[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Like Clouded Endless Stars, gen, Like a Malfoy series, 5/6

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Five

“Welcome home, Henry.”

Father’s hug was strong and desperate. Harry leaned against him for a moment, hugging him back, and then turned and waved at Ron and Hermione, who were both joining their families. Hermione nodded at him, looked at Father without a hint of an expression, and then turned and walked away.

Father let go of Harry and turned to hug Draco, bowing his head and speaking words too quiet to hear. Harry took a step back so that they could have privacy, and winked at Tonks as she got off the train. She’d spent the term exploring the secrets of Hogwarts, and now and then acting as a “bodyguard” for Harry when he had to go into a part of the castle where he might have to see Dumbledore.

Professor McGonagall had been shocked at the news that the new Defense professor was Sirius Black, and had promised Harry that she would be with him during any conversation he might have to have with the Headmaster. Harry mostly trusted her to keep that promise, but he didn’t trust Dumbledore not to trick his way past her.

“See you on Christmas!” Tonks said, and waved jauntily, and moved away to one of the points where people could Apparate or Floo out.

“Still not all the way reconciled with your Muggleborn friend?”

Harry was a little surprised at first that Father had noticed, in the middle of his hug with Draco, but then he remembered how strong Father’s survival instincts were, and smiled ruefully to himself. It was probably one of those instincts that had made him notice when Hermione had walked away without a word.

“Not completely,” Harry agreed, letting Father cast a charm that would tug Harry’s trunk after them, and Father and Draco get on either side of him. He might not be in much danger here in King’s Cross, but one could never disregard the notion after Sirius Black appearing out of nowhere more than once. “She still finds your past hard to swallow, and we disagreed about things like how important it is to study for OWLS instead of for regular classes.”

“What happened when you disagreed?”

“Granger sulked,” Draco said, obviously relishing the words.

“Draco. She did not.”

“Yes, she did! She was upset that you didn’t just roll over and tell her what she wanted to placate her. She sat at another table in the library and emitted this cloud of sulkiness that rolled along the floor like smoke.”

Harry scowled at his brother, but he did have to admit that it was sort of an accurate description of Hermione’s reaction. “I never used to just placate her.”

“Yes, you did. You didn’t want to argue with her, so you would sit there and sort of tune out the lecture, or you would pretend to ignore the issue until she dropped it of her own accord because she assumed you agreed with her.”

Harry scowled harder, but…

Yeah, that sort of was the way it worked. The times he had disagreed with his friends had been so awful that he did want to avoid big fights, if he could. And he still remembered that it had been a fight with Ron that had put Hermione in danger from the troll during first year.

“We will have a quiet Christmas,” Father said, breaking in. “We will invite your aunt and uncle and cousin over, of course, but no one else will come to visit on Christmas Day itself. We shall drink mulled wine and open gifts and discuss certain ideas your aunt has come up with.”

Harry nodded. It sounded wonderful.

“Lucius!”

The voice rang so loudly that Harry was half-convinced for a second either Black or Dumbledore had come to King’s Cross and decided to confront Father here. But Father whirled around and ducked into a crouch, raising a thick shield that settled over them like a dome, and a curse that would turn someone to stone deflected off the shield. People scattered, screaming.

Harry didn’t think either Black or Dumbledore would have used a curse like that.

Father straightened up, staring. Harry peered around him, despite the way that he was pressed backwards with the shield, and recognized the man standing in the middle of the train station by his silver hands.

Barty Crouch, Jr.

“Traitor,” Crouch said softly, but it was enough to make his voice echo from the walls in the sudden silence. “I’m here to make sure you pay.”

Father smiled. It was a terrible smile. Harry felt even Draco gasp and fall back towards him. He reached out for his brother without thinking, and they clung together inside the dome that Father had raised.

“I think,” Father said, “that I shall enjoy this.”

He spun his wand in a few motions that looked expert, and which Harry had never seen before. The dome shield shuddered and pushed outwards, and Harry found himself able to stand up in it, which he hadn’t before. At the same time, a section of it swung upwards like a door, and Father stepped out and through.

Harry started to scramble after him without thinking. He didn’t want Father to face Crouch alone. What if—

But the door swung shut immediately, and Draco grabbed him from behind and whispered, “Henry, no! This is the kind of fight that Father is always telling us to let him handle, remember?”

That might be true, but it didn’t make things any easier, for Harry to just stand there and let Father face an enemy he believed should have been his. Harry bit the inside of his cheek distractedly, unable to remove his gaze from Father as he paced to the middle of the train station. Other shields were rising around him, shoving away the few people who hadn’t retreated already.

“I have been looking forward to this,” Crouch said. He was smiling. He looked mad. There was a patch of flesh missing from his cheek and covered by a gleam of silver that Harry hadn’t seen in the vision, and his wand was clenched in his hands so hard that it looked as if it might fall to pieces right there. “If you knew how much, Lucius. If you knew.”

