Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Labyrinth, Harry Potter or anything else you recognise.
A/N: Again with the editing. Thanks for reviewing people – I do appreciate it. And, as always, thanks to SeulWolfe for beta-reading.
Chapter Ten
"So, the Labyrinth's a piece of cake, is it? Well, let's see how you deal with this little slice!"
30th May, 2005 - Jareth's Bedroom, The Castle Beyond the Goblin City
"Wha-What do you mean, Malfoy? How do you know it's him?" Severus asked sharply, and Harry shrugged. Jareth glanced at him briefly before replying.
"The name is intuited through the magic of the call. This 'Malfoy' person is calling to be brought here. In fact, he said 'us', which leads me to believe he would like me to remove more than himself. Excuse us." He said rising, and holding a hand out to Harry.
"But why-" Severus cowered under the stern gaze the Goblin King directed at him.
"Do not forget your place, wizard." He all but snarled, and Harry was reminded of the man his lover could be. He was not frightened though, because he knew that this was merely another side to the man's complex personality. A King sometimes needed to be harsh and commanding, and so he was. In fact, he found the air of command and power his King was displaying rather arousing.
They left the room in silence. After a lengthy pause, Sirius also left, and Severus slumped slightly in his seat, clearly about to launch into a sulk, if wasn't there already.
"Severus, don't start." Warned Remus, earning himself a harsh glare from the other man. "I mean it." Remus added firmly and Severus shifted in his chair again.
"But aren't you curious about why he - " He began but was cut off.
"Of course I am, but now is not the time." The werewolf replied, glancing at the stony faces of the elves still present in the room. The way they were staring was making him nervous.
Severus followed his gaze and slumped again. He was used to not being wanted; he didn't really think it would be any different here. Well, perhaps privately he could admit to himself that a bit of... appreciation, would not go amiss. It would be... nice to be appreciated. Welcomed, even. For once. But such self pitying was unbecoming, and so he kept silent.
A gentle hand on his shoulder and a soft smile to accompany it reminded him that he was welcomed, and loved as well, hard to believe though it may seem. If these people did not want him then so be it. He had his wolf back now, after all. All he has to do was reach out to him, and that wasn't so hard to do.
And best of all, there was no Dumbledore this time to say him nay.
"The presence of these others, these wizards, worries me." Declared Enaberia in elvish. Her tones were hushed, but in the silence of the room, everyone could hear her, though few could understand.
"I do not like them." Said Elalaeryn. This gave the rest of the family pause. Elalaeryn did not speak often, preferring to listen and observe. That was not so unusual for an elven ranger, but Caredessi's husband was more taciturn than most. So, when he did speak, everyone paid attention.
"I agree, that they could be a danger. But we must trust that Jareth knows what he is about. They are under his control here, and I think they are well aware of that fact. Especially after the words he had with the dark one there." Dellandario replied, and his family nodded. Enaberia leaned forward.
"That may be so, but I cannot relax until they have proven they are trustworthy. I would feel even better, if Talemario was here." She turned imploring eyes on her husband. "Do say he may join us here, darling! Your steward can easily take care of the kingdom while he is absent. I need to have all my children near me, and I know he would want to meet his little brother." She beseeched, her desperation evident in her voice.
The King sighed and quickly scanned the faces of his family, to see if they too wished this thing. They obviously did, since Caredessi even game him an eager nod, and her husband merely shrugged. "Please father," Began the Princess, "Say he can come? I do miss him, and I know he and Elessar would get on well together." She added. Elalaeryn bestirred himself for a second time that day to say his piece as well.
"This is a special time, though a troubling one. The family needs to be whole, Talemario must come." He said and Dellandario sighed again.
"As you would have it." He agreed, and signalled a servant. Writing a quick note on a pen and paper supplied by another aide, he gave the message to one of his best men.
"Take this to my son in Faenya-Dail. Tell him we miss him and hope he can join us as soon as possible." He ordered, and the messenger nodded. Throwing the window open, it was not long before he was on his way to his home, to bring Harry's big brother to Jareth's castle.
