Harry Potter and the Unholy Grails

A Restless Knight

The rain pounded against the windows of Privet Drive like a hundred tiny fingers. The growing darkness and the soft glow spilling from each window signaled the end of another troubled day. The evening news headlines flashed worrying and strange stories across the living room of Number Four. All the bodies from a London church had disappeared from their graves; a schoolteacher had murdered all her pupils that morning, an old historic ruin in the North had suddenly crumbled after centuries of stability, and the newest secretary in the Prime Minister's office had been killed in a plane crash. Nearly all the news was grave, and it had left the country considerably subdued.

'No stories about water-skiing budgies anymore,' Harry Potter reflected gloomily as he stared out the window onto Privet Drive, ears only half-tuned to the newscaster's voice. The Dursleys sat across from him, eyes glued to the television. It had become somewhat of a morbid ritual for them to watch the news each night, dinners of shredded carrots and cottage cheese perched precariously on their laps. Even Uncle Vernon had eased up on his manic torture of Harry, too enraptured as he was by the widespread destruction of his country.

'And they don't even know the half of it,' Harry thought to himself. He wondered how well his Aunt and Uncle would sleep if they knew that the bodies from the church hadn't vanished at all, but had been dug up and brought back to life. He doubted that they would be able to go on knowing that Mr. Number Ten and his family, who had recently vanished on a trip to Wales, might come crashing through their door at any moment in an undead rage. If the reaction of the Wizarding World was any indication, Muggle Britain would be thrown into a state of advanced turmoil if the truth were ever told to them.

Harry watched as a drop if water rolled over the frame of the window and began to slide through his field of vision. It hit one of its fellows halfway down and both were consumed by the other. The new, larger drop fell faster, dropping so quickly that it smashed into the frame at the bottom and broke into a thousand pieces. He watched several more drips destroyed by their own ambitious growth before pulling his eyes from the drenched figure of Mark Evans dragging his dog through the rain. Only Dudley looked up as he picked up his plate from the coffee table.

"Wherer ou goring?" He asked anxiously, his mouth full of potato. The Dursleys had shown an annoying need to be near Harry since he had arrived home from Hogwarts. They knew that he was their only means of defense in this invisible war. Yet Harry couldn't stand another minute of seeing Uncle Vernon's pulsing forehead vein (well used these days because of his constant proximity to Harry), and so he ignored Dudley.

Taking the steps two at a time to his bedroom, Harry quickly made it to his bedroom. Looking at the now-complete darkness outside, he grabbed a quill from his desk and crossed off July 30th on his calendar. Tomorrow, his 17th birthday, he would leave the Dursleys and travel to the Burrow. What would have been a happy day would be marred by the funeral of Kingsley Shakebolt, who had died just yesterday protecting the Muggle Prime Minister from Death Eaters.

While nobody was sure, since the only witness had been Kingsley himself, Harry was sure that the Death Eater that had attacked the Prime Minister was Snape. The hatred that had been seething in him since last June welled up again as he thought about it. Snape. He had worked alongside the Order for months, lured even Dumbledore into security, but he had betrayed them all in the end. Now he had killed two of them, adding further injury to insult. Snape. The quill Harry was holding snapped, he was gripping it that hard. What he didn't want to do to that man.

A fresh dousing of fear swept through the blonde boy as he ran down the dark streets of London. Every shadow and noise seemed to grab at his eyes, wrenching his face this way and that looking for an invisible and evasive pursuer. As he rounded a corner he thought he saw a figure move in a side alley. Seemingly out of reflex he pulled his wand from his pocket and held it in front of him like a sword. He hoped but no longer really believed that that would save him.

A cat, startled by his sudden pounding footsteps, darted out from a doorway. It had gone no more than a few steps when the boy had noticed it.

"Stupify!" He muttered automatically. The cat froze in its tracks.

"It would seem you are wasting your energy, cousin," a sneering voice came from the darkness of yet another side street.

Whipping around, the boy's eyes widened in horror as he recognized the heavy-eyed woman stepping into the lamplight. "Aunt Bellatrix," he murmured in dread.

"Ah, ah Draco," Bellatrix Lestrange chided mockingly. "For me to be your Auntie you would still have to be a Malfoy. You father disowned you, or had you forgotten?"

Draco said nothing. All of his thoughts and willpower were concentrated on two things. First he had to block Bellatrix from his mind, so she wouldn't know what he was planning. Secondly he had to Apparate far, far away, and quickly. Stalling for time, Draco attempted his best sneer and faced his Aunt.

"I am fairly confident in saying, Aunt Bellatrix, that I am much less out of favour with my father than you are with the Dark Lord."

"How dare you! I am one o the Dark Lord's most favoured -"

"Are you?" Draco snarled, thinking furiously, sneer firmly in place now. "He routinely sends his pets out looking for runaway teenagers now, does he?"

With a growl of rage Bellatrix raised her wand and slashed it through the air. Draco ducked wildly behind an old couch that somebody had put out as trash. There was an explosive noise as the fabric of couch ripped and then an acrid smell as it burst into flame. Draco stood, momentarily obscured by smoke, turned on the spot and vanished.

