[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Answer Is Silence, gen, R, 5/7

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

…Yeah, okay, it’s going to be seven parts.

Part Five

“And the Wizengamot finds Ludo Bagman guilty on charges of conspiring to cast Imperius on a Triwizard Champion and unduly influence the Tournament’s results…”

Ludo slumped in his defendant’s chair. This was the worst possible outcome. He hadn’t really meant any harm. He just would have spiced up the competition and made it a little more exciting. Krum was too far in the lead, and then he was further along in the maze than Diggory! The audience wanted something exciting, not a foregone conclusion!

And Krum had ended up winning anyway, so it wasn’t like he’d really influenced the Tournament’s results!

He had tried to explain that to the Wizengamot. Even someone he had thought would be on his side, Madam Dolores Umbridge, had wrinkled her nose at the mention of spicing up the Tournament. Too late, Ludo had remembered that she’d opposed the Ministry spending as much money as they had on the Tournament, wanting it reserved for spreading the truth about Muggleborns’ influence on the magical world.

So he was going to be sent to Azkaban. Ludo shivered. He hated Dementors. There should be some kind of prison reform in magical Britain! They should work harder at guarding their prisoners than with actual soul-eating monsters…

He saw a shadow move by the doorway of the courtroom. Ludo glanced that way out of optimism that had never felt more misplaced than it did now, but if he didn’t look for ways out of this, how was he going to find them?

Someone was standing in the doorway. A slight figure with a shimmer around it that marked a Disillusionment Charm, or maybe an Invisibility Cloak.

The person radiated cold magic, and although Ludo couldn’t see the face, he was sure that this was the person who had broken his arm so thoroughly in the maze that the Healers at St. Mungo’s had taken two days to set it.

Ludo flinched and shrank back, and then opened his mouth to utter a thin, high shriek. The debate between the members of the Wizengamot over the length of his sentence died at once, and people turned to stare at him.

“Him! It was him!” Ludo pointed a finger at the doorway, and apparently he was convincing enough that the Aurors who stood around his chair turned to stare. But they glanced at each other and shook their heads in the end.

Because the figure in the doorway had vanished.

Ludo closed his eyes and let his hand drop, while someone in the Wizengamot brought up the possibility of the Janus Thickey ward. But Ludo thought he would almost welcome the Dementors now.

As long as they kept him safe from that—that monster.

*

Dolores spun the black quill between her fingers and watched it pensively. Should she bring it to Hogwarts? In one way, she thought it would be the most useful tool she could wield to cement the Ministry’s control over the school and finally bring Albus bloody Dumbledore to heel, the way it should have been done all those years ago. They who wouldn’t serve the Ministry must be made to serve the Ministry. And children who were terrified enough to testify to Dumbledore’s extreme mismanagement of the school would be useful.

On the other hand, there might be some outrage from parents. It would be better if Dumbledore had done more than guide the school in his own direction and continue to advise Cornelius when that should be her place.

Dolores smiled slightly then. Well, there will be outrage from parents if I choose purebloods. All I must do is stay away from that.

She tucked her quill into the case she would carry it in, and locked the box. Dumbledore had been unable to find a continuing Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher; the man in third year had been exposed as a werewolf, and the one in fourth year had lost his wand hand and most of his wand arm in an accident. It was the Ministry’s right to appoint her to the vacancy.

And Dolores did look forward to teaching the truth.

She glanced up sharply as she heard a shift in the wards around her house. She frowned. There shouldn’t have been any way that someone could get inside. Dolores used blood-based wards, and there were few enough people left in the magical world who were related to her.

She drew her wand and crept towards the door. She was at the top of the stairs, and she had left a lamp blazing in the drawing room below, along with the fire. In the faint light, Dolores watched the shadows shift, and saw no one.

A soft noise came from behind her.

Dolores turned with her wand out, and saw what she thought was a thin black ribbon on the floor at first. Then it crawled towards her, and she realized it was a shining black snake. Dolores swallowed and cast the charm that would Banish a conjured animal.

Nothing happened. The snake continued crawling towards her, only now it lifted the front part of its body from the floor and opened its mouth. Dolores shuddered at the sight of the fangs.

Dolores took a deep breath. Employees of the Ministry were permitted to use strong curses in times of great personal danger. She gestured with her wand and said, for the fourth time in her life, “Avada Kedavra.”

The curse struck the snake, and it toppled over and stopped moving. Dolores nodded slowly. At least the serpent was dead, even if she was concerned about how it had come through her wards without alerting her.

