The Poetic Disclaimer:
All you see is JK Rowling's
Except this lovely plot
And if you steal either for profit
I will have you shot.
...
Part Twelve: Percy Returns
When dinner arrived, Draco was consoled, though not chipper by any stretch, and Ron was sheepish. Still, they marched inward to a fabulous dinner, where a few more chairs were filled at the table. Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, Draco recognized from the Pensieve, sat side by side. The conversation was going amiably until they came to the topic of Fleur and Bill's marriage. The newlyweds had left for Fleur's home in rural France.
Mrs Weasley appeared, to Draco, to like Fleur. "Oh, I hope they're having a good time. Really I do." She looked at her husband and blushed.
"You remember our honeymoon, Molly?" Arthur wiggled his eyebrows suggestively over the top of the Daily Prophet.
"Arthur!" Mrs Weasley blushed deeper. "Not now."
"What happened to all it being foolishness, Mum?" Ginny grumbled, "Honestly. The paper's marriage section is as big as the obituaries, and it's all for the same-"
Lupin slammed down his cup and pushed his chair away violently.
"Remus-" Tonks called pleadingly, holding to his sleeve.
His look was withering. "Let go of me," he barked. Draco thought he could see a gleam of werewolf in his eyes. Tonks let go, shocked, and Lupin strode from the room, slamming the door behind him. She rose and followed him out, looking desperate.
There was a sudden silence. Ginny finally broke it, muttering,"What's his problem?"
"Nothing to do with you, Ginny dear," Mrs Weasley said consolingly, touching her hand reassuringly. "It isn't your fault in the slightest." She looked to the door where Lupin had disappeared. "He's just-just stressed. That's all."
Ginny picked at her food with a fork. "You don't say," she said wryly. "Can't think of a single reason to be stressed here. Not one." She dropped the fork.
"Ginny!" Arthur Weasley said sharply. "That's quite enough."
"It's not fair!" she retorted, boiling slightly over in what was obviously an old argument. "We could help the Order!"
"No, you most certainly can't!" Mrs Weasley interjected, her voice shrill.
"And why not?"
"Ginerva Weasley, we have already had this discussion, and-" Mrs Weasley was stopped by her husband's outstretched hand.
Arthur Weasley seemed to be torn between rage and tears. He finally burst, folding the newspaper before him to expose a headline somewhere above the fold, in the middle. "This is why, Ginny," he strangled out. He stood and cast a copy of the Daily Prophet to her, across the table.
Even a few seats away, Draco could read the headline:
Longbottom Family Massacred!
Ginny stared, wide-mouthed, at the headline. Hermione took it from her, grim but calm, and began to read aloud.
"Death Eaters suspected in the murder vicious murder of the entire Longbottom family," she began, her voice heavy but steady. "This family is no stranger to loss. When He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named came to power the first time, it was Alice and Frank Longbottom who paid the price. They suffered under the Cruciatus curse rather than give information, and were driven mad. They now are the only remaining members of the Longbottom family, residing in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
"The Longbottom Reunion staged the battle. Aurors are unsure what means were used to overpower these wizards and witches, but it appears it was only one attacker. Most bodies were found in hiding, killed in an undisclosed manner. Only two bodies were found in a manner that suggest combat; that of Augusta Longbottom, Matriarch of the Longbottom clan, and young Neville Longbottom, classmate and friend to-" Hermione swallowed, "-Harry Potter." She quietly set down the paper, not bothering to finish the article.
Once again, all eyes were on Draco. He was unsure how to feel. Neville always seemed like a pathetic mess of a boy, but that didn't mean he deserved to die. Draco had to remind himself that it was not about his feelings; it was about how Harry would feel. He ran his fingers through his hair and felt the unusual texture of the scar on his forehead-Harry's forehead, he reminded himself. A lightning bolt, inscribed by a curse. A gift of years of life and years of peace until the boy savior could grow and mature and be hurt just enough to really mean it when he screamed that final spell, that green killing light. Draco caught a glimpse of battle out of Harry's memories; a graveyeard, a cauldron, a hand, a duel . . .
"He went out fighting," Draco said finally, gruffly, giving Hermione a look.
