“The House of Black recognizes the daughters of the House of Patil, and offers conditional sanctuary,” Harry said, magic sliding around him and twining with the sound of his voice. “Come with me. Kreacher, refreshments, please.”
He led them to the kitchen, where Barty leaned up against the wall with a cold expression, like a particularly handsome sentinel of some kind. Steaming tea and a plate full of biscuits waited on the table and Harry poured for himself and Theo first, as was polite, to show that the tea was unpoisoned, and then for the Patils.
Padma sipped her tea like a normal person. Parvati, on the other hand, huddled around hers, both hands wrapped around the teacup so tightly Harry feared for its structural integrity. Luckily Kreacher had, out of spite or good sense Harry didn’t know, put out the sturdy ceramic cups and not breakable china.
On a hunch, Harry said, “Kreacher, some food for our guests, please. A hearty meal.”
“That bad?” Parvati said with a hint of her old fire.
“You look like shite,” Theo said bluntly.
“Well, she’s been starving in a tent for the last, oh, six months or so,” Padma said in an acid tone.
Parvati looked down just as a steaming plate of mini meat pies appeared before her with a pop. She grabbed one and took a bite that was just barely small enough to not be obnoxiously rude.
“Talk to me,” Harry said.
Padma spoke for her sister, which Harry didn’t contest; Parvati clearly needed the food, and anyway as soon as Padma started talking he forgot to fuss about which of them told the story. It was… worse than he had thought.
But this was the moment he’d been preparing for.
Even if one aspect of their tale made him so angry he had to sink his nails into his own thigh to keep from turning the kitchen into the inside of an ice cave.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You ran away with Potter and Weasley last fall to hunt these objects of the Dark Lord’s, in an attempt to kill Him. Neville Longbottom found you and—convinced you all I’m a Death Eater and pure evil, I guess. You proceeded to spend several months trapping and murdering adjunct Aurors—”
“What?” Parvati said, going grey.
“You called them Snatchers, like this was some kind of marauding gang of mercenaries,” Barty said from his spot by the wall. “They’re a recent addition to the Auror Corps. Wixen empowered to apprehend anyone reasonably suspected to have information relating to the Order of the Phoenix and/or the Order’s repeated attempts to assault and murder members of the Wizengamot.”
Padma’s expression got grimmer with every word, while Parvati looked rather like she was about to vomit up the meat pies. Harry cast a silent anti-nausea charm at her under the table just in case. “No.”
“Yes,” Harry told her.
“Oh Merlin.” She set her teacup down very precisely and buried her face in her hands. “We thought… we thought they were hunting Muggleborns and the Order…”
“Well, they weren’t, but Padma implied it wasn’t your idea,” Harry prompted.
Parvati jerked her head up and shook it emphatically. “No. It was—it was Neville and Ron, mostly.”
Neville. Harry’s once close friend. Just the name sent a pang of pain and regret and rage through him. “And Potter?”
“Just the once,” Parvati said in a near whisper. “The… the last time. I guess they’d noticed they kept disappearing and… they flanked us, caught us from behind. There were… oh, it must’ve been a dozen of them, I think. That was the only time Jules… killed… I’m going to be sick.”
Harry cast another anti-nausea charm just in time. “You can’t afford to lose that food,” he said evenly. “Alright. So we can add accessory to murder to the long list of charges you’re facing. Let’s move on. You stopped after that trap went awry?”
She nodded miserably.
“And… since then, the four of you have just been living in a tent in the woods, rationing food, carrying around one of these objects on a chain—” and wearing a horcrux was just such a stupid idea— “and arguing about where to search next.”
“Jules th-thinks there’s one in Gringotts… he had one of his visions, and thought You-Know-Who gave one to the Lestranges to protect… and he said there’s another one maybe hidden at the school, but we couldn’t figure out how to break in, the security there has gotten much better.”
Yes, of course it had, because Snape wasn’t a negligent moron. “You’re going to have to tell me what these objects are, you know.”
“Horcruxes,” Parvati said hollowly. “Bits of—”
“Soul, yes, we’ve all studied it,” Barty said. He looked mildly homicidal, which was understandable: this was a conspiracy to kill the only semi-positive father figure he had ever known. “Yet you’ve been unable to destroy it?”
“None of us knows how to summon fiendfyre.” Harry carefully did not look at Theo, who almost certainly could. They should try that. Why hadn’t they thought to try that? “The Sword of Gryffindor can do it, Dumbledore used it on one of them, a ring, I think, but it’s at the school and we can’t get it.”
Everything about this mission was just so poorly conceived Harry sort of wanted to use the Stone, call Dumbledore’s spirit, and spend a therapeutic hour or two verbally abusing the old fart.
He wouldn’t, but he wanted to.
Time to get to the crux of the issue. “What do you want from me?” Harry asked them.
Parvati looked up and met his eyes. “I told the boys I was going to go home and get food and money, maybe polyjuice, from my sister. I… I can’t go back. I don’t want to go on. They’re just—they’re wrong. I don’t know if You-Know-Who is really running things like they say he is but there’s no purges! There’s no mass murder or—or Muggleborn registration or—I happen to agree that the enclaves are wonderful, there’s an actual election and as far as anyone can tell it’s a fair one, there’s a Muggleborn favorite for Minister—they’re just wrong.” Silent tears ran down her face but her voice was steady. “I agreed to help Jules defeat a monster, not… not persecute the first people to actually try to do something positive with our government in forever. I didn’t sign up to watch my friends become murderers in a war no one else is actually fighting. I don’t want my parents to go on thinking I’ve vanished.”
Harry nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Parvati said.
“Okay. I’ll help you. But you’re going to have to play ball,” Harry said, “alright? You’re going to have to betray them. They are going to get caught. There will be consequences. I need you to understand that going into this.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I just… I’ll give memories, testify, all that.”
