ciroccoj | Fic Post: Finding Elvis Chapter 2a (Reply)

Hi!

Remember the Harry Potter fic I started, where Malfoy the Muggle Works at Chapters? I'm semi-done, in that I've written out the whole story. The last chapters only need a bit of tightening and editing before going to beta. Oh, and I need to wrestle one scene away from my gluttonous Palm Pilot, which ate it.

So I've decided to celebrate the fact that it's semi-done by posting the first chapter publicly and the second chapter privately. Or rather, livejournaly. As this chapter turned out to be longer than the first one, I'm going to post it in two parts.

And again, while no feedback is necessary, it is always warmly welcomed :)

Also: beta!

bear rocks my world :) :) :)

And thanks to

bear and

snarkhunter for Alisia D. Crede ;

Chapter 2a - Missing, Presumed Dead

"Do you know how many people were struck with the Enmagio curse during the war?" Harry asked Celsus the next time he was in London.

"Enmagio? Er... don't know off the top of my head. Why?"

"Weren't you working at St. Mungo's at the time?"

"Yeah, but that was fifteen years ago. And it wasn't exactly the worst we had to deal with, we had Cruciatus and Imperius and Exuviae-"

Harry suppressed a grimace at that last one, having seen it up close once. Removal of the epidermis. One thing you could say about the Death Eaters: they were certainly creative. He interrupted Celsus' litany of horrifying curses. "Has it been used since?"

"Not much, I don't think. I think there was a case about five years ago. It wasn't a terribly easy hex to cast, though. The body fights off any attempt to remove magic pretty hard. One Death Eater said it felt like trying to smother an unrestrained person with your bare hands - it could be done, but not easily. It sometimes took two or three of them combined to do it right."

Harry frowned. "Why use it then, instead of an easier and deadlier curse?"

"Usually they did it to hostages or prisoners of war. That way they were rendered harmless, but could still be used to bargain with."

"Near the end of the war they were still thinking about bargaining?"

"Not much." Celsus eyed him shrewdly. "That's part of why some people thought Draco Malfoy was still with the Death Eaters. Because if he couldn't be a bargaining piece any more, why wouldn't they have just killed him?"

"It's a good point."

"They may have wanted to punish him, for turning on them."

Harry shrugged. "Good point again."

"Why are you asking?"

"Just curious." There was a pause as Celsus waited patiently for Harry to continue. Harry sighed. "I went back to the bookstore."

"And?"

"It's possible. That that man might be Malfoy."

"Really."

There was another, longer pause. "So what should I do?" Harry finally asked.

"Do you mean, confront him, tell the Ministry, keep it a secret?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know."

"You're the one who was pushing and saying that it might be him. What did you expect me to do if I decided you were right?"

"I didn't really expect you to do anything; I was mostly just reacting to your unattractive cynicism at such a young age."

Harry chuckled.

Celsus took a bite of his stew. "So how does he look?"

"Fine. Older, I guess."

"Aren't we all. I take it he didn't recognize you." Harry shook his head. "It might not be him, then."

On impulse, Harry decided not to tell Celsus about the Dark Mark. He shrugged. "Maybe."

"You know, even if you're sure it's him, there's no reason you should do anything about it."

Harry eyebrows went up. "Oh really? What if he did betray us? Should I just let him go free, if he got our people killed?"

"Why not?"

Harry gaped at Celsus.

"I'm just playing devil's advocate, but think about it," Celsus said, leaning across the table and gesturing at Harry with his fork. "Why should you identify him? Would it bring any of his victims back?"

"Celsus... if he pretended to be a spy for our side but was really still with the Death Eaters, he doesn't belong in a bookstore. He belongs in Azkaban."

"Why?"

"Justice? The Rule of Law? Punishment?" Harry paused. "Vengeance?"

"Do you not think that being a Muggle is enough punishment?"

"For killing people? No, I don't."

"I'd say for Draco it would have been."

"He didn't look like a man living out a life sentence. He looked like he enjoyed his job, liked working with books."

