[Songs of the Stormy Season]: Not With That Attitude, Harry/Adrian Pucey, PG-13, 14/14

[lomonaaeren]

“Are you planning to do something about the other anchors?”

Harry nodded to Hermione and swallowed the piece of toast in his mouth before he replied. “Yeah. We’re looking into finding some of the others now. Unfortunately, Professor Dumbledore only left notes about the one. He probably didn’t have time to look into any others, with that curse on his hand sickening him.”

“We?”

“Adrian and me.”

Hermione looked down at her lap. “Oh.”

Harry watched her for a moment, but she didn’t look back up. With a sigh, Harry reached across the table, took her hand, and squeezed it. “I absolutely wouldn’t be opposed to working on this with you, Hermione. But I’m not going to leave Adrian behind, and you know that Ron would still be there and would insist on making remarks about him.”

“It just—” Hermione looked up. “It feels like you’re leaving us behind.”

“Would you feel that way if you and Ron got married someday? That you were leaving me behind?”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

Hermione looked away.

Harry nodded. He suspected it was different for her because it was her relationship with Ron, and her secrets, and she and Ron were so sure that Harry’s secrets were different, dangerous, necessary to know.

And to be fair, Harry hadn’t exactly told them that the danger of Voldemort reading his mind didn’t exist anymore since the destruction of the Horcrux in him. But telling them that would mean telling them about the Horcrux, and the Horcruxes in general, and Harry wasn’t in the mood for seventeen more arguments.

Sometimes, not being in the mood for them was enough.

“I hope we’ll always be friends, Hermione,” Harry said as gently as he knew how. “But we don’t need to always do research or spend every minute together to still be friends. We’ve spent most of the last few summers apart. It’s been all right.”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “I know that we couldn’t have included you in everything we did those summers, but I should have pushed for us to tell you more that we could tell you. Especially since you were let into the secret of Grimmauld Place over Christmas in fifth year anyway.”

Harry just nodded, patted her shoulder, and stood up. He was meeting Adrian, in disguise, in Knockturn Alley in half an hour.

*

Harry stared blankly at the page before him, and swallowed.

“I told you this was a Dark ritual.”

Harry just nodded and shifted a little closer to Adrian, not caring that they stood in the bookshop called Darius’s Dark Things in Knockturn Alley where anyone could see them. Adrian’s glares were probably deterring anyone from approaching, anyway. “I—didn’t know that it would mean having to stop your heart.”

“Rituals require death,” Adrian said softly. “Blood. Sacrifice. The only reason that the one we already did didn’t was because Dumbledore was dying and because you were technically sacrificing a bit of soul.”

“Just not mine.”

“That kind of thing doesn’t matter to rituals.”

“If that’s the case, then we could use m—”

“No.” Adrian gripped Harry’s shoulders and bent down in front of him, so close that there was no way Harry could mistake the scowl on his face. “Just no, all right? I am not going to put you in danger even if you think you would prefer it that way. I love you too much to do that.”

“Why can’t I love you enough not to do it?”

“Because it is my privilege to protect you. And because you already went through one. It’s my turn.”

Harry hesitated, but Adrian had the stubborn look on his face, the way he had had when he was talking about how Voldemort could live forever instead of Harry dying, that made Harry nod. He knew that Adrian’s sense of fair play was engaged now, and there was no way for Harry to make a dent in that. “Fine. So what do we need?”

“What does the list say?”

Harry rolled his eyes a little and concentrated on the rest of the ingredients in the ritual list, the ones that he hadn’t paid as much attention to once he saw how the ritual would involve Adrian dying temporarily. “Oh. I don’t think we have most of these.”

“Your godfather might have some of them,” Adrian murmured into his ear, calm now that Harry agreed with him. “And the rest are in my family’s Potions stores.”

“Will they just give them to you?”

“Oh, no. But I don’t plan to ask, exactly.”

Harry cupped a hand behind Adrian’s neck and pulled him down to kiss him. “Just be careful,” he said fiercely. “I would go with you, but I think they might notice if I walked through the wards into the main house.”

“Yes. And there’s no way that my parents and brother would give up a chance to kidnap you and use you as a bargaining chip.”