“In exchange for your testimony, I can get you clemency,” Harry said. “The accessory thing might stay on your record but not as a formal charge, just a note in your file, and it’ll be expunged after a few years or so, we’ll see what the prosecutors ask for. I can promise you Jules won’t go to Azkaban.”
She sniffled. “Why… why not?”
Harry glanced at Barty, who shrugged, and Theo, who frowned for a second in thought and then nodded.
“They aren’t wrong about some things,” Harry said, and pulled up the left sleeve of his flannel pyjama shirt.
Both Patils stiffened at the sight of the Dark Mark, black and dormant. “Fuck,” Padma whispered.
“We’re courting,” Barty announced. “The Dark Lord is rather like my adoptive father and is quite fond of Harry.”
“I am also, through a rather happy coincidence, the last Heir to the House of Gaunt, and consequently Slytherin,” Harry said with a thin smile. “Formally I am an ally and not a vassal. The House of Black is autonomous. I have, one might say, quite a lot of pull, and part of the bargain was that Jules be mine to deal with. I don’t want him hurt. Locked up somewhere he can’t get himself into trouble maybe, but not hurt.”
“And… Neville? Ron?”
“I can’t say.” Not for sure, but he could make a good guess, and knew his flat expression would communicate it wouldn’t be happy endings for either of them. The Dark Lord would want to make an example out of it: prove that no purebloods were above the law, even the scion of an ancient House like Longbottom, and that outright resistance to the point of killing law enforcement was not going to be tolerated. It was possible that either or both of them would be trotted out at a Death Eater meeting for some extrajudicial consequences as well.
Harry only had so much influence and the last person he planned to spend it on was a former friend who had betrayed him so thoroughly.
“Okay,” Parvati whispered. “Okay, I’ll… I accept your terms.”
“Kreacher?” Harry called, and the elf appeared with a crack, frowning at Parvati’s lank hair. “Prepare two guest rooms—one,” he amended, when Padma held up one finger, “with two beds. Show Miss Patil here the way and draw her a bath if she asks.”
“Yes, Master Harry.”
Parvati reached across the table, and after a moment’s hesitation, Harry extended his left hand. Parvati bent over it and pressed the Black signet ring to her forehead. “Thank you, my Lord.”
“Go,” Harry sighed.
“Master’s guest is following,” Kreacher barked at Parvati before waddling briskly out of the room. She stood, grabbing the last meat pie to take with her, and left with quiet steps.
Padma slumped a little. “Merlin, Harry. Thank you. I… thank you. I owe you a debt.”
Tempting, but, “No, you don’t,” Harry said. “You acted swiftly to save your sister’s life. She may owe you but as far as I’m concerned her confession settles any score between your House and mine.”
“Still. Thank you. I…” Padma wrapped her hands around her own teacup, and now that her sister was gone, she wasn’t trying so hard to be the strong one anymore; there was a faint tremble to the liquid inside it that belied her external composure. “When she showed up at our home, I thought—I can’t lose her. I can’t.”
“I understand.”
“Yeah,” Padma said with a bitter, unhappy smile, “I suppose you would, of all people. What are you going to do with him?”
Harry let his expression harden. “What I must.”
As soon as he shuffled Padma off to the room she and her sister would share, Harry started plotting. Barty had vanished through the Floo before Padma was all the way out of the kitchen; he came back within twenty minutes with Corban, Bellatrix, and Rookwood.
“What’s the emergency?” Corban drawled, sinking into a seat around the Blacks’ kitchen table like this was an everyday chat and not a crisis meeting at four in the morning. Harry had bothered to tug a robe on over his pyjamas but nothing more; Bellatrix was wearing a silk slip that could only be described as a negligee without a hint of self-consciousness; and Rookwood had on what was obviously a dressing robe. Corban was the only one of them dressed in normal street clothes.
Theo and Harry filled him in on the broad strokes. “I can bring them down,” Harry said, “but only if we get this exactly right.”
“Okay.” Corban was up and alert by now, eyes ticking over the parchments Harry and Theo had strewn over the table, marked up with notes. “Your plan? I assume you have one.”
“Correct. I wear a ward-burrowing tracker—courtesy of the Weasley twins—and take Patil’s portkey back to Potter and his lot. It’s a special one of I believe Dumbledore’s design. It works, but only if someone on the other end activates it.”
“And if they don’t?” Bellatrix said cannily.
“She brought some of their hair,” Harry said, “in an envelope. Couldn’t get blood, which would have been better, but I can track them with the hair, it’ll just take longer.”
Bellatrix nodded. Her eyes were bright with glee.
“How long does the tracker take to break their wards?” Corban said.
Theo answered; he’d helped create it. “Depends on the wards. A few seconds to a few minutes, I expect; they won’t have anything stronger than that, not on a temporary structure and without using a blood anchor, which Patil confirmed they don’t have.”
“It’s very simple. Ingeniously so.” Corban nodded. “You go in, tracker activates, we apparate to your location and apprehend the rebels.”
“Precisely.” Harry braced his hands on the table. “We’re doing it tomorrow, which means I need you two,” he pointed to Corban and Bellatrix, “to get together a strike team that has legal authority to make arrests and the training and good sense to stick to healable, nonlethal spells. Are we clear? No Carrows, no one like Wilkes, no one without some Merlin-cursed self control.”
Bellatrix pouted. “But—”
“No torture,” Harry repeated. “Okay? This is going to go to trial, dammit, and if they get up there and say under veritaserum that their arresting Aurors used the Cruciatus—”
“He’s right,” Corban said.
“Fine.”
Sometimes Bellatrix bore a disturbing resemblance to a very sadistic child.
“Why am I here?” Rookwood said.
“I need you to create the apparition anchor and tie it to the tracking spell,” Harry said. Apparition anchors were very hard to cast; he hadn’t gotten around to studying them, but Rookwood, a former Unspeakable, would know how. “Let’s get moving. They’ll get suspicious if they don’t hear from Patil sometime before noon today. We don’t have a lot of time.”
