Chapter Two of "An Artifice of Copper and Tin'

[lomonaaeren]

Part One.

Title: An Artifice of Copper and Tin (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of Lucius/Narcissa and OMC/OFC, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU, brief violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In the wake of the revelations about so many people’s familiars, the wizarding world reacts…badly.
Author’s Notes: This immediately follows A Door Into Hope in my Children of the Sun series, and will spoil its ending if you haven’t read it. This should be only a few chapters long, and then the next longer part of the series will start.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“I hope you’re happy with yourself.”

Harry sighed a little as he looked up at the woman who had come to confront him in the entrance hall when he was on his way to breakfast. He still felt a little sick and dazed from the magic he’d expended the night before, and he didn’t know if he could fight her off if she attacked him.

He didn’t know who she was. Other than older than him, a lot taller than him, and with dark hair and a bitter face and a tin horse behind her. The horse had a golden aura around her and the words Artificial familiar floating in it.

“I’m not happy,” Harry said, staring up at the woman again. “But I think that this was the only way to keep more people from being attacked to protect this secret.”

The woman drew her wand without a word. Golden whipped himself around Harry’s ankles and yanked him down, then covered his body when he was on the floor with glittering coils. Harry couldn’t move, but he also didn’t think there was one place on his body that would be unprotected if the woman tried to use magic on him.

“Miss Jordan!”

Professor McGonagall’s voice boomed out, and the woman didn’t attack Harry, maybe because she was startled. Harry shoved at Golden with his shoulders and arms as best as he could, and Golden moved a little so that Harry could see what was going on.

Jordan, apparently, had turned to stare at the Headmistress as she approached, Malkin striding behind her with his fur all luffed out, hissing and spitting. Professor McGonagall had her hand clenched hard around her wand.

“You are one of the people who already came here to attack Mr. Potter,” she said. “Are you going to do it again?”

Harry shivered. He hadn’t known for certain that this Jordan person had been one of the people who attacked him, but it made sense. If she was willing to draw her wand on him once in the school, she could do it again.

“He ruined my life.” Jordan shut her eyes, and Harry saw her hands trembling before she tucked her wand back into her sleeve. “If he’d left things well enough alone and stopped making noise about artificial familiars…”

“I know that you were born a Squib.” Professor McGonagall lowered her voice, and Harry wasn’t surprised to see that she had raised the bubble of a Privacy Charm around them. He touched Golden’s head, and slowly his familiar let him up. “I know that you were treated unfairly, and I agree that things should change. But murdering other people will only increase the bad publicity that those with artificial familiars have.”

Jordan shook her head. She was trembling. Harry watched her and sighed. He couldn’t really feel sorry for her, not when she was one of the people who had convinced him that he had to mark people’s artificial familiars, but he supposed that he could feel sorry for people like her. The ones who would be devastated and hadn’t tried to murder anyone.

“You have caught one of them, Minerva?”

That was Professor Snape, coming up the stairs from the dungeon. Professor McGonagall looked back and forth for a moment between Jordan and Professor Snape. Then she said, “She must be turned over to the Ministry.”

“Why?”

Harry winced. He could see the brightness in Professor Snape’s eyes that would turn into cruelty if someone didn’t do something to stop it. And that someone had to be him. He was the one who had partially caused this situation.

“I don’t want you to hurt her, Professor Snape,” he said. “I want her to be turned over to justice.”

Professor Snape turned to him. His face twitched for a moment, and Harry wondered if he was thinking about the ways that he could make Jordan suffer, or what would happen if he did it and Harry didn’t like it. Maybe both.

Then he jerked his head down sharply. “If it must be, then it must be,” he said in irritation. “Although I don’t trust that the Ministry will actually do anything to the criminals.”

“They’re going to have to,” said Minerva, as she Summoned Jordan’s wand with a flick of her own, and then used a spell that linked her hands together behind her back with a clink of chain. Jordan’s mouth flew open in a gasp. Harry wondered if the spell did something else, too. He hadn’t seen it before, so he didn’t know.

He resolved to ask Professor Quirrell the next time he saw him.

“Should you—” Professor Snape turned to face the horse behind Jordan, and a moment later, Professor McGonagall did, as well.

“Should I need to? When she will not be able to access her familiar’s magic in the usual way?”

Professor Snape’s face was harsh, as if he was trying to take his frustration at not being able to hurt Jordan out in words. “You should. We do not know enough of the magic used to create artificial familiars, and whether she might be able to use her horse as a tool from a distance even if it doesn’t react like a normal familiar.”

“She is a normal familiar!” Jordan snapped. For an instant, her wrists writhed against the chain, and then it snapped tight behind her back with a louder sound than before. Jordan’s face went white. Harry bit his lip, but kept watching. He had been the one who brought about these circumstances. He would make sure that he watched.

“No, she isn’t,” Professor Snape began, in the tone that said he would be happy to debate Jordan for as long as she watched.