30th May, 2005 - The Throne Room, The Castle Beyond The Goblin City
"So, do you always bring the wisher's into the throne room? Or is it just the 'wishees'?" Harry paused frowning, before giving his lover a crooked smile. "Am I making any sense? Because I was just listening to myself in my head, and I couldn't understand what I was saying." He said with a chuckle and Jareth smiled.
"I suppose I know what you mean. It depends. Before I met you, I, well... I liked to play with mortals. Toy with them, and generally make them perform for my amusement. Mostly I would drop them at the beginning of the Labyrinth and let them blunder their way through it. Most of them did not make it through, and a lot of them didn't even try." He replied and Harry's eyes darkened for a moment.
"Why did you do that, Jareth?" He asked.
"I was expecting that question. There are many answers, depending on how honest with myself I wish to be. The easy answer is to say that the fae have always played with the lives of mortals and probably always will. This is one truth. I am by no means the only fae alive, though I am one of the oldest and most powerful. But to me, I think it was more to do with anger, especially lately. Mortals took you, and with you my chance for happiness. When one is immortal, one knows one will live forever, it makes the turn of the years rather dull. With you, I have a future to look forward to, a purpose other than governing this kingdom." The Goblin King explained, and Harry tried his best to understand.
A large part of what Jareth was trying to say was difficult for him to relate to, since he was so young and from such a different world. But it was not hard to imagine himself in the other man's shoes and so he could easily afford some empathy for his situation. And he couldn't be upset or disappointed in the King's behaviour since he was not able to say he would have handled the loss of his mate any better than Jareth had.
"And now you have a purpose, you do not feel the need to torment mortals, is that it?" Harry asked, stopping in front of his throne and waiting for the King to sit down before he did. Jareth duly sat in his throne and took possession of Harry's hand once more, when he was comfortably ensconced in his chair.
"I wouldn't say that necessarily. Some of them richly deserve it." He gave Harry a meaningful look. "But I will say this: with you now the centre of my universe, I shall renege on my previous streak of abject cruelty. For my enemies and yours however, I shall show no mercy, as befits a King." He delivered the last sentence with such steely certainly that Harry was in no doubt that he meant it.
"All well and good then. I would not expect or ask for anything else. The time has passed for second chances for some, since they are already on their fourth or fifth. This late in the game, as they say, the players must make their stand and suffer the consequences of their actions." Harry declared and Jareth nodded.
"So mote it be." He replied softly. He squeezed his lover's hand and quickly received and answering squeeze. With nary a change in his stony expression the King summoned forth the wishers with a flash of magic. Having known who was coming, Harry was prepared for the sight of the tell-tale Malfoy white blond hair attached to the two visitors. What he was not prepared for, was the near skeletal appearance of the elder Malfoy.
Harry was out of his chair in a heartbeat, intent on healing the man, but seconds later the door banged open and in stalked his godfather. Harry barely had time to blink in surprise, before Sirius flung himself down on the floor beside the sickly man, and gently raised his head to look at him.
The sharp yet ragged intake of breath marked the surprise as both Malfoy men recognised the man they though was dead and gone, and Sirius next words shocked practically everyone in the room to their bones.
"Lucius, I'm here. Don't ask me how at the moment. Just know I'm here, I'm real, and I accept. Can you hear me? I accept!" He cried desperately, before lowering his head to the other man's and kissing him soundly.
Harry stumbled backwards to his seat, still staring at the two embracing men in shock. Jareth helped him sit down safely, and sent him a quick glance to make sure he wasn't about to expire on the spot in surprise.
Slowly, his brain began to process what he was seeing, and the instincts afforded him since the change started supplying him with an explanation for these extraordinary events.
"They are mated?" He asked quietly and Jareth nodded.
"Yes, they are. Or at least, they will be. They were intended, but something stopped them from completing the cycle when they were adolescents. Hence the reason for the decline of the elder gentlemen. Sirius has now accepted the bond and the process has finally commenced. If you stretch your senses a little you will be able to watch the regeneration of his cells as the combined magic rejuvenates him." He replied and Harry did so.
