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Made of Common Clay	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 10987 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twelve—Seen the Heavens Opening
“Couldn’t you have avoided this duel?” Hermione sighs. Her head is barely visible behind the enormous tome open in front of her, a book that Harry found in a hidden cache in the walls of Grimmauld Place. The tome is bound in black, crinkled leather, and a scrap of the skin falls off as Harry watches. “It’s going to accelerate some of our plans, and you know I wanted to wait.”
“I didn’t choose it, Parkinson did. And you know that we’re ready. You just want to wait and test the spells again.”
“Of course I do! It’s their lives on the line if I don’t, not mine!”
Harry turns away from the mirror in front of him. They’re in Grimmauld Place by necessity, since the book can’t be removed from it. “Hermione,” he says softly, and Hermione blinks and glances at him. Harry reaches out and clasps her hand where it rests on top of the book.
“You know they’re ready. They wouldn’t have given you that petition signed in their blood and magic if they weren’t.”
Hermione blinks and swallows and looks down at the shiny ebony table underneath the book. The book almost covers that, too. “But they’re still the ones who’ll pay the price if I get it wrong.”
“I know. But they’re willing to take that chance.”
“I—Harry, is there any way you can avoid killing Parkinson? You know that the magic to get rid of the bonds he has will be easier if he’s alive. The bonds are going to writhe and change when the magic shifts to Pansy.”
“Not that much,” Harry says, holding her gaze, challenging her to think. “Yeah, the magic transfers from person to person when the head of the family changes, but that’s only because someone’s died. The idea that it matters that much and everything changes because of the blood is pure-blood propaganda.”
Hermione grimaces. “But it still changes, and I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
“I know. But you know that he’ll make it to the death. I could try all I like to avoid killing him and it wouldn’t work.”
“I do know.” Hermione reaches out and puts a hand over his. “All right. Do what you need to do, to survive. I’ll continue setting this up, and when the morning dawns that we can actually cast it…”
Harry grins. He knows it’s a bloodthirsty one, but Hermione is giving its mirror back to him, so it’s not like she minds. “Every pure-blood in Britain who prides themselves on a certain level of tradition is going to be so surprised.”
*
“I wanted to give you a few minutes in privacy with your parents, Potter, to tell them that you’ll be joining them soon.”
Harry turns around from looking at his parents’ graves. Atlas is standing there, sneering at him. Pansy is behind him, and both Malfoys, and Honeywell, and a handful of other people from the Sun Chamber come to witness the duel. The only person who came to join Harry is Ron. He leans on the fence of the graveyard, watching silently.
“I said all I need to say to them years ago. They understand.” And they do. Even though Harry would still like to know some things, like how much his father had been trained for the Sun Chamber and whether he would have refused the Lordship, he’s made his peace. He drops his cloak on the ground and faces Atlas in the nondescript black robes he favors for dueling—his one concession to Kingsley’s concerns is that he won’t wear scarlet Auror robes when he does this. “Are you ready?”
“Where is your sense of ceremony? Of course we will declare the terms we’re dueling on, and then we bow to each other…”
Atlas is practically spluttering, but Harry, his body balanced and calm and his eyes locked on the man’s face, knows the reason he’s spluttering isn’t some indignation about Harry “neglecting the ceremonies.” He’s afraid.
“If you want to do that, we can. Why did you challenge me to this duel?”
“To avenge the insult that your existence represents for me and my daughter.” Atlas drops his own cloak into Pansy’s hands. Her face is utterly expressionless, so Harry has no idea what she thinks about him dueling her father. Atlas steps towards Harry and begins to circle. Harry turns to match him. “To avenge the insult that giving a Lordship to a half-blood represents.”
“Two Lordships,” Harry points out helpfully. He studies the way Atlas shuffles, the sureness of his movements. He could be a dangerous opponent if he was younger and Harry not so well-trained.
Atlas’s face darkens, but he jerks his head down. “My Lord Black, my Lord Potter,” he says mockingly. “Are you ready to bow?”
“Yes,” Harry says, and inclines his neck in the formal dueler’s bow that he perfected a long time ago with those criminals who think it’s some kind of honor to formally face the Boy-Who-Lived. Because his neck is so closely parallel to the ground, he can do it without actually taking his eyes off his foe.
Atlas does the same, though his head bows a little more. And then he springs up and hurls a curse towards Harry that would shatter every bone in his body if it hit. Harry moves aside like a dancer, and it shatters a gravestone instead.
“Lord Parkinson! The witnesses—”
Dimly, Harry can hear Ron reassuring Honeywell that they’ve already set up the wards that will keep any curses from spinning outwards and hitting the people who came to watch, but he can’t take his gaze away from Atlas. His blood is dimming the world, his heart a steady pounding in his ears that he wants to keep pounding. As always happens when he duels, his focus narrows and intensifies.
