October 2008
Wizarding London, England
Ministry of Magic of Great Britain
Wednesday Morning, continued
Harry stepped in to the small interrogation room, shutting the door behind him. Lucius Malfoy sat restrained in a spartan metal chair on the far side of the table. He didn't look up when Harry entered the room, in favor of staring at an arbitrary point at the table, muttering something about Babbity Rabbity and tiny cups. His white hair was scraggly, his skin dirty and streaked with sweat. Harry recalled a memory of him looking similar as he fled the Battle of Hogwarts with his family. He shook the picture from his mind and set himself to the task before him.
Harry took a seat across from him and regarded him critically. If Lyra was correct, which he believed she was, then this was a facade. All he had to do is crack the shell.
"Mr. Malfoy."
Silence.
"Mr. Malfoy. My name is Harry Potter, I'm an Auror. Do you know where you are?"
Harry saw a flash of something cross the old man's eyes. Rage? Satisfaction? He couldn't be sure.
"I...I am at home? You must be my brother. I wonder if Mother has biscuits. I bet she does." Mr. Malfoy spoke in a croaky, thin voice.
"No, Sir. I'm an Auror and you're inside the Ministry of Magic," Harry corrected firmly without emotion. "It sounds like you've lost your voice? Care to tell me what happened?"
"Well I lost it in the boat races, you see." Lucius remarked, rocking slightly in his chair.
"Do you know where your son is?"
"I have a son?" the old man questioned, plastering an aloof grin on his aristocratic face.
"Well, probably not after tonight," Harry fired.
Lucius narrowed his eyes for a moment before schooling his face into an innocent pout. "That's sad. What will Mother say?"
"An excellent question, Mr. Malfoy. Actually, speaking of mothers...Do you have any idea where your wife is?" Harry asked.
Silence again, but Harry saw the real man under the act. He'd hit a nerve. He could feel it. Keep chipping.
"So, we know your son is disposable to you, you've made that quite clear a number of times over the years, but I wonder...is she as well? Surely you must know that, at this point, after so many years of betrayals and disappointments, she would push you into a dragon's nest to save her son. I can make reference to her devotion with some confidence, I feel, as I've witnessed it firsthand."
Lucius's response to this line of questioning was to raise his roped wrists to his mouth and begin to chew on his bonds while humming a Christmas tune.
"You know I saw her yesterday. She flagged me down in the main hall here. Asked after my wife," Harry paused and noticed a slight uptick in the old man's rate of breath. "She asked me for help, you see. Said she was worried about Draco. She said she needed help from someone her husband couldn't buy, you know like like Julian Diamond, and she thought of me. She offered me money and everything, can you believe it?! She came to me, of all people, to help find your ugly weasel of a sprog," Harry laughed. "She's a sweet little woman, naive, but sweet. If you're in to that sort of thing," Harry said with a roll of his eyes.
Lucius started banging his bound wrists on the table, singing "Good King Wenceclas" as loud as his ruined voice would allow.
Harry had an idea.
"Mr. Malfoy, stop that now," Harry said gently. He needed to get Lyra in the room, but a lot of his great idea hinged on her basically just going with it and doing whatever he said, which wasn't exactly her forte. Sod it...
"STOP IT!" Harry roared, slamming his fist down on the table between them. Lucius gave a genuine start before adapting a goofy smile and asking Harry if he had any magenta daffodils.
Lyra entered the room then, looking to Harry for instruction, using all of her composure to avoid looking puzzled. This isn't good enough, what are you doing?
"Auror Black, I...forgive me," Harry said, feigning contrition. "Just give me a few more moments with him, I...I have to know."
Lyra elected not to speak, but instead crossed her arms over her chest and gave an authoritative nod of her head, hopefully giving Harry what he was looking for.
"Sweet Merlin, aren't you a beautiful creature!" Lucius exclaimed. Lyra raised an annoyed eyebrow at him before turning her attention back to Harry.
Harry slumped his shoulders and hung his head low over the table. "Mr. Malfoy, you won. At least with me you did. I just want to know why? Why my Ginny? And my son, James? He was only 6. Why not just have me killed and be done with it? You sent your son to kill them and he did. You owe me a reason." With that Harry burst into tears, thick, full sobs wracking his body.
Lyra went to him at once, catching on. She placed her hands gently on his shoulders and bent down to whisper soft reassurances to him, shedding a sad tear of her own at the thought. Damn Harry, you're a savage...
An amused chuckle rose from the opposite end of the table. Harry and Lyra looked up at Malfoy to see him looking across the table at them, clear eyed and full of joy. His laugh increased in mirth until he was positively shaking with the thrill of it.
"That's extraordinary! It's even better than I could have imagined! My idiot son and your mousy, useless little bitch. It's...it's glorious," He bit out between laughs.
