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Made of Common Clay	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 10987 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Fifteen—And Without Name
“That’s going to make it harder, in some ways.”
“That there are so many of them, and they’ve found a leader to follow in Shafiq?” Harry stretches his arms out, flexing and shaking them to the ends of his fingers. He was up late last night, making sure that he has current, correct notes in several formats in case someone tries to Obliviate him. He also made a few copies of Pensieve memories and stored them. Then he had to be up early for another largely useless Auror meeting. “That’s the only thing that should make it harder.”
“I don’t like it,” Ron says, his mouth drawn down.
“I know.” Harry grins at his best friend, who’s sitting on the other side of Harry’s desk. “But you don’t like our plan with the Deathly Hallows either, or the magic Hermione is researching, or that meeting I set up a month ago—”
“I just think there’s too many plates in the air. Too many spinning pieces. I don’t know if you can keep track of it all and keep it from crashing.”
Harry does look earnestly at Ron, because Ron often has that gut intuition for matters of strategy that lets him look at a chessboard and see who’s going to win or lose three moves in. But when Ron thinks and then shakes his head, Harry decides that he’s going to go ahead with their plan for right now. Ron’s intuition needs to have something specific to focus on before he can make predictions.
“I suppose I have to go to the next bloody meeting,” Ron complains. “Because I was the one who saw them the first time.”
“Yes, you have to,” Harry says. “Sorry, mate, that’s the way it works. We’re barely getting them to agree as it is. They don’t think like humans. We don’t dare disrupt the routine right now.”
Ron’s eyes flash a little as he stands up. “And you are going to pull them into the net when all is said and done?” he asks, voice low, even though someone listening in would be hard-pressed to tell what they were talking about anyway. “Make sure that they’re punished for everything they did?”
“Yes. They’re too dangerous to leave untethered, which is what would happen when the Ministry fell. That’s the reason I wanted the Resurrection Stone to be part of this in the first place, remember?”
“Good,” Ron says, and his face is dark as he strides away. Harry can hardly blame him. They attacked George a few years ago in Diagon Alley, for no reason except that he looked like someone they’d been ordered to hunt. Yes, they’re going to be destroyed along with so much other filth that the Ministry commits.
Harry shakes his head and turns back to his paperwork. He has to give as convincing a performance as he can, at least for right now, that he’s just another Auror with the unexpected “luck” of holding double Lordships.
*
The loud bang outside his office door startles Harry just as he’s getting ready to sign a final report and go to lunch.
Harry finds himself turning before he consciously thinks about it and leaping behind the desk. The edge of it bruises his ribs, but he’s down and hidden when the door flies open and a cloud of green gaseous vapors storms the room.
Harry casts a modification of the Bubble-Head Charm on himself, a tight, glinting, silvery mask that fits over his mouth and nose and filters out every harmful particle in the air he breathes. He grimaces when he feels his skin prickle with pain, and quickly casts more versions of it on his hands and over the rest of his head. Then he crawls under the desk and flips up the front of it, a handy modification that Hermione taught him how to make.
Someone is screaming, steadily, in pain, out in the corridor. Harry’s face wrinkles into a snarl. So this isn’t just an unusually bold assassination attempt on him. These fuckers are going after other people, or don’t care when they get caught in the gas.
They’ll pay.
Harry tenses his legs underneath him and shoots out through the door, straight into the middle of the dissipating gas. There are two witches with Bubble-Head Charms on there, and they don’t wear Auror robes or any other garb that Harry’s ever seen in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They whip their wands at him and incant a wordless curse that tumbles through the air like a steel-edged disk as it comes at him.
Aren’t you cute. This is another spell that could explode and do more damage to people around him than just Harry. Harry supposes he should be happy his enemies are taking him seriously now, but this isn’t what he meant.
He casts the proper countercurse, and the disk spins apart and goes flying away in different, clanging directions. The witches stare with their mouths open for a second, which gives Harry enough time to cast a version of the Tripping Jinx that spills one from her feet and makes the other one hop to avoid it.
The second one hops straight into a spell from an Auror behind her. She cries out as her wand arm goes numb. Harry Summons her wand before she can think of anything else interesting to do with it and then rolls out of the way as the one on the floor tries the Head-Splitting Curse.
His fellow Auror is binding the first one, but the one on the ground is as quick as a snake. It must have only been the surprise that made her fall to the Tripping Jinx. And she’ll be back on her feet any second.
You’ll pay, Harry thinks, and focuses his desire for vengeance on her, since the Auror has the other one helpless and it’ll look bad to assail a helpless prisoner.
His spell is silent, a good thing, since it’s one he developed himself and he doesn’t particularly want to see it taken and used against him. Sparks ignite at the woman’s elbows, knees, shoulders, and several other places, and send pain through every joint. She screams and screams and drops her wand. Harry kicks it to one of the other Aurors who’s appeared out of an office.
The gas is dissipating. Harry takes off his charms slowly. “Everyone all right?” he asks, staring around.
