A Pirate's Tail | By : SamHill Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Slash - Male/Male Views: 3182 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: Not in any lifetime does Harry Potter (and his universe) belong to me. They are the sole property of J.K. Rowling, et al. I make no money and I mean not copyright infringement. |
A/N: See Chapter One for all disclaimers and warnings
Chapter Fifteen:
Harry groaned as he was dragged from his cell by the chain connecting his wrists. Three weeks he had been in Voldemort’s care and he wondered how much longer he would last. After spending eight days trying to torture the names of other rebels out of him, Voldemort had finally given up. Now Harry was just another traitor to the crown, set out in stocks during the day where he was publicly flogged at dawn and dusk before being thrown back into a dank, dark cell at night. The wounds on his back festered, and his body was half-starved from the meager portions of moldy bread and stale water he was given nightly.
“Didn’t think you’d get caught, did you,” Pettigrew whispered wetly, his sausage-fingered hands rubbing together. “I get to beat you today. A special treat for my Majesty’s most loyal subject.”
“Really? I didn’t know rats were considered subjects. But then again, I guess not even Voldemort can resist rummaging in the sewers for worthless, mindless followers who-”
The fist to his jaw ended his rant, but the fire in his eyes continued to burn. Pettigrew scurried sideways, as though afraid a mere look would strike him down like a silent curse. “Such green eyes... most unnatural,” he muttered to himself.
“Besides,” Harry said, picking up where he had left off after a few minutes. “I would think the Malfoy’s rank higher than you. After all, Draco is the one who brought me. You’re just a tool in the master’s hand.”
“The Malfoys!” Peter tittered maliciously. “They don’t know. His Highness is not fooled by them. The young Lord Malfoy marries in two months and his wife has already been given her instructions to his care. Three months after their wedding she will kill him. A simple poison that is undetectable. Lucius Malfoy will be thrown from a horse on a hunting trip just days after his son’s wedding and his wife...” He tsked without true feeling. “Such a sad thing for a woman to face the gallows alone, but that is the punishment for treason.” His beady eyes gleamed with such dark excitement that Harry was repulsed by him.
“And yet you tell me all this. What if I got the word out?”
“Even if you did, who would care? All your little friends know that Draco Malfoy betrayed you. Do you not think they would rejoice?”
“Do you think me stupid enough not to request his life be spared? I am not as foolhardy as your prince.”
“Then perhaps we should cut out your tongue to keep our secrets.”
“Not all communication is based on words of the mouth.”
“Your hands too, then? His Highness would certainly love the excuse to defile your body.”
Harry shut up then, not wanting to give the other man any ideas. He flinched into the rising morning sun and prayed that he would have the strength to survive another day in the stocks. ‘Of course,’ he reminded himself, as his arms were stretched high and the chain attached to a hook, ‘I have to make it through this.’ He let his mind wander as Pettigrew stepped up behind him, whip whistling through the air to kiss his back.
He remained in his trance-like state until he was taken down and shoved forward. Barely able to walk on his own, he stumbled and fell. The few that had gathered to watch his punishment had been jeering until that moment, and Harry felt the shift of their attention. Struggling to stand, he found himself facing the courtyard where the guillotine had been erected.
Standing on the platform was a young mother, father and their child. The mother was begging for mercy in both German and English while the father stood there listlessly. Their daughter clung to the wife’s dirty apron, sobbing with a fear borne of innate understanding; they were not there to play or have fun, but die. She could not have been any older than four or five.
“This woman and this man are traitors to the crown. They were caught stealing from a baker and face death. Let this stand as a reminder to all of you that King Voldemort will not absolve the unfaithful of their sins.”
The speaker nodded to a man dressed in black that Harry dimly recognized as McNair. Stepping forward, the executioner grabbed the screaming woman and pushed her down roughly onto the bench. She struggled wildly as her head was forced into place, the heavy wooden braces locking her into position. Her voice rose as McNair hefted the blade up the last foot and half and continued to ring out for a nearly a minute after her head rolled across the platform. The little girl began shrieking hysterically, held back by one of the stone-faced guards as her father was led into place.
“Stop,” Harry begged, eyes transfixed on the horrific scene playing out before him. “Make them stop.” The memory he should have forgotten of his parents’ deaths become fresh in his mind and the terror he had felt then flooded through him.
