Chapter 7
Revelations
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, but before she could answer, I heard hurried footsteps coming up the stairs which seemed to draw her attention.
"Be ready," she advised me, but ready for what? "We'll talk later." And then she vanished before my eyes.
I lay there in complete bewilderment for a few more seconds before Professor McLaughlin arrived in the dormitory. I debated asking her what was going on, but decided that it would be more prudent to just pretend to be asleep. I made sure my head was turned towards her, and left my eyes open a crack. I could barely see, but I could tell that she had her wand out.
"Homenum Revelio," she whispered. Checking we were all there? But why? Seeming satisfied, she turned to leave, and on impulse, I sat up.
"Professor?" She spun around, pointing her wand at me...which in my opinion, was a little uncalled for.
"Crane!" she hissed, lowering her wand. "You scared the hell out of me! Why aren't you asleep? It's three in the morning!"
"I heard you when you came in," I said, not so much lying as...enhancing the truth. "What's going on? Did something else happen?" She looked at me strangely for a long moment before answering.
"It's nothing. Don't worry. Get back to sleep." And she left without another word.
Well, that only confirmed that something was very wrong. How was I expected to sleep now? The best I could manage for the rest of the night was tossing and turning punctuated by the occasional fatigue-induced state of almost-sleep that lasted only a few minutes at a time. And yes, it was a very long night.
Morning found Harry in his office as usual, but he was finding it impossible to concentrate on the numerous reports covering his desk. His mind was still outside Malfoy Manor, wondering how on earth he was going to get inside. All the facts seemed to point to Lucius Malfoy being host to the disembodied soul, but how the hell could he prove it without inspecting him in person? Malfoy was never going to allow him access to Lucius, that much had been made abundantly clear. So then, he thought, he would have to get inside without Malfoy knowing. He still had the Invisibility Cloak, but the Manor would undoubtedly be shielded against Apparition. Would it be possible (he got up and started to pace) to Apparate just outside the Manor's defences and then break in through non-magical means? He doubted that the Malfoys would have thought to protect their ancestral home from crowbars. Of course, if the Head of the Auror Department were caught breaking into Malfoy Manor, the Daily Prophet would have a field day...to say nothing of Harry Potter being caught...
Suddenly, he saw a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. He reached out and caught the paper airplane with ease; once a Seeker, always a Seeker. He unfolded the airplane and read the cryptically short message written on it.
My father wants to speak with you. It was signed Draco Malfoy. He had to stare at the words for at least a minute before he could believe what he was seeing.
Well, that was unexpected. And (he began to pace again) highly suspicious. The odds of being invited by his suspect… It made no sense. Was this an attempt by Lucius to clear his name before he died? Or, on a less pleasant note, was it a ruse by the Dark wizard controlling Lucius, who could easily take the opportunity to kill him. After all, what Death Eater wouldn't want a crack at killing Harry Potter?
This risk could, of course, be mitigated. He could bring a couple of Mad-Eyes with him, or even a few regular Aurors. However, if Lucius wasn't possessed, then bringing a contingent of Aurors to his bedside could easily scare him out of saying anything at all, and while there was no way of knowing exactly what Lucius wanted to say, it was unlikely that a dying man would want to speak with an old enemy unless he wished to say something important. But if he just brought Ron with him…
"No," he said out loud to himself. The note had been for him specifically. Unless…
He went across the hall to Ron's office, which had the dubious distinction of being the only office in the entire Auror Department with a Chudley Cannons poster on the wall. Ron was clicking the lights on and off with his Deluminator, completely ignoring a large stack of papers that rose like a monolith from his desk, but immediately straightened up when he saw Harry standing in his doorway.
"Nice to know someone takes their work seriously around here," Harry said with a smirk.
"Yes, and what brings the illustrious Head of the Auror Office, Boy Who Lived, Chosen One, and whatever else they call you these days to my humble office?" Ron responded with equal sincerity.
"Have you gotten any messages today?" Harry asked.
"Messages? You mean owls, airplanes?"
"Any messages at all," he said.
