Author's Notes
I'm just going to come right out and say that I hate this chapter.
Not because of the content itself (though that's pretty bad too. There was a tissue warning somewhere in here, but I think I lost it...), but because I feel like it could have been done so much better but just refused to write itself into something much better.
Constructive Criticism feeds the muses, so let me know what you think of
Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Chamber of Secrets
Chapter Two: Assassination
Harry finds out who's responsible for tampering with his mail, prompting desperate measures from a supposedly helpful House Elf. Meanwhile, Dark and Arcana arrive in Surrey with one order: Find Harry Potter.
Harry slammed the door closed, and, upon remembering the houseguests that were likely arriving downstairs, performed a complicated twist-grab move that only the young and flexible could accomplish before the door actually slammed shut and made that 'noise' that Uncle Vernon was so afraid he'd make.
With his back pressed against the door, Harry took in his own houseguest.
The creature wasn't large, coming perhaps only to about his waist, with large bat-like ears on his head and green eyes, not quite the same shade as his own, that were the size of tennis balls.
Though it took Harry a moment, because Draco's description of them had been a little less helpful, to recognize a house elf.
While Harry was taking in the creature that had been standing on his bed, the house elf slipped off his bed and bowed so low that his long, thin nose touched the carpet.
It was closer now, and Harry vaguely recognized an old pillowcase that had been torn to create armholes.
"Er-hello?" Harry asked more than stated, a little nervous.
His first thought was 'how far away is Tarana' his second thought was 'how harmful can he be'.
It became clear quickly that there, in the home of the Dursleys, this creature could be very harmful.
"Lord Harry Potter!" it cried in a voice so high pitched that Harry was sure that, volume aside, it was going to carry down the stairs and get him into trouble. "Such an honor it is…So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir!"
Harry swallowed, glancing over his shoulder as though his uncle would appear through the door there.
While he knew that he was the Lord of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, he'd never been taught any of the intricacies that came with the title, and he seriously hoped that this house elf wasn't going to expect him to.
"Th-thank you," he said, clearing his throat. "Who are you?"
"Dobby, sir," the creature said as Harry edged his way along the wall, aiming not for his bed, but the far closer desk chair. "Just Dobby. Dobby the house elf."
Harry bit his tongue. "I er-I don't want to be rude or anything, Dobby, but…this really isn't the best time to have a house elf in my bedroom…."
Unconsciously, his eyes again went to the door.
Downstairs he could hear his Aunt Petunia's high, fake laughter drifting up from the living room.
The Masons were here.
The house elf hung its head and began to twist its long, thin fingers together.
"Not that I'm not pleased to meet you," Harry rushed to assure him, "but is there any particular reason you're here?"
"Oh, yes, sir," Dobby said earnestly, voice going high again and causing Harry to wince. "Dobby has come to tell you, sir…it is difficult, sir. Dobby was told-but Dobby isn't knowing how-Dobby wonders where to begin…."
Harry closed his eyes. "Sit down." He offered politely, pointing at the bed behind the creature.
To his horror, his effort to make the elf more at ease, and thus quieter, backfired spectacularly. Dobby burst into tears. Very, very noisy tears.
"S-sit down!" The house elf wailed, "never-never ever…!"
Beneath the unearthly wail, Harry could swear that the voices downstairs faltered.
Bugger. He thought, scrambling quickly to his feet and making pacifying gestures with his hands.
"I'm sorry," he whispered urgently. "I didn't mean to offend you or anything, but-"
"Offend Dobby?!" The elf choked. "Dobby has never been asked to sit down by a wizard-like an equal-"
Too late did Harry remember that minor detail.
The house elves weren't servants in the way that muggles saw them.
They were slaves.
"Dobby," Harry whispered harshly. "I need to you quiet down, please. You can't be found here!"
The young wizard ushered the elf to the bed, where he sat, hiccoughing and sniffling, looking very much like an ugly doll on Harry's bedspread. It took him several minutes, but he did, eventually, manage to calm down and control himself.
Unfortunately, he was looking at Harry with a familiar expression.
He'd seen it quite often the year before as he walked the wizarding shopping center, Diagon Alley.
Admiration.
Trying to lighten the house elf's miserable posture, Harry put his foot in his mouth again.
"You can't have met many decent wizards then," He said.
Dobby, likely registering the question before he heard the words, shook his head.
And then promptly leapt to his thin legs and began to bang his head loudly, and painfully, against the edge of the window. "Bad Dobby!" he screamed. "Bad Dobby!"
"Shit!" Harry hissed, leaping up and bodily hauling the house elf away from the window.
It was a difficult task.
