Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
And here comes the angst, again.
Chapter Eighty-Five: A Dagger Through the Vitals
"Sir! Sir!"
Rufus woke with a half-shout, staggering up from the middle of his bed. He blinked for a moment, and then frowned when he saw the room lit only by the glare of the green flames from the hearth. He habitually left his Floo connection open to a select number of people, so they could fetch him if there was an emergency at the Ministry in the middle of the night, but he didn't recognize the woman whose head hovered there now.
"Is something wrong, Madam?" he asked gruffly, trying to look as dignified as he could while beneath the sheets in his pyjamas. A dressing gown hung on the back of the bed, luckily, and he slung it around his shoulders while he watched her closely.
"I'm sorry, sir." The witch covered her mouth with one hand and looked down. Rufus saw the crossed wand-and-bone emblem of St. Mungo's on her shoulder, and doubted that it was because of any embarrassment at seeing a near-naked man on her part. More likely, embarrassment at disturbing the Minister out of his sound night's sleep. "But you did ask us to let you know if she ever woke up, and they said this was the Floo connection to use during the night, not the one in your office, and—"
"If whom ever woke up?" Rufus asked, baffled. There were patients in St. Mungo's whose awakening would have been cause for rejoicing, old comrades of his put into comas by Death Eater curses during the First War, but Rufus couldn't remember the last time he'd actually hoped for that.
"Fiona Mallory, sir." The witch seemed to shrink in front of him as he stared at her. "The, er, the Auror arrested and sacked for the torture of Harry Potter's parents, sir? She went into a coma from a Dark magical artifact, and now she's awake."
Rufus felt his heart give a single hard pound, and then he was fully awake and committed to the situation. Fiona had been one of his finest Aurors before she let her own anger at the abusive Potters get the better of her. He had never been able to shake the sensation that her sudden sleep was revenge more than an accident with Dark magic, even as he'd had to admit failure and move her from the Ministry to St. Mungo's. "I did leave instructions to know at once if that happened. How did she wake up?"
The witch swallowed loudly, and Rufus realized then that some of the pallor in her face came from fear. "Un—Unspeakables, sir. They came into her room with a kind of wand that held all of us motionless. When they touched her with it, it glowed blue, and she w-woke up."
Rufus hissed. It made sense that the Unspeakables would possess an artifact that could end Mallory's coma. They probably had the one that had dropped her into it in the first place. "And where is Fiona now?"
The witch cringed.
"Madam?" Rufus asked softly.
"The Un—Unspeakables gave her a Portkey," said the Healer, so softly that Rufus almost couldn't hear her. "She was saying something about speaking to Harry when she vanished." She peered at him with wide, frightened eyes. "Has she gone to talk to the vates, then, sir?"
"Yes," Rufus said shortly, only because she would spread rumors if he didn't acknowledge this somehow. Damn it, damn it, damn it. The last thing that needed to happen was Harry confronting his parents' torturer in the middle of the night. Of course, it was probably something the Stone would find amusing.
What are you playing at now, rock?
"Thank you for contacting me," he told the witch, and snuffed out the Floo connection with a wave of his wand. Then he hurried to put on the dressing gown and cast a handful of Floo powder into the hearth, hoping against hope that he would not need to call long before his target awakened.
"Headmistress's Office, Hogwarts!"
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry felt the surprised quiver of the wards before he even opened his eyes. He was already rolling into a battle-prepared posture, feeling Draco's loose clasp on him suddenly turn firm. He cast a silent Summoning Charm for Draco's wand, and heard it smack into his palm.
Then he opened his eyes.
A woman stood in front of him whom he didn't recognize at first, gaunt and starveling, her hair straggling like a mass of twigs around her face, her blue eyes sunken in her head. She clutched the Portkey that seemed to have brought her straight through the wards as if it would keep her from falling. Harry narrowed his eyes. The Portkey wasn't the bit of rubbish touched with Portus that usually served well enough. It was a small, key-shaped piece of silver, and it shone with such magic that Harry immediately brought some of his own power up in defense.
"Auror Mallory?" he asked slowly. The last thing he'd known, she lay in a coma from an accident with a Dark magical artifact, and she wasn't likely to wake up soon.
