lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! I have added one chapter to the chapter count since it seemed unlikely I would be able to wrap up this story with only one more installment.

Part Five

Harry drifted through the next few days.

He would wake up, and there was a huge hole in the back of his mind where his worry and fear and self-doubt had spent so much time over the past years. He would come down to breakfast fully intent on speaking to Lucius about what they should do next, and then words would trickle away from him like grains of sand.

Lucius looked at him calmly the first time Harry apologized for it.

“You have had a great shock. I would not be amazed if you need more time to think about it.” That was what he would say, or something like it, and then he would pass Harry the scones or the sausages or the eggs or whatever else he desired, and talk.

He told Harry about what the Manor had been like during the war, and how it was ultimately part of what had turned Lucius against his Dark Lord. Even before Narcissa died, Lucius had tired of living in fear, and for none of the power or prominence he had been promised. He knew some of what Harry was experiencing.

“You didn’t turn against him for disinterested motives, then,” Harry said, after the third story or so.

Seated across the table, Lucius laughed quietly, the sun through the window behind them shining on his hair. “No. It was all personal. But I thought you knew that? You told me that your brother said I turned against the Dark Lord after he killed Narcissa.”

“Yeah—yeah, but—”

Lucius waited while Harry swallowed a cut slice of strawberry and struggled to articulate what he was thinking. What Harry finally came out with was, “He made it sound like there must be something more to it than that, because he was comparing me to you, and saying I was worse.”

“He did what.”

“Yeah. Something about how you’d climbed back to the pedestal of being a good person, but I’d fallen from it, and that was worse.”

Lucius closed his eyes and sat in silence for a long moment. Then he said, “I am not a good man, Harry.”

Harry made a vague protesting noise. He wanted to say all sorts of things about how Lucius had told him the truth and led him to a better life, but he felt too exhausted.

“No, listen. I am not a good man as your brother defines it, which appears to be that I am doing things for moral reasons. I do things out of pain and hatred and anger and self-interest. When the Dark Lord killed Narcissa, it affected me powerfully. If he had not, I might have remained on his side until the end of the war.”

Harry took a bite of bacon and thought for a moment. He wanted to ask a question, but he also wanted to get the question into exactly the right words, so there was no way that Lucius could misunderstand him.

Lucius sat with his hands folded on top of the table, waiting patiently, his hair still shining.

“If you’re not a good man,” Harry said at last, “why court me at all?”

“Ah.” The skin around Lucius’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I told you about the Diviner, and how she promised that I could find someone who would bring me joy. I would have as gladly courted someone else whose name was present in her vision. Of course,” he added, and his voice deepened to a purr, “I would not willingly court anyone else now. You have firmly captured my interest.”

It was something to Harry, how that could still make him blush. He cleared his throat, feeling a little more human. “But you—said something else, something I didn’t pay attention to, on that first outing.”

“Yes?”

“You said part of the reason that you wanted to court me was the Diviner’s vision. That implies another part. What was it? Information on Ian?”

Lucius studied him. “Would you be upset if it was?”

Harry gave a bitter little laugh and ate another piece of bacon. “You didn’t owe me anything, then. The people who did betrayed me at a level I didn’t even know existed to be betrayed on. So now I trust you. I’ll be able to accept it if it was about Ian.”

“Ah,” Lucius repeated. “No, not your brother. I thought you knew what the current state of the Dark Lord’s wraith might be.”

“And you want to find him so that you can—”

“Destroy him. I would like very much to kill your brother, Harry.”

Lucius was gazing dreamily at Harry, not that he really saw him, Harry was sure. There was yet another new smile on his face, one that showed the corner of a tooth and looked as if it might open into a predator’s maw any second.

I could spend the rest of my life looking at him,searching for new smiles.

The jolt that caused Harry internally made him choke a little, and Lucius was alert in seconds, looking at him. “Harry? Are you all right?”

“I—ah—I’m fine. I just thought that—you were surprised I knew about Horcruxes, so why did you think I would know where his wraith was?”

Lucius’s raised eyebrows said that he didn’t quite believe Harry’s words, but he just nodded. “I thought it entirely possible that you and your brother were being guided by someone who knew about the Horcruxes but had never named them to you. Or that Ian knew and you did not, but he had shared some information.”

