[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Creatures of Wrath, These Creatures series, gen, R, 9/10

[lomonaaeren]

“I don’t like it.”

Harry snorted a little. “I didn’t like it, either. But I didn’t know what would happen when Dumbledore invited me to his office.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true?”

Hermione cut in at that point, maybe because Harry and Theo had been arguing across their little table in the corridor near her bathroom for five minutes, and Michael and Zacharias and Parvati had just been watching in silent entertainment. “But why would the Headmaster allow himself to become possessed in the first place?”

“He wanted knowledge,” Harry said, glad enough to explain this, since he hadn’t really got into it so far. “Knowledge of how to defeat the Dark Lord, and maybe of what the Dark Lord was like when he was younger. He could never quite bring himself to break free, because it would have ended his access to that source of knowledge. That’s why he stayed under the artifact’s dominion.” He wasn’t about to mention that it was a Horcrux.

“But that’s stupid.”

“You can’t imagine yourself becoming enslaved to someone or something that promised you knowledge?”

Hermione’s face turned bright silver with the flush. “That’s different.”

“Why?”

Theo touched the corner of Harry’s elbow, and his soul-bond was amused but also warning. Harry pulled himself back with a nod. He didn’t mean to defend Dumbledore, and just because it was tempting to argue with Hermione didn’t mean that he needed to do it. This wasn’t a purely academic debate.

“How are you going to keep it from happening again?” Michael asked quietly.

“Well, Griselda gave me a protective enchantment that should prevent most of that,” Harry said. “And she knows all the plans I have. And I’m going to make sure that someone knows where I am at all times.”

“Even if one of the professors makes you stay after class?”

“At least two of you are in every class I have. I’ll ask you to wait for me. We can all do the Disillusionment Charm well, right?”

Michael’s chest puffed out, and Parvati smiled. Zacharias gave Harry a cynical look. He understood what Harry was doing, and probably saw the mention of the Disillusionment Charm as manipulative, a way to involve Michael and Parvati without letting them be exposed to true danger.

Harry gave Zacharias a silent stare, reminding him of how upset his friend had been in the hospital wing. Zacharias flushed in turn and glanced down at his hands.

“And Dumbledore?”

Theo could be expected to know that Harry would have wanted to do something about Dumbledore, since they had their soul-bond, but the really amusing thing, to Harry’s way of thinking, was that Theo and Hermione spoke at the same time. He leaned back in his chair with a thin smile.

“Oh, well, he tried to disclaim any responsibility, saying it wasn’t really him who attacked me, you understand. But he still wanted me to be responsible for the burns that I gave him.”

“Burns?” Hermione squeaked.

“I used something like the fire that I used against the dragon. A fire born of pure hatred, and which burned him enough that the possessing spirit fled him and tried to escape. But I burned up the artifact that it used to live in, so it died.”

Everyone stared at him. Harry stared back. He’d thought he’d told them this already. Well, maybe not the exact means he’d used to destroy the artifact and the spirit, but they’d known he’d destroyed it.

“You made flames just—appear?” Michael finally asked faintly.

“We can do that all the time, Michael. It’s called magic.”

“Not like that. Not without casting a spell. And I thought you said you were being tortured with the Cruciatus at the time?”

“You didn’t tell us that!”

Hermione’s squeaks were getting a little annoying, honestly, but Harry reminded himself that she was different from his other friends, and moreover had died at a time of her life when her moral code was fairly rigid. He nodded and turned to face Hermione. “Dumbledore, or the Dark Lord if you want to say that, was torturing me with the spell when I conjured the flames.”

“Then he deserves whatever happens to him.”

“Even if he wasn’t the one technically torturing me?”

Hermione’s face was merciless, the corollary of her rigid moral code that Harry forgot about sometimes. “He still chose to cast that spell. He chose not to fight back against V-Voldemort even when he was casting that spell. If anything should have motivated him to stop thinking about knowledge, it should have been torturing someone.”

Harry thought a large part of the reason that Dumbledore hadn’t stopped was because of his conviction that Harry would have to die anyway. But it wasn’t the right time to bring that up, either. “Thank you, Hermione.”

She flushed more deeply and smiled at him. Harry turned back to face his other friends. “Yes, I made flames appear.”