"So what would you do? Bring him in? Demand he account for himself?"

"Maybe somebody should."

"Maybe somebody already did. You don't know what the Ministry did or didn't do back then. Besides, the Enmagio... if he survived that, he got as much punishment as anybody could possibly hope for."

Harry looked at him, puzzled.

"Didn't you ever read what happened to those people? A lot of them went insane. Quite a few killed themselves."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, use your imagination, Harry. What do you think it would be like? All of a sudden, you can't do half of what you could do before. And all around you, your world is set up for people who can. Remember Filch? Why do you think he was such a nasty piece of work? Half crazy with jealousy, being a Squib in the wizarding world."

Harry frowned, considering that.

"And he'd had his whole lifetime to get used to it," Celsus continued. "That kind of thing, dumped into your lap from one moment to the next... I'd go stark raving mad, I'm sure." Celsus chewed pensively. "There were other side-effects, too. Read Alisia D. Crede, she wrote some papers about it. Interesting work."

"But what if he didn't lose his magic?"

"Would he be working at a bookstore?"

"No, probably not. Unless he was hiding from the Aurors, still."

Celsus shrugged. "Why don't you try to figure out what happened to him, then?"

"How? Should I walk up to him and say Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to be Draco Malfoy, would you? There's some Aurors that would like to talk to you-"

"No, ask around. Maybe you can figure out what happened back then."

"Celsus, nobody figured it out fifteen years ago."

"Nobody looked all that hard, either."

"Excuse me? The Quibbler ran daily stories about sightings-"

"The Quibbler is for entertainment purposes only. You of all people should know that. The real Powers That Be were too busy rebuilding the Ministry and stamping out the last resistance and holding back rogue Dementors and frantically trying to hide from the Muggles. They were just barely keeping their heads above the water. Widows and orphans and blasted villages and castles and dragons and harpies running amuck... they didn't have the time or inclination to hunt down one lone possible Muggle, possible suicide/death. And half the people who knew him wouldn't have talked to the Ministry anyway. Years later... who knows?"

Harry shrugged. "All right, then, how about you? What do you know?"

"What?"

"You were there the night he lost his magic. What happened?"

"Harry, it was fifteen years ago - how do you expect me to remember-"

Harry started to laugh. "My point exactly."

Celsus blinked, then gave a short laugh followed by a sigh of resignation. "Oh, all right. Give me a minute. I'll try to remember."

***
You need a story, thought Harry at The Book Cellar a few days later. Like during the war. Get a story, use it so you can gather information without looking like that's what you're doing.

He wandered, stopping at the computer section. This was one of the only things he occasionally missed about the Muggle world. These machines had a magic of their own, and when he'd left the Muggle world they hadn't been as common as they were today. He could use them - most witches and wizards his age could - but he didn't handle them with the ease that Muggles did. Or, for that matter, with the ease that Malfoy did.

He glanced surreptitiously at Malfoy, who was on shift today. Marvelling yet again at how comfortable Malfoy seemed here. He'd swept the store, whistling absently to himself, helped a few people locate books, and was currently on the phone chatting animatedly about a new order of children's books.

Young adult books. Harry could be collecting young adult books for a school, as a volunteer project, with money raised by the students. And... he would need to come back a few times, as the students requested new books.

That should work. Harry got himself a computer book, then wandered over to the young adult section and looked at the titles with a reasonable facsimile of interest.

Talking to Celsus and reading Alisia D. Crede's work had been interesting, but somewhat unsettling, he thought as he scanned titles. Mostly he'd been appalled at how little he'd known - or cared - about how anybody but himself and his close friends were doing in the aftermath of the war.

Granted, it had been a difficult time for everybody. Just dealing with Ron and his shattered family was surely as good an excuse as anybody could have for sealing themselves into a bubble and away from the rest of the world for a long, long time.

Except that Harry had stayed in that bubble for years. Long after what was left of the Weasleys had settled into whatever passed for peace and no longer required him and Hermione to spend the bulk of their lives dealing with them.

