Chapter 6: Heafonfýr

Harry felt out of place going to the upper floor of Malfoy Manor alone. He hadn't been back here at all since December fourth, and it felt even stranger to freely wander when the Malfoy family called the house home again.

Hildegard's door was open. She sat up on the bed with one leg bridged. Dagmar's cat half-laid on her stomach. Heimdall lifted his head. Harry braced for him to scatter, clawing Hildegard along the way, but he merely stared.

Hildegard looked over too. A flash of nerves passed over her expression, followed by intrigue. She tried to hide it with a weak smile, which leant to awkwardness similar to what Dagmar showed toward Harry when he found her in the owlery.

"Figured I'd pop in for a visit," Harry told her. "You know, like old times."

Hildegard deflated a little with a shiver. "Definitely better here than Azkaban."

"Can I come in?"

"Pull up a seat." Hildegard gestured to the desk against the wall opposite the bed.

She made good work of her bottom lip while Harry brought the chair over to the bedside. Hildegard's gaze stuck to Heimdall, who put his head back down and closed his eyes. He started to purr as Hildegard scratched the back of his neck.

"I guess you've figured out by now all the ways I lied to you," Hildegard quietly spoke.

"No more lying now." Harry leaned back in his seat and put one foot up against the bed. "Madam Bones has measures against it in your interview. I'm sure you had your reasons. Some I can guess, the rest I'll figure out soon enough."

"I wasn't going to lie anymore anyway." Hildegard scratched the inside of Heimdall's ear with her thumbnail. "I deserve whatever I'm going to get. Even if I was an idiot, even if Voldemort used me. . .the damage I caused doesn't just go away."

"Why didn't you tell me the truth when you were in Azkaban?"

"I couldn't risk Voldemort getting suspicious I wasn't truly aligned with him. Now that he's caught wise, it's going to be a fight and a half to get him out of Dagmar." Hildegard's sigh was more visible in the rise and fall of her shoulders than actually audible. "Azkaban was just a waiting game. I knew Voldemort would come for me. He and Bella were capable of finding Bjorn on their own, but they needed me for the transfer."

Annoyance flickered in Harry's stomach. "You know how many people died or were kissed in that breakout, don't you? Nearly half the Auror office. Over a hundred prisoners. I haven't personally been to St Mungo's, but I've heard it's a right sorry sight. They've had to ask abroad for extra hands to care for all of the kissed ones that survived but had no family to take them."

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Harry. If there was ever a contingency plan discussed for if Azkaban needed to be breached, Voldemort just said he would handle it. Why didn't you listen to Lucius when he said Voldemort would come for him?"

"Because he sounded as deluded as any other prisoner there," Harry snapped.

"Given how Voldemort got in, don't you see how it would've looked to him if Azkaban was less guarded?" Hildegard's shoulders were stiff. "If it was too easy to access—if there was a minimization of death—he would've known immediately that he was expected there. He would've known that either Lucius or I talked. He is not stupid. Surely you know that."

Harry refused to admit that she was right. He pressed his lips and stared at his knee.

"Back before Voldemort went into Dagmar's body, he had no access to druidic magic," Hildegard continued. "Given his proficiency with the Imperius Curse, my best assumption was that he would somehow just make me, Lucius, and Rodolphus quietly disappear in the night. I didn't expect him to show up with Chelone like that, even after you said they were hiding on her. Odds were even on you bluffing. I didn't know Voldemort knew where she was."

"That's the island's name?" Harry forced himself to reply. "Chelone?"

Hildegard nodded. "He must have found her on his own. He never told me, but I guess he didn't have a reason to. He knew I intended never to return there. I didn't, at least not until he'd been dealt with."

"Why didn't you just tell me where the island was, if you didn't think Voldemort would use it? We could have cleared it. We would've found his hideout."

