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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—The Story of the Flaw
            Harry could feel the resistance the minute he began hissing. It felt as though someone had stretched out a hand and was pressing flat down on his tongue, trying to hold his voice back. Harry sharpened his strength and refused to stop hissing. He knew that Draco was having a bit of a struggle to control Narcissa, but that didn’t matter. He hadn’t told Harry to stop.
            Lucius had whipped towards the sound, but Harry had done his glamours well enough that he couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. Nor, Harry knew, would he have any idea what Harry was saying in the snake language, unless he could tell from the way that Narcissa was shrieking and struggling.
            What Harry said, quite simply, was, “Awaken. Respond.”
            The scar on Narcissa’s throat danced and writhed. Harry could feel the heavy rippling effect of it, passing across his forehead and face and down to his throat. The scar would bite him if it could get to him, he knew. But this time, it didn’t get off Narcissa’s neck and come for him. Perhaps something as simple as Draco restraining his mother’s wrists, the way he was doing now, was preventing it from moving.
            Lucius finally decided the real threat was Draco and not the hissing, and whipped back to face him. Harry opened his mouth to shout a warning, not sure what language it would come out in, but Draco had those Auror reflexes that had comforted Harry when he thought about this before, and he blocked his father’s curse before it could manifest.
            Then he and Lucius were dueling in earnest, moving away from the altar so that they could get to each other, and Harry knew that he would have to deal with Narcissa by himself.
            He turned back to the altar and continued with the hissing, the constant two commands to the scar, repeated over and over.
            The scar finally came free.
            It raced towards Harry’s hiding place, coiling and uncoiling, a thin dark line of evil. Harry did manage to get a good look at Narcissa’s neck without it, though, and also without the concealing necklace, for the first time.
            It was an absolutely clean cut in her neck, the edges of the flesh sliced away as though what lay between them had been Vanished.
            Harry had to smile. He knew, now, that the scar and the wound that had made it were older than the necklace and the mirrors, that they had been used to control it instead of the other way around.
            The scar slid straight towards him through the grass, and Harry flicked his wand down and to the right. He was not going to have this bloody thing intimidate him the way it had done last time, and accordingly, he had prepared a little surprise for it, studying some of the books they had found in Cuthbert’s Corner and Kreacher had cleansed of Dark magic.
            Some wizards had conducted rituals of sacrifice, and some had found it convenient to have a spell that conjured a ritual circle at a moment’s notice, around whatever had escaped from their current one and was attacking them. It was only a guess on Harry’s part that this would work, but the circle slammed into being around the scar, and it was made of blood because he thought it should be, and the scar slid to a halt behind the inner edge, as though it had banged into an invisible wall.
            Harry took a moment to crouch there before he got up. That spell didn’t make a visible cut on him, but it still took blood from his veins—it just Vanished it directly from inside and into the circle instead of drawing it from somewhere on his body. He had to endure the dizziness and the urge to sick up that inevitably came from blood loss.
            In the meantime, he heard sharp cracks and sharper voices from beyond the grass. Draco was dueling Lucius, Harry knew, and holding him at bay for the time being. Since his circle seemed to be doing the same thing for the scar, Harry leaned out of the bushes so that he could see the duel, ignoring the way the scar banged frantically against the magic caging it.
            Lucius and Draco weren’t casting at the moment. Draco had an intent look on his face, as though he could do this for hours. Lucius, on the other hand, looked half-crazed, breathing so hard that Harry was surprised he hadn’t dropped his wand. Sweat ran down his forehead, and blood from a cut on his cheek.
            “Who are you?” Lucius whispered, sounding as though he had said the same thing for hours. “Who hates us so much, who so wishes our demise, that they would battle against us like this?”
            “Someone you forgot,” Draco said, and then gave his head a little shake. Harry could see him catching himself back from the temptation to tell Lucius everything, that he and Narcissa had a child they had forgotten. That wasn’t in the plan, and grant Draco credit, he was aware of that. “Someone who has a claim to these stones that could replace yours.”
            Harry nodded. That was a good tactic, both to divert Lucius’s attention and to give him some other mental path to pursue. He would think that Draco was a Crabbe now, or someone who had bought the manor from the Crabbes.
            Lucius sneered. “You must see that I cannot duel you as well as you would duel me,” he said. He lowered his wand and gave Draco an ironic bow. “If you brought me here to kill me, that will be easily accomplished.”
            “No one wishes that.” Draco gave his father a cool look. “I wish, in fact, to heal Mrs. Malfoy of her problem, as I said to you once before. But the help I brought with me would hardly be acceptable to you. He has tried to aid you, and you rejected him.” He turned to face Harry. “Mr. Potter?”