They scattered with gratifying alacrity. Barty pulled Harry into a kiss, murmured “It’s incredibly attractive when you order people around like that,” and jumped back into the Floo to report to Voldemort.
Harry and Theo set about their own preparations: dueling robes, Harry’s dual wands, protection runes drawn onto their hearts and the backs of their necks for speed and sure-footedness and clear thinking. Theo pulled Harry close when they were all dressed and looked at him for a long moment, fire-eyes to water. “You’re not allowed to die,” he said, low and fierce. “Do you understand me? They’ve proven a willingness to kill in cold blood. There’s every chance that they’ll do it again. You’re not allowed to die on me.”
“I won’t,” Harry said. “I—okay. Come here.”
They were already in his study; it was the work of seconds to extract the Invisibility Cloak, which settled into his hands with a shimmer, as if eager to be put to use.
Theo’s breath hitched. “Is that—”
“I stole it from James’ study,” Harry said. “It’s… I’ll explain later, why I’ve been sitting on it. But, look.” He swirled it around his shoulders and tugged up the hood, vanishing from sight.
“What the fuck,” Theo said, looking around wildly. “Harry, I can’t feel your Mark anymore. I can’t feel you at all.”
Harry pushed the hood back. “Really? How about now?”
“Yes.” Theo looked relieved, then worried. “Wait, take it off.”
Harry did, and Theo cast a weak tracking charm at him. When Harry pulled the Cloak back up Theo’s face grew troubled and Harry knew the Cloak had nullified the charm.
“That,” Harry said, “is a problem.”
“Use it if you have to. Do you hear me? We can let them get away if we must. Just don’t die.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “No dying. Got it.”
“You’re an arsehole.”
Harry smirked, and Theo groaned, and Harry clung to that moment of levity as he tucked the Cloak away in his pocket and led the way back downstairs.
Grimmauld Place’s kitchen had grown crowded with Death Eaters. Harry recognized most of them; several were older Slytherins and Ravenclaws he had known from his early Hogwarts years, including Wright, who winked at him. Draco, Iris, Everett, Hestia, and Flora had shown up as well, the five of them waiting in a group to one side, their Vipers rings and smiles glinting.
Corban called them all to attention and explained the plan. Harry waited, silent and patient, while they asked their questions and made their preparations. Rookwood had tied the apparition anchor into the tracking spell on Harry and Theo had woven the tracker into the ward-tunneler in Harry’s concealed pocket. The apparition anchor on this side was locked to a simple runestone but it had to be held to each of their foreheads while Rookwood muttered a quick incantation for it to work. It was time-consuming. Harry did his best not to get jittery as minutes ticked by. The sun was up, now, and Parvati told them the boys were expecting her back by midmorning.
At last everything was ready. Bellatrix, Corban, and Hestia would be leading three separate strikes, from the north, southeast, and southwest of Harry’s location. Theo and Draco would be with the Vipers on Hestia’s team. The anchor was set, everyone knew the plan, and they waited in their dueling robes with drawn wands while Harry picked up Parvati’s half of the portkey and flexed Grimmauld Place’s wards to allow all the different methods of magical egress that were about to happen.
He twisted the small metallic cylinder so that its two halves clicked. A buzz of magic shocked his fingers: it was definitely active.
Now to wait.
There was no way to know how long this was going to take. Theo and Barty were nearly vibrating with tension, standing so close they almost touched—
A hook sank into Harry’s navel and yanked. The kitchen vanished in an instant. He fixed his eyes on the portkey in his hand and determinedly ignored the sickening spinning feeling of portkey travel as the spell bored through spacetime and dragged him in its wake.
He hit the ground hard. Harry had gotten better with portkeys over the years but this one was either unusually powerful, badly made, or both: vertigo dumped him on his arse and it was a second before he could get it together enough to activate the ward-tunneler in his pocket. He felt it come to life with no small relief.
Only then did he look up.
Three wands aimed steadily at his face. “Harry?” Jules said, thunderstruck.
“Nice to see you too, little brother.” Harry climbed slowly to his feet. “Wow, you lot look terrible.”
“Fuck you,” said Weasley.
“That’s not very nice to someone who’s trying to save your arse,” Harry said conversationally. “Now—”
Neville moved.
Harry couldn’t quite cast a shield in time to deflect the spell; the best he could do was twist as it hit and ropes wrapped around him, so that his right hand was within reach of the pocket holding the Cloak and ward-tunneler.
No sense playing nice if they were going right to the restraints. “Damn, Nev, you’ve improved.”
Neville glared at him. “Ron, get his sleeve?”
Harry didn’t bother resisting as Weasley roughly worked his left sleeve up his arm underneath the ropes. Nor did he react to their sounds of horror and disgust at the sight of the Dark Mark.
“Harry,” Jules whispered.
Neville was the first to move. He grabbed the front of Harry’s robes and hauled him in close. “I really thought you might not have gone that far, but you really don’t give a toss, do you? You sick fuck.”
“Careful, Nev, Barty might not like you getting in my space,” Harry said with every ounce of cruelty he had.
Neville reeled back as if struck. His face had gone ashy pale. “Fuck you. I can’t believe I—just—fuck you.”
“Oh, he does,” Harry said with a coldly suggestive smile.
“Harry, what’s wrong with you?” Jules said. “Are they—is it the Imperius? What do they have on you? Tell me it’s something.”
“He’s not being forced,” Neville snarled, back turned to their little group.
“I’m not.” Harry turned his mean smile on Jules now. “Not even a little bit. This?” He flexed his left arm as much as he could within the ropes. “Best decision I’ve made in years.”
Jules made a sound as though he wanted to be sick, and jerked away, striding for the tent Harry could see some twenty feet away.
“Watch him,” Neville said tightly to Weasley, and followed him.