For all that the creature looked thin and ready to snap in half, it was agile and determined to put a large dent in either his own skull or Harry's bedroom window.
When Harry finally got the creature to calm down in the middle of the room, one hand on a bony shoulder to keep it there, he channeled his inner Draco and demanded an explanation.
The firm command appeared to put the house elf even more at ease.
"Dobby had to punish himself, sir," he explained. "Dobby almost spoke ill of his family, sir-"
Harry chewed over their predicament.
Fallen was positive, though Harry wasn't supposed to know this, that the reason his mail was being so selectively tampered with, was because there was a binding spell or ritual that prevented the one doing so from interfering with the Malfoys themselves.
A spell, not unlike the one that would bind a house elf.
"You work for the Malfoys." He stated.
Dobby wearily nodded, his ears flopping listlessly.
"Do they know you're here?"
Dobby hesitated and then did a complicated thing where he shook his head and nodded, unsure of which gesture to finish making.
"Does Lucius know you're here?"
With watering eyes, Dobby shook his head so quickly that his ears banged against it.
"Draco's uncle?"
Dobby tried to pull away, hands reaching for the desk, but Harry put his weight into keeping the elf right where he was. "Don't-" Harry hissed. "You can't make too much noise, Dobby! If my family hears you, we'll both be killed!"
Dobby went very still, as though the idea that Harry could possibly be in danger in his own home was foreign to him. "But sir, you mustn't go," Dobby whispered urgently. "You must not go back to Hogwarts!"
Harry shook his head. "I'm not staying here, Dobby. I can't. If I don't go back, Tarana will kill these muggles or they'll kill me. I have to go back."
Dobby shook his head rapidly again. "No, no, no," he said. "Lord Harry Potter must stay here. It is safer. Even the Queen, the Queen can't protect him from Hogwarts. Both are too great, too good, to lose! Both will be in mortal danger!"
Harry was, predictably, skeptical.
"Dobby, Tarana has Fallen and Yoko, she won't be alone. We'll be fine, but only if we get out of here. What danger could possibly be so great that the Shadow Queen of Valeria can't stop it?"
Dobby looked up at the wizard earnestly. "A plot, Lord Harry Potter, sir. A plot to make terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To make the Great Ones go away."
Harry had never heard the Valerians referred to as 'the Great Ones', but logically that was who the house elf had to be speaking of.
"What terrible things, Dobby?" he asked. "Tell me who's plotting it and me, and Tarana, and the others, we can take care of it before we get to Hogwarts!"
Dobby made a funny choking noise, like the words were caught in his throat and choking him with them.
Unable to break Harry's firm grip on his shoulders, Dobby resorted to bashing himself in the head with his fists.
Harry caught one of them in his own, fearing for just a moment that if he squeezed the elf's wrist too hard, he'd snap it. "Alright," he said firmly, "you can't tell me, stop hurting yourself. Can I ask questions? Just shake or nod your head."
Dobby hesitated, then nodded.
"Does this have anything to do with Voldemort?"
Dobby clapped his hands over his ears and pulled them down. "Speak not the name, sir! Speak not the name!"
"Alright, so it's not Vold-sorry, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," Harry said thoughtfully, wishing again that Tarana was there. She would know the right questions to ask to get around the house elf's bound word. "Dark? Arcana?"
Again, the house elf shook his head violently enough to slap himself in the face with his ears.
Harry sighed. "Look, Dobby, if it's not Vol-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I can't imagine anyone else powerful to go against Dumbledore." The young wizard hesitated. "You know who Dumbledore is, don't you?"
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever had," Dobby stated. "Dobby knows it, sir. Dobby has heard Dumbledore's powers rival those of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the height of his strength. But Lord Harry Potter sir," the house elf's voice dropped to a whisper. "There are powers Dumbledore doesn't…powers no decent wizard-"
Harry's grip had gone as lax as his attention, so when Dobby suddenly jerked away from him, the boy's fists clenched around empty air as he belatedly attempted to keep him contained.
Dobby was oblivious, as he had grabbed Harry's desk lamp and was bashing himself in the head with it, erupting with earsplitting yelps with each blow.
The low buzz of conversation went suddenly silent downstairs as Harry wrestled the lamp away from his 'guest'.
The two were frozen as they listened to Vernon head up the stairs calling, "Dudley must have left his television on again, the little tyke!"
Horrified and with nothing else to do, Harry grabbed Dobby by his tattered pillowcase and flung the house elf into his wardrobe, slamming the door shut and pressing against it to keep the house elf inside.
Vernon threw the door open and glared at him.