"Harry," she whispered, and stared at him some more.
"She's not supposed to be here," Draco said, his arms tightening so much that Harry almost couldn't breathe. "How did she get through the wards? What does she want? Be careful, Harry."
"I know," Harry murmured, his puzzlement increasing when Auror Mallory simply stood there. Someone had exercised her muscles for her, probably by magic, while she lay in bed, but they were still thin blobs of meat around sticks. She certainly didn't make a very efficient assassin. Who would send her, anyway? Why not send someone else to kill me? "But—" He shook his head, and decided that just because they were speaking about her as if she wasn't there didn't mean she had to stand there silent and gaping. "Auror Mallory," he said gently. "Fiona. What are you here for? Who did this to you?"
Her eyes came painfully alive, and she took a single staggering step forward. "They rescued me," she whispered. "The ones who put me in the blackness in the first place, they rescued me and sent me back."
"Who?" Harry asked.
"The Unspeakables."
I thought the Stone was staying out of politics, Harry thought, even as he had to admit that it wasn't a very political move to wake up a sleeping woman and send her to him. Even if that woman had tortured his parents. Harry felt an uneasy consciousness stirring and struggling in him; he thought he should probably hate her more than he did for that, but Lily and James had been put so thoroughly into his past that it was like trying to remember a hatred from a hundred years ago. "Why did they send you back?" he asked. "Why release you?"
"They wanted you to know," Mallory said, and then bowed her head and began shivering. Harry cast a Warming Charm on her, eye all the while on the silver Portkey. It simply shone.
"Why aren't you fetching Professor Snape?" Draco hissed to the back of his neck. "You should be."
"I won't hear what she has to say if someone takes her away now," Harry pointed out. He thought this was eminently reasonable, and didn't understand why Draco lifted his wrist as if he would cast the phoenix communication spell. "No." He forced Draco's hand down, and turned to look at Auror Mallory again. "What did they want me to know?" It would probably be a lie, even if she sincerely believed it, but that didn't matter. Harry didn't have to act on Unspeakable lies any more. If the matter required it, he would go and face the Stone down again in the Department of Mysteries. The anger surging through him was certainly strong enough for that.
"Know—" Mallory squeezed her eyes shut, and stood a moment as if debating whether to tell him the truth. Harry, his magical senses raised to a high pitch because he expected the silver Portkey to do something spectacular, felt it when the wards on the Slytherin common room quivered and then admitted someone. He grimaced. Merlin knows how Snape found out about this so fast, but maybe he felt her come through the wards, too.
"Know that I only tortured your parents later," said Mallory suddenly, opening her eyes. "The first person who tortured them was Lucius Malfoy."
Harry felt the moment when the words tore through him, a dagger through the vitals, a steel blade that impaled and twisted his guts out of line. He wanted to bend over and feel at the wound beating inside him, judge how badly he was hurt.
But he heard Draco draw a pained breath at the same time, and forced himself through the moment by remembering he wasn't the only person with a stake in this. He scooted backward and wrapped one arm around Draco's shoulders and one around his waist, drawing him against him. He held him there while he gazed at Mallory. "What did he do to them?" he asked, surprising himself with the flat calm of his own voice. "And when? Do you know?"
"Not long before I was arrested," she said, voice becoming more lively, as if the memories sparked more strength in her. "The same day. I was there to take the fall for him, just in case someone suspected that something was wrong with the wards on your parents' cells." Harry saw a flash of contempt deep in her eyes, even now, for Lily and James. He supposed they didn't stop being abusers to Mallory just because they'd hurt. "I know he did something bad to them. Something painful, worse than the battle curses I used. I don't know what it was."
Harry nodded tightly, and felt the touch of wet breath on his neck as Draco made a torn noise of disbelief. "Hush," he whispered, then looked at Mallory. "And this is true?"
"I swear it is." Mallory smiled, a bit bitterly. "Scrimgeour sacked me after that, because he thought I'd overstepped the boundary of my duties—"
"You did," Harry murmured. He could feel Snape now, trying his best to open the door of their bedroom. Harry lifted locking wards his guardian couldn't get through and continued stroking Draco's back, gaze focused on Mallory.