Harry nodded. Of course most people would think that. The popular story in the press about Harry’s return, after all, was that he’d been left in the Muggle world for his own protection, but that Ian Potter had lovingly embraced his brother with open arms.

“And now?”

“Now.” Lucius leaned back, his hands playing over what might be the top of an invisible cane. Harry did remember seeing him carry a cane when they’d met a few times in the past. “Now I think that I would very much like to kill him, but for different reasons.”

Harry closed his eyes.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“I—yes. I just—it’s—it means something to me, that you want to do this.”

“And you had no one to mean anything to you for so many years. I understand.”

A hand brushed Harry’s arm. He opened his eyes and glanced up, and found himself caught in one of those stares from Lucius that he had such a hard time looking away from.

“You should have been protected and cherished,” Lucius whispered. “It is the fault of your brother and his circle that they did not. But I not adverse to making up for their lack.”

Harry choked and stood, all but flinging himself into Lucius’s arms. Lucius stroked Harry’s hair back and let him stand there, dropping the burden of considering what he was going to do about Ian and the rest of them until later.

There was a great deal of later in his life right now, but then, Harry thought he could use it.

*

On the fourth day, Ian’s black eagle-owl, Nightslayer, brought Harry a letter.

The owl soared in through one of the high windows of the dining room and towards Harry. Lucius Stunned Nightslayer so quickly that Harry didn’t have time to do more than open his mouth in a cry of instinctive protest.

Harry sat there, blinking, as Lucius caught the owl with a silent spell, and wondered if he had been about to cry out against the Stunner or at the fact that Ian had bothered to send a message only four days later.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” he asked at last, as he watched Lucius floating Nightslayer over to him.

“We shall soon find out.”

Lucius cast a furious series of spells on Nightslayer and the letter, too. Harry watched, reluctantly interested. He hadn’t thought that someone could cast a trap spell on a bird the way they might on parchment.

Lucius didn’t find anything. He sat back with a deep frown and glanced at Harry. “It is up to you whether you read the letter or not.”

“I should.”

“So eager to subject yourself to more of your brother’s machinations?”

Startled, Harry stared at Lucius and realized that he was angry. Angry on Harry’s behalf, ultimately, even if also sort of angry at Harry. Harry swallowed slowly and shook his head. “No—no. But Ian has the press on his side for all sorts of reasons. He could easily stir up a story about you kidnapping me or something similar.”

“I could weather the storm.”

“But you shouldn’t have to spend the Galleons necessary for bribes on me.”

Lucius looked startled for half a second before he laughed a little. “I am planning to spend all of my money on you when we wed, Harry.”

Harry blushed. It was still odd to think that this courtship was leading to marriage, although of course it was. “But we need to look at the letter so that we can see what Ian thinks is happening, don’t we?”

Lucius sighed and nodded. “I would offer to read it myself, but you’ve had enough of people standing in your way and claiming it was for your protection.” He flipped the letter towards Harry.

Harry caught it and opened it, trying to pretend that Lucius’s words didn’t make him flush harder.

Perhaps luckily, there was nothing in the letter to make him flush with anything except anger.

Brother,

I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but disappearing and hiding away in shame because you didn’t manage to persuade Malfoy to keep the courtship open is simply childish. You need to return home and stop trying to worry me. It’s possible that there’s something else you can do to make up for this.

His brother’s name was signed in a flourishing scrawl. Harry stared at it and thought, for the first time, about how Ian had been able to develop neat handwriting with a quill because Ian had grown up in the magical world, while Harry had been struggling to just learn to read and write in Muggle primary—

The letter caught on fire, burning at a speed that meant Harry nearly scorched his own hands before he could fling it away. He hissed and shook his fingers, then drew his wand and cast a healing spell, eyes locked on the ashes.

“What did he say?”

“He thinks I’m hiding somewhere because I’m ashamed about not managing to spy on you.”

“I see. And it is your belief that he would not try to seek you out soon?”

“He would think looking for me was beneath his dignity. He just commanded me to return.”

Lucius was silent. Harry shut his eyes and sat there for a few moments, concentrating on his breathing. It seemed that his anger had finally broken through the skin of ice that had spread over it through the last few days.

He was angry. He wanted someone to pay.

But he couldn’t think of the most effective way to do that right now, and he wanted it to be effective when he made it happen. So, his eyes still closed, he said, “One thing about the ritual doesn’t make sense to me, the way you explained it.”