"No, not yet," Ron answered. Well, that confirmed it then: the invitation had been for Harry alone, and while he could not ignore the glaring possibility that he was walking into a vengeful Death Eater's trap, he had an indescribable but inescapable feeling that he had to go alone, that whatever Lucius wanted to say had to be important. But he knew that Ron would never let Harry do this on his own, even if there was only a slight chance that Harry would be in danger. That was just the kind of person he was. So, obviously, if Harry was going to go ahead and accept Lucius' invitation, he couldn't let Ron know what he was doing. But to openly lie to his friend...
He mentally shook himself. He was not a child anymore. It needed to be done, and so it would be. Ron would probably do the same thing if he were in Harry's position. But still... In the end, he opted for a half-truth instead of an outright lie.
"Could you do me a favour?" Harry began.
"Anything for you, mate," Ron said with a smile. "You know that." Understandably, Harry's smile was not as bright.
"Yeah, I know. I need you to go to Gringotts. We won't be able to get into the Malfoy vault, but all the other Death Eaters' vaults are Ministry property. Take some people with you and go through as many vaults as possible."
"What are we looking for?" Ron asked.
"Anything. Anything that might be a Horcrux."
"And what then? Do I just go in and start prodding things with Gryffindor's Sword? See if anything starts screaming?" Both men chuckled.
"No, just confiscate anything that looks interesting and bring it all back to the Auror Office. And...it's not 'we,' Ron, it's you," Harry told him. "I'm not coming along on this one."
"Why not?" Ron asked, puzzled.
"I'm going to go ask the Wizengamot for a warrant to search Malfoy Manor," Harry lied.
"Oh, sounds like loads of fun," Ron groaned.
"Yeah, I figured I'd spare you the trauma. I'll probably be there all day, and even then I probably won't get one."
"I never thought I'd be thanking you for giving me extra work," Ron laughed, getting up to leave and gather his team. "Oh, that reminds me." He summoned the day's issue of the Daily Prophet from his desk. "Guess who made the front page...again?" Harry rolled his eyes; the cover story was about his visit to Hogwarts, illustrated by a moving photograph of him from a couple of years ago, on the occasion of his last visit to his old school.
"Wonderful," he grumbled. "Is it at least a nice article?"
"Oh, the article's lovely," Ron told him, "but you should see the editorial. I think they're trying to convince people that you put your personal life before your job or something."
"They can imply whatever they like," Harry said, but he couldn't help but feel irritated at the Prophet's seemingly endless attempts to sabotage his image. Arcturus Crawley's face appeared in his mind's eye, and he wondered if the ever-troublesome Undersecretary had been leaning on the paper. It was certainly not impossible.
By this time, the Hogwarts school day was already underway. Breakfast was over, class had begun, and absolutely everyone had heard about the message on the wall.
I'd heard about the message on my way downstairs; late to rise, I had been intercepted by Phil, who told me that there was something I had to see. The Charms Corridor was packed with gawking students whose frantic conversations provided a bizarre soundtrack to the spectacle. Thankfully, my height allowed me to see over the mass of students, and as soon as I saw the message, I had no doubt that this is what Amanda...or rather Not-Amanda...had been referring to. It has begun, she had said, but what exactly did this mean?
The vandalized chunk of the wall was encased within the dome of a Shield Charm, probably cast by Professor Chronus, the Transfiguration teacher, who was futilely trying to clear the crowd of students.
"All right everyone, let's get to class!" she yelled, but her voice did not carry. Filch managed to bat away some of the smaller students with a non-magical broom, but the crowd did not disperse until Professor McGonagall arrived, equipped with a Sonorous Charm.
"ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REPORT TO THEIR FIRST PERIOD CLASSES IMMEDIATELY!" Sonorous Charms were hard to argue with, but if the teachers expected that we would simply forget about the strange occurrence and go about our business as usual, they were sorely mistaken. While those teachers who spent the majority of their classes lecturing had a fair degree of success in keeping everyone on topic, those who gave their students any time at all to talk amongst themselves were inevitably faced with a discussion forum on the bloody message. The perfect opportunity for such discussion was Charms, which was being temporarily held in McLaughlin's classroom, as the class was generally so noisy and lively that you could talk all you liked without Professor Spanier noticing...although even if he did notice, he wasn't likely to be very angry at all; in all my years at Hogwarts, I had never once seen him in a bad mood. It also helped that the Ravenclaws shared Charms with the Slytherins, giving me access to Gordon.