Don't think about Ron and his family right now, he told himself wearily. There was plenty else to think about.

Like, for example, Crede's first article on Enmagio, written during the war. The quotes from survivors and their families had haunted him through a couple of the more boring meetings today.

"Paranoia, is what it feels like. Rampant paranoia. Missing out, knowing that everybody around you knows a secret that you don't."

He looked over at Malfoy, still on the phone, writing something down and laughing at something the person on the phone was saying.

"It was unnerving. It was just... I couldn't do anything for myself. I felt so helpless, all the time - and knowing that people around me could see and sense things that I couldn't, that was the worst. And it was so hard to explain, because... because for example I could explain that it bothered me that I couldn't see the Knight Bus, and people would nod and say Yes, that must be frustrating, but the real frustration came when you knew for a fact that there was nothing magical to see - and yet you still felt like you were half-blind. And people would say, "Honestly, Tim, there's no secret doorways or pictures, it's all perfectly visible to any Squib - oh, I'm sorry," and they'd look embarrassed at the word Squib and you wouldn't care because you wanted to just smash the pity off their faces, not for calling you a Squib but for thinking that if they could reassure you that there was no invisible magic, you would stop imagining that you were missing anything."

Malfoy got off the phone, tapped something into the computer in front of him, frowning at the screen slightly.

"She slowly started going insane. She insisted that we were hiding things from her, performing spells behind her back, fooling her. We tried so hard to reach her, but she got more and more angry and withdrawn. She'd have these bursts of rage, then break into tears, for no reason at all."

Harry shook his head, banishing the article's words and images, and concentrated on the books on the shelf before him.

Why young adult books, he wondered. The salespeople here seemed to specialize in a few areas of the store. Why had Malfoy chosen literature written for teenagers? Why, for that matter, had he chosen music or mystery, the other two areas he seemed to know fairly well?

Well, if you were talking about spy mysteries, that would be rather obvious, what with Malfoy's direct experience in that field. But most mystery books weren't about spies, they were about private investigators, and as far as he knew, Malfoy hadn't been one of those.

"May I help you?" Malfoy asked, startling Harry even though Harry had been expecting him. Harry quickly launched into his story.

"They're how old?"

"Eleven to seventeen, boys and girls."

"Well the Adele books are fairly popular with that age group, but I'd think most of them have probably read them all, except for the last one, which we can't seem to keep in stock." He frowned thoughtfully at the shelves, picked out a couple. "This one's a big hit. It's a little hard to get into at first, but the kids who stick with it love it to death. Do any of them have learning disabilities?"

Oh dear. "Oh, er, yes - dyslexia," Harry said, grasping at the only term he knew.

"This one's highly recommended for dyslexic kids - my niece is dyslexic and she's hooked on them." His niece? Malfoy was an only child. No nieces. Harry realized Malfoy was still talking. "...getting the kids to read is the first step - they find something they enjoy and they'll put a lot of effort into it, a lot more so than their lessons."

"Oh." Harry paused. "How old is your niece?"

"Thirteen," Malfoy said absently, still scanning the titles and pulling out a few more. "Any horse enthusiasts in the group?"

"Er, I don't know."

"Well, if it's girls there'll be at least one or two. Boys tend to prefer the violent computer games - and there's this series, it's actually based on a game; boys tend to really like it, but it's rubbish as far as literature is concerned. Maybe have that as a hook, again - get them reading trash they'll like, they see reading's fun, and come back for the good stuff."

Harry nodded, observing Malfoy. He really seemed into the work, the books - not marking time or hiding in this bookstore, but actually fully involved and enthusiastic about it. A lot more enthusiastic than Harry was about his own job, come to think of it. He doubted he'd want to talk to anybody at great length about anything having to do with the Velleywold conference... or, for that matter, anything connected to his job.

Malfoy also didn't look, at all, like what Harry had expected after reading the Crede works. They were nothing but depressing.

