Title: Keep It Simple, Stupid
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco.
Rating: PG-13/T for flirting and innuendo.
Warnings: This completely ignores DH, because I could not find a way to make that book work with the plot of this story. Also, it is absolutely ridiculous.
Summary: Draco has kept tabs on the Death Eaters since the war, but they've made up such ridiculous plots that he hasn't been very concerned about them. Now they've got a competent leader and a plan to assassinate Harry Potter. Draco's worried—but Potter ignores his warnings and flirts with him instead. Draco's life is not very much fun right now.
Notes: This was a small but persistent idea that grew into a true fic with msarden's encouragement. So it is totally her fault, and dedicated to her. This is a WiP in that not all of it is written, but it will be only around 5 or 6 chapters, so it won't be in progress for very long.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Chapter One—Draco and the Death Eaters
"We can't use Imperius," said Jugson, leaning forwards to emphasize his point. The table that the Death Eaters had enchanted to hold glamours of triumphant battles for the Dark Lord's side during the war—almost completely made up, of course—wobbled as he leaned on it. Draco rolled his eyes behind his white mask, but made a note that Jugson must indeed have a secure hiding place, since he felt free to eat all he liked. "The Ministry has put up wards inside the building to detect its use. But I know what we can use."
"What?" Bellatrix asked in a breathless voice. Draco averted his eyes from her. Her mind had shattered when the Dark Lord fell, and she was now convinced that he was sleeping in some secret place and would rise to aid them if they could only do something evil enough to make it worth his while to return. She was a complete embarrassment. Draco wished fervently that his mother had had better taste in family members.
"We use a Commanding Potion," Jugson said, with a fierce nod.
"Ah," said Avery, in a pleased voice.
"Ooh!" echoed several of the others. Draco stifled the urge to beat his head against the table.
There was a long, reverent pause, and then Yaxley, who was the most sensible one out of all of them, but still not in danger of causing the Ministry any lost sleep, brought up the obvious problem. Draco couldn't, since he pretended to be both completely loyal to the Dark Lord's memory and much stupider than he actually was in order to keep attending these meetings. "But a Commanding Potion tastes like dirty socks. How do you propose we feed it to the Minister?"
"I'm sure someone can knock him unconscious," said Jugson. "And then we pour the potion down his throat!"
"Yeah!" said Avery. Draco wondered idly how Avery's family put up with him. Of course, he'd never married and his parents had moved to the other side of the continent to get away from him, so perhaps the question was moot. Draco tried to envision an Avery family Floo call and came dangerously near to snickering.
He changed it into a cough at the last moment, which was a good thing. Dolohov had chosen tonight to watch him like a hawk. The Dark Lord's fall had turned him into a paranoid old bastard who made Mad-Eye Moody look the embodiment of laziness and social cordiality. Draco had already had to Obliviate him twice—not because he'd given himself away, but because Dolohov had ambushed him outside the deserted old manor they used for their Death Eater meetings and tried to kill him while shrieking that Draco was a traitor. The repeated Memory Charms, it was true, had probably not done any wonders for his mental stability.
"I have a question, though," he said meekly. He was always meek here. He was variously "Lucius Malfoy's boy" and "the boy who failed to kill Dumbledore" to the other Death Eaters; they tolerated him because one more person who had believed in the "vision" of pure-blood superiority was worth too much now to kick him out. Draco didn't mind. It made his interventions to crush their mad ambitions much less obvious. "There are wards in the Minister's office that alert the Aurors if he falls unconscious. How are we going to get past them?"
There was a disconcerted pause.
"How do you know about this, Malfoy?" Dolohov said at last, his voice a thick growl.
"I'm an Auror, Dolohov," said Draco, and let just a bit of haughtiness enter his voice, because they would expect to hear it. "They tell me these things. And Scrimgeour has some sort of medical condition that sometimes causes him to fall asleep unexpectedly. He could hit his head on a sharp object and require immediate medical treatment. So the wards are there to let us know if he needs transportation to St. Mungo's. Knock him unconscious, even assuming we could gain access to him, and we'd have three Aurors through the door before you could pour the Commanding Potion down his throat."
"I have an answer to that," said Rodolphus smugly. Draco relaxed. Rodolphus never came up with any plan even halfway workable. "There's a book in the Black family library I remember reading that talks about an amulet which functions like a specialized Portkey. It'll take us past any wards at all, let us grab the Minister and force the potion down his throat, and let us leave again at once."
"Wonderful!" Avery said.
"Yes, wonderful," Draco said, pouring pleasure into his voice. "How do we make this amulet?"