"It's a pretty dumb prank if you think about it," he said to Phil, Amanda, and I. "I mean, no one's getting embarrassed or one-upped by it. Sure, people are talking about it, and sure, people are freaking out a little, but I don't know who gets a laugh out of freaking people out like this."
"You'd have to be pretty twisted," Amanda agreed.
"Well, then actually I bet I know who did it," Gordon said. We stared at him quizzically. "Adam! Come on, we all know he's a bloody head case!" Thankfully, Adam was on the other end of the room, and didn't seem to hear this. I looked at him, trying to imagine him doing something like this. It seemed out of character for him; not because Adam wouldn't pull a prank, but because Adam was a pure-blood wizard who was damn proud of that fact. If he was going to pull a prank, it would have been magical in nature, but this could have been done by hand. As I thought this, I noticed that Adam was now staring back with a peculiar smile, and I looked away quickly, tuning back into my friends' conversation. Gordon's theory was still being discussed.
"I guess it's possible..." Amanda said hesitantly, but she didn't seem too convinced. Under normal...okay, more normal...circumstances, I would have been dominating the conversation, but I was preoccupied with trying to figure out how the message was related to Not-Amanda. Was she a simple hallucination, or was something stranger at work? Either way, I wasn't planning on telling anyone about what I was seeing just yet. Not until I had more information.
"What I want to know is if the blood is real or not," Phil said.
"What's that got to do with anything?" Amanda questioned dismissively. Evidently their no-talking agreement had been rescinded in the face of these unusual circumstances.
"Elementary, my dear Watson," he said sardonically. "Oh...I suppose you are Watson...outstanding," he chuckled. "But seriously now, if it's just red dye or something, then it is most likely an odd prank. But if the blood is real..."
"Where did it come from?" I muttered, but evidently my muttering was loud enough for my friends to hear, as they were now all looking to me. "Where did the blood come from? If it's animal blood, then whoever did this is pretty screwed up. I mean, I wouldn't kill an animal just for sake of a prank."
"And if it's human blood..." Gordon began, but didn't finish. That was something that was just too weird and unlikely to discuss.
"But no one's asking the obvious question," Amanda pointed out. There was a pause after her words while we all tried to figure out what she was referring to. When no one offered anything, she spoke out in exasperation. "Who's back?"
Unbeknownst to us, Harry Potter was wrestling with the exact same question. Who was back? Which Death Eater had managed to survive? He could only hope that Lucius Malfoy could give him the answers he sought. Anything else would be a waste of his time.
As soon as he arrived at the manor, he was ushered inside by the sour-faced butler and led upstairs into a large and ornately-furnished bedroom. There was a man lying on the king-sized bed, covered with white sheets; the sound of his laboured breathing seemed to pulsate through the room. Draco Malfoy was sitting beside the bed, regarding his father with a look of utter defeat and exhaustion that Harry could have never imagined seeing on his old rival's face. It was a moment before he looked up at his guest.
"Thank you," Malfoy said to the butler. "Now, leave us, and do not return unless summoned." Bowing, the butler left the room. "You'll have to come closer," Malfoy said. "Father's eyesight is fading." Harry complied, and stood opposite from Malfoy, taking his first look at Lucius in years...or rather, at what was left of him. The man on the bed was unrecognizable as the proud and haughty patriarch of the Malfoy family. He was little more than an emaciated, withered skeleton of a man. Even his hair seemed limp and lifeless. Harry had seen the man after his flight from Azkaban thirteen years ago, but even months with Dementors had not reduced him to such a state.
"Harry...Potter..." Lucius said in a voice no stronger than a whisper. "You came."
"Yes," Harry said. "I'm here."
"Would you like to...inspect the back of...my head?" Lucius said, almost smiling.
"No. You're not possessed," Harry said. He had realized as much as soon as he had seen the man. He wasn't possessed. He was dying.
"No. But I have...something for you. I know what you seek. I have...information."
"What sort of information?" Harry pressed.