The scrape of scales on the floor behind her made her whirl around. There was another serpent there, one rising from the floor and flaring its hood wide, and it—

It was a cobra.

Dolores backed up one step and then another. The cobra slid towards her, and Dolores was so busy watching it that she nearly missed the flash of motion from under the small table. She jumped and pressed her back against the banister.

Another cobra, the one bigger than the one she’d been confronting up until this point. And behind it came a moon-pale snake with silver markings that Dolores didn’t recognize, and then one that might be a black mamba, and there was a large green one climbing down from its position on the curtain rod in the drawing room below.

Dolores raised her wand. She would deal with this. She had to. She had to believe there was enough power in her magic and her wand to keep casting the Killing Curse for as many times as she needed to to keep the beasts at bay.

A sharp sting entered her heel, and then the racing of poison up her body.

Her hand shook as she aimed her wand, and she knew she couldn’t believe she had enough power after all.

*

Alastor Moody grunted as he leaned back in his chair and stuck his wooden leg out in front of him. It didn’t hurt the way his real one did after a day of standing as he taught young hooligans the basics of Defense, but the memory of what it had been ached.

So. Harry Potter.

Alastor frowned thoughtfully. He had agreed to come out of retirement to teach Defense for a year after the unexpected death of the Ministry toady appointed to the position. Albus had been desperate, and the curse on the position hardly mattered to Alastor. It would kill him—which no one had managed yet—or he would survive. That was the way it was.

Potter was probably the best student in his classes altogether, not just among the fifth years, with strong, fluid movements when he dueled, and a command of magic that was unequaled. Alastor had tested him out with curses as well as hexes and jinxes in his private lessons, and Potter always knew the right counter. Most of the time, he could cast it silently, his eyes shining as he moved.

But the boy was also quiet and withdrawn and prone to reading thick books that he had probably removed from the Restricted Section whenever he thought no one was looking. Alastor didn’t approve of that. Not when those books were about the kinds of curses that no one should use who wasn’t a Death Eater.

And yes, some of the Aurors had used them back during the war. Alastor was ashamed of that now, and thought the laws should never be relaxed again. Aurors were supposed to be better than those they fought.

Alastor tapped his fingers on the chair arm. Yes, he didn’t think Potter was on the wrong path yet, but he could be led down it so easily.

A sharp knock sounded from his door, and Alastor looked up. “Come in.”

Potter slipped into the room and stood just inside it as if waiting for Alastor to invite him further in. But he also stood in such a way that it would be difficult to get behind him or force him to move away from the wall.

Where did you learn that, lad? Alastor thought, staring at him. You grew up with Muggles and then you grew up someplace that Albus refuses to tell me about—I don’t think he knows himself—but where did you learn to act like a hardened Auror?

Alastor cleared his throat. A direct approach like that probably wouldn’t work with Potter. “I wanted to see you because I think that you’re one of the only students I have in Defense who could make a career out of it.”

Potter blinked and then sat in a chair that more or less faced Alastor but allowed him to keep his back to the wall. “No offense, sir, but I don’t think I want to aim for a career that would only allow me a year of it.”

Alastor snorted. “I didn’t mean Defense professor. I meant Auror.”

For some reason, Potter went still. Alastor watched him carefully. Did he not recognize the word? Sometimes those who grew up with a Muggle upbringing didn’t. But Potter had spent long enough in the magical world now that Alastor would have expected him to run across it.

“I know that my father was an Auror,” Potter said slowly. “But I don’t know that I want to make a career out of fighting a war, either.”

Alastor shook his head. “Unusual circumstances, Potter. Most of the time, there’s no war to fight. And I don’t know that we’ll see another one, at least not in the time it’ll take you to reach the ranks,” he added. He fully believed Albus when he said that Voldemort wasn’t dead, but the fact remained that he also wasn’t running around causing a war.

Not yet.

“Hmm.” Potter gave every appearance of consideration, but behind so blank a mask that Alastor had no idea what he was thinking. “So what do Aurors do on a day-to-day basis, if they’re not normally fighting a war?”

“Handle outbreaks of Dark magic,” Alastor said. “Dark wizards. Unusual cases. Very occasionally, we take bodyguard duty or track down an assassin. But most of the time, other people in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement can handle the minor cases, the regular thefts and the like. Aurors are saved for when the situation escalates.”