“Everyone except Auror Londer’s son,” says a pale-faced trainee who keeps his wand wavering back and forth between the downed assassins as if he doesn’t know which one is more dangerous. Harry makes a note to tell him later: the unbound one. “He was visiting and he got a full lungful of the gas. She already took him to St. Mungo’s.” The trainee swallows loudly. “But I don’t know what the gas is.”
The Healers might. Harry doesn’t care. They used a deadly spell in the Ministry, and not just on him. Harry flicks his wand.
The second witch, who’s just been taken prisoner by the Aurors, flinches and wails. The nearest Auror stares at her in consternation. When he casts a diagnostic spell, he shakes his head. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Maybe she’s just thinking about all the consequences she’ll reap for this behavior,” Harry suggests, waiting until the woman looks at him. He smiles then, and she shrinks away from him.
He cast a spell that made it feel like her elbow was being broken. No marks, no actual breaks in the bone.
But this time, that’s not the worst he’s going to do.
*
“Their names are Hebe Woodwind and Julia Anderson.”
Harry shakes his head a little as he sits down on the chair in front of Kingsley’s desk. “I don’t recognize either of those names.”
“Apparently they stayed out of trouble during the war. Stayed neutral, really, and convinced the Death Eaters they weren’t worth bothering with and our side that they’d been loyal all along when the war ended.” Kingsley sighs and studies the notes on the parchment in front of him. “But it turns out that they have plenty of Dark Arts books in their Ministry offices. We raided them immediately after they attacked, of course.”
Nothing wrong with plenty of Dark Arts books, Harry could say openly if Kingsley was really on his side. It’s using the magic irresponsibly that’s the end. But he swallows it back and says, “And their motivation?”
“They were paid a great deal of money to take you down. It had to be public, it had to be painful, and it had to be as flashy as possible. The gas they used originated from a potion. It’s meant to make the person who swallows any of it cough their lungs up.” Kingsley hesitates. “They both confessed under Veritaserum that it was Pansy Parkinson who hired them.”
Harry sighs. He honestly can’t just keep killing the Sun Chamber members, unless all of them are stupid enough to challenge him to duels. Besides, he wants at least some of them alive when their world falls apart, so they can see how shattered everything has become.
“What about Auror Londer’s son?”
Kingsley avoids his eyes. Harry leans slowly forwards. The time is coming when he’ll have to shed the “ordinary Auror” persona anyway. “What happened to him?” he repeats, his voice weighted and his face set in a grimace.
“He died.”
Harry nods a little. “Where did they get the potion? Did one of them brew it, or did they get it from Parkinson, or what?”
Kingsley seems relieved that he’s left the topic of Auror Londer’s son. He doesn’t realize just how these topics are connected in Harry’s mind, and if all goes well, he won’t for a while. “They got the recipe from Parkinson, apparently, and brewed it themselves. I think that Anderson had slightly more of a hand in it.”
Harry nods again. “Can we track the ingredients sellers in Knockturn Alley, do you think?”
Kingsley blinks. “You want everyone with a slight link to this arrested.”
“Yes. They killed someone, Kingsley. Of course I take this seriously. I imagine Auror Londer will, as well, when she hears of it.”
Actually, what Harry is thinking, with the part of him that never stops calculating, is that this is probably the part where Auror Londer joins his side. He’s felt her out in the past, and she’s been polite but unreceptive. Just as Harry managed to convey to her, without outright saying so, that he felt the problems in the Ministry were too severe to resolve, she managed to convey back that she disagreed with him but respected his right to his opinion. Which is why she never reported the feeling-out attempts to Kingsley or anyone else.
Now…
Yes, it’s sick that Harry is running the odds like that in his head. But not as sick as the fact that Parkinson sent these women after him, in public, with a dangerous potion that produced a gas capable of killing many. Woodwind and Anderson didn’t even release it directly into his office, but into the corridor outside.
“That might be difficult.”
“Tracking down the people who sold them the ingredients? Or pulling in anyone slightly related to the crime?”
“The latter.” Kingsley stares at him with weary eyes. “I mourn the young man’s death as much as you do, Harry, but we can’t allow ourselves to react impulsively. We have to think about whether the Ministry’s resources can stand an investigation like this right now, and whether—”
“Who’s putting pressure on you in the Sun Chamber?”
Kingsley catches his breath. Then he says, “No one.”
Harry looks him straight in the eye. It’s true that he hasn’t developed the instinctive ability to sense lies that a master Legilimens has, but it’s hard for a lot of people to lie when he’s staring straight at them. It has something to do with his reputation combined with the color of his eyes, but fuck him if he understands exactly how it works. He’ll go with it, though. “I’m also a Lord, and twice over. So is Neville. We can fight for you if you tell us who the enemy is.”
Kingsley looks in the opposite direction after a struggle. “No one in the Sun Chamber.”
“Someone outside it? Who?”
“I’m not telling you that someone is putting pressure on me at all, Harry. What’s true is that the Ministry doesn’t have enough resources to spend a lot of time or money tracking down all the people connected to this case.”
Harry draws himself back slowly and makes sure to speak with all the heaviness he thinks this deserves in his voice. “One of your Aurors just lost a son, and you’re telling her that you don’t have enough resources to investigate it.”