"A...story," Lucius said. "One that should have been told a long time ago. One that you need to hear, Mr. Potter. One that...my son needs to hear." Malfoy leaned in closer, looking completely bewildered. "One that Narcissa...oh Narcissa...gone to the grave never knowing..." He suddenly began to cough violently.
"Gamby!" Malfoy cried, and the House-Elf appeared in a flash of light. He stopped only for a brief squeal at the sight of Harry before rushing over to Lucius' bedside, tears in his eyes.
"Oh my poor master!" he wailed. Lucius reached out a gnarled and withered hand, which Gamby took in both of his.
"Gamby...bring water," Lucius instructed. "I have much to say, and my throat feels like sandpaper..." Releasing his hand, Gamby disappeared, reappearing again moments later with a crystal pitcher and a glass, which he set on a bedside table.
"Thank you Gamby," Malfoy said quietly. "Go, and do not return unless I summon you."
"Yes Master," Gamby said quietly, blinking back tears. Instead of vanishing, he walked out of the room, closing the door on his way out. As soon as the three wizards were alone, Malfoy got up and poured his father a glass of water, holding the glass to his lips as he drank.
"Thank you son," Lucius said. "Sit down, both of you. Be comfortable." The two men complied, both sitting on the same side now. "Now, listen...and do not judge me too harshly. My judgement is in the hands of another now."
"Don't talk like that," Malfoy said, but his bitter tone betrayed him. No one had any illusions about Lucius' survival.
"I've come a long way, Lucius," Harry said. "What do you have to tell me?" The was a moment of silence, and Lucius began to speak.
"Nineteen Seventy-Four," he said. "I was engaged...while I was engaged to Narcissa...I...I had an affair..."
"What?" Malfoy blurted out, but Harry honestly wasn't all that surprised. But as for what came next...
"I had an affair with...her sister..." The shock in Harry's mind was painted on Malfoy's face.
"You...you WHAT?"
"I'm sorry..." Lucius began, but Malfoy would hear none of it.
"Bel...You...Bellatrix Lestrange? And…and Mother died without knowing? How...?" Harry could understand Malfoy's disbelief: out of all of Voldemort's followers, Bellatrix Lestrange had been unquestionably the most deranged and vicious. She had destroyed Neville Longbottom's parents. She had murdered Sirius Black. She had tortured Hermione, and inadvertently killed Dobby the House-Elf as well. Even Dumbledore had been wary of her sadistic psychopathy, opting to die at the hands of Severus Snape instead of Lestrange, who, in the late headmaster's words, had liked to play with her food. Although, Harry thought, perhaps she had been less psychotic in her youth. Then again...probably not.
"We knew it was wrong," Lucius continued, "but we didn't care. We thought we were above consequence. But...our transgression came back to haunt us. Bellatrix soon learned that she was pregnant." Malfoy's jaw dropped wordlessly. "No Draco," Lucius almost chuckled, "I don't mean you. This was long, long before... I couldn't let Narcissa find out what had transpired, but Bellatrix was unmarried. I wanted to...terminate...the problem, but Bellatrix felt that pure-blooded life was sacred, and that it would be obscene to kill a pure-blood child. We decided that it would be prudent for her to...take a holiday. For months, we communicated only by owl. I didn't even know where she was hiding. She only revealed her location to me when the child was born. It was a girl...and a Squib."
"What?" Malfoy burst out. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know. It happens. Despite having two pure-blooded parents, the child had no magical ability whatsoever."
"But you couldn't possibly have known that when the child was just a baby!" Harry pointed out. "It takes years for magical ability to show itself!"
"True," Lucius said. "But there are spells that reveal whether a child is a Squib or not. They are usually performed on newborns by attending Healers; there are similar procedures for diseases and other abnormalities. The child was unquestionably a Squib.
Bellatrix didn't want to keep the girl after that, but I persuaded her not to kill the child. Instead, I took her to a Muggle orphanage...it would be years before I learned the true irony of this."
"Irony?" Malfoy asked. Lucius smiled.
