Disclaimer: I own nothing but the coma splices.

All Is Dust

Chapter 1 A problem of sauerkraut

I feel the murderer's fear as he runs. It's as if there is a cord connecting him to me that I can follow back to his panicked soul, the draw of it is irresistible. I slowly lay my mother back upon the ground; her body slowly becoming covered in icicles and frost, making her look like the personification of winter at its most beautiful. I don't stop to wonder how I could feel another beings emotions, I don't pause to consider the fact that the area around me looks like the deepest of winter even though it's late July. All I can feel is the frozen wrath inside my veins, and the location of the being that my hate desires to destroy.

I begin to run.

The streets and side alleys zip by at a speed that should have been impossible and the water on the ground and the sides of the building freezes as I pass. I hear the tinkle of frozen drops of rain behind me as they shatter upon the cobblestoned streets.

My quarry is in sight now. I see him take a side street and follow behind in his wake uncaring about the danger of chasing a man who just killed two fully trained adult wizards. I can feel him stop behind the corner of the street, sensing that vengeance is near I round the corner with a snarl.

I have no time to react as the crimson light of a stunner bursts out of another side street and impacts my back.

I awaken in a freezing sweat, literally. I take deep breaths in and out trying to calm down before I destroy another bedroom's worth of furniture.

Even almost four years after that night I still have dreams about it. Slowly I bring my emotions under control and climb out of bed, then pad over to the bedroom door and open it.

I smell Sauerkraut.

I hate sauerkraut. I loathe it with the passion of a thousand burning suns and am as welcoming of its aroma as I would be of a cigarette in the eye. "Damn it Dobby! Is that sauerkraut I smell?"

"Yes kind master! Dobby is being very fond of sauerkraut! It is reminding him of the taste of dirty socks master!"

"Wait, that's a bonus for you?" I groan standing in the doorway.

"Why yes young master Malfoy! It reminds me of when my mother Dinky would-.."

"Oookk thanks Dobby, that's more than enough information. I don't need to know about how you drew a link from sauerkraut to dirty socks and then to your mom." Hmm… there is a joke in there somewhere, but I'm just too tired to go for it. Almost unwillingly a smile comes back to my face; Dobby can always do or say something to get my mind off things best not thought of.

I walk across the rugs that are layered over the cold stone floor of my refuge, past the mantel where pictures of my mother and father stand smiling at me, and sit down across from my house elf. "What's for breakfast?" I grumble.

Dobby snaps his fingers and before me appears a plate of fruit, granola and a single boiled egg. Uhh ever since we went through France and he was lectured by the French elves about the importance of a "light and healthy breakfast for the masters" there hasn't been a sausage or strip of bacon in sight. If I ever find those damn elves I'll bury them in a mountain of dirty laundry. "Would it be too much to ask for some bloody meat? I feel like I'm turning into a rabbit." The cursed midget doesn't even bother glancing up from his heaping plate of spoiled cabbage.

Mine and Dobby's relationship really is a strange one. It started out as any regular house elf young master relationship begins, namely me doing everything in my power, and at my father's encouragement, to make his life a living hell. I believe my father's rationalization was that it helped young boys "build character." After my parents' death and the… change that I went through, it became harder and harder to be around regular wizards, and they seemed to be able to tolerate me even less. The only one who could withstand my rages was Dobby. The only one that stuck with me through it all was Dobby, and the only one who doesn't run away in terror when my temper all too often gets away from me is Dobby. When my parents were killed my very life was shaken to its foundation, and when the quakes subsided the only thing left was Dobby. He came with me when I moved in with my Aunt Andromeda and Uncle Ted, but that arrangement didn't last long.

I know now that Aunt Andromeda and her husband tried to be loving and show that they cared but I was in too much emotional pain and going through to many changes to care. Nymphadora was very understanding as well, at least after she beat my arse for calling her a dirty half-blood anyways. After that we got on rather swimmingly. As a matter of fact she is the only member of my family that I still write to regularly. Admittedly my family tree is a bit sparse at the moment, so I'm not exactly floating on options for familiar correspondence.

I grab an orange wedge and pick up the morning paper Dobby filched for me from somewhere. It's written in German of course, but I guess that's to be expected when you are in the country. Because of the old German and Austrian empires, when you're most anywhere between the Rhine and Russia knowing German will get you whatever you need in the wizarding community. It's the same reason why the official language of Durmstrang is German. All of the countries that it recruits from were once part of one or another of those empires. Luckily I got a year or so in with a German tutor before my mother realized the reason I wanted to learn was to go to Durmstrang. She then politely asked the old gentleman to leave and not to let her banisher hit him on the way out.

