[From Litha to Lammas]: A Darkness Like Fire, gen, 2/4, Like a Malfoy series

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Two

“And you don’t think you could do it based on what happened in the graveyard?”

“Not from ashes, no. And not from your memory of destroying it. That’s no match for having the physical object.”

“Do not refer to my son as a physical object—”

Harry raised his eyebrows a little as he stepped into the library and the discussion between his father and Aunt Andromeda abruptly cut off. “An ominous conversation that you stop when you hear me coming isn’t a bad sign at all,” he said.

Father cast Aunt Andromeda a steady murderous look. Harry was kind of impressed by how well his aunt bore up under it. She said, “Your father was asking if we could track You-Know-Who’s Horcruxes using the ashes of the one he believes he destroyed in the graveyard. I was saying we couldn’t. If the ashes are even left. It’s not impossible that You-Know-Who found someone to come and clean them up afterwards. And we can’t do it based on a Pensieve memory. It has to be the one in your head.”

Harry breathed out slowly and straightened his shoulders, then wandered over to the chair next to his father’s. They were in the library, and golden light coming through the windows slanted shadows over Father’s face. “Okay. I can do that.”

“She wants to use you in a ritual.”

“Not as ingredients the way You-Know-Who was planning, Lucius! As a participant so we can track the others!”

“You’re sure the snake was a Horcrux?” Harry asked his father, choosing to ignore Aunt Andromeda for the moment.

His father nodded stiffly. “I believe she was, and we cannot take the chance that she was not.”

Harry just nodded back. Then he turned to Aunt Andromeda. “What would I have to do?”

“Stand in the middle of a ritual circle,” she said at once, glaring at Father as if she thought he would try to interrupt. “Speak a short chant. That should be all you need to do. Rituals like this often proceed by carving runes into the central object, but since you’re alive, we don’t have to do that.”

“Well,” Harry said after a moment of stunned silence, “good, then?”

“You can’t be sure what impact Henry’s living status would have on the ritual,” Father hissed, slamming an open palm down on the arm of his chair. He also shifted as if he was going to get up and block Andromeda from looking at Harry. “And I will not allow you to carve runes on my son!”

“Well, what exactly do you suggest doing then, Lucius?” Andromeda snapped. “You are the one who told me about Horcruxes and insisted that I be involved in the quest to find them. Unless you happen to have a spare Horcrux lying around—”

Father laughed.

Harry cringed a little. The laughter was cold and sharp-edged, and he could easily imagine it flaying the skin off someone. Aunt Andromeda’s eyes widened, and she said, “Lucius, your son.”

Father immediately turned around a little and came over to kneel next to Harry’s chair. “If you were frightened, Henry, I apologize,” he murmured, and bowed his head.

Harry swallowed. Honestly, the amount of power he had over Father when he was like this sickened him a little. No, he didn’t want Father to change the way he acted naturally just because of Harry.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I just—imagined some things.”

“And some of us would quite like to hear an explanation of your laughter,” Aunt Andromeda snapped, her arms folded.

Father stood up and turned to face her. “I just might,” he said. “I might have a spare Horcrux lying around.”

“Lucius, talk sense.”

“The Dark Lord entrusted me with something he found precious,” Father said softly. “And very Dark. At one point, I made an attempt to get rid of it, because Weasley was conducting raids on my house.” His voice lowered, but luckily, he didn’t go off in a tirade about Weasleys. “But the attempt proved more disastrous than hanging onto the object would. I still have it. It might be a Horcrux.”

“Well,” Aunt Andromeda said, after a stunned silence of her own, “we might as well test it.”

*

Narcissa stayed close to Henry’s side as they stepped into the room at the foundations of the Manor. This wasn’t a place Henry had been before, and Draco had only joined her or Lucius here on some important astronomical days, like the solstices. The power humming in the walls and floor could be disorienting at first.

Sure enough, Henry jumped and turned a ghost-pale face up to her. Narcissa smoothed her hand down his cheek and turned him so that he was looking directly at the far wall of the room. It was easier to focus on the one white spot in all that dazzling black marble, at least until you got used to it.

“Look at that spot,” Narcissa said, her voice lulling. Her son breathed softly against her. Still alive. Every day he is alive is a victory. “What does it remind you of?”

“Um,” Henry said, his voice wavering. “Snow?”

Narcissa laughed softly. “Yes, it does me, too. It’s meant to be a visual representation of the winter solstice, but I do think that Abraxas was taken advantage of.”

