Chapter Twenty of ‘That Glorious Strength’- War Wizard Training

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty—War Wizard Training

Tom opened the door of the small tower chamber that he had set up to receive owls addressed to Roland Peverell, and paused, curious, when he felt the magic radiating from the center of the room. So someone had sent him a letter already, had they?

Of course, it was probably only Lucius Malfoy’s response to the taunting letter Tom had sent him with Theodosius’s remains. Or so Tom thought until he reached the perch where the bird waited. It gave him a long, critical stare, and then extended its leg.

Tom detached the letter and fed the owl a treat from his pocket, noting with interest that there was nothing on the outside of the letter except a dark wax seal showing a skull crowned with silver stars. Tom knew he had seen that seal before, but it took him a long moment to remember it.

Of course. It had sealed some of the Black family correspondence that Orion had received while in school.

Tom slit the letter open, wondering if he was about to get a missive from Narcissa Malfoy telling him off for threatening her husband.

But the writing, while curling and delicate in the way that many pureblood women were taught to write, was not from Narcissa. Tom had seen enough samples of her letters when she sent him a spy report—not that she would remember doing so—to know that.

Dear Roland Peverell,

My name is Andromeda Black. I was once Andromeda Tonks, and I had a husband and a daughter I loved very much. My husband was Muggleborn, my daughter a half-blood. I tell you this from the beginning so that there can be no mistake as to who I am, and if you are a blood purist, there is no more to be said.

But I am taking the chance that you might want to punish the arrogant purebloods as much as I do, given what Lucius Malfoy told me you did to him. I wish to propose an alliance. I do not know how many allies you have, how much money, or what kind of hidden base. I can, however, offer something unique: I can be an eye looking into Minister Malfoy’s secret councils.

He is researching your background, trying to determine what makes you so powerful. He thinks it might be the Deathly Hallows. Besides me, the other people he called in were Amelia Bones, Augusta Longbottom, Arthur Weasley, and Horace Slughorn.

Please write back to me. I have already given you valuable information, and I am burning with hatred. They made me slit Nymphadora’s throat. I will do anything to hurt them, anything, and you are the best chance that I have seen to hurt Minister Malfoy’s position in many a long year.

Andromeda Black Tonks.

Tom lowered the letter slowly, and stared at the owl. “Did she ask you to bring back a reply?”

The owl hooted at him and wiggled its tail emphatically.

Tom stood a few moments in thought, tapping the fingers of his free hand against the wrist and ignoring the lingering ache in his muscles from fighting Theodosius. Part of him was tempted to bring Andromeda into the secret of Roland Peverell’s true identity right away. Sirius’s alliance with him should ease the way, and it sounded as though she would embrace his cause.

But on the other hand, he had no idea how much she would embrace the cause of revolution specifically. She wanted revenge on the purebloods who had made her kill her child. She might think that he wasn’t moving fast enough and use the knowledge he gave her to cripple his progress by striking too soon.

Tom nodded slowly. Better to wait for right now, to make sure that Andromeda Black could be handled and held back. But he would give her a glimpse of “Roland Peverell” so that she wouldn’t think she had reached out to no avail.

Smiling, Tom left the owlery to compose his answer, motioning Andromeda’s owl towards the bowls of food and water on a perch along the wall.

*

Sirius stared at the Nott girls. They stared back at him. The younger one, Constance, hadn’t stopped hiding behind her sister, Sophia, even though this was Sirius’s fifth visit to the room they shared.

Sirius cleared his throat. “Um, did you enjoy the chess pieces I left last time?”

The girls exchanged glances. Then Sophia said, “We didn’t touch them.”

“Um. Why not?”

“We thought there might be enchantments on them that would hurt us if we touched them. It was the sort of trick Father would play.”

Sirius coughed and sat down on the chair near the door. The room was bright and cheerful, in one of the residences not far from Sirius’s rooms, with blue walls and two beds that were covered in gaudy, multicolored blankets that seemed to blend perhaps sixteen hues. Their brother’s bedroom was right next door, from what Sirius knew, although he hadn’t met Theodore Nott so far beyond a single, hostile staring encounter. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t know you would think that way.”

“You didn’t enchant the chess set to bite us?”

