Vengeance Will Be Mine
Chapter 10

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J. K. Rowling.

- - -

Harry Potter couldn't sleep.

His bed in the well-appointed re-done master bedroom was comfortable, and his bedsheets were cool. Dobby had helpfully put cooling charms on his pillow and sheets so he wouldn't swelter in the summer heat, so that certainly wasn't the problem.

Blast it, he mentally groused as he thumped the pillow.

Harry sat up in bed and grabbed up his wand. He muttered, "Tempus," and sighed. The numbers that flashed up momentarily showed that it was 1.12, hardly a time to be still awake and not able to sleep.

He knew why, too. He was too keyed up, having finally – finally – gotten his hands on Wormtail, after three years in which the unassuming-looking man had managed to throw the British wizarding world into turmoil and a second war, because he had managed to raise Voldemort back from the barely-alive form he once inhabited.

Harry decided he might as well do the rounds in his house, just in case. He slipped out of bed, put on his slippers, then rummaged for his glasses and put them on as well. After that, he silently descended the stairs with only his wand for a light.

The second floor showed nothing unusual, though Harry thought he heard Ron mumbling slightly as he passed the doorway of the room which Ron was sharing with Hermione (Harry was sure Hermione had enforced a 'separate beds' rule, much to Ron's misery). Croaker's room had the door closed, and Harry could detect no noise coming from it.

As Harry passed to the stairs, he peeked over the bannister and saw nothing untoward. Descending to the first floor, he smirked at the blank spot which used to have Walburga Black's infamous painting, and then paused as his ears picked up a faint scratching.

Padding swiftly on down to the ground floor, the scratching grew more noticeable. Suddenly, in alarm, Harry knew what was going on.

Throwing caution to the winds, Harry dashed down the stairs to the basement, barely noticing the kitchen being cleaned silently by Dobby and Winky, and dashed down the corridor that led to the room where Remus transformed.

The steady scratching of metal on metal could be heard through the door. Harry mentally kicked himself as he realised no-one had bothered to check Wormtail's pockets. With magic everywhere one looked, nobody paused to consider Muggle methods of escaping prisons. Without special hardening charms on the metal bars of Wormtail's cell, a saw would do the job of letting someone out. And if he had his wand…

Harry cursed and wished he'd remembered to check for Wormtail's wand before locking him up. Harry readied himself, mentally counting down from three.

On "one" he slammed the door open, wand pointed, bellowing, "Stupefy!"

The red light struck Wormtail completely unawares, and he collapsed against the rear wall, his saw stuck in one of the bars.

Ice seemed to travel down Harry's spine as he noticed that Wormtail had already managed to saw through four bars at the top, and was working his way down the gridwork on one side. The saw, which he plucked out from the horizontal bar at eye level, was just an ordinary blade which could be bought at any hardware store and could conveniently attach to a coping saw frame. If Wormtail had succeeded in sawing away for several more hours, he would have made a convenient square just the right size for escaping a cell that had anti-Animagus protections laid on it.

A detached part of himself admired the effort it must have taken for Pettigrew to have gripped the saw in his hands, pushing and straining against the metal. But a sudden surge of anger at the thought that Wormtail could have escaped their clutches, again, made Harry begin seeing red. Sparks flew from his wand as he bellowed, "Ennervate!"

A dazed Wormtail slowly stood, only to rear back in shock as he realised his unfortunate situation. He began snivelling, "Harry! Don't hurt me!"

Harry roared, "Shut up!"

He waved the saw blade under Wormtail's nose, yelling, "Think yourself lucky, do you? Let's see what else you've got hidden – Accio Pettigrew's jacket!"

Although the effect hadn't been intended, Harry barked a laugh as Wormtail was bodily sailed directly into the bars of the cell, mashing his nose quite thoroughly.

Harry muttered, "Well, that wasn't the brightest of ideas, I suppose—oh, crap."

Harry suddenly realised his attempted Summoning of the jacket had inadvertently smashed Wormtail into the already-weakened section of the cage, and he could see the bars were out of joint. A swift series of "Reparo" spells fixed that, and Harry realised they had forgotten to tie Wormtail back up. Apparently Fred and George had had difficulty sending him through, and must have briefly untied him to bodily shove him through the Floo.

Harry also realised no-one, not he, Ron nor Hermione had bothered to double-check for Pettigrew's wand. Mistake after mistake after mistake! Harry thought disgustedly, what were he and his friends, clones of that idiot Fudge?

But in the meantime, best to see if the wand was around. "Accio Pettigrew's wand!"

Luckily, no wand materialised from Pettigrew's clothes, so Fred and George must have kept it and not sent it through. Harry thought it was rather fortuitous in retrospect.

Harry smirked as he remembered the effect of the Summoning, and a part of him wanted to cause Wormtail some more pain. He pointed his wand and said, "Accio Wormtail."

The effect was even more smashing, as it were, as Pettigrew's moan of pain attested when he got a black eye and several bruises from slamming into the intact cell frame.

Harry decided enough was enough for now, and finished things off.