There was a silence at the table. Everyone seemed to have lost their appetites. "Well," Mrs Weasly said, standing. "I suppose I'll gather the plates. Arthur, lend me a hand?" She shot him a meaningful look, and they both retired to the kitchen.
The others had clearly left so the trio could grieve in private, but Draco could not think of anything to say. Neither could Ron or Hermione. Ron kept his almost tearful gaze on his shoes, and finally muttered hopelessly, "Might not have been killed. Might have gotten away, you know?"
"I think that this is war," Draco said, his jaw set in a hard line. "I think this is war, and there are casualties, and the sooner we end it, the sooner things like this stop happening."
"Yeah," Ron said grimly. "Still-"
Hermione, still reading the Prophet, gasped, "You again!" thrusting her finger into the paper. A tiny picture smirked and scurried from under her accusing fingertip.
"Who?" Ron asked.
"It's Rita Skeeter. She's back."
Draco sifted Harry's memories, becoming more familiar with the structure of his life. A broom closet, a crocodile handbag, and an acid-green quill that twisted and invented words and actions. A ruthless, shameless woman, unafraid of even Dumbledore.
"Hey, what's this?" Ron asked, beginning to read the article. "'Harry Potter, Boy Wonder, is our only hope'? What's she getting at?"
Hermione scrutinized the article, as if it would suddenly dissolve from glowing descriptions of Harry's bravery, integrity, and beautiful green eyes, into some sort of joke or trick. "It says here-well, it says here that she knew it all along." Hermione snorted in a most unladylike fashion. "How convenient. And it says next week she'll have an interview with you, Harry."
"Fat chance," Ron said flatly. "She gets too close, and I'll . . . I'll . . ."
"Do something unhelpful and violent," Hermione finished for him.
Ron flushed hotly, but held his ground. "Yeah, probably! Anything to keep that Skeeter woman away from Harry!" He glanced over. "You don't need that," he said, more gently. "Not now."
"But we might be able to use her," Hermione mused. "She'd be so desperate for a story-and we still know that she's an unregistered Animagus . . ."
An owl began pecking at the window.
"Hermes!" Ron said, shock apparent. He opened the window and found the note strapped to the owl's leg. Ron looked at it in horror. "Percy's talking to us again?"
Hermione smiled, looking equally exasperated and amused, and unstrapped the note from the owl's leg. She unfolded it. Percy's usually serifed, flourished script was oddly truncated around the edges. The hanging letters lacked their usual curl and were, instead, jerkily brought back to the next letter. It looked as if the writer had held the quill too hard.
"Dear Family," Hermione read, "I am writing to inform you that I am coming home very soon, probably before you get this note." Hermione stopped, slipped, and dropped her mocking in the next few sentences. "I need your help. Protect Harry from everyone. You were right. Love . . . Percy." Hermione dropped the note into Ron's hands, who snatched it and scoured it for something-hidden messages, or something, Draco mused. When he was done, he looked up.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'protect Harry from everyone?' Who's he need protecting from that we haven't already thought of?" Ron said, sounding disgruntled.
"Ron, something's wrong," Hermione said.
Draco, who had been sitting quietly, took the note from Ron. They watched as Draco mouthed the words, putting a finger on the word everyone. It seemed pressed harder than the rest. None of this fit with Harry's memories of Percy Weasley. "This is awfully short for Percy. He must have been in a hurry."
"Yeah. For the first time, Percy shuts up, and now we're worried." Ron kicked at the table leg, disconsolate. "I'm gonna go tell Mum." He went through the door to the kitchen as if he were walking to his own execution.
Crookshanks wound his way around Hermione's legs and advanced slowly on Draco's knee. He batted at his foot for a second, and took two hearty sniffs of him. Draco could have sworn the cat narrowed its eyes and bared a single tooth before cozying back to Hermione's arms.
Now the cat's suspicious? Draco thought, disgusted with himself.
Crookshanks rubbed himself against Hermione so violently that the note dropped to the floor. Both Hermione and Draco stooped to pick it up; their faces came close. Draco felt some of her hair tickle his cheek, the back of his neck. She smelled like lavender.
