I sincerely thank Jared, Joe, Speck TheKitty, Ardvarkeating101, and Kuilin for betaing this chapter.
Chapter 25.
The Search, Part III, To Be Nice
8:04 am, June 28th, 1993
Harry's mood became grimmer by the minute as he heard Bahry's report on the acromantulas.
Per Harry's request, Mad-Eye had negotiated with the English-speaking spiders last night, asking them to move somewhere else where there weren't vulnerable children. To Harry's relief, the acromantula patriarch Aragog had agreed provisionally, given that Harry could procure a suitable replacement forest. Mad-Eye's probing had also turned up information on the snake population of the Forbidden Forest.
For a few hours, Harry had thought with some relief that he had prevented a war between sapient beings.
Unfortunately, at about seven thirty in the morning, Auror McCusker, who was on watch in the Forbidden Forest, was almost killed in an ambush by two acromantulas the size of bulls. If Auror Bahry, who had served the Department of Law Enforcement for 101 years, was not by his side at that time, McCusker would have lost his head instead of his wand arm. Auror Bahry didn't hesitate to use the killing curse on the spider that tried to bite off McCusker's head, nor did he hesitate to use legilimency on the other spider he stunned.
What Auror Bahry's legilimency discovered horrified those who heard: the acromantulas attacked McCusker because they thought he overheard their secret negotiation with Auror John Dawlish, who promised them land and the flesh of hundreds of Muggles from some hellhole in Africa in exchange for their knowledge on the pipeline system of Hogwarts; or if the acromantulas would prefer white prey, land and Muggles in the former Yugoslavia could be provided.
A confused Auror John Dawlish was quickly arrested, and signs of legilimency and the Confundus Charm were found on him.
While Madam Bones and Mad-Eye were busy checking all the Aurors for traces of legilimency and other charms, Harry considered the implication of this.
-We are not only fighting Voldemort; There are many other dark wizards lurking out there, all seeking the Stone for themselves. These enemies might not be as intelligent as Voldemort, but they are no less cruel. They wouldn't even blink an eye to use hundreds of Muggles as acromantula fodder to discover the pipelines and floor designs of Hogwarts. And judging from the old cobwebs in the Chamber of Secrets, not even Salazar's secret base was safe from the spying eyes of the giant spiders. The spiders might know something about the Room of Requirement as well.
-Wizards who would form an alliance with man-eating acromantulas wouldn't hesitate to ally themselves with Voldemort, given that Voldemort could potentially offer them much more.
-We need to control the acromantulas, and control the news of Voldemort's reappearance for as long as possible. But given the interested eyes, I doubt suppressing the news of Voldemort's potential return is possible at all.
Harry didn't have enough time or energy to blame himself on a lot of things along the lines of "why did I decide to send the prisoners to Nurmengard" and "why is the Ministry still leaking like a sieve". He needed to deal with the acromantula crisis first. He couldn't afford to let the acromantulas offer important information about the Hogwarts defense system to anyone.
"Is Aragog plotting to ally with another dark wizard, or are some other spiders plotting against Aragog?" asked Draco, who was always keen on the political structures of any group.
From the blankness and confusion on Auror Bahry's face, such questions had never occurred to the second oldest Auror currently serving the Ministry. It was an easy mistake to make; reducing each individual monstrous spider to a member of The Swarm of Monstrous Spiders. He had to send his Patronus to his colleagues who were guarding the captured acromantula to get an answer.
A few minutes later, a mare Patronus jumped into view, and it said in a somewhat disturbed female voice: "The spiders plotting to sell the secrets of Hogwarts are conspiring against their own patriarch Aragog as well. By the way, I think one was eating something that looks like a child's arm - I need to look further into this."
Everyone in the office became uneasy upon hearing the last part of the report.
"Damn Hagrid!" Mad-Eye spat. "How could he trust promises from a half-blind spider?"
Madam Bones' face slightly twitched, but she offered, "Legilimency on Hagrid last night also revealed that he had offered food to werewolves hiding in the Forbidden Forest many years ago. But last year, when Mr. Lupin went into the Forbidden Forest looking for the pack to tell them that the Stone could cure lycanthropy, the pack of werewolves were nowhere to be found, it's possible the acromantulas didn't technically eat humans."