“What about child abusers?”

“Child abusers?” Alastor frowned.

“Yes.” Potter was leaning forwards, staring at him so expectantly that it told Alastor more about what his placement in the Muggle world had been like than Alastor thought it would be wise to let on.

“If the abusers are using Dark magic,” Alastor said shortly. “That’s what we’re there to combat, Potter. Dark Ars. Defend the innocent and the helpless by stopping it before it can spread further.”

“But I heard that Aurors were allowed to use Dark Arts during the war, sir. Unforgivables and the like.”

Alastor slapped his wooden leg. “That was a decision made by Bartemius Crouch, Senior and the Minister at the time. And good riddance to both of them, I say. I didn’t mourn when Crouch died. That decision should never have been made. We won’t beat what we fight by becoming like it.”

“So Aurors don’t need to know curses as well as countercurses, sir? I think that’s kind of strange, because you’ve been showing them to us in class.”

Alastor leveled Potter with an unimpressed look. Potter simply looked back, his lips slightly parted as if he had another question but had decided not to voice it at the last minute.

“I’m doing that as part of my job right now, Potter,” he said sharply. “It doesn’t mean that I would use them in daily life. And yes, you need to know their effects and what they look like when you see someone casting them so you can block or shield or dodge. You don’t need to know how to cast them.”

Potter nodded, his eyes dangerous. “Sir? What would happen if there were a bunch of enemies who had done the most dangerous and disgusting, foul Dark Arts you could think of? Would you think that the ends justified the means to get rid of them then?”

“What kind of Dark Arts are you asking about exactly, Potter?” And how do you know about it? The books Alastor had seen him reading were the sort that had to be handled carefully, but they didn’t contain anything that Alastor would label as “most disgusting” or “most foul,” not with his wide range of experience.

Potter sat up and took a deep breath. “Horcruxes.”

Alastor reeled back as much as he could while still sitting down, and clasped his hands harshly on the arms of his chair. “Where did you learn about that?” he demanded hoarsely.

“I found a book in my godfather’s library,” Potter whispered. “And it said that Horcruxes used to be really common. I don’t—I mean, I suppose it wasn’t common, but it said that people used to make them when they got into bands like the Death Eaters used to be, and it was a nightmare to track them down and destroy them.”

“What’s the title and author of this book, Potter?”

For some reason, a small smile lifted the corners of Potter’s mouth for a second. “The Presence and Rise of Death Obsessions Among British Wizards, by Pasiphae Josephine Halter.”

“Not one I’ve heard of,” Alastor said with a frown. Then again, the Blacks could have almost anything in that library of theirs, and Alastor was dubious that it had really been the right choice to leave a child in Sirius Black’s care, innocent or not. “But I’ll look into it. You’d be worried about a bunch of wizards creating Horcruxes all at once, you said?”

“Yes. I have nightmares about it.”

From the glazed look in Potter’s eyes as he stared at the wall, Black definitely should have kept him away from that book. Alastor shook his head in disgust. “Well, it’s true that Horcruxes used to be more common, but I wouldn’t characterize them as the main concern even now. Certainly I only ever had to destroy one as an Auror.”

“But you destroyed one?” Potter’s eyes were intent.

“Yes.” Alastor shuddered at the memory, but it was safely behind him and it wasn’t like there was a Horcrux right in the room with him at the moment, so he wasn’t going to allow the fear to control him. “I used Fiendfyre.”

“An example of a Dark Art being used for a good purpose, sir?”

Alastor grunted. “Fiendfyre isn’t actually illegal, Potter. It’s not even classified because most wizards who call it up can’t control it, and destroy themselves in the process. Why do they need to ban something that kills all the people stupid enough to summon it?”

Potter looked as if he might have protested, but in the end, he shrugged and leaned back. “Is Fiendfyre the only way to do it, then?”

“Depends. You have any basilisk venom lying around at the moment? Heard that works a treat, too.”

For some reason, Potter chuckled, and laughed for a moment as if he couldn’t stop. Alastor frowned at him. Basilisks were only a laughing matter because no one had been able to breed one in Britain in centuries.

Potter finally controlled his laughter and sat back. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think I want to be an Auror.”

“Oh? Maybe you don’t have a good idea of the work. Maybe I haven’t explained it clearly enough—”

“No, sir. I know what it entails.” For some reason, Potter looked both amused and weary now. Alastor disliked how often he was thinking “for some reason” when dealing with Potter, and tried to frown at him, but Potter was going on without taking notice of this. “I’ve done too much of it already, I think.”

