[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Blood Like Silver, Like a Malfoy series, gen, 2/5

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

Albus folded his hands on the table and frowned at Harry across the Great Hall. Harry’s shoulders tightened in response, as if he knew he was being watched, which was not what Albus wanted.

But something had happened over the Christmas holidays, and Albus needed to determine what it was before he made a move.

Sirius had sent Albus a letter full of ramblings that honestly made him sound drunk, about rituals and stars and darkness and how they had “scoured” Harry. Albus had written back asking what was going on, but Sirius’s next letter wasn’t much clearer. It sounded like he was talking about a dream he had had.

Had the Malfoys broken into Grimmauld Place and used the Confundus Charm on Sirius? Had they taken some of his blood? But it seemed to Albus that they would have slaughtered Sirius if they could find their way past the wards, not used a fairly harmless jinx on him.

Albus had arranged to be standing near the entrance hall when the students walked into it after the holidays, and he’d seen Harry’s scar looking—different. Paler, duller, less like the bright red mark it had always been.

Perhaps the Malfoys had been working to weaken the connection between Voldemort and Harry? Albus could understand why they would want to do that, honestly. It would be a way for Lucius to maintain his allegiance to Tom without Harry being affected by it.

But the only thing that had ever affected the scar was Tom himself. Had they brought Harry and Voldemort into contact?

If so, Harry showed no sign of it that first evening. But then Albus had heard from Minerva and his other professors about his spells causing chaos in the classroom, apparently because they were overpowered.

This is beyond worrying, Albus thought, looking at Harry with memories of a first-year Tom Riddle swarming through his mind.

Albus had discreetly cast a few charms that would warn him of the presence of a wraith, of a possessed person, or of someone who had been close to a wraith or a possessed person in the last week. The charms had simply faded and dissipated. They read as if Harry were only himself, with no passengers.

On the other hand, that curse scar on Harry’s forehead was like nothing Albus had ever seen before.

So he had written to Remus, and again to Sirius in case a clearer answer would come back this time, but until Remus could make it to the school on a day before the full moon and uses his enhanced senses to see if anything was wrong, Albus was stuck in a holding pattern.

Waiting.

And wishing, futilely, that Henry Malfoy had never discovered who he was, if it was going to lead to this much chaos.

*

Narcissa managed not to wrinkle her robes, but probably because she was holding Lucius’s hand instead of them. And if her husband had winced once or twice at the strength of her grip, he had said nothing.

She loved him more than she could ever say, and not least for bringing her to the outskirts of Muggle London, where Regulus had asked to meet, on the night of a full moon.

The air in front of them broke apart, and Lucius had his wand aimed at it immediately. But it was only a house-elf, one Narcissa recognized. He bowed to her at once.

“Mistress Cissy,” he croaked.

“Kreacher,” Narcissa said, a little faintly. She had thought he might still be alive, but had dismissed it as a realistic possibility. Suddenly the wards of Grimmauld Place and Sirius’s reluctance to let them in were looking like much less of a problem.

But she pushed the notion out of her mind. They were there for a different reason. “Is it truly Regulus?” she whispered. “Truly?”

Kreacher’s eyes gleamed with something deep and bright as he reached up and tugged on his ears. “It is. It is Master Regulus returned.”

Narcissa closed her eyes with a bone-deep shudder, while Lucius was the one holding on more tightly to her hand now. She knew she would have questions to answer when they returned to Malfoy Manor, especially about how she had thought this might have been a trick but had wanted to come anyway.

“Thank Merlin,” she whispered. “Kreacher, what happened to him?”

“He is telling you that, Mistress Cissy.”

Narcissa bit back a protest. Yes, she would have wanted to claim that right for herself if she had returned to her family after years of a mysterious absence.

“Very well. You will bring him now?”

“He is being here, Mistress Cissy,” Kreacher said, and snapped his fingers, and a Disillusionment Charm that must have been powered by house-elf magic for her not to notice it fell away from a patch of air next to them.

Narcissa sagged against Lucius. It was her cousin, her favorite cousin, her—her younger cousin. Who looked exactly like a teenager instead of the man in his thirties he should have been.

“How?” She put almost no breath behind the word, but Regulus seemed to hear it. Or read her lips. Or simply know what she was going to say.

