[From Litha to Lammas]: Like the Fox, Like the Phoenix, Like a Malfoy series, gen, 1/6

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Like the Fox, Like the Phoenix
Pairings: Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is a Malfoy), angst, violence, gore, torture, insanity, possession
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sequel to “Blood Like Silver.” Regulus is in training for the duel that will allow him to defeat Sirius and gain control of the Black wards. Harry is developing a curious friendship of his own. Sirius is making plans on how to snatch Harry away from his parents yet again. And they are all hurtling towards an explosive end.
Author’s Notes: This is the ninth part of my Like a Malfoy series and will make no sense without the others in the series. It’s also part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series of chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have six to eight chapters.

Like the Fox, Like the Phoenix

Regulus threw up a shield that blazed and blocked the curse Lucius had flung at him. It made his arm tremble to use that much magic, but he’d done it.

“Very good, Regulus. Again.”

It was the first time Lucius hadn’t given him a break between one spell and another. Regulus had to dodge this one. It broke apart in sharp slashes of silver light that looked like broken glass. Regulus shuddered.

“Not so good. Why didn’t you block that one?”

Regulus swallowed and stood up. They were in the massive dueling training hall that Malfoy Manor hid between the cellars and the ground floor, and the stone all around them glowed grey, absolutely stainless and spotless. In other incarnations, it would contain targets, practice wards, spellbooks, and so on, as well as chipped stone and other marks left by those who had dueled here in the past. But Lucius had wanted to make it like this so that Regulus “wouldn’t be distracted,” as he had put it.

“Because I didn’t have the magical strength left,” Regulus said, meeting Lucius’s eyes and projecting all the honesty he could.

Lucius frowned. “We’ll have to speak to the Healer about increasing the strengthening potions that you’re taking. Did Healer Cleanthos say anything about when you can begin drinking the Invigoration Draught?”

Regulus shook his head. “He thinks that I need to remain on the regular strengthening potions for a time.”

“Perhaps wise,” Lucius murmured. “Even if we do want you to get back up to full dueling strength as soon as possible.”

Regulus gave a tight smile in response. Some of his weakness came from his years in the lake, hovering between life and death, but other “weakness” was just a normal symptom of what he would expect. He had been a clever duelist, but never a particularly strong one. He had always relied on that cleverness to end the conflict quickly, and been praised for it.

But Lucius and Narcissa both assumed that Sirius would rely on main strength, and perhaps he would. Regulus had rarely seen his brother duel seriously, only in practice when they both lived with their parents or in support of his Marauder friends.

“Are you ready?”

“A cup of water before we go back to it?” Regulus asked, shaking sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. He didn’t want to cast a Drying Charm, since it would use up some of the power he needed for the duel.

“A good idea. Mizzy!”

A house-elf appeared and offered Regulus a stone cup of sweet water that tasted like it had had something added to it. He drank, missing Kreacher. Kreacher could come to see him, but he didn’t dare leave Grimmauld Place for too long in case Sirius noticed something amiss.

“Are you ready?”

Regulus raised his wand. It didn’t matter that some of the magic he was learning was Darker than he would have preferred, he told himself. Sirius was in control of the house that Regulus needed to get back into, and for that, he would have to be able to duel his brother and take over the wards.

Do it for Kreacher. Think of it like that.

“Ready!”

“Confringo!”

*

Sirius twined the chain of the locket idly around his finger. He had finally thought of a path to get back into Narcissa’s good graces, but it would require the cooperation of that stupid house-elf. “Kreacher!”

It seemed to take longer for the elf to appear than normal, which the locket whispered suspiciously about, but when he did, he looked no different than Sirius was used to seeing him. He bowed and croaked, “Master Sirius has a command?”

“Yes. I want you to take this gift to Narcissa Malfoy.” Sirius extended the wrapped package.

Kreacher gave it a doubtful look. “Master Sirius is not giving away Black heirlooms to another family?”

Sirius laughed despite himself as he thought about what his mother would probably say. “No This is an apology, and something—her son might have inherited from me anyway, as my godson.”

Kreacher transferred the doubtful look to him. “Master Sirius is not saying that Henry Malfoy is his godson.”

“Not lately,” Sirius agreed, keeping his voice mild. The locket whispered advice about that, too. His only chance to get close to Harry was to make it look like he had, in fact, given up most of his claim to the boy. “But whether or not he’s my godson in truth, I would still like him to have this gift.” He tilted his head at the box pointedly, then added, “If his mother approves, of course.”

“Kreacher is taking the present to the Malfoy house-elves,” Kreacher said, accepting the box and looking at it with the same scowl. “He cannot be taking it directly to Mistress Narcissa because of the wards on the Manor.”

