Title: Blood Loyal
Series: Sherlock!Wizardverse
Fandoms: Harry Potter/some BBC!Sherlock in the prologue, and references after
Pairings: pre-slash and slash Drarry, Romione, and others as they come along
Author: Lady Bryan (formerly Z-sama)
Beta: N/A
Legal: We don't own the characters created by Ms. Rowling or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or stuff controlled by the BBC.
WARNINGS: please see first chapter for full warnings
MISC: This is 6th year AU, and sets up background of the Sherlock!Wizardverse. This is also a prequel (of sorts) to our other story "John, I'm a Wizard".
That mongrel may have coached Harry and the other children against him, but the beast did not have his claws in everyone. The old wizard stood before a small cabinet. The doors were open to reveal racks of glowing vials and a small pool of water. The memories from the evening before swirling in the pool.
The door opened behind him. He closed his cabinet. He would revisit that memory later - Something about Mr. Malfoy's reaction to Harry's show of power had been... off.
He turned with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. "Mr. Finnegan!" he exclaimed bringing his hands together and rubbing them as if for warmth. "I am quite relieved to see you recovered from your ordeal. Please," he said as he gestured to the chairs before his desk. "Have a seat. Help yourself to some sweets. I am all out of lemon drops, I am afraid. But I do have some delicious licorice snaps."
Dumbledore sat at his desk, ensuring his withering hand had been well concealed by his sleeve as he watched Seamus Finnegan pop the devilish candies in his mouth without a second thought. And then, the headmaster waited.
o0o
They increased the intensity of their spells. Stronger and stronger until at last they were able to chip a piece off. Then another. Here and there small splinters, small chips, came off the cabinet.
"No more," Draco moaned, lowering his arm and leaning against Tobias for support. His core was drained. He doubted he could cast a simple summoning charm with how exhausted he had become.
Tobias put an arm around him to hold him up and sighed. "We need to work on your endurance. The enemy will not give you time to rest and recharge. If you're going to keep up with Potter and his friends, you need to push yourself beyond your limitations." When he was sure that Draco wouldn't fall over once he let him go, he moved to collect the chips and splinters they had made from the floor. Halfway through collecting them, he froze. His sense of smell may have been damaged, but his hearing was still rather keen.
"We are not alone," he said quietly, picking up one more splinter. He left the remainder on the floor and pocketed the rest as he stood. The grip on his wand changed. His muscles tensed as he became hyper aware of another presence nearby. He moved close to Draco and used one hand to signal for the boy to remain silent as he listened to their surroundings. "Slowly turn around and put your back to me." Draco did as he was told, and Tobias was grateful to feel the pressure on his back of his partner in crime. Two pairs of silvery eyes looked out into the hoard. Draco spotted movement and let loose a stunner. It hit a chair and shattered the back of it.
"Dig deep in your reserves," Toby said, loosing a stunner of his own when he sensed the next movement. They watched and cast, but Toby knew Draco wouldn't last long after the exertion of working the vanishing cabinet over.
He felt the electric crackle of the air before throwing himself in front of Draco. His protection spell was too slow as the Cruciatis took effect. Pain wracked his body as the haunting laughter echoed throughout the chamber. He had been released but drained from the fight. Behind him Draco deflected as best as he could the attack, trying to protect his guardian. His friend.
"The cabinet!" Tobias wheezed. "She's trying to get to the cabinet!"
Draco had put up a magical shield, one that Tobias had taught him in the training room. One he had practiced for hours alone, demanding of himself perfection. They were all that stood between her and the broken vanishing cabinet. "I'm going to lower the shield," he said, gripping his wand tightly. "But I don't have the strength to finish her. It's taking all I have to keep her from killing us."
"I'll try," Tobias said, staggering to his feet and flexing his fingers. His wand helped to focus - but focus was not what he needed right now. It wouldn't be strong enough. He needed it raw - needed it as unfiltered as possible. "On three," he said, and began the count.
As Draco lowered his shield, Pansy unleashed a spark of green. Tobias roared as loud as he could, from as deep in his chest as he could muster. He couldn't kill her - that much he knew. She still had a purpose in their future; in his past. But he could maim her. That much he could safely do. The words that came from his lips were lost to the howl of the wolf, but it threw her back, crashing through the hoard.
He lowered his arm, his palm scorched and smoking from the release of raw, wild magic. His chest heaved as he staggered forward, doubled over.
"Toby!" Draco gasped behind him. The wolf stood up straight and turned quickly. His wand on the floor. But he wouldn't be able to get it fast enough. And at such a close range...
Pansy gave a sickening gap-toothed smile as he tightened her grip on Draco's throat. She brought her face close to his and licked his cheek, savoring the saltiness of his sweat. With her other hand she held Draco's wand tightly, ready to be used.
