lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Title: Made of Common Clay (30/48)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Minor mentions of Ron/Hermione, Molly/Arthur, Neville/Hannah, Luna/Rolf, and past Harry/Ginny; otherwise, this fic is gen and will remain so.
Content Notes: Angst, violence, torture, politics, present tense, cynical Harry
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Harry has reached a very bitter and jaded thirty. His efforts to reform the Ministry haven’t lessened the corruption or pure-blood bigotry one bit. That’s when he finds out that he’s apparently a part of a pure-blood nobility he’s never heard of before; he’s Lord Potter and Lord Black. Unfortunately, that revelation’s come too late for him to be a reformer. All Harry wants to do is tear the system down and salt the earth. And with a double Lordship, he just might have the power to do that.
Author’s Notes: This fic is partially a parody of some of the tropes common in Lord Potter/Lord Black fics. The title and most of the chapter titles come from one of Oscar Wilde’s poems: “Sweet I blame you not for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay/I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.” I don’t yet know how long this fic will be, but it will get pretty dark.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty—Bosom of the Dove

“What is going on to distract the Ministry from our Apparating to the Forbidden Forest?” Luna asks as she and Harry walk under the leaves, heading for a clearing near the center where centaur representatives have promised to meet them. Luna also thinks the unicorns will find them this way. Harry isn’t as certain, but he is certain that he needs to hold back and let Luna have her way.

“We don’t need to distract the Ministry. We need to distract the Headmistress. And Hermione has descended on her, openly this time, with questions about Hogwarts’s history of relations with magical creatures.”

Luna laughs without opening her mouth very far. “It’s sad that we have to have the distraction in the first place.”

Harry nods. “It is.” But that particular sorrow is something he’s long since got over. Minerva was a huge support to him many times, but she could never follow him into this particular rebellion. He accepts that and tries to forgive her for it. At least he doesn’t think she’ll be someone affected very much by the Elder Wand’s spell, and she ought to be as grateful for the banishment of Dementors from the world as he will be.

They step around a great oak, and halt. That isn’t because they’ve reached their destination. That’s because they have a large centaur in front of them pointing an arrow at their chests. Harry doesn’t take his eyes from the bow. He can move before the centaur shoots, but he doesn’t want to risk exposing Luna to harm.

Luna doesn’t look alarmed. She only nods a little as if the centaur’s response is proportionate, even expected, and says, “My name is Luna Lovegood. This is Harry Potter. And we’ve brought these.” She holds up one chain of the glass globes.

The centaur, who Harry doesn’t recognize, tosses his long dark hair back and prowls closer with a tap of his hooves, staring at them suspiciously. Harry holds still. He lets the centaur examine the globes. Then the centaur steps back and says, “You will leave your wands here.”

Luna reaches into her robes and removes hers without hesitation. Harry does it with narrowed eyes. He has more concerns about the centaurs. They know Luna better than they know him; she’s been here many times. And even though he’s capable of wandless magic, he doesn’t enjoy using it and exhausting himself. Plus there’s the fact that the Elder Wand can’t come to him as a backup in times of danger anymore.

But the centaur glares in a way that says he won’t be allowed past until he does this. Harry ends up shrugging and tossing his wand to the centaur. “Play nice with it,” he says.

The centaur says nothing, but turns and leads them further into the forest. Now Harry can hear the swish of tails against flanks and the low murmurs of centaurs speaking to each other. Luna’s face is shining, the way it only seems to do when she’s surrounded by non-humans.

The clearing is large and has a sandy floor. There’s a unicorn mare, who has a sheen of silver that makes her look like tarnished ivory and which Harry thinks means she’s very old indeed, near the far side. She tosses her head up and snorts when she sees him, then takes a step backwards.

“Your friend smells of evil, Moon-Seer,” says a centaur Harry thinks is Bane.

“He works with a lot of Dark magic,” Luna says, and walks straight up to the unicorn, tugging gently on her horn and then her mane. “Behave. He’s doing it for you.”

