Title: A Reign of Silence

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco

Rating: R

Warnings: Angst, violence

Summary: After the debacle that occurred in the Head Auror's office, Harry and Draco are hot on the trail of the blue-eyed twisted. If, of course, they can avoid the scrutiny of the Ministry, Draco's parents, and everyone else who has a reason to be disappointed in them.

Author's Notes: Welcome to the twelfth fic in the Cloak and Dagger series, about Harry and Draco working together as Auror partners hunting down vicious Dark wizards. This follows "Invisible Sparks," Hero's Funeral, "Rites of the Dead," Sister Healer, "Working With Them," This Enchanted Life, "Letters From Exile," Writ on Water, "Evening Star," The Library of Hades, and "There Was Glory." It won't make much sense without having read those first.

A Reign of Silence

Chapter One—Investiture

The letter was heavy, so heavy that Draco knew at once where it had come from. It was loaded with official seals, too, some of them so old that Draco wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't been used for the last two hundred years.

Then he picked it up, turned it over, and saw the wax that sealed the back shut. It was black. Draco grimaced. Three hundred years, then.

"Draco? Who is that from?"

Harry was looking up at Draco from the dining room table, his mouth smeared with butter and honey and his napkin covered with marmalade. Draco shook his head at him. He would have liked, he sometimes thought, to have a neater lover, one who didn't like all three of those and so wouldn't end up with the mixture covering him.

But then Harry looked at him, and he found it hard to imagine yielding Harry for anything.

"My parents," Draco said, and sat down at the table with the letter in front of him, because he knew what Harry would insist on doing. Draco couldn't even object. In the circumstances, the spells Harry would use to detect curses and hexes were a better idea than they would usually be.

Sure enough, Harry cast with a steady hand but with a dark, pissed gleam in his eyes. Draco leaned back and watched him. Harry was messy and loud and still too prone to act as if Draco's life was more valuable than his own, but Draco couldn't have asked for a better partner—not really. All the other things that made him annoying and exasperating were also the things that made Draco love him.

Even the messiness has probably helped him survive somehow. Maybe someone who was chasing him tripped on a banana peel once.

The image soothed Draco and cheered him, and Harry looked up to meet his eyes and smiled a little, but shook his head.

"I can't really detect anything on it," he admitted. "They might have used spells that are too subtle for me to feel, though." He nodded at Draco and went back to eating.

Draco watched the letter thoughtfully. The last time he had seen his parents, he had broken a mirror that had attacked him, and it had turned out to be linked to a necklace his mother was wearing, which shattered and injured her. Whatever the letter contained, it wasn't going to be an offer of reconciliation, or to make him their heir again, the way they had once said they would do if he would give up Harry.

In the end, there was nothing to do but open it—though with charms that broke the wax and unfolded the envelope, rather than his bare hands. Harry nodded his judicious approval from the other end of the table. Draco watched a small pat of butter fall into Harry's lap, and used the sight to give him strength before he turned and read the bloody letter.

Draco Malfoy, it said, at the beginning, only there was a thick dark line under his name that made Draco sit up and stare, because it looked more like charcoal than ink.

Draco knew what that meant. He had not thought his parents would ever do such a thing to him, not when they had been content to ignore him for seven years, but he knew what it meant. He reached out and took Harry's hand.

Harry glanced at him sharply, once, then nodded and went back to eating. But his hand was in Draco's, and Draco could cling to it as an anchor against a world that seemed to be sliding and tilting and bobbing around him.

This is to declare blood feud against you.

There were a few lines more, but Draco ignored them. They were meant to explain what a blood feud was to the ignorant, and he knew. He more than knew. His fingers itched to shred the parchment, and he only managed to withdraw them and nod to Harry to read the letter by an effort of will that he hadn't had to use in those seven years.

Then he closed his eyes and turned his head away.

Harry read the letter, frowning. The first two lines seemed simple enough, but he didn't know what that thick black underlining beneath Draco's name meant. The second paragraph seemed meant to clear it up. It didn't.

We are against you blood, feeling, thought, and soul. We will replace your blood. We will raise barriers of pride. We will enact forgetting. We will find the opportunity to take your soul.

It was signed with both Lucius's and Narcissa's names. Harry found himself looking for some sign of shakiness in Narcissa's signature, and shook his head. Just because she had been wounded by the necklace didn't mean she couldn't sign a letter.

"I understand that it's bad," Harry said quietly, looking at Draco. Draco's eyes were shut, his head bowed, a hopelessness in the slope of his neck that Harry felt as if he'd hated for years even though this was the first time he'd seen it. "But you're going to have to tell me the specific reasons it is."