"Pansy... you don't have to do this," Tobias said as he started to edge closer. She sent a red spark to the floor at his feet. He stopped dead in his tracks. "Please, you're not like this."
"Like what?" she snapped angrily. "You did this to me!" she exclaimed. "It was meant to be HIM!" She tightened her grip. Draco's eyes started to roll into the back of his head. "It was supposed to be HIM!"
"I can't change what they did to you. But I can help you. Help heal your mind."
"My mind? My mind?! You, a werewolf, want to help me?!"
"Yes. Please, let me help."
"Like you helped Daphne just now?" she smirked. "I think I heard her neck snap when she crashed. Can you heal that?"
"If she lives, quite possibly," he said, stealing a quick glance at Draco. "You don't have to do this. You can still walk away."
She brought her wand arm up to her face and used her teeth to pull up her sleeve. She exposed the bottom portion of the Dark Mark seared into her flesh. "He chose me when the traitors fled. I am no coward," she spat. "If I cannot kill the headmaster, I can kill the traitors. Bring honor back to Slytherin."
Tobias lunged for her. She let go of Draco and leapt for the cabinet as the werewolf changed his target so that he may catch his charge before the boy hit the floor. "Pansy! Don't do it!"
She shut the door of the cabinet as he cradled Draco in his arms. He knew from her screams that she was gone. Gone to the other side wherever it may be. He closed his eyes, trying to will his imagination to cease showing him what deformities it may give her, knowing he was at fault now for ensuring further damage to the cabinet. He shook his head and looked down at Draco as he checked for a pulse.
o0o
Ginny had been so inconsolable that Hermione was forced to summon Luna Lovegood from the hidden foundations to help her calm the girl. She'd sent her patronus with her message, and was relieved to see a rabbit sent back to her that seemed to speak with Luna's voice.
Godric Gryffindor had appeared on the wall of the training room before swinging open to reveal the passage behind him. Luna and Hannah had come as support. Hermione quietly explained the situation to Luna in the corner who seemed to understand the problem. "I'm so glad Harry's accepted it. He always looked so lonely... Well. Now you all know why."
"How could you have known?"
"Oh, I always know. I'm Luna. I know everything," she said cheerfully before adding. "And the nargles told me," she said with a smile. "We'll take her down below for a hot meal and tea. Get her away from Harry and calmed down."
"Thank you Luna. I wish there was something I could do for her, but she's been muttering about... Well... it's not exactly acceptable for Harry to, well..." She blushed, unable to say the words herself.
Luna nodded her understanding and patted Hermione on the arm. "It won't be like that forever. You'll see."
"Because you know everything," Hermione said sarcastically.
Luna shook her head. "No. I just trust that Harry wouldn't be the way he is without him finding happiness. Now, let's go help Ginny calm down."
"Thank you. I can't have her distracting me from my-"
"Oh you're coming, too. We have an entire library down there at our disposal. Salazar Slytherin's other secret chambers. I'm sure you'll find what you need in his dusty old scrolls." Hermione excused herself briefly to find Harry and Ron and tell them she was going with Ginny and Luna down below.
o0o
Tobias dragged Draco through hidden passages. He could not risk Rowena or any other portrait portal to appear within the Room of Requirement. Not knowing if the room were still compromised. So he did the next best thing. He brought Draco to the infirmary and once again into the care of Madame Pomfrey.
When they arrived she had just finished straightening the last cot to a chorus of screams. Tobias dropped Draco unceremoniously on a fresh cot with a grunt and turned his attention to the screams.
"Their bodies are... purging," she said to answer his unasked question. "They've been fed poisons. Many of them. I cannot give them proper treatment with so much coursing through them already."
He looked to Draco asleep on the white blankets and nodded. "I will help if I am able. My father was a muggle doctor. From experience I've seen many of the symptoms are similar among muggles and wizards in times like this."
"I don't think..." she began but did not finish. This strange man who had brought her more trouble than he was worth had come back from the dead right before her eyes twice now. He had helped to tend to the boy that now lay on the cot nearby when any magic used to help the boy would have killed him. Perhaps he could be of some help. Her duty, first and foremost was to the welfare and health of the students. Her loyalties to the headmaster be damned. "Come this way. I trust you know your way around a mop bucket."
"Yes ma'am I do. What about Draco?... He can't be left in the open..."
She nodded towards a curtain behind her desk. "Those are the private rooms, for those with more delicate conditions. He will be safe there." She then indicated a small hallway. "I have the others down there. The secure hall."
"Secure hall?" he asked. By the time he had attended the school, he did not think such an area of the infirmary existed. Then again in a year and a half the castle would be left in ruins. It wasn't unreasonable to believe they simply neglected to put the infirmary back the way it had been before the war.