I flip open the front page and gaze in shock at the headline.

HARRY POTTER, THE TRIWIZARD CHAMPION, VANISHES! FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED!

Quickly I read through the headlining story. Apparently The-boy-who-lived went missing during the third task. No trace of where he disappeared to, just him gone and the trophy missing. The only lead that they had so far was that the defense instructor, Mad-eye Moody, had gone missing at the same time. Looking at the photo of him underneath the one of Potter I had to agree with them. Just with the name and the picture as evidence I'd convict him on the spot. The man looks thirteen different kinds of creepy and sounds another ten kinds of suspicious.

I back up from the table to prepare for the inevitable explosion. Wand? Check. A pair of boxers to hurl as a weapon of last resort? Check, Technically I'm still wearing them but they can be off me fast enough to fling like a linen grenade if I have to. Ok I'm ready.

I look over at Dobby happily munching on his breakfast and toss him the paper, "Hey! Dobby! When you get a chance read the front page." The elf takes a few more bites of his blasted kraut before picking up the paper and beginning to read.

Five, four, three, two, and… "GREAT WIZARD HARRY POTTER HAS BEEN TAKEN BY DIRTY NASTY EVIL WIZARDS!" Dobby howls before snatching his machete from next to his chair and begins punishing the paper and the table it's sitting on for being the bearer of bad news, and the bearer of the bearer of bad news respectively. I cast a protago and begin retreating under a steady shower of shredded kraut and woodchips. I simply wait and let the elf's wrath take its course. Why am I letting him mulch the dining room table? Because he has to put up with me on occasion when I lose my temper, and when mine gets away from me I leave a lot more in ruins than a simple piece of furnature. I guess the biggest question is why my elf has a machete in the first place, although for a guy his size it may be more appropriate to call it a claymore…. Anyways that question is a bit harder to answer. He picked it up during a fight at a bazar in eastern Serbia about three years ago. A werewolf was trying to bite me and he cut the thing's head off. He has been in love ever since. Picking it up was like a religious experience for him. I guess it's like when muggel women burn their bra; apparently when they do, it awakes something in them that makes them want to stop shaving their legs and start wear hiking boot, that's what a wizarding acquaintance of mine claims anyway. A similar thing happened with Dobby when he picked up "Chopsy," but instead of feeling liberated he just wants to kill things.

Hmm… He just threatened to cut off their feet so that they can never wear socks again. He must be more pissed than I thought. Dobby holds the wearing of socks as some sort of mystical forbidden fruit that to partake of would mean being cast out of his master's presence forever, but I'm pretty sure he still wants to take a proverbial bite out of one of those metaphorical wooly apples… Now that I think about it that gives a new level of meaning to his thinking that kraut tastes like socks… Maybe I should check on him while he's doing my laundry? Some of my socks have going missing lately… It's best not to think of that right now though since it looks like he is starting to come out of it.

"So I take it that you don't approve?" I inquire mildly, as I glance at the elf standing in front of me who's covered in wood shavings, cabbage, and more than a little spittle. I think that's a little of my poor boiled egg hanging from his ear.

"Master! We must be going and finding great wizard Harry Potter Sir! We must be saving him we must!"

"I'd love to Dobby, I really would, but where would we look for him? If the aurors have no idea where he is then I am fairly certain that if we scoured the face of England we wouldn't do either him or us any good. We do however have an appointment with a client in Berlin scheduled for forty minutes from now. So why don't you clean yourself up and change your pillow case and hand towel/kilt thingy so we can make a good impression? That's a good elf."

As Dobby begins cleaning up the mess and changing I walk over to my dresser and begin to get ready for the day as well. Off go my pajama bottoms and in their place I pull on dark green muggle military trousers. You'd be amazed at how convenient having all of those pockets can be when you have space enhancement charms added on them. Next I strap my spare wand to my leg, pull on my boots, and throw on a shirt and jumper to stave off the cold of an early northern German spring. I finish by sticking my wand in my mouth and muttering a teeth cleaning charm. I'm not as sure about the wizard supremacy as I once was, but there is one thing that English wizards defiantly have over our muggle cousins. We have damn fine teeth.

I glance up at the family motto carved into the stone above the mirror. Sanguinem Ante Omnes, Blood Before All. Once upon a time I knew exactly what that meant to me. Now? It seems like it has more layers than a bag of onions.

I strap my wand to my forearm as I walk over to and then up the stairs to the trap door exit above. Pushing open the heavy wooden door I squint into the bright morning light. The sight before me is a quiet little road a few miles to the east of Berlin.

