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Part Three

Hermione marching towards him with a determined expression made Harry want to grimace. And he hated that. They had been friends just a few months ago, the kind he'd thought would never have a crack in their friendship. And now this.

"Um. I sort of have a message from Professor Adley, Harry."

It hurt and was soothing at the same time to realize that she'd come on a mission from a professor. Harry had to think a moment to realize who she meant, though. "Oh, right. The new Defense one?"

"You haven't even paid attention?"

"Why not? I'm not in his classes."

Hermione huffed and sat down on the sofa across from him. They were in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, and Harry could see more than one nosy person peering at them. He waved his wand and put up a Privacy Charm.

Hermione lifted her nose in the air. "You don't want anyone to hear what we're talking about?"

"Not really, because I don't want them gossiping about it."

Hermione looked at him a little cross-eyed. Harry wished Ron was here, but he was serving a detention for supposedly being cheeky to Professor McGonagall. Harry didn't think answering "Because I value my sleep, professor," when she'd asked why Ron hadn't finished his essay was cheek, just truthful, but apparently Professor McGonagall disagreed.

"And maybe you don't want them to hear what you think of Professor Adley?"

"Why would I care?"

Hermione seemed to relax a little. Harry thought his genuine bafflement was getting through. "Professor Adley thinks you're prejudiced against him."

"How could I be when I don't know anything about him?"

"He's a half-blood."

Harry almost said "So am I!" before he remembered. Sometimes it was hard as hell to remember that his real mum wasn't Muggleborn. He sighed and nodded a little. "And he thinks I'm a blood purist because I'm spending time with my family?"

"Yes. The way I do."

"What do I need to do to—"

"Leave them behind, Harry." Hermione bent forwards, her face intent. "I know that they're your family, and they've tried, but—they're all blood purists. They probably can't even help it, growing up the way they did. They're stewing in a toxic soup. You need to leave before they start passing it on to you."

"Either they already did or they didn't, Hermione."

Harry had never heard his own voice so cold. Hermione drew back a little, her eyes wide, but said, "I think you can still be saved, Harry. Professor Dumbledore talked to me over the summer. He talked about how good people don't stop being good because they spend some time around people who are prejudiced. And I agree with him. You can still be saved."

"Maybe I don't want you to save me."

Harry was shaking. He thought of the charm that Healer Letham had taught him, but honestly, this wasn't the time. His hands were shaking, too, and if he pointed his wand at her, he thought he would probably hex Hermione right there. And that would be the end of their friendship. He forced himself to stand and take down the Privacy Charm.

That meant, unfortunately, that Hermione's voice rang out over the common room.

"Why can't you see that you are standing up for blood purist ideals if you live with blood purists?"

Harry glared at her, until he noticed the eyes watching them again. There were still too many people who thought of him as Harry Potter, who would gleefully point and laugh if his friendship with Hermione fell apart right in front of them.

Walking away without speaking was the hardest thing he'd ever done. He collapsed into bed and drew the curtains shut around him.

At least now he knew one reason Hermione believed this about him when Harry had never said a single blood purist thing in his life. Dumbledore was filling her head with nonsense, because Dumbledore believed there was no way the Malfoys could ever change.

Harry shut his eyes.

Fuck him.

Narcissa sat back from the parchment and stared at the Arithmantic calculations. She had tried to view them dispassionately, but her hands were shaking.

"Darling."

Lucius was standing behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. Narcissa turned so that her lips touched his knuckles.

"What is it?"

"All my equations indicate that a Horcrux rests somewhere we would have to approach my dearest Cousin Sirius about to enter," Narcissa whispered. She knew the name. It tolled in her thoughts like a bell. The Arithmancy she had used to try and forecast the position of the Horcruxes was absolutely clear.

Grimmauld Place.

Narcissa hadn't been there since Aunt Walburga had died, and she had never felt the presence of a Horcrux. But then, she hadn't thought about or searched for such things then.

Lucius's hands slowly massaged her shoulders. Then he said, "You don't think we can bribe your cousin with money."

"No. I'm afraid he'll demand access to Henry."