After some intense concentration, he could perceive an energy moving between the two men as they held each other, no longer kissing, but still connected. It did appear to literally be breathing new life into Lucius.
"Veela!" The answer popped into his head and was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Hearing this, Draco Malfoy who had been silent until now, spun round to face them, a defiant look in his eyes. This faded when he realised who he was facing.
"I - Are you the Goblin King?" He asked hesitantly, a trace of the old Malfoy pride in the set of his shoulders, but completely missing from his tone. Harry found he didn't like it. If the world had got so bad that even the Malfoys could not look down their noses at people with their in-bred arrogance, then something was seriously wrong. Not that he thought that such an attitude in a person was appealing or anything, but it represented a feeling of defeat which he was all too familiar with.
Seemingly not knowing what else to do, Draco sank to his knees and looked the King in supplication.
"Your Majesty, we asked to be taken by you as a means of protection. We are descended from peoples of this land, who sought adventure and new experiences in the human world and left with your blessing many years ago. Like the goblins, we have not forgotten who we are beholden to, but unlike them, my people have lost their way. Instead of bringing love and joy to the world as were intended to, many of my people have been using their powers for darkness and empty seduction." Draco paused as if gathering himself, and Harry watched silently along with Jareth.
"Continue." Prompted the King and Draco swallowed audibly.
"We lived on the earth as wizards, easily able to bend our veela powers to use in their magics. But we fell into the same corruption as the humans. My father was poisoned by a woman who sought to use him for his power and money. She stole him from his rightful mate, and since her death, he has been slowly deteriorating. We thought his true mate was dead but now I see he is here, and..." The younger veela's voice faltered as he tried to take in what was happening. Harry couldn't tell if he was more relieved or joyful, or maybe a mixture of both.
"It was my fault." A scratchy voice interjected, and all eyes turned to the owner of said voice.
5th February, 1974 - The Stairs Near the North Tower, Hogwarts
Sirius Black, debonair man-about-town, or so he liked to think of himself, was not having the best of days. In fact, his rather mild mannered best friend, Remus Lupin, would have put it in his usual offhand way, that our poor Sirius was having a little bit of a trying day. And he wouldn't be wrong either. Guilty of a gross understatement in his friend's eyes perhaps, but not wrong, no.
It had begun with him sleeping through his alarm and his friends deciding not to wake him because they slept through theirs as well. Sirius thought that this was a likely excuse and things had pretty much gone downhill from there.
He was late for breakfast and so had to go hungry. He didn't have any free periods before lunch, so he wasn't able to go to the kitchens for a snack. The strap of his bag broke and when he tried to repair it, it only made it worse. He'd lost his Transfiguration homework and been docked points, he'd blown up his potion and got detention, and then now when walking back from said detention he'd walked right into the slumped form of somebody or other, who seemed to be having an episode of some kind on the floor.
"Just perfect." Muttered Sirius as he bent to turn over whoever it was to check they were still breathing. "The perfect end to and even more perfect day." He swore under his breath when he noticed the tell-tale white blond hair. Snatching his hands away as if burnt, he stumbled and landed on his arse in his haste to get away from the boy on the floor - Lucius Malfoy.
Unfortunately for him, Malfoy, who had seemed to be unconscious when he bumped into him, now appeared to be waking up. Groans of what must be pain were emanating from the crumpled figure hinted at his move from out like a light to sort of wakefulness. Sirius thought of it this way because the grip the other boy had on his lucidity was clearly tenuous at best.
Not wanting to subject himself to Malfoy this close to curfew on a really terrible day, Sirius decided discretion was indeed the better part of valour, whatever that meant, and rose to beat a hasty exit to anywhere other than here. He probably would have succeeded too, if a hand hadn't shot out from the previously huddled figure, and closed over his wrist in a vice-like grip.
"Mine!" The word was spat out harshly and before Sirius could even react with more than a quick blink, rough lips closed fiercely over his.