He can feel every step Atlas makes, every winded breath he gasps long before Harry begins really casting. He is Atlas. He knows his strengths, his weaknesses, how to kill him.
But he doesn’t want to do it too soon. That would frighten people—well, the other Lords and Ladies in the Sun Chamber—and tell them too much about him, about his magic and how strong he is. So Harry plays instead.
He casts a Tripping Jinx that Atlas only partially avoids, so that he’s hopping on one foot for a second as he makes his way past one of the gravestones. Harry aims at the hopping foot, and the ground underneath it turns to water. With a small splash, Atlas soaks his robes up to a few inches from the hem.
Silence for a second. His face turns puce. Harry honestly wonders if he’ll die from a heart attack before they can finish the duel.
Then Atlas roars and charges him.
Harry slips out of the way, his breath and heartbeat still twinned with Atlas’s, still telling him exactly what to do. He aims his wand, and this time a subtle twist of a spell catches the wet robe itself, and tangles it around Atlas’s feet. This time, Atlas measures full-length in the grass and plastic flowers in front of one grave. Harry stifles a snicker as one of the petals on the plastic flowers scratches his cheek.
“Stand and fight like a man, Lord Potter!” Atlas scrambles up. His eyes are hot and his wand is waving so fast that it blurs in the air. He casts nonverbally, and Harry only knows what the curse coming towards him does and how to shield himself from it because he once saw a Dark wizard use it on him.
Harry spent a week in hospital afterwards. He’s not about to let it happen again.
Instead, he inclines his wand lazily, and a shield springs up in front of him, one made of spinning, silvery, transparent blades. They chop the curse apart, coming down one right after another, and continuing to strike the air for an eighth, ninth, tenth time, even though the Face-Eating Curse was probably dead on the third strike.
The shield dissipates when Harry wills it to. He looks up at Atlas and sees the stiff way he’s clutching his wand. That was probably one of his most powerful curses, and Harry still managed to throw it off like it was nothing.
That makes Harry tense with recognition. There’s no reason not to move now. He’s already revealed his power to anyone who cares to look, and from the look dawning on Atlas’s face, he realizes that he won’t live to mourn his mistake anyway.
Atlas lashes a Burning Rope in front of him, trying to grab Harry’s ankles and trip him, but Harry leaps over it and closes in, conjuring fences to the right and left. By the time Atlas thinks to glance around, Harry has already neatly trapped him against the bars that loom there.
“Going somewhere?”
Atlas locks his eyes on Harry as he steps forwards. Perhaps a foot parts them now. That’s enough for Harry to see the blood flooding to Atlas’s cheeks and the glitter that takes his eyes, the wild, mad glitter that Harry has seen in Dark wizards before. I’ll go down, but I’ll kill you before I do.
This close, Atlas seems to think it’ll be hard for Harry to dodge anything he throws. He raises his wand and nonverbally summons the red light that means it’s going to be the Vampiric Hex, draining all Harry’s blood through his pores when it lands.
Harry simply raises an eyebrow and flings his own spell, a white, glittering coat that settles like frost around Atlas’s nose and mouth. He drops his wand as he thrashes, hands rising to clutch at the mask.
He can’t melt it, not when the strength of the Frost Curse depends on the magic behind it. Harry holds the mask, and watches dispassionately as Atlas suffocates to death, his thrashing head nearly breaking his wand by itself.
“Stop it! Stop it, Potter!”
That’s Pansy Parkinson shrieking, trying to break through the barriers of wards that are holding her back. Harry shrugs and steps back. If there are “Lords” and “Ladies” who want to open the barriers and let her in, then they can.
But Harry feels no guilt for this death. Atlas would have killed him more painfully if he’d had the chance, and he was the one who brought the challenge for the duel. Maybe now they’ll understand a little better what exactly they’re facing, and let Harry get on with destroying them in peace.
Someone does eventually lift one of the wards that are meant to keep spells from flying into the audience, probably because they’ve remembered there are no spells anymore, and Pansy dashes forwards and flings herself down on her knees next to Atlas. Her hands are working frantically, but none of her magic can melt the frost. And Atlas is already almost dead, anyway.
Pansy stares up at him, and her eyes are filled with hate. “Heal him, Potter. Or I’ll never forgive you.”
Harry looks at her in interest, ignoring the gasps of the other members of the Sun Chamber. It seems that no one has ever dared demand something like this before. It kind of interests him. At least Pansy seems as if she’s breaking the rules out of love for her father, not to gain some political advantage.
Holding her eyes, Harry flicks his wand and breaks the frost away. In seconds, there’s small melting crystals on the grass around Atlas, and he’s sucking in so much breath that it looks as if he’s going to float right off the grass, the way Harry remembers Aunt Marge doing.
Pansy gasps and places her hand on her father’s shoulder. Her expression is blissful. Harry feels a little stirring in his heart. He wonders if he would ever feel like that if his parents had lived.