"What the devil are you doing?" he growled, storming across the room and grabbing the boy by the front of his shirt. "You've just ruined the punch line of my Japanese golfer joke. One more sound and you and that devil cat of yours will be on the bloody street!"
Roughly pushing Harry against the wardrobe, his uncle turned and stomped, flat-footed, from the room.
Harry was left shaking and terrified against the wardrobe.
This was the closest that either of his relatives had ever come to physically assaulting him, and the fact that Tarana hadn't immediately spoken up about Harry's sudden rise in fear, said that she was indeed as far away as she'd promised Vernon she'd be.
Harry slowly slunk away from the wardrobe and dropped onto his bed, hiding his shaking hands beneath his thighs as Dobby staggered out of it.
"See what it's like here?" he asked the house elf. "This is why we need to go back to Hogwarts, Dobby. It's the only place that Tarana has influence. The only place I'm safe. I have friends there-"
"Friends who don't write to Lord Harry Potter?" Dobby asked, before clapping his hands over his mouth with a squeak.
Harry and the house elf both froze, staring at one another.
Rage burned in Harry.
"You." He hissed. "You've been stopping my mail. Harassing Hedwig. How dare you?!"
Dobby pulled a stack of letters from inside his pillowcase. "Dobby didn't destroy them!" he promised, and Harry could tell it was true. The letters in the house elf's thin hands carried the familiar handwriting of Ron, Hermione, and even the barely legible handwriting of the Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid.
"You had no right!" Harry growled, reaching for them.
Dobby pulled them back and out of his reach. "Lord Harry Potter mustn't be angry with Dobby!" he cried. "Dobby hoped if Lord Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten him, Lord Harry Potter might not want to go back to school, sir, but Master Draco's Archimedes, sir, oh-"
Harry knew even as he was saying it that the words were a low blow, but he couldn't make himself feel bad about it either, "If the Malfoys found out what you'd done-"
Dobby cried out, dropping the letters. "Dobby was only trying to protect Lord Harry Potter! If Lord Harry Potter doesn't return to Hogwarts than Dobby doesn't have to-" the house elf choked, pulling on his ears.
Harry knelt to gather the letters together and Dobby watched with tears in his big eyes as he backed away from the wizard.
"Lord Harry Potter leaves Dobby with no choice."
Harry looked up just in time to watch the house elf slip out his bedroom door.
"Shit," he hissed, dropping the gathered letters and lunging after him.
XX
There was no sign of Dobby when Harry got to the first floor, crouching low so as not to draw attention to himself.
It was awkward, trying to move quickly while so hunched over and still make no sound, but somehow Harry managed to make it into the kitchen.
And to his horror, he found more than Dobby.
The massive truffle dish of pudding his aunt had made for dessert was hovering near the ceiling.
"Dobby-" Harry hissed.
"Lord Harry Potter must say he's not going back to school."
"Dobby," Harry growled.
"Say it, sir."
"I can't Dobby. You-"
Grimly the house elf, as though knowing that Harry was trying to command him to not drop the pudding, interrupted him. "Then Dobby must do it, sir, for Lord Harry Potter's own good."
Harry lunged forward, trying to catch the dish as it hurtled towards the floor.
By centimeters he missed.
The dish fell to the floor with a heart-stopping crash. Cream splattered the windows, walls, and cupboards as it shattered.
With a whip-like crack, Dobby disappeared, leaving Harry, poor Harry, standing in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by, and covered in, pudding, cream, and broken glass as the Dursleys and their house guests came to investigate the noise.
All he could do was cry out for Tarana through their bond and hope she could suddenly hear him because the look on his uncle's face promised murder.
XX
Tarana had promised Vernon a half-mile, minimum, but she still hadn't meant to be quite as far as she ended up being.
Between the threat to the Philosopher's Stone at Hogwarts several months ago, and the growing threat of the Valerian Traitor and his Thrall at the same time, it had been months since the panther had truly, properly stretched herself, and before she knew it, she was miles from Privet Drive, barely within Surrey.
The Queen had a flashback of a night, not unlike the current one, when the moonlight caught pale white within the trees.
Amber flickered like wisps in the wind-there and gone before Tarana could catch it.
"Arcana."
The Thralled Valerian King stepped, properly, into the dappled light.
"Good evening, hicari." The tiger drawled. "Quite the night, isn't it? Brings back memories."
"This place is supposed to be protected."
Arcana scoffed, tail swaying as he and the Queen circled one another. "Surely you know better than to rely on Dumbledore and the Ministry, Tarana. My brother had the right people paid. The right people threatened." He grinned. "The right people killed."