“I think I can guess.” Father fell into a defensive posture.

“You have no chance of winning, you know, traitor.”

Father said nothing. Harry couldn’t see his eyes from where he was standing behind the shield, but he could see from the tilt of his head that Father was looking straight at Crouch and probably didn’t intend to move his eyes.

Crouch cast a spell without speaking. It was an awful, withering blue-white light, and Harry cried out involuntarily. Then he slapped a hand over his mouth, frightened that he would disturb Father’s concentration.

Father laughed aloud, and stepped straight into the curse.

Harry wasn’t the only one to cry out this time; Draco’s cry echoed his. But the light seethed around Father and then disappeared. Harry’s eyes widened as he saw a glitter like diamond dust on Father’s skin. It seemed that he’d cast some sort of shield earlier, maybe while he was inside the dome with them.

“You always did start with that spell, Crouch,” Father said. “A weakness.” And he also cast a spell without speaking.

This spell curled around one of Crouch’s silver hands and faded. From the way Father’s own hand flexed, Harry thought he had forgotten that the curse wouldn’t affect silver and was irritated at himself for forgetting. But part of the curse landed on Crouch’s arm and pressed, and his shrill screams filled the air.

Harry smelled cooking flesh. He swallowed. From the soft laugh Father gave, he was pleased, and he raised a shield to deflect the nasty-looking spells that Crouch flung at him with ease. The only spell out of the ones Crouch used that Harry knew was the Blasting Curse.

Crouch and Father got closer and closer to each other, dueling with spells of increasingly strange color and a heavy smell that seemed to fill the air with ocean sharpness. Harry and Draco held on to each other, and Harry tried his best to see the battle for what it really was, to see if Crouch was tiring.

Or if Father was.

Then Father fell back under a heavy blow, and both Harry and Draco shouted at the same time again. Harry began to hammer on the dome shield that Father had imprisoned them under, desperate to get out and help—

Draco abruptly laughed. Harry stared at him.

“It was a feint, Henry!”

Harry followed Draco’s pointing finger, and saw that Crouch had charged Father where he had fallen on the floor of the station. And that Father had sat up and directed a stream of Fiendfyre straight at Crouch’s face.

Harry felt his mouth opening, sure that it was done now—

And Crouch lunged forwards, taking the blast on his silver hands, which only seemed to bubble a little, and broke the shield that must have been there. His hands wrapped around Father’s throat.

Harry shouted and hammered on the shield dome that contained him and Draco. Draco was doing the same thing beside him. He watched long cracks spread up and down the dome, branching out, writhing like snakes, and then the dome shattered with a heavy sound like a tolling bell and they were free.

Harry stumbled to his knees, gasping from the sudden surge of magical exhaustion that shocked him. He hadn’t realized breaking the shield would take power out of him. He reached for his wand with fingers that trembled, raised his hand and his head with so much fatigue that he was sure Father would be dead by now.

He looked up, and saw Crouch laughing, apparently slowly strangling Father and enjoying his thrashing—

And then Mother Apparated in behind Crouch and hit him with a spell that opened a huge cut in the middle of his back.

Crouch screamed and let Father go, rolling away. Mother hit him with another spell that severed what looked like his right foot. Crouch gave her a glare of absolute hatred, touched something fastened on his robe, and vanished in a swirl of Portkey colors.

“Mother!”

Harry said it first, he thought, but Draco’s voice was just a beat behind. Mother dropped to one knee and cast a spell that shielded them with what looked like a transparent, traveling version of the shield dome. Then she immediately held her wand to Father’s throat and began murmuring healing spells.

Well, Harry thought they were healing spells. He couldn’t hear them from this distance. He forced his legs to work, and stumbled towards Mother. She reached out an arm towards him without looking up. Harry snuggled close to her, and Draco did the same thing on the other side.

“Give me room to work, darlings,” Mother murmured, but she was the one who adjusted her position, so that they didn’t need to give up holding onto her but she had her wand arm free. “And cover my back.”

With a start, Harry remembered that Crouch might not be the only enemy, and turned his wand outwards. Draco was doing the same thing next to him.

Harry’s hand was trembling, and he suspected Mother might have given him the task to occupy him rather than because he would be good at it. But he still covered her back, until the Aurors arrived.

*

“Give us another rendition of what you saw, Mr. Malfoy.”

“He has already given you three.”

Harry fought not to sag back against the chair behind him. He didn’t want to look weak in front of the Aurors, and he didn’t want to make his family look weak, either, but he had come very, very near the end of his patience. He had told the Aurors what he had seen again and again, although he had said that he didn’t know the names of the spells other than the Blasting Curse.

