---
Coincidence? Surely you know there is no such thing... Destiny is busily at work.
|HPTC-Sorceror Daemersgrale|
---
Part 10- Prophecies and Portkeys
The Plane of the Trident..
Three minds were present in the room- omnipresent rather. They had attributes similar to that of a God; they held power of life and controlled Destiny. Of course, it was impossible to tell whether the Trident actually controlled Destiny or was merely a pawn in it's game. As impossible as proving the Deeper Meaning of Life.
Life itself was different on the Trident Plane. The souls of the Trident existed and interacted, but not in bodily or verbal fashion. They had passed far beyond the mundane and ineffectual language of mere words.
Every now and then, however, perhaps to appease nostalgic sentiment, they would once again imprison themselves in their old bodies. Even pure perfection could be tiring.
In a flash, the Trident had their old limitations back. They slipped easily back into the space-time continuum. The chaos around them twisted, and then formed itself to a perfectly white and sterile room. The walls gleamed and were reflected off the polished floor tiles. So jarringly perfect that the surroundings seemed surreal.
The Trident followed suit with King Arthur. A small, round table was placed in the centre of the room with three coloured chairs with it. One was the darkest black, the other the deepest green and the last a blood-red. The greatest Dark Wizard sat on the black chair, the Greatest Wizard sat in the blood-red and the most Intelligent sat on the green.
The Greatest Wizard was Gravero Gryffindor. His stature was dimunitive, but his green eyes gleamed determination. He absently pushed back his spiky black hair, unused to corporeal constraint. He glanced quickly at the other two at the table, but his set gaze went back to the one on the green chair.
She was Helaine Wrathstorme. Tall and willowy, with a pale complexion. Her hair was a wavy dark brown with streaks of honey. Her eyes were piercing blue and her lips firmly set. Even reassembled, her eyes and face seemed to belay an untold weight tugging incessantly at her soul. The weight of Knowing.
"You were told, Daemersgrale, not to interfere." Gravero said.
"It was decided." Helaine remarked.
"May I remind you that it was decided much before that I would choose an heir this century? And that it would be Draco Argentus Valwracen Malfoy? And that he would fall prey to our Curse?"
Helaine looked up from examining her hands. "It was. But you know the rules, Dae." She half smiled.
"It is the first of the five years of the Ascension, when it is decided whether we remain in the Trident or another will ascend to our place. Your Malfoy is the prime contender for your position." Gravero said, deadpan.
"He displays obvious potential, but I am unsure, Gravero. I am because he is unsure, he has decided to be my heir, but he doesn't believe in himself. I am merely helping."
"And helping yourself." Gravero added.
Daemersgrale smiled maliciously. "It is you that helps yourself, Gravero, to everything- including my wife."
Gravero blushed and then looked doubly surprised. He had obviously forgotten about the extremely human reaction. "I didn't, Daemersgrale. Helaine came to me. You were the one who-"
Helaine hit the table. "Enough! We are the Trident. We must function as one. You know what this bickering does to mortal time. It slows so we may decide and you know what that does to the fabric of reality."
"Of course- reality is then worn thin. Every instance Time is tampered with, reality is eroded. And you know that this decreases our chances of remaining in the Trident. And we all know what happens to Replaced members of the Trident." Daemersgrale shuddered. "They get imprisoned eternally on the dead plane."
"It is the price we pay for our power. Nothing comes free."
"It isn't as if we had a choice." Helaine said, quietly. "Anyhow, the one whom I believe shall replace me is called Hermione Granger, my heir. She is the one in our Curse as well."
"Quite odd, that the Gold and Silver both are being viewed by the Trident." Gravero remarked.
"It gets- ahem, odder-" Daemersgrale mocked. "-Hermione Granger is the best of friends with a boy- a special boy- called Harry Potter." Gravero coughed.
"Ah yes, my heir's heir or some such nonsense. He's up for my position- quite a coincidence, really."