"Oh, you can't make it," said Rodolphus, with an airy wave of his hand. "It's a bloody magical artifact, Malfoy. The Amulet of Golden Wind, it's called."
"So where is it?" Jugson asked eagerly.
The light went out of Rodolphus's eyes. "Er," he said.
Draco swallowed his chuckle better this time. Rodolphus was always forgetting some vital detail, such as that the magical artifact they would need to work their plan had been lost for several centuries.
"Well, do you have any clues?" Jugson asked, impatient now. "What else do you remember?"
Rodolphus scratched his head. "I'm not sure," he said. "Maybe it was called the Amulet of Silver Wind, in fact. Or maybe it wasn't an amulet at all, but a bloody great wooden horse. I would need to get to the book again to check."
"Right, then," said Jugson, with a firm nod. "We'll divide into teams, and one team will get into the Black family library, and one team will prepare to retrieve the amulet when the first team finds the information on it, and the third one will brew the Commanding Potion so that it's ready when we have the amulet."
Draco sat back whilst, all around him, the others began to argue about which team they wanted to be on and how they were going to get to the Black family library, which was in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, where Potter and his permanent guard of Aurors lived. Most of the time, his job as a "spy" on the remaining Death Eaters was mindless entertainment. They hid well, because they had more intelligent relatives—ones who had not signed up to serve the Dark Lord—who were determined to protect them, but their plans were hopelessly convoluted and likely to become more so. A little pressure here and there, and they would bicker for years without doing anything dangerous. So far, Draco had only angled to make sure that Fenrir Greyback actually made a public move and was captured, and that was because Greyback was actually a threat, both to the Ministry and Draco's own position.
On the other hand, there was a remote chance that they might stumble into a necromantic ritual that could actually raise the Dark Lord, or find a leader who could give them the direction that had made them dangerous when he was still alive. Draco could keep an eye on them to prevent that, just in case.
Their stupidity both depressed and enlivened him. At least he always knew, when he went back to work on Monday morning after a Sunday night Death Eater meeting, that his colleagues could not do anything worse.
Now, however, someone knocked on the door that led into the cavernous room of bare stone, lit only by flickering torches because Jugson was a traditionalist. Draco lifted his head sharply, then wondered if he should have reacted so fast, but luckily, Dolohov already had his wand out and his face turned in that direction.
"Who is out there?" Bellatrix asked in a soft voice.
"There shouldn't be anyone," said Jugson grimly. "We're all here. It's probably the Ministry."
A current of energy coiled through the room. Death Eaters were good at mindless violence. Draco bit his lip, wondering what he should do to convince the Aurors, if they were out there, that he was actually on their side.
The door opened before anyone could cast a spell, however, or snarl instructions to move, and the intruder easily ducked the curse that Dolohov fired off a moment later. He stepped easily into the center of the room, in fact, moving with large, long strides that suggested a big man. A suggestion was the most Draco could get, since the drape of his thick dark robes hid his body most effectively. He wore a white mask just like the other Death Eaters, and he turned to face them from the head of the table, next to Bellatrix, with a dangerous smile in his voice.
"Shoddy security you have here," he drawled. "I took down the wards in two minutes, and with no alarm to you. If I had wanted to kill you, you would have died never knowing who your murderer was."
Bellatrix and Dolohov nearly sprang at him then, because they were mad, but luckily Jugson had better sense—a touch of better sense, Draco thought. "Who are you?" he asked. "And why don't you want to kill us?"
"Call me—a friend," said the stranger, cocking his head. Draco felt a maddening familiarity curl up his spine at the sound of his voice, but he couldn't place it no matter how hard he searched through his brain. Was it one of the Carrows, perhaps, who had vanished and never been found? Someone he worked with in the Ministry? "I was never part of the Dark Lord's glorious inner circle, but I watched what he did with admiration." His tone abruptly hardened. "And I have watched what you have done since with contempt."
"Oi!" said Avery.
"We have done the very best we could with limited resources," Jugson began, in a delicately miffed voice.
"I'm sure you have, I'm sure you have," said the stranger, sounding bored. Draco's momentary suspicion that he was there to incite the Death Eaters into a killing fight he could claim was self-defense faded. No, this was something else, maybe the slight chance he had been thinking might occur all along. He shifted.
The movement drew the stranger's eyes to him. Either he already knew who Draco was, which would not surprise Draco at all, or a curl of white-blond hair had escaped his hood, because the man nodded. "Lucius Malfoy's boy, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," Draco said, warier than ever. That was exactly the term the Death Eaters used to address him. For how long had he been watching these meetings?