Professor McGonagall solved the problem by two more chains that linked together the front hooves and the back hooves of Jordan’s horse. The horse walked slowly behind her witch as Professor McGonagall led them away. Professor Snape stepped in the way as if to keep Harry from following them, even though he hadn’t intended to.

“Go in to breakfast,” said Professor Snape.

“Do you think the way society treats Squibs is fair, sir?” Harry asked.

Professor Snape paused for a long moment. Then he shook his head.

“How could it be?” he asked. “They are cast forth into the Muggle world, where many of them don’t know how to survive. Sometimes their families try to prepare them, but they don’t do a very good job. And if they’re purebloods, then suddenly they’re expected to live among and associate with people they’ve always been told are inferior. Many of them never speak to their families again, and not by their own choice. They’re pitied and despised from the time they’re very young, since everyone knows they’re Squibs by the time they’re two years old.”

“Then—don’t you think they would be better off in the magical world, sir?”

“Even that has problems. They can’t see familiars, Mr. Potter.” Professor Snape glanced for a moment in the direction Jordan and Professor McGonagall had gone. Harry looked, too, but they were already out of sight. “Unless they take measures to acquire one of their own, of course. They can’t see where a familiar is standing, or when someone is holding a door open for one, or when a chair is occupied by one. One reason that Squibs often leave our world to go into the Muggle one of their own accord, even if their families would be happy for them to stay, is the amount of offense and trouble they cause, without meaning to.”

Harry nodded slowly. So it didn’t have any easy solutions. Well, he had known that before he asked the questions, really. “Thank you, sir.”

“That does not mean that what you did was wrong,” Professor Snape said. “Not when so many of them have been trying to hurt you and oppose you.”

Harry laughed a little sadly. “I think it was the only solution I could come up with, sir, but that doesn’t mean it was absolutely the right thing to do.” He touched Golden’s head, and rubbed it when he felt his familiar leaning against him. Golden might have some problems with what they had done, too.

But not as many as people like Jordan had, or he would have refused to help Harry mark the artificial familiars in the first place.

Maybe that’s the most awful thing about the artificial familiars, Harry thought as he walked into the Great Hall. They can’t tell their humans when they’re going wrong, because they’re just objects who do what their humans tell them to. And if they’re ones who were cut apart and still have their own wills, they have to run away from their humans to do what they think is right.

His mind on Songleaper and Curtis, Harry looked around the Great Hall, and wasn’t really surprised when he didn’t see Wychard Medwyn and his peacock anywhere.

*

“I understand.”

“You say that, but you don’t really.”

Pomona sighed and sat back on the chair next to the fire. Bryony snuffled and climbed into her lap. Pomona stroked her copper hedgehog and gazed through the fire at her sister, Hebe, who was avoiding her gaze.

“I wish that you could have trusted the world to treat you fairly by simply remaining as you were born,” Pomona said. “But obviously, you couldn’t. And Mother and Father are the ones who ultimately made the decision. Not you. You were a baby.”

Hebe swallowed and glanced at her through the fire again. Pomona was glad, at the moment, that she couldn’t see Dragon, Hebe’s tin monitor lizard. Pomona had always thought him a bit dull, but it was a different thing altogether to have to get used to the idea that he was artificial.

“But I’m still the one who benefited from their—one of them cutting their familiar up.” Hebe’s voice was a raw, thready thing. “I don’t even know which of them it was.”

“But you’re not the one who committed the crime,” Pomona said firmly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What’s going to happen to me now?” Hebe’s eyes turned back to her, so full of dread that they hurt Pomona’s heart. “Did your student think of that before he unleashed the forces of chaos?”

“He is only eleven,” Pomona said gently. “And I would be surprised if you weren’t questioned by the Aurors.”

Hebe made a sharp noise and buried her face in her hands. Pomona knew that her sister was full of fear and anxiety on a daily basis, which was one reason that she hadn’t pursed a career as a Hit Wizard the way that she had first thought of. Appearing in public on a daily basis would have been more than she could bear.

“Are you listening to me, Hebe?”

After a long moment, Hebe looked up at her and nodded. A movement off to the side was probably Dragon, but Pomona ignored that and kept looking at her sister.

“I’ll do whatever you need to help,” Pomona pledged, holding out a hand to the fire even though she couldn’t reach through it to touch Hebe without Floo powder. “I know you didn’t cause the vivisection of whatever familiar was cut up to help you, and you haven’t hurt anyone to keep the secret. So we’ll face the Aurors together.”

Hebe fought down an audible sob, and then whispered, “Do you think—they thought they were making my life better? By not leaving me as a Squib?”

“I’m sure of it,” Pomona said. She thought of their parents, and decided internally that it was their mother who had cut up her own butterfly familiar to help Hebe. But she wouldn’t say that right now. Hebe had always been closer to their mother, and trying to tarnish her image in Hebe’s eyes wouldn’t help. “You know how our world treats Squibs. They were trying to protect you.”

“By committing murder.” Hebe stared at the floor.