The sudden loss of the couch's heat told him in an instant that he had escaped for now, but he knew he was by no means safe. He was standing in the high street of Hogsmeade, and a goblin was peering at him appraisingly through the semi-frosted windows of the Three Broomsticks. Shuddering, Draco refocused himself on the plan. He needed to get out of here, but Bellatrix would trace any magic he used. Suddenly an idea came to him, and he threw his wand arm up into the air.

The morning dawned fresh and wet over Number Four, and Harry was awoken by a stray chill that had crept through the crack in his window. Immediately he was aware of the tension in the household. He could nearly feel the Dursleys all sitting around the kitchen table, eager to start to pretend Harry didn't exist and scared to lived without his protection. The mental image making him chuckle a bit to himself, Harry threw a pair of robes and Dobby's Christmas socks on, sat on his trunk and popped it closed and lugged it together with his broom and Hedwig's empty cage into the hall. He had managed to lurch halfway down the stairs with the trunk when he realized that he could magic in down, having come of age today.

With magic to make his work faster, Harry managed to shrink his things into walnut sized trinkets and stuff them in his pockets. Then, with some trepidation, he continued into the kitchen.

"Um," he began. "I'm…well I'm going now. Erm…thanks." He said lamely, marveling at how anticlimactic the end of an era of his whole life could be. The Dursleys looked at him, and he looked back. The rain began to drum on the roof again. Uncle Vernon coughed by way of farewell, Dudley slowly pushed his hands against his backside (clearly afraid that now that Harry could do magic he would want revenge), but Aunt Petunia's expression was surprising. She was looking at him with a mixture of concern and pride. She nodded at him, and he may have imagined it but it seemed that a small smile was even tugging at the side of her mouth.

"Right," Harry mumbled and turned for the last time from the kitchen. He glanced around the hall, a thrill of excitement stealing over him, and he stepped out the door, his shrunken trunk and cage bumping in his pocket. He took twelve confident steps down walk before he reached the sidewalk, and in that time he was soaked through be the renewed downpour. He didn't care, and taking a few more strides down the road he decided to summon the Knight Bus instead of flying.

'Much less conspicuous,' he thought happily, and then laughed at the idea of being seen by Muggles on his broom on his first day as a qualified wizard. Feeling as if he had just drank a tankard of Felix Felicis, Harry drew his wand arm quickly up.

BANG.

A violently purple bus sprang suddenly into existence in front of Harry. The bus landed so close to Harry that his fringe was blown back over his head, exposing his lightning bolt scar, one of the front wheels balanced on the curb. The bus doors gave a wrenching squeak as they opened a sound so vulgar that Harry actually plugged his ears. An elderly Muggle couple and their grandson across the street didn't even glance around.

It took Harry several moments to realize that something was wrong. Muffled raised voices punctuated the sudden silence surrounding the bus. A teenage voice bellowed gruffly from beyond the bus doors, "Come in!"

Harry stepped cautiously over the threshold of the bus and looked around. At first glance the bus seemed to be nearly deserted, but upon second glance Harry discovered that all 20-odd riders and the conductor of the bus were all crowded around a large armchair. The person in it was hidden from view.

"You've got a lot of nerve, stepping right on to this bus, bold ass brass. We know what you are," the young man in the conductor's outfit was saying. Harry recognized Eddie Carmichael, a Ravenclaw a year above him who had once tried to sell him Baruffio's Brain Elixer before their OWLs. He supposed, with a pang of pity, that Stan Shunpike must still be in Askaban.

The crowd around the armchair was muttering angrily, and some of the wizards nearest it were even fingering their wands. Wondering who the whole of the Knight Bus could be so interested in, Harry took several steps closer. At that moment, Eddie looked up at him and many others followed his gaze. Even as he vaguely noticed Eddie's eyes pop, the crowd parted and Harry had his first clear view of the person tied, for Harry now say he was tied, to the chair. It was Draco Malfoy.

He was tied by his wrists and ankles to a plush pink chair in the center of the Knight Bus. A rag was stuffed in his mouth. How the bus' riders had got him there, Harry didn't know, but he was sure why they had. Ever since Lucius Malfoy had been sent to Askaban, the Malfoys had been under serious scrutiny by the Ministry. When both Narcissa and Draco had disappeared the same night as Dumbledore had been murdered, the wizarding community had seized, quite correctly, on this as proof of their allegiance to Voldemort. Harry had not heard of any of the Malfoys since then.

Yet here was Draco Malfoy, tied to an armchair in front of him. Malfoy's eyes flashed wildly around the room in plain fear. His left arm sleeve was pulled up to the elbow, exposing a snake tattoo so red and raw it looked as if it had been bleeding seconds before. His usually well-kept hair was falling into his face and looked in desperate need of a wash. All of him did, even his normally spotless robes. All the wizards around Malfoy were looking at him predatorily, and a ginger-haired witch at Malfoy's right elbow was twirling his wand in her hands.

