Summary: Harry Potter disappears just after his seventeenth birthday only to be found tortured, abused and near death three weeks later. Now he journeys to either come out of the trauma or deeper into the isolation of his own mind. (Alternate Universe - seventh year story)
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Chapter Twenty One – Things That Go Bump in the Daylight
"Is you's talking about what you's is doing to that poor boy in you's bedroom today also?" Dobby asked the mental healer innocently.
Camden Lennox was flabbergasted. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Yes, you's do know."
"Dobby," Madam Pomfrey asks as she approaches the two, "What are you talking about?"
"I is having one of the other house elf pop in to be seeing what he is being up to and Dobby is hearing about how he had a boy tied naked to his bed and on tops of him he was."
Madam Pomfrey shot a look to the wizard and says, "Healer Lennox, what is the meaning of this?"
"I was repairing a physical transfiguration that Toft performed on the boy's bits and pieces," explained Lennox silkily. "He was highly embarrassed about having his genitalia removed and wanted it restored."
"What Dobby is wanting to be knowing is why he had to be all naked for that to be happening," the elf said with great dissatisfaction.
"Yes, I would like to know that myself," the school nurse added.
"The boy seemed reluctant to allow anyone else to examine him and I was afraid that he may be suffering from far worse spells than the ones I found on his person."
However, before either the irate house elf or the school nurse could continue this conversation, the doors to the infirmary burst open revealing Crabbe and Goyle with Pansy Parkinson in between them, looking like she had just been trampled by a fire breathing dragon.
"What happened to her?" Madam Pomfrey asked as she saw them enter.
Vincent Crabbe shrugged his shoulders as if to say he had no idea what had happened to the girl, while Gregory Goyle said rather slowly, "We were in Care of Magical Creatures class."
"What kind of animal were you studying today?" the nurse asked quickly as she pointed her finger to the nearest bed indicating that boys should put the girl on it.
Crabbe again shrugged his shoulders as if to say he had no idea forcing Goyle to respond, "Hippogriffs."
Madam Pomfrey was amazed; usually Hagrid had Hippogriffs trained to not strike out at the students.
Turning back to the mental healer, Dobby says, "Harry Potter is being having many friends who is being very bad to his enemies."
The mental healer made a noise of disgust and stalked out of Madam Pomfrey's domain.
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From under one of the hospital beds, the large old gray rat with a silver paw watched closely to the events in the hospital wing with great interest.
'So the mental healer is doing questionable things to another student?' thought the rat as he took note of the situation. 'I wonder why that is? My master would be very interested in this bit of information.'
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"Damn that little elf!" said Lennox as he stormed into his private chambers. "I should have killed him earlier, before Wymer was caught." Then the irate mental healer slammed his fist into his writing desk causing several books to fall unto the floor.
Sighing Camden Lennox sits down and begins to compose a letter. 'Well, I had better let her know what's going on here at the castle so she can get the others in place quicker than we had planned,' he thought viciously.
'Dear Mistress,' he began his letter, 'We seem to have encountered an unforeseen complication…'
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"Albus?"
"Ah, Minerva," the Headmaster says happily. "Please, do come in. What can I do for you today?"
"I was wondering how your meeting went with the Malfoy boy. You left me quite curious about it this morning."
With his eyes twinkling as usual, Dumbledore replies, "It was something that I had not foreseen in our young Mister Malfoy."
Shooting the Headmaster a stern look that clearly said, 'You've still not told me anything,' she says to him, "In what way is that Albus?"
"He offered to give me his father in exchange for something."
"Can you be certain that he even knows the location of Lucius Malfoy? He has been hiding quite effectively ever since he escaped from Azkaban," Professor McGonagall says. "What was he bargaining for anyway?"
"The right to be the one to dispose of the next person we find to be guilty of Harry's torture. Along with Dobby of course, and I have to be the one to cover it up and hide it from the wizarding community."
Then a rarity occurs, Professor McGonagall actually snorted. "He's not asking for much is he?"
"No he's not."
"You're not actually thinking of doing it are you Albus?"
Sighing, the Headmaster steeples his fingers and admits, "The thought has occurred to me Minerva."
