spellbound heart

𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐭

Author: Lomonaaeren

Summary:

Draco has to clean up after Aurors; he knows that. But he's had enough of cleaning up after one particular Auror. At this point, Potter is the one who's going to do some work.

*****

Draco stood still, with his eyes closed. There was ash settling on the lids. There was ash in his hair. There was ash in his lungs. He wouldn't cough, though. He refused.

"Um. Sir?"

Draco nodded without opening his eyes. Then he raised his wand and cast a spell that swept the ashes up in a tornado. Only when they were gone from his eyelids did he look, and then he studied the way that the tornado had taken most of the walls with it.

"Um, sir? Do we have to file a report with the Ministry about this? I mean, of course we do, but—do we have to say that it was Auror Potter who did it?"

Draco turned in a slow circle. At one point, this had been a fairly nice two-floor house in Hogsmeade, not far from the path that led to Hogwarts. It had had stone walls, and tapestries on those walls, and a door encircled with enough ivy to choke a hippo, and a long dining room table encircled with chairs. Apparently the owner had liked entertaining.

Had liked, because the table and the chairs were gone. The ceiling was open in a crack that could have saved the owner the cost of a skylight. The stone was crazed with lightning bolts that reminded Draco of far too prominent a one on the head of the man who had done this. And the tapestries, some of the floor, the ivy, and the rest of the furniture had joined the table and the chairs as piles of blowing, drifting ash.

No volcano out of Pliny could have done a better job, really, Draco thought in a detached way.

"Do we have to say it was him?" repeated the trainee, almost hopping from foot to foot.

Draco turned his head. The spit in the trainee's mouth must have dried up, because he did nothing but stare silently for the next minute or two. Then he gave a quiet whimper that made Draco smile. The other wizards who had come with him, who were not trainees, grew quiet and glanced at the walls.

"A report isn't going to be enough this time," Draco said, and watched the trainee have his mouth shut for him with a gesture from another of his crew's wand when she caught Draco's eye. "I'm going to take on Auror Potter's punishment myself."

"Yes, sir," said the witch who had shut up the trainee, even though Draco rarely demanded the title of his crew. Draco nodded and swept past her, his wand moving in large flashes that would undo the cracks in the walls and lift what was simply overturned—not much—back into its proper place. Others would take care of the holes in the walls, would take care of the floor.

Draco had a Potter to take care of.

——

No one else would probably have found it easy to get through the wards around Potter's place, but Draco had a unique combination of cleaning team experience and Dark Arts experience. He found the weaknesses in the wards that no one else would have sensed, little curlicues of power trapped near the bottoms of them, and undid them, and walked past.

Potter's house was an unexpectedly small place with few of the beauties that belonged to wealth. But Draco, glancing around with his insides filled with the slow burning of rage, cared only that there were excellent places to hide.

Funny, in a way. He wouldn't have expected any Auror to stuff his home with furniture that blocked the lines of sight, doors that could close so firmly, half-walls that dipped and came down in odd wave-like patterns. But maybe Potter liked to think he could relax at home, and this was his way of ensuring he did so.