"Incarcerous! Stupefy!"

Harry decided that would hold things for now, and for good measure, snuffed out the one candle in the room that Hermione had left lit. Harry closed the door, muttered, "Colloportus," and padded back upstairs. Pausing to throw the saw blade on the table by his bed, he slipped back under the bedsheets. Sleep eventually came after he remembered to practice his mind-clearing exercises.

- - -

After breakfast, a still-groggy Harry sipped his second cup of tea as Hermione researched the best way to get to the abandoned Potter residence in County Galway in Ireland.

After closing up a wizarding atlas of Ireland, printed in the late 1950s, she said, "Well, it would be a simple matter to Portkey there. The residence is at the southernmost tip of Lough Corrib. There's a town called Menlough, but even that's not too close to your… I guess mansion, Harry. Even allowing for the passage of time and that I don't know if the atlas is self-updating, we can't go too wrong in assuming we'll be safe from any Muggles in the area."

Harry mused, "The question is – how do we get there? Portkey or Apparation?"

Ron shrugged, saying, "Can't see any other way. I wouldn't like to Apparate to a place I've never been to before. It'd have to be a Portkey."

Harry's stomach felt a bit queasy as he remembered his untoward experiences involving Portkeys, but he resolved to get on with it and not whinge about having to use one. To take his mind off the impending trip, he said, "Are there any wards here, anti-Portkey or the like? I assume there'd almost have to be, considering that Sirius mentioned something about his parents laying almost any kind of protection on this place they could afford."

Croaker's entry into the room solved that problem as he mildly said, "Good morning, all. Hope I didn't startle you too badly. If you're interested, I checked the first day I was here. The house is Unplottable. It has the standard Muggle-repelling charms, prevents Apparation from within the house to outside the house or vice versa, but does allow Apparating from one room to another. Portkeys inbound need to have been made by Dumbledore. Portkeys outbound, same situation. That's on top of the standard anti-Portkey ward. What else? Ah, the walls were slightly magically reinforced and infused with fire-prevention charms, as well as a sort of analog to a Confundus charm that keeps people from being able to detect that magic is being done in this house."

Ron whistled. "Sure didn't spare the Galleons. So I guess Harry, since he owns this place, can alter who's allowed to make a Portkey that goes in and out of here. How do we do that?"

Croaker replied, "There's several ways you can anchor a protection for that. I imagine Miss Granger here probably has the spellbook for it from the library. Care to look it up for us, please?"

Hermione put her orange juice on the table, excused herself, and was back within a few minutes holding a book which read Grimoire of the Blacks on it. Croaker lifted his eyebrows and said, "Meaning no offence, Miss Granger, but I'm surprised that book allowed you to touch it. May I check you over for any curses?"

Hermione, at first appearing surprised, gasped in realisation and hurriedly dropped the book on the table near Harry. She then stood near Croaker, who waved his wand and seemed satisfied with the spectrum of colours that emanated briefly from it.

"Very fortunate! I have no idea why the Black family wouldn't have laid on at least an anti-stranger curse or hex on the book. Were I the owner of such a book I'd have made sure nobody else would read it without permission. Given who the Blacks were, and their rather annoying pure-blood fanaticism, I wouldn't have put it past them to put spells on the book that required a person of Black ancestry to be the one to touch it, open it, and so on."

Harry shifted in his chair and uncertainly said, "Maybe some of the curses became inoperative when I took ownership? It'd be a… a contradiction, I guess, if a half-blood, and I'm not even a Black at that, to own this house and control it completely, but not let me or anyone have access to the books in it."

Croaker nodded, and cast some spells over the book, and sure enough, one made the book glow a rather alarming shade of red. He smiled tightly, saying, "Bingo, Potter – got it in one! There's a Withering Curse on the book that's not working properly, as though the spell were cast wrong."

Hermione looked shaken, and Ron didn't look much better. He said, "Blimey! We really dodged a Bludger there, all right, when we were cleaning this place a couple of summers ago. Brrr!" He shivered at the implications, and Harry eyed the grimoire with new wariness.

Harry pulled out his wand, pointed it at the book and guardedly said, "Finite Incantatem."

Nothing happened, and he sheepishly said, "It was worth a try. If I own the house I should be able to cancel the spell, right?"

Croaker cast his diagnostic again, and the book still went red. Wordlessly, he shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest, momentarily deep in thought.

Meanwhile, Hermione went to find a utensil, and came back with a clean metal spoon. She shoved the end of the handle under the cover, and began using the spoon handle to flip the pages. She said absently, "We'll have to see about any ownership-privilege spells later. Right now, I need to find the spell originally used by Orion Black and modified by Dumbledore for the Portkeys. I saw it in here when I was thumbing through it last night… ah, here we are.

"It requires the owner of the house and the one whose magical signature is required – and they can be the same person, but if not, the spell accounts for it – to both place a drop of blood on a rune carved into the door frame at the front. If all works well, all older allowed signatures are, for lack of a better word, 'deleted' after re-casting of the spell. The blood does make it a little Dark, but the blood has to be given voluntarily, so it's not that bad as such spells go. So I guess we have to do this like Professor Dumbledore and Sirius would have, with Sirius casting the spell and both he and Dumbledore offering blood at the appropriate time. So in place of Sirius, Harry would cast, and Croaker would offer his blood along with Harry."