“I was in a magically preserved coma as far as I can tell, in a state between life and death.” Regulus’s voice skittered and whispered like claws down a stone corridor in her youthful home. “Because the Dark Lord’s magic was the one doing the preserving, I survived better than I would have otherwise. And then I felt the call of the family ritual to give strength to your son, so I did.” He shrugged.

Lucius moved so suddenly that Narcissa staggered. He had his wand pressed to Regulus’s throat and a remote expression she had seen often, immediately before he killed.

“Swear that you are no threat to my son.”

“Why—would I be?” Regulus was choking from the press of Lucius’s wand against his throat. Kreacher had started to shriek in outrage, but now he was frozen, probably because he realized Lucius could kill Regulus before he could do anything.

“Lucius!”

“No, Narcissa.” His voice was stripped-down, as cold and flat and hard as a blade. He had gone deep into the state that he reached when he was going to protect her or the boys, and as far as Narcissa knew, an oath or the demise of the threat were the only ways to bring him out of that. “He spoke of being preserved by the Dark Lord’s magic. He bore the Mark when he vanished. I will make certain.”

The words pounded the air around them hard enough to make it spark. Regulus looked at them with flat eyes, and then nodded a little.

“You bore the Mark yourself at one time, Lucius.”

“I cut off and regrew my arm for the sake of my son. What will you do?”

Regulus gaped at Lucius for a long second. Then he said, “It’s not enough that I gave him strength?”

“You could have done that without realizing who it was you were helping, with the state you were in. And without knowing that my son went by the name Harry Potter for twelve years of his life.”

Regulus drew himself up. It was an impressive gesture, Narcissa thought, given how broken he was, how young he was. And he lifted a hand to hold Kreacher back.

“I was preserved in a lake full of Inferi that the Dark Lord created to guard an artifact that was incredibly important to him. I commanded Kreacher to take the artifact and destroy it. I will go through the same amputation and regrowth process that you did, Lucius, swear any oath you like. I loathe that monster and will never serve him again.”

Lucius waited a long moment, when Narcissa thought that he might kill Regulus anyway. Then he smiled.

“Good,” he said. “As it is, we know what kind of artifact you’re talking about, and we’ve now destroyed four of them. The ritual we needed your help with was to help our son kill yet another of them.”

Regulus was the one who looked unbalanced now. “You—can’t know what it was.”

“Horcrux.”

Regulus shook for a long moment. Narcissa wasn’t sure who wanted to intervene more, she or Kreacher.

And then Regulus straightened up with a harsh laugh, and said, “Maybe I should have come to you with this from the beginning. Yes, Lucius, I’ll swear whatever oath you like. May we be allies in this, and in defeating the Dark Lord who for some reason is obsessed with my cousin.”

Lucius’s jagged smile was visible as he lowered his wand and held out his hand to Regulus. They sank to the ground together, and Narcissa walked over to be their Bonder.

She held back the tears that burned the edges of her eyelids. Now was not the time for them.

But to have family returned to her beyond all hope or possibility of hope was a gift from Fate, and one that she thought they well deserved, to counterbalance the horror of her son having borne a Horcrux.

We shall do this. The Dark Lord stands no chance.

*

“Duck!”

Harry rolled on the floor as splinters of stone from the wall he’d tried to conjure to block Uncle Ted’s spell flew overhead. He could hear Uncle Ted swearing, and winced. He had told his family about the difficulties he was having with his magic. He hoped Uncle Ted didn’t think it was his fault.

The last pieces of stone disappeared in midair, and Harry’s uncle peered at him. “Does that happen with every spell?”

“The minor Transfigurations and Charms I’ve tried are okay,” Harry said, pushing himself to his feet. Draco stood a few feet away with a scowl on his face and hands on his hips, but Harry ignored him for the moment. “Anything second-year level or below. But above that…” He spread his hands helplessly.

“Hmm.” Uncle Ted’s eyes flickered to the scar on Harry’s forehead, although just like everyone else, he wasn’t going to talk about it in Hogwarts where the portraits could hear. “All right. What we’re going to do is a power-draining exercise.”

“What’s that?” Draco asked immediately. “It sounds dangerous.”

“Only if someone doesn’t have enough power behind their spells. What your brother has right now is too much.”

“He still might need that extra power to defend himself if—”

“Or he might just destroy himself and any allies he has if he doesn’t get his magic under control.”

