For the remainder of the day Harry and Draco oversaw their group as they each displayed what they could do so that they could determine what kind of work they had ahead of them. As Harry had expected, they were all around—if not slightly above—where an average seventh year Hogwarts student would be. But that included their seventh year, comparing them to the same students who are getting their education in the middle of a war. A normal seventh year student from this time period would know about the same amount of defensive magic as the average adult wizard. While they would still need a lot of training before Harry felt comfortable enough with them joining them on this excursion, they were still leaps and bounds ahead of where they should be for their age.
Harry was relieved to find that they were as advanced as they were so that it wouldn't be a complete overhaul trying to prepare them, but he also felt a niggling worry that refused to dissipate in his mind. Even with all of the hours they could put into training, there was no telling when they needed to be ready and Harry didn't like the amount of time it would take just to get them up to a level that he felt was adequate. Taking into consideration all of their classes and other duties, they wouldn't be ready until spring! So as soon as he filled Draco in on what he had planned he pulled Hermione aside.
After Hermione's third year, the time turner that McGonagall had given her was returned after she decided to drop the extra classes. Because it was something in McGonagall's possession before she'd given it to Hermione and not something she'd received from the Ministry specifically for her, there was a very good chance that their professor still had it. So, all Hermione had to do was tell McGonagall something along the lines of not having enough time to keep up with her school work, study for NEWT's, and working on her side organizations such as SPEW for her house elves and other nonsense. Harry was rather surprised when Hermione didn't immediately shoot the idea down; in fact, she didn't seem at all perturbed with knowing she would have to lie to her head of house.
Harry felt an unfamiliar satisfaction knowing that Hermione was already so loyal to him. It was only recently that their relationship had gone from 'nonexistent' to 'repairing itself'. The friend he had thought he'd lost to the chaos that was his life. The friend that saw the real him and still cared. It'll never be the same as before—he didn't want it to be the same as before—what they had now, though, he wasn't sure exactly where either of them stood in regards to each other, but he liked the electric warmth that shot through his limbs because of it. Actually, he felt similar sensations when the others looked at him; expressions a fluid mix of respect and loyalty and determination.
Months ago, Harry never would have thought he would receive such looks, and not have it be because of his title as the defeater of Voldemort. He wanted to hold on to them, to never let them turn away and look somewhere else. For the first time, Harry felt possessive about something. It's not the same as being protective, no, he knew exactly what that felt like and he can separate his protectiveness for his friends from this other feeling. If he were 'protective' of this look, he would do anything to keep it—even change who he is—but being 'possessive' of it means that he won't allow it to slip out of his grasp without changing who he is.
As Hermione sought out McGonagall for the time turner, Draco gathered the others to explain their plan. Because there simply aren't enough hours in the day to give them all enough training, they will simply have to make enough hours. Each of them will get individual one-on-one training sessions using the time turner throughout the week. Some in the group looked a little uneasy with hearing how hard they plan on working everybody, but when Draco let out a low agitated growl they all snapped back into blank or determined expressions.
With the help of Mal and working non-stop on the weekends, their time line would be cut into a fraction of their original estimate. Draco was still a bit miffed with Mal about the Mungsford Root, but Harry assured Mal that Draco knew it was an accident and would settle down when he felt like Mal had suffered enough. Mal quickly brushed it off, declaring that Draco had every right to tear him a new one for it, claiming that others had been killed for doing far less to an Izaki's mate.
Harry had this little chat with Mal before dinner, away from the prying eyes and ears of a certain narked Izaki. After that, Harry joined the others for dinner. Everyone seemed knackered, but at the same time resolute in knowing that they were doing something worthwhile.
…
Sleep is meant to be foggy—in and out of coherent scenes that frayed, aged, and faded as soon as they were occurring. That's how Harry knew that this dream was of no normal variety. It was too vivid, too crisp and razor sharp against each of his five senses. He stood in a room. Everything darkened by the midway point between dusk and full-fledged night. Dusty old floor boards beneath his bare feet that sagged slightly with age and oozed penetrating cold up into the bottoms of his feet. His breath fogged around his face but the air didn't feel quite cold enough for that.