"How would I have come into contact with a Dark artifact held in the Ministry?" Mallory spread her hands. "The Unspeakables did it for him, put me into that coma. And they took me out again. I don't know why. I don't know anything about them. But I swear that everything else is the truth."
I can't be allies with Lucius any more.
But this is Draco's father, and saying that is like saying I won't be Draco's lover any more.
Harry felt the first impact of Snape's magic against the wards, and sighed. He would be in here in a moment, and he would probably attempt to kill Mallory first and ask questions later. He was in that kind of mood, from the sound of it. "I'll tell everyone else. You should go. Do you have a safe place?"
Mallory blinked. "You—you care about that? I tortured your parents!"
"You did." Harry stared at her some more, and still there was a void of feeling where he should have expected raw anger and pain. Probably, the rest of it just hurts too much. And the silent sobbing Draco was now giving against him increased his own emotions towards other people, not Mallory. "But I think I forgave you for it. And you've told me who really instigated the torment. So I think you can go." He shuddered as Snape's wandless magic nearly managed to penetrate a weak place in his wards, and added, "Not for very much longer, though."
Mallory nodded. "The Unspeakables swore they would see me safe," she said, and clenched her hand around the Portkey, and tilted back her head, and dissolved into a mass of silver sparks, and was gone.
Harry lowered the wards and lay down on the bed with his arms folded around Draco, still rubbing his spine, still letting Draco cling to him like a young monkey, and now murmuring soothing words. "Draco, I'll never make you choose. I promise. He's your father. I know that. I respect that. You don't have to choose between us. I promise that—"
And then the door flew open, and Snape was there, and perhaps it was better that Harry hadn't promised anything, because the memory of the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow were coming back to him, and what he had promised to do to anyone who broke them, and the fact that Ignifer had told him the Unspeakables had threatened her father. Cupressus Apollonis had not broken. Would Lucius, who owed an actual debt to the Unspeakables in the form of Mallory, have done so? And what might he have given them if he did?
Not what, Harry thought, his mind landing as if by fate on the fact that they still didn't know who had betrayed Hawthorn as a werewolf to the Ministry. Who.
Snape bowed over him, saying harshly, "What happened? Are you hurt?"
"Not physically," said Harry, sinking his emotions into the Occlumency pools. Snape's sharp glance said he knew what Harry was doing and did not approve, but Harry ignored him. This was too important. He needed to view his situation as an outsider and keep moving forward, or the pain would cripple him. "Fiona Mallory woke from her coma. The Auror who tortured my parents?" he supplied, when he saw the confusion in Snape's eyes. "She said that she did cast curses on them, but she was the fall witch for Lucius. He tortured them in more depth and detail."
Snape closed his eyes, and his mouth tightened for a long moment. Harry curled up more around Draco.
"I am taking you both to the hospital wing," Snape said, as the small, frantic sounds that Draco was making soared. "He needs a Calming Draught."
Harry knew that Snape would pour a potion down his throat, too, if Harry gave him the chance. He would not give him the chance. His Occlumency would serve him well enough, to let him think about this.
And he had to think.
But he could see the path sprouting ahead of him, leading him, step by dismal step, to the end of draining Lucius Malfoy of his magic.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Draco couldn't breathe that well. He could hear Madam Pomfrey speaking to him in a low, worried voice, trying to get him to uncurl from around Harry and swallow a Calming Draught. Now and then she would stop and ask Professor Snape for some report on his symptoms, and whether he still thought Draco needed the potion. And all the while Harry held him and didn't stop moving his hand on his back.
They probably thought he refused to uncurl because he was ashamed, Draco thought, or because he was frightened about what would happen to his father if Harry went after him.
He wasn't, or else that was only in some part of his mind which the main emotion he felt wouldn't let him access. He was murderously angry.
Did he have to be so stubborn? So stupid? He tortured the Potters because he was taking the place of Harry as vengeance-taker, I know. But he knew, he had to have known, that this was one of the cases where the victim waived not just his right to take vengeance but the right to vengeance altogether. He should have come to Harry, talked to him, asked him about this. And then Harry would have had the means of outright refusal, instead of finding out now
What he did was wrong. I know how the tradition functions. Someone else can take revenge if the abused child doesn't take it, but he has to have the child's permission. The only exceptions are blood family. Connor could have done this, but not Lucius.