Harry shuddered. At least Adrian’s family weren’t actual Death Eaters—Harry thought he might never have got together with Adrian if not for that, since Adrian wouldn’t have dared to approach him—but their ruthless, emotionless greed wasn’t much more attractive.

“Stay safe.”

“Of course I will.”

*

“How is coming back covered in smoke and burns at all safe?” Harry practically yelled at Adrian as he cast the healing charms on him.

Adrian coughed a little. He was on Harry’s bed in Grimmauld Place—he’d been brought into the Fidelius Charm at the beginning of summer—and he was still steaming from the ears as though he’d swallowed a Pepper-Up Potion. “I didn’t know my mother even knew that curse.”

“Which one?” Harry cast another charm, and sighed in relief as it reported that Adrian’s lungs were free of smoke damage. He still grabbed the potion that Sirius had left next to him without comment when he’d Levitated Adrian up to this bedroom and forced the whole contents of the vial down his throat.

Adrian coughed again, but then began to breathe more easily. “The Dragonsbreath Curse.”

“It made you actually experience standing in a wash of dragonfire?”

“Yes. But at least I wasn’t flying on a broom through it.”

“You would have been safer,” Harry muttered, and shook his head as he healed the last of the burns. He’d started studying healing magic at the beginning of summer because he’d thought they might need it around the Horcruxes, and it had turned out they did need it, just not in the way that he’d pictured. “All right. Your—family aren’t going to welcome you home again, are they?”

“No. But I did manage to take all of my personal things before they found me there.”

“And the ingredients?” Harry lowered his voice since he couldn’t ward the door of the bedroom well, with the house belonging to Sirius.

“Most of them. There are a few things we’ll have to gather or buy.”

“What will you have to gather or buy?”

Harry jumped as Sirius stepped through the doorway. “Some of the spells in case Adrian goes back for revenge on his family.”

“I won’t,” Adrian said. “They’re not worth it.”

“You also said you would stay safe.”

“Now you knew how I felt all those times you were in the hospital wing.”

Harry sighed and turned to Sirius. “I’m sure you could teach us a few handy prank spells. Even if Adrian’s doesn’t want to use them for revenge on his family, I might.”

Sirius grinned at them. “I’d be happy to teach you anything you wanted, Harry.”

“Don’t encourage him.”

Sirius and Adrian exchanged a few sentences of what sounded like genuine banter, while Harry watched Adrian in silence. He would never forget the feeling he’d had when Adrian, his robes shedding smoke and sparks and more than half gone, managed to fall through the Floo in Grimmauld Place.

Maybe it was something that Harry would just have to accept, the way that he would have to accept the necessity of stopping Adrian’s heart as part of the ritual to find the rest of the Horcruxes.

But he didn’t think he would ever get used to it.

*

“And you’re sure this is the best place.”

Harry couldn’t keep the doubt out of his voice as he stared around the cave that had apparently been the first resting place of the locket Horcrux. Adrian put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but didn’t try to use it to steer him anywhere.

“I am. It not only has a connection to Horcruxes and the Dark Lord’s magic, it’s the only place we have access to that’s really large enough to lay out the ritual circle.”

Harry nodded reluctantly. They couldn’t very well do it in the cellars at Grimmauld Place, they couldn’t go back to Hogwarts, and they would never have access to the Pucey property and the little house on the outskirts of it again.

That realization had hurt Harry more than he wanted to admit.

“All right. Then let’s get started.”

Adrian bent down and kissed Harry, before he pulled back and began to scatter the shavings of obsidian around the circle he had already sketched out in chalk. Obsidian would have a part in this ritual just like it had in the one to transfer the Horcrux to Dumbledore.

Harry watched Adrian and worried. He seemed so alive as he bent, scattered, measured some of the plant ingredients and scattered them, too, and stood up to flash Harry a quick smile across the circle. And Harry was supposed to tie him down and stop his heart to find out about the locations of the other Horcruxes?

Adrian had said that Harry should think of it as Adrian always being in danger, like Harry, as long as Voldemort lived, so this was a way to get rid of that danger.

It still made Harry shiver with rage and terror.

But they had made their decision, and they had to deal with this.