Draco gaped at Uncle Ted. Harry winced as he spun his wand around his fingers. “Do you think that’s a likely outcome, Uncle Ted?”

“More likely if you don’t get this fluctuating magic under control.”

Harry swallowed. “All right. What kind of power-draining exercise did you have in mind?”

Uncle Ted turned around and picked up one of the iron weights that he sometimes flung at Harry, full speed, with a gust of wind when they were training. He placed it on the ground in front of him and spun his wand above it, murmuring words too low for Harry to hear. They didn’t sound like Latin, but the weight began to wriggle and curve in a way that reminded Harry of Transfiguration.

When it finished, it wasn’t a weight anymore, but a wooden board with two crystals fastened to it. Harry leaned close to look at them. They were completely transparent, but faceted in a way that made them look like someone had taken care with carving them.

“What do they do?” Draco asked. He had moved up to Harry’s side and looked as if he would have liked to step in between him and the crystals.

“The crystals are very hard to enchant, or affect in any way with a spell.” Uncle Ted’s voice stuttered, and Harry looked up in concern to see that his forehead was wet and he was leaning a little against the box he’d brought the weights and other training equipment in. “Even Transfiguring them out of something else, the way I did just now, is hard. Harry will have to cast with all his will and concentration to affect them.”

“And that will mean that more of my magic goes towards the same target and the same place,” Harry said, understanding.

Uncle Ted nodded and stood upright, his body swaying for a moment before he got himself back under control. “Exactly. It will allow you to really feel that magic and drain off excess power, as well as get to know what’s raging through your veins right now.”

“How much magic can it drain?” Draco asked. His voice was tight, and his eyes darted back and forth between the crystals and Harry.

“That depends on the person casting and the spell chosen. But I would say that to affect the crystals at all, a good fifty percent of the person’s magic has to go into them.”

“Henry still needs his magic for class.”

“I won’t use all of it, Draco,” Harry said, and stepped up beside Draco, pressing his hand firmly on his shoulder, when he noticed how pale and unhappy his brother looked. “Hey, it’s all right.”

“I don’t like it,” Draco said, and then he turned to look at Harry and shook his head, while the lines around his eyes deepened. “But I don’t have a better solution.”

“It’s safe, Draco,” Uncle Ted said gently. “I used it, and so did other Shadowfollowers, after we’d been undercover in an area filled with Dark magic and had to get rid of that residue. I know people who had to sleep for hours after they filled the crystal, but they didn’t have any lasting ill effects.”

Draco stared at the crystals again and sighed as if he were being asked to conjure them himself, before he stepped back. “All right, Uncle Ted.”

Their uncle smiled at him, then faced Harry. “Think of the most powerful spell you can cast, Harry. Then try to fill one of the crystals with the power of the spell. Channel it straight at them, as if it’s an offensive curse or hex.”

Harry held his wand up. “Expecto Patronum!” he said, and the silvery swan swam into view on an invisible current of water. After a moment, it spread its wings and flew straight at the crystal on the right.

The crystal bounced and rang like a gong. Then it began to glow with a soft, sullen white light.

“Hmm,” said Uncle Ted.

“Is that good or bad?” Harry leaned forwards so that he could see the crystal more clearly. It seemed as though it was the same as before, except for the glow. How much was that really affecting it?

“It’s a bigger change to the crystal than I expected you to be able to cause the first time,” Uncle Ted allowed. “But it’s not much of one. How do you feel?”

“Buzzing,” Harry admitted.

“Then let’s do some more casting,” Uncle Ted murmured, and moved out of the way, motioning Draco to stand with him.

Harry raised his wand and launched a barrage of hard spells at the crystal, hoping that there wouldn’t be any more explosions today.

*

“Have you approached Sirius yet?”

Regulus shook his head, putting down his teacup on the table beside him. Everything in Malfoy Manor was pale and searing, as if it were lit from behind, a shock after the darkness of Grimmauld Place and the—cave. At least Lucius had lent him a pair of robes, shrunken to fit Regulus, and they were cleaner than the ones he’d been wearing since the lake, even with Kreacher’s spells.

“I thought about it,” he said. “But I would have to tell him something I don’t know if he’s prepared to accept. He might think I was lying or that I was some kind of delusion. Besides, he’s drunk and raving half the time.”

“Obsessed with stealing our son,” Narcissa said, her hands clasped in her lap.