"If you found Chelone like Voldemort did, you would've known what I was. You would've found my old bodies, or maybe Lys would just tell you everything because she wouldn't know not to. You should've never found out about Bjorn. You should've never even known about Magnus. If you and the Ministry would've just let Erik and I handle our own business, we could've taken care of Voldemort for you. But no. You had to push and prod and poke. Now I sit here waiting for full blame to possibly be pinned on me, and I don't have my husband anymore."

Hildegard's welled eyes spilled over, her face crumpling as her focus on Heimdall sharpened. She wouldn't look at Harry, but Harry wouldn't be deterred.

He sighed. "You could've said something."

"Oh, ja," Hildegard snapped with a sniffle. "Here, look at Erik's Dark Mark. We're working against him, though! Really, we are! Please don't put us in Azkaban. You know you can trust us, right? By the way, you're not only going to have to look away from a lot of shady things we need to do, you're going to have to sanction it. That's all right, right? Because we promise Voldemort will be gone in the end. You don't know us that well, but you have our word that our motives are noble."

Harry rubbed his forehead. A pressure started behind it that would eventually graduate to a headache. He hated that Hildegard had a point. He knew well enough how the Ministry tended to look at situations through a black and white lens. Sirius wouldn't have spent twelve years in Azkaban if they'd even given him a chance to tell his own side of the story.

"This isn't why I came up here." Harry moved them along. "There's something else we need to talk about."

Hildegard still sniffled, but she sounded more annoyed than sad. "What?"

"I think Voldemort already knows your real name."

Although Hildegard's cheeks remained wet, her expression straightened out. Her wide eyes darted a little. "What makes you think that?"

"Back in August, Dagmar gave me her memory of when she met Voldemort the summer before," Harry said. "He seemed particularly interested in her use of the Heafonfýr Curse. I never really thought about it until Helka told me where you'd all come from, but that curse is exactly what it looks like, isn't it? It's in the name. Heaven's fire. It's a smite."

Hildegard shifted. "Ja."

"You never asked Voldemort why he wanted to talk to Dagmar that night?" Harry asked. "You knew how injured he was. Bellatrix had told Malfoy and Dagmar that you treated him afterward."

"I suspected, but he never said anything about that." Hildegard swallowed. "There was enough reasonability for Dagmar to have just randomly picked that curse up. She read about it in a book downstairs here. She brought attention to me, Erik, and Lucius that we didn't need at the time. Voldemort didn't know that Dagmar hated him, so I'd hoped he was just intrigued by a young witch showing some predilection toward dark magic."

It had been a while since Harry visited that memory via the Hogwarts pensieve, and he had only done so once. He furrowed his brow as he tried to remember everything about it. Voldemort definitely gave the impression of sizing Dagmar up, but that could go either way. He either suspected she was descended of a god, or just thought she would will to thrive under his guidance once she left Hogwarts in a year.

"Voldemort asked Dagmar some questions." Harry folded his arms. "He asked about Grim, and that Muggle that Dagmar nearly hurt in Nice."

"I never heard what they talked about," Hildegard replied. "All Voldemort told me was that he asked for a demonstration of the Heafonfýr Curse. Dagmar asked me last night if Voldemort told me about her putting Grim down, but he didn't."

"With all this in mind, I think Voldemort was gauging her nature as far as you two being. . ." Harry paused. "Is god the right term? Or is druid more accurate?"

Hildegard shifted enough for Heimdall's yellow eyes to crack. Some colour seeped up into her cheeks the same way it did Dagmar's when she was embarrassed. "Either or, I suppose. Godhood would describe what I am, druidic magic how I express that."

"Is druidic magic yours? Like solely yours, that you taught others here?"

Hildegard nodded, meeting Harry's gaze again. "Helka and Heimdall's too, although theirs is slightly different."

"I read up a little on the mythology after Helka came back from Leidfall with us. You must have come here before even the vikings were around. It made sense to me that all the stories about you and the other Norse gods came from you. You obviously didn't keep to yourselves."