And he thought he was high enough above the old laws and rules to ignore them all. He thought they didn't apply to him.
I am so fucking tired of having Harry be a better guardian of the Malfoy honor than my father is.
At last, he heard Pomfrey and Snape discussing a spell to make him look up, and that was when he decided that he'd had quite enough of that. He uncramped his limbs, and when Harry gave him a long, anxious look, nodded. He could sit up on his own. He could.
"Has anyone contacted my mother?" he asked, attempting to ignore the fact that his voice was hoarse and his face splotched from his tears of fury. Madam Pomfrey came towards him with a Calming Draught. Harry held out his hand and prevented her from doing so, eyes on Draco's face all the while.
"No, Draco," he said quietly. "We didn't know if you'd want that done. Would you like it done?"
Draco nodded once. Harry bowed his head slightly, then started to move away from the bed and towards the hospital wing's fireplace.
"Harry?"
He got a look in return that made him shiver, it seemed so cold and uncaring, until he realized that Harry had locked down his emotions in order to function. Well, that makes sense. "Yes?"
"Are you going to kill my father, or drain him of his magic?" Draco was proud of his voice. It didn't waver. It didn't even make it sound as though those were things that might or might not happen. It made it sound as though those were the only two alternatives, and Harry had to make one or the other of them come true.
"I don't know," said Harry quietly. "It would depend on what he did to my parents. And—to other people."
He took a handful of Floo powder before Draco could ask what that meant, and cast it into the fire with a call of, "Number Twelve Grimmauld Place!"
"Mr. Malfoy," Pomfrey said, almost shoving the vial in his face. "I do insist that you swallow this. You are too on edge right now."
"I am not on edge," said Draco, and thank Merlin, he could use his voice like a rapier, not like the wound spring he had suspected it might uncoil as. Pomfrey actually took a step away from him. "I am angry. I am mourning the downfall of my family honor. I am plotting ways to let my father know how disappointed I am in him before he dies. That's all."
"Let him be, Poppy," said Professor Snape quietly.
The matron glanced between both of them, then threw up her hands and stomped away, muttering about Slytherins. Snape took another step forward, eyes focused intently on Draco. Draco leaned forward and looked back. This was a man he hadn't seen in at least a week, since Snape had visited him in the hospital wing after the battle with Falco Parkinson: his Head of House.
"You know that your father may not survive the morning," Snape said.
"I know it," said Draco, and he did, and amidst all the pain that he wasn't going to admit to was the clean, sharp sawing of his anger. He really did feel that—not just because he wanted to, but because he did. It swept him up in pride. He was a fitting Malfoy heir after all, in a way that his father had not been for years. "He betrayed our name. He betrayed our honor. He has to die. Or lose his magic," he added. "That was the punishment Harry laid out for violating the oaths of the Alliance, and I would be content with that."
"Lucius would rather die than lose his magic," Snape said.
"I know that," Draco said.
"You are not mourning the loss of your father?"
Draco curled his lip. "I would be mourning it far more if I thought there was a chance he'd been under Imperius, or otherwise coaxed into doing these things," he said. "As it is—no. He knew what the consequences of getting caught were, and one of the first lessons he taught me was not getting caught. He should have known better."
Snape nodded and paced slowly away from the bed towards Harry, who was talking to Narcissa through the fireplace. Draco leaned back on the pillow and closed his eyes.
He did mean it. Lucius had always slipped through the nooses and traps his enemies laid because he took grand risks, but no unnecessary ones. He had been growing more reckless of late, as his disownment of Draco showed, and the moment a Malfoy took a risk and failed, he became contemptible.
Unless he really was under Imperius.
But he hadn't been. And he hadn't been when he was a Death Eater, either, even if he had managed to convince the Wizengamot he was.
Draco flinched a bit as he recalled one of his very first serious conversations with Harry, back in first year, when Harry had insisted that, yes, Lucius was a Death Eater, and calmly detailed his crimes. Draco had refused to believe it then—because he loved his father, but even more because he could not believe that the proud, elegant man he knew would leave evidence of his crimes behind if he had really performed them of his own free will. So he had been under Imperius. He had to have been.