Harry was looking straight down a long narrow hallway. He wasn't sure if it was just the lighting, or if the hallway really was painted in blacks and charcoal greys. At the very end of the hallway, a black door was faintly illuminated by nothing at all, the only door that Harry could see that actually had a door knob. A low hum resonated through the house—which Harry assumed is what he was standing in at this moment.
Feeling an instinctual pull, Harry's feet shuffled forward and he began the slow procession towards the door. Each step cranked up the volume of the hum until finally it took on a more defined sound. It sounded as if someone of immense strength was just behind that door at the end of the hall, beating against the door with a murderous fury. As Harry got closer, he realized that there actually was something behind the door, considering how the black wood shuddered and shook violently in its frame.
Harry's heart was beating erratically in his chest as he neared. Oh how he dreaded the opening of that door, but it felt like it was absolute, like no matter what tried, he would have to open it. When Harry was close enough to the door to touch it, the pounding stopped and the silence was deafening. The silence was anything but empty, though. It was like Harry could still feel that whatever was behind the door was still there, just beyond the wood and watching him expectantly.
His hand slowly lifted towards the handle, and as it did, there was a chilling sensation of cold fingers on the back of his neck. As his hand lifted, the fingers slid around his throat and jaw like a snake. His hand touched the icily burning handle and bony charcoal fingers slid over his face like a grotesque mask. All so agonizingly slow.
He opened his lips to take a breath, ready to turn the handle when he was suddenly ripped back so fast it felt like he was being torn from his body, from the very seams of the scene around him.
Harry's waking was as gentle and subtle as a blow horn. Jolting up out of bed, heaving in breaths that just didn't feel fast enough as he felt the residual clammy fingers curled around his face. Draco was awake and alert in a matter of moments, searching Harry for injury with frantic silver eyes. He couldn't get his voice to work around the labored breaths, but he managed to assure Draco that he was okay through his expression and a slight nodding of his head as he sank into Draco's embrace. Harry forced his breathing to slow as Draco's insistent fingers carded through his hair, an arm around his waist pulling him in tightly.
"Nightmare. . ." Harry answered the unspoken question and though Draco seemed to relax a little, the tension didn't leave him completely. The pair laid back down, limbs wound together and hearts primal rhythm syncing through bone, flesh, and clothing. Harry tried not to think about his dream as the darkness of his room wrapped its obsidian curtains around him and the dredges of slumber threatened to take him under once again—to what, he really didn't know. The weeping of drafts through cracks and corridors lulling him back into a tense sleep.
…
Morning held excitement for the coming days and left the night's events in the fog of a restless night. It was the last day of the weekend that Harry had left, so he knew it would be a busy day. On top of diving into the first real day of training, it was also the day that the Wizengamot would be meeting and later that night Harry was going to talk to Gail again about Terra di Morte. Getting a feel for how the Ministry was treating magical creatures and what kinds of legislation was being produced would help Harry before their meeting.
At breakfast, everyone seemed excited to begin training, though the Slytherins—as expected—didn't outwardly show any sort of giddiness aside from finishing breakfast a little early and pretending that they weren't watching Harry and Draco expectantly. They didn't all leave at once, that would arouse a bit suspicion among staff and student alike. Everyone in the group from Slytherin leaving together wouldn't look weird, but from the other houses as well? That would do nothing to help them avoid detection.
Training went exceedingly well for the first half of the day. Harry and Mal worked hands on with the others on introducing high-level defensive spells to them in their simplest forms while Draco lounged in a leather chair off to the side of the room of requirement, observing silently with an air of boredom stagnating around his person. When Harry asked him if he would help out the blonde scoffed and intoned some nonsense about not having the patience to deal with them at such an elementary level and how he would be better at 'refining' their skills. Harry left him be for the time being, knowing that he would take over for Harry after he left.
