Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns everything. I, in turn, own nothing.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to my editor, Athena Hope, as well as my betas: 3CP, DarknessEnthroned|MJ Bradley, Luq707, Regress, Thanos, and Thobeobo for their contributions.
ANYONE WHO JOINS MY DISCORD SERVER CAN READ SIX CHAPTERS AHEAD OF WHAT IS POSTED HERE! Chapters also release two days early in audiobook format over on YouTube.
If you want even earlier access, then sign up to my P.A.T.R.E.O.N page. They are usually a dozen or more chapters ahead of Discord.
All those links are on my profile, and if any give you trouble, use the direct links on my website's homepage.
Chapter 29: The Enemy of My Enemy…
The boat sliced white ripples into the lake's black surface. Harry wished that it would stop. Every time he found himself gliding across this dark water was the same. There was no escape.
An old man's begging replayed inside his head as the green light glowing in the dark lake's heart drew closer. The whimpers echoed through his mind until he was certain they would drive him mad. This was always the worst part.
He threw one leg out over the side and prepared to dive. A face below the surface brought him up short. Its silver hair and long beard swirling through the black waters stole his breath away.
His foot slipped and he fell forward. There was no splash as he went under, nor while he flailed in hopes of surfacing. It was no use. The lake's embrace was colder than the harshest winter night and as inescapable as Nagini's coils back in Godric's Hollow. The certainty of impending death was colder still, the kind of cold that burned.
His head broke the surface with a sound like cracking ice and he gasped for air. The green light was all but blinding, hanging low over the water like a ghostly fog. Where was he? This was not what was supposed to happen. It never went this way.
A hand reached for him through the shroud of ghostly green. The other's skin was as smooth and cool as moon-soaked seastone, their strength as sure as sunrise as they hoisted him up out of the water.
The pain of rough rocks scraping his knees raw never came as he struggled to his feet. Of a height with him and armed with long, blonde hair, his saviour was more devastating than the dark lake's chill. Looking at her had him feeling as wonderful as she was, yet he knew it was wrong somehow.
That truth was forgotten as her lips parted and he leant in close.
The green light flashed around them and whatever she had been about to say was drowned out by the sound of high, cold laughter.
The next thing he knew, he was sitting up and tangled in silk sheets. There was no sign of the water, or the rocks, or the bright green light. There was no sign of her.
"It's all right, Mister Renn," someone was comforting him. Of course it was all right. Why was he being reassured? "It was only a dream," the same voice said. "You're awake now."
It was then he realized he was breathing hard and fast as the room came into focus. It had white walls and a bright ceiling, with empty beds on either side of him. A woman dressed in white robes and wearing glasses was its lone occupant but for himself. Seeing her deepened the dull ache in him. It was not the woman from his dream.
Just a dream, he reminded himself as lucidity returned. Just another fucking dream…
His room this past summer had been smaller and more private, yet he could tell this was St. Mungo's. More difficult was remembering how he had come here.
Long, blonde hair shone brightly through his haze of memories. Narcissa. That had been it. Her smile had stirred up hot feelings and her touch had sent them spinning. They had mounted and he had sought an outlet in the form of Hangleton Estate. Guards had been waiting for him.
Then there was the dream. "Bloody hell," he muttered. What had the healers dosed him with to make him dream about Narcissa? How grievous had his wounds been?
The sharp pain starting in his left shoulder when he tried prying the sheets off his sweat-soaked torso brought back a flood of memories; a flash of green light and a blazing slice of pain, vengeful winds, dragons made from stone, and a desperate flight over the treetops.
What had happened after that? There had been the realization about Hogwarts being off the table as an apparition point, then… the smell of the sea? Something about a coastal highway?
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Oh, Merlin, I apparated to Narcissa's. Why had apparating to St. Mungo's not occurred to him?
"Mister Renn?" Harry looked up to see the nurse was watching him. "The healers said you would be all right when you came to and that you could be discharged. How do you feel? Do I need to fetch one of them?"