Sirius suppressed his own scowl. Putting it in Narcissa’s hands directly would have been ideal, but he supposed it would end up in them anyway. She would certainly recognize it, and want to hold it. “All right. That’s fine.”

Kreacher bobbed his head and vanished with the gift. Sirius sat back on the couch and stared into the fire, twirling the locket around his finger again. It said softly, Do you think that the gift will poison her quickly enough?

“It’s a first path back in,” Sirius murmured. “It’ll poison her the way we want eventually, but first, it’ll just make her suggestible. Trust me, I was forced to handle that gift as a child. I know exactly what it does.”

Perhaps we could have chosen another path.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “You were the one who came up with this one.”

I suggested the general details. You were the one who chose the instrument, and we must make sure that instrument does not fail.

“It won’t,” Sirius said, and lounged back on the couch and reached for the book of necromancy he’d been reading. There were some truly interesting rituals there, ones that he was thinking of adapting to turn Harry back into a Potter rather than just using one of the existing ones.

I will guide you.

Sirius stroked the locket and tucked it under his shirt the way it had suggested he do. When he began going out in public and to Malfoy Manor again, it would be imperative to keep anyone from seeing it. They would try to snatch it away from him if they knew how useful it was.

Only useful legacy my bloody family ever left me.

*

“Henry? Are you all right?”

Harry flashed his twin a quick smile. Luckily, Draco’s intense overprotectiveness from the ritual they’d done had worn off, but he was still the first to notice when Harry felt bad. “Yeah. Just a bit of pressure from the scar.”

“A bit of pressure.”

Harry shrugged.

“Henry.”

Harry glanced around. They were in a quiet corner of the library where they’d met up with Ron and Hermione to study. But Hermione was away looking for another book to study for the Charms OWL, and Ron had gone to have an argument with Fred and George in a different part of the library. “It’s weird. Nothing like the pain that I had in first year when I was around Quirrell or anything like that. A sort of—tug.”

“Tug, Henry Aldebaran?”

“Just repeating my words does nothing, Draco Lucius.”

Draco started to snap back, but Hermione arrived triumphantly waving a tome over her head, and he sat back. He didn’t like to discuss the scar or Horcruxes anywhere with Hermione nearby, which Harry could understand.

Besides. The tug and the pressure were diffuse, so far, to the point that Harry wasn’t entirely sure he was feeling them instead of them being in his imagination. Maybe it was born of the stress of studying for OWLS.

He would let it go for right now, and see if anything developed in the future. At the moment, there wasn’t much he could do except Charms study, with Hermione reading as fast as she could from the book she’d found and the mind-numbingly long list of spells that he had to memorize for the practical.

*

“This was coming for you from a Black house-elf, Mistress Narcissa.”

Narcissa raised her eyebrows as she regarded the black lacquered box her personal elf, Jester, had delivered to her. “I see. Please leave it here, Jester.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

After the elf had popped away, Narcissa leaned back in the chair behind her desk and stared at the box in silence. She had seen it before—or rather, one like it. Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion had kept a number of similar boxes around Grimmauld Place to deliver gifts in. They took the theme of their last name seriously.

It would have had detection spells cast on it if it had passed through house-elf hands, but Narcissa cast a number on it anyway. She knew spells that her elves did not, and if this was a gift from Sirius—

She sensed nothing, which was both reassuring and disappointing. It would have been all too convenient if he had found the Horcrux and delivered it to them.

When she flipped the lid open, Narcisa’s breath caught, and her eyes filled with tears. Inside the box on a pillow of violet velvet lay a string of black pearls that she had often seen around Aunt Walburga’s neck. They were the one piece of heirloom jewelry outside her own immediate family that Narcissa had always wanted to possess. Something about their shine and their smoothness spoke to her.

Beneath the pearls was a note. Narcissa moved them so she could read it.

Cissy,

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the past few months, and I have to admit, I was wrong. Wrong to steal your son, and act as though having a second one made up for having the other one stolen. Wrong to assume that he would ever want to have anything to do with me after I tried to kidnap him multiple times.

If I’m ever to be Harry’s godfather, I have to accept him the way he is now, and not the way I wish he was. And some of the thinking…well, James and Lily weren’t perfect, either. I couldn’t admit it to myself at the time, since James was my first friend and Lily was his wife, but they did things even to me that make me a little sick when I recall them.

So I sent these pearls as what I hope will be a gesture of reconciliation. I remember you always liked them. I sent a little something for Harry, too. Maybe with time, you’ll think more kindly of me, and give it to him.