Henry relaxed. Narcissa made a mental note of it. She wasn’t entirely sure if that had happened because Henry liked having something in common with her or liked understanding what he was looking at, but she would endeavor to remind him of both more often in the future.

Henry seemed to be avoiding looking at the circle in the center of the room, but he finally swallowed and turned around. Narcissa turned with him, her arm around his shoulders. The circle was overwhelming, yes, but those of Malfoy blood had an easier time absorbing the impact than did those who married into the family.

The circle seemed to gleam, half in and half out of reality. It was made of black stones piled up in what seemed to be random places and at random heights—at first. But when one concentrated, one began to make out the patterns.

Narcissa knew she hadn’t grasped them all, but one was that piles directly across the circle from each other when one looked at them straight on always consisted of differing prime numbers of stones.

“Will the circle allow me to work with it?” Andromeda asked quietly as she walked in, carrying a silk-lined box in which Lucius had put the diary. Narcissa wished he had never agreed to keep it for the Dark Lord, had never touched it, but it would be useful today. “I’m not a Malfoy, and the presence is…”

“It will allow you to participate,” Lucius said, his voice high and eerie in the Malfoys’ most sacred space. “But I will need to guide the ritual.”

Andromeda glared at him. Narcissa sighed. Her sister had always wished to be in charge of everything. She narrowed her eyes at the back of Andromeda’s neck and added a touch of magic to her glare.

Andromeda turned around and stared at her. Narcissa met her eyes without moving. This was a technique she had discovered to get Andromeda’s attention when they were children and Andromeda was about to start a two-hour argument with their parents over something like not being allowed to pick what they were having for dinner for the sixth night in a row.

Narcissa had never wanted to listen to that. Andromeda had never wanted to listen to anyone else—most of the time.

But now, Narcissa managed to convey with her eyes that Lucius was not going to budge, no matter how many hours the arguments took up. Andromeda glanced off to the side and nodded grudgingly.

Lucius, who was good at ignoring that sort of byplay, had already entered the circle and placed the crescent of pure silver he’d bought in Knockturn Alley directly in the center. Immediately, lines of light flared around it. Henry winced away from their brightness, and Narcissa joined him in doing the same.

The lines formed the imprint of a large, rayed star, but Narcissa had never seen them before. She hoped they would contain the Dark thing that Andromeda now carried gingerly over to the side of the circle.

Lucius took it from her before she could step inside and bent to place it on the crescent of silver.

Almost immediately, the metal began to smoke. Narcissa shivered, feeling sick with the smell and the sensation of something stirring in darkness. Henry was staring fixedly at the crescent, and only Narcissa’s resolve that they would hide nothing from him and he should have the ability to see the Horcruxes found prevented her from bundling him up and removing him from the room immediately.

The crescent then began to bubble. Whatever was in the book, the pure silver rejected its taint—but the book could also overcome any protection the silver provided, which was beyond concerning. Narcissa locked her legs in place and locked her arm around Henry.

Lucius aimed his wand at the box containing the book and then cast a series of complex spells, only about half of which Narcissa knew. She couldn’t tell if they had any effect, except that one of them made a dome of silver light appear above the box. Lucius knelt down next to that, between two of the rays surrounding the crescent, and began to carve runes into the dome.

An anguished scream rang through the room. Henry jerked. Narcissa turned and shielded him, bowing her head to escape the sound as best as she could while the screams continued. She didn’t dare cast a spell to block her ears in case Lucius called out for her.

But he didn’t. Now and then, in between the screams that rang out at intervals, Narcissa thought she could hear the scrape of his chisel carving the runes.

The screams abruptly died. Henry pushed at the confinement of her arms, and Narcissa sighed and turned around, still holding his shoulder. Henry trembled as he stared at the circle, eyes wide and fixed. Narcissa wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t go bolting off towards the book because of some compulsion to get closer.

“Narcissa? Henry? Are you all right?”

Lucius’s voice was calm, if cold, the voice he used when he was in the middle of great spells or magical workings. Narcissa called back, “I’m fine.” She smoothed Henry’s hair. “Are you all right, dear?”

After a long, tense moment, Henry nodded.

“And so is Henry.”

“And so am I,” Andromeda said, “If anyone cared.”

Narcissa gave her sister a chiding frown, but most of her attention was on the center of the circle, where the floating dome above the book was flashing with sharp, regular colors that seemed to come from several different directions. Then the colors settled into the runes and made them glow.