Lucius's hands tightened. Then he said, "Rather than give him even a moment alone with our son, I would burn down the building that contains the Horcrux with Fiendfyre, and let him die within it."

Narcissa let herself be steadied and warmed by the unshakable confidence in his voice. Those words were the kinds of things that had made it difficult for Lucius to claim to be under the Imperius Curse. But they were exactly what Narcissa loved and valued about her husband.

No one else would stand up for them. No one else would protect them. By the time the war had ended and Lucius had faced the chance of going to Azkaban, his parents were both dead. So was Narcissa's father, and most of her family dead or estranged. Bellatrix had been arrested. The other Death Eaters were distancing themselves from Lucius to save their own hides. Henry had already been stolen.

No one would protect their family except Lucius and Narcissa themselves. And someday their sons, but they were still so young that they should not have to defend themselves for a good many years yet.

They would do what was necessary.

"I may be able to enter on some pretext," Narcissa murmured. "To pretend to bargain. I may be able to steal the Horcrux."

"Do you think he would believe that?"

"Perhaps not, but we should try it."

Lucius bent down until his lips brushed against her ear. "How tired I am of giving in to them," he whispered. "How I wish we could destroy them, and bathe in their blood."

"Henry might not forgive you that."

Those were the only words that could have brought him back in his current mood, and well Narcissa knew it. Lucius tensed against her for a moment, and then sighed, stepping away. When Narcissa turned around to look at him, he wore the false moral mask on his face again.

"I wish he would."

Narcissa reached out and held his hand. She, too, would have liked to strip the skin and the bone from Sirius's body the day he had tried to snatch Henry in Diagon Alley the summer before her boys' third year, to roast him from the inside out so that he might know a tenth as much agony as he had inflicted on her family by stealing her younger son.

Someday, Henry might accept that. But the time was not now, and Narcissa valued her relationship with her son more than she did the chance for vengeance.

"Someday," Narcissa murmured, "perhaps."

"Harry!"

Henry flinched hard enough that he nearly banged into the wall. Draco immediately turned and moved between his brother and the new threat.

It turned out to be the new Defense professor, Professor Adley or whatever his name was. Draco did remember that his first name was Arcturus, and suspected that he was some bastard son of an exiled Squib. It didn't matter, though. What mattered was the strange, hungry, hopeful way that his eyes rested on Henry.

Draco prepared himself to draw his wand, fast.

"My name's Henry, sir," Henry said. "Henry Malfoy."

Part of Draco cheered that Henry had finally said that to someone, but he was mostly occupied in making sure that he was in between Henry and the strange professor. Henry had mentioned the professor's request, delivered through Granger, that Henry come and talk to him. Draco had thought it was strange then, and he thought it was stranger now, with the professor looking at Henry like he knew him. Even people who were Harry Potter fans didn't tend to call Henry by his first name the first time they really met him.

Adley waved a hand as though brushing the words away. "I've been hoping that you would come and talk to me."

"I don't want to. Sir."

"Does that mean you are prejudiced against half-bloods?"

Adley sounded aghast. Draco grimaced. He and Henry had left their defense lesson with Uncle Ted and had been heading to the Great Hall for dinner, which meant there were plenty of people around. People who could turn, and stare, and, of course, whisper.

People who would carry the tale that Henry Malfoy was a blood purist away from them if they weren't careful.

"Of course not!" Henry snapped, firing up the way he so often did. When he looked like this, Draco could remember how his temper had shone when his eyes were green. "But I don't have to talk to creepy old men if I don't want to."

Draco swallowed a laugh. Adley looked a little stunned. He shook his head, seemed to search for words to say and not find them, and came a step closer, reaching out one hand for Henry's arm.

Draco stepped forwards and shoved his wand into Adley's gut.

The world seemed to stop for a long moment. Draco had once overheard Father describing to Mother the way that the world did that for him in battle, when he had an enemy balanced at the edge of his wand and was on a precipice, himself. The way he felt as though he could see every possible movement, like a chess strategist, and was prepared for anything.