"Coincidence?" Daemersgrale hissed. "Surely you know there is no such thing, Gravero. They know each other as we knew each other. Destiny is busily at work."
"Quite- anyway, this Potter boy, he's at odds with your heir's heir, isn't he Daemersgrale?"
"Tom Marvolo Riddle" Daemersgrale hissed. "Yes."
"Enough of this small talk- we must not interfere any more."
"But what if my heir requests my help? He is after all, going to battle alone." The Sorceror said.
Gravero looked thoughtful. "You may help...but only if you clear it with the rest of us before."
"Very well."
"It is agreed."
"Come then, let us enter it into the Book of Destiny."
In a fraction of a second, the room and all inside it vapourised into nothingness. The three minds melded once more as one and disappeared.
All was well with the Universe.
---
||
The Malfoy cliffs...
Fleur Delacour balanced herself precariously on the very edge of the cliffs. The wind buffeted her face and screamed all around her. She spread out her arms and imagined leaping off the precipice, plunging into the wrathful waves below.
She let her arms fall beside her. Does even the great Harry Potter understand me? She wondered. Or will it be like all the others, like Roger Davies and Damien and countless others? Draco never loved me, and I never loved him. That relationship was just casual, fun...but I'm so tired of it.
She closed her eyes. It's so lonely...so very lonely.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
"They're not worth it, Draco." Fleur replied in French.
"Come now, Fleu, what's wrong?" He touched her hand comfortingly.
"Will I ever find true love, Draco?"
"You mean you didn't with me?" Draco asked, his eyes filled with feigned hurt and a smile tugged at his lips. "Fleur, how could you? I loved you so much!"
Fleur started to laugh. "Mythomane!" She exclaimed.
"It's not nice to call people complusive liars, Fleu." Draco smiled.
"Not just anyone, you Monsieur Draco Malfoy." Fleur stopped, she saw Harry in the distance.
"Ah, your chance at love comes along. I'm just going to disappear..." He turned. "Anyway, I need to find some clothes for Mia."
"What 'appened to her old ones?"
"They ripped." Fleur smiled and Draco held up his hands. "Hey, I had nothing to do with it, honest!"
"Mythomane." She laughed again.
Draco flashed a charming grin and Disapparated. Harry turned the corner. He jogged, panting, to the spot Fleur was standing on.
"Hey, I thought I saw Malfoy here."
"He thought he 'ad better...disappear. So 'ow are you Harry?" He noticed she made a special effor to say his name properly.
"I'm fine. So what were you an Malfoy talking about?" Harry tried to appear casual.
Fleur's eyes danced. "Harry...you are jealous!"
"Of course not!" He replied, blushing.
"Oh, Harry, what should you be jealous of? Look at his life...his parents?"
Harry glanced up at her concerned face. "Well, at least his parents are alive! Mine are dead, Fleur. They're dead." He looked away, embarassed.
Fleur put an arm around his shoulder and hugged him for a minute. "I know they are, Harry. But think...you are an orphan with dead parents...but Draco is an orphan with both of his alive."
---
||
The porch of Malfoy Manor...
Draco Malfoy glared at the feebly glowing dawn sun. He remembered the times when it had been his only object of solace. The knowledge that the same sun beat down on the rest of the world. Yet with that came the knowledge that he was so insignificant; the sun would scorch the earth whether he lived or died, loved or hated. And that was how Draco Malfoy found solace in indifference.
But yet, that was what haunted him also. His greatest fear, his greatest salvation. For what Draco Malfoy feared most was being merely a face in the crowd. Of never doing anything memorable. Of dying after having lived a mundane life. Draco Malfoy feared so greatly, that he would never be- unique.
But right now, Draco would have traded uniqueness for anonymity in a heartbeat.
His soul felt as if it was shattered into a million fragments. He had accepted Daemersgrale's deal. He didn't know whether Hermione would love him still...for how could she love a person who would kill hundreds upon thousands? Draco Malfoy knew he would kill people. And he also knew that he would do it without remorse. Why should he care about a nobody- a mere face in the multitudes? A mere droplet in the tide?
