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Bard of Morning's Hope	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9573 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen—Bloody Bindings
            “You can tell us something about Colin Creevey and why Myrtle doesn’t want him bound here as a ghost?” Harry spoke as clearly and specifically as he could, hoping to draw the Bloody Baron’s attention away from Draco. The way he was staring made Harry wonder if this ghost had a grudge against Draco, as much as Myrtle seemed to like him.
            The Bloody Baron turned to focus on him. Harry looked back calmly. He had seen a lot of horrific things on his job, and at least the Bloody Baron seemed unlikely to attack. Harry had his wand and his training and, if he had to, the Deathly Hallows, should that happen.
            Finally, the Bloody Baron murmured, “Not easy to intimidate, are you? Is that just the power of the Mastery of Death, or something else?”
            Harry shrugged with his head rolling towards his shoulder. “Both? Neither? I don’t know. I do know that the Bard of Morning’s Hope has attacked me several times, and I’m not dead yet.”
            “Is that what he calls himself?” A tremble seemed to run through the Bloody Baron, one that stirred him from the bottom of his wound to the top of it, and his face reformed into a scowling grimace. “Do you know why?”
            “Not for sure, since he’s never bothered to explain it, but I think the ‘morning’s hope’ part refers to him having cleared the world of Death Eaters and people on Voldemort’s side during the Battle of Hogwarts, since that’s what he wants to do,” said Harry. He positioned himself carefully so that he was standing in front of Draco; the Baron seemed to have a tendency to stare at him again. “As for Bard, I don’t know. I suppose he had to call himself something.”
            The Bloody Baron went back to staring at Harry again, which he much preferred, no matter how unnerving it sometimes was. His fingers seemed to strum on the air as if playing an invisible harp.
            Then he nodded. “I will tell you what I know,” he said. “I am in a sense bound to Hogwarts, but I can roam the grounds if I wish to exert some effort. I was there the night that Creevey’s ghost formed.”
            Harry frowned at him. “You knew that, and you knew a lot of the victims were former Slytherins, but you didn’t tell anyone what you saw?”
            The Bloody Baron laughed, a sound like a man dying of tuberculosis. “Who would have sought me out? Who would have believed me? And besides,” he paused for a moment, and his eyes grew distant, “I saw no connection. I read the details of the killings in the papers, but that does not mean I am any more adept at recognizing a ghost’s handiwork than, say, an Auror.” He shot Harry a piercing glance.
            Harry nodded in silent apology, and waited for the Baron to go on. The Baron seemed to be playing the same kind of waiting game, as if he wanted to see whether Harry would interrupt or not, but at last he nodded. “The ghost that formed came up from the ground where Creevey had been killed. I knew his brother had spent some time there, whispering apologies and watering the ground with his tears. Tear-watered soil, or blood-watered, is more likely to spawn a ghost than ordinary ground, and this was both.”
            Harry nodded back, not able to think of anything to say, his mind full of the horrible sight that the Bloody Baron had probably seen there.
            “Creevey arose and looked around him,” the Bloody Baron continued, eyes once again distant. “I tried to speak to him. I could sense his spirit flailing around between the mortal world and the—one we live in.” He gave Harry a ghastly grin. “You understand there are some things that are useless for ghosts to try and explain to a mortal.”
            Harry only nodded again, not wanting to anger the Baron or upset him any further. The Baron sighed as if reluctant that Harry had managed to avoid a fight, and went on.
            “He didn’t speak to me,” said the Bloody Baron. “Instead, he stared into the distance and began to scream. I can’t tell you how long the screams went on.” The Baron’s voice was low, slow, grim. “What I can tell you is that I began to hear other voices.”
            “Other voices?” Draco asked as if he couldn’t help himself. Harry shifted a little, making sure that he kept his body between the Bloody Baron’s gaze and Draco’s face. Maybe it was stupid, but he was still worried about the way the Baron had looked at Draco a few minutes ago.
            “Yes,” said the Bloody Baron. “They were voices I did not know—not voices of Hogwarts ghosts or other spirits that used to haunt the stones here. Creevey screamed and seemed to grow more solid and defined as I watched him. I cannot tell you how long this continued. Even after he faded from sight, I could hear the screams.”
            “For days afterwards?” Harry asked.
            “For more than a year.”
            Harry shuddered. He hated the thought of Colin in torment for that long. He might—he would always think that Colin’s ghost needed to be stopped before he killed again, but at least he would make sure that he wasn’t put through that kind of torture.
            “What happened?” Draco whispered. “Did someone summon him using a necromantic ritual, and he couldn’t break free of it?” He sounded as though he wouldn’t put that past Dennis. Harry might have agreed if it was the ghost of anyone but Dennis’s brother.
            “No,” said the Bloody Baron. He hesitated for a long moment. “You must remember,” he said, almost as sternly as Professor Snape used to, “that this is only speculation. There is no reason to think that it is the truth. Creevey’s ghost is unusual. I have long experience in these matters, but only with the variety of spirits I have seen pass through Hogwarts’s halls. I have no knowledge of ghosts elsewhere.”
