Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: Some of you have mentioned that you didn't think that the prank seemed to be much of a payback, in fact, quite the opposite. All I've got to say to that is, just wait until you see what Harry has in store for the next Monday prank, and the Monday after that…
Thank you Vaughn for being my Beta
Explanations
It was late afternoon by the time Lucius arrived back at the castle. He cautiously made his way through the large front doors, all too aware of the suits of armour standing nearby. He had faith in Harry, but things did not always go the way you'd planned, and he was not in the mood to be assaulted by yet another suit. The one he had encountered on his way outside had been enough, thank you very much. Lucius absentmindedly reached up and rubbed his shoulder. He and the armour had practically walked into each other when rounding a corner. The thing had managed to take one swing with its halberd, but fortunately for the blond, the suit had only severely bruised him and not killed him, as had been Lucius' first thought. He had not given the thing a second chance, shouting out the counter-curse, one of the most ridiculous phrases he had ever heard!
It had worked though, and the suit had stood down and ambled back to wherever it came from, enabling Lucius to make his escape. He had managed to flee the castle without any further encounters, to his great relief.
Walking swiftly along the corridors, Lucius noted that nothing seemed out of place, and unless he had witnessed the mayhem himself, he wouldn't have believed what had been going on here this very morning. Shaking his head in amazement, wondering how Dumbledore had taken the disturbance, the aristocrat made it to the boys' rooms unmolested.
Entering through the door, his eyes lit up at the sight of the two of them sitting peacefully side by side doing homework. "I take it you are pleased with yourselves?" he asked, walking over to them, taking a look at what they were working on.
"Of course, sir, wouldn't you be?" Harry asked, tongue in cheek, his green eyes dancing with merriment.
"Brat," Lucius replied with a laugh. "Spill it, how in Salazar's name did you manage to do that?"
"Sorry, Lucius, you have to wait until Severus gets here. The story isn't so thrilling that I wish to tell it three times in the same day," Harry replied laconically.
"Humph, it is fortunate for you, young man, that I like you," Lucius said with a sniff. "Very well, since it seems I have some time to wait, I suppose you can use the time trying these on," he added, pulling two packages from his pockets, enlarging them, and giving one to each boy.
Draco eagerly tore into his, while Harry subjected the blond to a suspicious look. Lucius merely lifted an eyebrow, daring him to make a fuss.
Realising the futility of making waves before he even knew what was in the parcel, Harry sighed and tore into it, groaning when he noted several sets of leather clothes. "Lucius, we have got to talk about your tendency to splurge on clothes for me. I already have plenty of clothes, I don't need any more!"
"Thanks, Dad, these are so cool," Draco said in delight, having unearthed several sets of leather outfits as well.
"You are most welcome, son." Lucius smiled. "As for you, Harry, I will overlook your comments, considering you grew up with heathens. A Malfoy never has too much clothes, besides, not even you can consider three outfits to be plenty."
"It's more than I've ever had before," Harry grumbled quietly, but his two companions heard him anyway.
"You are a Malfoy now, Harry, and you need to keep a certain standard. These outfits together with the ones you already have should tide you over until your real outfits are finished. It seems Mr. O'Connely has run into a few problems with some of your modifications," Lucius replied, sending a house-elf to get some refreshments.
"Let's see what colours he got you," Draco said, pulling the leathers from Harry's unresisting hands. "White, emerald green, jade green, royal-blue, navy-blue, tarnished silver… oh, you will have the entire school drooling over you dressed in these," Draco said with evident pleasure.
"Is that something to desire considering your reaction this morning?" Harry asked dryly, realising that he was fighting a losing battle. The Malfoys were going to do as they liked, he might as well go along for the ride. He would get his revenge at Christmas though. If they insisted on showering him with expensive gifts, it was only fair that he got to do the same, right? And by then, maybe he would know the men well enough to know just what to get them. Smirking slightly, Harry joined in the spirit and began to examine what Lucius had gotten for his son.
HPDM
It was very late afternoon by the time Severus could make his escape. Albus had gathered his most skilled teachers and had them examine the suits of armours for signs of magical spells or potions. They had found nothing. Whatever had been used to animate them, it was gone now, gone without a trace. There weren't even any signs left that they had ever been animated.
Dumbledore had refused to give up though, and had kept the professors at it long after they had given up on finding the culprit. Eventually Albus had been forced to give in and he had dismissed them, convinced Dark Magic had been behind it all, and he had left muttering about strengthening the wards and finding ways to scan for the Dark Mark.
Severus sneered and for once did not head for his dungeons, but to the ones he was positive were behind this whole mess. He was going to demand an explanation, ream them out but good and - maybe - award them a few points for a revenge well done. Oh yes, this had Potter written all over it. That boy had grown up and anyone not seeing it was a fool – an extremely blind fool.