“Harry, that’s—unheard of. At least with the dragon she had flames already—”

“He made a dummy disappear last year. But not an enchanted artifact. And not one that the Dark Lord himself made.”

Theo’s eyes were full of the hunger to know. Harry smiled at his friend and thought that he would have to make sure Theo never came in contact with a Horcrux. It would probably catch him the same way it had caught Dumbledore.

Other than coming into contact with me, of course.

“And what exactly are you going to do to Dumbledore in return?” Parvati asked, leaning forwards.

“The Daily Prophet should have something soon.”

“You can’t give us a hint?”

“Well, think of how long Dumbledore’s lived. Think of all the secrets that he probably has buried in his past. He came from somewhere, didn’t he? He did things before he defeated Grindelwald. What could come out of those?”

“Haaaary.”

Whinging was annoying, indeed. But it didn’t persuade Harry to change his mind. He smiled at Parvati, and she finally huffed and sat back.

“But it’s going to be tomorrow?”

“It might be longer. They’ll need time to confirm some of the things I sent them. I was actually a little surprised there hadn’t been at least one article about it already, though. Some of the writers might be faster than others.”

“There hasn’t been anything so far.”

Harry nodded, content. He knew that Parvati would tell him the truth, and might even have braved the hospital wing or sent him an owl if something had come out before this. “All right. Then we’ll see. In the meantime, what did I miss in the classes?”

Everyone tried to speak at once, and Harry sat back with a smile. They all had their pet subjects, and their pet spells that they thought were more interesting than others. And listening to them all, somewhat surprisingly, was enjoyable.

It made for a nice contrast to the butchering waiting for him that evening, which he had to turn his mind to next.

*

DUMBLEDORE, GRINDELWALD’S OLD LOVER?

It was the Prophet that was first after all, and they’d gone with a louder and bolder headline than Harry had thought they would. He read the article with a smile, even though it didn’t tell him anything he already knew, and then put the paper down while he went back to eating.

“Harry.”

“Yes, Michael?” Harry asked his friend out of the corner of his mouth. That was at least easy. People were chattering all around them, arguing and debating and shaking the paper at each other. There was nothing Ravenclaws loved so much as a good debate.

“You knew about this?” Michael shook the paper at him, which would go unnoticed in the general torrent of paper-shaking.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t make it public the minute you knew?”

Harry looked sideways in curiosity. Michael was a little pale. “Why would I have done that? I had to make sure the evidence was credible, and I didn’t have the kind of political position then or the personal safety that I do now.”

“But it deserved—I mean, we deserved to know. Everyone. The world!”

“Why?”

“So we could—do something about it.”

Harry shrugged a little. “I told you what Madam Pomfrey said. She didn’t think there was anything to be done, and that I shouldn’t try to disrupt the status quo. Exposing this earlier wouldn’t have changed this attitude. It would only have lessened my ability to do something about it.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Harry nodded to Dumbledore’s empty chair at the professors’ table, where he should have returned by now, according to the announcements made by other professors. “I think that’s a good start.”

Michael stared at him once more, then turned away to whisper with the other Ravenclaws. Harry sipped from his glass of water and thought this was only a temporary argument with a friend. He didn’t panic about it or start making plans for what to do in case Michael tried to betray him the way he would have last year. But last year, he’d still been recovering from the graveyard.

A cold wind seemed to blow through him as he thought the word. Harry swallowed and didn’t touch the torque around his neck. Even if it was invisible to others, he didn’t want to call attention to it.

And in the meantime, he had other things to think about. The butchering was very nearly complete. Still, Harry would wait to raid Malfoy Manor until the end of term, on the day after exams when no one should be paying that much attention to his whereabouts. He would take backup with him, but they would have to wait outside the wards, since he was the only one who would be clad in Lucius’s skin and bone and blood.

Harry half-smiled. He would be interested to see the Dark Lord again.

*

“You’re certain that you don’t have any to spare?”

“You know I don’t, Theo. You were there through half the process.”

Theo stared at him. Harry serenely ignored him. Theo was silent and bristling and disapproving, but he wouldn’t actually stop Harry. That was the only thing that mattered to Harry at the moment.

“You know that you can’t carry anything else with you except your wand,” Theo said abruptly. “No foreign magical influences.”