It was even mostly true. What mattered the most was that he hadn’t told anyone about Father using Fiendfyre, which he knew was both a Dark spell and the kind of necessary one that would get rid of Horcruxes.

Three years ago, I couldn’t imagine my life being this complicated.

“Mrs. Malfoy—”

“I allowed you to question my son so that you would leave us in peace. And now I see that you are not doing that.” Mother smiled, that smile with the queer, glittering edge that made even Father and Draco be careful around her. Now, Harry just relaxed further, because it was directed at the Aurors standing on the other side of the table instead of him. “Perhaps I should complain to the Minister.”

The nearest Auror, a burly man with broad shoulders and chestnut hair, winced a little. But he wasn’t the one who had spoken to Harry so far, and that one, a thin woman with mousy brown hair, shook her head violently.

“We need to know what happened. The boy is claiming that a Death Eater attacked your husband. We all know that there are no active Death Eaters anymore. Unless, of course, we think about the people who claimed to be under the Imperius during the war.”

Harry caught his breath, and didn’t care that it was audible. Now he understood better why this particular woman, who’d introduced herself as Auror Jansen, had hauled him into an interrogation room and asked him question after question, even though he’d answered just about all of them during the first few minutes.

“You do know that active Death Eaters bear active Dark Marks?” Mother asked, her voice gentle and condescending. Her smile still glittered.

“Of course.” Auror Jansen stared at her.

“And you have checked my husband’s arm. It’s one of the first things I saw you do after we came to the Ministry. What did you find?”

The woman’s mouth twisted. Harry didn’t know her as well as Mother, of course, but he thought he could see that she was trying to suppress rage. “We found nothing.”

Mother nodded. “And you know as well as I that there’s no way to remove the Dark Mark.” She tilted her head, and her eyes took on an even more disturbing glint. “Why, I seem to remember Minister Bagnold saying that was an infallible way to know the Death Eaters, by their Marks. To the point that she didn’t believe there was such a thing as an unmarked follower of the Dark Lord.”

“At least call him You-Know-Who, you bitch!” Auror Jansen surged to her feet. “I know what I saw that night sixteen years ago!”

“My,” Mother said, while the glitter in her eyes got worse, “you are unhinged.”

Auror Jansen drew her wand. Harry flung himself out of his chair and in between his mother and the Auror. There was at least a chance that the Auror would hesitate to curse the “Boy-Who-Lived,” the way some people still thought of him, even if she wouldn’t stop from cursing Mum.

Jansen took a step back, breathing heavily. She said to Harry, her voice low and thick with hatred, “I saw Lucius Malfoy murdering my aunt and uncle. I know I did. I know he was an active Death Eater. I’ll hate him until the day I die.”

“And I know what I saw,” Harry snapped at her, feeling his voice wobble. He concentrated as hard as he could on making it level. He could feel Mother’s hand on his shoulder. “A different Death Eater fighting my father. He isn’t on trial here. Why aren’t you out there looking for that Death Eater?”

Jansen didn’t answer. She just stowed her wand with a sharp motion and then followed the tug of her partner’s arm out of the room. He hadn’t actually spoken up or interfered, Harry saw. Well, that would probably be too much like doing something.

Mother’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Harry leaned against her. “Is Draco okay?” he whispered. “Father?”

Mother nodded. “I took Father home after they spoke to him once, and stayed with him the entire time. They did get Draco into an interrogation room, but he told his story once and then didn’t speak again. He’s at home now, too.”

“I’m sorry. I should have kept silent, too.”

“Why should you? You should be able to trust Aurors.”

Harry didn’t know what made him ask it. “Is it true what she said? That Father murdered her aunt and uncle?”

“I do not know,” Mother said, her voice so low that it felt like it was thrumming in Harry’s bones. “I suggest that we go home, and you can ask Father yourself when you’re both feeling better.”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then nodded. He followed along with Mother as they made their way to the Floo, Mother’s hand an iron anchor on his shoulder.

He knew his father had been an active Death Eater. He knew that he had committed murders. Harry would ask him about that, and he would bear the answer, whatever it was.

But he also knew that his father was no longer an active Death Eater, and had fought someone who was today to save both Harry and his brother. Harry was going to think about that during the Christmas holidays, and then write to Father about it when he was back at Hogwarts.

He wanted to enjoy Christmas, despite the traumatic beginning to it.

*

Andromeda hesitated a little in the sitting room where Henry had gone to read some of his new books after they had opened gifts. Narcissa was sitting in the chair next to Henry. She lifted her head when she saw Andromeda in the doorway, and tilted her chin down.

Andromeda knew what that meant. You’re the one who thought of this. You’re the one who has to tell him.

Andromeda took a deep breath and walked into the sitting room. Henry immediately lifted his head and tracked her. For all that he and Draco were superficially identical, Andromeda had never found it hard to tell them apart since she’d been invited into their lives. Henry was so much warier, as though expecting to be hit at every moment.

