Chapter Four of 'Leopard's Choice'- Dread in the Day

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Three.

Chapter One.

Title: Leopard’s Choice (4/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of canon background pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU (Harry Sorted into Slytherin at the end of second year), violence, gore, torture, present tense
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Sequel to Wolf’s Choice. Harry enters his fifth year with the Ministry demanding he retract his stories of Voldemort’s return, his allies demanding sacrifices he may not want to make, and the world becoming sharper with every breath.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to Other People’s Choices and Wolf’s Choice, and the third part of the Choices series. Seriously, don’t try to read this without having read the other stories first. I anticipate this being 60 chapters, like the others in the series. Also, please take the violence warning seriously. Like OoTP, this fic will get considerably darker than the others.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Four—Dread in the Day

“It concerns me that this enemy has appeared in your dreams.”

Harry sighs as he gets up from the cramped position on the floor Lyassa has been having him sit in to practice with Chaos’s firestone. She insists that he needs to be able to concentrate on such important magic through any manner of pain. Harry sort of appreciates that, but he doesn’t know if the pain of not moving for thirty minutes really counts. “I don’t suppose you could tell me more about it?”

Lyassa doesn’t respond immediately. Harry looks at her and sees her flicking her tail, a sign of uncertainty. “Are you all right?”

“To speak the name is to summon the being.”

Harry swallows. “So you think it would come to more of my dreams and stalk me through them if someone talked about it in detail?”

“Yes. Let us say that it is a creature who fought us for supremacy once, when we still lived more prominently in this world, and lost. It hates us. It hates Parselmouths. We will work on dream magic, however.”

Harry nods. “Thanks. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to hear. I’m still pants at protecting my mind from Occlumency.”

“Is pants like being shirty?”

Harry has to laugh. Of course, the Speakers barely wear clothing except when they’re in their two-legged forms and interacting with humans, and those are rare occasions. “No, sorry. I just mean I’m not very good at it.”

Lyassa shrugs with a roll of her shoulders and a clack of the scales that make up her “hair.” “Humans have their analogies, and we have ours. We will work on dream magic the next time I come. But I think it is time for you to leave now so that you will not be late to your meeting with the dog-smelling man.”

Harry rolls his eyes. The Speakers know Sirius’s name well enough, but they refuse to use it since Sirius refuses to have them in his house. “You know that it’s for a practical reason now. He can’t have my lessons there with all the Dark wizards that he has coming and going—not if we’re going to keep it a secret.”

“And was it for a practical reason last summer?”

Harry hesitates, and Lyassa nods. “You know that, sooner or later, you will have to show off your Parseltongue in front of them. Your dog will have to become accustomed to it, and so will your wolf.”

Harry switches back to English. “I know. But I’m not going to make them do it now.”

“Their loss,” Lyassa says, before she turns around and glides back towards the corner by the fireplace that the Speakers usually enter by. “Now, I must return to my loving husband.”

She chuckles before she thins to a point of light and vanishes. Harry sighs, and harder when he glances over to the door of the library and realizes that Theo’s standing there. A conversation shouldn’t blunt his awareness so much that he doesn’t even notice someone come in, not when it could cost him his awareness someday.

“Don’t worry,” Theo says, probably just guessing his thoughts instead of skimming them with Legilimency. “I’ve reconciled myself to her presence as my stepmother. And my father has been doing everything I ask of him by letter.”

“But?” Harry falls into step beside Theo as they head for the fireplace, absently balancing Lion on his shoulder. Severus comes out of his lab to watch them. Harry waves at him and says, “I’m going over to Grimmauld Place.”

“Be careful,” Severus says, as he always says since the day that Greyback attacked Harry at Grimmauld Place, and goes back into the lab and shuts the door behind him.

“We will be,” Theo tells the lab door.

Harry eyes him as he picks up the Floo powder. “Are you sure that you want to come with me?”

“Are you sure that you want to try and go without me?”

Harry scowls, but doesn’t try to prevent Theo from following him as they go through the flames. He just hopes that Theo remembers the discussion they had about Draco—that is, that he is utterly off-limits from being harmed. Harry appreciates Theo’s protectiveness, but sometimes he gets sick of it.