Why am I in Germany? After a while of living with the Tonks It became pretty obvious that Hogwarts was not the place for me, more for the other children's protection than for any fear that I wouldn't fit in. So I ran. I got Ted to bring me by the Manor to "pick up some things for school." When I got there I grabbed the family's old traveling trunk, a pretty cool piece of magic that basically looks like a regular trunk, except for the fact that there is an expansion charm on it to make it the size of a large room on the interior; another handy feature is that when you set it down it blends in to the terrain. Next I bullied Dobby into "popping' me to Gringotts where I withdrew the entirety of my trust vault, slapped it into my trunk, and took off for the great unknown.

Looking back now I'm more surprised than anyone that I wasn't caught or eaten inside a month. Turns out I thrive under pressure. I guess that's something that I would never have found out under different circumstances since I don't think my mother ever pressured me to do anything.

There were two other major factors to my successes, luck and timing. See what the muggels called the Soviet Union just happened to have fallen right when I was making my exit from good old England. In reality what the muggles called the Soviet Union was actually the wizards of Eastern Europe deciding that they had had enough of the muggles butchering each other during World War I, and more importantly to them I suspect, ruining the view from their nicely hidden manors. So they decided to give being the philosopher kings of Plato's Utopian a try. It really is amazing what a few hundred wizards running themselves ragged with memory charms and imperious curses for six or seven decades can accomplish. Of course that was before they decided to hand the reins over to the next generation, who, when they realized how much effort it takes to force the proletariat to be nice and share, promptly gave the whole thing up as a bad job.

So what does the fall of the evil empire have to do with my not being caught yet? With the entirety of wizarding Eastern Europe reorganizing their ministries the infrastructure isn't in place to track underage magic. The fact that the wizards were too busy worrying about muggles to bother with keeping track of the various dark creatures also means that the old forests of the east are infested with vampires, werewolves, and other even more unpleasant things.

For the last three years the battle fields of Eastern Europe, magical and muggle alike, have been both my playground and school yard. I learned the Disillusionment Charm while sneaking across a check point in the Ukraine, the Protego charm In Bulgaria from an Albanian wizard while we were running away from rabid Bulgarian quiddich fans. I also learned the Tarantallegra jinx at a particularly memorable college party in Vienna. I have almost died more times than I care to count but my practical knowledge of spell work is probably better than most of the more recent Hogwarts graduates, however, if you ask me to recite Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration all you'll get is a blank look or maybe the bird, by which I mean turning you into one, it just depends on the day.

I hold the top of the trunk open for Dobby as he climbs through then close and lock it. 'You remember the coffee house that we are meeting in right Dobby?"

"Yes master I is knowing the places you is meaning!"

Dobby grabs my hand and "pops" us to a small deserted ally inside of the eastern half of Berlin. Dobby then uses the house elves' own brand of magic to make himself invisible; it wouldn't due to have someone see an "extra-terrestrial." Last time a muggle saw a house elf I heard there was a movie made about it; I'm not too keen on giving that Spielberg guy fodder for a sequel.

We walk along the side walk to a hidden wizarding café at the corner of two streets. I sit down at a table in the back of the shop and wait for my contact to get here. A pretty waitress walks up to me, and while smiling, asks me what I'd like.

"Since my elf buzz sawed my breakfast, I'll take whatever you have on the menu that has the most grease and the least sauerkraut. The greater preference being given to the least sauerkraut part." I state in almost flawless German.

The lady quirks an eyebrow in respond, and replies back in the same language, "That is honestly the worst pickup line I have ever heard. What makes it worst is it almost, almost worked." She smiles. "Do you want coffee with that cheese?"

I just roll my eyes and nod and she pours me a cup before heading off to fill my order.

While I'm sitting I notice the eyes of many of the women in the restaurant on me.

I sigh.

For some reason, besides my obvious good looks of course, I seem to attract the attention of every girl anywhere near me that happens to like "bad boys." Most young men my age would be basking in the attention. I just wonder if the girls get the same feeling that insects do as they fly inexorably towards those Muggle bug zapping lights, knowing what they are approaching is deadly, yet too captivated to stop.

I lean my chair back against the wall and take a sip of my coffee. l would still probably go for one or two of the more pretty girls except for the fact that I've never run into one that I thought was really that attractive, and my mother would kill me if I did.

My mother… At the thought of her, her death, and her killer the icy flows of rage I have worked all of these years to constrain behind walls of occlumancy and suppress with indifference tries to rear its head. The pupils of every person in the room dilate in fear while in the area immediately around me the temperature plummets.