A second later, five beams of incredibly bright light—golden, silver, sapphire, black, and green—shot away from the book. The green light focused on Henry’s scar, and Narcissa tightened her mouth when she saw that it was the color of the Killing Curse that had placed the Horcrux there. She wrapped her arms around Henry again.

Henry swallowed and said, “I’m all right.” But the words were so soft that Narcissa could pretend she hadn’t heard them, and she promptly did so.

The light flickered out a second later. Andromeda cursed. “I hoped they would remain longer so we could see where they went,” she muttered.

“The spell isn’t as powerful as that,” Lucius murmured. “We would have to carve the runes directly on the object, and I am afraid of what the Horcrux might do if someone touches it.”

“I could try—”

“I don’t want to lose you when we’ve just found each other again,” Narcissa interrupted.

Andromeda gave her a conflicted look and fell silent. Narcissa smiled inwardly. For a Healer, Andromeda had never been that comfortable with the “softer” emotions that Narcissa and Bellatrix had had no problem expressing.

Not Bellatrix, perhaps.

But her elder sister was not here and not concerned with the problem at hand, so Narcissa asked, “I was right in thinking that there were five beams, Lucius? Not dazzled?”

“Yes,” Lucius said. “Not one for the diary itself, and not one for the snake I killed in the graveyard, since it was already destroyed. So…seven Horcruxes.”

Henry shuddered so hard he nearly tore himself out of Narcissa’s grasp. Narcissa stroked his hair. “Dear one,” she murmured. “Are you all right?” Do you think we will give up on this task because it is difficult? But she couldn’t speak those words aloud with their audience.

“Seven,” Harry whispered. “Well, six now. How are we ever going to hunt them all down or destroy them?”

“The spell your father found to destroy the snake in the graveyard will bring them down,” Narcissa said.

“Except for the one in me.”

Narcissa nodded. That was true enough. “But you know that Healer Percival at St. Mungo’s is still researching a way to take care of that. And while we could not maintain the beams of light long enough to follow them to their sources, still, there are other ways to seek out Dark Arts objects so powerful. I promise you, Henry, we’ll find them.”

“What will we do about the one in me?”

“Continue to work on it.”

“But we don’t have an answer yet!”

“We will.”

Henry fell silent, apparently confounded about that. Narcissa understood. Adults had ignored him in the past when he had problems far less severe than this, or lied to him about them. And he probably thought that no one could prevail against a Horcrux located not in an object but a living human being.

Narcissa could only stroke his hair and hope he would believe them one day. And she stood aside to let him watch as Lucius used Fiendfyre on the diary, and endured the screams and the smoke and the black blood that spilled on the floor of the circle, utterly destroying the silver crescent and the box the diary had been placed in.

Two dead, Narcissa whispered to herself, shaping the words with her lips, and caught Lucius’s eye. He was looking at her, sharing her thoughts so well that it was almost like Legilimency. Five to go.

*

“Are you all right, Andi?”

Andromeda mutely shook her head. Immediately, Ted reached out for her and drew her down to sit beside him on the couch. Andromeda closed her eyes and let herself slowly soak in her husband’s warmth.

She had no idea what to do.

Horcruxes weren’t something she could handle. She only knew what they were in the first place because Narcissa had explained. Andromeda had avoided the kind of people who might have taught her about such Dark magic in Slytherin House, and fled home before their parents had thought her old enough for such lessons.

And she couldn’t even help Cissy take care of them. Fiendfyre was a powerful and above all Dark Art that was beyond her. She didn’t have any idea what could remove a Horcrux from a child. Narcissa had said that Healers at St. Mungo’s were working on it, yes, but not the kind of Healer Andromeda was.

A helpless child, her nephew, was suffering, and she couldn’t help.

“Whoa there, Andi.”

She became aware that she was clenching her fingers down so hard into Ted’s leg that she’d torn the cloth of his trousers. Andromeda blushed and drew her hand back, folding it close to her chest. She took a deep breath.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ted asked quietly.

Narcissa and Lucius had both bound her with an oath before they would talk about the Horcruxes in any detail, and they hadn’t made an exception for Ted. Andromeda would have been insulted by that, thinking it was based on Ted’s blood status, but she suspected now that they had only told her at all because she’d been so loud and insistent.

“I can’t tell you everything,” she whispered. “But I can tell you that Henry is—it’s so dangerous, the kind of hold that that curse scar gives You-Know-Who over him, and I don’t know how to combat it.”