Adrian finished the last of the sprinkling of obsidian shavings, as far as Harry could tell, and then turned and smiled at Harry. His hand was already reaching for the clasp of his robes around his neck, and he shed them with a roll of his shoulders and neck that made Harry gape at him a little.

“Are you…trying to take my mind off the ritual by flirting with me?’

“Is it working?” Adrian’s voice was deeper than usual as he shed the robes so that they drooped down and pooled around his feet.

“…Maybe?”

Adrian chuckled at him and reached up to take off his wand holster. He would have to be naked for the first part of the ritual so he could draw the runes on himself. “Any moment of pleasure or happiness I can give you is enough for me.”

“It won’t be enough for me unless you survive.”

Adrian paused, holding Harry’s eyes. “The ritual requires absolute determination to survive on the part of the person making the sacrifice, and absolute determination to bring the sacrifice back on the part of the person directing it. I’d say we have those.”

But is it enough?

Harry held his tongue as he watched Adrian take the rest of his clothes off, though. They had discussed this to death already.

And it didn’t mean that he didn’t get a little bit of pleasure out of seeing Adrian naked before he started drawing runes on himself. It just meant that Harry wasn’t paying it that much attention compared to the rest of the ritual.

*

“Ready.”

Harry nodded and stood in the middle of the circle, which glowed with a sullen red and black light around them, holding the knife they had chosen over the center of Adrian’s chest. Unlike the ritual to remove the Horcrux from him, this didn’t require a lot of chanting or preparation beyond the circle and the runes. As Adrian had said, it depended on their wills. To survive. To find the Horcruxes.

And to bring the sacrifice back.

Harry looked into Adrian’s eyes. Adrian smiled a little, softly, looking up at him with an expression of absolute faith. It struck Harry that Adrian looked less distressed than he had at the ends of the terms when Harry had landed in the hospital wing.

He really does care more about me than he does himself.

The realization rocked Harry. His hand tightened on the knife. He swallowed.

“I’m ready to begin.”

Adrian’s voice reached Harry and steadied him. He nodded. Adrian had given up a lot, including his family, to be here with Harry right now. Harry couldn’t show less than the same faith, the same love.

“I wish to know where the last Horcruxes are,” Harry whispered, focusing his mind as strongly as he could on the lingering sense of Voldemort’s magic in the cave, and the ones they had already destroyed. “The last three.”

Adrian arched his back so that his chest came closer to the knife. “And I am willing to offer my heart’s blood to the endeavor.”

The knife and the ritual circle around them both began to glow with a soft silvery light. That was what was supposed to happen, but Harry’s hand still shook on the knife as he aimed the blade downwards.

“You’ll begin now?” Adrian asked, and Harry only nodded before he lifted his hand and then let it fall, still holding the knife.

The silvery edge on the blade sliced into Adrian’s chest, parting the skin bloodlessly. Adrian gasped and stopped moving.

His heart, visible through the gap in the skin and muscle and flesh that had simply pulled aside, stopped beating.

Shaking, Harry dropped to his knees and repeated, “I wish to see the last three Horcruxes. Show them to me.”

The silvery light spread out around them, beating in a way that echoed the way Adrian’s heart could no longer move, and Harry lifted his eyes. He knew he had to look, had to absorb the vision they were showing him, or this would all be for nothing.

And Harry couldn’t bear the thought of wasting Adrian’s sacrifice like that.

He locked his eyes on the images pivoting around him, and committed each one to memory, something that turned out to be easy to do.

Nagini, curling around Voldemort’s feet as he sat on what looked like a throne at the base of a tree.

A golden cup, high on a shelf in what looked like a Gringotts vault. Harry tilted his head to the side and saw the flash of a badger on the cup.

A silvery diadem resting on the head of an ugly bust, itself on top of a cabinet that looked like a Vanishing Cabinet. The heavy stone walls around the image said “Hogwarts” to Harry, even though nothing else did.

And the vision snapped out, and vanished.

Harry crashed to the floor at the same time, struggling to keep his eyes open. Adrian was breathing shallowly, the blood around his heart bubbling now as it struggled to beat.

I love him, and he will come back. I do believe that. I believe that more than anything I have ever believed.