Draco wasn't fond of Harry going to the Ministry on his own, but when Harry challenged him nonverbally to try to make him stay, the Dominant Izaki backed down to the will of his mate. It wasn't as if Draco could have gone with him anyways, Wizengamot meetings weren't some field trip where you could bring all of the spectators you wanted. Harry wasn't able to officially vote at the meetings yet, but he could attend with an active member. That was the only reason Harry could sit in, and since Lucius was the current holder of the Malfoy house votes, Draco wouldn't be able to attend until he himself reached an age where he could actually take over for his father; which he couldn't do until he graduated from Hogwarts like Harry.
It was a mess of circumstantial what's-it's that might even be contested by other members that might not like seeing him there, but if they really dug into it, Harry could always prove that he had a right to be there since he was the last surviving member of his line.
So two hours before lunch would begin, Harry left the room of requirement early with a quick kiss goodbye from Draco with a warning not to let his curiosity or temper get him into any sort of trouble. Harry stopped by his room before he left so that he could change out of his normal day clothes and switch them out for his high-quality tailored dark navy blue formal robes. Then he apparated straight into the Malfoy manor receiving room and waited until Lucius walked around the corner several minutes later, distracted by the buttons on the front of his robe and not noticing Harry standing there at first.
"Ah, looks like I arrived just in time to catch you on your way out." Harry spoke up, holding back a smile when Lucius looked like Voldemort had just popped into his home with a vendetta on his mind. Harry smiled politely after a moment. "My, I hope you didn't forget already Lucius, you invited me to join to for the next Wizengamot meeting. I think it will be good to spend a bit of time together considering that we are practically family now."
Lucius, ever the head of the Malfoy line, only spent a moment in his state of shock and soon pulled back down the impenetrable mask he was accustomed to wearing in all situations. As Lucius approached Harry in elegant sure strides, Harry found it amusing that the man he'd found so formidable as a child was no longer nearly as daunting now that they were so close in height.
"Please excuse my horrendous manners, it must have slipped my mind with all that has been happening lately. Shall we?" Lucius gestured towards his grand black marble fireplace that had probably never held an actual fire in it. Harry nodded graciously and followed behind Lucius into the floo.
Stepping out of one of the Ministry entry points after the nauseating transportation and then suddenly being surrounded by the loud clamor and rumbling of so many people was a bit overwhelming at first—as it always seemed to be. Lucius was waiting for him on the other side, and began walking at brisk pace the moment he seemed to have Harry's attention. Lucius weaved through the forceful current of people and Harry walked behind him leisurely so that he would have to be the one to cut the path through the stream. As much as it might annoy Lucius, Harry didn't really want to make a spectacle out of his visit to the Ministry. He may look different from the last time the public at large had seen him, but that didn't mean he was unrecognizable.
Making their way through the green and black marble maze of corridors and large ornately carved wooden doors, it took several minutes to actually arrive at the antechamber of the Wizengamot meeting chamber. There were only a few left idling in the antechamber, standing close together and talking lowly to each other with austere expressions. Lucius didn't loiter in the antechamber like the others, he simply walked through the door that would bring him to the side of the meeting room unnoticed.
Harry was mildly surprised to see that no one bothered to wear their official plum Wizengamot robes with the silver W embroidered into the breast. Though, he supposes that since they wouldn't have an audience because it wasn't a trial, there really wasn't a need for the formality. With less members in attendance than Harry remembered seeing at his last encounter with the Wizengamot, everyone was fairly spread out about the room. The space and lack of uniform allowed Harry to go unnoticed from where he sat next to Lucius.
Elphias Doge, he was the current Senior Undersecretary to the Minister after Umbridge's 'disappearance'. The position gave him the right to stand in Dumbledore's—as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot—place when he was out, which he currently was due to a probable bout of killer migraines and absolutely no filter on his thoughts. Harry held back a grin when recalling how haggard his Headmaster was looking lately. The fool deserves everything that is coming his way and more.