The stranger spread his hands. They were covered with thick leather gloves, hiding any sign of skin, though Draco thought he made out the lumpish shape of a ring beneath one cloth finger. "You see how he addresses me with respect?" he asked the rest of the circle. "He knows me for your natural leader. And I am. I learned from the Dark Lord. I learned from other Dark wizards. I have spent the last few years traveling the continent of Europe, studying under every powerful and dangerous practitioner of magic I could find. I am an expert on curses and on potions, and on defenses against them—and neutralizing those defenses. And it was all to one end. I have the same goal you do."
"Bringing the Dark Lord back?" Bellatrix asked, as she would.
"Leading us to world domination?" Jugson said.
"Eliminating the Muggles!" Avery pounded on the table with one fist.
"No," the stranger said, and he was laughing behind his mask, Draco was certain of it, at how utterly beyond this pathetic group all those goals were. "I can give you Harry Potter. I can bring him to you, I can show you how best to torture him, and I can find a way around his freakish luck that will enable you to dispose of him."
The entire atmosphere of the room shifted. Draco could see the idea taking root in their heads, utterly eliminating the hopeless—and harmless—plan of controlling the Minister's mind and, through him, the Ministry.
And Death Eaters were, ultimately, good at mindless violence. Political plotting had never been their natural arena.
"What do you want in return?" Dolohov asked. Draco would have liked to know the same thing, since he was sure the answer the stranger gave them wasn't genuine.
"For starters? I would like to see him dead." The man's voice dropped to a sibilant hiss, and suddenly Draco was less certain that he really didn't want this. It was possible to want more than one thing, after all, though he thought he was the only other person in the room to realize that. "He hurt me badly. Him and his money and his fame and his prestige. I am going to see to it that he pays." He darted a glance around the room. "Who's with me?"
They all cried out in rapture, utterly won over. Draco made sure to cry with the rest of them, but he could feel cold sweat gathering under his arms and behind his mask.
The stranger wouldn't show them a hint of a plan as yet. He would cajole and make promises and work them over, so that he could be sure he had their loyalty and they didn't question his motives.
And that was exactly what he did. He was probably a public speaker in his ordinary life. By the end of the evening, Draco might even have believed him, if he were a good deal stupider.
The rest of the Death Eaters ate it up. By the end of their evening, they were muttering the praises of this new stranger, who had told them to call him Prince, and swearing various complicated revenges on Harry Potter.
Draco left the room half-frightened, but mostly resolved. For too long, the Ministry had been content to leave the Death Eaters alone, partially because it would mean antagonizing certain powerful families but also because the defenses around the manor house where they gathered were supposedly impossible to pass without a Dark Mark on one's arm—a piece of magic that the Dark Lord, and none of them, had designed. Well, this Prince had managed it. Draco would suggest that someone get started studying the matter at one. Perhaps they could come up with a Portkey that would actually function in the damn place.
Draco ran a hand through his hair and studied the report in front of him, then nodded. A copy had gone to the Minister to warn him about the Death Eaters and Prince and discuss possible solutions. Draco had also given a copy to one of Potter's guard of Aurors who was there early, because of course Saint Potter was too high and mighty to come into the office before eleven on a Monday. Hopefully, that would be enough.
But Draco didn't know anything about Prince yet, save that he was a powerful wizard and had the same grudge as the Dark Lord but far more brains. The precautions they already had in place might be enough to save Potter's life, but they might not be. Draco sighed heavily and pushed the report away from him, to attend to some of the other pieces of less essential paperwork crowding his desk.
"Malfoy!"
Startled, Draco looked up, and blinked when he saw Potter striding towards him. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair looked extraordinarily ruffled. Draco rolled his eyes, not caring if Potter saw him do it. The man had remained a Gryffindor, for all that his habits had grown wilder and wilder. Potter would probably think it was a grand joke, and say, "That Malfoy, he never changes," to his friends later.
Draco suppressed the tiny wish that he were one of Potter's friends to appreciate and laugh over that remark. They had drifted into a sort of truce when they both became Aurors, based largely on never partnering and ignoring one another when they met in the office. That was the best Draco could hope for, and he knew it.
"What's this about a threat to my life?" Potter asked, far too loudly. Draco's office was isolated at the end of a corridor, but still. Draco winced and cast a privacy spell with a small flick of his wrist.