The mare calms down, though she still keeps a wary eye on Harry. Harry stands with his hands held away from his sides to show that he means no harm. And he really doesn’t. He can do harm if they attack him, though, so that part is misleading.

But all attention focuses soon enough on Luna, who spreads her chain of globes out. “If you agree, these can be strung around certain areas of the Forest so that you won’t be hurt by the human war that will probably explode soon.”

Bane, or the centaur Harry thinks is him, nods slowly. “We will want protection from the war, and these smell of pure magic. We will want to be well out of the war that someone here will unleash.” He turns and stares accusingly at Harry.

Harry just looks back. Given what’s going to happen to the centaurs after the war, given that they’ll be in a world where no one can discriminate against them, Harry’s not going to apologize.

“It does mean that you won’t be able to venture outside those areas of the Forest or your other areas until the war is over.” Luna bows her head so that her hair shines in the sun that peeks through the trees. “I am sorry for your loss of freedom.”

Harry thinks it would sound condescending if he said that, or even Hermione, but Bane seems to accept it in the spirit that Luna means it. “We are sensible of the sacrifice that your own position entails,” he says, and stamps a hoof.

Luna nods and begins to explain how the globes work. It involves a lot of blending the centaurs’ and unicorns’ magic with the magic of the Forest and the trees, and Harry gets lost in the theoretical intricacies. So he just stands in one place and looks around. He’s not foolish enough to walk in circles touching anything in the Forbidden Forest.

His gaze sharpens towards something that looks like a dark splotch on the trunk of a tree. It could be a shadow, sure, except that the leaf cover is thick enough here that no shadows should be coming from that direction. The centaurs took his wand, but Harry doesn’t need it. He throws his hand forwards and murmurs, “Ignis virens.”

Green flames burst into being on his fingertips, flames that will not burn wood or any other living material. The unicorn mare snorts in horror. Luna turns around to stare at him with a pointed look. Bane bends a bow.

The shadow moves, a crouching wizard in a dark robe fleeing through the Forest.

Harry snaps his head, tracking where the man’s going, and Apparates in front of him as he gets ready to pass through a small clearing that Harry and Luna also crossed on their way here. The man, whose face looks familiar even though Harry can’t readily put a name to it, hisses and draws his wand. Harry flicks his wrist, and he’s Body-Bound.

Bane arrives with a clatter of hooves and does shoot the arrow at Harry’s head. Harry looks at it, and a gust of wind arises to make the arrow bend around him and lodge itself in a tree.

“How dare you interrupt the sacred peace of our glade with violence!” Bane is dancing in place with rage, kicking up his heels behind him, and maybe a centimeter from launching another arrow.

“All I did was call one fire that won’t hurt people or wood to illuminate the area better and bind someone. It was you with the deadly weapon.”

“You bound our guest!”

“So.” Harry shifts his body stance enough that he’ll be able to fling a bolt of lightning at the stallion without hitting anything that might smolder. “You never really intended to take Luna’s offer and be at peace, then. You always intended to listen to what the Ministry might offer.”

“He is not from the Ministry!”

Harry bends the air again the way he did to get the arrow not to hit him, and the wizard’s cloak falls open. Along the inner lining is pinned a silver badge that resembles a pair of eyes, but one is open and one is closed. Harry nods. The Watchers split off from the Department of Mysteries about a year ago to be the Ministry’s intelligence department. They’re usually good actors, and they could fool the centaurs as to their intentions. On the other hand, they react badly when they’re found out, and they almost never see combat.

It would be so different if I was running the Ministry...

But Harry never intends to do that, and in a while there might not be any more Ministry. He unpins the badge from the wizard’s robes and tosses it casually in Bane’s direction. Bane flinches and lets it fall to the ground, then bends down to look.

“How do I know this is part of the Ministry’s insignia?”

Harry sighs. “It’s a sign of the Watchers. The Ministry’s spies and, well, sort of intelligence department,” he adds when Bane stares at him. “He may have been your guest in the sense that he told you he only wanted to watch me and know what I’m planning, right? And he probably presented himself as a neutral party or from wizards that were sympathetic to the centaurs, right?”