Best wishes,
Sirius.

Narcissa tilted the box, and noticed that there was indeed something else poking out from beneath the cushion of velvet the pearls had rested on. When she removed it, she saw a lion-shaped silver pin that had been Regulus’s. Lion for the Leo constellation, but of course, it would also fit Henry, with his Gryffindor Sorting.

She cast detection charms on the pin, but there was nothing on it, either, except the single black pearl that formed the lion’s eye. Narcissa sat back and cradled the necklace and the pin in her palms, looking from one to the other.

Sirius had truly reformed, it seemed, if he was sending gifts like this. He was asking for a future connection, not an immediate one.

Narcissa’s natural caution surfaced a moment later, and she narrowed her eyes. She would, of course, hold the gift to Henry back, and have Lucius test it, since in some matters of the Dark Arts he was more experienced than she was. She would not permit her son to be in any danger, no matter how tempting it was to simply accept these gifts.

But if they proved innocent…

Narcissa had her sister back, thanks to Henry, and one of her cousins. If she could have another, then it would be a priceless gift, worth far more than this.

She sat down to write the owl to Sirius, reaching out now and then to stroke the black pearls. She was hardly aware of the smile on her face. It felt natural there.

*

I can feel that she took the bait, hissed the locket. She could not feel the spells that I told you to place there. They are unique to me.

Sirius smiled, and stroked the locket’s chain.

*

Harry couldn’t sleep.

That was nothing unusual, really, but this time, it meant that he rolled over and stared at the ceiling, and then got up and wandered out of the Gryffindor fifth-year boys’ bedroom and down to the common room. He flopped in front of the fire and stared into the flames.

His scar hurt. Or the place where his scar used to be, really. It was nothing but a pale mark now. Harry knew the Horcrux was entirely gone.

Then what was this tug, this pulling feeling?

It wouldn’t stop, and no matter how long he stared at the flames, Harry’s brain wouldn’t stop flipping over itself with anxiety. In the end, he stood and went back to his bedroom for the Invisibility Cloak. Maybe if he hunted down the tugging feeling, then he would have something more concrete to tell his parents besides “Something is pulling at me.”

Invisible, he padded out through the portrait hole and into Hogwarts. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the pull, something he couldn’t do when he was around other people. They would always yell about something and disrupt his concentration.

Down. Up. Down?

Even here, it was hard to be sure of the exact direction. Harry sighed and started walking.

He had to dodge a few patrolling prefects, but in the end, Harry reached the seventh floor. He stared at the blank wall the feeling seemed to be coming from, frowning. What could be there? Was it something that Voldemort had tainted when he was a student here? A place where he’d cast a curse?

Or buried a body.

Harry shivered, hoping it wasn’t really that.

But there seemed to be few other factors that would connect with his scar and draw him to this random place in the middle of the seventh-floor corridor. Harry picked his way forwards and let his hands rest on the wall.

Nothing happened, except the tug becoming more insistent. Harry closed his eyes and tried to reach out with his mind. Hello? he asked, because why not?

Sudden “silence” in his mind, the tugging sensation stopping. Harry forced his eyes open and frowned at the wall. Maybe there was some remnant of Voldemort’s energy left, but it would fade if acknowledged.

Then someone replied to him.

Hello? Can you hear me? I’m trapped. Can you hear me? Oh, Merlin, can you hear me? How long has it been?

Harry took a step back from the wall, unnerved. The voice stopped at once. It seemed that his hands needed contact with the stone to let it speak.

Harry’s first impulse was to turn around and run up to the owlery, where he could send a letter to his parents. But what exactly would he say? He felt something pulling him and then heard a ghost speaking to him from a wall on the seventh floor? It sounded like a fever dream when he said it to himself.

And even if a few more days would make no difference to the person trapped in the wall, Harry’s skin crawled at the idea of leaving them alone. Had Voldemort killed someone and they’d been here ever since, calling out desperately, waiting to be heard?

Is this all that’s left of the victim of a killing for a Horcrux?

The thought of that made Harry extend his hands again, and the minute his palms landed on the stone, he heard the frantic voice.

--please don’t leave me alone, please, please, I don’t know how to make you hear me, I don’t know when someone else would ever hear me again, please hear me—

Yeah, I hear you, Harry “sent.” He didn’t even know how he was sending. Was it just that because he had been a Horcrux, he would be sensitive to another victim? Was it because his soul had been entwined with Voldemort’s soul? That was a disturbing explanation, but Harry didn’t have a better one.

The voice stopped abruptly. Then it whispered, Hello. What’s your name?