“I know that.”

“And do you know why?”

“It has to do with the magical theory that’s letting me get into the Manor in the first place. The wards and the other protective spells have to think that I’m Lucius. Anything that’s too foreign will disrupt the skin of disguise around me.”

“It would have been better if you could have used Lucius’s wand.”

Harry shook his head. “Breaking it up and using the splinters to pin the skin to me worked better. It didn’t want to work for me, anyway.”

“All right,” Theo said, with a long, exhausted sigh. “Then I suppose you know that you can’t bring amulets and healing potions and the like with you.”

“I know.”

Theo hesitated. Harry turned to face him. He saw Theo recoil without moving, and supposed that he had to give his friend credit for not bolting in the first place. It couldn’t be easy for Theo to see Harry, who had Lucius’s flayed face draped over his, and Lucius’s skin pinned in various places over his cloak and robes, and rivers of constantly, softly moving charmed blood dripping down his body. When the blood reached the edges of Lucius’s skin, it moved back up and trickled around the sides of Harry’s face.

“You don’t look anything like Lucius.”

“I know. But that’s what the interaction between his skin and the wards is for.”

Theo reached out and abruptly grabbed the air above Harry’s shoulders. Harry blinked. He knew that Theo was afraid to touch him for fear of disrupting the protective magic, but it was still impressive, sort of, that Theo would come so close to it.

“I’m going to summon Griselda,” Theo said in a low voice. “She deserves to know that it’s happening tonight.”

“I sent her an owl with the code we agreed on already.”

“But I want her there.”

Harry peered closely at Theo, and saw the truth in his friend’s tight muscles and the lines around his mouth. Theo was planning to summon Griselda for himself more than for Harry. Theo would feel better for having her there.

“All right.”

“You don’t—mind?”

“Why would I mind? I’d rather know that I have allies waiting for me if I need them.” Even though Harry thought it unlikely that he could really need them, and thought they would be caught beyond the wards if he did.

Theo relaxed. That was another benefit to having him and Griselda there that Harry wasn’t about to tell him, Harry thought. Theo would be content, and Griselda would, too. Harry had to do some handling of the people around him. It made them happier, and it made his plans more likely to go right.

“And you’ll have Zacharias keep an eye on Michael?”

“He still hasn’t forgiven you?”

“He’s—forgiven me, if you want to call it that, but he keeps bringing it up to argue about it.”

Michael seemed to really think that Harry should have acted the minute he knew about Dumbledore being Grindelwald’s lover. That Dumbledore had left the school under a pile of outraged Howlers and the Board of Governors was going to promote someone else to the Headmaster’s office didn’t seem to matter to Michael.

It was the most extensive argument Harry had had with any of his friends, but not the worst, and he knew they would overcome this one, too. He looked at Theo, and Theo nodded. “I don’t know if he would try to interfere, but he might.”

Harry thought he might, too. Not because Michael thought there was anything really wrong with Harry going after the Dark Lord—the only thing he knew—but because he wanted to corner Harry and make him listen.

“All right. Then I should begin.”

“You look awful.”

“Part of that is the point.”

“Yes. Don’t forget the rest.”

Harry didn’t have an answer for Theo, because of course he wasn’t going to forget about Griselda and his friends, and so he offered a faint smile and turned to walk down the corridor that would lead him to a secret passage, which would lead him out beyond the grounds. Kalder would be waiting there to Apparate him to Malfoy Manor.

And then Harry would see whether his hatred could destroy the Dark Lord’s body.

*

The outside gates of Malfoy Manor looked as if they were made of steel or granite, or silver. The wards humming around them were silvery in a way that complemented the metal. Harry had to smile. They wouldn’t defeat him, but they were an interesting touch.

“There is still time to turn back, my lord.”

Harry turned his head and stared at Kalder. Kalder gave a little shiver, but met his eyes without retreating. Harry had to laud him for that.

“Are you trying to tell me that you think I should?”

“I’m trying to tell you that I think there’s no reason to break into the Manor this way, my lord. Narcissa Malfoy is a clever woman, and forewarned. The Dark Lord might not even be here anymore.”

“But you would have told me if any of the other Death Eaters had talked about having to move him.”

“Yes, my lord. But that doesn’t mean they would have contacted me. They might know that I’m out of favor.”