But he wasn't.
And you tortured three Muggleborn children and their parents to death, Father, and left signs that you did so. You killed the Prewett twins, but only in company with four other wizards. Your deeds in war are of a piece with what you have done in the last year.
For the good of the family, Lucius Malfoy had to cease to be a wizard.
Draco took a deep breath, glad now that he'd learned the pureblood dances, glad that he'd been raised a pureblood. This made things easier when someone in the family had a horrible breach of taste or committed a horrendous crime. Other families would hang on their necks and cry and let themselves be dragged down, too. Draco had had the training to cut a useless blood relative out of his heart quickly and easily. The family must survive.
And then his mother came through the flames, and put her arms around him, and Draco allowed himself just a bit of comfort from knowing that someone else did feel the howling sadness and the pain within him.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Hawthorn paused. A letter lay on the table beside her bed. It had not lain there a moment ago, she knew. She had only turned her back to retrieve her hairbrush, which had fallen, and when she straightened, there it was.
Cautiously, she picked up her wand and approached, casting several spells on the way. No charms were revealed on the letter, only, strangely enough, the fading glow of Apparition, as if it had managed to transport itself.
The parchment was gray, and folded so as to make its own envelope. The seal holding it shut was black, an hourglass. Hawthorn Levitated the letter into the air and carefully slit the seal with a Cutting Curse, making the parchment fall open.
The words were written in an elegant, slashing hand, easily read from the careful distance she stood at. There was only one sentence.
Lucius Malfoy was the one who betrayed you to the Unspeakables, and through them to the Aurors.
Hawthorn stared. She felt old rage coursing through her like lava beneath solid rock. It was easily roused. She had had dreams, lately—such dreams, hard to remember, but still present in tattered pieces in her mind when she woke, of running after the Aurors who had mistreated her when she was in Tullianum, or Indigena Yaxley, or the mysterious person who had been the one to betray her werewolf status, and biting them. She wanted it so much. The hatred was a black beast beside her in the dreams, always present for the bite, and always giving her a moment of dark satisfaction before she finally woke.
But this—
This was confirmation. If she dared to think it was. The Unspeakables could have sent this letter through her wards. They could also be lying, trying to set Harry's allies against one another.
But a part of Hawthorn's mind she rarely used now, the part that had reveled in the name of the Red Death when she ran with Voldemort, woke and stretched and applied itself with rapid calculation to the possibilities.
Was Lucius ruthless enough to betray an ally like this? Yes, if it would gain him something greater. Hawthorn did not know what else it might have won him, but she knew the great prize: more unimpeded access to and influence over Harry. Lucius and Harry had had their first falling out around the time of the werewolf rebellion—just before it, in fact. And if Lucius had betrayed her to the Unspeakables, he might have hoped that he would have some more say over Harry's actions with Hawthorn gone.
It had probably been nothing personal. The Unspeakables wanted werewolves. Had they demanded one of Lucius? They probably had. And he had given them one close to Harry, close enough that it would hurt Harry when she was taken. That it had provoked Harry into organized rebellion instead of mad scrambling was simply Lucius and the Department's bad luck.
That doesn't mean he did it, Hawthorn counseled herself, trying to keep down the howl of the wolf inside her. It was still near the dark of the moon, but even now, a provocation like this was enough to rouse the beast. It means only that he had an opportunity to do so, and perhaps a motive.
And the Unspeakables would hardly have told this to her now out of the kindness of their hearts.
With a hand that trembled, Hawthorn took the letter, folded it up, and put it into her robe pocket. Then she tapped her wrist with her wand to activate the phoenix song communication spell. She would do nothing hastily. She would not rush off to confront Lucius, as the Unspeakables had probably hoped.
She would contact Harry. She would ask him if he thought there was a possibility of this being true, and if so, what they should do.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Lucius also found a letter on his breakfast table that morning. He nodded. He had expected it. Gray parchment, black hourglass seal. When the piled stones began to fall at last, he had expected they would come from this direction, the most vulnerable place.