But she would care, he knew it as he knew her. She would love him, he knew, but would she stay? And there came the paradox- a burden too heavy for his mind. The fact that he wanted Hermione Granger to stay with him him, but knew that if she did, she would not be her, and he loved her, so if she did stay with him still then he would not want her to because that wouldn't be her innate nature but if she didn't stay with him they'd both love each other but never be happy or together.
He brushed back his ice-blonde hair. Life, he thought, is not going to be quite as easy as Father said. The images of his father tellling him his future sprung to life.
"Your future, boy? It is all decided. You will serve the Dark Lord and become his most trusted aide." Lucius had seemed so sure.
"But, Father-..." Draco had said, but stopped. The minute the words left his lips he knew them to be a mistake.
"But? But? You do not question, you do not query- you merely accept."
"Ours not to question why, ours but to do and die." Draco had whispered.
"What?"
Draco had glanced up but looked down, unwilling to meet his fathers' furious gaze. "The Charge of the Light Brigade- a poem, Father."
"Sometimes I wonder, Draco- which world do you live in? This one, or the one created by you- woven from the threads of your imagination?" Lucius Malfoy always spoke ornately.
"I do not know, father." Lucius had hit him with the back of his hand.
"Listen well, Draco, I will not repeat this again. A Malfoy- a Malfoy always knows."
Draco almost laughed. If only I knew now. He thought, bitterly.
Harry glanced at Draco's set face. He wondered how you could describe the expression on it. Cold, hard...but Harry didn't think so. More like pensive, intense- yet also calculating, slightly cruel-evil. And Harry was jealous. Fleur had been right.
Quite intensely jealous of the fact that Draco Malfoy was a 'bad boy'. The one thing that the Boy Who Lived, the conqueror of Evil, the champion of Gryffindor could never hope to be. Harry wondered what it would be like to be Draco Malfoy. To be selfish and not care about the rest of the world. He wondered what it would be like not to be expected to do the 'right thing'.
Yet through it all Harry Potter knew that he could never be like Draco Malfoy. And that Draco would never be like him.
The front doors burst open with a loud clang. Ron strode out, his robes billowing in the wind and his ears crimson with anger. The veins on his temple started to protrude and he looked rather overblown. In an instant, Harry could see the 'Percyness' of him.
"Lupin just told me-" He paused for effect and then swung his right arm out violently. "That you," He pointed his finger accusingly at Draco. "- said that I am to stay here."
Draco greeted the outburst with perfect calm. "Yes, you will be of much more use.When we get back to Hogwarts, we'll have thousands of people arriving for the battle- they will need training. The only people who can give them proper sword and hand-to hand combat training is a person who knows how to."
"Well I bloody well don't!"
Draco regarded as he would a slug of extremely low intelligence. "Well, obviously-" He rolled his eyes. "- you will stay here and recieve it from the servants."
Ron's jaw dropped and he made a queer noise somewhere between choking with indignation and coughing with outrage.
"Weasley, if you need to throw up, you could go to a bathroom." Draco sneered.
Ron didn't even respond.
"Besides..." Drawled Draco. "Padma, Sirius and Lupin are staying, too. Sirius wants to stay with mum- Narcissa, the full moon's coming up soon, so Lupin's down."
"But- but-..."
"Please, Ron, you'll be of much more help over here." Harry said, gently.
Ron turned on him. "So that's how it is, is it? Not good enough to join your little expedition, am I? Fine."
He sniffed woundedly and Disapparated. "Should have added 'an inferiority complex the size of Russia' to my description of the Weasleys." Draco hissed.
"Shut up, Malfoy."
"Make me, Potter." Harry sighed in exasperation. He had a feeling this was going to be a long day.
"Forget that, we have to leave. This school is in India and to get there on a broom is-is-..."
"Preposterous?" Draco supplied.
"Yes." Harry affirmed.
"It would be much easier to use a public Portkey. There's definitely one in London."