Of the twenty-six people known to have been hit by the curse since it appeared eleven months ago, eight have committed suicide and another ten have made serious attempts on their lives. Six of those are currently confined to St. Mungo's. Of the twelve remaining known victims, five report emotional symptoms that most resemble a Muggle condition known as "Depression" syndrome, characterized by severe joylessness, anxiety, fatigue, sleeplessness, and lack of mental acuity. The remaining five claim to be coping well. It is significant to note, however, that three of these five are Muggle-born and one is half-Muggle. They have ties to the Muggle world and four of them have effectively moved into it.

Malfoy didn't have ties. Granted, that article had been written in the first few months of the existence of the curse, but the one written five years later, as a follow up, was hardly a picture of cheer. Particularly the concluding statistics:
Total known number of cases: 56
Committed suicide within one year: 16
Committed suicide since the war: 4
Still confined to St. Mungo's at this time: 8
Moved into Muggle world: 15
In wizarding world: 8
Fate unknown: 5
Confined to St. Mungo's for any length of time: 12
Reporting severe "Depression" syndrome at any length of time: 22
Still reporting severe "Depression" syndrome, in St. Mungo's, wizarding world, Muggle world: 6

So how had Malfoy ended up here? Functioning, rational, seemingly quite at ease? Harry had read some other things about Depression syndrome, and none of the characteristics fit.

The likeliest answer, Harry thought, assuming Malfoy wasn't a Death Eater still hiding from the Ministry - which seemed rather unlikely - was something that he'd encountered near the end of the last Crede article:

"No, she went Muggle. Said she couldn't bear to live as a blind cripple any more. So she, well, she, she went to Knockturn Alley and found somebody who - you know there's people who'll place a very good Obliviate on you, for a price. I begged her not to, but she couldn't - and so I helped her, we set her up with a Muggle-born friend's family. We exchanged our money for Muggle money, they took her in, and she was a new person. Didn't remember us. I've gone to visit her a few times, but it's too painful; she doesn't remember anything of her life, she's been told she's this Muggle who's lost her memory through some accident or something ridiculous like that and she believes it. She believes it, and doesn't know any of us any more."

"So the kids raised the money themselves?" Malfoy asked as he moved over to the non-fiction books.

"Yeah, they sold cookies."

"What kind of group is it?"

"Book club, actually."

"That's nice, kids going out of their way to read. Oh, here's another one they may like - the parents might not want it though, it's got a bit of adult content - it's written for kids, but it talks about sex and drugs and things like that. Check with the parents before making it available."

"She's happy now, I think. Works at a "coffee shop" - it's sort of like a restaurant, where they only serve this bitter drink, not like our coffee at all. She was an Auror, you know. Took nine NEWTs, she had a brilliant future ahead of her.

"It's so hard now, to think of her and see what she's become."

"That should be enough... twelve there, nine fiction, three non-fiction. You get a Book Cellar card free if you buy more than six books, so with the discount that's... about thirty euros. Did you want to look at any others?"

"No, that's fine. Thanks."

There were no real answers here, from the articles or from Malfoy himself, thought Harry as Malfoy took his books to the cash. And Harry still had no idea what to do about any of it. Not without knowing how Malfoy had gotten from there to here.

***
Harry looked at the stacks of papers on his hotel room desk. In one pile was yet another report on Romanian dragons and the structures in place to maintain them under control - the dragon handlers, what training they had, where the funds came to maintain them and keep their training up to date; the supplies needed for care of injured dragons and the spells needed to keep strong the wards around dragon country.

Another pile of documents about werewolves, and examples of discrimination faced by werewolves, statistics about how many werewolves had actually attacked people in the last twenty-two years (two, one fatally, out of 135 registered werewolves).

The last was a small stack from his brief investigations into Malfoy. He should be slogging his way through the first two piles, but instead here he was, re-reading the third.