"Yes, it was many years before I learned that the orphanage that I placed my daughter in was the very same orphanage that Tom Riddle once called home." This revelation sent a shiver down Harry's spine: that orphanage had been where the boy who would become Voldemort had first discovered his powers...and how to use them to get what he wanted from the other children. It had been his first taste of cruelty.
While Harry contemplated this, Lucius pressed on with his story.
"I visited my daughter on occasion, although she never learned who I was. However...as time went on, I saw less and less of the girl. I had other concerns...and another child," he said, smiling up at his son.
"Lucius, while I'm certain this would make a fascinating Muggle soap opera, I have better things to do with my time..." Harry began.
"Do you want to find the Horcrux or not?" Lucius interrupted. Harry's eyes widened in shock. How the hell had he known? "Why do you think I called you here? Why do you think I'm telling you this with my last bloody breaths? Bellatrix Lestrange is still out there, and unless you can stop her, she's going to come back more powerful than ever, more powerful than even Lord Voldemort."
His words hung in the air over the two old rivals, and if either had thought to look at the other, they would have seen that they wore identical expressions of shock and horror. Bellatrix Lestrange was not dead. The most psychotic and dangerous Death Eater of all was still out there, with the power to possess the body of any wizard she chose, and then move on to another at any time. Harry's head was spinning, and his attempts to think rationally only accelerated the spin. Tracking her would be impossible. She could be anywhere...anyone. And...oh God, Harry thought, the first thing she would do was to go after the ones who had destroyed her and her beloved master! And he was at the top of that list! But no...even more horrifyingly, he remembered that it had, in fact, been Molly Weasley who had cast the curse meant to end Bellatrix's life. If she was targeted... And it was only then that it occurred to him that even his and Ron's children would not be safe from Bellatrix's wrath.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to calm down. Before Bellatrix could go after anyone, she would need a body. A permanent body of her own, not someone else's. He reached deep into his memory; how had Voldemort done it? What were the required ingredients for his resurrection potion?
"Lucius, where is Bellatrix's father buried?" Harry asked. Lucius smiled.
"After the Dark Lord's downfall...and Bellatrix's supposed death...I had the foresight to have her father's remains exhumed. All the bones of Cygnus Black are currently locked in a crypt below the Manor."
"I don't understand," Malfoy said.
"When Voldemort returned," Harry explained, "he used a potion to give himself a new body. For the potion to work, he had to add three ingredients: flesh from a servant, blood from his enemy, and a bone from his father."
"Then we're safe, aren't we?" Malfoy said. "As long as she can't get at those bones..."
"For the moment," Harry said. "But as long as that Horcrux is out there...wait, how did Bellatrix make a Horcrux anyways? I can't imagine that Voldemort would have taught her how."
"He did not," Lucius said. "We were never supposed to know the secret of his immortality. But Bellatrix learned somehow. I really don't know how she figured it out, but somehow she did." Lucius' story was interrupted by a brief fit of coughing that Malfoy remedied by lifting the glass of water to his father's mouth. After drinking, Lucius continued. "Together...together we learned all we could about Horcuxes, and how to make them. There was very little information, as so little experimentation has been done, but creating one is simple enough. I wasn't interested though. I was still young enough to be unconcerned with death. And Bellatrix wouldn't dream of mocking the Dark Lord by imitating his method. So we did nothing...but the knowledge always lingered in our minds, and with it, the temptation to put that knowledge to use.
Voldemort fell in 1981. I wasn't lying all those years ago when I said that I was constantly on the alert for any sign of the Dark Lord's return; I knew it would only be a matter of time. But Bellatrix was distraught. She thought only of finding Voldemort and returning him to power. But discovering that he could be defeated, if not killed, was a terrible shock for her...and she was determined to make sure that, once he returned, it would never happen again.
My daughter was seven years old, and living with a young Muggle couple..." Harry cut him off.
"Why do you keep bringing your daughter into this? What does she have to do with the Horcrux?" Lucius said nothing, but stared blankly past Harry. As the silence dragged on, a horrifying thought occurred to Harry. "God! No, you can't possibly mean..."
"She tracked down her daughter, and went to her home. She killed the parents, and turned our child into a human Horcrux." This revelation was delivered in a detached monotone that served to make it even more disturbing than it already was. "She said once that, if she had children, she would gladly give them up in service to the Dark Lord. I suppose she felt that this was the best she could do."
