[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Blood Like Silver, Like a Malfoy series, gen, 4/5

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Four

“Is your magic under control now, Harry?”

Harry nodded and spun his wand between his fingers. “I think so, Uncle Ted. But can you bring out the crystals so that we can test?”

Uncle Ted beamed as he took the board with the crystals from his trunk. “I brought it this time instead of Transfiguring one,” he said. “We ought to get even better results from this than we did from the Transfigured set. Clearer ones.”

Harry smiled at him and then glanced at Hermione when she made a noise of concern. She was standing near the far side of the classroom where he and Uncle Ted and Draco held their Defense practice, wringing her hands for a moment before she clasped them together. “Oh, Harry, are you sure that you’re going to be okay?”

“I really am doing better than I was a week ago, Hermione. I haven’t exploded anything in Transfiguration in that time, right?”

He thought the joke would make her feel better, but she just looked more anxious.

“I have shields ready to protect you if Harry does destroy something,” Uncle Ted said calmly. “But I know that Harry has explained to you how these crystals work. To even get them to shine takes a lot out of a wizard or witch. I don’t think he’ll destroy them.”

“Oh, I wasn’t worried about being in danger, Mr. Tonks,” Hermione said, sounding a little shocked. “I was worried about the effect on Harry, and whether he would drain himself trying to make the crystals light up.”

“It’s good if he does,” Draco said. He was lounging against the far wall, and the protectiveness that had come from the ritual must have been wearing off, because he wasn’t trying frantically to give Harry advice. He did keep his eyes thoughtfully pinned on Harry, though. “Remember, Granger? We talked about this. Harry was overflowing with power, and that’s the reason he could affect the crystals at all. If he isn’t overflowing with power anymore, then that means he’s closer to regaining control of his magic.”

“You don’t have to sound so condescending, Malfoy.”

“Learned it from the best, Granger.”

Uncle Ted cut in before Hermione and Draco could really start, clearing his throat with a smile in the back of his voice. “Are you going to use a Patronus again, Harry? I was thinking you might want to try a different spell, so that you don’t overpower it simply because you always do that with the Patronus.”

Harry nodded and closed his eyes, sorting through the repertoire of curses Uncle Ted had taught him. Honestly, he didn’t want to use something in front of Ron and Hermione that would make them worry about what magic he was learning. He’d already spent enough time fighting with his friends.

After a moment, he decided on the Blasting Curse. They learned it in their regular Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, after all.

“Ready, Uncle Ted,” he murmured, without opening his eyes.

“Good. Now I want you to cast the spell you chose at the crystals, as hard as you can.”

Harry spent a moment more thinking about the energy he needed to use and balancing the incantation on the tip of his tongue, and then he opened his eyes, spun on his heel as if he were about to Apparate, and shouted, “Confringo!”

The curse soared through the air, and Hermione screamed in alarm. Ron said something, and Draco yelled at him, but the words were lost in the noise of Harry’s spell hitting the crystals.

There was an intense ringing shudder that seemed to travel all through the stone walls and floor of the room, and then pass over Harry, in a way that made his bones tremble. He watched as a dim white glow appeared in the crystal on the left, and smiled.

The next second, he slumped to the floor.

“Harry!”

“Henry!”

“I’m—all right,” Harry said, and he was. He was breathing a little unsteadily as he forced his way back to his feet, but he could see and hear, and the rush of power had only left him drained, not fainting. He smiled at the faint glow again. “I think my magic is back to normal.”

“It is, as far as I can tell,” Uncle Ted murmured. He cast one spell on the crystal and another that Harry recognized as a diagnostic charm at Harry himself. “Very well done, Harry.”

Harry smiled at the praise, and then went through hugs from Ron and Hermione. Draco sauntered over and gave him a quick look that probably seemed casual. Harry was the only one who saw how searching it was.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Draco said.

“Thanks. Now you don’t have to follow me around and watch me all the time.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Draco’s face grew pinched. “To do so is an honor,” he said. “Not something I wanted to be rid of.”

Harry held up his hands. “Okay, okay.”

Honestly, he thought that Draco had enjoyed the chance to lord his superior senses and sense of danger over his little brother, but there was no point in saying that, particularly in front of Ron and Hermione. Still, he smiled at his brother and tried to silently convey his appreciation.

Draco smiled back.

*

Lucius stepped out of the Apparition and spent a moment simply standing still and observing. He was already cloaked in a Disillusionment Charm, and he had a curse hovering at the forefront of his mind, which meant he would be quicker about casting it than most of his opponents would be able to believe.