30th May, 2005 - Sirius' Bedroom, Off Harry's Suite
"My family knew, of course, about the Malfoys. There had been some intermarrying over the years, how could there not be with the way the pureblood world has always functioned? Oh, they thought they had kept the secret well, but every Black husband or wife has always reported anything they discovered about their spouses back to the family. It's always been that way. Any family who think they can claim the loyalty of a Black over their family, with a measly think like marriage, is naive and deserves whatever they have coming to them. At least, that's the way my parents always explained it." Sirius said, with a jaded look in his eyes that Harry loathed.
Lucius was ensconced in the bed, Sirius next to him with the other man's head cradled in his arms. After what had happened in the throne room, Jareth suggested that the head of the Malfoy family might be more comfortable in a bed, considering his condition. Despite the rapid improvement since Sirius accepted their bond, he was still in pretty bad shape, so everyone agreed right away.
A message was sent to those still waiting in Ragnok's suite that they would be delayed, but would explain all and to wait there.
Draco had come with them, and was being established in an adjacent room, so that he could easily see his father. Although Lucius and Sirius would need to go into a seclusion of sorts to cement their relationship, the Goblin King had also explained that veela need to be able to sense their young nearby, this would help to keep them calm and make the rest of the process a lot easier on all involved, so Draco shouldn't be too far away.
Sirius, who seemed to know rather a lot about the process, suggested his room for the two of them to share, as his presence and scent in the room would soothe and reassure the veela that was Lucius Malfoy.
"So you knew, did you? What he is, and what was happening?" Demanded Draco, glaring a little with anger at the way his father had been treated.
"Yes. After I ran away from him, I spent the whole night trying to puzzle it out. A chance mention of Lucius' birthday by some Slytherins in a lesson the next day tipped me off, and I realised he had gone into his mating cycle, and discovered I was his mate. I rejected the idea immediately, even though I knew what it would do to him. I have no good excuse I am afraid, other than the fact that I was only sixteen at the time, and incredibly frightened. I knew the Malfoys were just as bad as my family and I could not see myself tied to someone like that for the rest of my life. I just couldn't." Sirius ran his hand agitatedly through his hair, but stopped when he noticed Lucius stirring, a frown marring his pale, perfect features. Sirius forced himself to relax before answering another question from Draco.
"So, you went to your cousin." He said quietly, and Sirius nodded.
"I did. I knew she wanted him and his money. After what had happened with Andromeda, her father made it very plain that she was to wed someone of his choosing, and believe me, that did not sit well with Narcissa. Until she met Lucius, of course. Then she was all too happy to set up house and home with a suitable pureblood of good breeding and fortune. There isn't much left to tell really. I tipped her off, and she came up with some way to make him think she was his mate and not me. I don't really know what she used since I didn't get involved in that. But it doesn't stop it all being my fault." His self recriminations were cut off by the man in his lap as he stirred again.
"Long time ago." Was all Lucius said, before lapsing back into a semi-comatose state. Sirius looked worried but both Draco and Jareth were quick to reassure him.
"His body is doing that on purpose. It's trying to divert as much energy as possible to healing itself, and doing so shuts down any superfluous functions while it is working." Explained Draco, and the Goblin King concurred.
"It is perfectly normal, I assure you. While not many of the veela who still reside in my kingdom have gone through as much distress as Mr Malfoy here, I have witnessed enough to recognise the signs, and there is nothing to be alarmed about." Sirius leaned back against the mound of pillows behind him, relaxing a little, but still with worried eyes on Lucius.
"His colour still worries me, though I suppose he's always been quite pale. Ha-Elessar, perhaps you could - ?" He raised enquiring eyes to his godson, who in turn frowned and approached the bed. Holding a hand barely an inch above the slumbering veela's skin, Harry shook his head and stepped back.
"I would not like to interfere. While I think I can help, I should not try to heal him at this early stage. His bond with you is still so new, that I worry introducing any foreign magic might interrupt the process. Such would be disastrous for any possible recovery. No, I suggest we wait until the bonding is complete and if he still has any health worries at that time, then we can address them. Until then, perhaps it would be best if we left you alone. What say you, Draco? Would you like to meet my family? There are even some people here you might recognise." He suggested and the Malfoy heir paused before nodding his acceptance, an intrigued look in his eyes.