"Albus! You can't be serious."
"I am."
"But why?" she asks incredulously.
"I think that our young Mister Malfoy has a larger stake in getting Harry back to full health than either of us had ever thought him capable of before."
The Transfiguration teacher gives Dumbledore a skeptical look.
Smiling, he adds, "I think that young Mister Malfoy may actually be in love with Harry. I think he would do his best to remove any and all obstacles that stand in his way of achieving his goal of winning Harry's love in return, even disposing of his own father."
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About the same time that Professor McGonagall departed the Headmaster's office, the current Head Boy, Draco Malfoy, entered the hospital wing.
"Drakie-poo!"
Draco Malfoy sighed inwardly and thought, 'Damn, I forgot she was in here.'
"Thank goodness you're here Drakie-poo," whimpered Pansy in a whining voice. "They've been dreadful to me all day."
"Yes, I know, I was there in Transfiguration and I heard about what happened in Herbology," Malfoy said with a slight smirk. "I told you that you should have dropped that subject a long time ago. You should have listened to me."
"This is that oaf Hagrid's fault, bringing back that dreadful beast that slashed you back in third year. You're father should have made sure that wild untamed thing was killed when he had to chance," she said in a pout.
Frowning, Malfoy stood at the end of her bed and said, "Pansy that Hippogriff flew away and hasn't been seen in years, what makes you think it was the same one?"
"That oaf Hagrid said so himself and everyone was talking about it in class. They said it was Bottom-Boy-Potter's pet and all the Gryffindorks and Hufflepoofs were fawning all over it because Potter liked it or something. It was sickening, as if some animal like that knew any different."
"Apparently it did Pansy dear," Malfoy said. Then he stood there in thought for a moment. 'Could it really be the same Hippogriff as before?' He really didn't want to think about it.
While he was in thought a small pop could be heard and a voice said, "I's is thinking you's is finding that Harry Potter is being having many friends." Malfoy and Pansy both looked at the house elf and saw Dobby standing there in his many hats and scarfs. "Dobby is thinking that many of Harry Potter's friends are not being the mindless beasts that you's is saying they is."
"Who asked you anyway?" scolded Pansy. After all this was only a house elf and they didn't count for much nor would they do anything back to you.
Dobby narrowed his eyes at the pug-nosed girl and said with dislike evident in his squeaky voice, "No one is being asking for Dobby's opinion, I's is just being giving it anyway."
Noticing the staring contest that was developing between Pansy and the elf, Malfoy asks, "How is Potter doing anyway? I heard," the Head Boy stressed the word purposefully, "through the grapevine that he locked himself in his room and won't come out."
"But you's was being…" Dobby began and then realized that Malfoy was speaking as if he wasn't present when the teachers has managed to get into Harry's room for a reason. Dobby then continued, "You's was being a nosey little bad boy when you's was being small and you's has not being growing out of that yet!"
Smirking in the trademark Malfoy manner, the Head Boy says, "Does that mean he isn't excepting visitors?"
"It is meaning that you's is minding you's manners or else you's is knowing first hand what it is being feeling like to being having pink hair, just like you's greasy head of house," Dobby said and then popped into Harry's room to see if he would be willing to talk to Malfoy.
"I don't know what the world is coming to these days," huffed Pansy from her bed. "Purebloods like us who should be treated as royalty having to deal with creatures like that."
Malfoy just looked at the girl and thought, 'Can she dig herself in any deeper?"
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Still sitting under one of the hospital beds, the same large old gray rat with a silver paw observed these new events with mild interest.
'So the Malfoy brat is sucking up to Harry?' thought the rat lazily. 'I wonder if the Dark Lord knows about this. I wonder if Lucius knows about this.' Wormtail thought about the possibilities and decided that the two boys hated each other as much as James and Snape did when they were in school, so he must be under orders to get in with Potter as much as possible.
With that thought in his head, the old rat got up and edged his way closer to the end of the bed to get a better look around the infirmary. He wanted to be in the room with the two boys when they spoke to one another.
'This is something my Master would want to know about.'
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"Harry Potter?" Dobby asked tentatively. "Is you's ready to being having a visitor?"