Weasley scowled at Harry. “If you so much as move a finger I’ll put you on the ground.”
“Could you anyway? My legs are falling asleep.” The ward-tunneler was maybe halfway through. Their wards were stronger than Theo’s estimates. Something not quite fear thumped behind Harry’s rib cage.
Weasley spat at him and took a step back. “Stand, then, arsehole.”
He was glancing nervously between Harry and the other two every few seconds. Harry cast a silent, wandless amplius auri, and filtered the resulting influx of sensory information with the ease of long practice.
Jules and Neville’s conversation swam into comprehension. “—keep him,” Neville said. “We don’t have enough food as it is.”
“Yes… but…”
“Jules, come on! You saw that. You can’t keep telling me you believe he’s just being forced into this!”
There was a pause. “No,” Jules said miserably, “I don’t.”
“So why aren’t you—”
“He’s my brother. Fuck, Nev…”
Neville put a hand on Jules’ shoulder. “He was my brother too.”
Harry had heard enough. He ended the spell and thought quickly.
Weasley wasn’t paying close enough attention. He thought Harry immobile, disabled. Harry could blind him with water vapour long enough to cut the ropes and put the Cloak on. It wouldn’t be hard. He had to do it imminently, before Jules and Neville came back, but—
If he did, the ward-tunneler would fail. It was so close to done. If he put on the Cloak the tracking spell wouldn’t work, and the Death Eaters and Aurors wouldn’t come, and this whole plan would fail.
Harry didn’t plan to fail.
Merlin, it was tempting, though. The Cloak almost sang to him from his pocket. Maybe he wasn’t imagining that. Maybe it was like the wand and the stone. Maybe it wanted to be used.
It wanted him to pull it on. Disappear. Run.
Ignotus Peverell had stolen years of his life from Death with this cloak, in the legend. Harry could steal back some years, maybe, if he put it on right now—but in doing so he would cost himself the culmination of a year of planning. Jules would get away. Neville would get away—
He kept his hands where they were and blocked out the Cloak’s tempting murmurs.
Neville turned decisively on his heel, and that was it, window of opportunity closed. Harry steeled himself.
His twin and his former brother in all but blood came to a halt in front of him, Neville’s face cold, Jules’ anguished. “We can’t let you live,” Neville said. “We know it’s been you making all of—all of this happen.”
“And what if it has?” Harry said with a taunting smile. “What have I done that’s so evil? Opened the way for more enclaves? Extended financial opportunity to Muggleborns and impoverished wixenborn? Single-handedly reshaped the Wizengamot, ousted a sitting Minister, and orchestrated his replacement in the freest and best-attended election of the last hundred years? I really don’t see how that’s any worse than you lot cheerfully murdering law enforcement officers just doing their jobs.”
Weasley made a small noise. “What?”
Maybe he could stall them. “Parvati told me everything. All those ‘Snatchers’? They’re adjunct Aurors. Not vile mercenaries or… secret police or whatever it is you thought. But you didn’t even stop to check, did you? You never even wondered who it was you were killing. You never questioned if it was right.”
“No,” Jules said. “No, that’s not—you’re lying. They’ve been targeting Muggleborns, the Order—”
“Yes, the Order, those people who have been organizing assaults and robberies targeted against the members of the Wizengamot, attempted to sabotage multiple new enclaves, and committed arson in Holyhead in response to an enclave expansion. Those are all, you might notice, crimes.”
Not that it was that clear-cut, but, well. It served his purposes.
“It’s You-Know-Who,” Neville spat. “Don’t listen, you guys. This is what he does. He lies,” Neville locked eyes with Harry, “and he convinces you that he cares, that he’s right, that he knows what he’s doing. He twists any situation to benefit him. You can’t trust him.”
“Never trust a Black,” Jules said softly.
“That’s right.” Neville was closer now. The tip of his wand hovered just over Harry’s heart. Interesting, Harry thought distantly. He would have expected the forehead. “He’s a Death Eater. And the only good Death Eater…”
“Is a dead Death Eater,” Weasley finished.
Neville pressed his wand to Harry’s chest. “Any last words?”
“I’m not afraid to die,” Harry said softly. “Are you?”
Neville opened his mouth.
A ripple of cracks rocked the forest. Neville spun away, falling into a dueling crouch, but Harry had felt the wards fall and was already moving. Water vapour spun into a tornado that surrounded Neville, blinding him and distracting him with suddenly sodden clothes; it was all the opening Harry needed to rip the ropes from his body with a burst of wandless magic and summon both of his wands into his hands.
It was over in a matter of seconds. None of the three fugitives got off more than a couple spells; surrounded by three well-trained teams, each wielding shields and stunners with deadly accuracy, they fell like trees in a hurricane.
“Well,” Harry said, kicking the last of the ropes away from his feet. “You lot have impeccable timing.”
<>
How had they broken the wards? It should have been impossible. Jules was numb. Seven hours alone in a holding cell and he still couldn’t bring himself to believe that that had really happened.
It wasn’t the torture dungeon he’d been expecting but it wasn’t a palace either. Just four stone walls, a wooden floor, a thin cot and a toilet, all of it blanketed in magic suppression so thick he felt like he was breathing molasses. Jules had spent the first several hours pacing and therefore knew its exact dimensions: five strides long, four across.
He couldn’t stop obsessively replaying what had happened. Trying to figure out where they went wrong. Letting Parvati go obviously had been dumb but how were they supposed to tell her she couldn’t go to her sister for help? She’d been so sure Padma wouldn’t betray them that Jules hadn’t even thought to wonder if Parvati might. And she had, Jules knew that much, because Harry hadn’t just stolen her portkey and followed it and somehow managed to shatter their wards without a word or a wand, from the inside. Oh no. Harry had also, once the Death Eaters showed up, taken the locket off of Ron’s unconscious body and pocketed it without a word.
Parvati had told him. It was the only explanation.