I close my eyes, struggling with the anger and hate that is fighting to be unleashed in as violent a way as possible. Slowly they are subdued and I drive the emotions back into the prison I have built for them. The temperature gradually rises again and I feel the emotions of the wizards and witches return to normal.

Finally I open my eyes, take a deep breath, and lift the coffee to take another sip. It's frozen solid. Again I sigh. I guess it's a good thing that I froze it since the mug is covered in fissures from where my grip cracked the enchanted ceramic, better a coffee-icle than a crotch full of hot coffee. That would be uncomfortable even for me. I glumly hand the iced coffee filled mug to Dobby for thawing and repair while I restrained another sigh.

Bloody hell! When is he going to get here? I can only hold my temper in public for so long before something sets me off. My fuse is already burning; I need to get out of here before I get too worked up to stop myself.

Finally I see a man wearing official looking robes and carrying a briefcase come in, look around, then see me in the back and come sit at my table. I can tell he works for the government right away, not because of the robes or the ministry pin on his collar; it's because of the look of bone weary tiredness I can see in his eyes. The ministries are decades behind, so every worker has to do the work of three. A few years ago they started hiring contractors in order to help deal with the dark creature problem. That's where Dobby and I come in. Admittedly I don't need the money since my trust vault contained more gold than most wizards make in half a lifetime, but it gives me a chance to use ghouls and the like as stress relievers and Dobby the opportunity to wield "Chopsy."

"So are you the contractor I was sent to meet?" Inquires the official as he looks me up and down. I can tell the unspoken though running through his mind. There is no way that this young man can be him.

I simply nod my head. Even though I'm very tall and rather well muscled for my age I still look only sixteen maybe seventeen at the most. He doesn't ask again. He must have been warned not to by whoever sent him.

The man opens his briefcase, takes out a folder and passes it to me. I open it up and see a picture of an old dilapidated castle.

"That picture is of an old Teutonic stronghold up in the far northeast of the country. As you probably know the Teutonic knights were a group of Christian muggle warrior monks that devoted themselves to ridding German of paganism and witchcraft. There are hundreds of these scattered throughout the Baltic so we never really thought much of it until someone realized that muggles couldn't see it."

"Which means someone put a muggle repelling charm on it." I supply my eyes scanning the paper. "And since they were an order dedicated to stamping out witchcraft why is there witchcraft on one of their fortresses that would keep them from entering it?"

"Exactly." Replays the man. "In order to find out a team from the ministry for historic magical conservation and protection was sent to investigate. They never returned."

"So let me get this right; my job is to go into a creepy enchanted castle in a dark forsaken wood no one has been in for hundreds of years and rescue a bunch of historians that got themselves lost? Isn't saving a princess and laying one on her to awaken the lovely damsel from an enchanted sleep the traditional thing to do in such a venue? Not save a gaggle of academics."

The man looks even more uncomfortable. "Well the truth is that a young member of one of the more important families in Germany was with the team… The pay is quite high as you can see."

"Ah, I do." I toss the folder to Dobby to look at. "What do you think?"

Dobby picks up the folder and his large eyes light up when they set upon the picture of the castle. An opportunity to use Chopsy AND a massive, old and most likely filthy castle to clean when he was done? The man had him at hello.

"Alright we'll do it." I reply.

The man finally smiles with a relived look on his face. "Oh thank you!" The official gets up to go but I stop him.

"Don't forget, half the payment now and the other half when it's completed." I may not NEED the money but I am still a Malfoy after all.

"Oh, yes of course, my mistake." The man pulls out a coin purse and tosses it to me. I catch the pouch and bounce it lightly in my hand as I watch him hurry back out the door in a hurry "Did he seem to be in a bit of a rush to you?" I ask Dobby before glancing down at him. His eyes are still focused on the picture of the castle a lopsided grin slowly spreading across his face,

I smile to myself. I almost feel sorry for whatever it is inside that castle. Almost. I just hope I can convince Dobby to leave the duster behind.

~All Is Dust~

The library was quiet except for the soft rustle of parchment as Hermione flipped through the pages of yet another advanced textbook on transfiguration. Occasionally her eyes would flit up to where Ron was sitting next to her. His expression hadn't changed from that blank lost look since that night. Hermione didn't know what worried her the most; the fact the Ron had sat in the library for two hours straight without complaining, or that he had maintained that lost expression the entiretime. Knowing hin probably the former. Hermione had always assumed that her ginger haired best friend just had no emotional depth, but he seemed to have learned to feel both sorrow and guilt in the week since Harry's disappearance to an alarming degree.