Harry was pulled back out of his thoughts about Dumbledore by the sound of a gavel meeting hard wood and was reminded of why he had been thinking about Doge in the first place. The silver haired man brought the room to a near-silent state, with the exception of several members that didn't seem all that interested in whatever Doge had to say.
Harry kept the expression his face politely neutral as Elphias began to dreary drone of reading the first piece of legislation that would be presented to the court. Something about whether shopkeepers should be allowed to have displays that went more than a meter out from their shop in an attempt to open up the cluttered walkway of Diagon Alley a bit more. As the time trudged on and more horrendously boring legislation was presented and voted on, Harry began to worry that Lucius had invited him for another reason besides the meeting itself and that listening to the meeting wouldn't bore any sort of value to him in any way. If that was the case and since then Lucius has thought better of actually discussing whatever he'd intended to discuss, then Harry was going to be annoyed that he'd wasted his time.
Just as Harry was coming to the conclusion that this was, in fact, what was happening here, Elphias closed another piece of evidence and it was like a switch had been flipped as everyone seemed to come back to life. People sat up straighter and even leaned in a little more, the lull of the meeting disappearing from their expressions and Harry's interest was piqued.
"Notion I-481 Section B: Notion states as presented by Werewolf National Alliance for Peace—in the instance that an individual infected with lycanthropy does not have the means of acquiring wolfsbane potion, it should be provided for them by the Ministry upon proof of inability to make said purchase. All those in favor?" Hands raised and scattered voices throughout the room intoned the traditional 'I' as their votes were counted. "Against?" Elphias asked and Harry was shocked to see more hands raise this time, and with more confidence. There were several who withheld their vote, but that wasn't what mattered.
All Harry could think about was Remus and how he knew that it was extremely hard for werewolves to get jobs at all, accounting for their high numbers of poverty. Also, he remembers how distraught Remus was when he had to face the full moon without wolfsbane around his cub to boot! Wolfsbane didn't necessarily completely contain the wolf, but it allows their human side to retain their memories of the full moon so that they know exactly what they did. Waking up with no idea if you'd hurt or killed someone the night before was far from pleasant. Harry still had to deal with the letter he'd received from Remus over about two weeks before, but every time he got to the point where he had a quill and parchment in front of him, his mind went blank and he only frustrated himself further.
Remus was still so clearly under Dumbledore's thumb. Perhaps this would need more intervention than just a letter, maybe he needed to sort this in person. But it would have to wait, more pressing matters were at hand.
Most of the bills and regulations presented after that one were sent in from other volunteer organizations that were meant to fairly represent the magical creature community. Harry felt sicker and sicker as bills that would bring magical creatures closer to having reasonable rights were shot down one after another. It appeared that the same laws and guidelines that had been implemented for magical creatures over half a century ago were what many of them wanted. They wanted to keep a huge group of beings and beasts under their boots to keep themselves on top.
The only notions that were actually passed were the ones presented by actual politicians that restricted the rights of creatures further. Harry was only slightly abated to see Lucius voting for every notion that would give them more rights, but there were several times where Harry caught him watching him from the corner of his eye before voting, as if waiting to see Harry's reaction to it first. He doubted that Lucius gained a whole lot from that though, because Harry was a master of composure with how much time he spends around Draco.
The meeting lasted for several hours, with the part about creatures being only a small portion, but by far the most important. The overall consensus by the time he walked out of the room and back into the antechamber was that—similar to the muggle world—those with the power to make a change only do so when it best fits their own interests. It seems to be happening a lot lately for Harry, he sets low expectations for something and is astounded to find that it's much worse than he'd thought.
Lucius and Harry left the Ministry rather quickly once the meeting had commenced, wanting to avoid anyone who might have spotted Harry during the meeting and might get it into their head to corner him after the meeting. They both flooed back to Malfoy Manor, Lucius first and Harry soon after. Lucius looked startled to see Harry come in after him, obviously he'd thought that the brunet would have wanted to go straight back to Hogwarts after the meeting, but Harry had one more piece of business to attend to before he met with Gail.