“I am here to offer what clarity I can, Harry.”

“Ian still had to face Voldemort.” Harry ignored the way that silverware clinked on the other side of the table, probably because Lucius had started. “Hermione still got Petrified in second year, and Luna still got bullied, and Ginny still died. I know you said the ritual wasn’t complete when she died, and it’s been unraveling since, but why didn’t it protect them from those other things while it existed?”

“I have been thinking about that, and I have two theories.”

Harry opened his eyes at the sound of footsteps. Lucius had stood up and come around the table, and was offering his arm to Harry. “But I thought that perhaps we can walk in the garden while we discuss it, and allow the house-elves to take care of the owl and the ashes.”

With a start, Harry realized that Nightslayer was still floating on air at the other side of the table. He stood up. “Of course.”

“Excellent.”

*

Harry stepped out into the garden and took a deep breath of fresh air. He really had been spending too much time indoors lately, he thought. He almost never went outside at Longbottom Manor, and in Malfoy Manor he’d mostly been shuttling between dining room, his bedroom, and the library.

“Theories, you said?” he murmured, and turned to Lucius.

Lucius, who was staring at him as if Harry were the one with sunlight in his hair and eyes and mind.

But Lucius shook his head a moment later and began before Harry could do more than start to blush. “Yes. One of my theories is that the people who chose the runes made a mistake in them. Those people must have included Augusta Longbottom, and I never heard that she was any great runesmistress.”

“You don’t sound confident in that theory.”

Lucius’s lips twitched for a moment before he inclined his head. “No. I think they cannot have made a mistake, or at least not a large one. The ritual would have torn itself apart long before this if they had.”

“Then what’s your second theory?”

Lucius stopped walking and turned to face him. Harry blinked at the expression on his face, as if a great stillness had come over him.

“That the runes and the ritual did their job,” Lucius murmured, “but that Fate was so powerful that some of it rippled through anyway. Your brother had to face the Dark Lord as matters stood, but he would have suffered much worse if they had not balked Fate of most of its prey. As it was, the person who bore that misery was you.”

He reached out and let his fingers rest on Harry’s cheek. Harry swallowed and continued holding Lucius’s gaze as steadily as he could.

“You are stronger than I knew,” Lucius whispered. “Stronger than you knew. I think increasingly that you were not meant to survive. They assumed that the ritual would transfer the Horcrux to you and kill you, or the loose end would be tied up by other means.”

“And that—”

“That strength makes me want you with a passion I did not know I was capable of.”

Harry closed his eyes for a long, shivering blink. Then he forced them to open and said, as strongly as he could, “If they—if they needed me to absorb their misery, why are the Weasleys trying to kill me?”

Lucius continued to gaze at him for a long moment. Then he gave a shake as if to wake himself up from a trance.

“The ritual tore with the death of Ginny Weasley, and nothing is working now as they assumed it would. Do I have your permission to cast another spell on you?”

“Of course you do.”

Lucius lowered his eyes and stood there in another silent trance for a moment before he nodded and lifted his wand.

Harry caught his breath in a gasp as the spell, which Lucius cast silently, settled on him. It didn’t hurt, not the way that the one to reveal the runes had, but it made his skin tingle as if his whole body had been asleep and was now waking up. He looked down at his hand, half-expecting to see it turning red or glowing.

It didn’t. Instead, the sensation died away, and Lucius gave Harry another new smile, this one strange and wild. “Look up, Harry.”

Harry did.

Above his head floated the crossed rune, Nauthiz, from the ritual that had condemned him. But now it shone with a distant ruddy glow instead of looking black, the way it had on the parchment. Harry blinked at it.

“They chose Nauthiz for reasons related to the other runes they used, and perhaps because it does mean misery and adversity,” Lucius whispered. “But remember the other meaning. It means the sun that wakens in winter, the resilience that withstands adversity, as well. All that needed to happen was a slight tear in the ritual, and the rune began working for you instead of against you.”

“I—really? The last few years of my life haven’t been very good.”

“But the Weasleys have not killed you,” Lucius said simply. “Ian and the others have not transferred the Horcrux to you, although logically they should have the moment they knew their circle was disrupted. You were driven so deep into misfortune that fortune has touched you now.”