"Are they in?" he asked Salazar, who nodded with a smirk.
"Good, dragons and Parselmouths."
The portrait swung open and Severus entered into a very cosy scene. Lucius was stretched out on one of the couches, reading, while Draco and Harry were sitting at the table, a few logs of wood sitting between them, talking softly and giggling.
"Alright, you little rascals! What did you do?" Severus snarled, stalking further into the room.
"Severus, I'm glad you came. What is the verdict?" Lucius asked, sitting up.
"The verdict, as you put it, was… that somehow the Dark Lord managed to get past Hogwart's defences and enchanted the suits. That would explain why the spell collapsed so suddenly, he didn't have the stamina to keep it up any longer."
Harry snorted, shaking his head.
"Quite! So what did you do, you little menace?" Severus asked again, his black eyes boring into Harry's skull as if he could will the information out of him.
"What makes you think it was me?" Harry asked innocently.
"Please! You are the only one with a grievance, no, let me rephrase that. You are the only one I know of at the moment who is angry enough and powerful enough to attempt to extract revenge on the Headmaster. Everyone else is merely gnashing their teeth or muttering angrily in dark corners. Well?"
Harry smiled ruefully. Trust Snape to be the one to figure it out. But then, the man was a spy and skilled at picking up even the smallest clue. "Yes, I'm the one who did it, and I've already promised Lucius I'd tell him what I did as soon as you got here. I did not relish the thought of telling my tale three times."
"And since Severus has arrived, it is time to talk. Tea anyone?" Lucius asked, snapping his fingers to summon a house-elf.
Severus nodded and sank into a chair, accepting the teacup filled with his favourite blend, along with a plate filled with sticky chocolate cake.
"Right. Where to start?" Harry mused, making himself more comfortable. "It began this summer when I stumbled across this diary, written by Norabeth Mulligan. She was a Muggle-born witch who lived during the reign of Elizabeth I. Her father was a merchant and married to a mouse of a woman, according to Norabeth. She was fascinated by the queen, but didn't dare name her only daughter after her. Instead she mixed and matched until she came up with Norabeth Elizandra Mulligan."
"Poor kid," Lucius murmured.
"Anyway, when she got her Hogwarts letter, her family was aghast and they threw her out. Norabeth didn't mind too much though, she was highly intelligent and had always dreamed about learning. She often eavesdropped on her four brothers' lessons and read their books any chance she got, much to her parents' dismay. From what I gather, she was something like Hermione, only with a far better attitude."
"This is all very fascinating, but what has it to do with what happened this morning?" Severus asked impatiently.
"I'm getting there," Harry smirked. "Norabeth was sorted into Ravenclaw and was apparently a whiz at Arithmancy. She was also something of a prankster. Her best friends were a fellow Ravenclaw named Augustus Snape, and a Slytherin named Lucien Malfoy."
Lucius and Severus both gasped.
"Apparently they too were also well known pranksters. Then one day, the school began to argue about who was the best pranker of the three. I'm not sure how, but they were roped into a bet. They got a month to create a brand new prank that would take place during a Friday, morning to lunch, lunch to dinner, and dinner to midnight. The students and the teachers were to be the judges.
"All three of them set to work, and what you saw this morning was Norabeth's prank. She bespelled a handful of small pebbles and dropped them into the suits of armours lining the corridors. When the bell rang for first class, the spell was activated and the suits began to charge down everyone that moved. When the bell rang for lunch, the spell was finished and the pebbles were banished. Thus no one knew how it was done and Norabeth had managed to create havoc inside the school," Harry ended his explanation.
"I agree it was a brilliant idea, but, Harry, it also very dangerous. What if someone got hurt?"
"But that's what's so brilliant with the spell she used." Harry laughed. "You can't get hurt. She thought of it too, you see. It was actually one of the rules, you couldn't hurt anyone, and you couldn't humiliate someone. The weapons still looked real, and if it hit stone or wood, they even sounded real. But, if they hit someone living, it would be like being hit by a weapon made of rubber. It might bruise, but it won't maim or kill."
"Hmph," Severus snorted.
"I can attest to that," Lucius said ruefully, rubbing his shoulder and the spectacular bruise he was sure was hidden under the clothes. His action drew the attention of the Potions Master, and before he knew it, Lucius found himself stripped to the waist while Severus carefully examined his injury, prodding with gentle fingers to make sure that a nasty bruise was all he suffered from.
"You will live," Severus said in a matter of fact tone, spreading some salve over the bruise, ignoring the way the blond wrinkled his nose at the smell.