Draco sat up with a gasp, as though surfacing from deep underwater. "This is it, then," he said, with his voice viciously cracking. "They're going to change themselves, physically, with enchantments, so that their blood is completely different from mine. They're going to alter the family tapestry and the official records so that they never had a son. They'll Obliviate themselves to forget my existence. And, if they get the chance, they'll send a Dementor after me so that I stop existing on all levels."

All the plates on the table shattered down the middle.

Draco leaped to his feet. Harry surged after him, shaking his head. It made sense that Draco would think this was some side-effect of his parents' magic, right after he'd spoken those portentous words. "I'm sorry, Draco, I'm sorry," he murmured, moving around the table and gathering Draco in his arms. "I didn't mean to do that. I just got so angry at the thought of what they're going to do to you."

Draco nodded and leaned on him for a moment before he stepped back. "We can't count on aid from them, ever again," he said, remotely, retreating behind that mask Harry had seen before whenever someone mentioned his parents. "But they also won't interfere with us. They want to forget I existed. They want to sever any connection between us."

"Sending a Dementor after you doesn't sound like ignoring you," Harry retorted.

Draco blinked at him. "I—well, yes, I suppose it doesn't," he said. "But they won't do it. They'll just contract someone who works with Dementors. There are Dark wizards who do."

Harry curled his lip, revolted, even as he began to cast Reparo on some of the dishes. "How do they do that without the Dementors taking their own souls? That's all they cared about, I thought."

Draco shrugged, leaning an elbow on the table and watching Harry put the halves of the plates back together. "The Ministry was able to work with the Dementors for years, when they guarded Azkaban. They can strike bargains of some kind. I have to admit, I don't know why they would want to." He tried to smile.

"It's revolting," Harry repeated, and wondered for a second if there was a way that he could punish the Malfoys. Then he shook his head. Not publically, because this would probably turn out to be one of those pure-blood things—like not inviting Muggleborns to certain parties and ensuring that their children never married one—that everyone knew about and would never discuss. Useless to try to get Skeeter or the papers interested in it then.

Abruptly, he cocked his head. Something else had come to him, and he wondered if he could say it without risking Draco's anger.

"You can say it."

Harry jumped and looked at Draco. "I didn't know you were that good at Legilimency," he said, and then finally took note of how pale Draco's face looked. He cast a Refreshing Charm on a glass of pumpkin juice, which would make it act a little like Pepper-Up Potion, and handed the glass to Draco.

Draco grimaced, because he usually hated it in the mornings, but swallowed obediently before he answered. "I recognize those particular looks on your face. You're always wondering if you can do something, and get away with it. I ought to know it, because I tried to follow you and get in the way whenever I saw you wearing it."

Harry grinned at him, and spent a second rubbing his arm. Draco finished the drink, set the glass down, folded his arms, and repeated, "You can say it."

Harry nodded. "Is there any way to force them to withdraw this—petition?" He knew from Draco's patient look that that wasn't the right word, but it was the politest one he could come up with at the moment, even if it was wrong. "I mean, if I could do something that would force your parents to stop this—"

"What could you do?" Draco asked, his voice flat, exhausted. "You couldn't make me back into an acceptable heir for them, and I forbid you to try."

Harry grinned. "I know." He let the grin fade, and decided that Draco was right and he might as well talk in an unguarded way, since he seemed to be already doing it. "What I mean is—if I offered to duel both of them, with the prize if I win leaving you in the family, do you think they would listen?"

Draco stared at him. Then he rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again, it was still Harry standing there, his Harry, with his hair disheveled from the pillow and a look of aching certainty in his eyes.

Draco shook his head. "Duels don't usually have prizes," was all he could think of to say.

"Some of them do," Harry said. "I would read the books in the Auror library sometimes when I was going mad doing research for an essay and had to look at something else, and wizards used to use professional duelists when they wanted to win a bet. Whoever won got to demand a forfeit from the other person, at least," he added, eyes half-closing and head twisting so that he looked more like Draco's Harry.

"All right, some of them do," Draco admitted. "But it's an old custom, and not one that I'm sure my parents would go for."

Harry snorted at the letter. "Older than declaring blood feud on your son?"

Draco shuffled uneasily. "What you have to know about my parents is that they don't care that much about the antiquity of pure-blood customs," he said. "They would feel free to cite how old the dueling custom is as a reason for ignoring your challenge, but they chose to declare blood feud because they knew it would hurt me the most."