“A little familiar, Harry,” a voice hissed softly. Harry whipped his head around, eyes wide. Voldemort stared at him with a hooded gaze, his decaying flesh heavily guarded from the sun and prying eyes by a thick veil. “What do you think the little girl’s head will do when it is severed from her body?”
“Oh, gods.” Harry turned grey in the face as he spun back towards the guillotine. He was just in time to see the father’s head sent flying by the sheer force of the blow. Someone in the crowd gasped and several people moved out of the way as it landed with a dull thud on the packed dirt. It, blessedly, remained silent.
“Please, not her. She’s only a child.”
“And that makes her innocent of the crimes against her?”
“Yes. Her parents were wrong for stealing, wrong for going against you. Their deaths prove that. But she had no part in their subversion. Please, do not kill her.”
“If I spare her life, will you give me something in return?”
“Yes, anything, but let her go first!”
McNair had the girl by her hair and was lifting her onto the bench washed in her parents’ blood when the guard stepped forward. Placed on the platform for just this occasion, he had been watching for the signal. The raised hand of the king was meant to spare a life. Though it had never happened before, Ludovic Bagman knew not to hesitate in duty lest he find himself in the child’s place.
“King Voldemort grants this child pardon for the sins of her parents,” he declared, voice ringing loudly over the courtyard. His words stayed the executioner’s hand and the girl wiggled free to dash into the shadows of a nearby alleyway. Harry tracked her as far as the rundown house that, no doubt, harbored enough secret exits to ensure her escape. The moment he was certain she was safe, he turned back to face Voldemort.
“Remind me to send you a thank you note once Cedric has rightfully been seated on the throne and you’re paying your penance in America. I’m sure it will bring you a spot of good cheer on those long and gruesome days.”
“You- You think you can fool me, Potter, but you were scared for her life. You begged me to free her.”
“Back when I first moved into Hogwarts, Sirius spent his free time telling me about the different kinds of spirits that haunted the local castles. One of them was a boggart, which he said could take the form of whatever we feared most and disturb us in our sleep, thus weakening our ability to fight our enemies. The trick, he told me, was in knowing how to face those fears. So I spent every hour of every day training myself how to be unaffected by your words and actions.
“Did you think that watching a woman’s head roll across a stage – a red-head at that – would really send me into fits?” Harry laughed softly, still bracing himself on the pole he had been flogged on. “You forget, False King, I’m Captain Harry Potter.”
Despite the late stage of his disease and the toll it had taken on his body, Voldemort moved quickly and his clawed hand, with its rough, scaly fingers, gripped Harry’s battered face in a surprisingly death-like grip.
“You may think yourself witty, Potter,” he ground out, spittle flying, “But in the end you are still my prisoner. Your life – and death – rests in my hands.” He shoved him back and waved forward another guardsman. “Chain him back to the post. Fifteen lashes and make certain he is aware.” The thin peels of flesh that posed as lips curled back, and King Voldemort bared his teeth to Harry. “Leave him in the stocks until dusk and then it will be twenty lashes more. He shall stay in the stocks each day, all day, from dawn to dawn. Tomorrow he shall be returned to his cell.”
He turned and made his way back towards the castle, voluminous robes only barely concealing the heavy cane he now required to walk. His guards – twenty of them in all – fell in step around him, blocking him from the view of the gatherers. Harry let out a strained groan as he was once more jerked into place. His forehead rested against the sun-warmed wood and he readied himself for the separation of mind and body. Before he could make the transition, however, the first blow landed. The second and third fell in quick succession and his knuckles became bleached as the rest rained down on him.
It was not the impossibly weak flogging that Pettigrew had delivered half an hour previous, but the skilled hand of one trained with a whip. Each stroke was made to produce the maximum amount of pain and the blood flowed more freely down his waist into his already stained, ragged trousers. The first five passed soundlessly enough, but the eighth dragged a hoarse cry from chapped lips. The thirteenth earned a howl and on the nineteenth, for the first time since he’d managed to trance his way through his punishments, Harry screamed.
~ * ~
Draco walked with Daphne’s hand tucked into the crook of his elbow, her lace parasol blocking the morning sun’s harmful rays. They had stayed the night at his father’s house to attend Court and his eye had been caught by the crowd in the courtyard. Only an hour past dawn, he noted, and already they were starting the executions. His stomach dropped when he saw the young family standing up there, the pretty red-headed wife who spoke in accented English and her husband with the foreign name. He had met them once, by chance, while out riding with his father and had learned they were immigrants from Germany.