Harry shrugged. Yes, that was true, and he was taking a chance. But it was an excellent chance, particularly given how long he’d waited and how much care he’d taken with the butchering process of Lucius Malfoy. There was living blood running down his face and body, the same blood that had run in Lucius Malfoy’s veins only a few hours ago.

And it would continue to live as long as Harry needed it to, thanks to the careful enchantments woven around him.

“Yes, it’s possible he’s been moved,” Harry said, since Kalder was watching him in a way that suggested he wanted Harry to acknowledge what he’d said. “But also possible that he hasn’t been. And it would be worth knowing that he has been, anyway.”

“Not worth losing you, my lord.”

Harry forced himself to smile and give a quick touch to Kalder’s arm, the kind of gesture that he would normally think was stupid and not something he should do. But the situation required it. “You know where I’m going, and so do Theo and Griselda and the rest of my friends.” Except Hermione, but there wasn’t anything she could have done in the current situation anyway. “I’m taking as many precautions as possible. I’m going to find out, and do what I must, and come back out.”

“What you must.”

“Yes,” Harry said, wondering. Kalder already knew this because they’d discussed it to death.

“Does that mean the death of Narcissa Malfoy, my lord?”

Harry shook his head a little. “If she doesn’t get in my way, then she doesn’t need to die. She’s not my enemy or planning to harm someone who’s mine in the way that her husband and son were. She hasn’t made any move against me in the last few months, so I have to think that she’s seen sense.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Kalder’s heavy voice made it clear he didn’t really agree, but didn’t know how to voice that disagreement. Harry spared a moment to hope that Theo, with his Mark and his soul-bond, wouldn’t start acting like this.

“I’ll take as many precautions as I can. I’ll be back soon.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Kalder’s eyes were still so bleak. Harry looked at Malfoy Manor wrapped in the silver shimmer of its wards under the spring moon, in the silence of a green night, and hesitated. “Are there protections that you haven’t told me about?”

“No, my lord! Of course not.”

Harry relaxed a little. He knew from the soul-bond that Kalder’s shock was genuine. “Then you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll go in and do what I need to do and come out. It’ll even be quick if it turns out that the Dark Lord isn’t still there.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Harry pressed Kalder’s shoulder once more, and then stepped out from their hiding place in the shadow of a large rock that seemed to be there for decorative purposes and strode up to the gates.

For a second, the wards reached for him and crawled across him as if seeking an excuse to grow thorns and stab him. And then their reach gentled, and silvery shimmers snapped open, creating a gate inside the gates for Harry to walk through.

Harry threw a single smile back in Kalder’s direction, and the shadowy place he knew Theo was standing with Griselda, and then stepped in and through.

*

The corridors of Malfoy Manor rolled out before, silent.

Harry passed along them in as much silence as he could, but his footsteps still clicked now and then. And his shadow flickered along the white walls, and he saw the portraits of Malfoy ancestors who were sleeping, or conversing with each other. Some looked towards him and nodded.

Harry hadn’t had the ability to test whether the Lucius disguise would fool an ancestral portrait, and the books he’d got the butchering instructions from had been inconclusive on the subject. He was glad it had worked.

He nodded back and pressed further on.

Of course he might have thought that Narcissa Malfoy was asleep, since it was nighttime, but he had expected house-elves, and maybe other guests. Where the Dark Lord was staying, Death Eaters might be, as well. Where were they?

Or were they not attached to the wards enough to hear a warning from them, or to know when someone entered the house?

Good news for me, if so, Harry thought, and passed through pools of moonlight pouring through silver-lit windows.

He paused in the doorway of a sitting room that had embers glowing in the middle of its fireplace, but there was a wizard in dark robes with a hood pulled over his face sprawled in the nearest chair, and no one else. He was snoring. Harry stepped to the side far enough to see a little of his face and confirm the man was no one he knew. Likely a Death Eater, then.

I suppose it’s good to know there are people about.

Harry kept his hand on his wand as he pressed further in and on. The Manor was far bigger than it was from the outside, far more than Nott Manor. Then again, Kalder had said the Malfoys had always had more money than sense. Spending it on wizardspace would—

A noise from behind startled him.

