Chapter Forty-Two of 'Wolf's Choice'- A Lord and His Court

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Forty-One.

Title: Wolf’s Choice (42/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Main story is gen, a few GoF canon pairings mentioned
Content Notes: AU of GoF, angst, gore, violence, torture, present tense, minor character death
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU of GoF. Harry begins his summer with horrific visions that come true much faster than he was expecting. He’ll have to rely on his circle of friends, both his guardians, and all his allies to cope with the results.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic that is a sequel to my fic Other People’s Choices. Make sure you read that first before you start this one.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Two—A Lord and His Court

“Where has your wife gone, Lucius?”

Lucius blinks at his Lord, his mind flowing slowly away from thoughts of the potions that he’ll have to brew in the next few hours. He’s in the Forbidden Forest with his Lord now, and there are slaughtered Muggles that his Lord is sculpting into a body for himself, but the potions are the important thing, the task that his Lord has set him to kill Severus.

“I asked you a question.” The Dark Lord lifts his head, and his teeth flash, sharp as a stoat’s, from the middle of red-black muscle. “My faithful followers answer questions when I ask them, Lucius.”

Lucius blinks again and cudgels his unwilling brain. He has to admit that he can’t remember seeing Narcissa for several days now. “I think that she went to visit her cousin,” he finally says. There was a note or something like that, wasn’t there? It’s so hard to think.

“Her cousin Sirius Black? And you let her go?”

“It’s just a visit,” Lucius says, and he knows he sounds uncertain, and he knows that uncertainty isn’t good in front of his Lord, but he honestly thinks that he shouldn’t be so defensive. “I—she left me a note, I think. It was an intense few days of brewing, my lord.” Reminding the Dark Lord about the service Lucius has done him should bring him his master’s favor back again.

The Dark Lord gives the kind of hissing chuckle that always used to be accompanied by a bout of the Cruciatus Curse. Lucius braces himself, but the Dark Lord only shakes his head and hisses sharply, “She has drugged you.”

“What?”

“Your uncharacteristic slowness can only come from a potion. Give me your wand, Lucius.” A little dazed still, Lucius hands it over, and the Dark Lord points it at him and says lazily, “Purgo.”

Lucius screams as his body abruptly empties itself of the foul potion that Narcissa must have fed him, through every orifice that he has. Thick liquid is flowing from his ears and nose and throat, and he falls to the ground, vomiting along with it. It’s the most uncomfortable sensation that he’s felt in decades.

That, and he feels like he’s drowning as thick chunks of ingredients and liquid flow out of his mouth and over his nostrils.

When he’s gasping and sobbing on the ground again, the Dark Lord yawns and says, “A reminder not to let that happen again, Lucius.” Then he reaches down to the Muggle bodies and begins pulling more pliant flesh off.

Lucius lies still and shivers. Of course his Lord is powerful, or his magic would never burn through the gathered flesh the way it does and render him always in need of more. Narcissa, on the other hand, slipped him a potion that made him obey her every direction, and then took off to some unknown destination, dragging his son with her.

Something unfurls in the middle of Lucius’s chest. It’s cold and slow, and he lies there observing it until he realizes what it is. Then he sits up abruptly.

“Something wrong, Lucius?” The Dark Lord’s voice is the same kind of lazy one that he used to purge the potion from him.

“I hate her,” Lucius whispers. It feels like a stunning realization, but it has to have been gathering power for a while, like a building storm.

“As long as you can hide the hatred long enough to get her back, along with anything she knows, I do not care.” The Dark Lord waves a hand at him, and Lucius gets up and bows and walks to the edge of the clearing to Apparate.

His mind is stunningly clear, in fact, which makes him wonder exactly how long Narcissa has been using the potions to drug him. Then he shrugs that off. The important point is how he will make her pay him back when he sees her again.

And how long has she been corrupting his son?

Answers aren’t coming to him right now. But he suspects that they will, as soon as he can reach a quiet place, like the Manor, and make his mind work again.

And then Narcissa will regret defying him.

*

“They saved your life over the holiday?”

Hermione can’t help the excited tone in her voice as she asks the question, even as she sees Ron flinch a little. He’s probably thinking that he’s never done anything that impressive, which makes Hermione want to smack him on the back of his head and remind him about the chess set under the school in their first year.