The door rattled. Jules was on his feet in a second, back pressed flat to the wall just to the side of the door. If he could just get a wand—
“Nice try, Potter. Hands, now,” someone said. “Stick ‘em out where I can see them and come out slowly.”
Fat chance. Jules stayed where he was.
The same someone heaved a sigh. “Alright, if you want to do it that way. Vertiginus maximus.”
Dizziness hit Jules like a bludger. He staggered, and then slid halfway down the wall, trying to keep his feet. It was just a basic dizziness hex, why couldn’t he—
Hands, on his arms, pulling them behind his back and fastening them in what felt like thick metal bracelets. “Finite,” the voice drawled lazily, and Jules shoved himself furiously to his feet as it drained away.
He found himself nose-to-nose with a wand held by the smirking face of Barty Crouch Jr.
“You,” Jules snarled. This was the sick fuck who was—who was with Harry. This was the piece of shit who—
“Me,” Crouch agreed. “Come along, we haven’t time to waste.”
“On a deadline to get me off to your torture chamber?” Jules taunted.
Crouch laughed and shoved Jules so that he stumbled and had to start walking or fall. His skin prickled having Crouch behind him. “Torture chamber? Did you forget about the rule of law? You’re going to trial, Potter.”
That couldn’t be right. They were letting him have a trial? Jules felt a surge of hope and tried not to believe it too much. The trial would probably be rigged. But maybe, if he could just get one shot at speaking freely, maybe he could—
“In here,” Crouch said, prodding Jules with his wand so that Jules turned into another, larger room down the corridor from his cell. Inside it were the first people other than Crouch that he had seen since his cell opened: a brown-haired, bored-looking wizard, Harry, that rotten wanker Nott, and—Jules’ stomach twisted. And Ron, tired, wide-eyed, but fine. Not tortured. Not dead. Just cuffed like Jules was and silenced, too, he had to be, or else Ron would be talking right now if Jules knew him at all.
“Sit.” Crouch shoved Jules towards an empty seat across from Harry. He did, not taking his eyes off Ron the entire time.
Harry tapped his fingers on the table. “I’m over here, Julian. Don’t look at him. He can’t help you right now.”
“The fuck do you want?” Jules said through gritted teeth.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t want to obey. Jules didn’t know if it was magic or just the flat, absolute command in Harry’s voice that made him do so anyway. He looked.
Harry might as well have been carved from marble. There wasn’t a hair out of place on his head or a wrinkle to be seen on his expensive tailored robes. His face was utterly expressionless, and his eyes—Jules shivered. His eyes were an unnatural shade of toxic, poison green, the color seeming to almost ripple behind his glasses. And he must not have been able to resist rubbing it in Jules’ face, because his robes were sleeveless, the bloody Dark Mark shamelessly on display.
He looked like a Death Eater. He looked nothing like Jules.
“That’s better,” Harry said. “Here’s how this is going to go. You are going to sign this contract.” Crouch slapped a scroll of Gringotts parchment down in front of Jules and flicked his wand so that it unrolled.
Jules didn’t look at it. “You lot already sent me a contract. I’m not signing it anymore now than last year.”
“Oh, you think this is the same one?” Nott said with a cold laugh that made Jules’ arm hair stand up. “That’s cute.”
Harry smiled faintly. “This is not the same contract. It is in fact much more stringent. You’ll have to forgive me—I wasn’t able to negotiate nearly such generous terms, not after everything you’ve done since the first offer.”
“You…”
“Of course it was me.” Harry laid a blood quill down next to the scroll. “You might want to read before signing.”
Reluctantly, Jules looked down and began to read the contract. Maybe…
His horror grew with every word. They couldn’t mean this. Could they?
Jules looked up, at Harry and then Nott, who had casually propped an elbow on Harry’s shoulder. Both of them were watching Jules with predatory expressions. And then there was Crouch, leaning on the table to Jules’ right, like he hoped Jules would try to escape; and the unknown fourth man, probably another Death Eater, who still hadn’t said a word.
This was serious. They meant this.
Just to be sure, Jules read to the end. Then he shoved it roughly away from him. “You’re fucking delusional if you think I’m signing that.”
“Why not? I think it’s more than fair, considering,” Crouch said.
“Are you nuts? This—I’d be trapped on some property in the middle of nowhere, I’d only be able to talk to people you approved,” this to Harry, “I’d lose my magic if I ever raised a wand against Vol– You-Know-Who, and I’d have to have a kid and let you have custody? Not a fucking chance.”
“Oh, I was hoping you’d say that,” Nott said.
Harry made a thoughtful humming sound. “Give us the room, please?”
The brown-haired man got to his feet, yanking Ron along after him. Ron’s blue eyes turned back towards Jules once, desperately, before he was gone. Nott brushed his hand across Harry’s shoulders as he followed.
“I’ll be fine,” Harry said to Crouch, who lingered.
Crouch nodded once. Then he looked down at Jules and there was nothing human in his face as he said, “If you harm him, rule of law becomes a thing of the past, and you’ll belong to me. Keep that in mind.”
Jules couldn’t stop a shudder from rolling down his spine. Crouch saw it, and smirked, before blowing Harry a mocking kiss and following the others out.
The door clicked shut again and Harry sighed. “Muffliato. Alright, Jules, what the fuck are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?” Jules said loudly. “What the fuck are you thinking? Unless—are you spying? Is this like Snape?”
“Merlin.” Harry’s mask cracked a little and he pinched the bridge of his nose the way Jules had seen him do a hundred times before. “No, I’m not a spy. I mean, seriously, turning down the best offer you’re going to get? It’s this or Azkaban, and not the nice parts of it either.”