We have told them, the letter said. Harry and Hawthorn Parkinson. They will be here soon.
Lucius laughed, a little, and stood from the table to check that his defenses were ready. Since he was found out, what he could do was face his coming fate like a man. Some disgraced purebloods could recoup a bit of honor to their names by admitting to accusations they knew were true and accepting execution or maiming or a duel, whichever the accuser chose.
He did not quite intend to go that far. It was only fools who did. And Lucius knew what honor was worth, and the answer was not his life.
But he would give what credit he could to the Malfoy name, for the sake of the son who would bear it after him.
And, thanks to the Unspeakables' eagerness to make sure he knew just what was going to happen to him, he had extra time to prepare.
He shook his head in amused disbelief as he went into his study. I hope that Harry considers the trade in allies he's just made fair.
SSSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry watched Narcissa and Draco embrace in silence, and tried to decide what to do.
Birds of fright wheeled and scattered in his thoughts whenever he tried to attend to them without the Occlumency pools. Therefore, he didn't try to attend to them without the Occlumency pools. He kept his emotions pinned, because they couldn't help him in this case, and considered his options.
Execution of Lucius was one possibility, for overstepping his bounds. But Harry had refused that option with most of the people who had hurt him, his parents included, and he would not embrace it now.
Turning him over to the Ministry for trial would work—if only he could be sure that the Unspeakables would not touch him there, if only he could be sure that the Wizengamot would actually find him guilty this time and not be swayed by Malfoy money and Malfoy charisma into letting him go. No, much as he would have liked to, Harry could not say that he trusted the Ministry to conduct an objective trial of Lucius Malfoy.
Cowing him as he had Henrietta and binding him with Unbreakable Vows would perhaps have been a choice if Harry thought he possessed the power to grind Lucius's temperament into gravel. But he did not, and Lucius Malfoy was not Henrietta Bulstrode. He might pretend to bow his neck, but he would wriggle and test the slack in his bonds, and find some way to get around the Vows, Harry was sure. Besides, intense anger at Henrietta for the way she had treated Edith had been his main impetus to bind her, not the injury Henrietta had done him.
If he harmed Hawthorn, his thoughts whispered, could you not find the anger to bind Lucius?
But if he harmed Hawthorn, then he had done it while a member of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow. And he had been subject to its oaths then, and there was only one punishment for that. Harry had said he would drain the magic of anyone who betrayed a comrade rather than simply withdrawing from the Alliance.
He closed his eyes. He would have found this so much easier if not for Draco.
"Harry?"
It took him a moment to realize that the voice came from his wrist; he had been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't heard the warble of phoenix song. And, ah, it was Hawthorn's voice.
"Mrs. Parkinson," Harry murmured, glad his own voice did not shake. "What is the matter?"
"I've received a letter saying that Lucius Malfoy betrayed me to the Unspeakables," said Hawthorn. "I need—I need to come to Hogwarts and speak to you about this. May I?"
Harry heard the soft sounds from Draco's direction cease. He looked, because he couldn't help himself, and saw Draco leaning in the shelter of his mother's arms, eyes fixed on his. Harry looked straight into his boyfriend's face, and could not look away.
He saw Draco mouth, "Tell her yes."
As if in a dream, Harry lowered his mouth towards his wrist and said, "Of course, Hawthorn. Come ahead. I'm in the hospital wing."
"Wounded?" Hawthorn's voice grew sharp. Harry marveled at her strength, that even bound up in her own pain she would spare a moment's thought for what might have happened to him.
"No," said Harry. "Just in shock, a bit. Please do come ahead, Hawthorn." He ended the communication spell when he heard her assent, and looked again at Draco and Narcissa, not believing what he saw in their faces.
Draco spoke before his mother could. "Drain him, Harry."
"Draco, he's your father—"
"He betrayed her," said Draco stonily. "You don't do that, not when the ally has never done you any harm. And not when you can get caught." He shifted restlessly closer to Narcissa, but Harry thought he was offering comfort as much as seeking it. "And he put you in an impossible position politically, and he knew it. And he didn't think about what the effect would be on you, of knowing that your parents suffered. He just tortured them because he wanted to, because he could. He doesn't think about other people, and the only time a Malfoy can afford to do that is when he doesn't have any dependents or any allies. He had both." Draco's face was eerie in its intense conviction. "Drain him, and keep his power for yourself. His magic is the only thing of value he has left to offer, now."