Harry took a deep breath, and pulled the knife from Adrian’s chest.

There was a long, horrible moment when he thought it hadn’t worked. Adrian’s entire body heaved and convulsed, his arms snapping up as if to fend an invisible attacker away, and Harry felt as though someone was biting his legs off. But then it passed, in a shimmer of reluctant magic that made Harry realize, at a wordless level, how close the ritual had come to not working.

Adrian swallowed and opened his eyes. Harry curled close to him, trembling more than a little, hand wrapping around his arm.

“I’m here,” Adrian whispered, as the wounds in his chest bloodlessly sealed themselves. “And I love you.”

Harry barely managed to whisper, “I love you,” back, before he was dragging Adrian towards the mouth of the cave and Apparating back to Grimmauld Place, not giving a fuck what the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery might do.

*

Adrian was a long time recovering.

Harry sat by his bed in Grimmauld Place and explained to everyone that they’d been looking for one of the means Voldemort had used to achieve immortality and had it blow up in their faces. People were sympathetic, and irritated, and sort of satisfied. They seemed to think that Adrian deserved it for doing Dark Arts.

Harry just shrugged. His priority was getting Adrian better and thinking of ways to reach the Horcruxes. Nagini would be hardest, but the one in Hogwarts not much easier.

Not with the announcements that had come through in the Prophet about how Snape would be Headmaster and all Muggleborns were “required” to attend. Not with the wanted posters everywhere showing Harry’s face on them.

Harry thought he might have the seeds of a plan, though. He worked on that as he nodded to the visitors and argued a little with Adrian about whether he should get out of bed yet and sneaked out in Polyjuice disguise to buy healing potions. At least Sirius was good at brewing Polyjuice and willing to wander London as a dog beside Harry, or by himself stealing Muggles’ hair.

It wasn’t the kind of Horcrux hunting Harry had thought would happen, but so what? What mattered was that they were still alive, and they would find the Horcruxes and eliminate them.

*

“You can’t Apparate inside Hogwarts.”

Harry nodded to Hermione as he worked with the Map to plot what he thought would be the best route. On the one hand, it wouldn’t be easy to locate the Horcrux; on the other hand, he had someone he could ask about a giant rubbish room. “Yeah, and not on the grounds. We’re not going to Apparate into the school.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

Harry smiled at her as he wrote down a note about the Invisibility Cloak. “Use brooms.”

“Oh. I—I’m not a good flyer. Should I go with you? What happens if I slow you down?”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. It should be okay.”

“But I feel as if I should.”

Harry just hummed a little as Hermione’s insecurities washed over him. It had actually become easy not to argue with her, or Ron, or Sirius, or any of the Order of the Phoenix members that sometimes drifted in and out of the house like sand washed back and forth on the tide. He knew what he was doing. Adrian knew what they were doing. This was much more important, and they would achieve it.

That was just the way things were.

*

“Yes,” Dobby said, in a squeak loud enough that Harry looked around worriedly, even though this stretch of the corridor was deserted and had been for some time. “The Room of Hidden Things be in the Room of Requirement, this way!”

“Of course it’s in the bloody Room of Requirement,” Adrian breathed behind him.

Harry half-smiled. He was covered by the Invisibility Cloak and Adrian by a Disillusionment Charm, and soaring hidden over Hogwarts’s grounds and sneaking in through a window of the Astronomy Tower had worked perfectly. Now they just needed to get in and out of Hogwarts as quickly as they possibly could.

And not expire from anxiety in the meantime.

“You have to be thinking of where everything is hidden,” Dobby explained, pausing in front of the tapestry of trolls dancing.

I need the room where everything is hidden…where everything is hidden…where everything is hidden…

And sure enough, the door appeared. Harry did wrinkle his nose when he stepped in and saw the piles of rubbish and dust and half-destroyed junk, but they knew what the diadem and the bust looked like. They would find it no matter how long it took them to trek through this mess.

“Accio diadem Horcrux!” Adrian hissed from behind him.

“Or we could do that,” Harry said, a little weakly, as the Horcrux zoomed towards them and hung in midair, stopped by the barrier that Adrian had hastily woven around it.