"We did at first," Hildegard said. "But no, you're right. Heimdall founded Leidfall and settled there. I couldn't stay still, so I had my clan. Helka floated. Whenever my clan migrated north in the summer, we'd make sure to stop in at Leidfall. More often than not when we headed south for the winter, Helka would come along."

"And she was with you the year your clan was attacked."

"Ja," Hildegard said quietly under her breath.

Harry studied Hildegard for a moment. "Helka had a pretty good guess about why you left your and Dagmar's real names behind after that. What was so special about the real Hildegard and Dagmar that those were the ones you picked?"

Hildegard winced, almost as if Harry had punched her in the stomach. She sunk further on the bed and ran her nails through Heimdall's long fur. "My clan was friendly with the Ramstad family, the one that lived on that farm in Denmark. We would pass through their land whenever we travelled between Scandinavia and Continental Europe. My fertility. . ." Colour touched Hildegard's cheeks again. "It's not just that I can independently have a child. The Ramstads offered us food and a place to rest. Because we'd linger for a little while, their fields stayed lush."

"I see."

"Then one spring we came through, and all but Aslaug and Hildegard had died of the Black Death." Hildegard shuddered. "It hadn't happened that long before we arrived. They had nowhere else to go, so they came with us. They were the only children I ever took in. Everyone else was an adult that had made the choice to join the clan. Hildegard and Aslaug were special to me.

"Aslaug learned her independence quickly enough," Hildegard said. "Hildegard. . .she was only ten when she came along. She always saw me like a mother. It never mattered how old we were. It about broke me to see her and Dagmar dead, laying together in a pile like discarded rubbish. They deserved to live on more than I did. I would've traded them places. I did what seemed to me the next best thing."

"What about Helka?" Harry asked. "She went back to Leidfall. You never went to see if maybe she survived? What about Heimdall?"

"I didn't want to answer to him. I couldn't face how badly I'd failed everyone." Hildegard sniffled. "I know I was a coward. Maybe that's why it was so easy to fake my death too. If Heimdall thought I was dead, he couldn't come looking for me. I ran so far, too. I went south until I reached water. Then I went east. I found Chelone in the Greek Isles, along with Lys and Vann. The longer I was away, the harder it was to return. So I just never did."

Harry tempered the frustration that welled up inside him. It didn't make much sense to him, but that was all logic. He wasn't exactly the person to start going around telling people how to act out their grief.

"I've already gotten it from Helka," Hildegard said. "You don't have to tell me what an idiot I was. I just wish that had changed by the time I met Voldemort."

Harry studied Hildegard again. "There must be more of a reason that you trusted him than just because you were an idiot."

"There were a lot of reasons, and maybe that's why we fell in together like we did." Hildegard tucked some hair behind her ear. "I found him by accident. He was down in the Balkans, and I was looking for who had set a death golem on me."

"A death golem?"

"That suit of armour Voldemort wore to Hogwarts," Hildegard said. "It was sentient once. It came onto the island and killed me. I was looking for who constructed it, and found Voldemort instead. He didn't know anything about that—the death golem in particular, or even what it really was—but we became acquainted.

"I liked him." Hildegard sighed in an almost wistful way. "So young, but on the path to great things. I should've paid more attention to what he was actually doing, rather than trust his own interpretation. I didn't realize how bad it was until Magnus told me about it. By then, it was too late for me to just wash my hands of him. I didn't think he would return, but he'd remembered a ritual he read about in my library that would get him a new body."

The hair on the back of Harry's neck stood up as he recalled that white, skeletal frame emerging from a cauldron. "Right."

"This is the problem with living for so long. There's so much time to cock things up on a massive scale."

Harry ran his tongue against the back of his front teeth. There was something here that he didn't feel like Hildegard was explicitly saying. "When I was asking you things in Azkaban, you gave me a pretty funny look when I asked you if there was ever anything between you and Voldemort. But you had a child together."

"Well, I wasn't going to admit that, was I?" Hildegard mumbled.

