Battles Hard Won
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Nothing but the plot is mine!
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***Chapter 1~Starting Over***
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***Goyle***
Greg Goyle clenched his fists for the hundredth time since following Minister Weasley into Hermione Granger's office. Greg knew she wouldn't be happy to find that he, of all people, was becoming a part of her team. His association with Draco Malfoy did little for his reputation. Since the final battle twelve years ago, he had had to fight for every ounce of respect. He was generally viewed only as one of Draco's lump-headed, brainless bookends, but he was far more than that.
Greg's thoughts turned inward, and memories of Draco flooded to the surface. A bright spot in the pureblood hierarchy, lost so young in a final heroic act, Draco Malfoy had been his best friend since they were little children. Although Greg hadn't found out until he was much older, his father had sold him into a sort of indentured servitude. For 3,000 galleons a year, Greg would live with the Malfoys to be a companion and protector to Draco. This arrangement suited both families, as Greg's father had been a cruel and dispassionate man and his mother cold and unfeeling. Greg had been much better off away from the couple that should have never had a child to begin with. The Malfoys, on the other hand, had treated Greg like a second son. Greg and Draco had been taught together by the finest tutors money could buy. The boys even had wands at the age of nine when Lucius had begun teaching them simple curses and hexes.
Greg and Draco had been fast friends for nearly all their lives when another boy was introduced to them - Vincent Crabbe. Greg had taken an instant dislike to the fat little boy with the brush cut hair and beady little eyes. It was soon found that the boy was far behind the other two in his basic education. It had taken time, but after a year, Vincent had finally become passable in his reading and basic arithmetic. The summer after each had turned eleven, Draco in March, Greg in May, and Vincent last in June, they had received their Hogwarts letters, and Lucius and Narcissa had taken them on a shopping spree in Diagon Alley.
Greg remembered his first glimpse of Harry Potter, the spindly savior of the wizarding world. Greg had been in a cubicle changing out of his new school robes when he had heard Draco talking to another boy. He was small and slight like Draco, but he had the messiest, blackest hair Greg had ever seen. His eyes were an intense green that had looked both full of wonder and sadness all at once. Greg's eyes had flicked to the boy's forehead, and he saw the scar peeking out from beneath the dark hair. The boy had left soon after
It was later on the Hogwarts Express that Greg's suspicion that the boy he had seen in Madam Malkin's was The-Boy-Who-Lived, and it was to his surprise that Potter had refused Draco's hand in friendship to befriend a Weasley no less. Greg had spent the remainder of that train ride cheering up his hurt friend as Draco had never been refused anything before, be it a new broom or simple friendship.
People never knew that the only subject Draco excelled in was Potions. He relied on Greg to review with him before tests in all his other classes and to help him with essays for Charms, Transfiguration, and Herbology.
Everything had changed during sixth year. Greg had received a letter commanding him to come home, his parents' home, for the Christmas holidays. A few days into the school holiday, his father gave him the not-so-wonderful news that he would be receiving the dark mark before the visit was over. He had not been able to find a way out of it, so he did the only thing in his power. He did what was expected of him. He had killed the muggle as painlessly as possible and had not made his father look bad.
He couldn't think of that night with out reliving the horror. He kept hearing the screams of a dozen muggles as a dozen young men, intent on becoming Voldemort's sycophantic followers, tortured them.
Vincent and Draco had been there along with him. Vincent's beady eyes had gleamed with malicious glee as the blood spattered onto his face. Draco had looked determined to do only what needed to be done and no more. Greg had always known that Draco didn't want this life, but in the end, Draco wanted his Father's approval most of all, and that had killed him. Draco, in a final act of self-sacrifice that even Greg didn't know he had, had saved Harry Potter from Lucius's last curse.
Greg had been physically ill for nearly a week after the initiation. True, he had been a bully and generally enjoyed the hollow rush of power he felt when someone shrank from him in fear, but the base cruelty he had been forced to inflict on another human soul was horrifying. That he would be required to do it again, that it was expected of him to find satisfaction in the rape of the unwilling, made him ill. He decided he needed to find a way out, and he had by way of his head of house. Greg had always respected Severus Snape, as a teacher, a mentor, and a model DeathEater, or so Greg had thought.