Bane only stares at him. Harry shrugs. As long as Bane doesn’t interfere in him Obliviating this bastard, it doesn’t much matter what he thinks. He wriggles his fingers, and his wand zooms to him from the entrance of the clearing.

That gives Bane his voice back. “You were required to leave that with the guards!”

“Why? This wizard didn’t.” Harry uses his wand to stir the Watcher’s cloak back, and nods calmly at the wand hanging in a sheath at his side. “Now maybe it’s because he was your guest, but I’m not going to leave myself defenseless in front of him.”

Bane turns the color of fresh beets. “Coramis!” he screams, swinging around. “You told me that our guest wizard didn’t have his wand!”

“He didn’t!” A big chestnut centaur trots forwards, swinging his tail and snorting in agitation. “I would swear that he didn’t!” He stares at the wand holster on the wizard’s waist, then turns to Harry. “You! You planted it there!”

Harry gives a little sigh. Yes, the centaurs deserve to be well out of a wizarding war, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to find them as tiresome as fuck.

“Obliviate,” he incants, aiming his own wand at the Watcher. The man jerks and slumps in his Body-Bind. Harry catches Luna’s eye and nods. “It seems that I’m making a nuisance of myself here, so I’ll leave.”

“Not when you attacked our guest!”

“Are you naturally this stupid, Coramis, or does it take special practice?” Harry asks, interested.

The centaur roars and charges him. Harry shakes his head and Apparates out. He’s sorry for the damage he may have done to Luna’s attempt to save them, but he’s also sure that she can work on it and correct the damage if she wants to. The centaurs trust Luna in a way that they don’t trust him.

And the way they shouldn’t trust a Watcher.

But that’s so completely not Harry’s problem right now. His problem is defending his people and making sure that their plans don’t spill out before they’re ready, and that he’s done.

*

“What exactly are we going to tell Molly about me going into seclusion for a month?”

“It might not even be that long, Hermione.”

But Hermione’s face is still set and stubborn, and Harry can understand. Molly is going to ask all sorts of questions, none of them easy. He puts his hand on Hermione’s shoulder. “We can tell her it’s a really intense research project. Remember that one you had the year you and Ron got married?”

“Yes, but in that case she knew...”

“We can tell her it just came up. No, I know! We can tell her that you’re being considered for the Unspeakables. She won’t be surprised when we don’t offer her any details then.”

Hermione gives him a wan smile. She looks at the floor then. “I never imagined that this would involve so much lying and sneaking around with Ron’s family.”

“It’s better this way,” Harry replies firmly. He’s absolutely convinced that Arthur and Molly and Percy and Ginny aren’t bad people, but that it would take far too long to persuade them that the Ministry is corrupt and that what Hermione, in particular, is doing is necessary. They don’t have weeks of time to argue. “They can adjust later. And they’ll adjust better than most of them since they won’t have as many prejudices for the Elder Wand to attack.”

“That’s true.” Hermione squares her shoulders. “And when it’s done, house-elves will have an actual choice.”

Harry nods. “Keep that in mind. We’re doing everything we can for them, and you’re doing more than most.”

Hermione sighs and picks up her wand, plus the small expanded pouch of clothes, books, blankets, food, and everything else that she’ll need to stay in the shelter for as long as the magic to free the house-elves will require. Knowing how much she managed to bring with her when they went on the hunt for the Horcruxes, Harry is satisfied she has everything. “I know. I wish it hadn’t been necessary at all, that people could have behaved sensibly from the beginning.”

Harry escorts her to the Floo, one arm over her shoulders. “Don’t worry. It’ll work itself out. One way or another now.”

Hermione pecks his cheek, her own face grim, and vanished into the fire. Harry watches her go, then turns back to the front of Hermione and Ron’s house at the same moment as an enormous shudder shakes it.

“What the hell,” Harry breathes. He knows Dark magic when he feels it. He didn’t believe the Lords and Ladies of the Sun Chamber would dare attack this place.