Harry reached up. The glowing rune descended and fluttered into his hand, shimmering on his palm, for a moment before it turned into a shower of sparks and vanished.

Sunrise, he thought. The glow around the rune had reminded him of sunrise.

“Do you think that if we didn’t do anything,” he asked Lucius, his gaze still locked on the place where the rune had disappeared, “Fate would just break on them and condemn them all to death and worse, and spare me? I wouldn’t even have to do anything?”

“I do. But I also think that you deserve more than that.”

Harry swallowed and looked up. “I know what I want, but you might not agree.”

Lucius stood as still as an unearthly thing for a long moment, and then said, “I would not agree if you wanted to kill them and make Horcruxes. That is the only thing I can think of that I wouldn’t agree to, and that would be only because I don’t think you deserve to have your soul mutilated that way.”

Harry gave a choked laugh. “But anything else? Murder? Torture?”

“Yes.”

“You—but why?”

“Remember what I was, Harry.” Lucius said very gently. “I changed my mind and collected information for the Order of the Phoenix, but only because the Dark Lord killed Narcissa. I am still what I am. I strike hard for those I care for, and I rehabilitate the Malfoy name, and I search for someone who can bring me joy. I see no reason to move beyond that, to dedicate myself to higher moral principles.”

Harry glanced at the white flowers that billowed and danced around them. He wondered if maybe his own dedication to higher moral principles would wither and die now. Ian had been the one to insist that Harry adopt them, and, well, Ian was a hypocrite.

Would I have been more like Lucius otherwise, just seeking a way to protect the people important to me and trying to make myself happy?

Harry thought so, since he could listen to Lucius without horror now.

He turned resolutely back to face Lucius. “All right. I want to trap them the way they trapped me. I don’t know if there’s a ritual that will do what I want, but there probably is. I want you to help me construct it.”

Lucius half-smiled, another new expression. “What exactly do you want to happen to them?”

“I told you. Trapped. I want them stuck in their old patterns, unable to move beyond them. I want Neville and Augusta trapped in Longbottom Manor until they die. I want the Weasleys to turn their wands on each other, the way they keep trying to do with me. I want—”

Harry hesitated, fell silent.

“Yes? You know that I will listen to anything you have to say to me.”

Harry swallowed and looked up. “Maybe I do some scruples left after all. Because I was going to say that I wanted Hermione and Luna to suffer, but Hermione wasn’t even around when they were first making this plan for the ritual, and I don’t know how much a part of it Luna was. I don’t know how much they benefited.”

Lucius studied him, then nodded. “I don’t see why we couldn’t create a ritual that targeted the people you wanted to see suffer the most, and left the others to the simple backlash that Fate has in store for them.”

Harry smiled a little. “Thank you.”

“Although I did notice one glaring omission.”

“Yes?”

“You have said nothing about your brother.”

Harry turned his head to stare blindly out over the flowers. He didn’t know what kind they were, but they had huge bell-shaped blossoms and golden centers and they danced in the wind like people triumphantly throwing up their arms at a Quidditch game.

“Harry? Do you have scruples about him after all?”

“No,” Harry said, and then paused and carefully sorted through his words so that he could make sure he was saying the real thing, the true thing. “The problem is that I hate him so much I don’t know what would be bad enough for him. How do you decide that? When there are all kinds of options for revenge and maybe none of them would hurt him enough?”

Lucius watched him for motionless moments, and then smiled. Harry felt that smile even though he wasn’t looking at Lucius. “Would you trust me to come up with a fate horrible enough?”

“I would. But could you create it?”

“Yes. I think I could. I will have to cast a few more spells and get close enough to him to get the answers from him the way I did from you. But once I have them, I can do it.”

Harry hesitated. “Do you think he would catch on that I’m hiding here, if you do that?”

“I am considerably more experienced in lying than Ian Potter,” Lucius said, with laughter rustling in the back of his voice. “And in fact, I plan to accuse him of locking up the man I’m courting and refusing to let him out, so that should confuse the issue sufficiently.”

“I told him that I broke off the courtship. He won’t believe you.”

“I will simply say that I received another letter from you,” Lucius said carelessly. “Now. Where do you think the best place to lure your brother to meet would be?”

*

“Thank you for meeting me here, Mr. Potter.”