“Whatever would you do without me,” Adrian muttered as he cast another spell that scooped up the Horcrux. “Honestly.”

Two to go.

*

“And do you think that we can just sneak into Gringotts?”

“I wasn’t going to sneak into Gringotts.”

“What were you going to do, then?”

Harry sighed as he looked at Ron and Hermione. They leaned forwards, looking calm but unhappy. They’d looked that way since Harry had taken just Adrian, instead of at least Ron, to sneak into Hogwarts and “destroy the anchor.”

And it occurred to Harry to wonder: why was he lying to them?

Maybe it had been necessary when he’d thought they would have moral objections to Fiendfyre and the way he’d got rid of the Horcrux inside himself, but they’d managed to accept Adrian’s use of Dark Arts in the cave with only minimal argument. And there had never been a requirement to tell them all the details about the Horcrux he’d borne, either.

I acted sort of like Dumbledore, lying to them because I was afraid of their reaction.

“All right,” Harry said. “I’m going to give you some more details of our plans and why Adrian and I have handled these things so cautiously. It’s fair to let you know more about what they are. But I’m not going to put up with any arguments about how I shouldn’t trust Adrian or shouldn’t use certain spells. All right?”

“All right,” Hermione said, after she and Ron had exchanged mystified glances.

Harry sighed, and settled in to explain.

*

“So you were really using a Dark spell to destroy the Horcrux, and lying to us about it.”

Ron’s voice was dull. Hermione had turned away halfway through the conversation and was staring at the shelves of books around them in the Grimmauld Place library, as if trying to visualize the ones that Harry had found the Fiendfyre spell in.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to deal with your moral objections and a bunch of lectures,” Harry said. He winced at the look on Ron’s face, took a deep breath, and pushed ahead. “And maybe a little bit as revenge for your keeping secrets from me during the summers that you were staying here.”

“We had good reason for that,” Hermione whispered. “Professor Dumbledore told me when I turned seventeen. He knew that you had a connection to Voldemort, and that he could learn anything you did.”

“And he could also have captured you and tortured it out of you, since you couldn’t Occlude,” Harry said. He ignored the horrified look she gave him. “Dumbledore really did have that concern, but he barely did anything to address it. He had Snape teach me Occlumency, and didn’t follow it up when I walked out of those lessons. And I told you that he still let Snape kill him and planned to let Malfoy just walk Death Eaters into the school.”

“So how is imitating him any better?” Ron demanded hoarsely.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

Ron paused for a moment, but Hermione went on. “And are you going to say sorry for all the other things?”

“Besides the lying? What do you mean?”

“Using Dark spells? Using Professor Dumbledore as a disposal bin for the Horcrux?”

Harry closed his eyes. Then he stood. “I’m not going to stay here and listen to this,” he said. “Dumbledore agreed with me doing that.”

“Only because he was cursed and dying and filled with guilt! You shouldn’t have asked!”

“And he shouldn’t have asked me to commit suicide via Killing Curse, which is what he was planning to do.”

Hermione buried her head in her hands. Harry felt a little sorry for her. She’d had to learn in a twenty-minute conversation that both Harry and Professor Dumbledore had done and planned to do horrible things.

“Are you going to give me lectures about this?” Harry asked.

“It’s horrible,” Hermione whispered.

“It’s war, Hermione. There wasn’t a non-horrible option to get rid of the Horcrux.”

“I would have—”

Hermione stopped. Harry watched her. “Yeah?” he asked at last, when some time had passed and she hadn’t said anything. “What would you have done?”

Hermione shook her head.

Harry nodded and let it go. He wanted to ask if she really would have died to get rid of the Horcrux, because he didn’t think she would have, but he didn’t feel like arguing. It was enough to know that his friends knew the truth, and also that he wouldn’t be bringing them along on any more Horcrux hunts.

It was hard to know that he’d been right and he couldn’t trust them, but good to know, as well.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” Harry said, as kindly as he could. “Adrian and I know where the last two are, and we’re going to find them and kill them. You don’t have to use Dark Arts or anything like that.” He walked towards the library doors.

“Harry.”

Harry looked over his shoulder. Hermione turned her head towards him, her eyes welling with tears. Ron put a hand on her shoulder, but didn’t try to stop her from speaking.

