For the Want of a Horse-shoe Nail
For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost
For the want of the horse, the rider was lost
For the want of the rider, the battle was lost
For the want of the battle, the kingdom was lost
And all for the want of a horse-shoe nail
Disclaimer: I own the rights to nothing of the Harry Potter stories, movies, merchandise, sexy underwear, or other paraphernalia, which are owned by J.K. Rowling and her associates – I am definitely not her, nor them. I have written this for my own entertainment and hopeful the amusement of some others as well. I have invented some characters of my own, so any blame for those does rest with me. Absolutely no money being made in any fashion at any time from this exercise in ravings of a lunatic.
Rating: T. Seriously AU. Warning, some character deaths, some character bashing. Horcruxes
Chapter 3: Loyalties
The two Ministry Obliviators who apparated in front of the Granger House made the common mistake which had proved so fatal to many in the secret intelligence trade. They assumed no one was or could be as smart or capable as they were. Consequently, they did not notice the presence of the other four persons who were also present, but hidden under disillusion spells around the front and back of the house.
The agents of Office 2 ¾ of the French Secret Service had been on-station for several days, expecting this standard procedure of the British Ministry to occur within one or two days of the 'emigration' of a young witch and her enrollment at Beauxbatons. Their orders had come from very high offices, and implies the confidence of their superiors in their abilities to carry out what could almost be considered an act of war, were it not part of the ongoing covert nature of their secretive world. The exact timing had been uncertain, but the expected actions of Ministry personnel were nothing if not certain.
As the residents of the house were 'known' to be two muggles and an underage witch, the two did not bother to erect anti-apparition wards before they approached the house to remove all knowledge of the magical world from the minds of the Grangers. What they did not expect, in their extreme confidence and arrogance, was to be hit from two sides with stunning spells.
The two British operatives soon returned to their Ministry offices to file their after-action reports. The younger one was certain that he and his teammate had thoroughly obliviated two adult muggles and one young witch who had the temerity and stupidity to attempt to leave the magical world.
The older agent caressed the dark tattoo on his left forearm, firm in his conviction that, not only had he and his partner obliviated the three, but he had also raped the two women to make sure that these muggles 'knew their place' and that part of the evening would be remembered by them – this he reported to his true boss, and not to the one who just paid his salary.
When it was later discovered that Hermione had not even been in the country when the supposed memory charms were cast upon her, and that her parents were out of town as well, his credibility and loyalty to 'the cause' came under considerable question. Among the Death Eaters, questionable loyalty had some serious consequences.
Draco Malfoy and his entourage were not having a good day, week or month. When the four returned to the Slytherin dormitory, with Draco's nose bandaged up, Pansy's right arm in a heavy plaster cast (which was not lightened by weight-reducing spells), and the two thugs limping badly (in spite of Madame Pomfrey's 'best' efforts), the contempt of their housemates was palpable.
After Draco started his tirade about how that blood-traitor McGonagall had assaulted them when they tried to put the uppity mudblood in her place, Agnetha Mulciber snorted, and asked "Was that the uppity mudblood that just handed you all your asses? Maybe she knew one of those muggle fighting things, goofo or carroty or whatever. She obviously knew more about fighting than you lot put together. Good Merlin, four Slytherins beaten up by a muggle-born Gryffindor. Old Salazar is spinning in his grave for the shame you have brought on us all!""
Draco turned crimson in fury, and started yelling about "When my father hears…", when he was again sharply interrupted.
Julia McNair growled, "Yes your father. The traitor to our Lord, and a thief besides. He claims to be the most devoted follower, interim Great Leader of the Death Eaters, and really he is an even bigger liar than you four are!"
Pansy Parkinson went pale, as Draco turned even brighter red. As her friend was rendered speechless, she asked, "What do you mean, a traitor and thief?"