That was the first time Constance had spoken. Sirius sat up. Sophia turned her head a little to the side, as if she didn’t want to watch if Sirius was going to attack Constance.

“No, I didn’t enchant it to bite,” Sirius said quietly. He thought about offering to touch the chess pieces himself and show them, but there were spells that could keep the caster safe from any consequence of touching enchanted objects, and their bastard of a father had probably used them. “Do you want to play a game?”

Constance clenched her fists and inched out from behind her sister’s back. She was a thin, whipcord girl, with eyes that she kept mostly trained on the floor as she scampered over to the side table and retrieved the cloth bag that held the pieces.

“Constance,” Sophia whispered.

“We have to know,” Constance said, and then she faced Sirius and brought the bag over, holding them at eye height for her. Sirius still had to bend down a little to take the bag from her, being careful to make sure that he didn’t accidentally touch her fingers and freak her out.

When he opened the bag and tipped the silver chessmen out into his palm, Constance took in a deep breath and skipped back. Sirius let her, studying the silver pieces. He had owned them when he was a kid, at Hogwarts, and he had kept them and carried them with him because they were one of the very few gifts his father had ever given him. When he’d been caged in Grimmauld Place, he’d found them again, and Riddle had slipped back to retrieve them when Sirius had asked him to.

Or asked one of his terrifying, efficient people to do it. Honestly, Sirius wasn’t sure he wanted to know half of Riddle’s secrets.

“You’re touching them. And they’re not burning you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, Constance!” When Sirius glanced up, Sophia looked as if she was about to launch herself across the room and grab her sister.

“I’d like to think it does,” Sirius said quietly. “These are the chessmen that my father gave me, and he was a bastard. Nothing like yours, nothing like as bad, but not good.” He twisted the queen between his fingers. “But I told myself that I was going to make my own memories with these pieces. And I did.”

“What memories?”

Constance had spoken in a quiet mumble, but Sirius had still heard her. He kept his eyes on the pieces and showed nothing of the warmth that was bubbling through him like a successful potion. He smiled instead, thinking of James and Lily.

“These are the pieces that my best mate used to play with the love of his life,” Sirius whispered, throat swelling a little as he remembered James laughing over the board with Lily. “She liked the look of them, and I let James pretend they were his before she caught on and realized they were mine. But it was all right in the end. By the time she realized, she was in love with him, and she forgave him the deception.”

“Who was your best mate?” Sophia asked. Sirius looked up a little and found she’d climbed out of the chair, but she climbed right back in the moment she noticed Sirius looking at her.

Sirius only nodded. He could hardly blame her for that.

“His name was James Potter. And his lady love was Lily. And they were both Hunted and harvested.” Sirius realized that maybe he shouldn’t have said that when Constance and Sophia flinched, but he didn’t know that hiding behind a diplomatic truth would work well, either. “You’ll meet their son, Harry, eventually. My godson. He’s here as a student at Fortius.”

“What happened to the people who harvested them?”

“I killed them. With my friend, Remus.”

Sirius heard his voice go harsh again, and winced. Why in the world had Riddle thought he was the right person to comfort two traumatized children? He was going to apologize when Constance spoke up again.

“Would you do that if someone tried to harvest us?”

Sirius gazed at her, and let out his breath, and said, “Yes, I would.”

Constance grabbed the chess bag and took it back. Sirius watched her study the silver chess pieces that were lying scattered across Sirius’s hand and the floor, and then peer into the bag for the ones that were still there.

Then she took one out.

“Constance!”

Sophia’s voice rang like a blade, but Constance said, “It’s all right. He would kill people who tried to harvest us,” and sat down on the floor to begin arranging the chessmen in different patterns. Sirius thought about conjuring a board for her, but only faintly. He was too busy sitting there with wide eyes, watching the girl who had been too scared to touch the silver pieces only a few minutes before play with them.

After a few minutes, Sophia got off her chair and came to sit next to her sister, giving Sirius suspicious looks all the while. Sirius took the hint and remained still.

Meanwhile, his mind reeled.

Maybe Riddle had known what he was doing, asking Sirius to care for a pair of traumatized children. Or at least ones that were traumatized in this particular way.