Daphne’s eyes gleamed as they watched the woman being wrestled down, her head braced at the neck by two wooden slats. The blade of the guillotine was caught by the sun and sent fractures of light that temporarily blinded Draco. He heard her frantic screams though, and the thud of the blade imbedding itself into the chopping block. He nearly lost the remains of his breakfast when her screams continued on for the span of several heartbeats.
Blinking away the spots dancing behind closed lids, Draco could see the King standing further back from the platform. There were guardsmen surrounding him and another man, a prisoner, it seemed, whose features were too hard to make out over the distance. The hand tugging at his arm drew his attention back just in time to see the husband receive the same “justice” in the Crown’s name. His eyes went to the woman’s head – now silent, thankfully – and he wondered if Harry’s mother had responded similarly after her beheading.
Mouth dry and gut churning, he watched the little girl being lifted into the air. “Daph, love, please, this is no sight for a lady such as yourself,” he pleaded even as the bile rose in his throat.
“Nonsense, Draco darling. It is our duty as loyal subjects of the King to oversee such things. You’re not… upset are you?” She batted her eyes prettily, but even that could not distract from the dark hunger that seemed to hold her. “Those who are unfaithful to the crown deserve no less, Draco. You would be wise to remember that.”
Draco breathed out a sigh of relief when the guard declared the little girl pardoned, but he knew better than to believe it was merely King Voldemort’s good will and understanding. Daphne excused herself to visit with Lady Millicent Bulstrode, currently engaged to Theodore Nott despite the scandal that had nearly ruined him. Draco would have liked the woman more if she weren’t such good friends with his wife.
Moving through the crowd, Draco picked his way over to where he had seen King Voldemort’s robes. Though still not close enough to see, he could hear what was being said.
“Chain him back to the post. Fifteen lashes and make certain he is aware.” There was a rustling sound, most likely him preparing to leave and then he added, “Leave him in the stocks until dusk and then it will be twenty lashes more. He shall stay in the stocks each day, all day, from dawn to dawn.”
‘A harsh punishment if ever I heard. I wonder what the idiot did.’
“Bleedin’ barbarian, an’ tha’s sayin’ summat, knowin’ t’is a pirate they’re flayin’. Can ye believe ‘im? Beats the lad twice, sometimes thrice, a day at five lashes each go for near a ‘ole month. Now ‘e’s to be left hangin’ in the stocks all day after receivin’ this many? The lad’ll die soon ‘nuff as it is. They needn’t bleed ‘im to death to do it, I say.”
“Aye, an’ ye say too much, Morgan. The King ‘ears ye an’ it’ll be yer head tha’s rollin’ up there.” The two men whispering at each other moved away, taking their conversation with them.
‘A month of this treatment? Perhaps he attacked the King? No, they’d have killed him outright for that. A thief, perhaps?’ Just as he stepped towards the clearing – at the same time that the man with the whip began to lay his stripes – Draco realized just who they were talking about. ‘Oh gods, a pirate… Harry-?’
Draco hesitated, unsure of whether he wanted to see the man that he had betrayed being beaten. He remained hidden in the shadows, watching the rise and fall of the whip, listening to Harry’s pained sounds and feeling his guilt mount. He was so focused on the proceedings that Daphne’s hand on his elbow caused him to start.
“Ahh,” she laughed. “Now I see why you didn’t hear me calling you. It must be a relief to see justice brought to the man who led the rebellion against the king.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she watched him watching them take down their captive. “There are whispers that the rebellion still exists. He refuses to give the King any information though the Lavender bitch was able to uncover their hideout." She smiled viciously and Draco's blood ran cold. "She killed the pirate's Scotsman."
"Irish," Draco corrected, feeling sick. "Seamus was Irish."
Her glittering gaze was once more fastened upon his face. "The heritage of a traitor matters not. You forget your place, my lord."