Then Atlas sits up, snatches his wand, and casts the Killing Curse at Harry. Harry whirls aside from it. Honestly, he expected this, especially since there’s no provision in the rules of the Sun Chamber for a duel declared to the death to end in anything other than death.
“You might not want to try that spell,” Harry says, head cocked as he spins a charm that comes together as glittering lines of gold in front of him. “Historically, no one’s managed to kill me with it yet.”
Atlas answers with a full-throated snarl, and lunges after him again. Pansy isn’t begging and pleading this time—either asking her father to stop or Harry to refrain from killing him. She’s just watching intently.
Well, Harry sort of expected that. He can still honor her love for her father without dying to honor it.
This time, when Atlas takes another step forwards and casts a curse that would turn every bone in Harry’s body to fine powder if it managed to land, Harry sends the net towards him with a lazy flick of his wand. The net spreads out as it flies, but comes to a stop hovering in front of Atlas, instead of touching him.
Atlas laughs aloud. “Do all your spells fail you like this, Potter?” he taunts. “Finite Incantatem!”
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Harry says without concern as he watches the net twist and grow and shine more brightly as it absorbs the magic. Then Atlas dies abruptly as the net spits the spell back at him, and everything in his body is reduced to a powder in an instant. The more powerful version of the magic that hit him probably turned his organs to soup, too.
Harry banishes the net with a twitch of his wrist and ignores the way Pansy screams as she falls to her knees beside her father. “Is the honor of the Sun Chamber satisfied?” he asks the witnesses, his eyes going along the line, counting the ones who haven’t visited Neville’s house and had their magical signatures recorded by his keystone yet. “Or does anyone else want to duel me and try to kill me?”
“You killed my father!”
Pansy is bowling towards him, her wand raised and her mouth so wide open that Harry can make out most of her tonsils. He rolls his eyes a little and hops to the side, lashing out a kick with one foot. It hits her elbow and sends her wand spinning away. She clutches her arm, whimpering, and it’s easy for Harry to kick again, this time into her stomach, and send her sprawling to the grass.
“No,” Harry says, shaking his head. “You don’t get to do that. You’d have to issue a formal challenge and proclaim that you wanted to duel me, first. And I already spared your father once. You knew he could die as an outcome of this duel.”
“You’re dead, Potter.”
Her eyes are staring at him with utter hatred. Harry feels his lip quiver, but manages to restrain the smile that would probably send some of them screaming away in fear. “And therefore I should have lain down and let your father kill me?”
“It’s all that I’d expect of the son of a Mudblood.”
Harry feels the freezing anger start to surge up from his chest, but honestly, at the moment, it’s easily controllable. “I was under the impression that it wasn’t the done thing to insult your fellow Lords and Ladies,” he says mildly. “Unless you do want to duel.”
“Of course it isn’t done!” Honeywell bustles towards them, her robes flaring out like a hen’s wings. “Heir—Lady Parkinson, I mean, please do control yourself. Of course your father died in a terrible way, but—”
“That’s the way he meant for me to die,” Harry points out helpfully.
“You would have deserved it!”
“So only pure-bloods can use Dark Arts?”
Pansy only stares at him, her eyes cold and devouring. Harry just waits. The other members of the Sun Chamber are shifting around and muttering. He can see at least a few thoughtful looks on some faces. It seems that perhaps evidence of what he can do is finally piercing through their blind shields of hatred when it comes to people who are descended from Muggleborns. Perhaps they are finally starting to grasp that blood has nothing to do with abilities.
And if they don’t and just decide not to attack him anymore because they fear him, that’s fine, too. What matters is that they leave him alone and don’t get in the way of his plans—until he needs them to respond to Hermione’s and Neville’s spells, that is.
“I agree with Lord Potter.”
Harry twitches and looks sideways. It’s Susan, who hasn’t attended some of these meetings and has been utterly silent at others. She’s staring at him with her mouth set in a firm line, but she doesn’t seem hostile. At least, he can’t see anything in her expression or feel anything from her magic which indicates she is.
“I think we should absolutely be consistent in the application of our own rules,” Susan continues earnestly. “If we wouldn’t reject a pure-blood Lady or Lord from our ranks for using Dark Arts, then we shouldn’t reject someone with a Muggleborn mother.”
Harry gives her a cautious nod. He’s not sure what reason Susan has for changing her mind.
He only hopes that it’s a genuine change and that he can count her as a non-threat in the way that he probably can’t count her as an ally.
Pansy stands up and walks away without another word. Honeywell goes after her. The other Lords and Ladies make the polite noises that one does at the conclusion of a duel, and Harry turns and leaves with Ron falling into step behind him the minute he’s out of the crowd.
“They’re never going to know what hit them, are they,” Ron says. He sounds like he pities the Sun Chamber, a little.
“No. But this time, they might know the direction the blow is coming from.” Harry has to smile.
*
SickPuppy: Thank you! I hope the duel lived up to your expectations.
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Made of Common Clay