            They hadn’t specifically discussed this deception, because they hadn’t thought Harry would use his Parseltongue so quickly. But Harry had decided that was the best thing to do, and just as Draco had fallen into line with it once he realized what was happening, Harry thought he could do the same now, and continue the lie Draco had begun.
            “Mr. Malfoy,” he said, and nodded to Lucius, who was staring at him in silence. “Will you finally leave me alone long enough to try this? I can do something, I think, but not if you keep setting Ministry people on me every time I start to use Parseltongue.”
            “You have every reason to hate my wife.” Lucius took a step back as if he would circle to the side and get another bead on Harry, but Draco aimed his wand at him again, and Lucius fell still in frustration. “Letting you hiss too long at her scar would condemn her to death.”
            “No,” Harry said. “She saved my life in the Forbidden Forest when she lied to the Dark Lord. You can think of this as the repayment for the debt that I never gave her.”
            Lucius squinted at him, seemingly confused. Harry thought he knew why. Narcissa had lied to Voldemort to save Draco’s life, but for Draco’s parents, they now had no child. They must have wondered before about the motives for Narcissa’s action, or perhaps they simply hadn’t thought them through in much detail.
            “You tire me,” Lucius whispered. “But it seems, for the moment, that I have no choice but to yield.” He hesitated, then folded his arms so that his wand was pointing off to the side. “You have a reputation as a merciful man, Auror Potter. Do not hurt her.”
            Harry nodded, recognizing the plea for what it was. Then he burned the grass he’d hidden in away to the sides with rapid flicks of his wand, so that Lucius could make out the scar coiling and slithering back and forth in the ritual circle.
            Lucius stirred once, then stood still and watched the scar as though it was natural to have it there. Draco had retreated towards the altar, Harry saw, and Narcissa. Well, that was fine. If he thought Harry would have more luck in dealing with his father right now, then Harry would try.
            “What do you know about this?” Harry asked Lucius.
            Long moments passed, each one a heartbeat, a beat of the blood. Harry thought it was possible that Lucius wouldn’t tell him. Then Lucius met his eyes, and gave what sounded like a little snort of despair, and said, “She has had that for—several years now.”
            Not caused by the explosion of the necklace, then, Harry thought. I knew it. He thought of other questions that he could ask, but in the end, only one of them seemed important. “What caused it?”
            Lucius’s eyes flickered back towards the glamoured altar. Draco could call Harry unsubtle and say that he didn’t understand the importance of expressions and little gestures, but this one, Harry understood.
            “What kind of ritual did the Ministry use the altar in?” he asked, greatly daring, but not, at the same time. They had the knowledge that enabled him to make the guess. Lucius might not know where that information had come from, but like Harry cared.
            Lucius stared at Harry with his mouth slightly open, then closed it again, hard enough to make his teeth rattle. His eyes had gone stern and distant. “It was not the Ministry.”
            “Interesting.” Harry kept his voice pitched low. “Because we found this altar in the Ministry.”
            Lucius turned his back. Harry watched him, muscles tensed to the point of leaping, ready to move in an instant if Lucius drew his wand. But instead, Lucius just paced back and forth a little, turned to look at Narcissa again, and said, as if addressing a different audience than Harry altogether, “It was a subgroup of the Ministry. Not the whole thing.”
            Harry kept from rolling his eyes with an effort of will. The distinction was important to Lucius, so he would pretend it was important to him—for a little while. “Then are you going to tell me what they did? Or enough about it to enable us to help your wife? There’s really no way that we can without knowing the content of the ritual, you know.”
            Lucius whipped back to face him, and Harry’s wand was at the level of his throat before he knew he was going to move it. Lucius disregarded that, though, as much as he seemed to disregard anything. He leaned towards Harry instead, and he was panting and his hands clenching as though he was going to murder Harry on the spot. Harry watched him, and Lucius broke from the stern pose a moment later and turned back towards Narcissa.
            “Who is that man?” he whispered. Harry waited for a second, but it was obvious the words hadn’t been loud enough for Draco to hear, because he didn’t turn around. “How am I supposed to just trust him to let him treat my wife?”
            Harry cleared his throat. Lucius didn’t turn around, though, so Harry spoke, hoping that Draco wouldn’t accuse him later of making concessions he shouldn’t have made. “He spoke the truth when he said that he had as much claim to these stones as you do. Otherwise, I can only say that he’s pure-blood, and under a glamour. We understandably don’t want to reveal our real identities.”