"It wasn't just that though, was it? You loved him."

"Ergh." The blotches on Hildegard's cheeks deepened again. She glanced at Harry out the corner of her eye.

"So you did."

"Of course I did." Hildegard bordered on snapping. "Why else would I make him immortal in a way we would spend our lives together? He was even good with Dagmar. He was so bloody intelligent, and dashingly handsome. He was. . .gentle. Sweet, even."

Hildegard wouldn't look at Harry when she said the last two. She turned shy again, so Harry took that to mean she referred to the most private moments between them.

"You want to know what's terrifying?" Hildegard drew Harry's attention when she was ready to meet his gaze again. "Everyone says that Voldemort isn't capable of love. I don't think that's true. I think he cared about me, but he could still do the things he did to hurt me."

Harry hummed in attempt to hide the discomfort that flowered up from his gut. Voldemort was a lot easier to deal with when it could be assumed he felt nothing for anybody other than himself. Was he like Nagini? A dark creature holden to its nature, although amplified by his human intelligence?

"You'll get him out of Dagmar, right?" Hildegard's eyes shone anew. "I can't anymore. He won't let me. But you'll figure it out. Right?"

"I can't make promises like that, but you know we're all going to try."

"I'll give you everything you need. Anything you need to know, I'll tell you."

"If Voldemort can love, I mean. . ." Harry pulled up in a slow shrug. "That could be leverage. I can't really say I'm all that concerned about taking the high road and not exploiting that if it'll get him out of all our lives, once and for all."

"Something I've learned dealing with Voldemort is that he's a master at dragging you down to his level. Even if you win, you lose. I alienated my daughter. She might be all right with me now, but I have no hopes for Luca. Erik took his mark. Now he's dead. Lucius is getting the benefit of the doubt, but he's still facing potential life in Azkaban. Narcissa went along to survive, and nearly lost her only child for it."

The feeling of Malfoy's body slamming back into Harry when he took the Killing Curse revisited him. He tried to focus on the sensation of Malfoy pushing himself upright to try and get it out of his head.

"Well, like I said, you're going to have no choice but to tell the truth to Madam Bones now," Harry said. "The only chance you have to keep any secrets is if you don't consent to do the interview. I can't say that would look good for you as far as the Wizengamot goes. Do you have anything else to lose at this point? I guess you wouldn't tell me, if you did."

"I'm not planning on skipping the interview with Madam Bones. You can have access to whatever she gets out of me." Hildegard adjusted herself out of the slouch she'd slunk down to on the bed. She smiled when Heimdall woke up with a low groan of annoyance. "Depending on how far back Madam Bones wants me to go, it's going to be a lot. Maybe something in all of it will be helpful. Voldemort might have been a huge part of my life, but he didn't take up much time in it."

"That'll include memories." Harry felt it fair to warn her.

Hildegard shrugged. "Go for it."

"Even if you give me permission, Madam Bones might not. We'll have to see," Harry replied. "I don't know if there's much point trying to confirm whether or not Voldemort knows your real name and all that. But I'm pretty sure he does. That will have to be factored in, and there might be other things yet to consider too."

"Right, you were talking about when he spoke to Dagmar." Hildegard lugged Heimdall up into her lap like a baby. With his size, he was more like a dopey toddler laid over her torso. "Dagmar told me about Grim. And what was it about that Muggle in Nice?"

"Voldemort used Legilimency, so he was looking for certain things. He found Grim, when Dagmar had shown mercy on a suffering animal and put him out of his misery. Then that Muggle in Nice, that Dagmar intended to punish for cornering her." Harry paused. "I'm trying to look at all this from Voldemort's perspective. He knew you were immortal. He associated you with the name Freja because of your clan. But now here's Dagmar, smiting men who. . .well, it's better not to wonder what they wanted with her."

Hildegard's shoulders seized. "She's so lucky they weren't magic-users. I still get nauseous if I think about it."