Greg was suddenly brought back to the present as Hermione Granger joined the Minister of Magic and him in her office. He felt her eyes skim over him, but recognition did not. He knew he had changed, but he couldn't help but wonder if he had changed so very much from his Hogwarts days that he was unrecognizable.
"Hermione, this is Gregory Goyle. He is the new researcher I was telling you about."
Greg watched Hermione's eyes grow cold at the mention of his name. Loosing the stigma of being one of Draco's dull-witted lackeys was going to be harder than he had thought.
"Arthur, may I have a word?" Hermione said in a voice laced with steel.
'No,' thought Greg, 'not happy at all.'
"Hermione." The minister's voice had taken on an equal amount of steel. "This is the researcher YOU requested whose primary focus is Transfiguration and Charms. I suggest you make the best of it, Miss Granger." With a snap of his robes worthy of Severus Snape, Arthur Weasley bade Greg good-bye with a smile then strode from the room.
With her arms folded in front of her chest Hermione Granger regarded him coolly. "I don't like you, Goyle," she said in a clipped tone.
Greg sighed and decided to try to appeal to her sense of fairness - if she had one when it came to former DeathEaters or Slytherins. "I am not who you think I am, Granger. I never was. Just give me a chance. That is all I'm asking here. If my work is not up to scratch, you can fire me and never have to see me again."
She pierced him with a gaze that showed every ounce of distrust she possessed. She huffed a little, then pushed away from the wall and marched out of the office. Greg assumed he was to follow. She walked down the hall a short distance and stopped before an open door. She tapped the nameplate next to the door twice with her wand, and his name appeared, engraved by magic, in the brass plaque.
"Here is your lab. Settle in, and I'll get your first project." As she walked away, the heels of her sensible shoes clicked loudly on the hard linoleum floor.
Goyle looked around the lab; it was adequate. All the basics were there, but he would need more than a few items from his private lab. He started a list of the items needed.
***Crabbe***A few hours later, across London, someone else was also embarking on a new chapter of his life.
He still couldn't believe that he had gotten it for such a paltry sum. Borgin was an idiot. The dagger was the single most beautiful item he had ever owned - carved malachite handle, pulsing ruby blade - just gorgeous. Borgin had warned Vincent that the blade was cursed and said to be the prison to a demon, but Vincent Crabbe was too enamored of the blade to care about curses and had begun carrying it everywhere with him. He didn't want to leave it in his Knockturn Alley flat where it had a very good chance of being nicked.
Tonight, he was on his way to meet some acquaintances in a seedy little pub deep in the heart of the Alley. He walked into the pub, and fingering the blade, he joined the two other men in a small private parlor.
"Nice knife, Vinny." Rude said drunkenly.
Something inside Vincent snapped. He grabbed the fox-like man by the collar and slammed him into the wall. "How many times do I have to tell you, Niles, not to use that stupid name? My name is Vincent."
He stepped away from the man and looked dumbly at his fist. The knife was gripped tightly in his hand, and he dimly noticed that the blade was wet, seemingly dripping liquid rubies. He looked back up at his sometime friend Niles Rude, and his eyes widened. A red stain had bloomed on the other man's chest over his heart. The blood was bright and stark against Rude's dirty white shirt..
The dagger grew hot in his hand, but his fist refused to obey his mind's command to open. He let out a yell as the searing heat crawled up his arm, then blossomed through his body.
**No worries, Vincent. Kill the other one as well. It will be thought that they killed each other.**
Vincent Crabbe narrowed his eyes, then did as the voice suggested. He plunged the knife into Jack Kinny's back as he stood gaping at the still form of Rude.
**Very good. Transfigure a couple of knives and put them in their hands. Then apparate back to your flat.**
It didn't faze Vincent that he had just killed two men that he had numbered as friends. He did as the voice suggested, arranged the scene, then apparated with a small pop.
He grabbed a bottle of fire-whiskey and drank deeply from the bottle. He sank into an armchair and tried to drink himself into oblivion, but after a few pulls from the bottle, he suddenly flung it into the hearth and fell to his knees clutching his head. Pain blossomed like a vise being tightened around his skull. He threw his head back with a roar, and his eyes settled on his reflection in the night-darkened windows. He looked just as he always had but for one thing - his eyes.
His eyes were wild and burning red. There was only one being that he knew that had red glowing eyes: His Master, his Lord.
Voldemort.
**Silly human. Tom Riddle was weak. He never had this kind of power. He never had a notion of power such as mine.**
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