Suddenly, Malfoy's desperate eyes caught Harry's. Harry's stomach swooped as he looked at the fear in his former enemy's eyes. He vividly remembered the night two months ago when he had watched Malfoy lower his wand to Dumbledore. 'He wouldn't have killed him,' Harry thought with certainty. It was this thought that prompted him to open his mouth at all. "What are you doing?"

Pulling himself up impressively, Eddie Carmichael pulled the lapels of his conductor's uniform straight and smiled at Harry, "We have just apprehended this criminal, Mr. Potter."

He looked at Harry, clearly expecting him to exclaim in praise or wring his hand. Instead, Harry said, "What crime is he accused of, then?"

Taken aback, Eddie's smile faltered a bit. Around him, the bus rider's were looking mildly surprised. Harry knew they were thinking his reaction was hardly Chosen One material.

For a few moments the only sound was the rain hammering at the bus windows, and then an elderly witch stepped forward from the silent crowd, "He's a Death Eater, Mr. Potter! Look, you can see the Mark right there on his arm." She shuddered dramatically.

"Ok," Harry said, nonplused, "but has he committed any crime? Has he killed, or used an Unforgivable?"

The witch considered this. "It hardly seems to matter-"

"It matters a lot," Harry interrupted. "Albus Dumbledore once told me that it is our choices that make us who we are. I hardly think Malfoy chose to be a Death Eater. He was much more likely forced into it by his parents, or Voldemort."

The entirety of the bus flinched at the Dark Lord's name, and Ernie Prang, the bus driver, lurched the wheel to the right so hard that an entire elementary school had to crowd up against the church beside it to avoid being hit. Malfoy's face snapped up to look Harry in the eye. He had wanted to join the Death Eaters, and he knew Harry knew it. Only the slight knit in his brow betrayed his confusion.

The bus was buzzing with mummers from its occupants. The word Dumbledore was being used over and over. In his death, Professor Dumbledore's words had become law, and Harry had known it when he had evoked his name. Finally, Eddie turned from the whispering crowd and looked at Harry again, "If he isn't to be considered a criminal, Mr. Potter, what do want us to do with him?

"Let him go," Harry suggested. "He's obviously running from Voldemort, or why would he risk being on the Knight Bus?"

Eddie looked stricken. "Let him….go?" he repeated aghast. "But what if he has done Unforgivables? How would we know?"

Harry considered his options. He didn't know what Draco had done, so forcing him to reveal his secrets could condemn him. On the other hand, it seemed that it would be the only way to help him. Mind made up, Harry took the three steps that separated him from Draco, and reached into his robes. Pulling out a small vial of clear Veritaserum potion that he had nicked from Slughorn, Harry pulled the rag from Draco's mouth.

"Potter…" he rasped. His voice was harsh, and sounded as if he had just been running.

"Stick out your tongue Malfoy," Harry commanded. To his astonishment, Malfoy did it without question. Carefully Harry dropped three drops of Veritaserum onto Draco's tongue before straightening up. "What is your name?" he asked.

"Draco Malfoy," Malfoy answered in a suddenly deadened voice.

"How old are you?"

"17."

"What year are you in at Hogwarts?"

"I don't attend Hogwarts anymore."

Harry paused at that. He looked around at the bus apprehensively. Finally, he took a deep breath and continued, "Are you a Death Eater?"

"No," Malfoy murmured. "The Dark Lord had me expelled from his ranks for not killing Albus Dumbledore."

"Had he ever asked you to kill anyone else?"

"No."

"Have you ever killed anyone else?"

"No."

Harry felt relief. He looked appealingly around the bus, but was surprised to see them unconvinced. He turned back to Malfoy.

"Have you ever used an Unforgivable Curse?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"No," Malfoy muttered dully. "The Dark Lord did not feel I was powerful enough to be trusted with them."

Harry felt triumph, and decided to confirm his suspicion. "Are you on the run from the Death Eaters?"

"Yes. They are looking for me to try to kill me, as they killed my mother. The Dark Lord," Malfoy choked. "He does not accept failure."

Al through the bus now there was a good deal of approving nods and even smiles. Harry decided the time had come to act. He pulled his wand from his pocket and removed the ties holding Malfoy to the chair with a wave. Several people stepped back, alarmed, but Malfoy did not move. He sat on the chair, head down, seemingly uncaring about his renewed freedom. Harry turned to Eddie. "Are we in London?"

Eddie was still gazing at Malfoy as he muttered, "Where are we Ern?"

Ernie Prang was not looking at the road at all, as he had been watching the proceedings behind him. As a result, factories and fountains, mailboxes and mansions were leaping left and right, and it took Ernie a few moments to figure out their whereabouts.

"We are just not far from Piccadilly, Ed."

"Excellent." Harry said. "Stop the bus please."

The Knight Bus stopped entirely, so suddenly that Harry fell a few paces back, and Malfoy was brought reluctantly to his feet as his body kept moving forward. Harry seized Malfoy's marked arm around the wrist, pushed 22 sickles into Eddie's hands, and amid mild protest he pulled Malfoy off the bus. Clutching the despondent boy to him, Harry concentrated hard on the one place he felt he could go with a fugitive Death Eater and not have one or both of them killed. He swung them both around, and they vanished.