            Lucius swung around again. His face was pale enough that Harry thought he could see veins in his forehead and all down his cheeks. “Except for you. Your Parseltongue would give it away if your face did not.”
            Harry shrugged lightly. “I’m on the run from the Ministry anyway, and you already know what I think of your brilliant attempts to gain power. Having you know who I am makes no difference to our plans.” He hesitated, then added, “And besides, this scar has never taken glamours well, anyway.”
            Lucius gave a single, distracted nod. He said, “I suppose, if I do not explain, you will only try whatever ritual you have on Narcissa without knowing whether or not it will work.”
            Harry blinked. “I thought you said I was a merciful man.”
            “I hope you may be.” Lucius waved his hand at him. “But I know nothing of your partner, and from the way he watches her, he wants to prove an experimental point, no matter what it costs her or whether it would be better to leave it alone.”
            Harry bit his lip to avoid saying anything, but he wondered what kind of life Lucius had led, not to recognize the emotion on Draco’s face. Harry knew love through the glamour. He thought he knew family love, even. Just because he hadn’t seen it directed at him often didn’t mean he had never seen it.
            “Well,” Harry said at last, “I can’t fully speak for what my partner might do. But you have a chance to keep your wife from going insane, Mr. Malfoy. You can even say that we owe it to you, since I broke the mirrors and necklace that were protecting her. For the last time. What did the Ministry do to her?”
            Lucius seemed to spend one more moment contemplating all the ways his plans had failed, and then he sighed and said, “She wanted to show—certain people—that she was worthy of taking up a cause they had abandoned.”
            Harry snorted. “Can you be less cryptic? We do want to heal her, but we need information, and right now, I can’t say what information is going to be important.”
            Lucius took a step towards him, looked at Harry’s wand, and halted again. “She was hoping that former Death Eaters, and other Dark pure-bloods left leaderless by the fall of the Dark Lord, would accept her in his place,” he snapped. “Is that clear enough for you?”
            Harry shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He was sure that Draco still had Narcissa under control, or he wouldn’t have risked taking his eyes off Lucius for that long.
            Of course that’s happening. Because no one ever learns.
            Harry sighed and looked at Lucius again. “How did she think she would be able to convince them to follow her? And why her, and not you?”
            Lucius frowned, a ripple that seemed to travel through most of his body before ending up on his face. “I was—Marked. Someone they saw make bargains with the Ministry to avoid spending too much time in Azkaban or losing too much of my money. Narcissa argued, and rightly, that they wouldn’t follow someone who had made too many compromises. But Narcissa hasn’t made those. She wasn’t tried by the Ministry as harshly, thanks to you.” He cocked his head at Harry as if thinking Harry would comment. Harry stayed silent, and Lucius continued, “And she’s from a family that still commands respect, because of their commitment to the Dark Lord’s ideals in the last few generations, while the Malfoy name right now is tarnished.”
            The last few generations bar two, you mean. Harry had to bite his lip to avoid saying anything about Sirius and Regulus.
            Lucius half-bowed his head. “And the first thing the Dark Lord did, which convinced us of his connection to the great Salazar Slytherin, was speak Parseltongue.”
            Harry sighed. “She thought the Ministry could give her the ability to speak it.”
            Lucius nodded. “They had had—some success with others, other wizards who wanted gifts of wandless magic. They could not make them more powerful with incantations, or increase their magical cores, but single powers were within their grasp. Narcissa underwent a ritual on the altar which mingled her blood with the blood of a snake and then fed it back into her veins.”
            Draco lifted his head. Harry could see the curled lip and his mouth moving, and knew what he should ask next without even staying to hear the words. “What kind of serpent?” he asked, turning back to Lucius.
            “I only witnessed part of the ritual,” Lucius said, his hands locking together before he noticed, and put them behind his back instead. “The torches—the firelight, the shadows, it was confusing to see what they were doing—”
            “You already told me about a Dark ritual that the Ministry itself conducted, and you’ve already tried to have me killed,” Harry said. “You might as well tell me what kind of snake it was. Unless it’s a basilisk, one kind isn’t Darker than another.”
            Lucius still kept wincing, and stood silent for a long time before he again opened his mouth. Harry barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Did Slytherins like to keep secrets for the hell of it? It was absurd, how reluctant Lucius was to divulge information that might save his wife’s sanity.
            “A cobra,” Lucius said at last. “A king cobra. Don’t ask me about the sex; I don’t know that. But I did see that the marking on the hood was stained scarlet. And no, I don’t know whether that was natural or magical, either.”
            Draco moved. Harry glanced at him, and saw him nodding. Apparently he either recognized Lucius’s description, which Harry didn’t, or something else about it was enough to go on.