“Yeah, Hermione?”

“When did we stop being friends?”

“I think—the summer before fifth year.”

Hermione looked down and said nothing. Harry let himself out of the library and took a deep breath in the corridor beyond.

It wasn’t a happy feeling, but at least they had all been honest with each other. If they were ever going to find a way back to each other’s sides, it would come from that, and not from the kind of fond lies Harry could have told.

He walked away to find Adrian, aware of his lighter stride.

*

“And you are aware that you would have to promise us something of substantial value?”

“Yes.”

It had been all Adrian had said. Harry had remained silent at his side, under the Invisibility Cloak, while Adrian bargained with the goblins. He’d been able to approach the bank openly. From what Harry knew, Adrian was still not only a pureblood but someone who was in neutral-to-good standing with the Death Eaters. His family hadn’t announced his defection.

And now they were standing in a blank stone office with only a small desk and a small gold plaque on it with a name in goblin runes that Harry couldn’t read. He would have worried, but Adrian had told him that the plainer a goblin’s office was, the more highly respected that goblin was. It showed that they would have won their position without the need for decoration.

The door opened, and a tall goblin with long claws and fangs that projected outside his mouth stepped in. His skin was a deep grey that reminded Harry of some of the stone walls they’d passed. Adrian bowed to him, and Harry did the same thing, despite being under the Cloak. Most of the goblins had probably known he was there, Adrian had told him.

“Sit down, Mr. Pucey, Mr. Potter. And take that Cloak off.”

Harry did, still remaining quiet. Adrian sat in the chair as if he had always expected it to find it stiff and uncomfortable, but Harry had to hide how the rough stone was affecting his arse. He thought the goblin might get offended.

“What have you come to trade to us for this item that you say we have?” The goblin was watching Adrian as if were the most dangerous one—which, fair, Harry thought. “You must know that we would never normally give up one of our treasures.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then tell us what you are offering.”

“The entire contents of the Pucey family vaults, including artifacts, books, and goblin-made weapons returned to their original owners, plus the vault space itself, plus the right of weregild against Dominique Pucey’s portrait.”

Harry choked.

The goblin sat up behind his desk, staring at Adrian in a way that made Harry abruptly hope that Adrian could give the goblin what he’d promised. “You are claiming that you can hand over the Pucey family vaults?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that you can do this?”

“Because they should have disowned me, but they didn’t.” A smile widened across Adrian’s face that made Harry rather abruptly wish they were alone. “And I found my grandfather’s letters from fifty years ago that any member of the family can access the whole of the vaults and do with them as they will, once they’re of age.”

“He rather came to regret that provision,” the goblin said slowly. “Although he wouldn’t change it, because he enjoyed the vision of dispossessing his children too much. He was a rather stubborn human.”

“Yes. But it’s to my benefit, now.”

“Adrian,” Harry interrupted, before he could consider whether this was something he should do. The goblin did not look mortally offended, which at least was a good thing. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Adrian turned towards Harry with an adoring smile, and the goblin cleared his throat and turned his chair around to stare at the wall. Adrian reached out, hand shaking a little, as he ran the back of his knuckles down Harry’s cheek.

“I know that you’ll always take care of me,” Adrian said softly. “And my family didn’t disown me because they’re still hoping to profit from me and my association with the Boy-Who-Lived somehow. I want their greedy opportunism to bite them in their collective arses. Please, Harry. It would mean so much to me.”

Well, how could Harry say no to that?

“And you would give the vault space back to the bank?” the goblin interrupted. “You would give us the weregild without hesitation?”

“Of course. My ancestor’s portrait was a raving idiot to offend the goblin nation. I don’t know why my family has protected her for so long.”

“And the vault space?”

“Of course,” Adrian repeated. “What use would I have for vaults sitting empty?’

“You might want to fill them with your own possessions someday.”

“Harry has his own vault, and I can’t imagine that I would ever own so many things that he didn’t have a share in to need a whole other one.”

“What is it that you want?” breathed the goblin. He might be trying to sound neutral, Harry thought, but he was fairly sure Adrian had him.