Harry, under so many Disillusionment Charms that they made his impression of the world waver and swim, watched with jealousy he knew was untoward as Lucius stood to shake Ian’s hand in front of the Leaky Cauldron fireplace. That was close to the way Lucius had greeted him for their first courtship outing.

Ian didn’t take Lucius’s hand. “I want to know what you know about Harry,” he snapped.

“I know that he sent me a letter reopening our courtship,” Lucius said. He didn’t act any more conscious of the people in the pub around them than Ian did, but Harry was sure he would have seen the eyes darting their way. “But I sent you a letter because I have not heard from him since then. What do you know about him?”

Ian stared at Lucius with his lips slightly parted. Then he drew his wand and cast a Silencing Charm. Harry stood so close to Lucius that he was included in it. Ian folded his arms and said, “He left Longbottom Manor.”

“Did he.”

“What is that tone of doubt for, Malfoy?”

Lucius’s hand moved in a circling motion that Harry had seen him practicing over the last several days, but hadn’t known the effect of. Now he knew. The Silencing Charm fell, but Ian didn’t seem to notice.

“I know that you are displeased with your brother,” Lucius said in his laziest drawl, “though I must admit I have never understood precisely why. I wonder if he did leave the Manor, as you claim. Or if you locked him up to keep him from leaving.”

Ian’s mouth opened wider. He seemed honestly shocked at the accusation, and Harry wondered if the ritual and the runes and the circles had kept him from even facing negative personal reactions. He didn’t seem to have any idea how to cope with them.

“What are you—you can’t possibly be serious—”

“I am,” Lucius said, and there was no trace of a smile on his face. His left hand, dangling down by his side, drew a flat black stone from one robe pocket. His fingers danced across the surface. Ian, seemingly unable to look away from Lucius’s face, didn’t notice. “I know that you hate your brother. And frankly, I think your reaction childish. The Weasley girl’s death was an accident, from everything I heard—”

“It was not an accident!”

It sounded like half the Leaky Cauldron gasped. Harry was blinking himself. He had never seen Ian angry like this, a vein standing out in his forehead and cords distending his neck.

“She died because of one of your sort, Death Eater! And she wouldn’t have died if my fucking brother had just kept an eye on her, the way he was supposed to! He destroyed so much that day, my future and the love of my life, and he wants to think that he can just go on existing? Think again.”

And Ian whirled around, tossed powder into the flames, and vanished through the Floo.

Lucius stood staring after him, his face the very picture of patrician shock. After a few moments, he shook his head and sighed. “Forgive me,” he said to Tom, the barman. “I didn’t intend to cause a scene.”

Tom nodded, looking a little shaken. “Thought he had a Silencing Charm up. Didn’t think that would happen.”

“I believe the Silencing Charm failed because of his intense temper.” Lucius shrugged and slid his cloak back over his shoulders. “That can happen, I have heard, when one has less than perfect control of their magic.”

The murmurs that swept the pub were far more intense than before, but once again, Lucius didn’t appear to notice them. He walked towards the fire, and Harry doubted anyone saw him tap the air with his fingers. Harry stepped up beside him, close enough to be swept up in Lucius’s cloak and arms and Floo back to Malfoy Manor.

*

When they got out of the fire, Harry removed the Disillusionment Charms with a flick of his wand and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ian lose his temper that way.”

Lucius leaned against the mantel and smiled at him as he spelled the soot off both his robes and Harry’s. “I believe that the ritual was comprehensive. It would have made it easy for him to be calm and self-righteous, the kind of person he aspired to be. With its magic failing, he will lose his temper more and more often.”

Harry wistfully pictured what that would be like, with the unraveling of Ian’s reputation across months or years, but then shook his head. He still wanted a better revenge. “I saw you use the stone. Were you able to confirm it?”

“Yes.” The humor drained out of Lucius’s face and body fascinatingly fast, leaving him less alive than a marble statue except for the moving lips. “He is a Horcrux, and the runes that were cast on him are the ones that I saw in your aura as well.”

Harry nodded. “And are you going to tell me about the perfect revenge on him that you envisioned, now?”

Lucius smiled at him and leaned near to murmur into Harry’s ear, “Given that I possessed one for a long time—”

“Father? What are you doing?”

Harry jumped and spun around. In the doorway of the Floo room stood Draco Malfoy, his face distended with immaculate horror.