All in all, Harry was not sure what to make of this older, more reserved Draco Malfoy. While it stood to reason that he would loose a lot of his childish impulsiveness with the passing of the years, he would still expect to see some of that inborn Malfoy obstinacy to be apparent, and it wasn't. As he had concluded earlier, he didn't like it. Oh, for sure, it made dealing with the young man an awful lot easier, so he supposed he should be happy with that. But he wasn't.
As they left Harry's guest suite, and made their way back to Ragnok's chambers, Jareth's ever faithful aide appeared and walked along side his lord.
"Your Majesty, some of our people Aboveground are reporting outbreaks of civil unrest in the magical community. It is mainly centred around the wizards, as they appear to be setting themselves against anyone of mixed race parentage." He declared, handing his King a sheaf of documents which Jareth quickly scanned before handing them to Harry to read.
"Wizards have always been fools, it is not secret. This latest idiocy may well be their downfall. It was only a matter of time I suppose." He mused, ignoring the accompanying snort from Draco.
Harry handed the documents back to Jareth, who in turn gave them to his servant. Stopping before the door the Ragnok's suite, they waited for the guards to knock and then open the doors for them, the Goblin King nodding to his aide to join them.
30th May, 2005 - The Living Room, Ragnok's Usual Suite
"Ah, there you are gentlemen, and I see you have brought us a visitor, care to introduce him - " Ragnok was interrupted by Draco's heartfelt cry.
"S-Severus?! Professor Lupin?" He exclaimed in shock and surprise. They too were amazed to see him.
"Draco?"
"Mr Malfoy?"
All three were on their feet staring at each other, seemingly having forgotten about the rest of the people in the room. With a slight gesture, Jareth motioned to Harry to take a seat with him and let the wizards sort this one out for themselves. While the three of them were exchanging brief histories as to why and how they were there, Harry's parents beckoned him over.
"Elessar, we've sent for your brother to come and join us here. I know he will be very impatient to meet you. We don't want to overwhelm you or anything, but it didn't feel right leaving him out of all this." His mother explained and Harry nodded his agreement.
"It will be a tad strange, but then most of this has been already anyway. I would like to meet him too though. When will he get here?" He asked, and his father answered.
"It shouldn't be more than two or three days, give or take. He will need to make sure everything is in hand and organised in Faenya-Dail before he can leave." Dellandario smiled, and turned slightly when he saw the three wizards taking their seats. Jareth rose and started pacing the room, a habit he seemed to have picked up from Harry in a short space of time.
"Young Mr Malfoy here is a veela, as is his father. For those of you who do not already know, the veela which live Aboveground originated from my kingdom and went out into the wider world for adventure and new experiences a long time ago. Some have remained and I have sent for their Court representative to join us here. She should be here in a few hours. The Malfoys are now under my protection and if necessary we shall repatriate them as my subjects, should the need arrive in the future. They bring with them worrying news of persecution and attacks on anyone with apparent magical creature heritage." There was an outbreak of murmurs and unhappy noises from the people in the room.
"A report of this kind has reached me in the last few minutes as well," Began Ragnok. "Apparently, they have not made any moves towards my people, probably because they know we're holding their gold. The attacks are directed to isolated persons, lone werewolves, that kind of thing. The Ministry of Magic has passed a new law requiring everyone with so called 'creature' blood to register, and I hear they have plans to make the records semi-public, so that employers and the like can check it before they hire people, etc." The outrage in his voice was clearly evident and more than one person wondered if wizarding Britain had gone and lost its marbles this time.
There was a long silence as everybody tried to digest the news, not that it affected many of them directly, but the suffering of those they counted magical kin was enough to make them extremely upset and angry.
"How did it ever get so bad?" Murmured Harry, though his voice was soft it could be easily heard by all in the quiet room. He got up and went to look out of the window, smiling briefly at the goblins having a good ol' time in the grounds below. He turned back to face the others. "I should have left them all to Voldemort." He declared.
"Oh bloody hell! Potter!?!"