Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Masks of Real Heroes	By : Aelys_Althea Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Slash - Male/Male Views: 17755 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: Many thanks to the wonderful J. K. Rowling who offered such a beautiful world for amateurs such as myself to frolick in. This is a not-for-profit fanfiction and all characters and original storylines of Harry Potter belong to her!

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
A/N: Just a short one, I apologise. It sits right between two very long chapters that I couldn't seem to find the right point to chop at. So I'm making up for it by updating early :) The next chapter should be up before the end of next week.
WARNING: this chapter contains depictions of violence.

Chapter 13 - Karma and Vipaka
A crack ripped through the air of sleepy, suburban Paris. The snow was thickly laden upon the ground and still drifted from the sky in twirling flakes to disappear into the white carpet that adorned frozen front lawns. There was not a person, resident or interloper, in sight; understandably, given that it was approaching two o'clock in the morning.
Well, there no figure that could be seen.
Shrouded by a cloak of disillusionment, two figures made their way down the ice-slick pavement. It was for the best, perhaps, as an onlooker may have been startled that the thin robes that both wore kept them from bodily shivering and cringing upon themselves, shoulders hunched. Not even puffs of cloudy breath escaped their lips; the mist would have been an unwanted indicator of their presence.
Pausing before one house, the modest residence barely discernible from its fellows, the shorter figure paused. Placing a gloveless hand on the shoulder of her fellow, she peered at the letterbox before nodding and lead the way up the path to the front door. Her boots would have clacked in an announcement of her presence as she glided elegantly up the steps had she not similarly muffled any noise they could make.
Another pause before the front door, not in hesitancy but to resume composure. The woman lifted her hand and the wand it held and pointed towards the door.
"Alohamora."
A faint click, followed by the twist of the handle by invisible fingers, and the door swung inwards. A cold draft followed the woman much like the silent figure of the man behind her.
The hallway was much as Narcissa to Lucius had described from her brief glimpse of Harry's memory. She was always like that; in her distress, she focused upon the small, the irrelevant details, that held little import. Anything to distract from the centrepiece of what she had witnessed. There was no squat table or vase in the hallway – evidently the man had not seen to replacing them after the first had been broken – but other than that it was the same. A feat not difficult to accomplish given that such sameness was stark and barren, bereft of personalisation and only a plain mirror, square adorning one wall.
Striding down the hall with purpose, Lucius trailing behind her, the witch glanced in each door as she passed it. One, a small and simple bedroom; another, a chilling bathroom with a distasteful smattering of utilities around the faucet and a bitter reek that bespoke neglect. A kitchen, a lounge room, a dining room and, finally, a closed door.
"Narcissa, perhaps I should."
Lucius kept his voice low and careful, as though he stepped carefully around a potentially wild animal. Narcissa spared him not a glance and barely a thought. 'No, it is my decision, and I will see it through to its end.'
"And just what, pray tell, is this end?"
His wife gave no answer this time, but she did shoot him a penetrating glance. Lucius dropped his chin in a nod of acceptance and spoke no more.
Pressing on the handle, Narcissa followed the swinging door into the room. It was dimly lit but the interior perceivable given the moonlight streaming through the open window. How the man considered it a good idea to leave a window open in the dead of winter was beyond Lucius, but he considered as he wrinkled his nose following in his wife's wake that he should be thankful nonetheless. The crispness of the night air swept away a reek that would have clouded the room had it been closed. It was a smell that Lucius, unfortunately, recognised; the staleness of alcohol was a stench one was unlikely to forget.
The man on the bed was smothered in a cocoon of blankets. Additional blankets lay strewn across the floor, interwoven with crumpled clothing and discarded shoes. More limp articles clothing spilled from an open cupboard that bespoke chaos at a single glance. It was clear that either the man had been in a hurry to upend the contents of his wardrobe or he had maintained a wary distance from orderliness for quite some time.