Croaker, who had been listening even as he was tapping his finger against his mouth, said, "That'd be the wisest, as I'm the one with a legitimate Portkey creation licence."

Harry nodded and rose out of his chair. He looked round at the others and said, "Well, shall we?"

Harry led Croaker and the others to the front door, and began looking for anything that might be vaguely Runic. Finally, on the door near the handle he saw what looked like a very angular letter R, and just opposite it on the frame, he saw something that looked vaguely like a Z.

He turned to Hermione, who was standing beside him on the right, and said, "Here, can you figure these out?"

She leaned over, peered at the runes, and grinned ironically. "Remember what I was complaining about after OWLs? That one," she pointed at the Z, "is eihwaz, which means 'defence'. On my exam I mixed up ehwaz and eihwaz. The other rune is raidho, meaning 'transportation'."

Harry nodded. "And a Portkey is transportation. I wonder if that also doubles as the anti-Apparation anchor as well."

Croaker nodded. "That would make sense. If you're paying someone to modify a door like that and cast spells which require it to be unaffected by brushing blood on wood, you'd like to make it as easy as possible to anchor as many protections as you like. It's a variation on the use of runes to help anchor a Fidelius when you're applying it to property rather than a person."

Harry had his wand back out and said, "Well, shall we begin?"

Hermione began reciting the words from memory for the spell, as Harry made a small cut on his finger and dabbed it on both runes at the indicated moment in time, after which Croaker followed up. Harry finished by jabbing his wand at each rune as he cast the last spell Hermione instructed him to use.

After Harry muttered "Episkey" to heal his finger, he said, "That was it? We're done?"

Croaker said, "I guess so. We'll find out. Did you three have a particular place in mind?"

Harry nervously wondered if Croaker was just humouring them and expected them to want to go to the Weasleys and would refuse to send them anywhere else. Well, nothing for it, he thought.

"Um, actually, we do. I wanted to check out a place of my Dad's in Ireland."

Croaker's eyebrows lifted, but to his credit, he simply said, "That I can do. We're lucky; a quirk of history has slowed the separation of the Irish magical realm from the English-Scottish-Welsh one, so in effect the British wizarding realm still includes all of Ireland.

"That means for all intents and purposes we're Portkeying within one country. And yes, I'll be coming with you. If something untoward happens I'd rather not be rattling around this place, unable to get back in should you need help. As far as the Fidelius is concerned, I'm going to broadly interpret the terms of my licence, which allows me to specifically teach the spell under the condition that the maker of the Portkey is taking me with him or her to a protected residence.

"All right, you three. Get packed. Bring anything particularly protective, which means clothing suited for a wilderness, not for a city, and anything else you can think of."

Harry took his cue and rushed up to his room. He grabbed his Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it into a backpack along with a torch he'd nicked off Dudley back at Privet Drive, and a spare change of clothing. He said, "Dobby! Winky!"

The two house-elves materialised with twin pops, and Winky said, "What does you need, Harry Potter sir?"

"I'm going to be leaving this place for a little bit. Er, come to think of it, is there any way you can tell me if there are any house-elves at this place my Dad used to own?"

Dobby's ears pricked up and he said, "You just has to call us, and we is coming where you will be. We is able to find out then."

Relieved, Harry said, "Okay. I may be calling for you later today, then. Actually, I have another thought. Could you take a human with you somewhere if you had to?"

Winky shuffled her feet and said, "House-elves is not supposed to show their magic, Harry Potter sir, not like that."

"But it'd be a brilliant idea! That way we wouldn't even need to take a Portkey on the return trip, right?"

Dobby said, "You is correct, Harry Potter sir. House-elves is able to bypass wizard protections."

"Okay. Keep that in mind. I've got to go now. Thanks again for the great job cleaning – oh! And make sure the git in the basement doesn't try to escape like he almost did early this morning when I ran down there."

Dobby nodded. "We will do that, Harry Potter sir. We was startled when you was rushing past the kitchen." His ears drooped. "Dobby is sorry that he did not know the prisoner was trying to escape. Dobby will make sure now!"

"Thanks. I'm going to go now, okay? You can go back to whatever you were doing."

The house-elves popped away, and Harry clattered back down two flights of stairs to meet Croaker, Ron and Hermione by the front door. Croaker was holding out a metal canister, presumably something that had once held Floo powder or the like. It was cracked down one side, which explained why it wasn't currently being used.

Harry said, "Where'd you get that?"

"There was a rubbish pile in the boiler room. I assume the house-elves were putting things there temporarily. Now grab on, and we'll be off to your place in Ireland."

Harry put his hand on the canister, and braced for the whirlwind of light and motion that was always so unsettling.

Author Note:

Thanks go to misfiredcanon for the beta reading. Con-crit is, as always, appreciated. :)