“I’d rather go to prison than give up,” Jules snarled. He leaned across the table. “Harry, I know you’re on the right track—I know you took the locket from Ron—you have to find them. Snape has Gryffindor’s sword, if you can get it it’ll destroy them, there’s the locket and then Hufflepuff’s cup, I think, and Ravenclaw’s diadem, and the snake. He’s not invincible. He’s just a man, and he can be killed, you have to understand…”
He trailed off as a cold and ugly expression warped Harry’s features. “Oh, really? Horcruxes? Wow, I never would have known if you didn’t tell me.”
“Wait, you—you know?”
“Of course I know,” Harry said tightly. “Doesn’t matter how. You’re not going to convince me to turn. You’re not going to change my mind. You can either sign that contract or we’ll make you.”
“You can torture me. I won’t break.” He wouldn’t. Jules would rather die of a curse or go crucio-mad than give in. If he signed that contract, that was it, this was over.
Harry studied him. Then something shuttered and he was just as cold and closed-off as he’d been before. Jules tried to bite back the sudden feeling of having made a mistake. “Yes,” Harry said slowly, “you will. Because if you don’t, I’ll kill your pet weasel. And if you say no twice, I’ll kill you.”
“I can’t die,” Jules said. “Not until the prophecy is fulfilled. Neither can live while the other survives, remember?”
“If you think the prophecy gives you some kind of mystical invulnerability, you’re wrong,” Harry said. “Prophecies aren’t fixed points. It isn’t a guarantee. You can be defeated.”
Jules stared at him and tried to think of a way out, but—he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
“Jules,” Harry said, leaning forward with his elbows braced on the table. “Jules, please. I’m trying to keep you alive and out of Azkaban. Just… work with me.”
“Wanting me alive doesn’t excuse that.” Jules gestured at the hateful brand on his brother’s arm.
“I don’t care what you think of my choices. I just refuse to watch you die for yours.”
“I thought I’d be going to trial and then Azkaban.”
Harry made a tiny, frustrated sound. “Azkaban for life. That’s a death sentence and you know it.”
“For life? Right, that’s justice, going away on a life sentence for running away—”
“No, for murder.” Harry slapped a file down on the table and opened it with tightly controlled motions. Inside was a stack of photographs that he began laying out in front of Jules one after another after another.
At first Jules didn’t realize… but then he saw one bloke, with a distinctive shock of cornflower-blond hair, and he knew they were the Snatchers.
“Erika Kynes,” Harry said, tapping one photograph at random, of a thin-faced witch. “Melissa Dalloway. Catsar O’Neil.”
Jules closed his eyes.
“Coward,” Harry said. “At least have enough fucking respect to look at them.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Jules said through numb lips.
“No. No, you just sat back while Ron and Neville did, right? Up until that last day, when you finally ‘helped’ them clean up your mess?” Harry laughed even though it wasn’t at all funny. “The vaunted Boy Who Lived, reduced to a common felon. You won’t have to worry about telling your kids their uncle is a criminal.” Jules flinched. “You’ve already consigned every one of Ron’s siblings to that fate. Because you dragged their brother off on your stupid crusade. Because you couldn’t be arsed to even ask questions about who you were murdering.”
Jules flinched back.
He didn’t want to think it. Hadn’t wanted to. But he couldn’t deny—
He looked.
Their eyes accused him. Two dozen people, all dead because of him. And it was his fault. He’d been the leader. They had followed him off into the wilderness to hunt horcruxes. Ron and Neville faced life in Azkaban because of him.
If he signed the contract, he’d be alive. Alive was better than dead because if Jules was dead then no one could defeat Voldemort, not according to the prophecy. And… could he really let Ron die because he refused to do this?
No. He couldn’t. Jules had done enough to them. At least if he signed it, he would be alive, Ron and Neville would be alive. Maybe what was left of the Order could break them out. They knew enough about the horcruxes that… with enough work, and time…
All wasn’t lost. As long as they lived, there was hope.
It hurt. Every part of him hurt as he reached for the blood quill. Jules closed his eyes and signed his name.
Sealed his fate.
<>
Dealing with Jules was easy compared to the problem of one Neville Longbottom. Especially since it had to be Harry to come up with the solution.
They had already been tried, the case whipping through the Wizengamot in a blaze of public outcry and press circuses. No one wanted to drag it out in the chaos of Hazel Laurens’ transition to the Minister’s office. Jules hadn’t even taken the stand. One of the contract stipulations was that he turn over a signed confession and sit through a formal deposition under truth charms. Between his evidence and Parvati’s tearful witness testimony, Ron and Neville’s public defenders could do no more than argue for reduced sentences, which neither of them was given.
However, once they were out of the Ministry… anything could happen.
“He wants an example,” Barty had said into the darkness of their bedroom. “He’s going to use Longbottom.”
The darkness now was not nearly so absolute—light from the hallway filtered into what amounted to a large closet, where Harry had secluded himself—but it felt heavy. Tonight was the first mass Death Eater meeting since the trial and the election, and it was time, as Barty put it, to set an example.
Someone tapped on the door and then nudged it open. “Harry?”
“Yeah.”
Theo stepped in and sat down next to him. “This is going to suck.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do?”
Harry nodded once.
“You know I can do it for you,” Theo whispered. “My hands are yours. My wand yours to cast with. I can do it.”
“I know.” Harry shifted over so their shoulders touched and leaned his head against Theo’s. “And if it were private, maybe… but this is going to be a show. You know Wilkes and Jugson would love to knock me down a peg. If I don’t do this myself… and on some level I even want to.” His voice darkened. “He’s a fucking traitor.”
“But you still don’t want to have to do it. I know. Just… remember, when it’s over, we’ll all go home and you never have to see him again.”
Harry sighed. “I assume you came to find me because it’s time?”
“Yeah. Meeting’s about to start. I think they’re expecting you to make a bit of a grand entrance.”
“Well, I would hate to disappoint,” Harry said. He allowed himself two more breaths of weakness and then levered himself up to his feet with a cool mask of disinterest settling over him. “Alright. Let’s go.”