"No," he said, trying to wrestle his sluggish thoughts under control. "I'm a bit groggy, that's all." There was still a deep ache in his left shoulder and the muscles still lacked their normal strength.
"Good," the nurse said with a practiced smile. "I'll go get you discharged then. There's a young lady waiting in the lobby. I think you had her worried."
Dread coiled in his breast. Him being here meant he must have been successful in apparating to Narcissa's, and that he had likely scared her half to death.
The nurse had been gone for about half a minute when he decided it was time to leave. Narcissa would have questions. It was not as though he could provide her honest answers, and he was in no shape to come up with convincing lies.
The lobby was teeming when he stepped in from a side corridor. Over half the chairs were occupied and a long queue winding from the reception desk almost reached the front doors. Lines for the apparition zones were nearly the same length. The exit it was, then. Once outside he could apparate just off the Hogwarts grounds.
A flash of blonde hair drew his eye and his heart lurched. It was Narcissa.
That was fine. She could not see him and was not directly in his way.
Why was she staring at him? Was it just his imagination?
Her heeled shoes clicked against the tiled floor as she took a step toward him. And then another.
Harry abandoned all tact and shoved through the crowded queue. Angry shouts and sharp-tongued curses chased him into the apparition zone. Someone wearing dark red robes was heading for him. They were too late. He was already turning on his heel.
Narcissa felt faint as she stepped through the emerald flames and into the manor's entrance hall.
The sculpted ravens with their outspread wings ought to have been a source of calm. She had loved those statues all her life and had often dreamt of making them fly through the corridors when she had been a girl.
Today they made her yearn for those simple times, nevermind the fact she loathed simplicity and found it duller than a rusted blade.
Why had Renn fled from her? Did he assume she was under Riddle's thumb? Had the witless man not paused to consider who had transported him to the hospital in the first place?
She held a breath for three slow seconds and then let it out. That had been unfair of her. Renn had been injured the past night and was probably on high alert. Suspicion on his part was only natural.
The fact did not diffuse her ire. Things could have been so much easier had he just stayed long enough to hear her out, or if he knew she would do anything to help him topple Riddle.
She had never quite considered it in those terms and was surprised to find how resolute she felt thinking it. It was not just for her sake, or even for her sister's. Her own desire to tear the bastard's throat out was only one part of it.
"You should never judge a man until you know what's gone into making him," her grandfather had once said. "Men are forged, not conjured. They are the sum of their surroundings and all that they have seen. Nothing more and nothing less."
What had Riddle done on his road toward attempted rape? What awful things had preceded his brainwashing of Andromeda? How many poor people's suffering had shaped the monster he had become?
Her hands curled into fists. She had to stop him. She…
Was being foolish and naive. What could she possibly do against a man who could melt into smoke, a man who was highly thought of by the emperors, a man with the power to shape generations?
The bubble of hope that had been fuelled by her anger popped. Her best chance had been a stranger whom Riddle had nearly killed less than a day ago and who had run rather than stand his ground and look her in the eye.
"Did you sleep well?" her grandfather asked as he stepped into the entrance hall.
"Not as well as I'd have liked." There was little point in lying to him. She had learned that years ago.
"I can't say I'm surprised," he said. "You weren't like yourself last night."
She idly twirled a strand of hair around her forefinger. "I'm sorry if I startled you."
"Are you going to tell me what rattled you?" Leave it to her grandfather to cut straight to the heart of things.
"Why do you ask?" Narcissa said in a bid for time. What was she supposed to tell him?
Arcturus levelled her with a flat stare. "There's not much I can do without knowing, is there?"
"I don't see what could be done." There was no proof of a convictable crime and no other way to dispatch Riddle.
"Then we're both fortunate I've had years of practice seeing things most men overlook." From another it might have been laughed off as a simple jibe or boast, but not from him. "Narcissa?"
"I was threatened." There was most certainly no catch in her voice as the answer tumbled its way out of her.