"Don't blame you." It left a rancid taste in Harry's mouth too. "I think that's why Voldemort wanted to talk to Dagmar, though. He wanted her to demonstrate the Heafonfýr Curse under ideal conditions. He gave her his wand. Is there something he would've seen when she cast it that would give you and her away as gods?"

Hildegard pressed her lips, then pursed them as she thought. Eventually, she shrugged. "I don't think so. Smiting is an inherent ability of gods, but it was also stolen by wizards. It's just lightning. Think like Prometheus giving Man fire. Her eyes would've lit up because of her blood, but the lightning might have been too bright for Voldemort to see that."

"I wonder what that book she read about it in had to say."

"You could ask Lucius," Hildegard said. "After we came back from Nice, Voldemort suggested he remove it from the library in case the Ministry decided to look into it. I'm not sure where it wound up, or maybe it was returned downstairs."

Harry furrowed his brow. "Wouldn't it look like Dagmar was lying about reading it here if the book was suddenly nowhere to be found?"

Hildegard hummed. "I never thought about that. We were more focused on nipping things in the bud."

With Hildegard's second mention of the book containing the Heafonfýr Curse, Harry decided to take his leave so that he could look into it. He headed down the foyer stairs and into the library. There were far too many books for Harry to find the right one on his own. He didn't even know what it was called.

Mr Malfoy was no longer in the great room, where he'd been when Harry arrived. The Aurors there told him that Mr Malfoy had gone upstairs to the master bedroom. Still hesitant about making himself too much at home in someone else's house, Harry went instead to the kitchen and asked the house elves if one of them would be willing to fetch Mr Malfoy for him. The one named Tibby beamed and disappeared with a small crack. With that, Harry migrated back to the other end of the manor house.

He folded his arms for comfort while looking over some of the titles on the shelves. It wasn't footsteps that alerted Harry of Mr Malfoy's arrival, but a voice—and not one that belonged to the living.

"Lucius." The portrait of Abraxas Malfoy spoke in a voice that ran Harry's veins cold. "Look at what you've done to this estate. Your grandfather would have been a lot less kind to you than I, to see this parade of blood traitors, mudbloods, and who knows what other filth you've allowed your disappointment of a son to invite here."

"Perhaps you ought to join your father in the attic storage," Mr Malfoy drawled in return. "Then it shouldn't bother you so much."

Behind Mr Malfoy as he turned the corner from the foyer stairs into the library, Abraxas' oil-painted face pinched and he walked out of frame. Harry still gazed at the empty background (which he thought he recognized as one of the windows in the drawing room) when Mr Malfoy addressed him.

"A commanding, stately man." Other than a quick quirk of an eyebrow, Mr Malfoy remained impassive. "You would have despised him, Potter."

Harry shrugged. "I'm used to Walburga Black screeching at me, so your dad seems quite charming."

It was very brief, but Harry thought he might have seen an amused smile. "Did you forget something earlier?"

"No, just had something else come up that I wanted to ask you about."

Harry drifted closer to him, although there still remained a broad, invisible wall between them. Mr Malfoy didn't bat an eye earlier about conveying all he knew about Wormtail, but Harry wasn't yet used to him being the slightest bit approachable. Harry still held Mr Malfoy at arm's length regarding the truth, like with Hildegard. As neither of them had yet gone on the record with Madam Bones, Harry was exercising a lot more caution than he had out at Azkaban.

"I just spoke with Hildegard," Harry said. "Do you remember the summer before last, when Dagmar got in trouble in France?"

"Of course." Mr Malfoy mirrored Harry's folded arms.

"There was a book that Dagmar learned that curse she used from. Which one was it?"

Mr Malfoy pursed his lips and looked about the library with a hum. "It was a simple glossary of forbidden hexes from the sixteenth century. I'm unsure that it was ever returned here, but I could help you look for it."

"If you wouldn't mind." Harry hesitated slightly on his way toward the opposite set of shelves Mr Malfoy headed for. "Where did it go? Hildegard mentioned you removed it."