"Whoa-kay, Harry. Is that good? You mind? I mean, it's just we don't have a lot of time before he starts singing White Christmas" Lyra spoke plainly, in a cool, almost bored tone while she fixed her eyes murderously on the cackling man.
Lucius stopped laughing immediately at that and stared at them.
"Oh, by all means. That would be great," her friend replied sweetly, his tears gone.
Lyra snapped like a whip. Her movement generated a wind that ruffled Harry's dark hair as she whipped her wand out and spelled the bastard across the table. Holy shit, he thought. That is positively terrifying.
"LEGILIMENS-"
Oh bloody hell.
After his internal ourburst, what Lyra met first in his mind was a wall. A great iron wall followed by another and another. Turns out, Lucius Malfoy was a damn good Occlemens. Oh yay! It's been so long since I've had a challenge, she thought before getting to work. She layered in tributaries of pathways under, over and through all of his defenses, to uncover his memories. Uncovered, she saw a shriveled misanthrope who tortured his son and had the most pathetic sense of entitlement she had ever encountered. To his wife, to the government, even to the lives of other human beings. If something didn't meet his expectations, if it threatened his ego, if it bored him, he would simply crush it to dust and move on to something more worthy of his time. He was also, unfortunately, a genius...which was going to make her job a lot harder.
Being inside his mind was like swimming in acid, like running in smog. The entire ambiance of his being was caustic, toxic...poisonous. She needed to get what she came for, get out and never EVER come back. She muscled her way through one of his iron barricades to find a memory of him in his study, boredly flipping through a book of Finnish Runes, an original copy from the family archives. He stumbled upon a curse. An exhausting and intense curse, but one that intrigued him. With it, you could compel someone to kill whomever it was in all the world that they loved the most. It was absolute cruelty. It could be modified to induce mania, obsession and even sadism in the cursed. It contained a provision that enabled the wizard to cast a temporary blind by incantation over burning wormwood and arctic moss that would protect a person from being the target of the person cursed, who would simply move on to another loved one. It had given him an interesting idea, one that sated his intellect, served his vanity and could potentially help him regain some authority.
Lucius had been powerless for too long. He'd kept his head down for too long, and what did he get for all of his forced humility? He got snubbed at parties, abandoned by all of his 'friends' and had only his daft wife and useless son to talk to. His debutante whore of a daughter-in-law distrusted him immediately and did whatever she could to keep him from his only grandchild. The child should be educated. Brought up with the right traditions. Molded in to a leader. Into a real Malfoy. At the rate his idiot mother was going, the poor wretch was likely to be a Hufflepuff. Not while he lived.
From what he could tell, based on the uptick in his son's drinking and drug use, Draco was broken-hearted over his divorce. He knew his son to be a romantic and sentimental fool and figured that he missed his wife. His daughter-in-law's parents had both died in a private plane accident some years prior. If he could cast the compulsion over Draco, and a blind over Scorpius...Draco would kill is ex-wife, Lucius would simply ensure his capture, and he and Narcissa could get custody of their grandson and raise the boy properly.
She watched him cast the curse, adding as much mania and obsession as he could. It would leave a trail of evidence, he thought. She saw him waiting for news of Astoria Nott's death. Getting impatient. Realizing Draco was pursuing someone else. It mattered little to him, if he killed another. He could always find a different way to dispatch Scorpius's mother after Draco was in Azkaban. He thought it best not to interfere with Draco's task. The curse itself was irreversible. Draco would pursue his target until he killed her or died himself. It was just a trifling detour.
The blind had to be recast precisely on a weekly basis by him alone, to keep Draco from coming after his own son. Thursday, Lyra answered for herself, recalling when she read him at the market. Wait a minute...shit...that's tomorrow...
Lyra was beginning to falter. She was exhausted from breaking though his occlemency and felt ill from the exposure to such vile hate. She could feel the sweat trickling down the back of her neck. She was going to pass out.
She pulled out of his mind and took several shaky steps backward until her back made contact with the wall of the little room. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, shaking.
Harry was by her side instantly, putting a cool hand to her flushed face.
"Auror Shacklebolt!" Lyra called out to the Head Auror she knew was watching the whole scene unfold, "I someone to bring me a vial. Right now."
Harry looked back to Lucius Malfoy who had passed out, seemingly braking his nose faceplanting on the hard metal table.
A moment later, Colin entered with a small glass vial and placed it Lyra's shaking hands.
She drew several stuttering breaths before raising her wand once again and put it to her own temple. She muttered an incantation and twisted the wand between her fingers, pulling a silver strand of memory out of her mind and depositing it in to the vial. She looked up at Colin and put the vial back in his hand. "Give it to him."
As the young man rushed from the room, she looked over at Harry. "We need to bring Astoria Nott and her son here now. If I can't get this asshole to block the kid by Thursday night, Draco's going to go after him."