McNair shook her head. "You stupid bitch! In the war, the loyal followers of the Dark Lord fought and died, or went to Azkaban, loyally and proudly. What did the 'loyal' Lucius Malfoy do? He was the treasurer for the Death Eaters, and he bribed his way out of prison with Death Eater money, and claimed to under the 'Imperius' for years. Instead of spreading the money around to our people, he kept it all for himself so all of the others, like my Dad, had to get menial jobs for feed their families. Dad's Mark still showed that His Darkness was still around, but did Malfoy try to find him? No! Hell, no! He set himself up as the power behind the ministry, so he could become the next Dark Lord himself!"
Draco screamed "My father is loyal to the Dark Lord. He was using the money to keep the Death Eaters from being executed or imprisoned so that when the Dark Lord rises again, our world will be ready for him to take his rightful place."
Of course, the older Slytherins took Draco's new denial as absolute confirmation.
Elliot Avery shook his head sadly. "Draco, you are either as big a liar as your father, or you are an even bigger fool than everyone in this castle already thinks. I don't know why the Hat even let you into Slytherin, and not kicked your skinny butt out of the castle! And you can take your groupie and your bookends with you when you go! I would have called Parkinson 'your whore' but I suspect neither you nor her would be smart enough to know what to do if you were naked together."
The news of this conversation did not remain a Slytherin secret for long, in part because of the house elves listening in. When the rumour got all the way to Minerva McGonagall, she smiled. The second part of the future, foreseen by the centaurs, was now coming to pass and the future was heading in the right direction.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley had snuck into the hidden room, past the giant three-headed dog, and down through a trap-door. Right now, Harry was wondering why he had let Ron talk him into this situation, as they were surrounded by vines which seemed to be trying to strangle them.
For some time now, Harry had been wondering why he thought coming to Hogwarts had been a good idea at all. A good part of his eagerness to move into the magic world had been that it was not the Dursleys' place and it was something that the Dursleys would have hated – those two points had made it seem like heaven on Earth. At first.
Now, it seemed like everything and everybody was conspiring to kill him – at least at the Dursleys' place, he knew what the threats were (Uncle Vernon, and Dudley and his gang). At Hogwarts, he had a mountain troll (which, in spite of what he was told, turned out to be no threat), being assaulted by Slytherins, getting beaten up by the other players and the bludgers when playing quidditch, being sent out into the Forbidden Forest after a monster that was killing unicorns, and now being strangled by a bloody plant!
Harry had also been wondered about why he and Ron did things together. Where Harry hated the public attention and the 'limelight', Ron was always desperately hungry for it. Ron had been a mystery to Harry initially, until he saw his friend getting harassed by his older brothers, and receiving a Howler from his mother. Ron would find all manner of ways to skive off homework and studying, and his resentment of Hermione Granger had been a puzzle.
Harry often wondered what had happened to the bushy-haired young witch that he had tried to save the previous autumn, discovering that she had not required saving at all, but did require catching so she did not hurt her head as she fainted. She had disappeared soon after that day, and had not been seen again. He had enquired about her from his Head of House, who smiled and told him that Miss Granger was in good health and would be informed of his concern.
Harry sometimes thought what it would have been like if Hermione had remained at Hogwarts, and whether they would have become friends. Growing up with the Dursleys, Harry had never been permitted to have friends, particularly girls (as his uncle and aunt were adamant that 'freaks like him' should never reproduce), and at Hogwarts, he had only a few close acquaintences. He was on reasonable terms with his dorm-mates, but spent most of his time with Ron Weasley.
He had noticed that when Ron saw the respect that his brother Percy commanded as House Prefect, and the attention that his wild twin brothers got for their mis-behaviour, even when they got a Howler from their mother, Ron would look desperate. When Ron or the twins mentioned their little sister, Ron looked a bit lost and alone.
Then Harry realized that, unlike himself who tried not to attract attention (and attacks), Ron was the youngest boy with five overachieving brothers and the son of an overbearing (in many ways) mother, all of whom were always telling him what to do. Ron was using the passive-aggressive reaction, of doing exactly the opposite of what he was told to do – if he was told to study, he would goof off, or find something else, anything else, to do, while resenting it the whole time. This partly explained why he had hated Hermione nagging him to do homework.