"The Dark Lord asked for it."

"He had it, then?"

"As far as I know. I never saw it again, nor was it referenced in my company."

Harry nodded slowly. That didn't bode well for his theory that Voldemort already knew who Hildegard and Dagmar really were. One good thing was that Voldemort had still gone above and beyond to try and get his soul out of Dagmar's body. He didn't grow power drunk as soon as he realized he could inhabit a god. Harry didn't like to think about how disastrous it would have been if Voldemort had Bellatrix kill his old body while Harry and Dagmar attended Hogwarts together. That sort of magic likely superseded any of Hogwarts' protective spells. Nobody would've known that Voldemort was in the castle until he was flinging Killing Curses across the Great Hall at Harry. And then he would've seen Luca. . .

Shaking his head, Harry reset his focus on the task at hand. A lot of the titles he glanced over were in Latin. Harry lost a little steam through that. Really, Mr Malfoy would know better than him what the book looked like.

Harry still looked, although not with as much finesse as Mr Malfoy running a searching finger through the air. Harry glanced over his shoulder, watching Mr Malfoy for a moment. "Dagmar gave me her memory last summer of when Voldemort asked to meet her."

Mr Malfoy stuttered in his search before continuing on. "Is that so?"

"She gave me the little bit leading up to it, when you fetched her from upstairs."

Mr Malfoy looked back at him.

"You didn't want to. I could tell."

"Of course I didn't." Mr Malfoy continued his search. "The kids should have never been involved, especially to that degree. I attempted to convince the Dark Lord that it was unnecessary, that Dagmar already understood the gravity of her actions, but he insisted. He told me that he only wished to speak to her."

"Why did you hit Draco?"

Harry asked the question before he had a chance to hesitate. It didn't feel appropriate because of how personal it was, especially using Malfoy's first name in attempt to disarm Mr Malfoy that much more. Harry's heart picked up a little with anxiety as Mr Malfoy's head bowed. He wasn't familiar enough with him to know what his anger looked like. Clearly he was capable of boiling over into physical expression. That black eye Malfoy came to school with looked nasty, and Malfoy had told Harry later that he was caned as a child for discipline.

"I knew he was drifting from an ideology the Dark Lord would approve of." Mr Malfoy kept his back to Harry. Harry figured if he so much as shuffled his feet, the room would be too loud to hear Mr Malfoy over. "Striking Draco was a last resort to keep him quiet in a place where he could have been overheard denouncing the Dark Lord by the Dark Lord. Draco had every right to be upset, but that would not have saved him. I didn't want to risk the Dark Lord believing it was against his best interest that Draco return to Hogwarts the next morning. I would rather my son hate me than watch him be swallowed by this."

"You think that's what would have happened?"

"The Dark Lord would have likely told him about his connection to Dagmar, to ensure Draco understood the potential consequences if he opposed him. Draco and Dagmar were far too entangled by then for him not to feel a personal responsibility for her."

Harry nodded slowly. Although Dagmar and Malfoy kept their relationship under wraps for the first few months back to school last year, Harry understood what Mr Malfoy meant thanks to the memory Dagmar had provided. Where it started with Malfoy packing up in his room and Dagmar lounging on his bed, Harry bore witness in the room's post-coital cushion just how simultaneously soft and sharp their gazes already were for each other.

"Draco told me you were eavesdropping on our visit in Azkaban."

"Oh—yeah." Harry supposed there was no point denying it. "I'd say you don't sound surprised, but you'd mentioned the possibility there anyway."

"I'd hoped you would leave Draco alone after that."

Harry shrugged. "You should be glad I didn't. It was the things Draco did for me afterward that convinced the Wizengamot he wasn't fit for Azkaban. If I didn't get to know him as well as I did, I wouldn't have felt a flicker of guilt to testify against him."

"I suppose the defiance to authority he and you have in common is a good thing, then."

They carried on in silence until Harry's mind started running again.