A number of Aurors became much more relaxed when they heard Madam Bones' explanation, but Harry just felt worse: some CHILD got infected by a curable disease, and the rest of the wizarding world just stopped considering him or her as a human being anymore! And a sapient spider has eaten another sapient being, perhaps even alive, and that's actually part of the nature of the giant spider…
Harry's brain wanted to stop working, for some protection mechanism in it tried to shut down and reject the horrible scene that was being produced by his vivid imagination.
The world outside Harry's brain continued without Harry's input, and Draco was already suggesting, "Then maybe we should ally with Aragog, and help it to get rid of the rebels."
All the employees of the Department of Law Enforcement nodded with agreement. From the looks on their faces, everyone of them would dearly prefer the acromantulas kill each other until there were no spiders left in the Forbidden Forest.
Harry wanted to protest - he wanted to point out that acromantulas were sapient beings with intelligence almost matching that of wizards, and the death of sapient beings for any reason would be a horrible thing - but he knew that would be a lost cause.
At this moment, Harry realized that how small and how fragile a world that Hermione and himself were in. Not even Draco was close to that world of idealism. Before Harry could convince Draco of the innate value of lives of acromantulas, the image of Draco in Harry's head already offered rebuttal: Harry, you had said that since there was no reproductive isolation among wizards, Muggles, veelas, goblins, vampires, and werewolves, so we were still the same species. But nobody has ever successfully mated with an acromantula, or manticore, or sphinx, or quintaped. Therefore, they are not the same species as us.
Harry knew that he'd better not give Draco a chance to make the being/beast argument, for more Aurors would be even less likely to change their minds after hearing Draco's argument.
Or, at least, when the Aurors' lives are still being threatened by the sapient cannibalistic spiders, they are not going to be convinced by your the ideals. Slytherin snapped. We killed thirty-six Death Eaters who were definitely sapient human beings when our life was threatened, you hypocrite! We only began to remember our ethics because our life was not the one at stake at this moment.
"Hmm, Draco, could you go there and give Aragog some advice on how to rule his offspring better?" Harry pleaded. "And if possible, could you also try to minimize the number of deaths in the acromantula population?"
Lady Narcissa Malfoy looked as if she could tear Harry into pieces with her slender and fragile hands, while her son, who knew Harry much better, just nodded and said, "OK, Harry. And General Chaos, I need to borrow some items from you."
With that, the General of Dragon Army requested some magical and Muggle items from Harry, and, more importantly, the protection of several top Aurors from Madam Bones.
Narcissa became visibly calmer the moment Draco began to address the four Auror trios assigned to him. Harry guessed that she saw what game the new Lord Malfoy was trying to play now, and Lady Malfoy was not going to intervene in the games of the new Lord of her Ancient and Most Noble Family.
At this point, Mad-Eye snapped. "Lord Malfoy, how about I go and protect you?"
Draco smirked, increasingly mirroring his father. "Auror Moody, that would be wonderful."
Harry could tell that Draco was fighting for dominance with Mad-Eye, but since there would be less risk of Draco dying with Mad-Eye in the Forbidden Forest, Harry wasn't going to complain.
About thirty minutes after Draco had departed with the Aurors, the new Lord Malfoy reported by two-way mirror that Aragog's discipline of his disobedient offspring was going well - the colony of acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest were obviously untrained in the fine arts of politics besides direct killings, so even some basic maneuvers on Draco's part could outsmart most spiders.
Harry was a tad relieved when he heard this development.
However, after this morning's Daily Prophet arrived, Headmistress McGonagall had to leave and deal with a public relations crisis, with letters and parents showing up at Hogwarts demanding to know why "some dim-wit half-giant" who raised man-eating acromantulas had been hired to look after Hogwarts grounds.
Harry agreed with the parents' outrage in principle, but he couldn't let the angry guardians into the Forbidden Forest to hunt down the acromantulas themselves. For one thing, Aurors were relatively powerful wizards, and one Auror had been confirmed to be under the influence of legilimency and confunded - who knew how many of these livid parents outside Hogwarts were under some form of mind-control charms?
-I need Draco's opinion on the public relations stuff.