Only silence came back to him. He was in a small private cemetery attached to the Crouch estate. There were weather-beaten stones in every direction, and wildflowers and weeds swarming all over the monuments. Lucius thought he could hear the soft songs of birds in the distance, but any that were nearby had probably flown away from the sharp crack of his Apparition.

Lucius nodded, and started walking.

He wound his way among the stones, his eyes darting from inscription to inscription, his mind on high alert. It would have been more convenient if he could have walked directly to Mathilda Crouch’s grave, but detection spells didn’t work on the dead. Lucius had read speculation that they latched onto the spirit, which was why they would work through Polyjuice and glamours and the like, and the dead had none left.

At last, he reached a large headstone that had tilted slightly from what seemed to be a lightning strike at the base. MATHILDA CROUCH, read the letters. BELOVED WIFE. It had only the date of her death, not her birth.

Lucius smiled, wondering if it stung Barty to know that his father hadn’t bothered to put the word “mother” on the stone. He held up his wand and spent a moment considering what curse to use.

Well, of course, when he thought back to the Dark Lord’s tactics in the war, there was only one real choice. It would be magically taxing, but it was also likely to trip any wards or alarms Crouch had on the grave, and perhaps even alert him through his blood connection with his mother. The magically sensitive could feel it, and the mad.

Lucius readied himself through deep breathing and settled the quiet in his mind like snowfall. Then he aimed his wand at the grave and whispered, “Inferius.”

The ground rent itself apart, leaping into the air in great gouts of dirt. Lucius stepped back out of its range. He’d cast the spell before, and he’d expected that. Right now, he watched with calm eyes as the magic streamed into the grave and grasped the body there.

It twisted the bones out of the thin silk shroud that had held them, but Lucius collected the wisps with a swipe of his wand before they could go very far, and redressed the corpse. The worse the impact it had on Crouch, the better.

The body wavered back and forth as Lucius’s necromancy pummeled it, bright green light like the Killing Curse filling the sunken hollows of the skull. Lucius smiled a little as he felt the spirit dragged struggling back to the body.

It wasn’t the whole of Mathilda Crouch’s spirit—that had gone on to wherever people went who did not become ghosts—but it was enough to animate the body and give it a semblance of her voice. That, too, should drive Crouch mad.

The body trembled at last, and the eyes lit with the dull green glow of an active Inferius. The corpse knelt before Lucius and asked in a harsh, rasping voice, “Master, how may I serve?”

The crack of Apparition echoed across the graveyard. Lucius turned his head and smiled.

“Go and greet your son.”

The spirit almost certainly didn’t remember who its son was, but it shuffled to its feet, obedient to Lucius’s will, and made its way towards the tree where the crack had sounded. Lucius turned to face it, twirling his wand between his fingers.

Barty Crouch came around the tree.

One look at his mother’s body trundling towards him with outstretched arms, and he went completely mad.

“You dare!”

The curse he threw at Lucius was a lethal one, but Lucius had wielded it himself in his Death Eater days, and he knew how to counter it. He leaped forwards, and his shield deflected it into a headstone, which wavered and ceased to exist.

Meanwhile, the Inferius had almost reached Crouch. Crouch held out his arms and embraced it, weeping.

More mental than I thought.

It wasn’t the way Lucius had planned to capture Crouch, but it was also too good an opportunity to be wasted. He whipped his wand down, reinforcing the Inferius’s will with the movement, and its arms closed around Crouch.

For a moment, the madman visibly struggled, but he just as visibly didn’t want to break his mother’s bones. Lucius decided the matter for him by Stunning him and watching him drop to the ground with cool contempt.

It is easier to capture him when he isn’t attacking on the offensive, Lucius thought, and then set about returning Mathilda’s corpse to its grave and preparing Crouch for transport to Malfoy Manor.

*

“Do you want to go to the Three Broomsticks, Harry?”

“Sure. Why not?”

It was the first time Harry had visited Hogsmeade since Christmas, and Draco had allowed him to go out with just Ron and Hermione, probably because his intense protectiveness from the ritual was finally beginning to fade. Harry inhaled a lungful of crisp winter air and smiled at the people walking past him.

A few people stared, but only a few. Harry had found that only those who knew him well could tell the difference between him and Draco when they didn’t have the context of school and classes and Houses to remind them. Others didn’t think of him as the Boy-Who-lived when they saw him, only one of the Malfoy twins.

It was wonderful.