"Ginny told me what Voldemort said to her in the Great Hall," he said. "About the diary."

Mr Malfoy hummed.

"I might know a way to confirm it," Harry kept on. "If it's true, I guess I'm sorry I blamed you."

"You were a child." Mr Malfoy waved a hand in emphasis of the dismissal. "The only one I was sore toward for that was Dumbledore. I would've expected him to require more evidence than the Dark Lord's true name scribed in the front, and then my having a Dark Mark on my left forearm."

"Kinda hard to claim total innocence when you went right back to him after he returned."

"You're right about that," Mr Malfoy said. "I did lie back in 1981 that I was under the Imperius Curse. And yes, I returned to him the night he summoned me to the graveyard. As you are well aware."

Harry's eyebrows rose at how easily he admitted that. "So you were faithful to him, then."

"When I was young, yes. I regret how long it took me to become disillusioned. I wasn't offered the same nudge out by my parents as Draco received."

Harry looked out of the library at the portrait of Abraxas. He'd returned to the frame, and looked less than pleased. He glowered at Harry in a way that might have made him wilt to dust should the man actually be standing in the room with them.

"My father was one of the first Death Eaters," Mr Malfoy continued. "He attended Hogwarts with the Dark Lord. The same year, in fact. They shared a dorm. I was lucky enough—" (Harry picked up a drip of sarcasm there) "—to personally know the Dark Lord before the wizarding world came to fear his name. His world was the only one I ever knew for a long time."

"So what changed your mind?"

"The world I was born into was what I believed its natural stasis. During the first war, it seemed logical to me that should that be right and true, it was how the rest of the world ought to settle. I was posted in the Ministry as a means to influence legislation to the Dark Lord's advantage, so I wasn't privy to the brutalities of the field. I did see things, though. How the Dark Lord handled dissidents was particularly without taste. Did you ever meet Fenrir Greyback before he was hunted down?"

Harry suppressed a shudder. "No."

"Lucky you."

"I heard that Voldemort used to use him to keep people in line. That's true?"

Mr Malfoy nodded. "The first war went on too long. Everyone—both sides, I would say—was tired. The older families of Magical Britain were supporters the Dark Lord's could take for granted. Without them, his numbers rapidly dwindled. As deaths racked up, he needed to ensure that baseline. We too had a spy problem, although the Dark Lord took care of it before it could amount to anything. Regulus Black admitted under great duress that he planned to inform Sirius about Pettigrew's status among us, having learned of it."

Harry's heart sunk. "You knew this before Sirius went to Azkaban?"

"I learned it on the island." Slowly, Mr Malfoy was making his way around the edge of the library. It had been a while since Harry budged at all. "With so much downtime and shared meals with all of us there, some grew nostalgic of past deeds. Bellatrix tortured Regulus for the Dark Lord until he himself killed him. She didn't know why either until the Dark Lord quite happily explained to us all. He didn't want to lose the one foothold he'd gained into the Order of the Phoenix."

"I guess not," Harry darkly replied. "It nearly paid off for him, after all."

"Indeed."

"You didn't have anything to reminisce on?"

"No." Mr Malfoy's gaze met Harry's again. "It was so easy for me to get away with claiming to be under the Imperius Curse because I didn't actively do anything to harm anyone. Coming to the end of the Dark Lord's first campaign, saying my actions were not my own wasn't entirely a lie. Because the Dark Lord was so focused elsewhere, I was able to dither about and just look busy. My father was still alive, so I had his shadow to hide in should the Dark Lord look too closely."

Harry stayed quiet so that Mr Malfoy would fill the silence.

"The Dark Lord disappeared at a very convenient time for me," Mr Malfoy continued. "With the war forging on, the Dark Lord was beginning to raise ranks. My father too wished to see me more active, to earn my place rather than have it handed to me. I believe he found it embarrassing that I, the son of one of the Dark Lord's first Death Eaters, was merely skulking about in dark hallways and speaking in hushed tones with Ministry officials. The Dark Lord came to me here in early autumn of 1981 and asked if I was ready to move up to bigger and greater things. Muggle torture, in particular."