“Do Narcissa and Lucius?”

“They’re working on it, and they have some other people working on it. No answers yet.”

“Then there might be one someday,” Ted said firmly, and relaxed back into the couch, directing Andromeda’s attention to the fire that burned on the hearth. “Remember what we said about the flames on our wedding night, Andi?”

It was an old, old ritual of their own, but it still made Andromeda smile and feel as if she might be able to fly without a broom. “Flames are ever-changing,” she whispered.

“But they always give off heat and light.”

“And they shine like hope—”

“In the darkness,” Ted finished, and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ve never seen anyone as determined to protect their children as our in-laws.” He still sounded wondering when he spoke about that sometimes, given that they’d gone so many years without in-laws. “They’ll find a way, and if their first try doesn’t work, they’ll change like the flames and come up with some other pathway.”

“I know. I just—”

“Wish there was something you could do,” Ted said, and smirked at her when Andromeda scowled at him. “Sometimes, Andi, love, you just need to sit back and let other people handle that.”

“I’m horrible at that.”

“I know. So am I. But we’ll try together.”

And Andromeda leaned her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and tried as best as she could to focus on Lucius and Narcissa’s utter determination to save Henry, without focusing on how to insert herself into their plans.

*

“How do you think of yourself in the wake of Pettigrew’s death?”

Harry looked at his hands. He and Healer Letham had been talking for half an hour about other things, like how he felt about being in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and how he felt about knowing his family had allowed him to take three days to come to terms with what had happened in the graveyard. They were even in the familiar room in the Manor where they’d had so many sessions in the past.

But Harry had said when they started that he wanted to talk about Pettigrew, and so, here they were.

“I think I’m a murderer,” Harry whispered. “I keep thinking—how can I be walking around and laughing and casting magic, when he’s dead? I keep thinking that there are mitigating circumstances, and then I think that I’m wrong and there aren’t. I keep thinking that I was wrong to judge Mother and Father for wanting to murder the Dursleys, and wondering what makes me different than they are.”

“Do you want to murder the Dursleys, Harry?”

“No.” Harry just never wanted to see them again.

“Did you want to murder Pettigrew? From what you’ve told me, it was an accident, and you meant the charm to hit him in the hand and not the throat.”

“Yeah, but…what do intentions matter, when you have actions?”

“I see,” said Healer Letham, tilting her head and looking at him like a wise old crow. “You think that because you killed him regardless of what you intended to do, you cannot be a good person.”

Harry flinched. He wouldn’t have put it in those words, but it was kind of what had been circling around in his head. He looked down and nodded. “I wanted—I wanted to spare him,” he whispered. “But I didn’t. Isn’t that what matters, that I didn’t, regardless of what I wanted?”

“That kind of logic makes sense in the face of trauma,” Healer Letham said calmly. “But it also makes everything in life a result of malice, no accidents or mistakes allowed. Is that the way you would think of someone else in the same situation? As a murderer?”

Harry shook his head quickly, and then grimaced. “You’re going to say that because I wouldn’t think of them that way, I shouldn’t think of myself that way either, right?”

Healer Letham’s eyes shone with something gentler than amusement as she nodded. “We know each other well. That is one thing I would bring up, yes. But I also know that you have difficulties thinking of other people and yourself in the same way. Today, I would like to dig into that a bit. Why would this be murder for you and an accident for, say, your friend Hermione?”

“Hermione wouldn’t have been caught in that situation in the first place! She would have dodged—”

“Or perhaps been frozen with shock and died after being used in the necromantic ritual. You cannot know. Think a little about the question. Use a different person if you want. Take your time.”

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Part of him wished that Healer Letham was a little less reasonable, sometimes. But she sat there and waited, and gradually, Harry’s mind turned in the direction of the question she had actually asked.

Would he think of Draco as a murderer in that situation if he had killed Pettigrew in self-defense? No, of course not.

Would he think that Draco was more likely to choose a lethal spell on purpose and get out of the situation as quickly as he could? Yes.

And would he think that Draco was making a good choice if he did so?

Yes.

Harry breathed out slowly and opened his eyes. “I suppose there’s not much actual difference between what I did and what someone else would do,” he said reluctantly. “And I wouldn’t blame them for trying to survive at all. I think it’s—different for me because of other reasons.”

“What are those other reasons?”