To say that Hermione wasn't worried as well would be a lie. She was worried sick, but for her the way to handle any negative emotion had always been too burry herself in work. So here they were, in the library, the same place they had spent every hour of free time for the last week.

"Excuse me, you two, the Headmaster would like to speak to both of you in his office."

The two friends glanced up to see McGonagall standing next to their table. A she had an expression that was similar Hermione's on her face, one of pain and sadness, but hers was tempered by the fact that she had known such loses before, and with a touch of resignation because she knew that such loses would be suffered again.

The Gryffindors simply nodded, packed up their books, and followed behind the Deputy Headmistress.

As they walked through the halls of the ancient castle it wasn't hard to see the factions forming in the student body. Groups of Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors were bunched together talking in hushed whispers about how the rumors of how Madeye had taken Harry couldn't be true. Other knots of students seemed to have already accepted it as fact and were debating heatedly over who was to blame and whose head should roll for it. Others just didn't seem to know what to believe.

Finally the three arrived at the entrance to Dumbledore's office. "I want both of you to know that as your head of house, if you ever need to talk to someone about this… incident, my door is always open to you." McGonagall favors her two students with a shaky smile before heading back to attend to her other duties.

The friends stepped onto the moving staircase and then up to the door and through.

Dumbledore sat behind the large desk in the middle of the room, his fingers steeple and his chin resting upon them.

"Come in, please, both of you take a seat." Ron and Hermione took his advice and sat down the chairs proffered. "Lemon drop?" The professor offered but the students could tell that it was purely a reflex; his face had the same look as McGonagall's only sadder. At both of their silent head shakes the Headmaster sighed. "I had hoped to be able to tell you this under better circumstances, but as it seems I have but a short time left as the Headmaster of this school; I thought it best I tell you now before I am forced into retirement.

"So it's true! They really are sacking you! But how could they? Surely the rumors couldn't be true! Moody couldn't have taken Harry, he just couldn't have!" spurted out Hermione as soon as Dumbledore paused from speaking.

Dumbledore glanced down at the young lady from over the tops of his half mood spectacles. " Ms. Granger I honestly wish that was what happened; it would be far better than the reality of the situation. It appears that sometime during the summer of last year Professor Moody was replaced by a pollyjuiced Death Eater. This was the same individual that entered Harry into the Tournament. It was also the same individual that turned the Triwizard Tournament trophy into a portkey to a graveyard where Lord Voldemort was resurrected using Harry's blood in a dark ritual. I Wish there was another way for me to tell you this but…" Dumbledore closed his eyes tiredly and finished in a whisper, "Harry did not survive."

The room was deathly quiet for a handful of seconds before the silence was broken by a gut-wrenching sob from Hermione. Tears streamed in rivers from her eyes. Ron's eyes where the same as before, but now there was something else in them, something harder.

"Our enemy could not have planned his return better. Not only has he regained his body but he has also managed to keep it a secret, while at the same time discrediting me. In one fell move he has positioned himself for a grab for power from the shadows, while breaking the back of the opposition and crippling any future resistance."

"Yeah, so when are we going to kill the bugger?" replied Ron, the anger clear in his voice.

"I'm afraid that it is more complicated than that Mr. Weasly. There was a prophecy that only Harry could kill Voldemort, and now he is no more. "

"And your point is?" fires back Ron. "That bastard killed my best mate! There is no way I'm going to just let him get away with it! So some prophesy says the only way to stop Voldemort is for Harry to do it hu? Well the only way for a Quiddich game to end is if one of the seekers catches the snitch. But if your seeker gets knocked out of the game you don't just give up! The beaters start working over time! The chasers fly for all they are worth! You use tactics that you never would have considered if he was still in the game! Because at that point you aren't just playing for the win, you are playing for your friend and teammate that's been injured or worst! So what are you going to do Professor? Are you going to throw in the towel and call it a game? Or are you going to go back and throw everything you have into it and fight, for Harry."

At this point Ron's voice cracked and he stopped, swallowing back his tears.

Dumbledore slowly opened his eyes again and gazed at Ron considering his words. Finally he nodded and his shoulders straitened as his gaze filled with resolve.

"Of course, you are right Mr. Weasly. We fight."

Slowly Hermione looked up, wiped the tears from her sparkling eyes and nodded her head with conviction.

"We fight, for Harry."

AN: I had an amazing speech lined up for Ron. It was going to be amazing, but then I remembered, he has the emotional depth of a teaspoon. *sigh* so I deleted it and wrote some crap about Quiddich. Sad day. Ah well thanks for reading!