*

“Harry.” Sirius hugs his godson hard, and then pulls back and surveys him. The jangling nervousness that has been plaguing him all day recedes a little as he meets Harry’s eyes. Harry still hasn’t fully recovered from what happened at the end of his fourth year—that’s obvious—but he’s so much better.

Once, Sirius thought he might not wake up sane from his bed in the hospital wing. This is a wonderful gift.

“Are you all right, Sirius?”

Sirius smiles and ruffles Harry’s hair, then nods at the Nott boy standing behind him. Merlin knows he’d never try to ruffle that one’s hair, even in jest. “Yeah, the guests you met before for the alliance are coming over, and they’re bringing some new people with them. I hate entertaining.”

“Even though he’s so good at presenting himself as the leader of the alliance,” Cissy says, sailing through the door of the sitting room where the Floo entrance lets out. “Hello, Harry, Mr. Nott.”

“Mrs. Malfoy.” Nott bows from the waist, correct and perfect. He’s a quiet kid, even quieter than Harry’s Zabini friend, with calm dark eyes and an intense interest in books. There’s no reason for Sirius to feel more nervous at the sight of him, but he does.

Well, at least he’s sure all that ferocious intensity will be channeled into protecting Harry, so that’s something.

“Hi, Mrs. Malfoy,” Harry says, and he’s shifting around a little as if he wants to ask a question by telepathy instead of words.

“Draco is in the library and won’t be participating in this meeting,” Cissy says. For a moment, her gaze crosses Sirius’s, and she frowns at him. “But we have perhaps ten minutes before it begins. Will you excuse me, dear?”

“Of course.” Harry looks relieved and confused. For that matter, Sirius shares the last emotion. He doesn’t resist as Cissy grabs his arm and steers him towards a little room off to the side that Sirius’s father used as a study, but he doesn’t know what she could want. They’ve practically rehearsed every step of the meeting, every word. Does she think he’s forgotten it all?

But when Cissy shuts the door behind her, it’s to scan him closely and say, “What’s wrong, cousin?”

“I’m nervous about being in front of these wankers. I’m sure you heard me tell Harry that.”

“I didn’t mean that. You’re—you look as if you’re about to claw your own skin off. This isn’t nervousness.”

“How would you know when you never feel nervous yourself?” Sirius snaps back, and then limits himself to a deep breath when Cissy just stares at him. “Right, that wasn’t fair.”

“Or true. Of course I’m nervous. I’m nervous about my son’s future. I’m nervous about what you’re concealing from me.” Cissy folds her arms when Sirius starts to say he’s not hiding anything. “Listen to your feelings, Sirius. I think that you’re vibrating like this because your instincts know something your rational brain doesn’t right now.”

She doesn’t say what little rational brain you have, but Sirius knows she’s thinking it. He closes his eyes and concentrates on his magic and instincts instead of snapping back at her. He frowns as his brain rushes and dances through odd corridors and doesn’t calm down. There’s—

“There’s magic out there that’s familiar, but unpleasant,” he says, opening his eyes. “Coming closer.”

Cissy stiffens, her head tilting up a little. “Here yet?”

Sirius shakes his head. “But approaching.”

“Then we must guard the house,” Cissy says, and steps away from him, her hands down at her sides with the palms displayed. Sirius wonders what the hell she’s doing until she adds, “Engage the wards, Sirius.”

Sirius understands then. The Black wards are extremely unamused about someone, even if they’re of the family, appearing like a threat when they’re engaged. Sirius closes his eyes and reaches out, twining his magic with the active wards of the house. Most of the time, they sleep. Sirius has passive defenses up against the obvious threats—werewolves, after last summer, are included, and Dumbledore’s magical signature—and they jangle and scream and bounce someone off if they try to enter.

Active wards are…different.

“There,” Cissy says, sounding a little breathless. Sirius opens his eyes and sees her looking at the far wall. There must have been a crackle of light or movement as the wards engaged. “That should keep us safe.”

Sirius nods, but then he hears the whoosh of the Floo, which means his “guests” are arriving for the “alliance meeting.” He grimaces and pats down his robes one more time, then opens the door of the study.

