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Chapter Thirty-Nine—Consequences of a Cloak

"I hope it's all right, Draco."

Draco gave Ron a tight smile and kept walking up to the front of the Great Hall with his mother, who had personally come to fetch him for his father's funeral. He wanted to rage at Ron for being an ignorant idiot, though. How could anything be all right when his father had been murdered and they still hadn't caught the person who had done it?

But it wouldn't serve the Malfoys right now for Draco to show that kind of emotion in public. With an effort, he smoothed down his response and kept walking beside his mother.

The moment they got out of the Great Hall, though, Mother's hand tightened on his shoulder. Draco turned to face her, ignoring the prickling of fear down his spine that someone might spy on them from the entrance of the hall. His mother would notice if something like that happened.

"Draco," Mother whispered, her face pale and her eyes burning. "We have something very important to do."

"What is that, Mother?" Draco was proud of how steady his voice was, comparable to the stone walls and floors around them.

"You know that your father had a guest in the house? In the rooms that we told you never to visit?"

Draco nodded, although truthfully, he hadn't known they'd had a guest. He'd thought that his father might be keeping a prisoner or perhaps an experimental potion or dangerous beast in the rooms. But he had obeyed the directive to keep away, because he'd loved his father.

Father.

The grief tried to bite at him and drag him down like a wolf dragging down a deer again, but Mother was speaking, and Draco had to pay attention to her.

"Protecting the guest was one of the things that your father needed to do. Now that he's dead, we will need you to take up that burden. Do you understand?"

"Not really," Draco had to admit. "Mother, what is going on?"

"Shhh." Mother's hand rested on his face for a moment, then his hair. "I promise, Draco, you will know soon enough. But we can't talk like this in public. Our enemies might overhear."

Draco bit back the temptation to say that she had been the one to bring the subject up, and nodded. He simply had to realize that Mother was a little scattered these days, affected by Father's death, and he could hardly blame her when he was experiencing some of the same stress, sleeplessness, anger, and feelings of being useless.

"Come now, Draco. We will be late if we don't go soon."

Draco hurried after his mother in silence. He wasn't surprised when they went up to Headmistess Carrow's office. The only surprise had been that his mother had come to the Great Hall to fetch him in the first place, instead of just having the Headmistress summon him.

But Draco reckoned his mother had been too distraught to care about what would happen when people saw them together in the Great Hall, so he held his peace.

"Mrs. Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy. I am so sorry about what happened to the Minister."

Carrow looked as if she was a corpse trying to act a part, thought Draco. It made her sympathies worth less than nothing. She was probably just trying to calculate how losing the Minister would affect her own position, when he was the one who had appointed her. But Draco nodded as if he accepted and believed her, and Carrow turned to Mother.

"Please keep Mr. Malfoy by your side for as long as you need to. I will arrange to have his work in his classes excused."

"Yes," Mother said, mechanical-sounding now that they had someone else in the room with them. She took a pinch of Floo powder from the bowl that Carrow offered her and cast it into the fire. "Malfoy Manor!"

Draco followed, doing his best not to sneer at Carrow. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and was only a moment away from wringing them. He wondered if he would find her fled from her post when he came back.

He came out into the receiving room of the Manor, and started when he saw the woman waiting for him. He had seen her a few times before, but always in his father's office. Mother had made it clear that his aunt was not a worthy visitor to the Manor.

"Aunt Andromeda," Draco said, and made his voice as calm and clear as he could. If she was here, there was a reason. He stepped forwards with his hand out.

Andromeda shook it. "I'm sorry to hear about your father," she murmured.

Draco had his doubts whether someone who had once married a Mudblood was capable of the finer gradations of feeling that would have allowed her to actually grieve Lucius Malfoy, but he inclined his head. "Thank you."

"Come, Draco, we have to have you meet our guest."

For some reason, his aunt's eyes widened. But she stepped back and waited as Draco and Mother left the room and traveled down a corridor paneled in dark wood towards the suite that had been kept locked for the last several years.

Mother paused before they entered the outer room, one hand resting on the door, and looked hard at Draco. "Do you know what your father most believed in?" she asked.

"Blood purity." Draco was sure on that, given the amount of times he'd talked to Father about it, and was astonished when she shook her head.

"No. Protecting and saving our family. Making sure we were always among the powerful." Mother exhaled slowly. "When he first came to me and told me about our guest, I was astonished. But then I understood. This man is the most powerful man in the world, Draco. It made sense that Lucius took him as Lord and began to serve him."

Draco felt as though she had punched him. He stared at her in disbelief. Mother nodded back and opened the door before Draco could object at the thought of his father serving anyone.