Harry whirled around, his hand clutching his wand. A house-elf did stand there, bowing and clasping his hands over his heart. His voice was low. “Master Harry Potter must leave as soon as he can, yes.”

Cold jaws opened up in the middle of Harry’s stomach and bit him. However, he kept his voice as calm as he could. “You know who I am?”

The elf straightened. Tears shone in his eyes, making Harry think of what Kreacher would look like weeping—or try to. He literally couldn’t imagine it. “Dobby wanted to help Master Harry Potter four years ago, he did. And he couldn’t.”

Four years ago…the diary?

“You wanted to keep me safe from the diary that Lucius Malfoy brought to the school?” Harry asked slowly. “Or gave to Ginny Weasley?”

“Dobby must not speak of such things!”

The elf spun around and began smacking his face into the doorway of what seemed to be a small study off to the side. Harry jumped and glanced over his shoulder, although he thought the sitting room where the Death Eater sprawled was too far away for the man to hear.

“Dobby! Stop that!”

Thankfully, the elf did. But he turned around with his head shaking and his ears trembling. “Master Harry Potter must leave now.”

His eyes were big and hopeful, though, and Harry couldn’t help but think that the right combination of questions and actions would get him the information he needed. “How did you know who I was in the first place?”

Dobby shivered all over. “You are—Dobby was knowing who Master Harry Potter was for years. Dobby be watching over you at Hogwarts sometimes.”

Harry swallowed. He hadn’t known that had ever happened. He would have to be more careful in the future. “Is the Dark Lord still here?”

Dobby began to gasp and choke. Harry shook his head. “Forget I said that.”

Dobby swallowed in turn and stared at Harry with those big, hopeful eyes that still seemed to beg him to ask the right question. “Mistress Narcissa is saying that we house-elves cannot be talking about the Dark Lord.”

Harry nodded. Come to that, it was probably the sort of directive he should issue Kreacher. Then again, no one else seemed to know that Kreacher still existed or be willing to talk to him in the first place. “What can you tell me about?”

“Dobby can be warning Master Harry Potter about the Dark Lord!”

“Then please do it.”

“The Dark Lord is being,” Dobby said, and leaned forwards so that Harry imitated him at the same time, “dangerous.”

Harry concealed his sigh with an effort. “I know that, Dobby, but I need more than that, you see. I need to know where he is, or what he’s planning, or what kind of state he’s in at the moment, and I don’t think you can talk to me about that.”

“Dobby cannot.” Dobby was shuddering, one hand rising as if he would start choking himself. “Dobby is sorry! But Dobby can be telling Master Harry Potter that he should be leaving as soon as possible.”

Exactly the kind of thing that Theo and Kalder would tell me, Harry thought, and entertained a momentary thought of Dobby meeting his soul-bonded people. Then he dismissed it. “What kinds of warnings can you give me about the path forwards?”

“Master Harry Potter must be staying away from the libraries, the studies in use, the sitting rooms in use, and the kitchens.”

The kitchens? Harry cocked his head, wondering if the Malfoys used them as sort of a potions lab. For the first time, he felt a bit of regret that he’d cast Draco into a coma. It was the kind of thing Harry could have read out of his mind. “All right. Thanks, Dobby.”

“Please, will Master Harry Potter leave?”

Part of Harry hated to disappoint the elf staring at him with huge, pleading eyes. But he couldn’t gratify him, either. He patted Dobby on the shoulder and walked on, hearing a low sob behind him as he did so.

It’s too bad that I don’t have the time right now to break the bond that ties him to the Malfoy family. I could use another house-elf, and this one seems like he’d be loyal.

He’d probably irritate Kreacher, though.

The idea of the two house-elves meeting kept Harry entertained through the next corridor, longer than the thought of Dobby meeting Kalder and Theo had. And then he drew up and found himself outside a large pair of doors that were closed with a complex ward centered in a circle on them. It looked like the sleeping face of a moon, with heavy closed eyes and a mouth that was stretched in an expression Harry didn’t think was a smile.

Harry nodded a little. All right. So he would do what he had to do to open the doors, and he would see what lay beyond them. All the side corridors and rooms had faded away, and this was the only path that seemed to lead back into the main house. Maybe it was even the place where the Dark Lord was hiding.