*

“Can I cast one of the spells that was in Disaster’s book, sir?”

They had been working at Harry’s private lessons in offensive magic for about ten minutes, outside the huge dome that housed the basilisk. Professor Riddle raised an eyebrow and turned towards Harry, his eyes as still as the cloudy sky. “You haven’t yet mastered the Shield-Breaker Curse that I’m trying to show you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry felt himself flush. “I know,” he mumbled, and didn’t cast down his eyes despite the temptation. Disaster had been a proud person from the time she was a child, and she had said in her book that all war wizards needed to be the same, to avoid people trying to use them for their power. “But I think this one fits my power better.”

Everything about Disaster’s book seemed to fit his power better, he thought. Even just holding the book and touching the pages was comforting, in a way that holding other magical books wasn’t.

“Hmmm.” That was all Professor Riddle said for a moment, but at least he seemed to be thinking about it. Harry wanted to hold his breath until he said yes, but it took so long that he had to breathe again before Professor Riddle said, “All right. Five tries on this new spell, no more, and after that, we’re going back to the Shield-Breaker Curse whether you’re successful or not, Harry.”

Harry beamed. “Yes, sir! Thank you!”

Professor Riddle stepped back and out of the way. Harry thought that was a good move even though Harry hadn’t told him what the spell was yet. It was still a war wizard spell that could probably be deadly. “All right. Show me what it is.”

Harry shook out his wand arm and tried to keep his hand flexible but ready, the way that Disaster had said in her book. He fixed his eyes on the horizon, because that was also what the book had said he should do. Then he very gently whispered the spell and gestured with his wand in a single sharp line.

“Destruo.”

The air in front of him wavered and turned dark. Then the darkness formed into a single black bubble that bobbed back and forth for a second as if it was thinking. And then it turned and darted straight at some low scrubby bushes that were off to the side.

Harry heard a faint thump as the bubble landed. A second later, the bushes were gone.

Harry didn’t see them disintegrate or burn or anything like that. One second, they were there, and then they weren’t. The stems that had held them were chopped off clean, as if they had always ended in that place. And the bubble of darkness was gone.

There was silence next to him. Harry, panting a little, because the spell had yanked on his magic to the point that it felt as if chains were rattling around inside him, turned to see what Professor Riddle thought.

Professor Riddle’s mouth was hanging open a little. Harry beamed at him. He knew he’d got the spell right because that was the effect the book had talked about. And he also knew it wasn’t that impressive because there must be other spells, like some of the hotter fire ones Professor Riddle had talked about, that could destroy things completely, too.

But it was still pretty satisfying.

“What do you think, sir?” Harry added, when a few minutes had passed and Professor Riddle had stood there, silently examining the bushes, and not saying anything.

*

I am thinking it is a good thing that you had the Legilimency blocks in your mind before I decided to give you that book.

As it was, Tom summoned a smile. He could not blame Harry for the power he had been born with, particularly when Tom intended to use that power in his own revolution.

He would simply have to watch closely to make sure that Harry could not destroy the grounds of Fortius on a whim.

“It is impressive,” he said, and nodded to Harry, who looked so proud and happy that Tom was abruptly reminded of how the boy had grown up. My praise is important to him. I don’t have to chain him and probably don’t need to put more blocks on his magic, as long as I remember that. “But you must, of course, be careful where you aim your wand. How big is the spell’s area of effect?”

“Disaster’s book said it could be a mile!”

A mile. With an effort, Tom kept his face gently inquiring. “Oh? And do you think you should cast it within the grounds of Fortius?”

Harry paused for a moment. “Oh. Er.” He looked at where the bushes had been. “But I didn’t destroy anything I wasn’t trying to destroy!”

Well, there’s a relief, and This time both warred as words in Tom’s throat that he wanted to speak. He managed to incline his head and not say them. “Do you think that you should cast the spell within the bounds of Fortius at all?”

“But how am I going to get better at that kind of spell if I can’t train at Fortius?”

“I own a small property deep in the country,” Tom murmured. “Muggle country,” he added, when Harry started to open his mouth. “Behind the kind of wards that will only allow me to feel what goes on inside them. Most wizards and witches will not even know that the wards exist. We’ll go there this weekend, and you can show me what you’ve learned.”