“Let’s go to Honeydukes first! Fred and George said they have these spicy chocolates that can burn your throat all the way down…”

Despite Hermione looking doubtful that that was something they should be buying, they did go to Honeydukes, where Harry bought everything he looked at or Ron wanted. Ron seemed to have got over some of his worries about Harry’s money, maybe because it was Malfoy money they were spending. He laughed as he tossed one of the spicy chocolates down his throat, and then promptly started coughing.

“See! I told you!”

Harry wandered down the street to the familiar tune of Hermione’s scolding and Ron’s protests from behind him. He glanced at Tomes and Scrolls, but he couldn’t think of any books that he really wanted to read. Uncle Ted kept him supplied with books on curses and jinxes, the most interesting subject he knew.

“The Three Broomsticks now?” he asked, turning around to walk backwards.

“Yes, why not?” Hermione seemed to have calmed down, and Ron wasn’t coughing any longer, although he still massaged his throat.

When they went in, it was crowded, no surprise, but there was a small table towards the back that was free. Harry elbowed his way to it and sat down to hold it while Ron and Hermione went off to shout their orders at Madam Rosmerta.

Harry paused a little when he saw Oliver Wood sitting at one of the tables, arguing with Marcus Flint, of all people. Oliver turned around and grinned as he noticed him.

“Hey, Harry! How’s Quidditch going?”

“All right,” Harry said. Quidditch was no longer at the forefront of his mind, and he didn’t attend practices all that often. He knew he could catch the Snitch, and so did everyone else.

“Good, good,” Oliver said, and turned back to arguing with Flint. Harry listened a little, but it seemed to be about the internal affairs of the Puddlemere United team, and Harry lost interest.

Ron and Hermione came back with butterbeer and a tray of sandwiches and soup, and Harry lost himself in conversation with his friends. It was good sometimes to remember that as well as being the Boy-Who-Lived and the lost Malfoy twin, he was just himself, fifth-year Gryffindor and friend to Ron and Hermione.

“Have you started studying for your exams yet, Harry?”

“Uh, yes?” Harry said, blinking at Hermione. “You were there through most of it, I’m pretty sure.”

Hermione blushed a little while Ron laughed. “Not like that, Harry! I meant, have you started studying in depth? Revising the course books? Practicing spells other than the curses and jinxes that Mr. Tonks was teaching you?”

“Yes,” Harry lied.

“Harry! These exams are going to be some of the most important of our lives! It’s incredibly useful to study for them and to get good marks! If you don’t study, then you won’t get good marks—”

Harry sat back and let Hermione’s words watch over him. He caught Ron’s eye, and Ron snickered and shrugged. He’d had his share of fights with Hermione over OWL exams already, Harry knew, and he seemed to think it was fair that Harry get a turn, now that Hermione wasn’t being held back anymore about what had happened to Harry over Christmas.

Or the fight that we had before that, Harry thought idly.

He sipped his butterbeer and looked around. Oliver had left at some point, and Flint was sitting alone at the table, scowling down into his mug. Harry saw Hagrid toasting the air, and Flitwick making his mug dance across the table in front of him, and Shacklebolt in a corner with his arms folded.

He didn’t know exactly what changed, what warned him, but something in the pub’s atmosphere did. Harry found himself falling flat on the floor, while a spell whistled overhead and collided with the wall behind him.

“Harry!”

There were more screams than just Hermione’s as the pub dissolved into chaos. Harry scrambled forwards on his hands and knees, getting under the table and in front of the chairs, and leaned out to try and get a good view of the person attacking him.

It was Flint, his spells going wide and marking the walls with craters, while he roared and swung his wand as though he couldn’t control it. Staring at him incredulously, Harry wondered if he was drunk.

“Harry!”

Hermione was pulling at his arm. Harry nodded grimly. They had to get away, and he had no idea if the professors in the room would manage to calm Flint down, or if the charm still embedded in his skin and ringing would bring help soon. He didn’t even know who would be warned by the charm today, Uncle Ted or Tonks or Mother or Father.

Harry slid out from beneath the table and straightened up. Flint immediately focused on him, and his wand swung around with what seemed to be deadly precision this time to point straight at Harry’s chest.

Harry’s world abruptly narrowed down to a crystal-clear tunnel. This was the sort of situation he had practiced for so many times with Uncle Ted. He knew exactly what to do. He aimed his wand at Flint.

“Serpens ignis.”

The air cracked like a whip as a snake made of fire materialized in front of him. That made some more people scream, maybe because they thought Voldemort was there. Harry ignored them and whispered in Parseltongue to the snake, propelling it forwards with another slash of his wand.