His hatred seemed to bubble up inside him in response to that. Harry took a moment to lick his lips and center himself. He wanted to have his hatred and rage ready to attack if he did take a step into the Dark Lord’s resting place.

Then he extended his hand and let the living blood and muscle coating his limbs speak to the heavy seal on the door.

The moon seemed to shine with a subtle light that argued for wards embedded in it. But it didn’t shriek or wake up the house the way a true trap would have, or a protective device that could see through the “cloak” Harry wore. Instead, a glowing corona of radiance spread around the moon and grew rapidly from a dark moon to a full one and declined back towards the new one.

And then the doors unlocked with a click.

Harry smiled a little and let his hands reach out, draped with the skin and the living blood. Small streamers of muscle were wound about his fingers, and they were the ones that rested on and parted the doors.

There was only darkness beyond. Harry walked into it with the calm steps of someone who was entirely at home. He didn’t know how Dobby had seen through the disguise, but most likely it had to do with his thinking that Lucius Malfoy was a “bad master.” Everyone else who might be in the room or beyond it should see only Harry.

The doors clicked softly shut behind Harry. There were shimmering silver wards on the windows, too, but they didn’t provide enough light. Harry lifted his wand, and the candles and torches in the sconces on the walls lit at his gesture, the gesture of the master of the house.

The light stabbed through the room. Harry saw that he was standing in a large library, bigger than the one at Hogwarts in terms of how high the ceiling loomed and how many shelves there seemed to be, and the windows that shimmered with the wards lined either side of the huge dome.

Narcissa Malfoy stood in front of him with her hands clasped. Harry had only seen her face in the papers a few times, but he would have known her from the blonde hair and jutting chin that a few of the Black ancestral portraits in Grimmauld Place had.

“Lucius,” she said softly. “Let me welcome you home.”

Dobby must have told me to stay out of the library because he knew Narcissa was here, Harry thought, and stepped smoothly forwards. He knew his voice would be Lucius’s. The enchantment and the skin covering guaranteed it.

“Thank you,” he said, and let his voice tremble a little. “You don’t know—you don’t know what Potter did to me.”

“I don’t. Won’t you tell me about it?”

“He tortured me through my Dark Mark,” Harry said, and let his voice fall still further, while he pushed back his left sleeve. The skin of Lucius’s Dark Mark rested there, gleaming with foul magic and providing an explanation for some of the power that coated Harry, and Narcissa’s gaze went to it as if compelled. “He has some kind of—control over them that I didn’t anticipate. It explains why Kalder betrayed us.”

“My poor darling. And yet you escaped?”

“He thought me broken at last. He sent me to you with the intention of having me betray you and the Dark Lord. And he never saw the rebellion that I hid at the bottom of my mind, away from him.”

“He’s a Legilimens?”

Narcissa’s voice was a little sharper. Maybe she’d thought she’d assessed the threat Harry posed, and that hadn’t been part of it. Harry just nodded, though, shrinking back as if terrified or ashamed to remember something. “He’s mastered enough of the skill to read the surfaces of minds. He didn’t find my rebellion, however.”

“I’m glad.” Narcissa closed her eyes and trembled a little. “I’m so glad, my darling. Please, come here.” She held out her arms.

Harry walked over without hesitation. He had known this might be something he’d have to do, the same way that he might have to bow or kneel before the Dark Lord. He was prepared to endure it.

Narcissa’s hands rested like steel bands around his shoulders and arms, and she drew him closer, murmuring. Harry let his own murmurs escape his mouth too softly to be heard, the way hers were. This was the best way to handle it, when he hadn’t bothered to look into Lucius’s mind enough to find out how he handled intimate matters.

And then he felt the wand at the nape of his neck.

“Did you think,” Narcissa hissed into his ear while Harry stood still and tried to decide what he should do, “that you could bring an alien magic within the wards of Malfoy Manor and not have me know it at once?”

I didn’t bring any—

And then Harry thought of the torque Griselda had gifted him with, and wanted to howl.

He had no time. He broke free of Narcissa’s hold and reached for his wand, but she had had more warning than he had, and she got the spell off first.

“Stupefy.”

Harry fell, thinking as he did, They want to keep me alive. That’s something.

His friends and guardian waiting beyond the wards were also something.

Then came the night.