On top of this, he was desperate for whatever attention he could get, and hanging around with Harry seemed to get him into all manner of attention-getting situations. Sometimes, it was Ron who initiated the messes they got themselves into.
Ron had resented Hermione, because she was smart, overachieving like his brothers, and was always telling him what to do. On top of this, she was a girl, which Harry did not recognise at first was a contributing factor to Ron's reaction. Ron was the last son, born a year before his younger sister. All his life, Ron got the impression that his sister was the one his mother actually wanted, and he was the penultimate failure. This, and always being told to look after his little sister, had told him that she was more important than he was.
When Harry proved to be a natural flyer on a broom, and Professor McGonagall had coerced him into playing quidditch, Ron was ecstatic, and became his constant companion. Ron was obsessed with quidditch.
Harry loved the freedom of flying on his broom. It was something the Dursleys would never have allowed, and it was something he could do that people admired. For the first time, he was not the 'Boy-Who-Lived', but someone doing things to be proud of on his own.
However, he came to love and hate quidditch at the same time. Between the bludgers, the beaters, and the other team's seeker trying to drive him into the ground, it was as bad as getting beaten up by Dudley and his thugs. But Harry remembered hearing about a famous American test pilot who said that combat flying was the ultimate flying, and playing quidditch against Slytherin was as close to combat flying as Harry could (or wanted to) imagine.
As the vine tightened around his throat, Harry remembered the saying that as you die, your life flashes before you. In this retrospective view, he found that for most of his life, things had been done to him. Now at last, he was starting to do things himself. And now, it was perhaps too late.
As he was losing consciousness, he thought of his friends, and particularly of the bushy-haired witch who seemed so like him in many ways. Like him, Hermione was an outsider to wizarding society, and the unfounded assumptions had been made by so many who should have known better. In her case, it was her heritage that people looked down on.
In his, the magical world made assumptions based on something inexplicable that had happened on that Hallowe'en eleven years ago. That something had defined how people dealt with him, and nothing he did or said seemed to have any influence on how they treated him. And as far as he could figure out from the very limited clues that people were willing to reveal, it was nothing that he had done, other than survive.
Harry had often wondered how the wizarding world had known so much about him. He was the only one who had survived that fateful night, and he had certainly not been in a position to reveal his appearance or the shape of his scar. It was only during visits and discussions with Hagrid that he discovered that Hagrid, Professor McGonagall and Headmaster Dumbledore had been almost the only magical people that had seen him after the murder of his parents and the destruction of Voldemort's body – it had become readily apparent that Hagrid was completely unable to keep secrets, especially when he had a mug of ale in his hand. This last fact had led to Ron and Harry's arrival at their current predicament, when Hagrid informed them of how to keep 'Fluffy' asleep.
Another way he and Hermione were the same was that both had come to the world of magic with a sense of wonder and anticipation, a sense that most of their pure-blood classmates did not seem to have, seeing the world of wizardry with a deep complaisance. They both were also deeply disappointed to find that the magical world was occupied by the same mix of wonderfully open and narrow-minded nasty people that they had encountered in the mundane world.
He found that he missed Hermione, very badly. Ron may have hated her for nagging him to do his homework, but she was really smart. Perhaps she would have been able to figure out a way around the vines which were currently cutting off his airways, or to get them t stop trying to kill him. Or maybe, she might have been able to talk the two of them out of the incredibly stupid idea of two first-years trying to protect something that a castle of fully trained and experienced wizards and witches were in charge of looking after. Right now, either option was sounding good.
Just as Harry was about to completely lose consciousness, he felt a searing pan from his forehead. Blood poured down his face from his scar, and Harry could dimly see a black cloud leaving his face.
At this point, the strangling vine perceived part of a soul leaving Harry's body. Not being the brightest semi-sentient plant in the greenhouse, the Devil's Snare assumed that Harry and Ron had both died (Ron having passed out shortly before). With this occurrence and the total relaxation of their bodies, the vine released its hold and they slid to the floor below. This is where the school staff found them, after the Gryffindor prefects reported them missing.