Harry reached for his two-way mirror, only to see that the other side was already requesting communication.
Draco's slightly worried face appeared in the mirror. "Harry, the swarm of rebelling spiders suddenly started fighting and killing Aragog's faction. I need to help Aragog stabilize the front. I think the outside dark wizards got in touch with the spiders again."
-So much for peaceful solutions.
When the General of Dragon Army shifted his position from Aragog's political advisor to the spider patriarch's military advisor in a civil war, Severus had to dispatch several hundred of his thinning snake army into the Forbidden Forest to prevent the acromantulas from running away into either Hogwarts or the wrong hands, while Lucius continued his search without being notified of his son's adventure.
As time went by, Draco's report began to take on a hint of confusion and panic. "Harry, I just gave Aragog the light potion you used to blind Sunshine and Dragon in our first-year fight, along with transfigured glasses, because I think since acromantulas have eight eyes, they must be affected by the light more than we are. Well, the potion didn't work so well in the much denser woods in this part of Forbidden Forest, but that's not the point. I think the enemy is mocking me: spiders on the other side just used a fire-light potion that can ignite trees and produce blazing light. And remember my last report, when I told you that the enemy spiders were exhibiting better guerilla tactics than I was? Now I think the mastermind behind the enemy spiders is showing me how Hermione, you, and I could do better in our latest mock battle against the allied forces of fourth and fifth year armies if we didn't hesitate to take casualties."
-What… Professor Quirrell, is that you?
As the background noise of screaming spiders and stunning hexes lowered, Draco's voice suddenly took on another level of horror. "Harry, the enemy retreated for no reason at all! I had thought I would need to sacrifice at least one fourth of Aragog's faction to resist this round of attack. Now... now the enemy is giving us time to rest!"
Professor Quirrell's cold and somewhat interested eyes appeared in Harry's mind.
-He is taking his time. He is enjoying this moment when someone is able to put up a mockery of resistance in front of him.
Mad-Eye's scarred face suddenly replaced Draco's with the blond boy's protesting voice in the background. "Lad, I see the reason for the retreat. The enemy acromantulas all rushed to devour the body of Giuliani, a dark wizard from Italy. When they couldn't get a bite of Giuliani, they bite each other. Anyway, Giuliani wasn't killed by spider bites; it appears our dear enemy mastermind finished him off."
-Voldemort was annoyed by the presence of another dark wizard in a territory that he considered his and his alone, so he killed other dark wizards who tried to lay their hands on Hogwarts. And that's…
-That's possibly what Voldemort considered a nice thing to do.
-Remember teaching Voldemort to be nicer, and how he promised to try? After that, he killed MacNair, maybe he made a horcrux then, maybe he didn't even need an incantation to make a "simple" Version 1.0 horcrux, he just did it with a pebble or something like that. Afterwards, since he didn't get a chance to hide that particular horcrux, it can easily be touched by a magical animal or something, then…
Harry fought down the chills in his spine, and said in a quivering voice: "Auror Moody, Draco, pull out all our Aurors, and retreat back to the castle now."
-If my guesses are correct, Voldemort would finish off all acromantulas "for us", because he may consider killing all giant spiders who tried to sell secrets of Hogwarts a "nice" thing. He may also consider instigating a spider civil war a fun thing to do as well.
-Oh, Professor Quirrell, please consider letting Draco and Mad-Eye leave unscathed a nice thing to do.
Hermione, who knew the truth of what happened that night one year ago, looked at Harry in silent horror. She, too, understood.
Madam Bones was confused, but she agreed to withdraw the troops from the Forbidden Forest. The enemy was obviously stronger and there was no point losing Aurors in a foregone battle.
Just as the view from the two-way mirror swirled when Mad-Eye tossed it back to Draco, the ex-Head of Slytherin's empty voice was transmitted through the two-way mirror together with the light of a Patronus. "Mad-Eye, whatever you are doing now, I need you to turn back an hour, and trace Lucius' every movement in the pipelines near the Headmistress' office."
Draco's face took on a grey shade.
Then Harry heard Mad-Eye's curse. "Damn, I can't! Time doesn't allow it!"
The new Lord Malfoy shrieked.