Distantly, Draco was pleased to learn he had inherited that from their father. In the moment, he was focused on Adley's rising and falling chest.

"Mr. Malfoy," Adley said. "Get your wand away from me."

His voice had descended to a guttural snarl that made it sound like he had seen battle himself. Draco didn't care that much, though. What he knew was that he wanted to hurt the professor, and he was a few seconds away from doing that.

"You tried to grab my brother," he said, his voice as hard as the cold light that seemed to surround this moment. "You don't get to do that."

"I was merely trying to make sure he wasn't—"

"You don't get to manhandle him."

"Draco."

Henry was speaking softly, his hand coming to rest on Draco's shoulder. Draco shuddered and pulled himself back from the precipice. Speaking of things that would spread around the student body like wildfire, his attacking a professor—someone who had just accused Draco's twin of blood prejudice—would do it even faster than accusations against Henry.

He managed to retract his wand, and started to tuck it away.

Adley nodded as though they were finishing up a conversation, and lunged forwards and grabbed Henry.

Draco cast.

He didn't even incant the spell. It surged up through his stomach and to his head and down his arm and through his wand as though it had been waiting all along for a way out. It hit Adley in a spray of conjured glass shards.

Adley fell back, screaming.

Draco stood there and watched without sympathy or pity as the shards whirled around Adley, slicing him, cutting him, hitting him so hard that he started to bleed in a dozen places. He fell over and lay there, twitching.

And Draco didn't care. What mattered was that he had stopped his brother from being kidnapped again.

"MR. MALFOY!"

Draco turned his head, not surprised that McGonagall was the one marching towards them. She always seemed to show up after the danger to a Slytherin or a Malfoy had passed. Henry pressed against Draco from behind, trembling.

"What did you do to Professor Adley?" McGonagall snapped, as she flicked her wand and cast a spell that banished the glass shards. Draco felt a faint sadness as he watched them turn to small, dewy shapes in midair and fade from sight. It was the first spell he had ever cast silently.

"I hurt him because he was trying to kidnap my brother," Draco said.

McGonagall blinked at him, and then at Henry, who looked shaky and was still pressing close to Draco's back. "Is that true, Mr. Potter—I mean, Mr. Malfoy?"

"He wanted to talk to me," Henry whispered. He sounded dazed. Draco took a step back and put his arm around Henry's shoulders, silently telling McGonagall that he was going to be there no matter what. "Draco threatened him to get him to back off. And then he lunged forwards and grabbed my arm."

"I will take care of this, Minerva."

Of course Dumbledore was marching towards them now. He flicked his wand and bandaged Adley's wounds—Draco was mildly amused to realize that McGonagall was so invested in scolding Draco and Henry that she hadn't done that—and then floated him onto a conjured stretcher. When he glanced at Draco, his face seemed to have turned to stone.

"You will receive detention, Mr. Malfoy."

"I'll serve it gladly, sir." Draco's voice was calm and distant, and he felt detached from even his ferocious need to protect Henry. He wondered if he was going into shock with much the same calmness that he had done everything else. "And what will happen to Adley?"

"Professor Adley, Mr. Malfoy."

"He attempted to kidnap my brother. What will happen to him?"

"I'm sure that Professor Adley didn't intend that."

"You'll take it seriously, sir, or I'll owl my mother and father and tell them that Henry was attacked. I'm sure they'll remove us from the school then." Of course, Draco intended to tell Mother and Father either way, but how he told them would make a difference.

Dumbledore's mouth locked tighter, his nostrils flaring. But he nodded and turned and walked away, with Henry and Draco following behind him.

Henry clung to Draco the whole way, as if he would never let go. Not one protest about how Draco had used a violent spell or how Adley might not have meant the grab the way it had looked like.

That, more than anything else, told Draco how frightened his brother was. He clung back.

Albus sat behind his desk and wearily rubbed his head. This was a disaster.

And all because Sirius couldn't control his desire to talk to Harry and just had to make a grab for his arm.

He raised his head and studied the people sitting across the desk from him. Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy sat in chairs flanking Harry and their son. Lucius's eyes were cold, and he looked as if he might try to lunge across the desk and strangle Albus.