"But can't they be traced?" Fleur asked.
"The one in KnockTurn Alley can't." Draco said, grimly. He glanced at Malfoy Manor once more, turned and started to open the frontal archway.
The front door clicked and Harry made a sort of gasping noise. Draco twisted his neck around and then blew out his breath, relieved. It was only Hermione.
"Herm, what- what happened?" Harry managed to choke out.
Hermione looked slightly nervous but determined. "Nothing happened, Harry."
"But- but those aren't your clothes!" He exclaimed. Hermione looked down.
"Oh, you actually take notice then?" She said, vengefully. "Or is it just since Draco arrived on the scene?"
She was paying him back, Harry knew, for not realising and accepting her feminity in school. Every dance the same old story, neither Harry nor Ron would actually as her out, but when she went with someone else both would pick him to pieces. It had been only Ron before, but Harry too had done it in a more brotherly fashion.
"But-" Hermione cut him off.
"Why is it that I can never change without you acting as if I should be thrown into St. Mungo's mental ward?" Seven years of the Wizarding World had changed her. St. Mungo's came easier to her lips than 'mental asylum'.
Harry coloured slightly. "No- I'm sorry, Herm, you look really...really-"
"Cool." Draco finished, sauntering up. "I knew mum's clothes would fit you."
"Mum's?" Harry choked. "Why are you-"
"My trousers got ripped while I was..um, fencing with Draco yesterday. They're the only one's which I can attach a sword-holster to." Hermione said, smiling to herself.
She re-buckled her heavy scabbard as Harry looked at her incredulously.
She was wearing dark walnut brown leather flared hipsters and styled heavy sandals. Instead of the tunic she wore a sleeveless fitted black vest which showed through her chainmail. The scabbard hung loosely at her hip. Her hair was SleekEazy'd and gelled straight, her eyes outlined in charcoal black pencil and her lips the same brown as her trousers.
She seemed like a different person, her aura of restrained scholarliness was nonexistent and she looked darkly beautiful. Draco casually placed an arm round her waist and led her to the frontal arch.
"You look amazing." He whispered.
---
||
The Gryffindor Dormitories...
Sylvoren Trelawney jerked upright in her bed. It was yet six o'clock, none else had awoken. She felt a systematic throbbing at her temple and smiled to herself.
"So the Quest begins." She whispered and reached under her bed.
A musty book with bronze clasp opened to her touch. Without even a whispered command the pages turned. Each page a prophecy, and each prophecy having infinite consequences. Some were written in quatrain form, such as those by the outcast Nostradamus. He had breached Wizarding Law and revealed forbidden secrets to the Muggle World. Some did not rhyme at all. Sylvoren reached the double page she was looking for.
Two prophecies about the same event spread before her. The first was quite simple, the second more complex.
Wilt break her sacred joining Vows.
The one of Flame will walk no more
If the Traitors walk with the Sorceror.
The Maid of Undead's wish shalt come to be
When the Lord comes forth with his plea.
But she too will join her minions state
Arion's rider will fulfill her Love's fate."
"Upon winged horse and dragon scale
With Lightning's brand and Daemersgrale
Tears, blood and steel: the battle will be fought
Upon Leaders of the War, vengeance will be wrought.
The Maid of Undead and Alchemist Divine
Will lose one love they thought thine
The Cassandra will ill-fortune prophesise
Arion's rider will be warned of Love's demise.
The Mage of Lightning in Love unaware
With white iced Veela and her gilded snare.
The Healer will walk forever alone
After War returning to amethyst throne.
Slytherin's heir will walk no more
The world shall never be as it was before.
Two paths diverge for the chill-eyed one
One of evil, one fatally unstoppable once begun.
Tomorrow her task would begin.
---
||
Knockturn Alley, London...
Harry glanced at the dirty shop windows, mired with streaks of dust. His entrance had not evinced as much excitement as before because he was wearing a heavy black cloak, as were the others. Somehow Draco managed to make even a formless cloak look stylish. Harry glanced back at Hermione and Fleur.