"There's someone commanding the scattered remnants of the Death Eaters," said Draco. "A wizard who calls himself Prince and claims to have a grudge against you. I would act carefully in the next few weeks, Potter, until we can—"
"That can't be," said Potter, with an easy wave of his hand, and leaned in unnecessarily close. Draco glared back, not wanting to shrink against his chair like a girl, but uncomfortable with the way Potter's musk—did the man never bathe?—was wafting into his nostrils. "Prince was Snape's last name, and Snape is dead."
Draco swallowed. "I know." Severus had died protecting him, an action which Draco was simultaneously grateful for and unable to forgive. "But someone else could have chosen the name as an alias. If we can figure out the psychological reasons for that, then—"
"I mean, I don't think this bloke's a threat." Potter shrugged and nudged enough of Draco's paperwork aside to sit down on the desk. Draco opened his mouth in outrage to tell Potter that was his desk, but the idiot was chattering on, and what he said next was enough to shut Draco's mouth hard. "It's not Snape. Therefore, he's not a threat. Just some other git with a grudge. If he comes after me, then I'll kill him. Pow!" He flourished his wand, and a blast of green smoke shot out from it and impacted against the wall. Draco held his nose as he anticipated the scent of rotten eggs that spell usually left behind. He was startled to smell roses instead. Potter must have modified the spell. Quite a feat, to both do that and make the incantation non-verbal.
Draco felt another rueful little pulse. Modifying spells was one of his favorite hobbies. He would have liked to talk about this over Firewhiskey with Potter, and maybe laugh at the stupid things he'd say when he was pissed. Certainly it had to be a different, more amusing variety of stupid from that the Death Eaters or the other Aurors provided Draco.
"I think this could be the real thing," he said. "Some of what he said last night—"
"Don't worry your pretty little head about this, Malfoy," said Potter, and patted his cheek. He seemed to think that Draco's stare of sheer goggle-eyed bewilderment was an invitation, because he leaned in, his breath touching the place his hand just had, and whispered, "Instead, why don't you think about more pleasant things? Dinner with me tomorrow night, perhaps?"
Draco stared for just a moment longer.
Then his resentment that Potter seemed to be up to his old games, just when Draco had finally thought they'd settled into an adult, working relationship, reared up. Draco narrowed his eyes and made his voice icy. "I don't go on dates in the middle of the week, thanks."
He expected Potter to claim that this wasn't a date next. Potter just looked horrified. "Look, Draco—can I call you Draco?—"
"No."
"You're twenty-five, not seventy." Potter leaned closer still, and his voice fell into something Draco could only describe as a purr. He was horrible at it, definitely. It did not make Draco wish yet again, and more fervently, that things were different, no it did not. "It's perfectly acceptable to date in the middle of the week. Let me reassure you of that, just in case you forgot." His hand smoothed up and down Draco's arm. "So, what about it? I've been wanting to since forever, but—"
"Potter." Draco shook off the hand like a dog shaking off water. "No."
"Well, all right, it was only since last week, but still, you're bloody fit." Potter looked at him admiringly. "Come on, why don't we go out for lunch today if tomorrow night isn't good for you? I know a place where we can get the most smashing curry and you can forget about silly little braggarts who think they're after my life—"
"This is serious, Potter!" Draco flung himself to his feet, and away from temptation. "This isn't a game! Prince is the best candidate for murdering you I've seen since the end of the war." Although I could give him some good competition, the way I feel at the moment, he thought.
"But it is a game." Potter smiled at him beatifically. "You're handsome when you're angry, did you know that?"
Draco gripped the edge of his desk so he didn't go for Potter's throat. "Get out of my office."
"Should I have said that you're beautiful when you're angry?" Potter looked concerned. "I almost said that, but I thought it was too girly. And I'm sure that you're all man, Draco."
Draco kept from screaming by a very narrow margin. He drew his wand instead.
Potter pouted for a moment, then rose, holding his hands in front of him, when Draco made a threatening flick with the wand. "All right, I'm leaving. No curry today. But think about tomorrow night, all right? You've been working too hard if you seriously assume that this Prince bloke is a threat."
And then he was gone, and Draco was left to sit down and weigh the advantages of helping Prince against the advantages of standing in his way.
He got his breathing back under control, slowly. Then he gave a determined nod and picked up his quill again.
Protecting Potter wasn't his job, thank God. He was just supposed to keep meeting with the Death Eaters and finding out what he could about Prince; he was sure that was what Shacklebolt would tell him. Potter's pet Aurors and his friends and his fans would do all the guarding that could be wished.
Yes, thank God. Because if he were responsible for Potter's safety on top of everything else, Draco was sure he would have gone mad. The man was infuriating.
In a good way.
Shut up, Draco told himself.