“You’re counting your defeat of Voldemort as a baby, Potter? That’s not really the same as sustained Auror work you’re paid for, you know.”

“No. I’m counting everything else, Professor Moody.”

Before Alastor could ask what he meant by that, Potter stood up with a weary sigh. “If that’s all, sir.”

“At least consider it, Potter,” Alastor said. He disliked how close to pleading his voice sounded, but he had to make a fight for it. “You’re the best candidate for the Auror department I’ve seen in many a long year.”

“I don’t think I have the right temperament for it, sir, sorry.”

And Potter slipped out the office door before Alastor could say another word. Alastor groaned and sat back, rubbing his real leg this time.

That hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. And despite how much he would have liked answers to some of the mysteries surrounding the boy, Alastor was wise enough to know that he’d probably never find out.

Firewhisky, he thought as he cast a Summoning Charm. I need Firewhisky, and lots of it.

*

There was a cold wind in the cell. There was darkness everywhere. There was a song that was singing at the corners of her consciousness.

Bellatrix Lestrange opened her eyes, and saw the darkness within the darkness.

She smiled, and extended her hands as she began to croon gently. They’d taken so many things from her, the guardians here and the weak and impure wizards who fought against her Master. But they could not take this. Her first loyalty, her first promise, her first and deepest hunger.

The darkness flowed slowly into the cell, and coiled in her hands, like a snake come for shelter. Bellatrix stroked its back, which was cold and strong and so Dark, and smiled down at it.

It made a simple request of her, but Bellatrix gasped to be so honored. It was always the simplest requests that were the deepest.

“Of course, Master,” she said, and laid her head back against the cell wall, and allowed the darkness to flow into her eyes and nostrils.

There was coldness and starless blackness and space and death spreading through her, but there was also the knowledge that he would never die, not truly.

Lord Voldemort opened his eyes and turned his head. The cell was empty, and there was no wand available to him, but from what he remembered of the routine of Azkaban, the guards made a check of all the cells at least once a week, and would come into a cell if a prisoner appeared sick enough.

The spreading chill of a Dementor struck along his left side, but Lord Voldemort turned his head and laughed softly, and it retreated.

After fourteen years as a wraith, Dementors held no fear for him.

Lord Voldemort settled back against the wall to wait, with the patience common only to those who had carried themselves beyond human limitations.

*

“Harry, Harry, what is going on?”

Ron heard his voice spiral up towards terror, but there was nothing he could do about it, not when blood was running from the scar that You-Know-Who had given his best mate.

Harry rubbed away the blood with the back of his hand and glanced around. The library around them was mostly deserted, Ron saw when he looked, not because people weren’t studying but because people had decided unanimously that they weren’t going to sit near someone who acted as strangely as Harry did.

Ron frowned at Harry. “You can set up a Silencing Bubble. I know you can. Do it.”

Harry snorted a little, but did it with a sweep of his wand. Silently, the way he did so much casting. Ron sighed enviously. Harry had said that he would start teaching Ron silent casting this year, and he had, but it was coming pretty slowly.

“What is going on?” Ron demanded quietly, leaning towards Harry.

Harry hesitated once. Then he said, “You know I told you about that nightmare I had?”

Ron nodded sharply. The nightmare had been about a bunch of Death Eaters having Horcruxes and Harry having to destroy them one by one, and had meant he also had to explain to Ron what Horcruxes were. Ron could have done without that knowledge, thank you.

“I don’t think all the dreams or thoughts are entirely my own.” Harry was speaking slowly and watching Ron’s face all the while, like he thought he would reach some invisible line where he would have to stop speaking because he would upset Ron too much. “I think some of them come from Voldemort.”

Ron flinched despite Harry’s frown. He’d got used to hearing Harry say it, but not often enough to stop having the reaction.

“Because of your scar?” he whispered.

Harry nodded, again slowly. Maybe he didn’t have the words, Ron thought. “I think he may have left a Horcrux in me, Ron.”

Ron gagged. The thought of his best friend having a piece of that—that monster’s soul inside him—

“How?” he whispered. “You said—you said someone had to do it with a ritual and a murder and put the soul in an object—”

“He murdered my mum right in front of me, didn’t he?” Harry’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Ron wasn’t sure it qualified as a smile at all. “And he could have done the ritual before he went to Godric’s Hollow. It doesn’t need to be done in the same place.” He took a long, deep breath. “Maybe he was going to use my murder for it, I don’t know for sure. Or maybe his soul was so unstable after he made his Horcruxes that—”

“You never said he made more than one!”