Well, she can do that in a while. Right now, she wants to find out more about what Nott and Malfoy actually did.

“Yes, they did,” Harry says, and ignores the way that Malfoy puffs out his chest and Nott just studies everyone with the same kind of slow, dangerous smile. “Dumbledore broke into Grimmauld Place to try and kidnap me. Sirius was a little slow getting there, but Theo and Draco held him off until Sirius did. And then Chaos breathed on Dumbledore.”

Hermione can’t help the way her eyes widen as she looks as the dragon asleep next to Harry’s chair, her stomach bulging as if she’s swallowed lots of small pieces of meat. “Are you sure she’s safe, Harry? It seems like she’s getting out of control…”

“She’s not going anywhere, Hermione.”

Hermione nods. She figured that, but she’s still a little uneasy about Chaos. She keeps thinking that someday the dragon will do something Harry really regrets, and the only person he’ll blame is himself, because blaming the dragon is useless.

“It’s very simple, Granger.” Malfoy gives her the kind of condescending smile that makes Hermione’s fist itch. “People just need to stay in line, and then they don’t get burned.”

“That’s enough, Draco!” Harry almost hisses at the end, as if he’s about to start speaking in Parseltongue. “I don’t want to intimidate people into going along with me! I’m not that kind of—” He cuts himself off abruptly.

“Lord, you were going to say?” Nott is twirling something that looks like a watch on a chain, and has such a smug smile on his face that Hermione thinks he could probably do with a good hit, too.

“I wasn’t going to say anything like that.” At least Harry seems to have regained control of himself again. He sighs and turns to Hermione. “I know that Chaos is growing up and I’ll have to let her go eventually. But she can’t even fly yet. It may take a while.”

Hermione nods, eyeing Chaos herself. The dragonet opens one eye and looks up at them, then closes it again. Hermione thinks that she might actually like it better if she could see some sort of malicious planning in it. Then she could make plans on how to fight Chaos and convince Harry to give her up.

But there’s only wildness there, and the contentment of a creature who’s been left to sleep off a heavy meal.

Maybe, Hermione thinks as she watches Chaos apparently go back to sleep again, wildness is more dangerous.

*

“Oh, no,” Harry says firmly when he sees people who are on the Slytherin Quidditch team approaching him again, “I am not going to play for the team, and that’s final.”

“We’re not here about that, Potter.” The tall girl with a twist of auburn hair coiled around the back of her neck is called Lorna Blackstaff, Harry thinks. He heard some gossip that she was chosen as one of the new Chasers, itself kind of remarkable because the Slytherin Quidditch team isn’t known for having lots of girls. That’s probably the only reason Harry remembered her name. Blackstaff folds her arms. “We’re not thinking about this year, anyway. There’s no Quidditch, remember?”

“Not too soon for you to start thinking about next year.”

Blackstaff smiles briefly. “I can see the Slytherin in you when you talk like that.” The others are falling in line behind her. They must have picked her to speak for them. “We’re here about some rumors we heard.”

“Sure,” Harry says, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. When have rumors ever painted him in a good light? “Tell me what they are.” He dangles his hand over the side of the chair, and Chaos gives a slight, soft rumble and opens one eye.

Blackstaff keeps speaking with one eye on Chaos in return, which at least shows she has some sense. “We heard that you had a study group. But then we heard that it was more than that.”

“More than a study group?” Harry tilts his head. This is a new one on him, and he honestly can’t imagine what rumors they heard. Even his friends who want the study group to grow tend to present it that way to new people. “Well, it’s true that we’ve worked on more than just Defense, but—”

“No.” Blackstaff is grinding her teeth in the way that says she’s actually going to have to talk to him, a fourth-year, and doesn’t like it. “No, I meant that we’ve heard you’re building an army. Or that you’re a Lord.”

Harry is able to laugh fully and freely at that, and while it gets him some dark looks from the corners of the Slytherin common room that can hear him, it also means that Blackstaff’s face relaxes into befuddlement, which is great. “Then you heard wrong. Or you heard some people joking.”

“I’m sure that I heard some people refer to themselves as your lieutenants,” says a bulky boy that Harry doesn’t know from behind Blackstaff. “Nott and Zabini, wasn’t it? Or Nott and Malfoy.”