The door swung open on a neat sitting room, decorated in whites and pale greens. Draco took a step in, glancing around. This impressive man his mother was talking about wasn't anywhere in sight, but there was an open book on the small glass-topped table between two chairs. Draco half-closed hiss eyes when he recognized it as one of the bound reports his father had mentioned studying in his last letter to Draco.

"Through there," Narcissa whispered, motioning at a door with a shining window in it that Draco knew must lead to the bedroom.

Draco took a deep breath and walked over to it. He listened, but no sound came from behind it. Was this "lord" asleep? He glanced at his mother, who motioned impatiently with one hand again. Draco opened the door.

The bedroom beyond was blue and white, and sunlight created by charms showered from the large window over the bed. A tall man lay there, younger than Draco had expected, and crowned with shining golden hair that made Draco wonder if he was a lost Malfoy relative. That might explain how his father had thought he was preserving the family's power by bowing to someone else.

The man stirred and rolled over. Mother caught her breath behind Draco.

And then a shining wand leaped off the table beside the bed and streaked across the room, hovering in front of Draco. Draco stared at the colors coming from the wand and felt lost. He had had a vision like this once, hadn't he? Someplace, sometime.

"I have waited for you," said a voice that seemed to sigh with promises, and then the wand lowered itself into Draco's hand.

Draco had never felt anything like it, not even when he'd found his hawthorn wand at Ollivander's. The sparks that ran up his arms and circled around his shoulders felt like being embraced by a creature of pure sunlight. Power surged through him, and he turned and aimed his wand at the man on the bed without being told, simply because it was what the wand wanted him to do. "Avada Kedavra!" he cried.

The jolt of green light that tore out of him was as green as the Manor's grounds in spring, although the last time Draco had cast the spell, he'd barely managed a thin line on the verge of blue. The spell slammed into the man, and he stopped breathing.

Mother gasped behind him.

The feeling of magic roaring through Draco changed direction and strength, and he laughed aloud. He turned back to Mother with a smile and shake of his head.

"It was never the man who was worth following, Mother," he said. "It was the wand. It is the Elder Wand. And now it has come to me."

Andromeda fought the temptation to sink to her knees as Draco and Narcissa came back into the sitting room. He was carrying a wand that Andromeda was certain was the Elder Wand, and all but glowing with power. His lip was curled back from his teeth, and he walked as though daring someone to hit him.

"Cissy?" Andromeda whispered.

Draco focused on her, and Andromeda recoiled as he did. "You will no longer call my mother by that disgusting nickname," he ordered. "In fact, you will forget that you ever knew it."

Andromeda gasped as something seemed to rip across her mind, stinging the way a slap to the cheek would have done. She knew that her memories had shifted, were altered, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember the thing that she had been ordered to forget. She ended up bowing her head, because that was the only way to survive at the moment. "Your will be done," she whispered.

"Yes." Draco glanced around and then turned to the fireplace. Flame danced across its logs without him having to gesture or say a word. "Mother, what kind of arrangements have been put in place for Father's funeral?"

"We will be holding a reception at the Ministry for those who wish to come and pay their respects," Narcissa said. She looked calmer than she had when she'd brought Draco through the Floo, but Andromeda wasn't at all sure that was a good thing. Her eyes followed the wand in Draco's hand as though it was the string guiding her movements. "The funeral itself will take place tomorrow, here on the grounds. Afterwards, there will be a gala to collect donations to the Phoenix Fund."

Andromeda kept her mouth shut, as dearly as she wanted to scoff. The Phoenix Fund, which billed itself as a charitable organization, had been established to pay wardmasters and other witches and wizards with comparable talents to keep adding their strength to the web of spells which kept Albus Dumbledore sleeping and imprisoned. Lucius had delighted in the name, claiming that because Dumbledore had once owned a phoenix, there could be no greater irony.

What is ironic is how afraid he was of a half-blood, years and years after he put him in the earth.

Draco nodded, his expression distant. "Those plans can proceed," he decided. "But I will be adding to them."

"Yes, my son? How?"

"I will introduce everyone to their new Lord at the gala."

Andromeda felt as though her stomach had filled with ice, and also was sure she felt the wand gazing at her. She stood still. Objecting was foolish. Trying to flee would be more so.

"Our new Lord?" Narcissa asked, staring at her son. "Not our new Minister?"

"The Minister's office has outworn its usefulness." Draco's voice had an odd cadence to it. While Andromeda hadn't spent a lot of time around him, she didn't think he was the one speaking anymore. "It is time that our world learns and profits from the reign of a Lord."

"Are you sure that you're ready for the burden, my son? At only fifteen—"

"The wand has much more experience than that, Mother."

Andromeda continued to remain quiet. She wondered if Draco would kill her, if he would bind her magic in some way, if he would remember and dismiss her. She had already sent an owl to Riddle about the Render that Narcissa wanted to build, but this was another development she desperately wanted to inform him of.