"For the dangerous ones," she said. "Be careful Mr. Black. Young Mr. Goyle likes to aim his vomit at the hair." Rather than levitate her newest patient, she went to his cot, used a charm to add wheels, and pushed him towards her desk. The curtains parted and revealed a short hallway with a few sparse rooms. When she came back into view she had another cot, empty and fresh, to replace the other. "What are you standing around for young man. He'll be fine. He just needs a good rest and plenty of fluids. I don't know what he's been doing but the poor thing has nearly exhausted his magical core. Now shoo. Those rooms won't clean themselves."
o0o
Harry and Ron peeked out from the tapestry after Hermione told them she would be leaving. The common room was empty of visitors. "Wonder where Lupin went off to," Ron said as they came out from hiding. "You think he went to look for what's making those creatures?"
"Maybe," Harry said, then got a great idea. "Let's head back to Gryffindor tower. We can ask some of the portraits on the way what they've seen over the term." Ron agreed as Harry summoned his map and cloak to him... to discover they were nowhere in the chambers. A frown crept into his features before Ron suggested Remus must have had them.
Together the boys set off across the castle. Rowena, having overheard their conversation, had deliberately set them at the opposite end so that they may ask more than a few portraits for information. As they made their way through the castle, not getting anything substantial out of any of them they felt like they were being followed. Watched. And yet when they looked, no one was there.
"Stick close," Ron said, checking his wand in the back pocket for the hundredth time. "You might have made peace, but that doesn't mean we're safe here anymore."
Harry nodded. They walked on, checking classrooms and corridors as they went. And yet the feeling of being watched did not pass until they were at last inside the Gryffindor tower. The pair of friends had not gathered much information, and many of the portraits, especially those near the tower, were overjoyed to see him again. None of that compared to the shock and excitement of his housemates whom had remained at the school for the holiday.
o0o
Remus had seen her appear in the corner of the corridor. When the two boys had stepped out and she swung back closed her dress changed hue once again to her normal Ravenclaw house colors. It was a marvelous magical feat he had yet to puzzle out the how and why. She had been a great comfort to him during his school years. A quiet place to study where his friends would not find him. And later when he came not as a student but as a teacher, she hid him away within her warm and comforting walls to keep him and the children safe from harm.
He turned his attention to the boys and followed them in secret beneath Harry's cloak. Watching them he made a note of what they were doing - and the lack of response they received. He would have to go back himself and do more poking around. If they could learn why the portraits wouldn't tell Harry what they knew then they may discover other Hogwarts secrets as well.
Once he had followed them safely to Gryffindor tower he turned his attention to his true task. To root out Pansy Parkinson's compatriots. The girl had done so much that could not have been possible on her own. How many of the students in the castle now showed their true faces and how many were hidden behind magic and potions? That was why he took the map, for it was designed to show who is who beneath their masks.
o0o
Snape was summoned from Spinner's End late in the evening the day following Christmas. Arriving at Malfoy Manor he had assumed he had been summoned to explain himself before the Dark Lord about the sudden change in Narcissa Malfoy's condition. However he discovered it was not Lady Malfoy who needed his expert hand but another hysterical female.
A girl, a child, to be exact.
He had trained himself to remain impassive over the years when faced with even the most grotesque of injuries. And this was indeed grotesque. "You there," he snapped. "I will need an assistant. Strong stomachs?" Two women nodded. "Follow me," he said, stalking through the manor as he made his way to the parlor turned medical suite. He did not relish his role as the designated field medic. Not in the first war, and not even now. But knowledge of potions, both deadly and healing, had it's price and value. It saved him from much of the fighting the first time around. Instead he spent much of the first war patching together those who did the fighting.
And now... He stopped at the door to the rooms housing one of his own students. One he had told the Dark Lord would not be up to the task put before her. But the stubborn old fool had insisted. "How long ago?"
The wolf guarding her room blinked at him in confusion. So he clarified. "How long ago was she brought here, you idiot mongrel."
"Hours ago I suppose," was the growled reply. "Popped right out of a cabinet down at Borgin and Burke's she did. Her face all twisted and-"
Snape ignored him now and turned to his new assistants. "Are you alright with blood?"
"I'm not," one said.
To her he replied, "The potion stores in the basements. I need essence of dittany, blood replenisher, milk of the poppy, and anything silver."
"Silver, sir?"
"She has been in contact with werewolves at the school. We cannot rule anything out," he replied. "Now go." He reached behind himself and opened the door, breaking the silencing charms placed on the room to muffle the girl's agonizing screams.
He pushed up the sleeves of his robe. The woman followed him inside and swallowed hard. The girl couldn't have been older than her own daughter, Daphne. "I will need you to bind her," he shouted to be heard. "While I examine her injuries! Can you do this?!"