Harry wants to pound his head against something—he could have bloody told them that game would get out of hand—but right now, he doesn’t have anything that would do. He regards the boy with boredom. “That was a joke.”

“Marius, you based all of this on a joke, and you can’t even remember who was making it?” demands another boy next to the bulky one, and they start to squabble. But Blackstaff is staring intently at Harry, as if a gaze would make someone make sense. Harry only stares back, raising his eyebrows. He honestly doesn’t know what she wants. Is it his fault that some of his friends decided it was hilarious to call themselves his lieutenants?

“It’s not all a joke,” says Theo abruptly, standing up and sauntering over to stand next to Harry from the couch near the windows that he’s been sitting on. Harry glares at him with narrowed eyes. Theo chooses that moment to pretend that he never called Harry his lord and he doesn’t respect him at all. “It’s less formal than you want to make it, though.”

“What’s it like?” Blackstaff spins around to face Theo, her eyes bright. Harry opens his mouth, but Theo speaks smoothly.

“It’s a group of friends, and allies, learning defensive magic together. But we have to agree not to attack each other, and we have to set aside House rivalries. We’re allies.”

Blackstaff frowns, while behind her the shoving behind the two boys who were accusing each other has reached the level that is going to result in one of them crashing into a wall. Harry notices Chaos watching them narrowly. “But you still have to have someone be a leader. Who’s your leader?”

“Harry.”

Blackstaff gives a smug smile that, as far as Harry is concerned, doesn’t look good on her at all, and turns to face him again. “So you’re the one who can say whether we’re going to join this group or not.”

“If you want to put it that way. But as far as I’m concerned, you can if you promise to be allies and put aside the House rivalries the way Theo talked about, and if you really want to learn magic.”

“Magic and protection.”

“Well, most of the magic we learn is defensive—”

“No, Potter. You know as well as I do what I’m referring to.” Blackstaff’s eyes were larger and looked more luminous than Harry thought they really should, and she leaned forwards with her arms folded across her chest. “Protection from the war that’s coming. That’s usually a matter of formal oaths or alliances. We’re prepared to ask for that, and offer it, too.”

Harry lifts his head. Theo has gone still next to him, and part of him is aware that’s because Theo thinks Harry has to make this decision. The rest of him is just exasperated that it’s coming to this at all.

It’s one thing when he’s with his friends and he can laugh it off, or when he’s dealing with Snape’s overprotectiveness. This feels like dragging private things out in front of everyone, and he is going to have a word with Theo later.

“I can’t give you absolute protection,” he says quietly. “I’m teaching my friends and allies to defend themselves. And some of them are closer friends than others, or we’ve made each other promises that we’ll do or not do certain things. None of that is the same thing as choosing a side in the war or them trusting me to defend them from every single blow that might strike them.”

Death Eaters. Voldemort. The words hang in the air like a second knot of smoke from the fire, but Harry isn’t going to be the first one to speak them, if no one else will be.

“We’re not asking for absolute protection,” pipes up the boy whose name seems to be Marius from behind Blackstaff’s shoulder. “We’re asking for a fighting chance.”

Harry shrugs. “Then I’ll ask the others in the group if they would be comfortable with some upper-year Slytherins joining us. You might as well know that they probably won’t say yes if any of you bullied them in the past—what is it now, Blackstaff?”

“We want more than that.”

“I don’t have more to offer than that.” Harry keeps his voice flat and uninterested, although he does reach down one hand to prevent Chaos from getting to her feet as she stirs. It’s the way things are that he can get irritated with someone and she doesn’t have to attack them, although she doesn’t accept that all that often.

“I know that you can, if you want.” Blackstaff stands there, and Harry doesn’t say anything to put her out of her misery, so she’s the one who finally says it, although she raises a Privacy Charm around their corner of the common room first. She includes Theo, who is smiling slightly, damn him.

“I know you can be our lord.”

“Besides power, what does a lord have?”

Blackstaff obviously thinks this is a trick question—and she’s right on about that—but she pauses to think about it first. Harry gives her a narrow, encouraging smile. “Followers,” Blackstaff finally says. “Politics. A publicly stated position of some kind. Usually a mark—I mean, not that anyone has to, but it’s sort of a tradition.”