"Sorry," he mumbled, and picked up the parchment.
A tap came at the door. Draco rose, but Mrs Weasley emerged, trailed by Ron, and she motioned for them all to sit and be still. "Who is it?" she called, her voice wavering slightly.
"Mom?" a small voice came at the door.
Mrs Weasley had descended the stairs silently until now. Her voice quavered. "Percy?"
"Mom!"
Draco was unsure who opened the door, but Percy and his mother were embracing violently, and Molly Weasley looked as if she were going to drown him in kisses. "Percy! Percy!" she cried out in joy, knocking his glasses askew. "Percy, oh, how I've missed you! Oh, I forgive you! We forgive you! Oh, Percy, it really you! You're really home!"
It was approximately this time that Percy fainted into the table, knocking over a salt shaker, shattering two plates, and coming dangerously close to being impaled on a fork.
Hermione winced and muttered, "Oh, dear."
Percy claimed, once he was conscious, that he was too tired to answer questions today. It had been a long day. Tomorrow, he promised. Mrs Weasley led him to Fred and George's old room and placed him in one of the beds. Shutting the door, she sighed in relief and thanks. "Sleeping like a babe," she said, misty-eyed, to the curious crowd that had followed her. Hermione, Draco, Ron, and the red-eyed Ginny were banished. Though Ginny went to bed, the others stayed awake in the living room, discussing plans.
"We should leave soon," Hermione whispered, an eerie shadow cast on her by the lantern. "The Longbottoms-" she shook her head. "If they can attack anywhere, anytime-we should leave. Perhaps within the week. The Burrow's enchantments are strong, but they're not that strong."
"Yeah," Ron said, looking down again. Draco realized he was hiding tears. "Neville-"
"Neville was the weakest among us," Draco shot scathingly.
Ron and Hermione looked at one another for a moment, and then stared back at Draco. He readied himself for a lecture from Granger.
"This isn't like you, Harry," Hermione began in a low voice. "You have every right to be angry, but . . . "
"Just think about Dumbledore, okay?" Ron interjected roughly.
"How he was murdered," Draco replied stiffly. "It fills me with compassion to think of it, Ron. Destroyed when he was weak."
"Not that, Harry!" Hermione hissed. "Think of what Dumbledore would say, what he would do! It's not a bad thing to grieve a little, you know!"
Ron nodded, adding, "Yeah . . . you're beginning to sound like Snape."
The insult struck him so violently that Draco did not have recognize that the anger was not entirely his own, but from another source. He glared silently at them.
"I'm going to bed, Harry. I suggest you do the same," Hermione said, rising.
Ron followed suit. "Yeah. G'night, Harry."
After they left, Draco blew out the lantern and sat in the darkness, sinking into the armchair. Like Snape? Perhaps. After living in a cave, alone, in the dark, with nothing but bats and his own nightmares-or worse, his own memories-as company, he would become cold as Dumbledore's murderer. It was lucky that Snape found him at all. He had almost been happy-for the first time in months, he had almost been happy . . . and now Neville was dead, the boy who never deserved to die.
The room was open to a faint breeze, and Draco fell asleep, feeling it lick his face. He did feel his body changing, returning to its true form, or the pen vibrating frantically in his pocket, giving him a silent, unheeded warning: you are in danger, danger, danger of being discovered, discovered, discovered . . .
Draco woke to the sound of voices in the hall. It sounded like Tonks and Lupin were having what was trying to be a quiet fight. He laughed under his breath; a lover's quarrell, so to speak. He crept to the door and peered out, unaware that he was once again a grey-eyed blonde.
Across the hall, in the kitchen, Harry saw Tonks and Lupin silhouetted. At first, he thought they might be fighting, but Draco realized they were kissing. Snogging away madly in the Weasley kitchen as if it were the most natural place for such things to occur.
Draco thought he was going to be ill.
Another dark figure moved, and this time from the stairs. It slipped across the kitchen, past the oblivious lovers-toward, Draco realized in horror, the living room, where he was. He leaped back to the wall behind the door just as it swung open.