"What I want to know is who won the contest," Lucius said with a grin once he had been allowed to redress; after all, the honour of one of his ancestors was at stake.
"Actually, they all won. The students couldn't decide which prank was coolest, and the teachers were all so impressed with the ingenuity and the spell work involved that they couldn't decide either," Harry grinned.
"Why do I have a feeling we will be subjected to the other two's pranks as well?" Severus asked with a small groan.
"Umm, maybe because you will?" Harry said, bursting into laughter upon seeing the men's faces.
"What happened to this young witch?" Lucius asked, deciding a change of subject might be good.
"She married a wizard three years her senior named Orion Black and gave him seven sons and three daughters."
Lucius nodded. He had guessed as much when Harry said it all began this summer. He hadn't bought the trunks then, and the only books he would have had access to were those found in the Black libraries.
"That reminds me. The families in the old days, at the time of the founders and there abouts, they all had loads of children. Why don't the families of today?" Harry asked with curiosity.
"In the old days the life was much harsher. Children died as infants at a much higher rate than they do today. Even if they survived the infant stage, life was still harder than nowadays, and duels to the death were not uncommon when settling a grievance. To ensure that the family named survived, they had more children. If you had only one, the risk was very big that they could be killed off, thus making a distant relative head of the family. Or the family line died out completely."
"But what about today? In the past 100 years, we've had two big wars, and one that is still being fought. Isn't the risk of something happening to the heir just as big today as it was then? What would happen if, Merlin forbid, something happened to Draco? Wouldn't the Malfoy name die with him?" Harry wondered with a frown, trying to understand.
Lucius shuddered, paling drastically.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," Harry said miserably.
"You didn't," Lucius said, trying to reassure the youth and collect himself at the same time. "You just happened to touch one of my nightmares. I always wanted a large family, but Narcissa, the cold-hearted bitch, refused. Claimed it would ruin her 'perfect' figure. Having large families fell out of practice a few hundred years ago, at least among the Purebloods, when there were a few rather vicious fights about who was to inherit the title and the property. It even went so far that one son killed off his five brothers to ensure he was the one to inherit when their father died. Seeing that, many families began to have only one son to ensure that such a thing did not happen again."
Harry snorted. "And the Purebloods moan about how the Muggle-borns are taking over their world. No bloody wonder when they are breeding themselves out of existence! That attitude really needs to change if the wizarding world is to survive. Each family should have at least two children, a son and a daughter. At the very least! I'm only surprised those idiots at the Ministry haven't tried to make a law or something, deciding on the number of children a family is to have. Surely others beside me are aware of the dangers we are facing?"
"I'm afraid not," Severus commented. "Everyone is so focused on the war that they are fairly blind to everything else. Whoever ends up leading the wizarding world once the Dark Lord is gone is facing a gargantuan task getting it back on its feet. The outlook on Dark and Light needs to be revised, a lot of subjects need to be reinstated here at Hogwarts. The issue of the number of children needs to be addressed, and then there is the whole question of Dark Creatures, which is a beehive in itself."
Harry nodded. "Another problem is jobs, isn't it? There are too few jobs in the wizarding world, so the Muggle-borns return to the Muggle world where they can get a second degree and find jobs more easily. The Muggle world also has all these modern commodities that they are used to and that the magical world is lacking. Hogwarts doesn't show them how to compensate for dishwashers and washing machines and such. There is also the fact that they aren't fully introduced to the wizarding world. They don't understand the customs and laws that rule it. No wonder they return to what is known and thus more comfortable. Reading all these diaries is helping me to understand better, but I am still lost when it comes to a lot of things. I'm not sure I will ever be fully comfortable in the magical world, and that makes me so mad because if it wasn't for Dumbledore's meddling I would have had a real childhood. I could have grown up, learning all the things the purebloods do, and not walking around feeling like I don't fit in. That I don't belong, just because I didn't inhale it with the mother's milk the way children like Draco did."
Draco scooted closer to Harry and wrapped him into a hug. "Hush, love. We will get rid of Voldie and deal with Dumbles and we will make sure no child ever has to experience what you did. Okay?"
Harry buried his face into the crook of Draco's neck and nodded. Putting his arms tentatively around the Veela, Harry basked in the feeling of love that seemed to come off the other in waves. All directed at him.
Lucius and Severus both watched the scene with sad eyes. In getting to know the boy better, they found it was criminal the way he had been treated. How he still was able to feel compassion was beyond them. So easily he could have been turned into something Darker than even Tom Riddle, yet he hadn't. Harry's soul was shining through and it was almost blindingly bright. It only made the knowledge of his abuse even more difficult to bear.
Next Time:
The four discuss the Dark Marks and Severus and Lucius learn a bit more about the Spirit Snakes.
Stay Tuned…