She probably says that because of the expression Harry can feel on his face at the mention of marks. He shakes his head. “I don’t want any of that. I want friends, and people can be allies if they want, but not followers.”

Blackstaff looks him in the eye for a surprisingly long time. Harry expected her to either make some arguments or just take offense and storm away, but she doesn’t. He raises his eyebrows at her and keeps stroking Chaos, although Chaos now just feels interested in things.

“How much of that is true,” Blackstaff asks finally, “and how much of it is a pretense you made up to spare yourself from seeing the way things are going?”

Harry narrows his eyes, especially when he hears Theo mutter—not softly enough—“Most of it.”

“I can’t keep people from asking me,” Harry says. “You know, the way you did. But I can refuse to lead people around, and I can refuse to mark them, and I can refuse to make these political statements that people want me to. There’s people who assume they know my politics, anyway, just because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“I know. I was one of them.” Blackstaff goes on before Harry can say that that proves his point. “And don’t you sort of have to have those politics? Since you do, why don’t you let people help you against—your counterpart?”

“Helping is one thing. I won’t be a lord the way you’re asking me to.”

“I still haven’t heard a good reason why, other than your own reluctance.”

“Because I don’t want to enslave people! Is that a good enough reason?”

Blackstaff draws back from him, and Chaos sits up and fans her wings. Harry reaches up and curls his fingers firmly around her muzzle before she can breathe. Chaos rolls up an eye, and the impression of flames press against his mind.

“No,” Harry hisses in Parseltongue. It’s not that she understands it, exactly, but she’ll respond to it better than she will English. And she does stop heating up his fingers and gives him a meaningful look that he wishes he understood all the implications of.

He glances up, and everyone is staring at him. Harry’s skin crawls. At least they could stare at him when he does something genuinely impressive, he thinks. Speaking Parseltongue and working with Chaos are things that everyone has had years or at least months to get used to.

“Why do you see it as enslaving people?” Blackstaff asks, her voice a whisper.

“Those people with marks on their arms have to do whatever their lord tells them to,” Harry says flatly. “And they act like they have to follow him even if he falls, too, and they can’t tell him what he’s doing wrong when he has a stupid idea. I know that everyone felt enslaved by Voldemort when they followed him—” he ignores the wave of gasps and Theo shifting uncomfortably next to him—“because otherwise someone would have told him what a stupid idea it was to attack a baby.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Theo says softly. Blackstaff is still blinking as if she’s having to settle new thoughts into long-held conceptions in her brain, and it’s hard work.

“But too often it is. And people expect it to be like that. For lords to make war and give them something simple to follow. Maybe someone else will try to change that.” Harry shakes his head. All he feels now is weary and disgusted. Why can’t people think for themselves? Why can’t they just accept the study group for what it is, and stop trying to turn him into a lord? “I don’t want to. I already have enough to do.”

“But you are going to fight the Dark Lord,” Blackstaff mutters. It sounds tentative.

Harry nods fiercely. “Yes, of course I am. He’ll go on trying to kill me, anyway. What I won’t do is set myself up as his equal, or someone who enslaves people.”

Blackstaff clears her throat. “Would you mind us joining the study group?”

Harry shrugs. He has the feeling that she hasn’t given up, which makes him as uncomfortable as hell, but on the other hand, he can’t see into her head or force her thoughts to change—that’s exactly what he’s against. “Like I said, I’ll ask the others. You can join if they agree.”

He turns around and walks up the stairs to his bedroom, knowing he’s being rude. But he’s so discouraged, and he sits down in the middle of the bed and holds out his hands for Chaos. She jumps up, even though her claws make rips in the sheets, and settles her heavy, warm chin on his legs. It’s exactly what Harry needs right then.

“I don’t mind being a leader,” he whispers to her as he strokes her scales. “Not really. But I don’t want to be a lord. And they keep acting like I should. Why don’t they want to think for themselves? Is it really that scary?”

Chaos snuggles close and sends an image of dragons soaring in the air. All of them proud and fierce and beautiful, but unconnected. There’s so much starlight between their wings.

Harry lies back on the pillow. He doesn’t want that, either. He loves his friends and he wants to keep them safe.

But there seem to be so few people who want to join him between those two extremes. And it must be fear, because what else can it be?