“You have a connection to Dragon, don’t you?” Pomona asked. It wasn’t the sort of thing usually discussed in polite society, but she couldn’t think of a better time for asking it than now. “I mean, you can feel him?”

“Of course!” Hebe’s big brown eyes swung up. “Maybe not as strongly as you feel Bryony, but how do you compare something like that? I can feel his soul fluttering against mine when I tell him to do something or when I cast a spell.”

“I think all of this is far more complex than we know,” Pomona said firmly. “If you can feel a connection, if you can do magic because of your bond to him, then obviously, Squibs aren’t just magic-free as we’ve always assumed. And the artificial familiars aren’t just objects. We need to rely on that angle. Tell them that former Squibs are people, and former Squibs, and that taking away your familiars would do no good.”

Hebe looked at her with wide eyes and then a tremulous smile. “Thank you for not rejecting me, Pomona,” she whispered. “I don’t think I could bear it if you did.”

“I promise that I never will,” Pomona said. “And frankly, I don’t understand the people who do. They’re the ones whose souls are dead.” Bryony stood up and nuzzled her hand in agreement, and Pomona stroked her nose gently. “I’ll fight for you, Hebe.”

“And what about your student who caused all this?”

“For him, too. We’re all magical,” Pomona said. “We all have familiars, no matter how we got them. We should fight to stand together.”

*

Lucius slipped away as soon as he could from Narcissa and the way she was swearing at the front page of the paper. Sometimes her words and actions jolted him, as much as he loved her.

He walked across the grounds and came to a halt in a part of them that Narcissa never visited. It wasn’t much, certainly not marked by anything except Lucius’s memories, and the memories of people now dead. It was a small green mound, and the house-elves knew to plant white and blue flowers on it and to renew the flowers when they faded, but they didn’t know why.

There was a marble bench nearby, really meant for the contemplation of a mirror pool in front of it. Lucius sat down on the bench and gazed at the mound instead of the water.

His father had thought that Lucius didn’t know, so he had never bothered to deny it. He had never ventured near the green mound, either, and hadn’t known about the flowers that Lucius had ordered the house-elves to plant on it.

At least, he hadn’t known in life. After there was no more chance that Abraxas would damage Lucius, or the mound, Lucius had taken great pleasure in telling his portrait, and in watching the plum color that its face turned as it raged.

The portrait-painter had probably been stupefied by the amount of extra Galleons Lucius had sent a few days later. But she’d never confessed the payment to anyone else, so Lucius hadn’t had to silence her.

Narcissa didn’t know, and Abraxas certainly wouldn’t tell her, considering it shameful as he did. Lucius had often contemplated telling Draco, but it would only happen, if all, when he was older and could understand the complexities.

Perhaps Lucius could tell him sooner than that, given the influences of Draco’s…friend Harry Potter.

Hecate sidled up to the bench and twined her neck around Lucius’s. Lucius stroked his familiar’s throat with gentle fingers and stared at the mound. No tears blurred his vision. They never had.

Abraxas Malfoy had thought Lucius didn’t know and didn’t remember anything important, but Lucius had been two when his sister was born, and four when she died. Of course he remembered. Angelica had been small, her hair nearly white, her eyes nearly silver, perfect.

But no familiar had manifested by her side at the age of eighteen months. Lucius hadn’t cared. It hadn’t been borne in on him, at that point, how shameful it was to have a Squib in the family. He had played with Angelica, sung to her, and promised that he would do magic for her, since she couldn’t do it herself. He’d put her on Hecate’s back and watched his wyvern soar a few meters above the ground with her, knowing that he needn’t worry. Hecate was a part of himself, and she would be as tender with Angelica as he was.

He had brought Angelica back to the Manor one day after such a ride, and his father had met them and told Lucius to leave the room, that he had to speak to Angelica. But Lucius had lingered outside the door, which he had cracked open, already planning to intervene if the scolding got too intense. Angelica hadn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t deserve it.

Hecate pressed closer. Lucius stroked down her neck and touched one of the enormous, delicate wings.

He would never forget, as long as he lived, the sight of his father’s hands closing around Angelica’s throat, or how Angelica’s feet had drummed.

He would never forget, as long as he lived, that he had been too much of a coward to go to her rescue.

His father had left the room with Angelica’s body by another door, and had told Lucius later that night, when he asked why she wasn’t at dinner, that she was sick with a violent fever. Then Abraxas had claimed she had died overnight. Lucius’s mother, Elspeth, had barely wept. She had done all her weeping before the death, Lucius was certain.

Of course Angelica had been buried on the Manor grounds, as all Malfoys were. As who knew how many other Malfoy Squibs were, because they would never cast them into the Muggle world where someone could find them.

History said there had never been a Squib born into the Malfoy line.

History lies, Lucius thought, and touched his familiar on the back in the way that Hecate knew meant she needed to withdraw her neck, and he started to walk back towards the Manor, revolving the decision that he must make in his mind.