There was no doubt about it, Fleur was far more beautiful. Even the most rose-tinted of eyes could see that. But Hermione was beautiful too, in an unassuming way. Fleur's charms had worldly wiles behind them.
Draco walked into the same shop Harry had seen him in many years ago. Borgin and Burkes. He quickly followed him in.
Draco was already at the desk, his hand on the calling bell. He rung it impatiently.
"Yes? What do you want?" Borgin snapped.
Draco flipped back his hood.
"Master Malfoy!" His tone changed immediately. "How may I be of assistance? How is your father?"
"He is with his Master, Borgin. My companions and I require to arrive at a certain destination- without the authorities finding out."
Borgin's smile faltered slightly. "Of course, of course. Young Master Malfoy is aware of the large costs that anonymity entails?" He asked, moving towards the back of his shop.
"You will be paid well, Borgin." Draco said as the greasy man came back. "I require an Asiatic PortKey."
He carried a smoky grey crystal prism. "Merely touch the facet of the destination you wish to arrive in."
Borgin left it on the table. "I thought PortKeys were supposed to be nondescript." Harry said.
"That's only if it's in a place where Muggles might find it." Hermione replied.
"Yeah, a Muggle in KnockTurn Alley, Potter? I don't think so." Draco whispered Harry's name. "Okay now, we have to touch the top right facet, that'll take us to Bangalore. I'm sure we can find the school from there."
He placed a hand inside his cloak and drew out a wallet rather than a pouch. He placed a shimmering square of metal on the desk.
"You still take WizCard Gold, don't you?" Draco asked.
"Of course, of course." He replied sliding Draco's card through the SpeedCharge Galleon Check. "There's one PortKey every hour...it's due in a few minutes."
The seconds ticked by in silence. Borgin glanced curiously at Draco's four shrouded companions.
"So, you are holidaying with your friends, Master Malfoy?" He asked at length.
Draco smiled, the PortKey would activate any second. "That, Borgin, is for me to know...and you to not." He glanced back. "Mia, a strong forgetfulness Charm please."
"Memorium Erasi." She cried forcefully, as a jet of blue light hit Borgin square on the chest.
He looked up confusedly...his dank shop was empty.
---
||
The PortKey destination, Bangalore, India...
Padma Patil lifted herself to her feet. They were in a small, musty shop. The mosaic on the floor hadn't been cleaned in years. Padma tried to open the door. It was jammed shut.
"Alohomora!" She whispered as the door swung open. The sunlight streamed in, illuminating the shop and making it seem even dirtier. Padma stepped out onto a busy road. No cars passed, but a mass of people writhed and weaved through the small street as one. A large gold edged sign hung at the top of the street.
The others came out of the shop. "Welcome to Tantri Bazaar, magical hub of Bangalore City."
Fleur glanced around in astonishment. Contrary to what she had always assumed about India and Indians, they seemed quite normal. Most witches and wizards on the street were dressed in fashionable robes or stylish Muggle clothing. Fleur could have sworn she saw a few branded robes in the milling crowds.
The first thing that Harry noticed was the profusion of non-Indian magic-users in the street. There were almost as many as there were Indian.
"So, Padma, what do we do now?" Harry asked. Padma smiled.
"We ask." Padma turned and tapped a bright red-haired man of around twenty on the shoulder. "Excuse me."
He looked her up and down and smiled. "Yes? How can I help you?" His accent was mostly neutral, with a guttural edge to it.
"We're looking for the uh, Vidya School for the Gifted, you know it?" Padma smiled.
The man's face furrowed suddenly. "Who are you?"
"We are looking for it, we-" She was interrupted by Draco.
"We want to become students if possible. A friend told us of it." He said smoothly.
The man smiled. "Excellent, my name is Javed- you can call me Jay. I teach the Elemagi at the Institute. I'll take you there."
"Cool." Said Draco.
"Cool." Padma agreed.
---
---