“I’m not telling her. I’m telling you.”
“So you’re going to tell her something different? Or you’re going to tell her the same thing but dress it up in pretty words?’
Kingsley slams a hand on his desk and pulls himself to his feet with it. “I am not discussing this any further with you, Auror Potter. And if I see you speaking to Auror Londer, I am going to discipline you. It is not your place to join this investigation. You know that Aurors are always banned from investigations involving themselves.”
Ah, yes, they only tried to kill me, after all, that makes me so unimportant. Harry smiles with all his teeth on display, and nods a little, and lets himself out of the office, walking fast. He doesn’t know exactly where Woodwind and Anderson are being held, in some level of St. Mungo’s or in the Ministry, and getting hold of them wouldn’t do much except sate his desire for vengeance anyway. It sounds like they’ve been questioned under Veritaserum.
But he does know where one person is. And she’s not going to like it when he’s finished with her.
*
Harry has to sink a lot of magic into breaking down the Parkinson wards, but not a lot of skill. They’re big, crude defensive wards that make him wonder if perhaps Atlas Parkinson was the wardmaker of his family and Pansy doesn’t have the skill to replicate his.
Well, even if that’s true, it serves him well now. He steps into the entrance hall of Parkinson’s house, which is high enough to have balconies running around it, and calls up with a mad grin, “Honey, I’m home.”
A red curse is his answer, flying from one of the balconies. Harry nods and dodges. He hoped that sarcasm would get her to reveal herself, and it’s worked.
He casts a Bouncing Charm on himself, hops, and leaps up into the air with the momentum from bouncing off the floor. In a second, he’s on the banister of the first floor balcony, and then he bounces off that and onto the level where Parkinson is. She stands with her back pressed against the railing, shaking, staring at him.
Harry cancels the Bouncing Charm and smiles at her. “Hello, Parkinson.”
She tries to curse him again, but Harry focuses a pulse of wandless magic, will—and fury—on her wand arm. She screams as her humerus breaks and her arm sags. Harry strolls casually over to her and takes her wand while she writhes in pain, then casts a series of charms that stabilizes the bone and binds it to her side.
He does nothing about the pain. She brought it on herself.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You aren’t going to die.”
That makes Parkinson fall silent and blink big eyes at him. “Do you—you don’t want to leave the Parkinson family without a Lady?” she asks.
That’s actually true in part, since it would make Hermione’s task harder than it needs to be, but Harry isn’t about to say so. “No,” he says, and she lowers her head. “But I want you alive to pay for what you did. And torturing you endlessly, while it sounds like fun, gets boring after a while. No, Parkinson, you’re going to help me track down the people who sold you those Potions ingredients, and you’re going to be my ally in the Sun Chamber.”
“Your ally in doing what?”
Harry grins. It’s kind of interesting that he can explain the truth to someone who so emphatically isn’t on their side. “Bringing down the Ministry. Burning the roots of the pure-blood world that you so value.”
For a minute, Parkinson’s face is as pale as the carved bars of the railing behind her. Then she shakes her head and forces a laugh. “You wouldn’t actually do that, Potter. You don’t want to expose our world to the Muggles or lose your power that comes from your Lordships.”
“I don’t give a fuck about my Lordships,” Harry says casually, and watches Parkinson react to the words with no small amount of satisfaction. “And this won’t expose our world to Muggles. It’ll just get rid of some of the irritations that infect us.”
“And you’ll be dictator afterwards, I suppose? Or the figurehead king that Shafiq and the others want?”
“You know about that, then? Of course you do. No. I’m going to destroy things and then let people rebuild.”
“But your people.”
“I’m going to make sure that a lot of the people who despise Muggleborns are removed from power, so yes, some of them will be Muggleborns I know or who are my friends. One of them will probably be Hermione. But I have no ambitions to rule, Parkinson. Only to destroy.”
Maybe it’s the words, maybe his tone of voice, but she shudders with her eyes fixed on him, and seems to finally believe him. She licks her lips and whispers, “You have to understand that I’ll never willingly help you.”
“That’s all right.”
Harry slices his palm with a simple gesture. The blood runs down his hand until he collects it with another gesture, and then it flows into the air and heads straight towards Parkinson. By the time she’s realized what he intends, it’s already flown into her gaping mouth, and Harry casts the charm that Healers use to make unconscious people swallow. Parkinson stares at him with her eyes widening still further.
“You—you can’t.”
“My blood flows in your veins, my will is your will,” Harry says clearly. The words to activate the blood-based Imperius, the undetectable one, are simple, because they take an enormous amount of power that most wizards can’t spare. He feels the magic surge through him, and then nearly knock him down as it flies into Parkinson.
She blinks and then looks at him with eyes that hold only a slight trace of the glaze they would if he was controlling her with the traditional Imperius Curse.
“Come on, then. We have a lot to plan.” Harry takes out his quill. “Including you telling me a list of the ingredients for that potion, and who sells them in Knockturn Alley.”
*
Moodysavage: They are unable to think beyond what they want, which is power. They knwo Harry is Hermione's friend, but they think he would give her up for power.
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Made of Common Clay