The hairs on the back of Harry's neck stood up again as Little Hangleton's graveyard returned to mind.

"I said I was ready, but in truth I knew I couldn't do it. I became preoccupied with what it might take for Narcissa, Draco and I to disappear. With enough gold it would be possible, but I couldn't take it too quickly from the family vault without gaining my father's notice. I feared that Bellatrix would track us down. Then. . ." Mr Malfoy hesitated. "Halloween."

Harry opened his mouth to ask why Mr Malfoy didn't just go to Dumbledore, then closed it. Considering Fenrir Greyback, Regulus, the way the Ministry treated suspected Death Eaters with or without a Dark Mark, then how quickly Dumbledore blamed Mr Malfoy for Tom Riddle's diary. . .Harry didn't know if he should be more frustrated or disappointed at how impossible everyone made it to cross the line.

"So why did you go back?" Harry asked. "Why did you answer his summons to the graveyard?"

"I assure you, my reasons were not noble." Mr Malfoy's practiced drawl made him sound bored of the conversation, but Harry reasoned he would just stop talking were that actually the case. "My father was gone by then, so I had no one left to hide behind. I had made myself a prominent figure in Magical Britain, so disappearing was not an option. I did not want to widow Narcissa and leave Draco without a father by ending up like Igor Karkaroff.

"I was practiced in quiet work. Given the efforts the Dark Lord went through to ensure his return was not well known, I thought perhaps it was best to keep a close eye on him. I doubted many other Death Eaters would return. Lots couldn't, given they sat in Azkaban. It was quiet, thankfully. The Dark Lord's first task for me was supposed to be difficult, but wound up not so: finding Hildegard."

"Right."

"After that, it became important to find Bjorn. The prophecy was a literal bust. . .as you know."

Harry jerked his chin downward in a makeshift nod.

"I understood what needed to be done about that situation." Mr Malfoy was now nearly to where Harry had stopped his search. "I knew the Dark Lord would not survive. The Ramstads and I never explicitly discussed it, but now Hildegard and I can confirm we thought along the same lines. All we needed was the Dark Lord's soul to be whole again, and then he was vulnerable. Getting the fragment out of Dagmar required a lot of work, work we ended up failing toward."

"Yeah." Although Dagmar didn't seem to hold it against Harry after they'd talked earlier, his conscience still fluttered toward guilt for his own hand in everything going wrong. "To be fair, that's kind of on everyone."

"Indeed."

Harry moved toward the centre of the library to give Mr Malfoy more space. He opted not to be offended that Mr Malfoy continued searching for the book where he had already gone over. Silence fell between them as Mr Malfoy finished up. At the end, Harry heard his exhale.

"It's not here," Mr Malfoy said. "I didn't think it would be. Is there something you needed with it? Would it have been helpful in convincing the Dark Lord to move along?"

"I couldn't tell you for sure, but honestly, probably not." Harry shrugged where he leaned back against one of the chairs. "I was more curious what Voldemort wanted with it, and what he might have read."

"It wasn't much, if that's any consolation." Mr Malfoy approached him. "The book was just a glossary. The spell name, incantation, effect, and reason for being forbidden."

Harry nodded slowly. He would need to think about what everything he heard about Voldemort and the Heafonfýr Curse might mean for Dagmar. Between Hildegard and Mr Malfoy, a lot more information than Harry intended to seek out today floated around in his mind.

"Well." Harry pushed away from the chair. "Good chat then, at least."

Until then, Harry couldn't say if he'd ever heard Mr Malfoy laugh in a way that didn't sound cruel. "A chat tends to go both ways. This was more me thinking aloud as I prepare to sit down with Amelia."

"Either or." Harry took a step toward the foyer. "Cheers. I'm sure I'll see you around."

"Mhm."