But when he draws his wand and runs to the front of the house, he sees it’s not them after all, although Shafiq is standing in the front row of a long line of wizards and witches. It’s people in Auror robes.

Harry stares at them in silence while they raise their wands again, and the Spiritual Earthquake Curse strikes the house. This is meant to bring down wards, protective charms, and any other kind of defensive magic keeping a place safe. It can destroy a Patronus. It can unravel spells that hold floods and fires and hurricanes at bay.

And the Ministry scolded him for using Dark magic.

Harry steps back and considers for a moment. He doesn’t want to let Ron and Hermione’s house be destroyed, of course. He can’t let that happen. And the Ministry already knows that he’s powerful, and that Shafiq fears him.

So there’s not much point in hiding now, is there?

Harry smiles and backs up a little. Then he rushes forwards, and uses a spell to fling the door wide open. It so startles the Ministry flunkies that they pause in their casting, which means the next pulse of the Spiritual Earthquake Curse dies away. It needs to be cast by many people working together.

Harry knows what he wants to do now. Shafiq has been an annoyance for long enough.

He locks gazes with her, and smiles. Then he brings down the fire that she tried to use to burn him to death.

It flares all along her veins, strikes up through her eyes and her nostrils and her brain. Shafiq has time for one hoarse scream before she drops dead, but even that doesn’t finish all the way.

Harry tilts his head at the Aurors who have been casting Dark magic. “Now, who’s next? I thought you’d like to face me on even ground, which means that I’ll duel seven of you at once. Would you like that? Or do you want eight or nine? That’s a bit fairer, I think.”

“You murdered her,” whispers one Auror who’s standing far enough back in the ranks that Harry can’t identify her.

“She was a nuisance,” Harry says cheerfully. “And I’ve had enough of nuisances.” It’s more than that, of course, because Shafiq tried to kill him and she might have collapsed Ron and Hermione’s house if he wasn’t here when she started this nonsense and he’s read the records. She made sure that more Muggleborns were imprisoned than any other member of the Sun Chamber, and she got so many pure-blood members of her family off for various crimes that they could fill a wing of Azkaban by themselves. The Shafiq family doesn’t have a lot of direct heirs, which is apparently what matters to the seat in the Sun Chamber, but they have a lot of hangers-on and cousins and illegitimate children and the like.

But let them think he’s evil and insane. It fits the image that he’s trying to project, anyway.

The Aurors back up in front of him as Harry stalks towards them. He lets his steps roll and his hips shimmy the way that his Auror trainers tried to teach him to move. They thought he should use his fame and his reputation to win extra slack from the papers when the Aurors messed something up.

Harry thought they were ridiculous. But now he can use those same tricks to make them look ridiculous.

And himself. He’s mocking himself as much as them as he stalks towards them.

Mocking all the times that he thought he could do good. Mocking all the years that he tried for reform and went back to his friends when someone laughed in his face and planned with them to do it again.

They wanted him to be a Dark Lord. He won’t rule, but he doesn’t mind playing the part in other ways.

He halts in front of them. A dozen pairs of terrified eyes stare at him.

“Using Dark Arts in the open?” he whispers. “Tsk. Tsk.”

He raises his wand.

Several of them break, and Apparate. The ones who remain realize that they can’t cast the Spiritual Earthquake alone. They back away in a tight knot, looking for a moment at Shafiq’s body.

“Approach and claim it if you want. I don’t care what you do with the rubbish.”

One of the Aurors who has a look of a Shafiq relative very slowly edges out of the knot and casts Mobilicorpus. She makes the mistake of looking at the burned-out sockets of Shafiq’s eyes, and chokes. When she turns back towards him, her glance is full of hate.

But also caution. Good. They won’t die trying to take him on.

Harry smiles at them. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

They scatter. Harry turns and quietly walks back into Ron and Hermione’s house, where he knows he’ll find the right Potions ingredients to cast an unbreakable ward.

This is the beginning of the end.