            “We know that, sir,” said Draco, and he was speaking respectfully enough, and the Baron was listening closely enough, that Harry felt comfortable shifting his weight a little. “But it’s still more knowledge than we have right now. We didn’t even think the Bard of Morning’s Hope might be a ghost until today.”
            The Bloody Baron waited long enough that Harry would have thought he had changed his mind about telling them, except he didn’t fade through the wall or floor. Then he grunted and nodded. Once again, the ethereal blood that coated him seemed to shimmer and reform.
            “I think that he was the receptacle for other spirits of the battlefield who would have arisen as ghosts themselves, but they lacked his driving force or his mental strength,” said the Bloody Baron. “There are many reasons that Creevey could have been different. He was among the youngest who died in that battle, and youth is known for its strength and vigor. Or possibly because he came back to fight out of pure courage, instead of because of the desperation that led some of the others to fight, he was different. What I know is that those other potential ghosts contributed their strength to him—I think. They made him live through the moments of their own deaths, and filled him with their anguish and their longing for vengeance. It would explain many things, especially his strength and the fact that he appears to have claimed many victims, not only his own murderer.”
            Harry nodded soberly, shaken. The thought of what Colin had been existing through…
            He wondered for a moment if Dennis had suspected that about his brother, and then hissed in anger and dismissed the thought. Yes, all right, it was potentially true. But that only meant that Dennis ought to have wanted more for his brother to be laid to rest, instead of wandering around in the thrall of all that pain. Dennis’s motives made little sense to Harry, whether or not he had really known his brother was the Bard of Morning’s Hope.
            “That explains why the attacks didn’t occur right away,” Draco whispered. “He was suffering through that. Becoming the kind of ghost who had the strength to bypass so many wards and barriers and attack so many people.”
            “Why didn’t you tell someone?” Harry asked abruptly. “If you knew that he was an unusual ghost and the way he had formed was strange, why didn’t you go and do something about his suffering? Tell someone in Slytherin, at least?”
            The Bloody Baron looked at Harry in turn, and Harry found himself flinching a little before that endless, cold tunnel of a gaze. “I believed it had happened, and then Creevey had gone on to whatever awaited him. He was in Hogwarts for a short time. Then he disappeared. That happens to many ghosts. We—I and the Grey Lady and the other House ghosts—are unusual in having lasted so long a time. Myrtle is young compared to us. I thought Creevey roamed at all around the school because he was troubled, and then came to terms with what he had seen and faded as most spirits do.” The Bloody Baron shook his head slowly. “I would have attempted to speak to him if I had known.”
            Harry believed that. He didn’t know the Bloody Baron that well—he couldn’t even say that he’d known Nearly-Headless Nick that well—but he thought he was telling the truth.
            “Then,” he said, “you know that we want to end things as much to set Colin free as to stop him from killing anyone else. Do you think binding him to one place would help? Or would that only drive him more crazy with the suffering and the anguish he’s absorbed?”
            The Bloody Baron was silent. Then he nodded once. “I think that is what would happen. And you would have to search long—and would probably still fail—to find a location that was not frequented by humans. I think he has already gone over the edge into our equivalent of insanity. He would only grow worse if he couldn’t roam and kill, and then he would turn his revenge eventually on whatever human happened along where he was bound.”
            Harry sighed. “Then there’s my other idea. I think I can kill him entirely with the help of the Deathly Hallows. Strip his ghostly power and banish his soul.”
            “You would not banish it,” said the Bloody Baron, and now he had lifted a hand in which the transparent image of a sword flickered. “You know better than that, Master of Death. You would kill him. I will not permit you to exercise such power on any spirit that formed in Hogwarts. He deserves a rescue.”
            Harry stared directly into his eyes. He knew that it would be a hard fight of it, and he didn’t particularly want to do it, but he thought he could extinguish the Bloody Baron if the ghost attacked him.
            “Then what do you suggest?” he whispered. “If binding won’t work, and the passage of time won’t weaken him, and he only goes on killing, even people like Draco’s mother who have killed no one, then what do you think should happen next?” He heard Narcissa shift at the mention of her name, the only noise she had made for the whole of this long conversation.
            The Bloody Baron’s sword vanished, and he leaned forwards, bobbing as if from a cork in the middle of water. “Bring his spirit here. I can calm him and bind him in a realm where he cannot interact with the human world.”
            “What?” Harry asked. “How?”
            The Bloody Baron smiled, a horrible sight. “You know that Peeves fears me. There are reasons why. There are—reasons that I have control over any ghost within these walls.”
            “What are they, then?” But Harry felt Draco lay his hand on his back at the same moment as the Baron’s smile widened and Narcissa cleared her throat.
            “I do not see why we need to know that, if you feel that we can trust the Bloody Baron’s word,” she said. “And as yet, is there any reason we could not?”
            Harry stared at the ghost. What he had said about Colin sounded as though it made sense; it would explain how the innocent boy Harry had known had changed into this vengeance-crazed killer. And he was also willing to trust that the Bloody Baron would be trouble if he fought him, even if the Deathly Hallows would ultimately let Harry overwhelm him, and there wouldn’t be any reason not to trust that the Baron could control Colin.
