Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Made of Common Clay	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 10987 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 19
- 20
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Ever Dropping
Harry wakes in the Malfoy Manor dungeons. He can’t mistake that smell of rot and superiority.
He keeps his eyes closed as he flexes his hands, testing his bonds. They appear to have tied him with chains, instead of magic. Harry turns his wrists back and forth and feels the rub of actual steel against his skin. He hasn’t been rubbed raw yet. He’s on a pallet of some kind, flat on the floor, not hanging from his wrists.
Amateurs.
Not amateurs about the way they captured him, though, Harry has to admit to himself as he thoughtfully turns his feet back and forth to feel the give in the shackles on his ankles. Lighting that green fire was a stroke of Dark Arts genius. It not only broke his wards and disabled most of the other defenses he would have in the house, it confused him and made his thoughts fixate in one direction. He could think only about getting Draco to stop stabbing him and then about getting away. The effect began to fade once they Apparated, but by then he was captive and under the influence of a half-effective Stunner.
It was bolder than he was prepared for. It’s not going to stop him from killing the Malfoys for it. Or at least Lucius. He doubts Draco really wanted his father to sacrifice a Muggle, even if he was willing to take advantage of it.
Harry finally opens his eyes. Darkness waits, but Harry can wait, too, and he stays patient and still until he can make out a thin length of light from under a heavy wooden door. Harry rolls his head towards it. The distance to it looks to be about half again the length of his chains.
Hermione would be so disappointed in me for getting myself captured.
Harry digs down into his mind and spirit, and breathes out slowly. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Magic rises and sparks around him. It wants to form lights immediately, an instinctive reaction to the darkness, but Harry holds it back from doing that and instead winds it around his wrists, carefully arming himself against the chains.
The metal is stronger than he expected, steel infused with runes. Harry uses the magic to trace the runes and make out the shape; he’s fairly certain that burned fingers are the least of what he could expect if he tried a physical touch. His eyebrows climb up when he makes out shapes on the edge of ash trees and lightning bolts. Huh. They are taking him more seriously than he thought.
He lets the wandless magic go and lies in the darkness for a moment, thinking. He can turn the straw or fathers in the pallet into a weapon, but he needs someone to attack first. He can wait until someone comes to get him, but he doesn’t want to. He can make them think that he’s still asleep, but that also has the drawbacks of waiting.
In the end, Harry shakes his head. He would like to stay here and find out what they’re plotting, but there is too much chance that it would involve him being a sacrifice to power a ritual or some other disgusting purpose. Harry intends to be the one to sacrifice people if it has to be done.
“Kreacher!” he calls.
It takes a moment, but the elf manages to get through whatever protections hide the dungeons. Harry thinks it probably has to do with Kreacher’s stubbornness as much as any connection Draco or Narcissa have to the Black blood. Kreacher puts his hands on his hips when he sees Harry. “What has Harry Potter Auror been doing?”
“Getting myself into awkward situations,” Harry admits, holding out his chained hands. “Can you remove these?”
Kreacher stretches out a hand and hisses as his fingers come into contact with the edge of a cuff. “The runes! The runes, they are too strong!”
Harry nods. Well, he escaped from Malfoy Manor once before with the aid of a house-elf. It makes sense that this time, they would decide to make that as difficult as possible. “Okay. Can you go upstairs, spy on the people there, and return and tell me what they’re saying?”
Kreacher gives him an offended look. “Harry Potter Auror is not giving real challenges,” he says, and vanishes.
Harry settles back with a grunt and a sigh. His legs ache. The cuffs there seem to have tightened when he moved around. It would be like the Malfoys to enchant them so, Harry thinks. A lot of movement might be the sign of an escape.
It seems like a slow-moving hour until Kreacher reappears. He bobs his head determinedly. “Harry Potter Auror is being kidnapped by idiots.”
“Well, I knew that.”
“The people up there are discussing Harry Potter Auror. One group says to kill him. Mistress Narcissa be saying no. She is saying they can use you as a hostage for good treatment from the Ministry.”
And maybe get themselves back in good standing if they trade some favors for releasing me, Harry thinks. Narcissa has always been smarter than the rest of them. “How many people are up there?”
“Seven. Mistress Narcissa, Master Draco, Lucius Malfoy, and four Kreacher is not knowing.”
“Do they wear robes like mine when I go to the Sun Chamber?” While it hasn’t changed the bossy way Kreacher treats him, Harry’s double Lordships make his elf proud. He’s put himself in charge of cleaning the robes and the gold stole and all the rest of it. He’ll know what they look like.