Harry looked up from the floor, where he was sitting with Hermione.
"Who's here Dobby?" the Head Girl asked, thinking it was most likely Ron or Ginny.
"Well …" Dobby hesitated for a moment and then said, "It is being Draco Malfoy, it is."
Harry's eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
"Malfoy?" Hermione said to herself, "I wonder what he wants."
"Um," Harry said uncertainly, "Hermione, would you mind if I spoke to him in private? I don't think I can stand it if you two started in on each other right now."
"Oh," she said startled, "of course, if you're sure that is. I can hold my tongue you know."
"I know you can, but we both know that he would insult you without even thinking about it and I would prefer not to have to …"
"I understand Harry," she said as she got up from the floor. "I'll come back a little later."
"Thanks," Harry said gratefully as she walked out of his private room.
"Is you's needing anything before I's is getting the Malfoy boy Harry Potter?"
With a faint smile on his lips Harry said, "Yeah, where did we put that chess set?"
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"Malfoy," Hermione said as she exited Harry's room.
"Granger," he replied as he walked towards Harry's door to knock on it.
"Mudblood!" Pansy called out from her bed as Hermione passed it as she walked towards the infirmary doors.
"Five points from Slytherin for being juvenile and for name calling," Hermione said over her shoulder as she left the ward.
Pansy huffed indignantly in her bed and Malfoy smirked at her behind her back.
A moment later Dobby popped back into the room and said, "Harry Potter is willing to being seeing you now he is."
Malfoy nodded his head and whispered so that Pansy couldn't hear, "I need to speak with you in private, it's urgent."
Dobby narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but nodded his head in the affirmative that he would meet with the Head Boy and then allowed him to enter Harry's room.
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'The Malfoy brat wants to meet secretly with Harry's house elf?' thought the rat as it scurried into the private room and under the bed as fast and as silently as possible. 'Master will find that very interesting.'
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Harry was sitting at a table with a chess set already set up on it when Malfoy entered the room.
"Malfoy," Harry said as a greeting.
"Well, you're looking better scar head," drawling Malfoy in a bored voice. "You know all walking and talking like that, one would think that you were actually alive again."
"Nice to see you too ferret."
Malfoy smiled at the insult. "And insulting me as well. Much better indeed."
"Was there something you actually wanted other than to insult me?"
"Well, it is the perfect hobby and I do so hate to mess with perfection."
Harry rolled his eyes as the Head Boy took a seat opposite him, while taking out his wand to tap on the white pon to move it into action.
"Who know I recently played another game of wizarding chess with out esteemed Headmaster."
"You did?" asked Harry as he tapped his black pon to move across the board. "That's interesting."
"Is it interesting? It was the first time he has ever played chess with me," drawled Malfoy. "If I had known what an honor it was, I would have marked it on my calendar or something like that."
Harry smiled slightly which secretly pleased the Slytherin.
"Well, I'm sure he had some ulterior motive in mind at the time."
"Oh I'm sure he did. Did you know that his chess board picks itself up and turns itself around in mid-game? He said something about making it more interesting to play that way. Personally, I think he was just cheating."
Harry looked up at his counterpart and asked, "Did he win?"
"No."
"Are you sure about that?"
Malfoy opened his mouth to respond but said nothing for a moment.
"Apparently not," said Harry in a bored and superior tone.
"Oh you think you're so clever don't you?"
"I usually am when I am dealing with you."
Malfoy made a grunting sound in the back of his throat and had his queen pulverize an innocent looking pon. She was quite savage about it.
Deciding to change the subject Harry said, "Dobby tells me that your girlfriend is in the outer ward."
"She's NOT my girlfriend Potter."
Smiling Harry counters, "Really, wouldn't know that as a fact by the way she is always hanging on your arm as if she were spello taped to it."
"She is severely brain damaged," Malfoy said.
"Is that why she's in the infirmary then?"
Malfoy looked up at Harry in surprise. "Don't you know why she is here?"
"Um, no," admitted Harry. "Dobby never said and I forgot to ask to be honest."
Sitting back in his chair, Malfoy gave Harry an appraising look and then smirked and said, "Well, it seems after her little performance this morning at breakfast …"
Harry cringed at the mention of what happened that morning.