“Okay!”

Tom half-shook his head as he watched Harry go back to practicing the Shield-Breaker that Tom had been trying to introduce him to. By all rights, a child shouldn’t have been able to cast that powerful a war wizard spell on his very first try. It seemed that both Harry and Tom had been right, and Harry’s magic was attuned to the spells in the book in a way that it wasn’t to more ordinary magic.

It exhilarated Tom. It meant they might be able to take the war to the purebloods far sooner than he’d envisioned.

And it worried him. Even when his magic was partially bound, even when he wasn’t trying, Harry was acting like a weapon of ultimate destruction.

Tom hoped that the wards and protections on his country property would be enough to contain Harry. He feared what he might have to do otherwise.

*

“And it’s true that Theo died ?” Draco whispered, sitting across from Professor Snape’s desk. Professor Snape had been the one to tell him, although Draco realized now that his father must have known. Draco’s mind was numb with shock.

He knew—

Of course, he knew that people died. Father had shared some of the history of the struggle to establish pureblood power with him, the private history, and Draco knew that some Mudbloods and Muggles had to die to make sure that the right people got the magic they should be blessed with.

But Theo was a pureblood. He was in Slytherin House with Draco and Ron. Sure. he was quiet, but it didn’t matter much. He still smiled and made jokes and did well in his classes and cast spells. Draco had thought vaguely about a future where he and Theo would both be older and their children would be in Slytherin House together.

And now he was gone.

Professor Snape was nodding, his eyes dark. “Yes. I’m afraid that he had gone home to visit his father for the holidays. He had planned to stay at Hogwarts,” he added, a moment before Draco opened his mouth to say the same thing. “But his father owled him and requested that he come home. I saw him through the Floo myself. I would not have if—” Professor Snape closed his eyes.

Draco stared at his hands. He had known that he would probably see and hear about more people dying now that he was at Hogwarts. Some of the children here, the Mudbloods or half-bloods permitted to attend, might be harvested.

But a pureblood?

“Do you know how he died?” Draco whispered through a dry throat. “How much pain he was in?”

“Draco, it will not help you to imagine—”

“I want to know!” Draco snapped his head up. “I want to—” He couldn’t even voice the thoughts to himself. He wanted to somehow share in the pain? He wanted to think about Theo’s last moments and imagine them? He didn’t know.

Professor Snape considered him carefully for another few moments. Draco bit his lips so that he wouldn’t blurt something out. He knew that his father probably wouldn’t want him to know the details, so he appreciated that Professor Snape had to consider whether treating Draco like an adult would be worth the Minister’s displeasure.

“He burned to death in Fiendfyre,” Professor Snape said softly, at last. “I am told that it is a quick death.”

Draco buried his head in his hands. His shoulders trembled, but he forced himself to sit up a second later, before Professor Snape could get up from his chair behind his desk. The professor leaned back and looked at him.

“Thank you for telling me,” Draco said, and ignored the fact that his voice was a croak, hoping that Professor Snape would, too. “I need—I need to know what our enemies are like.”

Professor Snape blinked and looked a little taken aback. But then again, he was a half-blood, and Draco knew that meant his sensibilities were a bit dimmer.

Draco stood up and walked out of his Head of House’s office without waiting to be dismissed. His back prickled for a moment, wondering if Professor Snape would curse or hex him for that. But once again, a half-blood’s limited sensibilities won out. He might be suffering from an excess of sympathy right now.

Draco walked down the corridor towards the Slytherin common room, his head bowed. He wasn’t really surprised when Ron came to the door to find him. He would have known that Draco was due back from the professor’s office by now.

“Draco?”

Ron’s voice was soft and hopeful, but worried. Draco looked up and stared at him, and wondered for a second if he should share the news of Theo’s death. It had hit him hard enough, and Ron still had some bleeding-heart tendencies left over from his upbringing. He would have Sorted Gryffindor if Draco hadn’t rescued him, Draco was sure.

But no, Ron was on their side of the war with this mysterious enemy. The right side. The winning side. And Draco needed to let him know how dangerous this was.

