Written for @Sky-Bridges in gratitude for their generous donation!
WARNING: contains spoilers for Alternate Future: Chapter 6.
Albus Dumbledore was dead at Theo’s wand, and tonight, James Potter would go the same way courtesy of his erstwhile son.
Barty knew he couldn’t be there, but his mind wouldn’t stop turning it over, imagining where Harry would be now. What he was doing.
Surely it was far too early for the Weasley girl to have gotten her hooks into Potter. Could Harry already have made his way to the study? Possible. Entirely possible. He worked quickly. He had been to the house before.
“He’ll be fine,” Theo said, without looking up from his immensely finicky translation project.
“I know.”
Barty envied Theo the ability to focus despite the stress weighing on them both. That was a skill Barty had never quite mastered. Most of the time, he did alright, but knowing Harry was out there, using ancient and illegal magic to break into the Chief Auror’s home, murder him, and frame him for attempted rape—Barty couldn’t think past that. Couldn’t attend to anything else. Instead he just paced around Grimmauld Place. Up and down the stairs. Drifting in and out of the drawing room where Theo’s reference texts and source materials splayed out around him on the floor and hovered in the air like a time-stopped parchment explosion.
Just as Barty reached the ground floor, Kreacher appeared in front of him with a crack. Barty’s heart nearly stopped.
“Master’s suitor be having tea.”
“Not now,” Barty said, turning away.
Crack! Kreacher appeared on the staircase, nearly at Barty’s eye level, with a knobby, threatening finger thrust forward. “I is saying Master’s suitor be having tea,” he repeated. “In the parlor.”
Barty opened his mouth.
“Tea.”
“Okay,” he said. Fine. Maybe it would help. Worst case scenario, the tea made him ill, and vomiting would at least pass the time.
Kreacher had set out some kind of tea on the table and a display of biscuits. Barty nibbled on the corner of a shortbread round with crimped edges and a clock face delicately picked out on its top in poppyseeds. The tea, when he tried it, tasted of chamomile and something stronger; potions were more Harry’s wheelhouse, Barty himself preferring to get lost in the precise and beautiful patterns of advanced arithmancy, but he thought this wasn’t a house-elf’s normal offering. “Kreacher? What’s in the tea?”
“The tea is being a calming chamomile blend,” said Kreacher, who stood perfectly at attention to the side but nevertheless had something of a shifty air about him.
“Right.” If it had calming draught, Barty would taste that, for sure. He meditated for a few seconds and mentally shrugged. Whatever it was seemed to be minor, not proper potion-strength. Probably he should warn Harry that Kreacher was apparently watching him brew and picking up some tricks.
Barty wouldn’t put it past the elf to poison someone over patisserie. Not him, though. Kreacher was devoted to Harry and by extension Harry’s suitor.
In that way, Barty could relate to the mad old house-elf. Barty himself tended to get tied up in the well-being of a very few people and the rest could go hang. The number of people who had earned his devotion, ever, had been two, until he met a wizard with cold green eyes and a serpent’s smile, and then his vassal and best friend.
Anything that hurt Harry or Theo would regret doing so. Barty’s thoughts skipped back to the risks Harry was, at that very moment, taking upon himself in Potter Manor. What he would do to James Potter and Ginny Weasley and the fucking Chosen One and anyone else who had a hand in it if Harry was caught and killed or injured today…
With some difficulty, Barty pulled his mind away from blood and screaming. Torture was a tool. Torture ought to be used judiciously. Until such time as he had confirmation that something had happened, he would not obsess over it. He would not.
He had nothing else to do instead.
Barty drained his teacup. Kreacher reappeared before he’d even got it back down to the saucer, brandishing a teapot and a scowl. Meekly, Barty proffered the cup for a refill.
He was just raising it to his lips when he heard a distant whoosh and felt a ripple in the wards. The cup fell into Kreacher’s hand but Barty wasn’t there to see it; he’d already all but vaulted the sofa to get out of the parlor and into the hall.
Theo hit the ground floor just as Barty got to the kitchen stairs. They both pounded down the cramped staircase and burst into the kitchen.
The green flames hadn’t died out entirely. Harry was there, wearing plain black robes in a dueling cut, trim through the torso and paneled below the hips for ease of movement.
His face was tight and unhappy.
“Harry. You’re alright?” Barty said, moving forward, grabbing his shoulders and looking for any sign of injury. “How did it go?”
“It worked,” Harry said flatly.
Theo drifted around and pressed a cup of the same tea blend into Harry’s hand; Harry took it and sipped without seeming aware of it. His eyes weren’t quite focused.
“And you?” Barty said.
A tiny, bitter smile tugged at Harry’s lips. “My father’s dead. Ginny’s got fake memories of attempted rape in her head. No one saw me. I’ll let you know how I’m doing when I figure it out.”
“Do you regret…?” Barty said slowly. Not because he really thought Harry might, but because he knew he was not a good benchmark for such things, knew—
Harry laughed, short and harsh. “No. I’d have taken my time with it, if I could.” Fuck, that should not be a turn on, this was not the time. Keep it together, Barty told himself firmly. “It’s—I hate that Ginny’s doing—that. And I can’t be there.”
Personally, Barty could give half a hippogriff shite for Weasley, but she mattered to Harry, so he would keep that opinion to himself as well. “She knew what she was getting into, Harry. At her age, you would have done it.”
“I know. She knows her own mind.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier,” Theo said. “D’you want to duel? Take your mind off of it?”
Harry shook his head. “I’m going to go work on the potion I’m trying to reconstruct.”
“Want company?” asked Barty.
Uncharacteristic indecision sat on Harry’s face, guardedness and trust going to war.
Trust won.
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