"Harry," a hoarse, strange whisper came, and for a moment, in the dark, it sounded deeply familiar in Harry's memories, in Draco's memories of Harry's memories, something he had kept too close to himself to even examine properly.
Draco felt an alien leap in his heart, a wrenching exhilaration. He rubbed his forehead, trying to clear his muddled mind and felt-no scar. The strangeness of his body was his own. Draco frantically searched himself and, finding the flask in his pocket, took a shaking sip of Polyjuice potion. The door eased away from his body as he transformed.
"Harry," the shadow whispered again, now creeping further into the room. "Where are you?"
Draco touched his forehead with trembling fingers and felt the scar erupt. With a jolt, he realized the voice-he recognized the voice-he knew that voice, the voice that had fallen beyond the veil and he had always hoped he would return, and now everything was going to be all right-
"Lumos," the voice whispered. A soft light fell on Draco, whose hair went from blonde to shaggy black as the figure turned.
Percy Weasley stood, holding a wand, and looking odd and blank.
"Percy?" Draco asked hoarsely.
"Imperio," he muttered.
Draco did the only thing he could think of. He ducked, and cast the shield charm that Potter had drilled into him. Draco's fury blazed and he fired back a hex of his own.
"Incarcerous!" he shouted. The ropes bound a shocked Percy quickly and tripped him, letting him fall loudly to the floor. A few thumps followed from the kitchen-Lupin and Tonks separating, running to the living room-and they rushed in.
"Harry!" Lupin shouted. "What's going on here?"
Draco advanced, furious, on the bound Percy. It was a voice modification charm, so simple and transperent, and it sounded precisely like Sirius. Draco's mouth twisted. Someone who had known him had done this. Bellatrix, or perhaps Narcissa, or Wormtail-his gut wrenched. "Think you can impersonate Sirius, do you?" he snarled, picking up Percy by the front of his robes. "Think you can throw around Sirius' memory and that I'll come to you like some sort of lost puppy? Is that what you think of me?" He pointed his wand into Percy's face. Percy did not react but to laugh, ghoulishly, in Sirius' voice.
"Harry, put him down!" Tonks demanded, forcibly ripping Draco away.
Mrs Weasley, woken by the trouble, entered the room in a shabby dressing-gown, looking distressed. "What is it? What's the matter? . . . Percy?"
"He tried to cast the Imperius curse on me," Draco spat. "He was using Sirius' voice and he-he tried-" He pointed his trembling wand at Percy again.
Lupin had taken Percy's face in his hands and rolled his head around as the horrible laugh continued to issue from his mouth, almost mechanically. "Imperius Curse," he said quietly. "Can't be anything but that."
There was a horrible silence as they all realized what this meant. This meant they knew where Harry was-the Death Eaters were trying to get him, even now . . .
Mrs Weasley put her hand over her heart. "Oh . . . oh . . . Harry . . ." she whispered weakly. She sat heavily on the sofa. "Oh, Harry, he was sent after you-by-by-You-Know-Who . . . and I just . . . I just . . . I let him in!"
"Mrs Weasley, there's no way-" Tonks began.
"I just let him in!" She began to sound hysterical. "I've been pretending like everything's normal-as if-as if Harry's just my own son-and now-"
Part of Draco wanted to stay and comfort Mrs Weasley. "It's not your fault," he murmured quietly. He glanced at the window, catching his own reflection. Catching Harry's reflection. He could not stop himself from saying it. "It's hard not to trust when . . . when they look just like someone you love."
Mrs Weasley began to weep silently. "Mortal Peril . . . the clock's been saying that a year now, but I've just . . . ignored it . . . Mortal Peril . . . and I blinded myself . . ."
But there was nothing for it. Percy was secured, and Tonks and Lupin offered to guard him. They would go to St Mungo's in the morning. Mrs Weasley soldiered on through, straightening the room, rushing the rest of them off to bed, keeping her tears almost entirely at bay. It was like being picked up by a gentle hurricane, a flurry of maternal movement. When Draco was put down, he was alone in the darkened bedroom. Percy's old room. Draco lay awake in bed for a long time. Still, before dawn broke, he managed to fall asleep.