"Who?" The word was like a dagger being drawn out of its sheath.
"I can't." She was Narcissa Black, daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She would not shake or look away.
"Who?" he asked a second time.
"Grandfather, there's nothing to be done. The man—"
Arcturus took three strides forward and placed both hands atop her shoulders. "I don't care if the man responsible was our Lord Governor." They were almost of a height, yet his presence loomed like the great walls around an ancient stronghold. "No one threatens a member of this family. Not you, not Sirius, not the lowest of our lot." He squeezed her shoulders as his stare bore into hers. "Tell me who it was."
Narcissa opened her mouth. Her heart was pounding. "Riddle." What was she doing? What mayhem was going to stem from this? "It was Riddle."
Harry shuffled the letter between his palms and realized he could never send it. How had the words felt adequate behind the curtains of his four poster bed? In the light of day and surrounded by the smell of spoiled straw, they were weaker than a toddler's drink.
Wind blew in through an opening in the tower wall the owls used to come and go. It kicked up clouds of feathers and whistled faintly between stone plinths. The sound of it was like jeering laughter.
He crumpled up the parchment and tossed it out the opening. It writhed in the air and was then ripped away. No relief came when it was lost to sight. Instead he felt the fleeting impulse to scrawl another draft.
That just heightened his frustration. Why did he want to write her anyway? Her saving him had likely been for appearance sake. A death in her front lobby would hardly have reflected well on her, and she was Riddle's kin.
He forced thoughts of her from his mind. The artifacts had been a neat intrigue. Like the trapdoor, the Chamber of Secrets, the Department of Mysteries, and the Deathly Hallows, he had been unable to resist their pull.
No longer. People had already been hurt because of his failure to stop Riddle. All his efforts had to be focused there, and then on finding a way into the Department of Mysteries so he could devise a return home.
Harry sensed someone behind him and turned. "Am I interrupting anything?" asked Pettigrew.
The sight of him stirred a pit of anger into churning motion. "No, I'm just thinking. It's been a long couple of weeks."
"I'm sorry about that. We all are. Sorry, I mean. We're all sorry." Pettigrew looked down at the floor. "All of us but James, at least. I'm not sure what's gotten into him."
The rat shrank back and he realized he was scowling. When had his temper grown so hot? "It's all right," Harry said, wrestling the anger down.
"I just don't get it." Pettigrew wrung out his hands. "If I had half a clue, I might be able to do something."
"You can't. I know exactly what set James off, and it's not the sort of thing you can just fix."
"Why won't you teach me?" Harry had raged at Dumbledore. "What good are these meetings if you won't show me how to fight?" It had been so frustrating, just as it must be for James. "What good is knowing Voldemort if he'll just kill me in the end?"
"There are things that men must know before they take up arms," Dumbledore had told him. "What good are weapons in the hands of those who don't know what use to put them to?"
Harry could remember bristling at that, the way it had bruised his almighty ego. The way James must be feeling now. "I know what use to put them to!"
"I do not doubt that they would serve you against a lesser man than Tom, but lesser men are no concern of yours. It is Voldemort that must concern you. Voldemort, who will not be conquered by a list of spells shown to you over the space of months." That was what it came down to. Nothing he could teach James would help him in his pursuit of vengeance against Riddle, but it might well get him killed trying.
"Then what good is any of this?" he had demanded. "Those spells are more than I know now and you're telling me they won't be enough? What use is this if nothing I know will be?"
"You must learn the lessons that Lord Voldemort has never learned. Patience, Harry." If only James had that. "Witts and patience. What good is might when misdirected? A well-honed mind cuts in ways no sword could ever dream of."
Pettigrew was twisting the fabric of his robes between his thumb and forefinger. "That doesn't mean the rest of us can't be sorry for it."
"True enough." The Marauders were a decent sort, discounting the rat who stood in front of him.
"Here to send a letter?" Pettigrew asked. "Or do you have an owl you've been checking in on?"