“It’s going to be all right, Sirius.”

Sirius starts to answer, but that’s when they hear the screaming start down the corridor.

As he starts to run, Sirius thinks grimly, Trust Cissy to jinx things.

*

Theo is standing next to Harry at the edge of the large sitting room that they came into, the one that has the only active fireplace as far as he knows. He watches as the guests come through the flames, mentally ticking them off. There’s his own cousin, Milton Nott, a weedy bastard who was always angry that Tarquinius had a son, helping a woman with the look of the Shafiqs through the fire. There’s Astoria and Daphne’s aunt with another Greengrass relative. And there’s Hecuba Selwyn with—

The tall woman with the curly blonde hair comes through the fire and tries to draw her wand, only to begin to scream and clutch at her arm.

It doesn’t matter. Theo is already moving, getting himself between her and Harry, drawing his wand so that he’ll be able to cast anything he needs to. Selwyn spins, her face startled, her hand raised. The woman is on her knees but trying to spit and curse, only cries of agony keep erupting from her lips instead.

“What is going on?” Harry snaps from behind Theo, echoed by what sounds like a hiss from Lion.

Theo starts to answer, but Black and Mrs. Malfoy burst into the room then, with Draco right behind them. Theo makes sure not to catch Draco’s eye, and instead raises his wand as the woman gets one knee beneath her.

Black gestures with one arm, and a silhouette shaped like the strange woman, but red, coalesces in the air around her. It grips tighter and tighter, and Theo can see her struggling against it. It presses closer around her, and then shrinks, and then abruptly pops like a balloon. Theo jumps despite his distaste for such dramatics.

He expects to see blood all over the floor, but instead, Black bends down and picks up something from the rug. It’s small and glows red like Chaos’s firestone. Harry shifts behind him. Theo’s sure that he just reached into his pocket to make sure that his stone is still with him.

Black examines the red stone, and his face turns harsh and cold in instants, probably the kind of face that got him accused of murdering a dozen Muggles. He flicks his wand out and turns to Selwyn.

“You dared to bring an enemy into my home?” he snarls.

Theo turns to Selwyn, his own eyebrows rising. The oath she swore to Harry should have prevented that.

Of course, maybe it wasn’t strict enough. Theo wishes now that he’d thought to be there and supervise the giving of the oath himself.

“Of course not!” Selwyn is staring at Black, at least doing a good job of pretending that she’s stunned. “Her name is Aurora Black. She said she was a distant relative of yours, from France, and wanted to reconnect and join the struggle in Britain. I brought her because—”

“She’s my disguised cousin Bellatrix Lestrange,” Black snarls.

Theo can feel his eyes widen, and can only hope no one is watching him. He doesn’t want to be that weak. He shifts so that he’s pressing his shoulder against Harry’s. Harry presses back, but his attention remains on Black and the motionless Selwyn. Theo glances at Harry and finds his eyes narrow, the hard mask on his face that has sometimes appeared there in the weeks since Chaos’s death.

Bellatrix Lestrange was the most formidable of the Death Eaters on the battlefield. From the way he listened to his father describe her, Theo made that determination on his own. Oh, Lucius Malfoy had more money and better connections, and his own father has his beasts, but Lucius preferred to stay behind the scenes of power, and his father never revealed all his beasts could do for fear of telling his enemies about his real capabilities.

To know that she simply walked into Grimmauld Place in disguise, that she might have got close enough to hurt Harry or Black himself—which Harry wouldn’t recover from—if the wards weren’t triggered…

Theo turns to Selwyn. He can feel a cloud descending on his mind. It’s a little like the haze that happens when someone calls him “Theodore.” His hand goes down to his side, and he draws a knife. He cradles it in his palm, because, indeed, no one is looking at him. But he’s ready to strike, to kill her.

It won’t matter how strong Hecuba Selwyn is rumored to be in magic. Not when she won’t see him coming in time, and not when Theo has done enough Potions research to ensure that the poison that coats the blade needs only come close enough for someone to smell it.