Regulus smiled at her. She was still his favorite cousin, even as he mourned the years that they hadn’t got to pass together. She looked exactly as he would have pictured her grown up, shining and beautiful and stern. “Well, there’s that. But he’s also wearing the Horcrux, which isn’t going to increase his sanity.”

“Wearing it?”

“It’s a locket. One that once belonged to Salazar Slytherin.”

Narcissa closed her eyes. Lucius leaned forwards from the couch where he sat beside her and asked sharply, “Couldn’t you or Kreacher get it away from him?”

“Not without a struggle,” Regulus admitted. “I’m not sure what happened to my wand, and none of the ones that Kreacher have brought me to try have worked. Kreacher can’t act directly against Sirius as the master of the house, unless I manage to take over the position somehow and command him. And so far, the locket hasn’t sensed my presence, but it could probably act against me if it did.”

Narcissa and Lucius exchanged glances. Then Narcissa nodded as if they had also exchanged messages, and stood. “Then the first order of business is finding you a wand that works, Regulus.”

“And then perhaps you can duel Sirius and take his place as the master of the house,” Lucius said, his eyes flashing.

“I will take time to recover. The locket isn’t to be underestimated, either.”

“You need a Healer as well as a visit to Ollivander’s.”

“Can we risk visiting the Alley at all? Someone might recognize me…”

“We’ll arrange things.”

Regulus leaned slowly back against the chair he was sitting on. It was hard, murky, to remember Mother and Father, for all that it had only been a few weeks ago in his own sense of time that he’d lived with them. He hadn’t thought that he would ever consider one of his cousins as a parental figure.

But, well, he could certainly do worse than the Malfoys.

*

“Thank you for coming, Remus.”

“You’re welcome, Albus. Exactly what is it that you want me to sniff out on Harry?”

Albus took his time casting the privacy spells around his office door. Although it seemed as though Harry probably hadn’t used the Invisibility Cloak much since embracing his Malfoy heritage, there must be no mistakes. Remus waited with his hands on the arms of the chair, but his eyes sharpened with each new charm Albus cast.

“He came back from his holidays with his magic going out of control,” Albus said. “It’s happened in Minerva’s class now, in Charms, and in several others that I’ve heard of. And his scar looks different. Paler, more faded. I’m afraid of what the Malfoys might have done to him, and I’d like your help to find out.”

“You think I could smell Potions residue?” Remus looked skeptical. “It’s been long enough that I might not, and that’s assuming it was a potion that would linger on his breath or his skin.”

“I was thinking that you might be able to smell changes in his magic and scent. The kind that he would have if he were possessed.”

Remus leaped to his feet, sending the chair skidding across the floor. “Albus!”

“You know very well that Voldemort’s wraith possessed one man inside Hogwarts,” Albus said, and watched Remus flinch at the name before slowly bowing his head. “I simply want to make sure that that has not happened again, Remus. It occurred to me that the Malfoys might have exposed Harry to Voldemort as a way to convince Tom to spare his life.”

Remus shuddered, but nodded. “If you think it’s really necessary. I’ll—need a disguise of some sort to approach Harry. He doesn’t like me, not that I can blame him.”

“You cannot blame yourself for trusting me, my boy. I was the one who told you Harry was safe, who believed that he was Lily and James’s child in truth.”

Remus gave a smile that faded almost as soon as it appeared. “It’s still so strange to think they never had one.”

Albus sat silent for a moment, letting Remus have his mourning. Then he stood and took out his wand. The Elder Wand pulsed with power in his hand, pleased that he intended to use it for something interesting.

“I will cast a special Disillusionment Charm on you, an overpowered one,” Albus promised. “You need not stay very long or very close to Harry. Simply make sure that he has no particular magical changes to his scent or signature.”

“And he won’t be able to sense me?”

“No one will be able to sense you under this spell.”

In truth, it was the wand that was special, not the spell, but Albus had found that those explanations tended to make people far too interested in the Elder Wand, and he intended the wand’s power to die with him. For now, he piled folds of magic onto Remus until he faded from view. It was hard even for Albus to see him. He stepped back and smiled.

“Thank you, Remus. You could be the saving of not only Harry but all of us.”

Remus did something that might have been a nod, and left the office. Albus sighed and sat down again behind his desk.

He wished things were simpler, that he could just call Harry to his office and speak to him, be trusted and believed. But they were not, and he would have to work in the world as he found it.