"No owl," Harry said. "No letter, either. I just… came up here to think."
"I do that sometimes. It's nice to get the fresh air without having to walk all the way outside."
"Is that what you came here for? Should I head out and let you think?"
"No, it's all right." Pettigrew reached into the pocket of his robes and withdrew a stately-looking roll of parchment. "I came here to give this to you."
"How did you know I was in here?" Harry asked, extending out his senses and detecting no malice in the missive he was being offered.
Pettigrew made a show of chewing on his lip and shuffling from foot to foot. How pathetic are you? Harry wondered all the while. "I'm sure they won't mind too much," the rat murmured, shoving the parchment into Harry's hands as he went fishing through his robes and came up with a second sheet of parchment. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Seeing the map unfurl weakened the grip he held around his temper. Pettigrew had begged for mercy when cornered in the Shrieking Shack, shouting bloody murder about how he would never have betrayed his friends had his life not been on the line.
"It's incredible," Harry breathed while the Elder Wand did its best to burn straight through its holster. Pettigrew must have assumed he was the surest bet around and must have been hoping this show of faith would curry favour.
"It's our little secret," the rat told him in a hush. "Sirius was behind most of it. James and Remus helped some too." A faint blush hovered in Pettigrew's thin cheeks. "I'm no good with stuff like this, but I helped scout the passageways. They're all on there."
Harry's eyes wandered to where the second floor was illustrated. There lay one of the few oversights contained on the Marauder's Map. He had been dwelling on it more often as of late.
Could Riddle have hidden a horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets? Was that the real reason it was so well warded?
Pettigrew cleared his throat and made a subtle gesture. "Oh, right," Harry said, opening the missive clutched between his fingers.
It read:
Hello, Mister Kalloway,
I think it's time we have another chat. Somewhere more private this time. Maybe a walk along the coast? I'm sure you know the place — the one you go to get all your things enchanted? Say … tomorrow at sunset?
See you soon.
Sincerely,
Dorea Black
His heart dropped. How had Narcissa wormed her way free of his nondisclosures? How had the connection been drawn between him and Malcolm Renn? Had Dorea been the one to put it all together, or had that been Narcissa?
One way or another, he had a feeling he would find out soon.
The smell of salt and sound of squawking seagulls greeted him when the darkness peeled away.
No light shone behind the wide windows of Narcissa's storefront and her sign was gone. He frowned while inspecting Malcolm Renn's reflection in the glass. Something felt off and it was more than just the vacant building.
Closing his eyes and pressing one hand against the window, he felt it. The wards were down. Of course. The enchantry had been warded against outside apparition before he had barged through.
He turned away and ignored the guilt. The choice had saved his life and the wards could be restored.
So why did he feel guilty?
A soft snap displaced the wind's faint whistling. "No guards this time?" he asked Dorea, having already probed the area for anyone in hiding.
"Hm? Oh no, there's no need for them tonight." A sharp edge marked the corners of her smile. "You and I are just having a discussion."
Harry was no fool. This script was one he had read before. "And if I decided to do more than stand here and discuss?" It was best to play it out and get things moving.
"Oh, I don't think you will."
The flippant way she said it raised his guard. "What makes you so confident? Your letter was as good as any threat."
"Threat?" She flicked her hand in a dismissive gesture. "I just wanted to ensure you understood the stakes."
"I think I understand them well enough," he said after a moment's pause.
"Good. I know it must have startled you. I'm sorry about that and am happy to answer any questions you might have."
"Does Narcissa know?"
"Narcissa knows that there are no records of a man named Malcolm Renn," Dorea replied. "I'm sure you understand that I had to give her something that might sate her curiosity. She would never have stopped looking otherwise."
"But that's all she knows?" It was important he knew which people were aware of any holes in his facade.
"For now."
"For now?" He was as taut as a bowstring. "Is that a threat?"