“Theo’s dead,” he whispered, leaning a little towards Ron and steering him away from the common room door. There were people who would gossip about this in Slytherin. Draco wasn’t ready to expose the truth to them yet. And since Slytherin was the largest House in the school ever since Hogwarts had begun following a sterner course, Draco couldn’t be sure that everyone in the House was equally devoted to pureblood ways. There were some half-bloods.

“What?”

Draco nodded, glad that Ron’s eyes were wide and his voice was shaking. Ron hadn’t truly been close to Theo, but he had seen him around and they’d eaten breakfast and sat in class together for months. Of course that would make an impression.

“Yes, I know.” Draco hesitated and cast another glance over his shoulder, but no one was coming. “Professor Snape said he burned to death in Fiendfyre when someone killed his father and destroyed Nott House.”

Ron’s mouth was hanging slightly open. He snapped it shut and swallowed. “And your dad still can’t figure out who it was?”

Draco drew himself up a little. “Are you criticizing my feather, Weasley?”

Ron took a satisfying step backwards. “Of course not, Draco! I just—I just wondered where he—I mean, what progress—”

Draco didn’t really want to listen to Ron babble, so he interrupted. “You’re forgiven. But he’s only dropped a few hints my way. We haven’t discussed it in much detail because I think he didn’t want to tell me how Theo died.”

Draco shut his eyes again for a moment. It was still hard to believe that someone who had been there, who had made a bed rumpled with sleeping in it and helped Draco with Charms and spoken to him and eaten meals next to him, was so utterly gone.

“As long as Minister Malfoy’s working on it, I know we’ll catch them.”

Draco opened his eyes and looked carefully at Ron to see if he was lying or hiding nervousness behind bravery. But Ron just looked back at him with bright, steady eyes, and Draco sighed out slowly.

If people who weren’t even related to his father could have so much confidence in Lucius Malfoy, how could Draco help but do the same?

“Okay,” Draco said, and together they walked into the Slytherin common room. Draco made sure to keep his head high and show no trace of what he had been feeling or saying just a few moments before on his face.

Purebloods did have certain standards.

*

Andromeda stared at the letter that had landed in her hand with her owl that morning. It was sealed with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and she had wondered, when she first received it, if she was dreaming.

But she was nearly convinced, now, that she was not, that vengeance for Dora and Ted was finally within her reach.

She took a deep breath, and tore the heavy wax seal on the letter, an emerald-green color except for the bold black lines of the Hallows, open.

Dear Andromeda Tonks,

I must admit that your offer of aid surprised me. I had thought that you were a “true” pureblood, one who cared for nothing but the reputation of her family and what she could gain from Minister Malfoy’s regime. I had no idea of the true story about what happened to your family. My deepest condolences.

I will be more than happy to welcome you to my side, but for obvious reasons, I reveal to no one where I reside at the moment. I will therefore invite you to a safehouse behind wards that no one else can detect—once we know a little more about each other, and are both certain that we want to work together.

I have two questions for you now, however. Why did you never try to assist your cousin, Sirius Black, in his house arrest, if you hate and despise Lucius Malfoy and his pureblood regime? And will you allow me to question you under Veritaserum if you meet?

On the right answer to these questions does our alliance depend.

Roland Peverell.

Andromeda opened and closed her free hand slowly, staring at that signature. There was no familiarity in it, the way she had thought there might be if this Roland Peverell was really someone she knew hiding behind a different name. Not that she had really expected there to be. It was just—

She was so close to revenge that the thought there might be something she didn’t know about this Peverell and that could be damning made her want to claw her way out of her skin. And she had to know the right answers to his questions. The second one was obvious. The first one, not so much so.

The true answer was grief. Grief for Ted and Dora had consumed Andromeda to the point that she simply hadn’t been able to think about Sirius.

And there was also fear. She didn’t want to try to free Sirius, or even hint to Narcissa that Sirius’s crimes weren’t that great, when it might mean she would also end up dead, and in a way that meant she couldn’t destroy even one of her enemies.

She would find some way to tell the truth and still make her answers acceptable to Peverell. She would.

Because Andromeda would sacrifice anything for the chance to make the fire burning inside her, hollowing her out, sweep out from her and consume Lucius Malfoy and all the others who had been part of forcing her to slit her own daughter’s throat in the inferno.