“The golden cup engraved with a badger that is currently in a deeply disorganized vault belonging to a Death Eater. Probably a Lestrange or a Malfoy, and probably the cup of Helga Hufflepuff.”

The goblin paused for a moment. Then he said, “I know whereof you speak. And I see no reason that it should not be given to you. Perhaps it was stolen from Hufflepuff’s descendants, but we do not know that for certain.”

“Thank you.”

“You will sign a contract saying you are relinquishing the Pucey vaults’ contents, the vault space, and the portrait to us?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” the goblin said, and smiled with a mouthful of teeth so sharp that Harry leaned back a little in sheer appreciation, “I do not see why we cannot do business.”

*

“That was easier than I thought,” Harry said as they left the bank with the cup. “At least, if you’re willing to give up your whole family fortune, it was easy.”

“They never loved me more than the contents of their vaults, and they never used that ability to claim the whole vaults themselves.”

“Why not? Were they aware of it?”

“My father might not have been. He wasn’t born into the family. But my mother was. And it’s because she was always waiting for the right time, the best time, when she could see the expression on the face of someone else she hated while claiming the vaults for herself.” Adrian shuddered and shook his head. “So she wouldn’t even have the Galleons and artifacts and vindictive satisfaction she could have had, because she was always dreaming of the greater vindictive satisfaction she could have in the future.”

Harry leaned his head for a moment against Adrian’s shoulder, and then he pulled back, and Adrian Apparated them back to Grimmauld Place.

The cup and the diadem burned, and screamed in agony as they did.

And then there was the snake.

*

“You think he’s at Malfoy Manor?”

“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“We don’t have any evidence. That vision I got was tightly focused on Nagini, and she and Voldemort really could have been anywhere.”

“But think about it.” Adrian leaned back in the chair in Harry’s bedroom in Grimmauld Place and counted the points off on his fingers. “Voldemort wants luxury. Malfoy Manor supplies that. Malfoy—the school-age one—had a task during this year, and Voldemort probably kept a close eye on him every time he actually went home. The Ministry isn’t looking at the Malfoys anymore because of Lucius’s claim to be under the Imperius in the first war, and the wards are the sort that would impress even a Dark Lord. It makes sense that he would be there.”

“So you’re saying we should at least investigate it?”

“Yes.” Adrian tipped his chair forwards so that it fell and the legs screeched on the wooden floor. Both of them ignored the sound of Mrs. Black starting to shriek downstairs. “And I know that we can’t break the wards, but we don’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“We have the perfect bait.”

Harry began to smile.

*

“Try to act a little more like a captive in distress, won’t you, Harry?”

“I’m no damsel, what do you want me to do?’

“Stop grinning.”

Harry did manage to wrestle his face back under control as Adrian dragged him to a halt outside the wards of Malfoy Manor. Adrian tapped his wand against Harry, and Harry obediently dropped to his knees in a posture of agony, as if Adrian had just cursed him. Then Adrian lifted his voice towards the wrought-iron gates and silent white walls.

“I come with a gift for the Dark Lord!”

It didn’t take long for a house-elf to appear, staring at them with huge eyes. It squeaked and vanished. Harry bowed his head and shifted a little to ease the pain in his knees from the gravel, complaining under his breath as Adrian’s wand dug into the back of his neck.

“I’ll do worse than this if you don’t stop complaining, Potter.”

“So it is true.”

Harry tensed against the bonds of fire that Adrian had conjured for him, hissing a little as the flames burned his skin. This was the first time he had been so close to Voldemort since the graveyard three years ago, and it was hard to remember that he should act as though his head was splitting open with the pain.

They had planned for that, though, so Harry let Adrian bow and begin the deceptive conversation. His attention was on the snake crawling behind Voldemort.

They had to have both of them outside the wards.

Harry gasped aloud and sagged in his bonds, and interrupted the “negotiation” Adrian was undertaking with Voldemort, in which he claimed to want revenge on Harry for his family disowning him. “Pucey, you bastard,” he groaned. “You said that he wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t what, dear Harry?”

Voldemort was only a meter or so away now, but Nagini was still within the wards. Harry raised his head and glared at Voldemort, but at the hems of his robes instead of his eyes. All they needed now was for Voldemort to read the truth about their plan from his mind. “Said that you wouldn’t feed me to Nagini,” he slurred.