“Hecuba Selwyn,” Black begins, his voice oddly resonant. Theo thinks he actually hears a bell clang somewhere in the house. “You are banished from my properties and not welcome in my house for the duration of thirty days. You will be harmed if you return before then.” He folds his arms, and the Black wards ignite around him, snarling lines of red and blue and green. Theo sighs and tugs himself back from the edge. At least Black is taking the responsibility of protecting Harry seriously.

And without even a stupid joke about his name, at that.

“Thirty days is the whole term of our alliance.” Selwyn doesn’t say it as though she’s upset about it. Theo thinks she’s too shocked to be upset. Her eyes are wide, and her voice is flat. She glances back and forth between Black and Harry. “The time that I swore my oath for.”

“Yes, and you’ll keep it better for being far away from my godson.”

“I want to ask her one thing,” Harry says, and leans forwards. It’s leaning because he’s wise enough to know that Theo’s not about to move aside for him to get closer to Selwyn, not now. “Did you know anything about Aurora Black being Lestrange when you brought her here? Anything at all?”

Theo frowns a little. That seems an odd question. It’s not as though Selwyn’s going to tell the truth, and it’s not as though they can make her tell the truth.

“I thought she was a distant Black relative, and a little strange.”

Harry nearly smiles. Theo can tell from the way the shadows move on the edges of his face. “Those answers would fit Bellatrix Lestrange, too. Let me repeat. Did you even suspect that she might not be who she presented herself as?”

“No.”

At the same moment she says it, Lion hisses sharply. Theo half-turns around, but Harry grabs his wrist and holds him still, shaking his head. Then he murmurs, “Would you like to repeat that answer, Ms. Selwyn?” and his voice is threatening enough to make Theo think, fleetingly, that he’s been taking lessons with Professor Snape.

“What are you talking about?” Selwyn is staring back and forth between Harry and Lion. “Why do you think I’m lying?”

“One of the things I’ve learned about Parseltongue,” Harry says smoothly, “is that it’s hard to lie in it. It’s full of emotions and sounds about emotions and words for physical states of being. Besides, most of the time snakes don’t see the point of lying. Their world is prey and predators and neutral beings and rare allies, and none of them require lies.”

There’s no doubt that Selwyn is tense now. “Fascinating, but as you are the only Parselmouth in the room, I’m not sure what—”

“And,” Harry continues, removing Lion from his shoulder and holding him coiled in the palm of his hand so that Lion is leaning towards Selwyn and fluttering his wings eagerly, “there is enough lying in the human world that snakes can learn to sense it in a human’s tone and scent. And communicate it to those who understand it.” He holds up Lion, his palm level with his face, his eyes locked on and blazing on Selwyn. “I’ll ask you again: did you even suspect that ‘Aurora Black’ might not be who she presented herself to be?”

Selwyn straightens her shoulders. She says, “I thought she was strange. Eccentric. I thought she might be lying about her first name. But she did know details about the Black family that convinced me.”

“And you thought that by bringing her here—”

“I didn’t know that she would hurt anyone.” Selwyn’s voice seems to get slower, the opposite of the reaction Theo would expect, and she stares stolidly at Lion. “I thought she would get an interesting reaction out of Black, and maybe out of you. And her reactions would tell me something, too. That was all. I didn’t know that she was—who she was, or that she intended to hurt you.”

Harry watches her critically, then nods. He lowers his hand, and Lion flutters his wings and curves into the air, landing on Harry’s shoulder and lashing a coil around his neck. Harry’s face is still impassive, the time it’s looked the most like that since Chaos’s death. “Thank you. We appreciate your cooperation.”

Black is gaping at Harry as if he’s sprouted wings of his own. The Greengrasses and Theo’s useless cousin and his guest are staring hard from the side. Selwyn looks as if she wants to take back half her words. Mrs. Malfoy, who’s standing behind Black, has her hand over her mouth in a way that might be meant to cover up a smile. Draco’s eyes are as wide as pools of nightshade.

Theo, on the other hand, could burst, so proud is he.

He can be a cold bastard when he needs to be. That means, the rest of the time, he won’t need to be.

I’m so glad that Harry was Sorted into Slytherin. I’m so glad that he came into my life.