The mere thought made Andromeda’s stomach clench. To think of her own Nymphadora growing up like that…

Instead, it had been her own nephew.

“Yes, Aunt Andromeda?” Henry asked politely, putting his book down and focusing on her.

“I think I’ve figured out a way to remove the Horcrux from you.”

Henry jolted, his mouth opening a little. Then he cast a glance at his mother and narrowed his eyes.

“We chose not to tell you with the trauma of the Auror attack and then the excitement of Christmas,” Narcissa said. “Besides, we knew that the announcement should come from the person who discovered it.”

“How did you do that, Aunt Andromeda?”

And she was the focus of those grey eyes again. Andromeda sat down in a chair near the fireplace and shook her head a little. “The most ordinary way. I was walking down Diagon Alley and peering into the windows, looking for a gift for Ted. I saw a small collection of toys, various pieces of a puzzle that could be assembled into a horse that would move.”

Henry blinked.

“It came to me in a flash that it would be dangerous to try and remove the Horcrux from you because it is so rooted in your soul, and no one knows the exact consequences of placing a Horcrux in a living being in the first place. But it could perhaps be broken apart and removed, a bit at a time.”

“How—is that actually going to be less dangerous than just sucking it out of me?”

“I don’t know how to suck a soul shard out of anybody,” Andromeda admitted. “Except if we used a Dementor, and that option is not one that I am willing to use.”

Henry shivered. Andromeda could feel Narcissa’s glacial stare from the side, the kind that said, If my child has nightmares, I am blaming you.

“Of course not,” Henry whispered. “No.”

“But I know how to remove small pieces of something from someone’s mind and soul and magic,” Andromeda said. “There are curses that crack them as others crack bones. I’ve practiced taking out the shards of magic over and over again, in my time as a Healer.”

Harry licked his lips. “I—it sounds great, Aunt Andromeda, but if it’s that simple, why didn’t one of the Healers at St. Mungo’s think of it? They’ve been working on it for months now. Maybe even over a year?”

Andromeda canted her head and smiled grimly. “I don’t believe it occurred to them to crack it into shards. Or if it did, they might have been afraid that the pieces would scatter and root themselves further.”

Henry turned grey. Narcissa leaned in to smooth her hand over his shoulder, and gave Andromeda a harsh look.

Andromeda stared back at her sister. She would never suggest something like this if she had thought it wouldn’t work. What did Narcissa think of her?

For long years, nothing at all.

Andromeda clenched her hands. She would not go back to that. She would get the Horcrux out of Henry and prove that she could do something. And she thought she knew where to start.

“Would you consent to me casting a spell on you and seeing what the Horcrux shard looks like, Henry?”

“I thought—well, why didn’t anyone cast that spell before?”

“They were afraid to hurt you,” Andromeda said bluntly. “It’s painful. But I need an idea of the size and shape of the shard, so that I know how to target it.”

Henry nodded without even glancing at his mother, although Narcissa opened her mouth as if she would protest it. “I want to do it, Mum,” he added, still without looking away from Andromeda. “The visions I get because of it are a lot more painful.”

It was too bad that Henry wasn’t looking at Narcissa, and didn’t see the softened expression that passed over her face at the word “Mum.” But Andromeda used that moment to draw her wand. “Animam revelio,” she whispered, gesturing at Henry.

His head arched backwards and he bit down on his lip, but he didn’t scream. Andromeda blinked away tears. That said a lot about his pain tolerance, none of it good.

His body glowed as if lit from within. Then a dark light traced up to the scar. Andromeda leaned forwards, concentrating. She had a Pensieve she would place the memory within later, but she needed to be alive, aware in this moment, seeing all of it, all the details, so as to have the best possible insight into how to get rid of it.

The black light glowed. It surrounded Henry’s scar and shimmered like that. Andromeda nodded. She wasn’t entirely surprised that it was the same shape as the scar, considering—

Then the light whirled and spread.

Andromeda stared at a jagged, glinting thing, spread throughout Henry’s body, from his head to his feet, covering almost the whole of his own soul like a slimy film.

She ended the spell and passed a hand over her face. She had thought, when they’d discussed the shard being an accidental Horcrux, that it was small. Why?

It wasn’t. It was—huge.

“Aunt Andromeda?”

She looked up, met Henry’s eyes, and decided that telling the truth was the best thing she could do for him in this instance. “It’s spread all throughout your body,” she said. “Like a cancer. We have to begin cracking it and getting it out of you as soon as possible. I don’t know what will happen if we don’t.”

Narcissa gasped. Henry stared down at his lap, looking overwhelmed, and Andromeda wondered if she shouldn’t have told the truth after all.

At last Henry looked up, his lips thin. “Then let’s start.”