"… it seems that she managed to first get on McGonagall's bad side and has been assigned a five foot essay on the subject of transfiguring one's hand into a cat's paw. Then in Sprout's class she was singled out to harvest as many Bubbertoober pods as possible, thus getting much of it on her talons, er I mean hands, which has caused them to swell painfully."
At this point Harry was actually starting to feel like his old self again, even though it was at someone else's misfortune. Well Parkinson deserved it really.
"Then she went to Care of Magical Creatures where she met up with that damned Hippogriff that you made friends with and somehow that brute got it into his little brain that she had wronged you in some manner and apparently was not pleased about it and showed her what he thought of her."
"Buckbeak?"
"Is that the creature's name?"
Harry looked annoyed, and said, "Well, if you weren't so busy trying to look superior and had actually listened to Hagrid when he was explaining about how to interact with them, Buckbeak wouldn't have slashed you that day. Buckbeak is as gentle as a new born Kneazle with me."
"It must be your animal magnetism then."
"Must be," agreed Harry absently as he sent his rook after Malfoy's bishop.
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Wormtail sat under the bed with his mouth hanging open. Which really did not look convincing on a rat.
'The Malfoy brat had been in a private meeting with the Headmaster and now he was flirting with Harry?' he thought as he listened in on their conversation. Suddenly he had to reevaluate their relationship. This was not the behavior James and Snape displayed to each other.
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"Has she said anything to you since she's been in here?" asked Malfoy conversationally.
"I've not been out of my room since … this morning," replied Harry.
"Probably for the best then."
"Why," asked Harry mischievously. "Are you worried that she'll spill the beans about you behind your back? All about how she bleaches your hair for you in a secret Slytherin hair salon. Perhaps she'll tell the tale of how she's carrying your love child and that you're going to have to marry her to make her a respectable woman."
Malfoy shivered at the thought. "That will never happen," he said with conviction.
"Why isn't she good with hair?"
Again Malfoy opened his mouth but said nothing, which almost managed to impress Harry.
"I DO NOT BLEACH MY HAIR!"
"If you say so," Harry said in a sing song voice.
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'He's in love with him,' thought Wormtail. 'That's what he's up to; he wants to be with Harry. Master will be very pleased when he learns of this.'
Then the rat's thoughts turn quite greedy, very greedy in fact, 'I bet Lucius would be willing to pay through the teeth to keep this information away from our Master. I bet he would be willing to pay quite well to keep this from the entire wizarding world as well.'
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While Harry and Malfoy were playing wizards' chess, Dobby made himself useful by cleaning the private room Harry was staying in. Also he wanted to chaperone the two young wizards as he knew Malfoy had other interests in Harry Potter other than intellectual ones. The little elf also thought Harry knew the same thing deep down inside his heart, but wasn't ready to deal with it and has thus far ignored it.
As Dobby watched the two interact with one another, he thinks, 'I's is not thinking the Malfoy boy is realizing what he is being getting himself into. But Master Harry is only being smiling when he is near.'
However, Dobby was pulled from his thoughts when he noticed something move under Harry's bed. Frowning slightly Dobby bends down to pear under the bed and finds the swishing tail of a big fat gray rat with a silver paw. The rat was peaking out from under the bed watching Harry and Malfoy and not paying any attention to the elf as he went about the room performing his few duties.
Dobby's eyes bugged out when he realized what he was seeing. Grabbing a hold of the rat's tail, Dobby pulls him out from under the bed and begins to repeatedly banging him in the nearest table as hard as he could.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
"YOU'S IS BEING A BAD WIZARD YOU'S IN BEING!" cried Dobby as banged the rat on the table.
Both Harry and Malfoy had there wands out and pointing them at Dobby.
"Dobby," asked Harry, "What are you doing?"
Stopping what he was doing Dobby looks to the two boys and holding up the rat he says, "I's is just punishing you's enemies for you Master Harry."
"Wormtail."
To Be Continued … Please Read and Review
I wanted to thank everyone for reading and reviewing my last chapter, I really appreciate it.
Also, I'll try and update more often then once a year for now on, but I'm not making any promises.