Hitching her robes slightly, as though stepping through a putrid puddle, Narcissa edged her way towards the bed. Lucius, in an unconsciously protective response, followed a step behind. The nearer he drew, the stronger the smell, and that, coupled with a glimpse of the crinkled face and mussed hair, so similar to that which his wife had described with such seething ferocity, caused his stomach to clench uncomfortably.
His discomfort was evidently but a shadow of his wife's rising hatred. On top of the nauseous expression that tightened her face, Narcissa's unforgettable and tightly tethered, dozing creature of hatred and cold fury visibly shuddered into awakening. Lucius could almost see the thoughts course through her mind: this man, this creature, lay so defencelessly in his bed. So open, so trusting in the feeble protections of his four walls. A trust that for once Narcissa, his tender hearted, loving wife, felt no compunctions in abusing.
She had considered at length, and usually aloud to Lucius, exactly what punishment she would inflict upon the man. Her conclusions were apt, and he couldn't but agree with them in the majority. Pushing the man through the legal system, whether it was Muggle or Wizarding, would not be enough. The conflict of the two peoples would urge to the side of minimalistic, of wary caution, and it was more likely than not that the man would receive only the bare scrapings of the charges he deserved.
Wizards and Muggles always sought whatever route led to the least confrontation between their two peoples.
And yet, the punishment Lucius knew she so longed to deliver did not seem appropriate either. How was death – even following extended torture – anything compared to a life of torment and fear, a life that he had inflicted upon a boy no older than eleven? Narcissa was a fiercely protective woman, and of children most prominently. That she now knew Harry, had come to care for him as Lucius could so discern… he could read the guiltless desire within her eyes, how she longed to break the mans mind under an endless string of assaults, shedding her kind exterior to reveal the base instinct of a protective mother beneath. But even that did not seem enough. Why should he escape into insanity when his victim had to live on with the memories of his abuse?
Extending her wand, Narcissa pressed the point between the ridges of the sleeper's furrowed brow. The wrinkles deepened for a moment under the soft pressure and the man stirred slightly. A firmer press of the wood into pliable skin and a moan dribbled from between chapped lips. Even in his drunken state, the unexpectedness of the uncomfortable touch was enough to awaken him.
Eyelids blinked open in flutters, pale blue eyes hazy and watery. It took a moment for the man to gain his bearings, and when he did he turned his gaze towards the woman looming above him. His brow crinkled further, yet with only confusion, not fear.
"Que…?"
"Falso memento."
A gasp shuddered from the man's lips. If his brow was wrinkled before, now it was a riot of pained clenches and trembling muscles. His eyes snapped shut and fingers rose from the depths of his cocoon, only to grasps feebly at the upturned corner of sheets.
Narcissa watched passively as her spell took effect, as the gasps and trembles evolved into full-body twitches and moans of distress, but Lucius could see the tightness in her shoulders from his onlooker status behind her. Idly, she dropped her wand to her side. It was not perfect, not enough, but it was good enough. That she considered as much almost made Lucius cringe at the possibilities of what she had done. Almost, but not quite.
"What did you give him?"
Lucius' soft voice contrasted starkly to the pitiful whimpers of the man writhing with increased intensity in his bed. Though Lucius knew that she had hardly grown to tire from the sight, would never to hide her gaze in guilt or sympathy, Narcissa detached herself from her observation and turned towards her husband.
"I gave him what he deserves."
Though he nodded obligingly, Lucius refused to drop the matter. "Which he undoubtedly does. But what do you feel he deserves?"
"Far more than I have given him, unfortunately." Turning back towards the man, who had begun to convulse in thrashing jerks, Narcissa cocked her head idly. She had never been one to take pleasure from inflicting pain, but in this instance Lucius thought she looked almost… satisfied. In a twisted, contemptuous way. "I gave him memories. Memories I have fabricated, modeled on those he has inflicted upon Harry. At present, I am dragging him through a youth of fear and pain, of constant terror and utter despondence. Just what he subjected Harry to. An… alternate reality to his past, one that I will force down his throat until he chokes on it." Her voice was a bitter spike of cold fury. "And he will have to live with those experiences for the rest of his life. Live with what he has done to Harry as though it were done to himself."