            “Myrtle said that he frightened her,” Harry said abruptly. “Wouldn’t the same thing happen if I brought him back and you bound him here? He would frighten the other ghosts, or the children, or the professors?”
            The Bloody Baron gave a low laugh. “I would make sure that he was only able to pull pranks, the way Peeves does, until he became harmless. Believe me, Mr. Potter, I can sense when Peeves’s energy is building up to a point where he intends to inflict permanent harm on someone else. And I would do the same thing with the young Creevey.”
            Harry rolled the thought around in his mind, and sighed slowly. It was probably the best fate he could hope for when it came to Colin. For one thing, Harry didn’t have the power to bring him back to sanity. He didn’t even have the power to make him stop attacking, although Colin appeared to have moderated some of his attacks on Harry himself.
            And Harry didn’t really want to condemn Colin to death or whatever the equivalent of it was. He would only have done that if the choice was between Colin’s continued existence as a ghost and the safety of the living.
            “Could you make sure that he wouldn’t attack even the children or relatives of people who died here fighting on Voldemort’s side in the Battle of Hogwarts?” he asked.
            The Bloody Baron nodded, not removing his shimmering eyes from Harry’s face.
            “All right,” said Harry. “Then do you have a suggestion about how we’re going to get him here? If he can attach himself to the wood of our wands and so on, then he’s probably already overheard part of this conversation and knows our intentions. And he wouldn’t want to come back here anyway, if he even suspects that you have the power to bind him.”
            “He is not here,” said the Bloody Baron, and his eyes glowed. “My power keeps him out of the castle. He did try to attach himself to you, and perhaps did during the walk up from Hogsmeade, but the moment you passed inside the boundaries of Hogwarts, my power took over. He is not here,” he repeated, and he sounded as if he was looking at Draco this time.
            “All right,” said Harry. “But then he knows you’re powerful enough to keep him out.” He considered asking the Baron about the source of that power, and rejected the notion. He would probably only talk in riddles anyway, and Harry didn’t have time for that. “So how are we going to get him here?”
            “You happen to have with you rather perfect bait,” said the Bloody Baron, and this time he was definitely looking at the Malfoys.
            Harry straightened up. “I am not leaving them exposed to the Bard. I made a promise to protect them, and I’m going to keep it.”
            The ghost chuckled, a noise like blood bubbling down a pipe. “I was not proposing that you abandon them. Only that you place them close enough to the boundaries of Hogwarts that Creevey’s ghost is drawn in. I will protect them from there. They were Slytherins,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth again. “I have all the loyalty to them I need.”
            He turned and made his bobbing bow to Draco and Narcissa this time. “And now, it remains to be seen if, despite being Slytherins, they have courage enough to agree.”
*
            Draco looked at the Bloody Baron and swallowed. It wasn’t like this was the ghost who had comforted him when he was sobbing his heart out over the Vanishing Cabinet and being part of the Dark Lord’s army. And he had never had a close relationship with the Baron. Since he seemed so concerned about Creevey as a fellow ghost, maybe he would let him murder Draco and his mother after all.
            As if sensing his doubts, the Baron gave him a calm, implacable glance. “I do want to help the Bard,” he said. “For what measure of help I can give. But it means that he will not kill people, because if he killed them here, then probably the humans would drive all of us forth. No. I shall permit no deaths to take place on these grounds from ghosts, any more than I have from Peeves.”
            Draco hesitated. It was true that Peeves had never killed anyone. And the Bloody Baron would really have no reason to lie about being able to confine the Bard. If Draco had never had a close relationship with this ghost, he’d never antagonized him, either.
            “You will exact vengeance for my husband?” Narcissa asked abruptly.
            The Bloody Baron smiled. “The first months under my confinement, when he finds that he cannot fulfil the purpose for which he was created, ought to be revenge enough for anyone.”
            Draco knew his mother was thinking about that. He held his breath. His mother cared more about vengeance, he thought. He cared more about survival.
            “Very well,” said his mother, and Draco nodded. “Tell what we must do.”
            Draco glanced at Potter, to see what he thought. If he believed this was a bad idea, then Draco would try to talk his mother out of it.
            But Potter was looking hopeful for the first time since they had learned about the Bard, and Draco relaxed. Yes, he thought, he could live with this.
            And survive.
            “Tell us,” he echoed.
*
LISA: The rest of the Muggleborn Legion doesn’t necessarily agree with Dennis. On the other hand, he’s been their leader for a long time, and no one has cared to challenge him, either.
Yes, Harry is starting to feel something.
Severus1snape: Thanks!
SP777: I think I came up with a good one.
Kain: Yes, Dennis has lost Harry as a friend forever, no more how sympathetic Harry feels to Colin. Harry does think that even eternal death/non-existence would be better for Colin than the existence he has right now, anyway.
Thanks!
Yes, Myrtle is terrified of that. But although Peeves teases Myrtle, he doesn’t hurt her. So the same thing would happen for Colin if the Bloody Baron can get him under control.
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Bard of Morning's Hope