Voldemort laughed and spoke in Parseltongue to Nagini. It was an odd, thrilling experience for Harry to realize that he could no longer understand his enemy. It seemed that the Horcrux really had carried Parseltongue with it.

But he didn’t need to understand her, since Nagini came slithering eagerly into the open, and Adrian let the bonds on Harry go.

“Avada Kedavra!” Adrian roared. The green spell spread out in front of them like a monstrous flower and gripped Nagini, ripping life away from her. She slumped, and then Adrian set her remains aflame with Fiendfyre, just in case the Killing Curse couldn’t completely destroy a living Horcrux.

Voldemort screamed, a sound so thin and high-pitched that Harry winced even as he stood and tackled Voldemort’s legs. Voldemort fell, but he was already growing sharp thorns and scales all over his skin, swinging his wand to face Harry—

“Reducto corpus!” Harry yelled.

From this close, he had no chance to duck the rain of muscle and flesh and blood and worse things that poured off Voldemort’s body. But he also had no chance to miss with a spell that had been designed to destroy magically-constructed bodies like those usually raised for Inferi.

Harry wiped his face off and staggered to his feet. The crumpled remains of Voldemort’s body all around him made him want to gag, but instead, he moved back as Adrian directed the Fiendfyre to eat that body, too.

There was a thin, high wailing, worse somehow than the louder cry Voldemort had given just seconds ago, and Harry winced. He knew it was the wraith fading from the world with no Horcruxes left to anchor it, and of course that was the result they had wanted and why they had done this at all, but—

For a moment, he felt fleeting unhappiness, felt guilt.

And then he turned and collapsed into Adrian’s arms, and sobbed aloud for joy.

*

“Where have you been?” Sirius hopped anxiously back to his feet as Harry and Adrian Flooed into Grimmauld Place’s kitchen. “You just disappear with no word, and Ron and Hermione said they heard something about you being held prisoner by him, and then—”

“We defeated Voldemort,” Harry said casually over his shoulder as Adrian steered him towards the stairs and the shower.

“What—?”

“He’s gone. We got him to come out of the wards of Malfoy Manor, and Adrian only pretended to take me prisoner, and Adrian killed the snake and I blew Voldemort’s body up. “The blood is his.”

“What—you can’t just appear and say that you killed You-Know-Who and just—Harry James Potter, get back here!”

*

“Do you think we should have done it in public?”

“What do you mean?” Harry rubbed a towel briskly through his hair, not bothering with one that would have covered his chest or groin. Adrian’s appreciative gaze told Harry all that he needed to know about how his boyfriend felt at the sight.

“I mean that people might not believe we defeated him. No one other than maybe the Malfoys saw him die.”

“People haven’t paid as much attention to him as they should have in the last few years, anyway. And plans get changed all the time. Just look at the way that Snape stupidly held to that plan he had with Dumbledore even though Malfoy didn’t get to bring him an audience of Death Eaters. And we didn’t need his help the way Dumbledore imagined we would. We can tell a few people, and some people will spread the word, and others will doubt us, but the Dark Lord won’t come around to command the Death Eaters anymore. That’s going to be the real ending for them, that he isn’t there to tell them what to do.”

“Do you think some of them might take up his mantle?’

“If they do,” Harry said, leaning up to kiss Adrian, “then we’ll be there to kick their arses.”

Adrian’s eyes sparkled as he bent down and returned the kiss, with interest. Then he drew back and said, “Yeah. I thought you would say something like this. And we’ll do whatever we have to do.” He paused, his face working. “I’ll get along with Weasley and Granger, if they become your friends again.”

“Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t,” Harry said. He thought he ought to feel sadness at that, but at the moment, nothing mattered except that he was happy. “Race you to the bed?”

Adrian cheated by sweeping Harry up in his arms before he could jump on the bed, and Harry dragged him down and kissed the breath out of him, and then they rolled on the floor, and that was just as good as the bed.

Harry left sadness behind as he held Adrian, as the joy soared through him.

They had defeated Voldemort, and there was nothing they could not do.

The End.