But of all of them, it was Narcissa who worried Albus. She sat still, her hands folded in her lap, and smiled a little. If someone had walked into the room and hadn't known what had happened, she might have looked the perfect picture of a woman getting ready to have tea and a bit of a gossip.

Such perfect self-control was not typical of a Black or a Malfoy. Albus swallowed and turned back to Harry, whom he had to make his plea to.

"Professor Adley didn't mean to kidnap you," he said. "He only wanted to talk to you."

Harry lifted his head and eyed Albus. Albus internally sighed. He still expected those eyes to be green, looking into them. How he wished that Harry had never learned the secret that had turned them grey.

"I don't believe you," Harry said softly.

"Why not, Harry? Please—"

"You will address our son as Mr. Malfoy," Narcissa said softly. "That is the way you speak to children in this school whom you have no personal relationship with, I believe. And your only relationship with him is as his Headmaster. Which may be terminated very shortly."

Albus clenched his hands under the desk. He couldn't let the Malfoys snatch Harry and vanish with him into the Manor. Too much would be lost if that happened, including the chance of defeating Voldemort.

"I understand," he said stiffly. "But the fact remains that Professor Adley wanted to speak with Har—Mr. Malfoy, not kidnap him."

"Why did he?"

"He was curious why Mr. Malfoy did not want to attend his classes. And he also believed that Mr. Malfoy was prejudiced against him because Professor Adley is a half-blood." Albus chose his words carefully. He had gone to visit Sirius in the hospital wing before coming to his office to confront the Malfoys, and that was the story Sirius had gasped out. Albus thought it rather a stupid one, but it was the one Sirius had told Hermione, and Hermione had told Harry, and so they had to stick with it. "When he saw Mr. Malfoy turning away from him, as he thought, out of blood prejudice, he grew desperate."

"He could not have retreated and routed his questions through us?" Narcissa asked softly. "He had to speak with our son right then? He had to disregard Draco's warning?"

Albus was as glad to pick up the new subject. "That is something that must be addressed," he said, and turned to fix a wintry stare on the Malfoys' son. Draco simply stared back at him, eyes like chips of ice. So he inherits this much of his parents. I had hoped he was salvageable. "Your older son injured a professor."

"He was going to kidnap my brother."

"I have told you that he was not," Albus snapped, and didn't bother controlling his hand when it rose to rub his forehead. Let them all see how much of a headache he was getting from them. "And in retaliation for a kidnapping that never happened, you tore Adley's chest and throat to shreds."

Lucius turned a pleased smile on his son. "Did you? Well done, Draco."

"I cannot believe that you are congratulating him for using a Dark Arts spell!"

"From what you described of the spell," Narcissa said, crossing her legs at the ankle, "it was not Dark Arts. The Glass Shield is in fact meant to form a barrier that will deflect some spells and warn enemies away from approaching closer."

"Then how do you explain the fact that Professor Adley is in the hospital wing with cuts to his chest and throat that will scar?"

"Accidental magic."

Albus scowled at her, seeing no need to pretend to neutrality or geniality now, not when all of them knew where they stood. "It was not."

"Can you prove that it was not, Headmaster? I hope you will not say that you could. That would indicate you have been casting the sorts of spells on our older son that are invasive and not warranted except when a Healer or other trusted authority figure uses them."

Albus took a deep breath, reining in his desire to simply shout. That would not win him any allies here. And he had to win them. He had to win the most important one, anyway. He turned to Harry.

"Mr. Malfoy," he whispered. Harry, who had ducked his head, looked up again. "You must see that Professor Adley was an innocent victim of violence. You and your brother mistook his intentions. I promise, he wasn't going to kidnap you."

"How do I know that?"

"Because I have interviewed him, and he said so—"

"Why should I trust him when he grabbed me?" Harry's voice was flat. "When he was acting like he was going to take me somewhere? When he ignored me and Draco and just did whatever he wanted?"