She nodded, swallowing hard again. She pulled out her wand and cast the only spell she could think of; one that created ropes to restrain and tie the girl down. Once he had been sure Pansy was secure, he moved closer, sweeping over her with his wand and muttering softly the charms to tell him of internal injury. He discerned that some of her internals had become... twisted. Moved out of place and causing her excruciating pain. He cut away her clothing to give her a proper examination and even had to turn his own face away a moment in disgust. Her pale skin mottled and broken. Large swaths of discoloration across her abdomen.
Soon his second assistant arrived with a tray laden with potions and brews. Things he had asked for and others that looked familiar that she felt may be useful.
Snape took a piece of the girl's robes and ripped it off into a smaller portions. "Soak this in dittany and lay it across the left half of her face. Press it firmly, flush against the skin to close the wounds," he said as he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. The second assistant did as she was told, handing the tray to the other woman who set it down.
"Milk of the poppy," he said, hand out. The bottle was placed in it, already decanted. He poured one third of the bottle into the girl's mouth. "Massage the throat to ensure she swallows."
When he was satisfied that it had been done, he recalled powerful healing spells he had learned many years ago in his youth. Spells that, had she known to what use he was going to be putting them, she would never have taught them to him in their childhood. He worked throughout the evening, his assistants following his orders to restrain and administer as he performed the incantations and spells to untangle the girl's insides.
o0o
He had finished cleaning the mess in the secure rooms a while ago. Now he stood staring through the slot in the door at the teen-aged girl inside. "There is not much we can do for them without knowing exactly what they have been taking," Madame Pomfrey said to him as she came up. "We can make them comfortable. Ensure they do not harm themselves. But until their bodies have purged..."
"I... have dealt with a similar situation recently. If I am permitted to examine them, take samples of their blood or hair, I may be able to create a potion to counteract what they have taken."
"I confess I am not as proficient in potions making as I ought to be, though I do my best. Normally I would be consulting with Severus, or as of this term Horace."
"So why haven't you?" He slid the panel in the door back into place before moving to another and looking inside. "Consulted them I mean."
"Horace is trying, but his knowledge of poisons and addictives is academic only. Severus understands the practical uses due to his, shall we say, troubled background. I understand that you are from the continent? Perhaps where you are from they have other ways and methods."
"My muggle father was a doctor," he said. "Often he and my mother employed the muggle sciences in their work together. In my training I have endeavored to do the same, carry on their work in my own way."
She considered his words a moment. She stopped him with a gentle touch to his arm as he closed the panel to move on to the next door. "Your muggle ways can help save these children?"
"I believe so."
"What do you need, Mr. Black? I will get you anything that is in my power as a ministry licensed healer to acquire for you."
"Actually, I need only a safe space to work away from the headmaster and prying eyes. I have my rooms, of course, but I need a space closer to the patients. Some of the potions and tests are very time sensitive. I can move my essential equipment here. If you have the time, my work is quite delicate and would require an assistant. You can learn my methods and my recipes to help others in your work."
"You would share your recipes?"
He nodded giving her a soft smile. "Of course. Despite what many are led to believe I really am only here to offer my help when and where I am able."
She gave his arm a squeeze before letting her hand fall back to her side. "I will find you the space you need. Have your supplies here by nightfall. I want to work on these children as fast as possible. The sooner we have them to their old and happy selves the better." He nodded his agreement and turned to go. She caught him again with her words when he reached the end of the small corridor. "Tell me, Mr. Black. Those you recently helped like this, were they... Were they Potter and his friends?"
He stopped, turning his head slightly to show her he heard her words. He said nothing and continued onward, another ally richer in Potter's struggle for independence.
o0o
Harry and Ron didn't think they would ever get away from the common room. They had agreed in advance on a cover story about Dumbledore needing him for important missions to do with the Order. Super secret stuff and the like. However they found it wasn't needed. Most of them apparently were under the belief that because of all the times Harry had been attacked at school he and his friends had all been given private rooms.
Some were jealous of the special treatment. Some were relieved, as they'd had some sense of peace in Harry's absence.
Another oddity they would have to look into. Harry, for his part, was just glad to be sitting on his own bed. Surrounded by his own things. And wearing his own clothes again. They were debating on whether or not to pack up their trunks and return to Draco and Toby's shared accommodation when Seamus arrived, throwing himself down on his bunk with a groan.
"So good to be back in me own bed!" he had moaned blissfully.
Maybe one night in their own room wouldn't be too terrible a thing. They could sleep on the decision. And it would afford Harry some time away from Draco to examine and give thought to everything that had happened so far this year.
A/N - Forgot to mention it a few chapters back, but due to the darker than anticipated turn this story has taken, I've upped the rating from T to M.