Henry Malfoy. Harry thought he shouldn’t use his former name, just in case this was someone Voldemort had killed more recently and they would have heard of him.

My name is Mal. A man named Tom Riddle killed me and trapped me here. Do you know—how are you hearing me? Do you think other people could hear me? Could they get me out of here? Do you know? Do you know?

Harry grimaced and pulled back a little. The desperation in Mal’s voice was grating, but Harry reckoned he could understand, if he’d been trapped there twenty years, or fifty years, or more. I don’t know for sure how I could hear you. Or if other people could. Sorry.

Mal was quiet for a moment. Then he said, Do you think they could remove me from the wall? It’s not—my body is here, but it’s really my spirit that I want removed. Do you know any talented necromancers?

Harry jerked, thinking of the spell Father had cast. Mal said nothing, apparently waiting for his answer, and Harry at last sighed and said, I know a necromancer, but they’ve promised not to do any more of that kind of magic. Maybe I could talk to one of the professors, though? Or the Headmaster?

In his heart, Harry knew he would go back to Father and ask him about necromancy if he had to. He couldn’t really picture himself addressing it with any of the adults at Hogwarts, and Father did know about necromancy.

I think they would think less of me for letting myself become a victim.

Why is that?

Because I was warned, and warned, and warned, and yet I dared to go up and talk to him anyway. My killer. They would pity me, but they would think that I got what I deserved.

Harry shook his head. No one deserves to be trapped in a wall for decades. I’ll do what I can to get you out of there without mentioning your name.

Thank you.

Harry’s eyes stung a little from the sheer relief in Mal’s voice. He leaned his hand harder on the wall for a moment. You’re welcome.

Mal didn’t respond, but Harry thought he felt a pulse of gratitude anyway. He pulled back and walked up the corridor that would lead to the staircase. He was already wondering how he should write the letter to Father.

And wondering, too, if this was an ancestor of his. Could “Mal” be short for Malfoy?

*

“Permit me to say that you seem to be more tense than usual, Harry.”

Healer Letham was sitting on the couch in the Room of Requirement with a cup of tea in her palm, but she seemed to have forgotten it. She was staring at him, and Harry sat back with an embarrassed smile when he realized that he’d been sitting on the edge of his own couch, bouncing his heel back and forth.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Harry scowled at her. He enjoyed speaking with Healer Letham, but she had a certain trick where she would let her voice rise in a question that made him doubt his own solid answers that he’d already given.

“Something happened, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Nothing that could endanger your life, I hope.”

“Of course not!”

Healer Letham studied him for a moment longer as if she didn’t believe him, but in the end, she nodded and leaned back on the couch. “All right. How is your relationship with your parents since you and Draco spoke with them?”

Harry picked up his own teacup with a little sigh. Mother had been so focused on revenge after Marcus Flint had attacked Harry that she’d tortured Barty Crouch Jr., whom Father had captured, instead of coming to see Harry or Draco. And Father had promised not to use necromancy, but—well, that conversation hadn’t been easy, either.

“I think it’s better,” he said carefully. “At least Mother knows that we were upset with her, that we needed her and she ran off to do something else instead. And Father’s been careful in his letters to me, but that’s only to be expected.”

“Do you know how much you mean to them?”

“Of course I do! I know how I was stolen, and that they would have torn the world apart to try and get me back—”

“I didn’t mean that, precisely, Harry. One thing I have sometimes wondered is if they should spend more time telling you how they love you, and not only as a stolen child, but as yourself. Henry Malfoy.”

“They do that. Of course they do that.”

Healer Letham propped her chin in her palm. “Do that? Because the way you were speaking seemed to me as though you were talking about Aldebaran Malfoy instead.”

Harry swallowed and wondered what he should say. That sometimes he did feel like his parents saw what he had been or would be more than what he was right now? That he felt lonely when they laughed about memories that were years old but which he hadn’t been there for?

Because those things were true. But he didn’t think that meant Mother and Father loved him any less than Draco.

“I’m all right, Healer Letham.”

She watched him with opaque eyes for a moment more, and then said, “Very well. You know your own mind the best. I am only here to help you know it better.” She smiled and leaned back, and the moment got less intense. “And there’s nothing else that you wish to talk to me about?”

“Only that I’m still having arguments with my friend Hermione sometimes…”

Harry was happy to talk about normal things. Low-stakes things. Things that definitely did not involve conversations with his father where he might have to ask Lucius to take up necromancy again, or murdered people trapped in walls.

But he knew that help would be available if he needed it. And no matter what anyone else might think, it did make a real difference to have that help available.

He just didn’t need it all the time.