“I should have known better? I should have done better because—so many people think I’m different?” Harry heard his voice peter out, and then shook his head. “No. Not that. Not really. I don’t think I’m better than other people because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, even if they think like that.”

“All right. Any other reasons you can think of?”

Harry lowered his head and closed his eyes. Then he whispered, “I—suppose I’m still carrying along some of the stain the Dursleys tried to impose on me.”

“Explain that a little further, please, Harry.”

It was easier with his eyes closed. “If I do something good, then it doesn’t matter as much because I’m—more trouble than other people, too. And if I do something wrong, it’s worse because I’m worse.”

Healer Letham smiled. Harry could tell that without even looking at her. As she had said, they did know each other well. “Very good, Harry,” she whispered. “I know that was a difficult thing to say aloud, and I’m proud of you.”

“But it doesn’t make sense, right?” Harry asked, and found the courage to open his eyes again and meet hers. “I still sound like I’m a little mental, or like I’m—”

“Your aunt and uncle?”

One of the small things about Healer Letham Harry was grateful for was that she didn’t resort to the awkward ways his family tended to talk about the Dursleys, just because they didn’t want to say Harry was related to them in any way. Healer Letham talked about them the way Harry talked about them. He nodded. “It doesn’t make sense for their words to be lingering in my mind when I know they’re wrong. I wasn’t a freak, and my parents weren’t drunks who died in a car accident.”

“Those who raised us have a huge impact on us,” Healer Letham said, and leaned back on the cushions that separated her from the arm of the couch, studying him thoughtfully. “As I think you can see if you consider some of the differences between you and your brother.”

Harry snorted, trying to imagine what Draco would have been like if he’d been raised by the Dursleys, and if he’d even have made it to Hogwarts age. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Very well.” Healer Letham smiled at him again and propped her chin up on a fist. “So, considering that you now know some of the reasons why you think of your killing of Pettigrew as unjustifiable, where you would like to go from here?”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the kind of traumatic event, because it is singular and not spread across multiple years, that we can do memory modification on, if you’d like,” Healer Letham said, her voice as still as cool water. “We can blur it and make sure that you don’t remember it as well in the future. Or we can continue talking about it so that you can try to blunt your sense of guilt by reminding yourself that it was an accident. Or we could try excising the memory altogether, moving it into a Pensieve.”

Harry frowned. “That would—other people would be able to see it then, right?”

“We could cast the kinds of spells on the Pensieve that would prevent them from doing so easily. But yes, there is the chance.”

“I don’t want that,” Harry said, with a shudder. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to see that memory and judge him, even if the judgment would just be that he had acted the way he was “supposed” to act.

He was still struggling so hard to be his own person, poised between the Malfoy he’d been born to be and the Potter boy of the past. But he didn’t want others to come along and try to push him one way or the other with their opinions on the memory. Just hearing them say what they thought based on what they knew was bad enough.

“All right. What about blurring the memory?”

“Would you suggest that?” Harry asked, leaning forwards and staring hard into Healer Letham’s eyes. She blinked once, as if she hadn’t thought he’d do that, but answered immediately.

“If your trauma is keen and sharp enough to prevent you from sleeping or would send you again into a state like the one you endured for three days, then I would suggest it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t. And it will always be your choice regardless.”

Harry closed his eyes and slumped back in his chair. Yes, his choice. The way that the Portkey to the graveyard really hadn’t been. But this would be.

He exhaled slowly, then said, “I think I want to talk through this. And keep my memories sharp and fresh and inside my head where they belong.”

“Interesting. May I ask why?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, why?”

“Because—no matter how I feel about it or if I can get to feeling better about it, he’s dead,” Harry muttered, opening his eyes and looking at Healer Letham. “He’s probably the first person I’ll see die because of Voldemort, but not the last. And I don’t want to forget about that. I don’t want to forget that the spells I was learning with Uncle Ted had real consequences, either. I—I want to keep that. All of that.”

Healer Letham smiled slowly. “Very well.”

“What do you think of that decision?” Harry asked.

“I think it’s the best one that you could make under the circumstances. I wish you had not been subjected to what you’ve suffered at all. But as you’ve pointed out, it’s happened. It has to be dealt with.”

Harry smiled shakily. He hadn’t really thought Healer Letham would have told him if she’d been disapproved, but it made him feel stronger, to hear that she’d support his decision.

Healer Letham shifted so she was sitting up again, both feet tucked underneath her. “Very well. Shall we begin?”