"What are you on about?" Harry said, furrowing his brow.
"I'll explain in a minute. I need a little one on one with him," she said gesturing at Lucius who was groaning now and struggling to sit up.
Harry started to protest, but Lyra shut him down. "Go get Nott and the kid. On your way out, have Colin get me a glass of water and a wet cloth."
"Blimey, you're a bossy thing," he said, pulling her to her feet and helping her to the chair.
"That is true," she huffed, tiredly,
"You sure you're alright?"
"Ohmigod Harry, go. You're offending my groove."
He made an annoyed face at her before exiting quickly from the room.
Lyra looked across at Lucius Malfoy. He had fresh blood running out of his now crooked nose and was wavering in his seat as if he was going to lose consciousness again.
"Hang on," Lyra said raising her wand to his face. Lucius flinched and whimpered in anticipation. "Episkey-"
His nose twisted back to center with an appalling crack. "Agh. You bitch!" He moaned.
"You're welcome," she countered flatly.
Colin entered again with what she'd requested. She grabbed the items and put them down in front of Malfoy. She aimed her wand at his restraints and muttered a spell that caused the ropes to fall to the floor. The man flexed his wrists before reaching for the cloth to clean the blood from his face.
"So, you're the soft-paw, then?" He inquired.
"You mean like the good cop? Oh hell no. Harry was the good cop. I am something else entirely," she countered.
"Hmmm...an idiot American slut who's about to be litigated to within an inch of her life?"
"Ha! You are too much fun! I've been inside your head. I know you're not that stupid. I'm only sitting here looking at your sorry inbred face because I have an offer for you."
"Speak," he commanded.
"Recast the blind on your grandson until we can apprehend Draco."
"Why? It hardly matters. Draco killed Potter's little bitch and one of her pups for good measure. It's done. He'll wake up with a bad headache and not remember a thing."
"Just do it and I'll make a half-assed attempt at having your sentence reduced," she said evenly...maybe a little too evenly.
He noticed. He was a genius, after all. An evil fucking genius. She thought before he began..."You lying little trollop. She's not dead, she's probably lying on her back right now under that sniveling, self-righteous...
"And I'm gonna stop you right there, you unbelievable pig," she said waving a hand at him dismissively.
"WHO IS IT?" he roared at her.
"If I tell you, will you cast the blind?"
"No."
"If you don't do this, your grandson might be killed and you will have effectively forced your son to do it."
Lucius shrugged.
"Why? I just read your memories. You have big plans for that kid, right?"
"Plans change."
"What about your wife?"
"Potter was right. She chose her side years ago. She chose that boy," he said with a genuine look of disgust.
"That boy is your son, you asshole! Christ, you are insane. I'd rather you go back to the Christmas carols," she countered, rubbing her forehead in frustration.
"Just kill him, then. He's been nothing but a disappointment to me his whole life..."
Lyra (re)broke his nose with her fist.
"You fucking bitch!" he lunged at her from across the table causing her to stupefy him against the wall. He was gasping for breath around the torrents of fresh blood pouring out of his nose.
Lyra stood above him, wand at the ready. With her freehand she unbuttoned her black blazer, revealing the glittering Quatrefoil that Draco had given her (in his insanity...but Lucius didn't need to know that).
The old wizard's eyes zeroed in on it and he snarled. "Where did you get that, you cow?"
"Now, now Dad! Is that any way to talk to your future daughter-in-law? I'm a quarter muggle-blood at a minimum, I'm adopted you see, so I actually have no idea," she giggled lightly. "That...that's not gonna be a problem at family dinners is it?"
The bleeding man spat blood and chuckled. "He's going to kill you. I can't wait."
Lyra approached, looking down at him with contempt and whispered, just for the two of them. "No, you filthy coward. We're going to walk over your grave hand in hand and forget you. Lucky for Draco, he has excellent taste. I do this shit everyday and I am going put you in a hole with a smile on my face."
The door burst open behind her, ushering in Zabini and Rossman who looked from her to Malfoy in concern.
She looked back to them and rolled her eyes. "I'm done, I'm done. Lot of emotion in this room, you know? It got the best of me. Hot-blooded American. My bad. Here, you poor helpless thing, let me fix it...Episkey-!"
"Ow! You vile dirty-blooded slag, I'll have you killed in your sleep..."
"Hey you two want coffee?" she asked the 2 Aurors sweetly before exiting the room, leaving Malfoy bleeding on the floor.
Hey friends! So I just wrote the climax for this arc of the story and it. is. intense. We've got a little bit of stage-setting ahead before it happens, so bear with me. Thank you to Shell8bee for your kind reviews. I think it's about to get (in my biased opinion) pretty damn interesting. Please keep reading and reviewing! I am open to all matter of sinful suggestions. Thanks! -MM