Harry looked at Narcissa.
"If he did all that Mrs. Mallory and Mrs. Parkinson have said," said Narcissa, after a moment of long, long silence, "then I must agree, Harry. I am—I am the one who sought Hawthorn out, who brought her into this alliance with you. I did it intending her nothing but good, as well as knowing that she would make a wonderful loyalist for you if you could persuade her. It is like the maneuvering I did on your behalf in the third year; I intended nothing but good, and still I wrought you harm. I have wrought her harm, exposed her to my husband's attention. I knew that he was conducting correspondence with someone mysterious in the days before Hawthorn was arrested. I should have picked up the clues."
"Mrs. Malfoy—"
"Narcissa, Harry. Call me by the name I have most claim to. And I say that I should have picked up on them. The standard that most matters in such a thing is the witch's. I failed my own." Narcissa leaned her head on Draco's hair, pale and silent.
Harry closed his eyes and nodded, even as he heard, faint and far away, the "pop" of Apparition as Hawthorn appeared on the edge of Hogwarts grounds.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Lucius felt the moment Harry, Draco, Narcissa, Severus, and Hawthorn arrived on the outer defenses of the Manor. Of course, the first three of them could have passed through the wards without trouble, linked to them as they were, but the presence of the fourth and fifth kept them excluded.
Lucius waited, calmly, at the door to his study. On one side of him was a stack of papers and ledgers that Draco would need to examine to know the intricacies of the Malfoy legacy. Lucius had played him no tricks, but that did not mean that what he must keep track of was simple.
On the other side of him stood a single vial with three drops of clear fluid in it.
In his hand was his wand.
He waited, and lowered the wards when he felt Harry begin to drain them. He did not want his home damaged. It would be Draco's home thereafter, and the home of the heirs Draco adopted. It was not, strictly speaking, Lucius's property to expose to the spells of his enemies anymore.
He could taste their wariness as they ventured inside, looking for traps all the way. Lucius had not trapped the rooms, however. They would discover that eventually, and come to him. He was willing to while the moments away by running his plan through his head, though he knew it was perfect; he wished to admire the angles and the cleverness of it. And sooner or later, they would arrive at the door of the study, and see him, and pause.
They did. Severus was in the front, beside Harry, and Lucius was glad, because they would be able to identify the Veritaserum Lucius picked up and swallowed even from a short distance.
The brief, cloudy dullness of the drug came over him. However, Lucius fully planned on telling the truth even without prompting, without questions, and so the numbness faded.
He looked Harry in the eye, and said, "I used a species of insect on your father that will give him cancer in a short time. They should remain even though he is drained of magic. The answer as to how to defeat them is there." He gestured to the book on medical magic he'd placed among the Malfoy ledgers. "I cast a spell on your mother that will stretch her dying moment to an eternity of suffering. You can take that away by using your absorbere gift, I am certain."
"Did you betray me?" Hawthorn asked, shouldering Harry and Severus aside so that she could see him. Lucius lifted his head and studied her, letting his mouth reply without hindrance.
"I did."
And then things fell out as he had known they would. Lucius felt almost as if he were the piper and led his foes the dance.
Hawthorn howled and charged at him. Lucius had known her rage and hatred would compel that; even though she was a controlled witch most of the time, she hated traitors, always had, and she had a werewolf's temper urging her on now. He lifted his wand and cast the complicated illusion spell he'd practiced until he could do it nonverbally.
The spell took form in the air between them, in enough time that Hawthorn had to stop and watch it. It reached into Hawthorn's memory and tugged out the image of her child dying—it had to be her child, because her dead husband had not been her mate—and played it again in front of her.
Lucius listened, timing out the moments, feeling the stunned immobility of the others melting instant by instant, and heard only the wolf in Hawthorn's voice when she howled again.
She came at him without mercy, but also without coordination, and her wand was half-forgotten in the overpowering, pressing need to grip him in her jaws or shred him with her nails. The book on werewolves had said it would be so. The pack instinct was strong in them, and they could be fooled by the spell into thinking that someone who had not actually killed their child or mate was the murderer.