The snake immediately wrapped around Flint, who thrashed in what seemed to be pure surprise, and managed to get another spell off and reduce another of Madam Rosmerta’s tables to a smoking ruin. Harry hissed, “Bite him,” and the snake plunged its head down and bit into Flint’s collarbone.

Flint screamed as the wound caught on fire, and dropped his wand, spreading his fingers. “I surrender, I surrender!” he was babbling, while the serpent kept biting him and wrapped its tail around his waist to maintain its hold.

Harry managed to cancel the spell and call the snake back to his wand. Shacklebolt was scowling at the sight of Flint on the floor, his hands up and his wand rolled over to Harry’s feet. Harry rolled his eyes and turned around as he heard Hermione and Ron creeping out from under the table behind him.

“Why in the world would he do that?” Ron whispered. He sounded shaken. “He can’t hold that much of a grudge from Quidditch!"

Harry grimaced and decided to act now before someone came in and took charge of the scene the way they’d totally failed to do when Flint was actually attacking. He carefully used a Severing Charm on Flint’s left sleeve.

“That will do it,” he said, and he and Ron and Hermione stared at the pulsing Dark Mark in resignation until the professors remembered they were adults.

*

Narcissa stalked into the room where Lucius was keeping Barty Crouch, with Regulus right behind her. Regulus was silent, but his eyes were darting between Narcissa and the prisoner when they at last halted.

Lucius was holding the Imperius on Crouch. Narcissa knew that, and knew that he wouldn’t answer her in the way she might have wanted him to. He stared past her, expression slack, eyes blank.

But still.

“Lucius has had some information from you,” Narcissa whispered. “But not enough. Not enough to anticipate the attack on my son today.” She paused. Behind her, Regulus took a breath, but released it without saying anything. “Because we asked who the active Death Eaters were, and you apparently didn’t consider Flint active because this was his first mission.”

Silence. Crouch stared at the wall. Narcissa stared at him.

She knew that she should be doing other things. Reassuring Henry through the Floo. Reassuring Draco the same way. Her older son was blaming himself, thinking that if he had gone with Henry to Hogsmeade, the attack wouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t his fault, and Narcissa needed to tell him that.

But her head was full of white light, a wintry blast she had last felt when Sirius had tried to kidnap Henry again, and she needed to remove it.

“Cissa?”

Regulus, trying to remind her she was human. Well, that was fine, but it was not what Narcissa needed right now.

“You may wish to leave the room, Regulus,” she said softly.

There was a long enough pause that she thought he had. Then she heard him saying, “I’ll stay.”

Narcissa drew her wand. Crouch continued to look past her.

She touched her wand to his throat and thought about Henry screaming in pain because he’d had nightmares of the Dark Lord, backing away from Sirius in panic, huddling in the darkness of that Muggle home.

“Afflicto,” she whispered.

The spell touched Crouch, although the only sign that it had was a slight widening of his eyes. He was suffering, Narcissa knew that. The Affliction Curse would chip off a bit of the soul, much as the Dark Lord had done when making Horcruxes.

Narcissa’s next spell was the Imperius. She layered it on top of Lucius’s, not taking control over Crouch from him but forcing Crouch to obey her as well.

“Show me the pain you are feeling,” she whispered, and smiled as his screams filled the room, soothing some of the white light in her head.

She could not protect her son. She had sworn that she would never let him be kidnapped again, and this man had set up the trap that had taken him to the graveyard. She had agreed to let Henry return to Hogwarts, believing it would be a safe haven for him, and instead Sirius had almost taken him again and then a Marked Death Eater had attacked him.

She needed to let out some of the madness, or she would simply kill Crouch, and Lucius would have to bind his spirit to get him to talk, in much the same way he had bound the spirit of Crouch’s mother to capture the man in the first place. Lucius wasn’t good enough at necromancy to do that kind of spell twice in a month.

So Narcissa made Crouch scream, and the light inside her diminished and died. By the time that Crouch had finished sobbing, it was gone completely.

She stepped back and removed her own Imperius. Crouch slumped and drooled some more.

She turned around with a smile, and saw the round eyes Regulus was staring at her with. Narcissa inclined her head. She didn’t regret using the spell, and she had given her cousin a chance to leave. If this changed the way Regulus saw her, that was the way it would be.

Regulus swallowed, and swallowed again. Then he looked at Crouch and whispered, “He deserved to suffer that much?”

“He did.”

Regulus closed his eyes, then opened them again. There was a faint sheen of tears to them. “All right.”