Not that she thought she would get the chance.

"Aunt Andromeda."

Andromeda jumped, and tried to convince herself that the light along the wand was simply a knowing glint such as might be in an eye if the wand had one, and not the beginning of a Killing Curse. "My lord?" she whispered.

"I need something from you."

"Yes, my lord." It grated to lower her eyes and step towards Draco as if she really revered him, but she would need to survive and get out of here somehow. And pretending was second nature to her now after years of living in a pureblood world and hiding her rage and hatred.

"I need your loyalty," Draco said, and smiled at her, and a tide of obedience crashed into Andromeda's mind and swept most of what she was away.

Harry came awake, gasping. He lay for a long moment in his bed with his hand clasped over his chest and felt his heart leaping as if trying to escape from behind his ribs. He blinked at the ceiling and listened, trying to understand what had awoken him when he couldn't hear any wards sounding.

Silence answered his listening. Harry sat up and swung his legs out of the bed, then rubbed his face.

It had seemed like a voice speaking through his dreams. But Harry couldn't remember what it sounded like, or what it was saying, or even why it had seemed important. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a dream sudden and startling enough to wake him up.

Then he glanced blearily around the room, and started. Because, no, there was something obscuring his view of the window.

Harry quietly gathered power around himself. He could obey Professor Riddle's injunction not to use war wizard magic on the grounds of Fortius and still hit the intruder with something intense enough to dissolve him or her.

The shape moved, and Harry ducked and rolled from his bed onto the floor in absolute silence. His roommates were breathing quietly around them, none of them waking up. That worried Harry. Some of them had keener senses or different training than he did. Why were they all sleeping on as if they didn't have a care in the world?

Harry clenched his hands into fists and took a long moment to listen. There was no sound of breathing or footsteps, or the crackle of magic. Of course, with his luck, there was someone in the room with them who could cast without a wand.

But they probably would have killed us by now if that was true, Harry thought, and stood up, his hands still in fists at his sides.

The shape had moved away from the window, and for a long moment, Harry didn't know where it had gone. Then it draped itself over his head and shoulders, and Harry went down with a flail and a shout.

Someone stirred in the bed and muttered something irritated that ended with his name. Meanwhile, Harry was discovering that the figure that had worried him and then attacked him was—

A cloak, apparently.

When Harry lifted his arms to try and fight it, he discovered that the cloth swathing him had made his arms vanish. He stared, said something soothing in response to another repetition of his name, and then sat up and stared down at the Invisibility Cloak Professor Riddle had told him about but had had no luck finding in the house at Godric's Hollow.

Why did you come to me now? he wondered uneasily. Andromeda Tonks's foretelling hadn't indicated any reason for the cloak to emerge from hiding.

The material shifted and slid in his hands, so soft and sleek that Harry's fear was pierced by wonder. He held it up and tilted it back and forth. The shimmer of power running through it could be mistaken as just the shimmer of the cloth unless you were really paying attention.

"You were a Deathly Hallow," he whispered, addressing the cloak softly enough that he shouldn't wake up his roommates again. "You are a Deathly Hallow. Have you come to me because the wand is moving? Is this the endgame?"

The cloak pressed closer to him. Harry stood up and wrapped himself in it. He disappeared so thoroughly that he could feel a thick layer of muffling start up between him and the ordinary sounds and sights of the room. It was like looking at the others through a film of starlight.

Harry shook his head and stepped out of his room, moving in a silence that seemed to well out of the floor beneath him and swirl around his head. He made his way to a balcony of Gryphon House that hadn't seen much use lately. Most of the people in the House felt that it was too exposed to whatever the purebloods might fling their way.

Harry sat down on it and took off the cloak, turning it around and around. It remained the same, an extremely well-made and shining piece of cloth that turned everything that touched it invisible.

"Why now?" Harry murmured. "Why didn't you show up earlier when I was fighting the wand?"

He gasped aloud and bent over in the next second as pure sorrow seemed to stab him in the stomach. The sorrow welled up into his head, and Harry's eyes ran with tears as he sagged back against the stone wall behind him, forced to relive the Invisibility Cloak's memories.

We were three, and one.

The years that we passed together could not be counted. Even when we were apart, in the hands of different humans who thought themselves our masters, we always knew where we were. We knew where we intended to be. We knew what purpose we served, and we were content.

Then came the first of the wizards who intended to wield one of us against someone who had the other. The House of Gaunt set the Resurrection Stone into a ring and tried to use the ring to command the wielder of the Elder Wand at the time. This was not the purpose for which we were made.