Lucius flicked his wand again, and sang the second spell he'd prepared in his mind. Argenteus!
A series of silver blades formed in midair between him and Hawthorn, and flicked forward, studding her shoulders, her arms, her torso. The shock did not kill her at once, as it would have with a normal human, but it bore her to the ground, and then she howled once in such pain that Severus bent over to help her.
Lucius had debated in his mind whether Harry would bend over to help Hawthorn, too, but he did not think so, and he was proven right as Harry stood where he was, staring, eyes focused on him.
It was too bad, really, that he had to be exiled from such power, Lucius thought, watching even as he felt the winds begin to build and knew Harry was gathering his magic to swallow Lucius's own. He should have trusted his insight that night when Harry had declared the Alliance. Here was a wizard worth serving, strength worth being close to—might, as he had described it, once, long ago, to his son.
But that might was not worth losing his own magic to, and so, before Harry could overcome his own shock and doubt and personal pain long enough to drain him, Lucius touched the Portkey that shone around his neck, in the form of the top button of his robe, and flickered out of his study into the room behind it. At his gesture, wards sprang up around the open door to the study, blue and green and softly flickering. Lucius had shown no one else these wards, not even his beloved Narcissa. His father had impressed on him the need to keep them secret and safe, and so Lucius had always done. Those wards, the product of an Unassailable Curse, would only allow someone of Malfoy blood to pass into this room, and they could not be destroyed, anchored as they were in the actual flesh and tissue of the line, unless all living Malfoys were already dead. Lucius thought the ancestor who designed them must have faced an absorbere at some point.
Narcissa pressed forward, and was thrown back. Harry tried to drain them, and the wards slipped away from him and snarled. Lucius did lock eyes with both of them, and try to give them a final farewell and a summation of all they had meant to him and what he thought of them now.
Draco slid past his mother, and into the room.
An expression of shock came over his features, holding him in place. Lucius had known that would happen. He spoke swiftly to his son, even as one hand shot behind him to hover above the powerful Portkey they would have sensed at once if he carried it on him.
"You are my pride, Draco. Though I had little enough to do with it that I am ashamed of myself, you have become a man, and a rightful heir to the Malfoy line. The best of your mother is in you, and of me as well. You are not a subordinate to Harry, I see that now, and you will do our blood proud."
The Veritaserum in his body would not let him speak less than the truth. Lucius used that as a double-edged sword. It let him tell this young wizard, less than a month from his seventeenth birthday and thus from coming of age, with his blond hair half-tousled behind him from the wind of his speed and his wand raised in an attack position and his body coiled in a defensive posture, what he really thought of him.
And the words, so unlike what Draco expected to hear, kept him frozen in place one extra moment, the moment his father needed.
Lucius grasped the Portkey.
The Manor dissolved around him, shutting out the sight of Draco's lunge and the curse he tried to cast, which Lucius was sure went through his fading form and destroyed the desk he'd been standing in front of. He felt a moment's faint regret. He had liked that desk.
He landed on a desolate heath, and glanced around with a resigned expression. Finvarra Malfoy had not chosen the prettiest of the Malfoy properties to make the safehouse. Of course, if she had, then sooner or later a child would have contrived to kill his or parent so that they could safely inherit it.
And the house, though small, would keep Lucius comfortably enough, alive and safe behind wards that no one else could pass, because no one else was a part of the oldest living generation of Malfoys.
He ducked into the house, and the wards closed around him. Lucius took off his cloak with a sigh and a shake of his shoulders.
The house was cold, but a wave of his wand lit the hearth. He was thirsty, but a few charms summoned him a glass and an old bottle of wine. Lucius had been saving it for the day that his son came of age. He felt no qualms in opening it now, even though he had always envisioned sharing it with Draco in proud silence. He had seen that Draco was already an adult, birthday here yet or no.
He drank, sitting calmly in front of the fire, and cast the Summoning Charm to call a book on the history of the merfolk to him. It was a subject he had long meant to study, and had never had the time to look at before.
Merlin, he loved being a wizard.