Ron was glad for the Silencing Bubble, because Madam Pince would definitely have kicked them out of the library if she’d heard. Harry blinked and looked at him for a second, and then broke into a fond smile.

“Sorry, Ron.” Only the fact that Harry looked genuinely sheepish let Ron calm down. A little. “I promise, I forgot I hadn’t told you. But yes, I’m sure that he made more than one. Some of the memories I have…confirm that.”

Harry’s voice had gone all soft again the way it did when he was thinking about terrible things. Ron swallowed and glanced off to the side for a moment, and then nodded. Yes, right, he could understand Harry not wanting to spread around all his horrible memories to his friends.

Then he took a deep breath and glanced at him again. “But you are going to tell someone that your scar is bleeding?”

“I’ll write to my godfather about it, promise,” Harry said soothingly. His scar had already stopped bleeding, Ron noticed, when he wiped away a few droplets. Ron hoped that was a good sign. “He knows a little bit about Voldemort and the Horcruxes. He should be able to handle knowing this, too.”

“I know you don’t really trust Professor Dumbledore, but—”

Harry shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t trust him, Ron. I think he’s a good person. But I also think that he’d try to take on too many of the burdens in the name of sparing me and not piling too much of a burden on me, and I can’t have him doing that.”

“Is it really fair to make a child carry it?” Ron muttered, kicking his foot under the table. The more he came to know Harry, the more he came to understand how much of a curse his fame was.

“No,” Harry said. He was smiling when Ron looked up, even though it was that tight, strained smile that sometimes unnerved Ron. “But don’t worry, a child won’t be carrying it.”

Ron eyed Harry. Then he decided to let it go. Harry had said that Professor Lupin had spent a lot more time around Grimmauld Place after Sirius was declared innocent, because they were old friends. That had to mean he would help Sirius to carry it and make the best decisions to keep Harry safe from Voldemort.

Ron just hoped that Harry would change his mind and ask for Professor Dumbledore’s help if things got really bad.

*

“Cissy!”

Narcissa Malfoy turned around and held her hand out with as true a cordiality as she could muster. “Bella. It’s been too long.”

Bella embraced her and kissed her cheeks. That wasn’t unusual, and of course anyone would have changed after ten years in Azkaban, but it did seem to Narcissa that the embrace was too tight and firm, and Bella’s nails pressed into her back through her robes in a strange way.

But then Bella stepped back and smiled, and that was the old, only-slightly-insane smile Narcissa remembered from their youth. “Do summon your house-elves and have them set food on the table!” she crooned. “I haven’t had real food in ever so long!”

That, Narcissa could believe. She called Willis and gave him the orders for a true feast, then drew her sister towards the circle of chairs she had made in front of the fire. “Will Rabastan and Rodolphus be joining you?” she asked as they sat down, Bella arranging her robes around her legs with a fussy little gesture.

Bella laughed, a high-pitched, cold sound. “No. They broke out of Azkaban at the same time as I did, but I sent them to wait in an old safe place elsewhere.”

Narcissa blinked. “I’m surprised that the Ministry hasn’t said something about three Death Eaters breaking out of Azkaban. You alone, I could see making it out without being noticeable, but—”

Bella snorted, an odd sound. “The Ministry doesn’t want to shake the morale of the people, does it? And I don’t think that many people would take the breakout of Death Eaters at all well. They might think the Dark Lord is coming back.” She giggled.

“Do you think he might?” Narcissa asked as delicately as possible. She was no longer sure of what she thought or felt about that. Lucius’s death had been devastating in its effect on Draco, and Narcissa had spent nearly a year comforting and consoling him before he would even sleep through the night again.

But she had also grown to like the feeling of peace and independence in the last few years, and had decided that the Dark Mark on Lucius’s arm had been his greatest mistake. She would not like to take a place in the Dark Lord’s ranks herself, no matter how fulfilling Bella and other people might claim it was.

“Oh, sister dearest, I’m sure he will.”

Narcissa leaned forwards. “You have heard from him?”

Bella looked straight at her and smiled, and her eyes flashed a dark red. Narcissa sat slowly back up, fear nearly making her sick.

“Yes,” Bella said. “Oh, yes, sister dearest, I have.”