The threat was implicit; should he be thought false, he would quickly find himself on the guillotine bench. His wife, Draco was quickly learning, had a streak of viciousness as far-reaching as the King’s. She also had the ability to command armies, as she had had their wedding moved up to the week after he assumed ownership of the Potter’s old home. She was now the young Mrs. Draco Malfoy, soon-to-be Duchess of Essex. The Devonshire title still rested with Harry Potter, but Draco knew it was only a matter of time before King Voldemort had him executed.
They continued their stroll through the courtyard, Daphne pausing to exchange words with the other lords’ wives. Draco’s eyes searched the crowd, pausing on a familiar face. The mop of brown hair pulled back in a lady’s bun with only a few curled tendrils falling to frame her heart-shaped face, Nymphadora Tonks could have been any middle class young lady out for a morning walk, but Draco knew better. The woman was a spy through and through and if she was here, then Harry’s friends would very soon know what had become of him.
He glanced down and saw the little boy standing at her side, small hand tucked into her own rather dainty looking one. His brown eyes were wide as he took in the bustling crowd and Draco prayed the child hadn’t been exposed to the beheading only an hour ago.
“Darling, your attention is wandering. Should I be jealous?” There was an edge to Daphne’s voice that chilled Draco, but he feigned ignorance.
“I was only thinking that I should like a son soon,” Draco replied, nodding towards little Teddy. He smiled at her as a true lover would, aware that several eyes – and ears – were on them. “Or a daughter. If she takes after her mother she will make a very fine wife even a prince could not find fault in.”
Daphne looked momentarily speechless and the women who stood nearby tittered at his flirtations. Draco inclined his head towards them before escorting his wife through the gates that led into the castle’s heavily guarded yards. His wife’s continued silence assured him that she was too preoccupied with his statement to have realized who the child was.
‘Hermione said she thought the boy was the result of a previous relationship. Ginny hinted that it was Sirius Black’s brother, Regulus, who was killed by Voldemort for treason. If that’s so, Teddy is entitled to a small but decent inheritance. Of course, once the king discovers who they are, they’ll either face the gallows or the guillotine. Spy or no, she should never have brought her son here.’
His thoughts were cut off by the appearance of his father, face drawn and haggard looking. The lustrous white blond hair hung limp in its band, and for the first time that Draco could recall, the duke truly looked his age, if not older.
“Father, are you well?”
Lucius looked at his son, all emotion wiped from his expression. “The king’s physicians have found a way to slow the progress of the disease.”
Draco forced his lips into a smile. “A most joyous occasion. It has been hard on him I am certain.”
A nod was his only reply. “Daphne, you are as beautiful as ever.”
Daphne let out a trilling laugh that set both men’s teeth on edge and batted ice blue eyes at the older Malfoy. “You are too kind, milord. Draco and I were just on our way to visit the king. Perhaps we should walk with you a bit first.”
“That will be unnecessary. The king is aware that you are in the palace and awaits you.” Lucius paused, his eyes searching the young woman’s face. This cold-hearted, gold digger was not the same Daphne Greengrass who had once played with Draco and Pansy as small child. She had been warm and loving. “Daughter, I have been remiss, but whatever happened after your parents fell ill and passed away.”
“Milord, you worry over trivial matters,” she laughed, but her tone was far from pleasant. “After my mother passed my father attempted to move on. Unfortunately, he was unable to cope with the loss and killed himself. After that, I was fostered out to the Lestranges, who raised me thenceforth.” Her eyes glittered in a way that made Lucius want to drag his son away from her. “Or rather, they did until my foster mother was brutally murdered by that pirate.” She spat the word out venomously, her finger nails biting into Draco’s arm.
“My apologies, daughter. I had not wished to bring up such a sad subject.” Lucius bowed low. “Please, allow me to take my leave. It has been a long night and shall be an even longer day if I do not take my rest now. Draco, please come and visit me at the next chance you have. I believe Saturday morning would be good? Your wife already has an engagement and this would keep you from being underfoot.” He turned to Daphne, adding almost off-handedly, “I have been working on my will as of late. I wish to leave you both the Essex keep, but I would also like to leave something for each of you personally. Would you mind?”
She was once again coy and charming, batting her eyes at her father-in-law. “Whatever you feel is best, Father. Now, if you will pardon us, I do not wish to keep the king waiting.” She gave a small curtsey as Draco bowed and led them past the senior Malfoy. As they crossed the threshold into the throne room, Lucius found that he was worrying for his son once more.
~ * ~
tbc
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