            “Fine,” Harry said. “We’re going to try and—” He paused, hoping Draco would fill in the gap.
            Draco did, as smoothly as though neither of them had ever intended to drop the thread. “Separate the Blood Cobra’s venom out from within your wife’s veins, Mr. Malfoy.” If it was strange for him to speak of his parents that way, Harry couldn’t tell it from his voice. “It may not reverse all the changes that have happened, but it will halt them, and give you time to decide what you want to do next.”
            Harry nearly applauded. He could understand the reasons Draco had made that decision. He had wanted to help save his mother, but this was as far as he could go, the only debt he felt he owed them. There were some things that Lucius and Narcissa would have to do on their own.
            “What is a Blood Cobra?” Lucius’s voice was low as he turned back towards Draco. Harry suspected that not knowing who Draco was, and having his wand aimed at Narcissa’s throat, still bothered him.
            Draco snorted, sounding enough like himself that Harry started a little before reminding himself that it didn’t matter what Draco sounded like. Lucius couldn’t remember anything about it anyway. “A magical snake that certain wizards have experimented with enough to separate it from the rest of its species. They would have done better leaving it alone. Their venom is blood, now, and their blood poisonous. The experiments were successful in the sense that the snakes can survive, breed, and pass down their traits to offspring. But there is no other safe use for them.”
            “The Ministry told us that the ritual was safe.” Lucius’s voice did not shake, but he had an expression on his face that made Harry think he would have liked to let it.
            “Of course they would have,” Draco said shortly. “Now. What happened instead of your wife gaining Parseltongue, Mr. Malfoy?”
            Lucius shut his eyes. “The cut that they transfused the—Blood Cobra’s—venom into did not heal properly. The scar was animated from the very first, but we thought that a side effect of the ritual. It turned out to be the main outcome. Only later did I find out that the Ministry was not as effective at instilling these gifts of wandless magic as it claimed. My wife did receive a gift, but it was this scar, not the Parseltongue. And while Parseltongue, from snakes, can soothe it, my wife still cannot understand it.”
            “The mirror that I shattered was part of the protections against it?” Harry asked quietly.
            Lucius nodded, still not looking at either of them. “Real snakes are too unpredictable with speaking Parseltongue consistently, so we recorded sounds that a wizard using a Translation Charm assured us were Parseltongue words. Perhaps he was wrong. But as long as the sound came through the mirrors, which were linked with the necklace, then the scar was soothed. And it was an extra safeguard. The snakes carved on the mirrors laid down a charm over the scar that ensured it slept most of the time.”
            Harry said, “Until I broke one.”
            “Yes.” Lucius turned his head, and it was hard to meet his eyes. “And it became obvious that the scar was awake again, and the stress of sharing her body with something else—a separate being, one that she could not command—was driving my wife insane.”
            “I know how to cure her, then, Mr. Malfoy,” Draco said. “At least, I know how to keep the situation from worsening. I will remove the Blood Cobra’s blood from her veins, performing the ritual in response, and my partner will burn the scar.”
            Harry blinked. “Excuse me?” He didn’t know why Draco would want him to cauterize the wound. It seemed like it would be the natural point of entry for Draco’s magic, since it had been the cut the Ministry had poured the poison through.
            Draco jerked his head at the ritual circle Harry had imprisoned the scar in. “Burn it. So that it cannot get back to her and try to become part of her once more.”
            Harry straightened his shoulders. Lucius was eyeing him, and looked like he might have started to doubt the story that Harry and Draco were partners in magical theory and ritual working together. “Of course.” He glanced at the scar, which had given up on thrashing against the boundaries of the circle and lay coiled in the middle. Even as he watched, though, the thick head rose like a question mark and looked at him without eyes.
            “We have what we need here,” Draco said, talking to Lucius, or at least he was when Harry turned back around. “We only need your permission, Mr. Malfoy, for when we might begin.”
            Lucius gave him a thick smile and stepped away with his palms raised towards Draco. “We are in your hands.”
            Literally, Harry knew, and ignored the way that Draco’s smile seemed to curdle and kindle, both at once. Draco glanced at him. Harry nodded.
            I’m game to try this if he is.
*
            Sasunarufan13: The flaw, as you see here, is really the scar itself, and while it can move around and attack people, it won’t do so at her urging.
            Yes, they did hear Harry hissing, but Harry thought it was best to move, while Draco held Narcissa relatively helpless.
            Thanks for reviewing.
            SP777: Well, Athright was brought in by Jenkins and Warren, who trust her, so Harry could talk to them about her if he needed to.
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Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity