Do you happen to remember if you sold any recently?” He hated not having a time frame. Still, he didn’t think Potter would be willing to disclose how long he’d been receiving the letters.
Bertha shrugged and gestured around the inside of Comfrey’s Comforts for the Burgeoning Writer. “I don’t work here all the time. I know we haven’t sold any today or Tuesday, but I don’t know about yesterday.”
Draco nodded, disappointed. Well, asking like this wasn’t a guaranteed means of reaching an answer; he had to hope to find either a general pattern or someone who remembered a striking customer. “Well, thank you for the material, Bertha,” he said. “One more question. What would you say the typical Hell’s Fields buyer is like? Old, young, anxious, successful?”
Bertha looked around to see if anyone was nearby among the crowded shelves, then leaned towards him and whispered, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Malfoy, it’s mostly the young, romantic types. And the ones who fancy that they can write scary stories but haven’t ever actually tried it. As though the ink would make them into writers capable of handling psychological wounds and horror suddenly.”
Draco smiled back at her. He had to resist the urge to ask if she was a fan, not because she’d taken his name calmly but because she was the kind of person he would like to have read his books. “Thanks, Bertha. I’ll let you know if I have some other research that requires your important perspective.”
Bertha seemed to take his half-flirtatious tone the way Draco intended it, not a promise that more flirtation would be forthcoming but teasing banter that she could respond to with a smile. “Oh, yes, I would enjoy that,” she said. “It’s not every day that I’m told my perspective is important. At least, not my perspective on ink.”
Draco winked at her and slipped away towards the front of the shop, nodding to several people he knew on the way. Yolanda Timpany was staring at the nearest pieces of parchment as if she expected them to rearrange themselves for her pleasure. Xerxes Columbus, who was engaged on the writing of a massive epic poem that he probably wouldn’t finish before his death, tested the weight of two quills in his fingers. Terry Boot was sighing melodramatically because the shop didn’t have the brand of ink he happened to require.
Please let Boot be the person writing to Potter, Draco thought fervently as he stepped out the front door. It would be so nice to be able to despise him for some reason unconnected to his poetry.
A hand grabbed the front of his robe and slammed him against the window, making it tremble. Draco’s first thought was an insane hope that Comfrey wouldn’t make him pay if he’d cracked the glass.
Then he looked up along the arm and into the face of the person who held him, and hissed in surprise. It was Potter.
“I knew that I saw you come in here,” Potter whispered, so softly that Draco doubted he would have heard him if he were a few inches farther away. He leaned forwards, and his wand, invisible from most angles, pressed into the soft flesh at the base of Draco’s neck again. Draco had to admire the effort, and he tucked away the sight of Potter’s pose for an appearance in the novel. “You’re the one sending the letters to me, aren’t you?”
Draco, opening his mouth to give a pretty speech about how he was sorry for what he’d done, was caught completely by surprise. He stared for a moment or so, and then spluttered unattractively, “No, of course not!”
“I know that this shop sells the ink the letters are written with.” Potter nodded towards the sign over Comfrey’s door and then glared dramatically into Draco’s eyes. Again, the effect was nice, or at least Draco told himself that was why he became breathless from the pressure of that intense green gaze. “And to see you coming out of this place when you’ve shown that you have far too great an interest in my personal life?” He leaned closer again, until his nose almost brushed Draco’s cheek. “It fits very well.”
“It doesn’t fit well at all,” Draco said sharply. “I don’t have any of that particular ink in my possession. I was investigating who has bought it so that I could try to figure out who was sending you the letters, if you must know. And I’m sorry,” he added, deciding that he probably should have said this in the first place, but Potter was so exasperating. “Sorry for breaking into your office, I mean. But I’ll have you know that this isn’t the only place that sells that ink, so you can’t be sure it came from here.”
Potter stared at him with eyes that looked like they could strip the soul from a Dementor. Draco raised his chin and tried to pretend he was too proud to be affected or disconcerted or embarrassed by that stare, but with his groin tingling and his cheeks hot, he doubted that Potter thought so.
“I think I believe you,” Potter whispered. In a single smooth motion, he pulled himself free of Draco and stepped back. His eyes were so wary that Draco was impressed; he had seen Justice make less threatening moves. “That doesn’t mean that you should cross my path again, Malfoy. Especially in an effort to find out where the letters are coming from.”
“Do you believe me about the apology, too?” Draco asked, ignoring the advice. He was glad to see that Potter had been at least intelligent enough to figure out the clue about the ink, but he wasn’t highly placed in the writing community and couldn’t investigate as easily as Draco. “I do mean that.”
Potter gave him a merciless smile. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not, since I have no intention of letting you near me ever again.” He turned, his cloak whipping around him, and strode towards the top of the street.
Draco hurried after him. “But don’t you see,” he called to Potter’s back, “that what I did was stupid, and poorly thought out, and I do apologize for that? I didn’t mean to hurt you. I let my exasperation carry me away, and-”
“I don’t believe you,” Potter called over his shoulder, “because you’re only saying you’re sorry because this disrupts your research for your story. You’re not sorry for hurting me in any way. I’ve learned one lesson in the last few years, Malfoy: I only need to associate with people who have my welfare in mind.”
Then he Apparated away, and left Draco standing in the middle of the street looking foolish. His recalcitrant brain, of course, pictured how even that would look in the middle of a novel.
Draco sighed and turned towards his own home. He’s mostly right, but still…
I still didn’t want to hurt him.
That emotion burned right beside his unquenchable curiosity about the letters, and his squirmy guilt that he’d had Justice steal one of the letters bound for Potter, and the fierce rightness that made him want to write Potter’s story anyway.
I reckon I could do worse than take the advice Granger gave me, and try to learn more about the small things in Potter’s life.
Chapter Five.