Albus blinked, shocked by the chill tone in the child's voice, and then he understood. Kidnapping would be Harry's greatest fear right now, probably more than fear of being killed by Voldemort. He had been taken to the graveyard via Portkey, after all, and nearly used in a ritual there.

Albus should have thought of the ongoing effects of that kind of trauma and shock. Instead, he had gambled too much on the other kind, thinking that Harry having killed someone last summer would prejudice him against violence and drive him away from a family that continued to embrace it.

"Harry," he whispered.

A Stinging Hex to the hand made him jolt. Narcissa tucked her wand away and stood, shaking her head.

"I do not want Henry to make decisions right now," she said. "Not in the middle of his shock and terror. I do not want him to decide on giving up Hogwarts until later. But if you want him to stay here, Albus, you will get rid of that man." She half-smiled. "Unless you want him butchered and delivered to you in pieces."

"That is a threat, then," Albus said, keeping still and fixing his gaze on her, even though he desired nothing more than to shake his hand out.

"It is," Narcissa said, serenely.

"Such an act would be illegal."

"But the threat is not. No more illegal than grabbing someone's arm." Narcissa smiled more widely, and then turned and escorted Draco and Harry out of the room.

Lucius stood up in the silence that followed and shook back his left sleeve. Albus thought he was going for his wand, and tensed, but Lucius simply turned his arm, displaying his bare skin.

"Perhaps," Lucius whispered, "you should have considered how far we will go for our son. To the point of violence. To the point of chopping my arm off and regrowing it. You would have had to display half as much care for our son as you did for Sirius Black."

Albus's breath caught. Lucius leaned in a little.

"Yes, I recognized him," he said. "From a single glimpse in the hospital wing. And yes, Narcissa will butcher him if you keep him here."

He turned and left.

Albus sagged back against his chair and shut his eyes.

"Henry…"

Harry curled up harder in his bed at the Manor, where they'd gone directly from Dumbledore's office, and shivered. He wanted to talk about it, but he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't know how to turn the churning in his chest and the thunderous noise in his head into any kind of coherent words.

Mother bent over and kissed his forehead. Harry wanted to turn around and hug her.

But at the same time, he didn't.

Mother retreated with a light brush of her hand over his hair. "When you are ready to speak about it, with us or with Healer Letham, we will be here," she murmured, and Harry nodded stiffly from the middle of his tight little ball. He hoped that they would give him at least a day.

At the moment, it felt like he could use a week.

He lay in the darkness, staring at the wall, and shivered. Father had told him "Professor Adley" had really been Sirius Black. Without that, Harry might have shrugged off Draco's suspicions that it was an attempted kidnapping, but with that, he couldn't.

What is it with Black and wanting to kidnap me? Harry thought in disgust.

His eyes drooped shut.

Barty knelt before the fire and reached out his hands. This required unstinting devotion, and he had it to give.

He plunged his hands into the fire.

A scream tore out of his throat, but only because that was the weakness of the flesh, the horror of it. The honor still outweighed the horror. Barty kept himself kneeling, kept his hands in the flames, and the flame surged up and danced around him.

The ritual his lord had planned before, he thought, distant, in a daze, would have required the flesh of a servant. This did, too, but it required the willing sacrifice that Pettigrew could never have given—

Then his strength gave way, and he was rolling on the ground, screaming. His hands were blistered and cracked, but he turned his head and stared at the fire instead of trying to heal them.

A shadow danced in those flames, hidden from view if one were not looking for it. But Barty was. He saw.

The shadow rose and rose, acquiring dimension and form and weight. Its mouth opened, and a low delighted laugh spilled forth. Lord Voldemort stepped forth from the flames, a being of shadow and bone, his skin gleaming white and smooth, flawless. His eyes were blood red, bold. His hair was a shimmering mass of white scales that clung close to his skull and rattled when he moved.

He stooped down and trailed his fingers across Barty's face. "My beloved servant," he said. "I shall heal you, faster and stronger than before. I shall give you the gift of a hand that no one who sees it shall ever forget."

"Master," Barty whispered, and bowed his head, and shivered, and smiled.

Harry woke screaming.