Without saying a word, Harry gestured for Lucius to go on so that he could follow him. Lucius didn't let anything show through as he turned stiffly and led Harry to his office. Once there, Harry sat down in the chair on the other side of Lucius's desk and waited for him to sit as well. Harry watched Lucius carefully as he spoke, cataloging every little movement and expression.
"How has your Dark Lord been lately?" Harry asked casually, thought the subject was anything but. Lucius stiffened in his chair, looking utterly befuddled and at a loss for words. Finally deciding on what to say, he cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter. Harry found a vengeful satisfaction in making Lucius uncomfortable, but that wasn't his only reason for asking him about Voldemort.
"As you and Draco already know, I am loyal to my Lord and am not actually helping the light." Lucius's voice cut through the air in harsh tones the let his displeasure with that fact show through to Harry. Ah, so he's still angry with him for making him tell Draco. Harry couldn't say that he was surprised by that.
"Neither am I. That has nothing to do with my question. I'm not sure how much you know at this point, but I know you're smart enough to piece together that I was involved in your lord coming back to you early on his annual holiday. I want to know if anything has happened or changed since then. You and I both know that I am more than capable of digging the answers out of your head. Do we want a repeat performance of a few weeks ago or can you just give me a bit of information that can't even harm your Lord?" Harry threatened, feeling agitated after the restless night, less than promising Wizengamot meeting, and now having to deal with Lucius's stubbornness once again. Lucius raised a blonde eyebrow as if to prove Harry's thoughts further.
"Are you so sure that you can? It has been a while since you tried, I won't willingly give up anything about my Lord, and so you'll just have to take it from me." Lucius leaned back in his chair, waiting for Harry to do just that.
Harry stood up from his chair, ready to take on Lucius's challenge and prove that he always had the upper hand. Bracing his hands on the desk, Harry's gaze bored into light grey eyes and he pushed through the old occlumency shields, meeting little resistance. When he broke through, though, he hit a second wall that hadn't been there before. As if triggered by the contact, the wall flared out defensive magic of its own and Harry couldn't pull away fast enough. Harry physically recoiled, stepping away from the desk as he felt an unfamiliar magic soak into his skin.
Lucius stood, looking beyond smug with himself as he straightened out his already impeccable robes.
"You really think my Lord wouldn't find out about your little move last time? He put up a few shields of his own to protect what I know, they're impenetrable so many others have tried." Lucius scoffed at the thought of being underestimated by someone so young.
"You idiot!" Harry roared as it felt like his lungs were filling with smoke from the inside out, cutting off his airways. Stumbling and grabbing the chair closest to him to keep from falling over as his legs trembled. The sneer on Lucius's face fell instantly and was replaced with concern, panic, and a bit of apprehension like he wasn't sure if Harry was faking or not. Voldemort didn't know what he is and neither did Lucius, which means that Lucius didn't anticipate that Harry—an Izaki—coming into contact with Voldemort's magic—being practically a Fassir—might have a very adverse effect on him.
Harry crumpled to the ground as his limbs lost their strength and Lucius ran to catch him, only managing to slip a hand under his head before it hit unyielding marble. Cursing under his breath, Lucius scrambled to try to do something—anything —to help Harry. Harry gasped for breath that didn't reach his lungs, if he could breathe, he would have screamed for the pain that stabbed straight through his skull like a white hot fire poker. Suddenly Lucius was gone, but Harry hear him vaguely of the sound of his own chokes and gasps. It sounded like he was talking to someone in low, quiet tones so Harry couldn't make out what he was saying.
All Harry could think about at that time was how Draco was going to be furious with both of them. Harry was still recovering from his blasted heart stopping and now he let his curiosity almost put him back in a grave. Harry's lungs stopped trying desperately to expand and his vision blurred around the edges. It felt like Harry's head was filled with helium and about ready to float away from his body. As his limbs went numb, Harry saw Lucius come back into his fading line of sight and faintly felt his slide his arms underneath him and lift him up off of the ground. Before Lucius was even fully upright, Harry was unconscious.