"Then they're shitty people."

Draco blinked. It wasn't a view of the situation that had previously occurred to him, but he could see Harry's eyes glowing, and he knew Harry wouldn't back away now.

"Well," he said. "Yes. I think they might even agree with that. The difference is that they would be proud of being shitty people by a Muggleborn's definition."

Harry eased closer, lifting one hand to touch the side of Draco's face. Draco turned his head and shut his eyes. For a moment, his mind rang with the echoes of what his parents would say if they could see him and Harry touching that way, and then things smoothed out and became still, gentle, silent.

"I hate them for doing this to you," Harry whispered, stroking up and down and making Draco sway into him. "I hate them so much."

Draco kissed his hand and then took it away, because this would only lead to bed if they continued, and he thought they needed to think about other things—shocking as it would be to Harry if he said that. "I know, but we have to decide how we'll respond," he said. "Any letter in return will be ignored. That includes a letter that you write them trying to get them to duel you," he added, when Harry opened his mouth. "They've decided to cut me out of their lives. That's the end of it. They'll ignore people associated with me just as viciously."

Harry was silent for a long moment, frowning. Then he said, "There might be something else I can do. Well." He nodded to Draco. "At the very least, I'll make sure a Dementor can't take your soul."

Draco smiled weakly at him. "Thank you." But he was thinking about the tales he had heard of blood feuds in the past that included the destruction of the soul, where the Dementor could appear at any time, from Diagon Alley to the victim's own home, and have his soul drained before he could object.

Harry's arm tightened around him. "I mean it," he whispered, and then he was kissing Draco again, open and full-mouthed, and Draco decided that a short interlude in bed wouldn't be so bad after all.

Harry was aware, as never before, of the eyes and murmurs that followed them as they made their way through the Ministry to the Socrates office. Most of the time, he tried to ignore the people who stared at him, because it was all for stupid reasons. They either admired what he had done in the past too excessively, or they believed the Ministry's and the papers' lies about him.

Now, though, he took notice of who looked at them and who whispered and who turned away, and he met their eyes if they stared at him and Draco for anything like long enough. In the end, they ducked and flinched and moved, and Harry and Draco were the ones who walked untouched, guiltless as they were, through the building, and down.

"Hard, aren't you?" Draco said, only for his ears.

Harry shrugged as they pushed the door of their office open. His heartbeat was up, his blood roaring in his veins, but not because of the idiots they had passed. There was another danger here in this office, another confrontation that would hurt much more. "If they really thought we were murderers, they would avoid us, not whisper like that," he said out of the corner of his mouth. "But they aren't brave enough to come up and tell us they believe in the truth, either. So let them squirm. It's the only price we can make them pay."

Draco started to respond, but pulled up and stared at the man who stood in front of Rudie's desk. Harry put his hand in the middle of Draco's back, as though to push him forwards, but really to feel the coiled tension in his muscles.

Yes, that tension was far worse than it would be for a simple, accidental meeting, or for another Auror being here. Harry moved forwards, so he was the one in front when the new Auror turned around.

Harry probably would have called him ordinary if he'd known him, or was meeting him without Draco. He had mild dark blue eyes, dark hair that hung absolutely straight to his shoulders, and a grey shirt and trousers visible beneath the Auror robes. He nodded to Harry and focused on Draco.

Because the tension was there beneath Harry's hand, though, Harry thought of how an expression that neutral could hide dislike, and he watched the bulges of the wizard's sleeves for signs of a wand.

"Malfoy," the man murmured. "They told me I would be working with you, but I didn't really believe them. I thought your parents would never let you end up in a place like this."

"You're going to be working with me, Elder, and don't you forget it."

Harry started as Rudie stepped into the office, swinging her cloak off to hang it on a hook. She had been the confrontation he was dreading, since he had played a large part in her partner going mad, but she acted now as if she barely saw him. Her attention was on Elder, and the way that he leaned back on her desk, his hands planted on piles of file folders. A snarl split her face.

Harry wondered suddenly if Rudie had a flaw, the potential for becoming twisted. He'd never seen her show any exceptional abilities, but then, Draco didn't either unless you knew what to look for. Harry's visions of possible murders were more well-known.

"My apologies, Isla," Elder said, and bowed a little to her before he focused back on Malfoy. "But we're going to be members of the same Corps, and that means I want a few answers from Mr. Malfoy here. Why—"

"His name is Auror Malfoy," Harry said, stepping fully in front of Draco so that Elder had to look at him alone. "Though I can see why it might have slipped your mind, since you don't seem used to courtesy."

