Chapter 4
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Malfoy screeched
“Apparently but you know me all in the name of justice” I said dryly
“Where the fuck even are we?”
“Potter Manor”
“Why the fuck are we here?”
“Because I am the only remaining Potter, the only one who can walk through the wards without being obliterated. This is the one place the ministry wont think to look and if they do they wont be able to get here anyway” I opened a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of fire whiskey. “Drink?” I was already pulling two glasses down and pouring the fire whiskey into them. Malfoy stood in the entrance hall staring at me. I handed him a glass and walked to the sitting room, I plonked myself down on the couch and waited. Malfoy always had been a curious creature, and true to form he wandered in after me and sat in the armchair. I watched him looking around at the room, plush armchairs sitting facing each other, the ones we sat in now, the brick fireplace was lit but I'd charmed it not to throw off heat for another few hours. The walls were made of mahogany and lined with bookcases filled to bursting and the floor was sandstone, it threw off a lovely ambiance of coziness to the room really. I hadn’t had much chance to do anything really with Potter Manor, I’d meant to update it, add a television and more technology, more things that are mine. I looked at Malfoy as his pale gaze settled back onto me.
“So?” He asked
“So?” I responded swirling the glass in my hand
“What's the plan?”
“Well we stay here for now, then I’ll go back out into the world and tell everyone you’ve vanished without a trace if you want”
“That won’t work, Umbridge will be after us and she’s got the backing of basically the entire ministry, she’ll never believe I’ve just vanished, or that you can’t be used to get to me.”
“I’ll kill her” I shrug
“What happened to justice, to that goodness you pride yourself on?”
“It died with my humanity” I laughed, the noise was cold and harsh and without even a hint of humour. But Malfoy shook his head with a look of almost disappointment but not quite.
“You have more humanity than the world combined, it could never die. But seriously what are we going to do, you’ve just made us both fugitives” He sighed
“Yeah not the first time I’ve been a fugitive, probably won’t be the last either if I'm honest. Besides they can’t find us here” I sipped the whiskey, savouring the burn as it travelled down my throat to my stomach.
“Where exactly is here?”
“Nowhere” I smiled. I could give him a straight answer but right now it seemed more fun to just allude to it.
“What?” Malfoy cocked his head to one side, almost like an owl or a cat. I’d not seen him do that since he was in 3rd year trying to figure out what made Hermione the top of the class.
“Nowhere, the concept that something has to be somewhere is such a mundane thing when you really think about it.” Malfoy raised his eyebrows at me and I sighed “Technically we’re in Mexico, where my family is originally from, where potter manor has stood for thousands of years”
“Mexico?” Malfoys voice went up an octave
“Si”
“You live here? Is this why we haven’t seen you around?”
“No, I live in London, I just live in the muggle world, It’s less complicated, less well everything really. I can just be Harry there, none of this by who lived shit, there’s less at stake there.”
“But you’re a wizard?”
“Well spotted Malfoy, what wonderful observational skills you possess”
“So why would you live in muggle London?”
“Less temptation, less complication, less at stake, that's why”
My phone buzzed at that moment, Hermione.
Ministry in shambles, are you out of your mind? Where are you? - Mione
Potter Manor, any chance the B sub is ready? - H.P
That’s a good place to hide actually. Maybe soon, it hard to tell - Mione
Bollocks, I could really do with some B - H.P.
Yeah well you should have bloody thought of that before you kidnapped Malfoy and went to an untraceable location with him - Mione
She was right, because of course she was right, it was so very fucking stupid to take him somewhere like Potter Manor. But it is the safest option, the damn thing is locked up tighter than Gringotts really, No-one even really knows it exists outside of a few people everyone is under the assumption that Potter Manor was obliterated during the first war. I groaned. How long exactly could I go without blood? How long before I became more creature than man? I needed to figure out a way of getting blood without alerting Malfoy to my medical condition and without succumbing to the monster in my veins.
I shook my head,
“What temptation is there for you?” Malfoy murmured, he’d been watching me stare at my phone and it had taken him talking for me to remember he was there. Fuck
“What isn’t there temptation for?” I countered, Malfoy raised his eyebrows at me but said nothing, he simply changed the subject. Typical Malfoy.
“So, since when do you have a Manor? Whenever I've seen you you’ve been wearing rags and living with the Weasleys”
“That’s a long story” I sighed, Malfoy looked around, then looked back at me and with a hint of what could of been a grin he said
“We have time”
Against all expectation it actually caused a laugh, a real laugh to burst from my mouth, I summoned the bottle of fire whiskey and set it on the table between us.
“Alright, if you insist but don’t say I didn’t warn you”
Malfoy settled himself on the couch, poured some more whiskey and waited expectantly. I sighed
“So my parents, as you know, were James and Lily Potter. They had set up a trust fund when I was a baby just in case they were to die you know” Malfoy snorted but I ignored him “They’d put enough in the fund to get me through school and buy all the things I could possibly need before the age of 18. Obviously that didn’t really happen, upon their death I was meant to go to live with Sirius. He was my godfather after all, he even adopted me in some weird blood magic he and my dad found, that obviously didn’t actually happen. Instead I got sent to live with my mum’s muggle family, her sister as it happened and her husband. Awful people, they really didn’t like me very much.” Malfoy choked on his whiskey
“You grew up with muggles?” He squawked
“Yes? It’s no secret that I grew up away from magic” I furrowed my brows “I didn’t even know I was famous until I came to hogwarts”
“You… You didn’t know who you were?” His voice had raised an octave
“Nope, thought my parents had died in a car crash actually” I shrugged but Malfoy's eyes were impossibly wide, then he shook his head
“Actually Potter, that makes a lot of sense. I remember how you were in first year, amazed by everything magical, how badly Severus treated you because you couldn’t answer his questions. I always just thought you were being a smartass, but you genuinely couldn’t answer because you had no idea” Malfoy shook his head a second time.