"And you expect him to live through such? I would not have considered him strong enough to continue in the aftermath of such a past."
Narcissa smiled thinly. "I will not allow him to end it himself. I have my curses. He should not be afforded such a luxury."
The silence that followed was broken only by the squeak of bedsprings and the choking pants of the man as he writhed in his bed, sweat dripping in thin dribbles down his face. Narcissa watched as his struggles became more and more feeble, and Lucius watched his wife. Finally, when silence fell once more, he spoke. He felt that… he had to.
"Narcissa, you cannot avenge them all."
The witch did not bother to glance towards her husband, gazing fixedly on the pale and sweat-slick face before her. "Avenge them all?"
"Harry. The children like him. The survivors, young and old." Lucius paused briefly, fighting to keep his voice as gentle as possible; his qualms over such infliction may not be as great as Narcissa's, but he could appreciate the pain she felt. Narcissa had always wanted to save people, protect and comfort those objected to pain and trauma. It was the sole reason she practiced in medical Legilimancy. It was one of the reasons she so struggled as the wife of a Death Eater. "It is not your responsibility."
Narcissa closed her eyes briefly as she visibly fought the rising tide of fury. Not cold, this time, but bubbling hot. After a time, old anger can spark anew in a fiery heat. Narcissa knew this all too well. "I know it is not."
Lucius fixed his eyes upon his wife, attempting to follow the train of her thoughts. "They are not the same, Narcissa. Harry is not Medea." Narcissa flinched at the name, a startling as though slapped. Lucius forced himself to continue, though it pained him for the pain it so obviously elicited from his wife to recall the one patient she had been entirely unable to help. "Their circumstance may be similar, but they are not the same person. Harry is stronger than she. Perhaps not in every way, but in this. He is not one to seek vengeance." Lucius paused for a moment. "Or perhaps that makes him weaker."
"I do not think it is a matter of strength and weakness." Narcissa swallowed as she struggled to maintain her composure. Her voice was strained, wavering with the intensity of her suppressed emotion. "Simply a difference in character. No, Harry is not, I believe, one to pursue vengeance, but neither is he one to fall victim to the wounds his experience has inflicted upon him. She was not capable of such. Her anger was too great."
"Do you believe that this will truly help him, then?"
Narcissa glanced sideways at her husband. She didn't trust herself to face him full-on, not without risking unleashing her anger full ball. "It will remove the monster from his past."
"You intend to tell him?"
Shaking her head, Narcissa pointedly ignored Lucius' insinuating. "No, I could not inflict that upon him."
More silence. And finally, "you can take this for yourself, Narcissa. For you. It need not be solely for Harry's sake."
For he understood, Lucius did, in a way he had been teetering on the edge of understanding for days now. Narcissa needed this. This man, this terrorist… he embodied every villain that assaulted the traumatised clients of his wife's past, every father swimming in his cups that lashed out with a fist, every brother that shifted the blame onto the burdened shoulders of a withering soul, every mother who cast their child aside to seek her own happiness. Every monster who dared to touch a child in pursuit of their own pleasure. The though quelled Lucius from insisting his wife restrain herself, that she let it go, that the monster wasn't her own, that it wasn't her fight.
Because it was. To Narcissa, the monster before her was very real, and very personal.
It was now appeared to be a physical effort for Narcissa to restrain her anger. Her teeth clenched in a bulge of her cheek, fingers gripping white-knuckled around her wand as she visibly fought to keep it lowered at her side, fought to contain the hexes that longed to burst forth. "For myself…" She laughed lowly, an empty sound.
"I know you struggle to accept that you could not help, that you can't help, all of them. But Medea…. Narcissa, you were only young –"
"Medea was only young! Only a child!" It spewed forth. The anger, the hatred, the regret. The baseless guilt. "She was only a child, she did not understand, could not cope, with that which was inflicted upon her. And she was punished for the only way she could continue to exist!"