Elder's eyes widened, and for a moment he stood so still that Harry could identify the outline of his wand in his left sleeve. He was probably right-handed, then, and would go for a cross-body draw. Harry knew relatively few Aurors who had the habit he himself had perfected, of shaking his wand out into his dominant hand.

"Harry Potter," Elder whispered. "I knew that people were telling me you were lovers and partners with Malfoy, but I didn't believe it."

"Then you're stupid as well as unobservant, Harris," Draco said from behind Harry, in the tone that told Harry he'd better move out of the way now. He did, and left Draco to give Elder a tight smile and nod. "It's been all the Ministry can talk about for weeks now."

"Sometimes I don't listen to petty gossip," Elder said, and gave Draco the kind of smile that said he was trying too hard to be superior. Harry had seen a lot of those smiles in his first year, from mature Aurors who were trying to pretend that Harry's new reputation as a killer of Dark Lords didn't frighten them. The ones who really were better just went ahead and did well in front of Harry, instead of bragging about how much they could.

"Only sometimes," Draco said, and walked past Harry with his steps a perfect glide. Harry matched him, returning a glare for Elder's wide-eyed look. He didn't care if Elder thought him hostile and a threat. In fact, the more Elder thought that, the better-pleased Harry would be, because it might mean Elder would leave him alone.

Elder started to open his mouth, but Rudie reached out and slapped her hand over it. "We have a case," she said, and nodded to Harry and Draco before picking up one of the files and sweeping out the door. She paused in the corridor, though, and turned neatly on one foot, staring back at Elder. "Did you forget English? We have a case, I said."

Elder hesitated, looking at her and back at Draco, as if he couldn't believe that someone would deny him the right to confront an old enemy. Harry swung towards him, but he thought it was Rudie's snarl that finally made Elder hunch his shoulders and hurry out the door.

Harry waited until the door had been shut for a few minutes and Draco had taken his seat behind his desk, staring straight ahead. He wouldn't slump and give in here, Harry knew. The wards on the office had changed, and what might have been unobserved a fortnight ago would now be watched. Harry bent towards him and lowered his voice so anyone watching through the wards would have that much more trouble picking up what he was saying. "Talk."

"I didn't mean not to talk about him," Draco murmured, still looking straight ahead. "I didn't deliberately keep his name from you. I never thought he would be assigned as Rudie's partner."

Harry nodded. "I know that. You don't have any of the same problems I did with deliberately keeping secrets." He rubbed the middle of Draco's back where his hand had rested during the confrontation, hoping to loosen up some muscles. No point in holding back from touching Draco now, when everyone knew they were lovers.

Draco gave him a dry smile, and then stretched and flexed, rolling his neck back, loosening up the cramped muscles in the middle of his spine as well as he could. Harry went on rubbing. He appreciated the level of care that Draco was trying to give himself right now, and wanted to encourage it.

"I met him on a case," Draco said. "One I handled when I was still with Kellen." Harry nodded again. He would have asked more about Draco's former partner, dead just like his, but the case he'd died on was sealed, and there were Ministry standards that even Harry respected. "I never thought…well. He discovered a series of clues that Kellen and I might have discovered, but we swept a room and were impatient and didn't see them. It was those clues that led to the arrest of the killer, but someone died before then, someone we might have saved before if we'd attended to all the evidence."

Harry said nothing, but moved behind Draco and began to massage his shoulders. Just because Draco didn't wallow and brood on the guilt that he felt over the deaths of victims the way Harry did was no reason to think he was callous towards them.

"That feels good," Draco whispered, dropping forwards until his head rested with a thunk on the desk.

"Good." Harry kept up the slow, rolling rubbing. "And then?"

"Elder realized that he was the one who'd found those clues," Draco whispered. "But he couldn't rest content with the Ministry's official commendation. He came down and told me off for not finding them—I would say that I don't know why he blamed me, instead of both me and Kellen, but, well."

Harry nodded. Draco had faced his own degree of prejudice in the Ministry.

"I got angry and told him off. Insinuated some things that I shouldn't have, without my family's power to back me up. I frightened him, and he's the sort who can't bear to admit he's frightened. So now he's taking his chance to come back at me."

"I'll stop him, too," Harry whispered, bending down and letting his lips brush the nape of Draco's neck. "I'll stop them all. And in the meantime, we can concentrate on the hunt for Ernhardt."

Draco's hand reached back and gripped Harry's for a moment, hard, crushingly. Then he sat up and turned around. "Where's that transcript of your conversation with Morningstar?"