"I think you should relax, dear," Dorea told him with deceptive sweetness. "That tone won't help either of us."
Harry looked across a scarlet sea to where the shadowed cliffs stood sentry and reigned in his composure. "Does anyone else know?" he asked. "Charlus? Dumbledore? Anyone?"
"No one knows," Dorea assured him.
The water looked less like blood, all of a sudden, and more like a sprawling bed of roses. "Good," he said. The wind felt mild when next it blew. "Good."
Dorea cocked her head. "Aren't you going to ask me how I found out?"
"How did you find out?" he asked, refusing to let her prod him into anger.
"Narcissa asked about you, but she couldn't tell me anything other than that you were a client of hers."
Learning Narcissa had not slipped out from his nondisclosures was not the relief he might have expected. "That's it? You put all of this together based off of that?"
"I knew there was no wizard named Malcolm Renn near enough to apparate the way she said you had been doing, and I knew you had to be someone interesting," Dorea admitted. "Narcissa is not a socialite. She would only ask about someone if she found them interesting, and that vastly narrowed down the field."
"And how did you decide that it was me? There had to have been other choices?"
"Oh, there were, but given your propensity for lies and false faces, you were the top suspect."
It was difficult to dispute her logic. "What confirmed it?"
That sharp smile flickered back across her face. "You did, just now."
Harry clenched his teeth to keep from cursing. "Was that why you wanted this meeting? To confirm that it was me?"
"It is nice to know how much I can tell Narcissa — I did promise I would keep looking for her mystery man, you see — but no."
Harry's stomach shuddered with unease. "And what can you tell her?"
"Nothing at all," Dorea said, as if the remark was meaningless.
"That's kind of you," he said carefully, knowing this was the point when blackmail would be wielded if past experiences held true.
"Kind?" Dorea's soft laugh was like ice clinking against the inside of a glass. "I think you'll find that it's actually pragmatic."
"Pragmatic how?" Here it came.
"Because I'm not in the business of selling my close allies' secrets."
Of all the things he had been expecting, that would not have made his list. "I mean no offence, my lady, but I wasn't aware that we're close allies."
"Were you not?" There was a shift in the way she stood, in the way she spoke. "Have you never heard the adage 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?"
Harry watched her the way a rat might watch a sleeping serpent. "A couple times."
"Then consider yourself made aware." The impulse arose to step away from her. The snake had come awake and shed its skin to reveal that it was coiled. "You know who hid behind that silver mask. The two of you have history. You want him dealt with. Those things are what make us allies."
"I'll tell you the same thing I told Charlus — you can't just make him disappear. It's not that simple."
"There is more than one way to make a problem disappear," Dorea pointed out with clipped precision.
Harry took a breath. "Being married to the lord governor—"
"Plays no part in what I'm suggesting."
He paused. "Then what are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that when working with a man as uniquely talented as you, official avenues aren't the roads I would walk down."
"If anyone were to find out—"
"If anyone were to find out half of what I've done for the wellbeing of this country behind my husband's back, I wouldn't be standing here right now."
Harry's mouth went dry. It was the way she said it that sent a shiver down his spine. "People would find out about this one," he said. "Men like him don't just disappear. If you knew, then you would understand."
"If I knew." Dorea tasted the words, savouring them before smiling. It was an awful smile. "I'm disappointed. I expected that by now you would have learned not to assume the kinds of things I know."
"What are you saying?" Harry asked as his mentor's words from long ago welled up.
"A well-honed mind cuts in ways no sword could ever dream of."
Dorea was no longer smiling. "I'm saying that when dealing with a man like Tom Riddle, it pays to have friends in high places."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
— Socrates
A special thank you to my high-tier patron, Cup, for her generous and unwavering support.
PS: The next chapter will be out in one week. Remember that chapters can be read early on Discord, YouTube, and P.A.T.R.E.O.N! All those links are on my profile, and if any give you trouble, use my website's homepage. That site can be found via a generic Google search of my pen name.