Dry, factual report of the battle with Blaise Zabini's group - diagrams, timeline, statements from Aurors and prisoners of war. Terse medical reports on both, as there wasn't time for much more detail in those days. Death certificates, same. Scrolls that had probably not been opened in at least ten years but still felt almost like new except for the dust.

Paracelsus Green (second team medic)
minor injuries (healed, Skele-grow, third-level Knit charm)
aftereffects, v. brief Cruciatus (healed, Serenitas) and Exsanguine (healed, Ferritas)
dehydration (healed, Aquafire)

Tamara Silvanine (first team member)
Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Rupert Grisenwold (first team leader)
Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Ginevra Grisenwold (second team member)
Deceased, Avada Kedavra

Seven more of those; three others of survivors treated for physical and psychic injuries caused by physical and magical means.

Draco Malfoy (second team informant and scout)
minor injuries (healed, Skele-grow, third-level Knit)
blood loss and internal bleeding (healed, Hematos and Venasurgio)
dehydration (healed, Aquafire)
aftereffects of Exsanguine (healed, Ferritas)
aftereffects of completed Enmagio (unhealed)

A later medical report

Draco Malfoy, Enmagio
no magical abilities present
being followed for emotional aftereffects

Another report, briefly stating that he'd requested release from St. Mungo's once three Healers had confirmed the diagnosis. He'd been released into his own care, although he did not give an address, as he did not have one. Homelessness was hardly unusual at the time - people were staying at the Ministry, Hogwarts, various safe houses dotted around the country and in Europe.

A one-paragraph report on a visit to him at the home of Pansy Parkinson. He reported no unusual ill effects, checked out medically, and agreed to report to St. Mungo's in a week to be "followed."

Clip of two-sentence report from St. Mungo's: "Visit to home of Pansy Parkinson following missed appointment of patient Draco Malfoy, Enmagio after effects. Patient not in premises, Parkinson unsure of his whereabouts, will contact St. Mungo's to reschedule appointment."

More reports from St. Mungo's: "Patient Draco Malfoy has not contacted St. Mungo's or Ministry for medical follow up or secondary debrief re raid of March 18."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown."

"Whereabouts of Malfoy unknown, last seen at home of Pansy Parkinson, no other family or acquaintances report contact with him. Ms Parkinson believes him to have committed suicide, see Crede article "Enmagio and its effects."

And the last entry, from the Ministry: "Missing, presumed dead."

Not much to show for a life. Not much to show thanks or care towards Malfoy for his service or sacrifice.

Of course, Harry was familiar with the reports of the time - how many incredibly complex and time consuming events had been reduced to "raid completed successfully"? How many had no reports at all? That didn't mean nothing had happened. Only that nobody had time to write it down.

But even memories hadn't yielded much, as Harry, bored out of his mind by the current administrivia he was involved in, had tracked down people whose names he recognized from the reports. He'd asked, and they couldn't add anything useful to the reports.

The Quibbler was even worse. Harry had spent about an hour, more for entertainment purposes than anything else, leafing through the batch of old clippings that had been put together for him by a very eager and giggly clerk at the paper.

Malfoy grave found in Glastonbury! and Malfoy's body finally unearthed, missing eyes and four fingers! were just two examples of headlines. Harry read about sightings at a concert, Hogwarts, the Pixie Woods just outside Limerick, a Montrose Magpies/Chudley Cannons Quidditch match (as mystery replacement Seeker), two Muggle supermarkets, one Muggle hospital in France, and a Muggle medium-security jail in Cornwall, before he gave up. None of them seemed remotely plausible or worth looking into - the 'sources' were unnamed, the facts hazy, the situations implausible.

He could start looking in the other direction, he supposed. He could try to figure out when "David Bergsen" had appeared in the Muggle world, and what he'd done there. But he had no idea how to even begin that. It would probably involve the use of computers, too. Which he wasn't terribly comfortable with. And nobody he knew was comfortable with them either.

Too bad he couldn't ask Malfoy for help with that, Harry thought, and chuckled to himself as he finally put aside the interesting stuff and started on his stack of tripe from the conference.