Tarana and Arcana, mirror images of one another, slowly sank into hunting stalks as they circled together.
"And all of it," Arcana told her, "to complete a single command."
Tarana's mind stuttered, caught between the here-and-now and the past.
Arcana, for all that his mind wasn't his own, knew his Queen too well and saw the moment the realization came to her.
"Dark did say not to fix what wasn't broken, Tarana." He said with malicious glee. "And finding Lily Potter's estranged sister in her old Hogwarts records, well, I couldn't simply abandon a classic now, could I?"
Tarana was a burning blur as she lunged for the tiger.
Prepared as he was, his own Element rose to greet hers and the trees were filled with steam.
Arcana lunged through it, but his target was no longer there.
With a snarl, he turned on his tail.
Though he couldn't see the black panther as it tore through the forest, she wasn't trying to hide the sound of her paws thudding against the ground.
Without a moment more of hesitation, the King took off after his Queen.
XX
The dinner was, to say the least, a lost cause.
Petunia had dug out a carton of ice cream to use instead of her pudding, but it was clear that if Vernon had any chance of making his business deal, it was gone now.
Petunia had shoved a mop into his hands and hissed at him to start cleaning. The boy wasn't even a third of the way done with his chore, when Vernon escorted the Masons out to their car, again apologizing for his 'disturbed' nephew.
Dudley, who had likely been more upset that the delicious looking dessert had been destroyed than anything else, had been settled in the living room with the television while his mother oversaw Harry's scrubbing.
No amount of trying to reason with his aunt was working.
Her words were curt and her tone sharp, as she told the boy that he had best hope Tarana got home before Vernon was done with him.
Everyone inside, however, took off for the front door when Vernon started bellowing, at first, incoherently, and then for his wife.
Dudley and Harry caught themselves at the door, with Dudley's bulk pushing his slighter cousin out onto the front porch, and they watched as the near rail-thin Petunia tried to help carry her walrus-like husband.
Vernon's pants had been shredded at the ankle, like something with claws or fangs had tried to get to the flesh beneath it but failed.
"Damned dog," the man was snarling, limping slightly.
"Dudley, dear, come help me with your father," Petunia called, face flushed with the effort of trying to keep Vernon upright, though, from his point of view, Harry couldn't see any kind of injury that would have prevented the man from walking on his own.
Dudley rushed to his father's other side. "What was it?"
"Some kind of mutt," Vernon growled. "Might have some kind of feral disease. And these slacks were expensive, damn it!"
From behind the three Dursleys, Harry could see the shadows shifting across the street.
Shifting in a way that he was, unfortunately, remarkably familiar with.
"No!" he screamed, blindly reaching back into the house for some sort of weapon.
Vernon looked up at him, his rage from earlier reignited. "Boy-"
Harry's hand clenched on a curved handle, doubled with a slim stick of wood. He pulled both free of the umbrella stand that sat beside the door and lunged off the porch.
Too late.
The 'dog' as Vernon had named it, was no dog.
It was a direwolf.
Black as night and nearly as tall as Harry's chest, the wolf bore down on the Dursleys, bringing them down in a pile of uncoordinated limbs as he sought to tear into flesh.
Harry swung his newfound weapon at the wolf's head, and it ducked, an amber eye flashing in the nearby streetlight.
With a single paw, the direwolf shoved Harry away, catching the thin wood, Dudley's school cane, and snapping it within powerful jaws.
"Pitiful," the Traitor rumbled, grinning as the wood dropped to the ground. "So easily manipulated, you mortals are."
Harry slowly backed away. "TARANA!"
Dark tilted his head, clicking his tongue in mocking disapproval. "You should have stayed inside, boy," he said, half-turning away from the young wizard. "You all should have stayed inside the wards."
"No!"
XX
Arcana was persistent, Tarana would give him that, but she had ten years of living in Surrey to keep her just that little bit ahead of him as they tore through backyards, side streets, and alleyways as she rushed to prevent history from repeating itself.
They were barely three blocks from Privet Drive when Tarana pivoted and body-checked the unprepared tiger into the path of an oncoming vehicle.
The car, honking long and loud, swerved to avoid the tiger, who barely spared it a glance.
The derailment gave Tarana enough of a lead that she turned the corner a full house ahead of her pursuer and was swiftly bearing down on the tangle of boy-and-wolf that rolled on the front lawn.
The child was screaming bloody murder, echoed by Petunia and Vernon, though neither was apparently brave enough, or in decent enough condition, to try and get between the two.
Tarana went low, sinking fangs into Dark's hind paw and tearing it out from under him.