By the time Theo got up, he too had tucked away all his vulnerability behind a devil-may-care smirk and fiery eyes. He walked at Harry’s left shoulder and a half a pace back as they strode down the corridor towards the room in Malfoy Manor where most Death Eater meetings were held. Their shoes rapped loudly against the marble and Harry knew, even over the low murmur of voices coming from the door up ahead, that their approach would be heard.
Good.
He and Theo swept into the room without an ounce of hesitation. “Evening,” Harry said pleasantly. “Bit early for that, isn’t it?” he added, nodding to Spencer, who’d already popped open a bottle of firewhiskey for the younger Death Eaters by the foot of the table.
“Never too early for a shot. Join us!”
Harry shook his head with a grin. “Maybe next time.”
“Black’s got a traitor to punish,” someone called from further up the table, to a ripple of laughter and jeers.
“I prefer a steady wand tonight,” Harry agreed. He didn’t laugh and the people nearest him paled and looked down.
Harry’s seat, unlike most other newly Marked, was towards the head of the table, only two places from the Dark Lord. Barty sat at his adoptive father’s left hand and Harry next to Barty, as his promised. Theo, as yet unbound by even a formal courting period, sat with his father a bit farther down.
The Dark Lord himself was absent, as were Lucius and Bellatrix, who typically sat in the places immediately to the Dark Lord’s right—Bellatrix because she was his favorite and Lucius because he was the Lord of the manor in which they gathered. Harry knew where they were, and braced himself. It wouldn’t be long now.
Barty pressed his foot to Harry’s under the table in silent comfort.
Harry ended up not having to worry about whether or how to engage in conversation with the other Death Eaters: the double doors that typically led to the ballroom slammed open and the Dark Lord stalked into the room. Everyone rose and bowed in unison; as he straightened, Harry caught sight of Neville, walking between Lucius and Bellatrix. His hair hung greasy over his forehead but his Azkaban jumpsuit was clean and if there had been any physical damage they had healed it. Most likely he’d been silenced too, or else, judging from the most twisted hatred Harry had ever seen on Neville’s face, he’d be screaming insults at them.
“Sit,” Voldemort said, waving a hand. They settled back down into their seats, except Bellatrix, who remained standing behind Neville with a manic smile.
“We are gathered here today,” said Voldemort in sibilant tones, “to settle a number of logistical matters, but first… there is a spot of discipline to mete out.” He waited while a few jeers from the foot of the table died down. “We have recently triumphed over the so-called Chosen One, Julian Potter, who many believed would be my downfall—”
“That scrawny prat?” someone yelled mockingly, to quickly stifled laughter.
Through it all, Harry sat stone-faced.
“I don’t believe any have ever claimed the Order of the Phoenix and their associates to be logical,” Barty drawled.
“Just so. At any rate, Mr. Potter’s little resistance has now been nullified, thanks to the cunning and foresight of our very own Lord Black.” Voldemort turned eyes like a banked fire on Harry. “And we captured a certain blood traitor in the bargain. Would you care to do the honors?”
“It would be my genuine pleasure, my Lord,” Harry said.
Every Marked Death Eater was in attendance today, save one or two who had been excused to see to other duties. Their eyes were heavy on Harry, and the room hummed with anticipation, as he stood and walked around the head of the table to where Bellatrix stood by the side entrance.
“Thank you, Bella,” he said courteously.
“Of course, my Lord,” she all but purred, and kicked the back of Neville’s legs so he fell to his knees with a thump. “He’s all yours.”
Neville glared up at him from his knees. His hate was a brand, burning, but it didn’t land. Harry was ice. Invulnerable.
The ash and elder wands were alive at Harry’s wrists, both ready and eager, but… perhaps not too soon.
If the Death Eaters expected a show, then Harry could deliver.
Hands conspicuously empty, Harry tilted his head, and smiled. Neville’s hate began to morph into fear. You think you know what I’m capable of, Harry thought, almost amused, and then with a twist of water magic he drew vapour from the air and thickened it until Neville’s throat and lungs filled with liquid.
Neville choked and gasped. A murmur went up behind Harry but he paid it no mind. This was a delicate balance, one he had practiced a few times on small mammals but never a person, controlling just enough water to give the sensation of drowning but not so much that his victim actually died. Neville jerked and tried to scramble away; Harry flexed one hand, and pinned him in place with the wandless magic that had been his salvation as a child, that he had once trusted Neville to see.
Hyperventilation set in within a minute. It would make the feeling of drowning worse. Harry backed off a bit and then just when Neville was on the edge of calm he flooded his bronchial tree again. Mild oxygen deprivation would be affecting him now. Sapping energy until Neville’s head grew light and his muscles weak.
Real justice, Harry thought with sudden savagery, would be drowning Neville in the Chamber and abandoning his body to rot in the deep tunnels below Hogwarts, never to be seen again.
This would have to suffice.
An idea came to him. Harry narrowed his eyes and concentrated just enough to freeze tiny particles of the water as Neville gasped and hacked and failed to breathe. Then he pulled it up and out of Neville’s mouth in one last rush, the minute ice particles tearing at sensitive alveoli and tracheal lining, and banishing the puddle of water back to water vapour with a wave of his hand.
Freed from Harry’s magic, Neville slumped to the ground, breathing raggedly. Blood flecked the corners of his mouth. The Death Eaters were completely silent now and Harry, with his back to them, allowed himself a coldly self-satisfied smile. Most of them would never have seen what he could do when pushed. The likes of Wilkes and Jugson thought him an inexperienced child, a lordling afraid to dirty his hands, a thinker, true, but no one to fear. Certainly a few of them harbored stronger feelings about blood purity than Voldemort or the new regime generally and would have underestimated Harry for his halfblood status.
Not a one of them, Harry would bet, was capable of that level of wandless magic.
“Is he dead?” someone asked.
“No,” Harry said without turning. “That was just a… warm-up, as it were.”