Lucius, in a reversal of their usual roles, maintained his calm. "And you were not the one to sentence her to such a listless life for her misguided vengeance. But that is neither here nor there. It was not your responsibility to save her –"
"Then whose was it?!" Her voice was not loud. Narcissa was never loud. No, it was rather a ferocious hiss, the bite of a taunted snake. A sound Lucius had never once heard her utter before. Yet her bottled fury did not even consider the unnaturalness. "There are many people to blame, yet no one to take the punishment! None save for a poor girl driven into insanity by the traumas of her past. It was not her fault, she was not in her right mind when she –" Narcissa gasped as she fought to suppress the flow of her words. Her body was trembling, visibly shaking in anger, and support her though he wished to, it was all Lucius could do not to turn tail and flee the room. "It was not her fault, yet no one saw, no one cared. He was gone and she still hurt, there was no one left. No one left to. Take. His. Punishment!"
With a jerk of her arm, her wand snapped forward and aimed at the man lying limply in his bed. "Crucio!"
There was barely a pause before the screaming began. A shriek, far louder than Narcissa's hissed tirade. The man's back arched, bowing, and he bared teeth savagely. His face distorted into a mask of pain to smother the misery and despair that had drawn it previously.
He screamed. He screamed and screamed, until his voice gave. And even then he screamed on, a voiceless puppet straining beneath the rigid point of Narcissa's wand as veins bulged and capillaries burst. His skin darkened to a sickly patchwork of reds, white and spider webs of purple before Narcissa finally lowered her wand. The woman panted as though from physical exertion, eyes wide and trails of salty water dribbling down her cheeks.
"All of them, younger and older, as children… Medea. So much was stolen from them, from her, and yet… I could do nothing… Nothing, not even to protect her from herself. And when the opportunity arose, for justice to finally be served, it was taken from her. With a well-aimed curse to the head, and she was not even aware of what she was doing. A single moment of her grief, of her insanity –" The quivering witch closed her eyes, dropping her chin as her fingers loosen from the wand. The rod teetered for a moment, before it slid from her grasp.
Lucius captured it in his fingers, caught before it could drop to the floor. He placed the wand into his own pocket before looping both arms around his wife's shoulders. He was not one for embraces, affectionate or supportive, but it felt right to offer as much now. The fiery fury, the madness of grief long in coming, had fallen from Narcissa as quickly as it had come. He would not lie to himself and say he was sad to see it go; the image of his wife so wrought with hatred and malice, her protectiveness and sorrow sparked to a dragon-like intensity, was so unlike the woman he knew, the woman she was. And all because of an ancient grief, a pain, that had been dwelling within her for so long.
Before them, lying as limply as a ragdoll in the tangle of his bedding, Stephen Defaux was a shattered mess. His limbs twisted unnaturally, skin still awash in sickly tones. Blood dribbled from his nose, his ears, his eyes, and if not for the faintest movement of his chest Lucius would have believed him dead.
He certainly looked worse off than many dead men Lucius had seen. And he had seen his fair share.
He spoke almost without realising it. "It is not your fault. You can't save them all." Lucius knew the guilt, the sadness, still resided within his wife. Not for the shattered figure before them – never – but for those she simply could not reach.
Not even bothering to fight it, Narcissa only nodded. Not in acceptance but merely acknowledgement. She leant into Lucius' warmth for support more than comfort; her legs threatened to give out, as though all energy had been drained from her frame.
They remained as such for only moments before a sound caught Lucius' ear. A faint rapping on the door, a muffled phrase that sounded like a question. Peering towards his wife's face, her head similarly turned towards the door, he gave her a final squeeze.
"We seemed to have overlooked the practicality of a Muffling Charm."
Narcissa breathed a puff of humourless laughter. "That we did. It is natural to assume that someone would have heard the scream." She turned towards the man lying motionless on his bed, not even a whimper emitted by his broken voice. The trickle of blood oozed thickly from his nose. Hatred still smouldered in her eyes, yet had frozen back to its icy hardness.
Without another word, the two clasped hands and, with a crack, disappeared from the bedroom.
- 13
- 14
- 15
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The Masks of Real Heroes