In his shock, the Traitor released his prey, and Dudley, still screaming, squirmed and twisted his body, trying to pull himself away from the two animals as they fought, Dark to contain his prey, and Tarana to force him to release it.
Harry, an umbrella in hand, came from nowhere and hammered the wolf hard in the side of the head.
With blazing eyes, Dark turned on the boy, fangs flashing.
Tarana dragged her claws down his thick fur but was swiftly distracted by the tiger at her back.
Fire flashed in the night, illuminating the front lawn to all and sundry who were likely watching from their windows, drawn by the noise of the wild animals.
Now, however, Tarana had the attention she wanted.
Dudley, freed from the aggressive wolf, crawled his way towards his crying mother's reaching arms.
The Dursleys booked it for their door and slammed the door shut behind them.
Despicable mortals. Tarana grumbled, tail lashing as she was circled by the two dark Valerians. "Harry."
The boy, who had been abandoned by his relatives on the front lawn, scrambled backward.
Dark chuckled.
"I have no intention of fighting you, Your Highness," the wolf said. "That outcome would already be decided."
Harry tugged fruitlessly on the front door and the Traitor turned his great head to look at him.
"Kill her."
XX
Let it be known, that Tarana and Arcana had fought thousands of times, be it as a sparring match, as part of their courting, and especially after Arcana's brainwashing.
The two were incredibly compatible fighters, even without adding the claws and fangs of their animal counterparts.
This fight, however, would prove to be a fatal one.
Arcana and Tarana were so compatible, so in tune with one another even a decade after Arcana's change in 'loyalty', that Arcana was able to keep Tarana centered in the yard as Dark advanced on her charge, the boy's only defense a battered umbrella.
Essentially slapping her hicari across the face, Tarana set fire to Dark's injured leg to buy the boy more time and twisted her own magic in a move that she had spent over a decade using on these very doors.
She unlocked it.
The distraction cost her dearly.
Arcana tore flesh and muscle nearly down to the bone on one of her hindlegs, buckling the appendage and essentially hobbling her.
As the door swung open and Harry darted past the ward line, Dark howled his rage and darted forward hard and fast, using her limitation to his advantage.
With Arcana struggling to get a good grip on her other hindleg, Dark bit down with all the force his form gave him, snapping the bone of her left foreleg.
Her shriek echoed.
"TARANA!" Harry screamed.
"No." Tarana snapped, head snapping in his direction.
She snapped her fangs at Arcana as he sank claw and fang into her haunches and hauled her already off-balance body to the ground.
Black eyes swung to the Dursleys doorway and fire leapt to life, penning Harry to the front hall and preventing his exit.
Without missing a beat, Harry turned and sprinted through the house, aiming for the backdoor.
"Keep him inside, Petunia!" She paused as a scream was torn from her. "None of you leave that house!"
Regardless of her normal thoughts for her nephew, Petunia was also a mother.
For all that she had not a drop of magical blood, she felt like she could sense the death in the air.
Her bony arms caught him and held fast as Harry darted past her.
There were tears in both their eyes as fire burned through the wood of the lower half of the door, charring it black, but spreading no further up the walls.
"No!" Harry sobbed.
"You shouldn't see," Petunia whispered fiercely. "You shouldn't know."
"Nonononononono!" Harry yelled. "Let me go! She needs help! Help her!"
Petunia nearly lifts the boy off his feet before he squirmed free.
She looks to her husband for help but finds the man, face red with blood down one side but pale on the other, on the phone with what sounded like animal control.
She ran back to the living room, horrified to find not only Harry but Dudley as well, with their hands pressed against the glass of their front window.
"Get away from there!" she yelled, running forward.
Despite her own words, however, she couldn't take her eyes off the spectacle in front of her even as she was trying to pull the two boys away.
The three humans could only watch as the tiger sank his fangs as deeply as they would go into the panther's throat.
And pulled.
XX
The agonized scream that echoed on Privet Drive, did not stop there.
On an island in the middle of the ocean, isolated from human and creature alike, in a building where such screams were the norm, there was such a shriek from one cavern, hidden within the deep shadows there, that all others fell abruptly silent for the first time in over a hundred years.
In a rundown hotel in some nowhere town in America, two voices cried out with such deep, soul-wrenching pain, that no one complained about the noise, although it lasted well into the dawn hours.
The Moors, a wretched place for any soul, was made even more so by the eerie, broken yowl that bounced through the fog.
An opulent mansion in Wiltshire was woken by duel cries of heart-wrenching pain, waking all other occupants of the house.
No matter where in the world they were, no matter how linked they were to one another, the remains of Valeria felt the death of its Queen.
And the absence was beyond anything it had ever felt before.