Neville had got himself somewhat under control. He looked a little shaky, but he’d wiped the blood away and hauled himself upright, glaring up at Harry. Let me talk, he mouthed furiously, and then, you owe me.
Harry nearly laughed. “I’m not interested in the words of a traitor to me and mine,” he said, and then, with a quiet snick, the ash wand fell into his left hand. “Maybe I do owe you something, Neville, but it certainly isn’t consideration.” He raised his voice so the whole room could hear. “For those of you who don’t know, Longbottom’s parents have been consigned to St. Mungo’s for the last fifteen years, due to unfortunate and somewhat unforeseen consequences of the blood price enacted against them by Bellatrix Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange, and Bartemius Crouch for the death of Rabastan Lestrange in nineteen eighty-one. I’m pleased to inform you all that a recent addition to the St. Mungo’s staff was able to determine that the cause of the Longbottoms’ illness was not exposure to the Cruciatus Curse but an extremely rare and difficult application of mind magic.”
Neville paled.
“It was most likely cast,” Harry said, speaking to the room but looking steadily at Neville, drinking in his former friend’s growing horror, “by the late Albus Dumbledore, who, I am sure, didn’t want the Longbottoms able to continue working against him. You see, he had already learned by then that they were negotiating with the Dark Lord for neutrality. They wanted,” and here he smiled at Neville, “to keep their infant son, Neville Longbottom, safe.”
Murmurs of surprise swept the Death Eaters and then fell silent again. Harry turned his head slightly; Voldemort was watching, one hand idly stroking Nagini’s head, and appeared perfectly content to let Harry’s theatre play itself out.
“I’m pleased to announce that the Longbottoms are expected to make a full recovery,” Harry said. Neville let out a tiny, choked-off sound, his hands shaking, all the hate drained out of him. “Such a pity that they won’t ever get to see you, Nev. But they’re young. They can have another child.”
Neville’s mouth twisted into a silent scream and he flung himself forward. But he was weak, his body still recovering from several minutes of half-drowning, and Harry stepped aside easily, letting Neville fly past him and crash back to the floor.
“Ouch,” said Barty. Several Death Eaters laughed.
Harry knelt and pressed the tip of his wand to the soft tissue under Neville’s jaw and lifted until their eyes met. “I wasn’t sure what to do with you,” he said softly. “But then I was looking over your parents’ case, and I had a stroke of inspiration. Surely you’ve heard of the Binding of al-Mardini?”
Neville froze. Barty, who knew an absurd amount of weird niche enchantments, laughed.
“Explain, if you would,” Voldemort said, “for the less educated of your brethren?”
“Of course, my Lord. Apologies.” Harry lifted his gaze from Neville to the table of Death Eaters. “Scholars of medicine and magical history will know of Masawaih al-Mardini, pharmacologist and physician who lived in the tenth century. Among other medical advancements, he pioneered the art of binding an ill witch or wizard’s magic, so that they could not harm themselves with uncontrolled magical outbursts. It remains in the standard healer’s arsenal as a last-resort spell for the terminally or chronically ill. And it has been used to soothe Alice and Frank Longbottom since their hospitalization, though I expect it will have been lifted now that they have at last begun to heal.”
“Poetic,” said Corban with a lazy smile. The Death Eaters watched with eyes that glittered in the witchlight, eager and still, like a pack of hyenas.
“I thought so,” Harry agreed, and then in a flash he moved his wand from under Neville’s chin to just over his heart, the tip pressing brutally between his fourth and fifth ribs.
The incantation for this binding was long, complicated, and entirely in Classical Arabic. Theo was better with the language than Harry, and had helped with the hours of practice needed to understand its contents and master the pronunciation. It flowed effortlessly from his throat and tongue now like water running downhill.
A distant part of Harry thought this should be hard. It wasn’t.
Taking Neville’s magic from him was the easiest thing in the world.
Harry stepped back when he was done, and turned to Voldemort with as bland an expression as he could muster. “He is barely more than a Squib now, my Lord. Certainly no threat to us.”
“I think we ought not allow him visitors,” mused Voldemort, with a glance towards Corban, who nodded: as chief of the Auror Corps he had enormous influence over the prison’s regulations. “Words can be as dangerous as magic. Best not allow him the chance to try and muster support from his cell.”
“It will be done,” Corban said.
Harry knelt so he and Neville were face to face and cast a muffliato with a flick of the ash wand. “Do you remember, when we were children, how you believed yourself a squib? I gave you power, Neville. I gave you love and loyalty. The Vipers were your family. You betrayed all of us when you turned on me. Now you reap the consequences.” He studied Neville carefully: his old friend’s face was as easy to read as ever, angry and afraid and broken. “You should thank me, really. At least, unlike you, I chose to be merciful.”
“Bellatrix, if you would,” Voldemort said, and that was Harry’s cue.
He dispelled the muffliato and rose. “I won’t see you again. Enjoy Azkaban,” he said, and then stepped away, nodding to Bellatrix as they passed each other.
The meeting dragged on for nearly another hour. Harry heard little of it. He wouldn’t have thought he could feel soothed and lacerated all at once. Neville had been his friend. His brother in all but blood. Until he wasn’t, because of Harry’s own choices. Harry would not—could not regret what he had done. He would never regret Barty, he thought, as their hands found each other under the table, Barty running a thumb soothingly along Harry’s knuckles. It calmed some cold part of Harry’s heart to have exacted retribution against a traitor. And yet, to have done that to someone he once called family—
Was the human heart always so contradictory? Even occluding couldn’t entirely dull the conflicting emotions. Or, at least, not without a risk of causing himself permanent harm.
Barty was all that kept him together until at last they were done giving the Dark Lord their reports and could return home. Theo knew as well as Barty that Harry’s collected mein was a mask, and came with them; and though neither he nor Barty tried to talk about it, their quiet presence was enough of an anchor.
That night, Harry slept deeply, and didn’t dream.
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