“As I was saying, they didn’t like me very much” I continued, only to get interrupted again
“Define that they didn’t like you”
“Well I was the child of a sister that my aunt hated because she was magical, I was magical and weird things happened around me. More than once I was punished for accidental magic, it’s not a big deal”
“Potter. I am only going to ask you this once and I’m asking because I need to know, I’m a nosy sort and it will eat me alive if I don’t find out.” Malfoy said, his voice was soft “Did they beat you?”
I closed my eyes, of course it would be Malfoy that would pick up on that, of course it would be him to outright ask me. I nodded only once, sharply and quickly, I heard the intake of breath as I looked up but what I saw on his face wasn’t pity but anger. I shook my head and continued
“Yeah so I usually got my larger cousins hand-me-down clothing, but it was better than no clothing at all, anyway once I found out about Hogwarts, Hagrid took me to Gringotts. That’s where I learned about the trust fund, except I didn’t know how to turn the money into muggle money, and I didn’t really bother about nice things. It’s hard to miss something that you’ve never had, then I did stay at the Weasleys sometimes so at least I got food even if they didn’t have much money and wouldn’t take any from me. Once I turned 18 I received a missive from Gringotts telling me that the full weight of my accounts was now accessible, I had no idea there was anything other than the original trust fund. Then suddenly I had the weight of not one fortune but two since Sirius had willed the black vaults to me, and then there were the properties, town houses, manors, ancestral homes.” My voice faded into nothing as I caught the way Malfoy was looking at me.
“So yeah, that’s how I’ve ended up here, I learnt that wealth is meant to be spent and I learnt I’m bad at doing nothing, so I bought more properties, I rent them out, I created a company and run that. I have more money than I know what to do with really” I joked
“So now you have so much money you actually do spend it?”
“I do, but maybe not as willy-nilly as you but I am sitting here in an Armani hoodie and custom made Japanese jeans” I laughed.
“So this place?” He gestured around him
“This is Potter Manor, I think people thought that it was destroyed during the first war but it wasn’t. It’s pretty much impenetrable, Helps that everyone thinks that the Potters are Indian but we’re Spanish, Mexican really so no-one thought to look for the manor that is blatantly under their noses. I did edit the wards just a little and I do have a get out plan should we need it though not to worry”
“So we’re in Mexico?”
“Yes Malfoy, I did say that earlier”
“Forgive me oh great one for being a little bit perplexed at the fact that you apparated us out of the ministry and not paying attention, never mind that you apparated in one damn jump i might add halfway across the world and you don’t even appear winded”
“I don’t look winded because I’m not winded Malfoy” I sighed
“It shouldn’t be even in the realms of possibilities to apparate out of the damn ministry Potter. There are wards up, anti apparition wards, wards that should have been impossible to get around!” Malfoys voice was increasing again
“I didn’t go around the wards Malfoy” I sighed, I knew about them, we all knew about them but there’s certain privileges that come with having the magical power of merlin on steroids.
“Then how the fuck did we get out of there?”
“I went through them”
I watched his eyes widen, watched the expressions flick between shock to disbelief to outright awe and finally annoyance.
“You’re telling me that you have the magical ability that surpasses the combined strength of merlin and dumbledore?!”
“You’ve always known I was powerful Malfoy” I sighed
“Not that fucking powerful, that means you’ve always been going easy on me when we’ve duelled haven’t you!”
“I…”
“Don’t fucking lie potter!” Malfoy had shot out of the chair and was glowering at me now
“Maybe” I muttered.
“Up, get up we’re going to duel!” Malfoy announces.
“I don’t suppose I can take you for a tour of the manor instead?” I tried hopefully
“Absolutely not, I know there’s got to be a duelling room somewhere, if you’re going to keep me prisoner here the least you can do is show me how much you were tanking our duels” He crossed his arms, the idea of duelling him had my blood pounding in my ears and the beast within me shaking its fist at the bars. It’s a very fucking bad idea, I have enough problems controlling my appetite as it were without the added incentive of battle. I’d noticed over the time I've had this condition that any strong emotions cause it to be hard to resist the call, harder to restrain the desire. A duel is a very bad idea, so why am I standing, why am I grinning just a touch too sharp, why am I leading Malfoy down to the duelling room…
The duelling room is at the back of the house, it’s made entirely of obsidian and warded to hell and back from the rest of the house, just to make sure any duels don’t cause the rest of the manor to collapse on itself.
I opened the door for Malfoy and gestured for him to enter, he brushed past me and the demon that lived inside my bones reared its head as the scent of his blood reached me. It took everything in me to keep my hands to myself, he smelt divine. Warm like vanilla chai, sweet like green apples with just a touch of bitter coffee maybe? Just a touch of bite, some kind of spice, maybe clove or cinnamon, my mouth watered. I breathed through my mouth, wrangled the beast back away from the bars and only once I was sure I wasn’t going to tear his throat out did I join him in the chamber.