We lashed back at the wizard, and the ring that held the Stone broke apart. But the Gaunt wizard who had wielded it survived, and he did not give up the idea of the ring. He called spirits from the veil with the Stone and bound them into the next ring he forged, so that it would have the power to contain and command us.

We attempted to move to protect ourselves. But in the meantime, the Cloak had come to rest in the possession of the Potter line, and no matter what it tried or who tried to steal it, there it remained. And the Wand was in the possession of the wizard Grindelwald, among those who attacked the Potter line. We did not wish to have someone who would raise two of us against the Stone, any more than we wished the Gaunts to use the Stone against the other two.

We thought we had found a solution to our problems. We worked on the lines of fate, and ensured that Albus Dumbledore met Gellert Grindelwald in battle and took the Wand from him. We planned that he would find a young wizard who would claim the Stone as his heritage, and in turn, find a Potter who would be traveling with the Cloak. We did not care who would win that three-cornered battle, as long as we were in charge.

But it did not come to pass. The wizard who could have claimed the Stone did not. Albus Dumbledore befriended the Potter who had the Invisibility Cloak but did not act against her, and that meant the Cloak went on passing down the line. We did not understand. It was as if another force of fate were acting against us.

And then when Albus Dumbledore was buried in the earth, we discovered that the Elder Wand was not with him.

We do not know what happened. We know that we felt all three of us existing within this world, and then it changed, and we do not know how or when. We—the two of us, Cloak and Stone—searched for our Wand in such ways as we could, motivating our owners to act, sending dreams and foretellings, and driving a few people to go near Dumbledore's burial spot. But we could not sense it. And if a pureblood had claimed the Wand, we would have been able to, and might have been reunited at last.

Now, we know the truth. Somehow, the Wand was pulled beyond the world, and took over the role of puppeteer in order to come back to us. But something corrupted it. Now it is in the world, but it does not intend to reunite with us. It intends simply to destroy everything and everyone in sight, including us and the people who wield us.

I have emerged from hiding because there is no other way to settle this conflict. If you face the Wand directly in battle, you will die. You must become something more than a force of pure destruction. I will help you.

Harry tore himself out of the cloak and the pressure it was exerting on his mind with a gasp and a shake of his head. He stared down at the cloak covering his hands and obscuring part of his chest. His heart was beating wildly. Not that he thought he would have been able to see that, even without the cloak.

"I don't understand," he whispered. "If you're so powerful, what can I do?"

The cloak stirred, and more images and words poured into Harry's mind, but this time, he managed to retain his own separate identity enough to hear them, instead of simply plunge into them as into the middle of a stream and be lost within them.

We must find out what corrupted the Wand. We must find out why it is so intent on destroying things. A war wizard can make it focus on you. It does fear you, for all that it thinks it does not need to. And that means we need your help.

"Oh," Harry said flatly, and leaned back to stare up at the stars, feeling helpless in a way he hadn't since Professor Riddle had rescued him from the Dursleys. "Bait. That's what I am."

It is the role you must play while we find out what has gone wrong with the Wand. But we will protect you. It would not serve our plans if you died before we could lure the Wand onto the battlefield and call to it.

"Call to it."

It is ignoring the two of us speaking to it. It is as if it does not even recognize the form of our language anymore. But in the middle of fighting for its existence, then we have more of a chance of breaking through the shell of indifference or corruption that surrounds it.

Harry simply shook his head. In some ways, he supposed, this wasn't so different from how he had been positioned and played across the board so far by Professor Riddle. He was a manipulator, even if he was also the one who had given Harry the freedom and power to determine his own fate. And Lucius Malfoy and the purebloods who followed him had manipulated Harry's life before he was even born, by murdering his parents and creating the world he had to grow up in.

We will give you a reward.

"I can't think of anything that's going to make up for planting me on a battlefield and making me into bait."

We will ensure that your war is won the way you want it to be won. That the purebloods die and you have your revenge on them. That their plans do not come to pass. Did you know that your professor is blind?

"I—what?"

He once had eyes in the house that now holds our Wand and its wielder. The wife of the man who died. But that control was taken from him when the Wand began to assert its will. She has been feeding him false information. The Wand sensed your professor's control and arranged this. We will give you the true information and allow you to defeat your enemy.

Harry breathed out. Well. Put that way, at least the cloak seemed to be more on his side and Professor Riddle's than it had seemed so far. He held up the shifting, glimmering thing and stared at it for long moments.

"And after this is over, you'll go away? I won't have to be around you or serve you."

I am as eager to be parted from the Potter line as you are to defeat the Wand.

Harry nodded grimly. At least that was something.

And what he had to tell Professor Riddle couldn't wait. He stood up and ghosted into Gryphon House, to leave and go to Professor Riddle's quarters. Harry had permission to wake him in the middle of the night for emergencies, and this, Harry thought, bloody well was one.