"But Father, if you knew this, why the hell did you never tell anyone?" Malfoy burst out.
"I didn't know; I deduced. Bellatrix and her idiot husband went to Azkaban that same year for attacking the Longbottoms, so it had to have been done before then."
"But how did you know that it was done at all?" Malfoy pressed.
"At the time, I didn't. It was only four years later that I realized what had been done to my daughter. She had been returned to the orphanage, and I went to visit her on the occasion of her eleventh birthday. But someone else was already there. Albus Dumbledore. He had gone to inform my daughter that she was a wizard, and to tell her about Hogwarts."
"But why?" Malfoy asked, sounding as confused as Harry felt. "If she was a Squib..."
"Yes...but could a Squib levitate objects and send them flying around her room?" Lucius said. "She could do magic. And yet, the Healers couldn't have been wrong. There was only one explanation."
"She put a little of herself into the child," Harry said quietly, remembering his twelve-year-old self learning why he could talk to snakes. "When Bellatrix made her a Horcrux, she accidentally gave her the ability to do magic."
"Yes, and powerful..." Lucius went on, but another coughing fit overcame him. "Time...so little time..."
"Father, I'm getting you to St. Mungo's," Malfoy insisted, but the old man waved him away.
"It's...it's too late...for that now." It was clearly getting harder and harder for Lucius to speak without running out of breath. "The girl...went to Hogwarts...graduated...but..."
"But what?" Harry demanded. He could see that Lucius would not be able to talk for much longer, and he needed all the information he could get in order to track down the girl...although it occurred to him that she would actually be older than he was.
"But...she's gone."
"Gone? What do you mean gone?" Harry asked.
"Disappeared...over ten years ago. I could never..." This time as he coughed, flecks of blood flew from his mouth. "You...find her...find her...and do what must be done."
"You want me to kill your daughter?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Don't be a fool," Lucius growled. "If Bellatrix returns...so will he..."
"What are you talking about?" Harry demanded. He had a pretty fair idea who "he" was...but Dumbledore had assured him that it was impossible! "What do you mean?" Lucius reached out blindly until his hand found his son's head. He grabbed Malfoy and pulled him in close, whispering something that Harry couldn't hear. Then, with a final shuddering breath, his arm dropped, and his head fell back onto the pillow. Lucius Malfoy was dead.
Draco Malfoy stared blankly at his father's corpse, his mouth slightly open, eyes vacant. On impulse, Harry went over to him and put his hand on his old rival's shoulder. Malfoy didn't seem to notice the gesture.
"What did he say?" Harry asked gently.
"I don't know," Malfoy whispered. "I couldn't hear."
"Malfoy, I know you don't want to do this right now, but..."
"Tomorrow," Malfoy said. "I'll come to the Ministry tomorrow. We'll talk then. Not now. I can't..." A single tear left a shiny trail down the side of his face. Harry lingered for a few minutes, and then silently left.
That night, three black-robed figures sat around a table in a tiny, dark room. One produced a crystal ball from inside his robes, set it on the table, and lightly tapped it with his wand. A sickly green glow began to radiate from the ball, and the smoky image of a skull-like face appeared within it.
"Which of you will give their flesh for me?" the face said in a horrible echoing voice.
"I will," said the man who had produced the crystal.
"And my father's bone is secure?"
"It has just been moved to a new location," said the man to the right of the first. "Only I know where it is."
"Then all that remains is blood," the third man said.
"I will provide that myself," said the face in the crystal. "My enemy is with me at Hogwarts. I just need to find them, and once I do, we can begin. Now that I have a body that will not decay, I have all the time in the world." Having said this, the face vanished from the crystal ball.
The crystal was similar to a two-way communication mirror; a pair of them would allow two parties to communicate over any distance. Back at Hogwarts, the other crystal of the pair had just been concealed within an inconspicuous book bag. Secure in her new host body, Bellatrix Lestrange smiled. Her message was the talk of the school, and she relished the chance to spread terror among the enemies of the Dark Lord once more. Now, all she had to do was find the one...