“Two of them, Harry Potter Auror. Two of them be tall and proud and one is a woman with red hair and one is the man with sandy hair Harry Potter Auror laughs through the fireplace with.”
“Neville?” Harry chokes. “Neville is here?”
“He is being Lord Longbottom? Yes, Kreacher remembers now. Kreacher is bad elf for forgetting.” Kreacher turns around and hits his forehead on the stone.
For a moment, Harry sits there in wonder, because he can’t believe Neville betrayed him and yet he doesn’t understand how else Neville would have access to Malfoy Manor. Then he shakes his head. He’ll act on the supposition that Neville is here to help him unless something else happens. Susan is an unknown factor, though. “Can you carry a message to Neville without alerting anyone else, Kreacher?”
Kreacher gives him a faintly insulted look. “Kreacher can be doing much more than that, Harry Potter Auror.”
“I know, but I’m talking about what you can do right now.”
Kreacher sniffs and nods. Harry wishes he had something to write on, as that wouldn’t require Kreacher to speak, but he can’t move his hands into the right position anyway, it’ll have to be verbal. “Tell him that I’m in the same place that Luna and I told him about.”
Kreacher vanishes. Harry carefully wakes his wandless magic again. He’s not as exhausted as he expected to be after confronting the green fire. He must have slept a long time on the pallet.
He winds the magic around his shoulders in the form of an invisible but strong and hissing serpent. He can either aid an ally, if one shows up, or attack his enemies, but he’ll probably only get one strike before someone tries to Stun him again.
There’s a soft pop beside him as Kreacher appears again. “Lord Longbottom is hearing the message, Harry Potter Auror.”
“Good. Then I want you to cause as much noise as you can. All right? Around the stairs to the dungeons. But leave before someone can see you.”
“Harry Potter Auror does not need to be telling Kreacher.” Again the elf goes. Harry pulls more and more magic out of his body, stopping only when he knows that he would faint or fall if he tried to run. He needs to escape once he’s out of the chains, not collapse and let them capture him again.
A rumble begins to shake the Manor, sounding as though some pissed-off dragon has woken up deep beneath them. Harry listens critically, and then shakes his head. No, he’s wrong, it doesn’t sound like that after all. He should know, after the dragon that he and Ron and Hermione rode out of Gringotts.
Footsteps begin to rush down the stairs. Harry can only trust that Kreacher is out of the way. He readies the snake around his shoulders. Although he can’t see it—his magic isn’t visible because that’s the way he wants it—it does rear up, its power flowing out of it, so savage that Harry shivers in delight.
This is the first time that he’s come so close to unleashing in front of other people. Only the rune-marked chains hold him back now.
As it happens, the first person who flings open the door of his cell is Draco. Harry snaps the serpent out in a long motion with his arm that his chains don’t restrict. In seconds, the unseen mouth of the serpent clamps down around Draco’s wand and yanks it away from him, bearing it back towards Harry.
Harry laughs as it settles into his hand. He’s used this wand before, and the hawthorn wood hums and then settles into his grip. He touches it to the runes on the cuffs around his wrists, and they explode.
Harry is already moving as the shards of steel spring up around him. He knows they might have cut him. He also knows it doesn’t matter. Once he goes deep enough into his battle-fury, then he won’t feel the pain of any wounds until long after he slows down.
One touch, and the cuffs around his ankles explode as well. Stunners fill the cell, but Harry is on the floor, using the pallet as shelter, and he fires a Bone-Breaking Curse, precisely, one after the other. It’s damage he can heal if he catches Neville or anyone else friendly to him, but it will also cripple and incapacitate the ones who aren’t.
He hears the sound of Draco’s leg breaking, then Lucius reels back with a dangling arm. Susan Bones is standing there with her hands clasped to her mouth and her eyes so wide that Harry can’t help laughing at her as he bolts up and Disarms Narcissa with an easy motion of his own wand. Narcissa’s face goes pale, but she steps backwards and awaits events.
“They told us,” Susan whispers. “They owled us. They said they had you captured, and that you would suffer unless we did exactly as they told us.”
“Harry, mate?” Neville steps forwards, his eyes wide. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Harry looks curiously at the two people behind Neville and Susan, his blood beating furiously against his ears. He recognizes the white-bearded man in the Lordship robes of the Sun Chamber after a moment. He’s Lord Abbott, a distant relative of Hannah’s. His first name is Maximillian or something like that, Harry thinks. He pauses, then bows deeply.
“They didn’t owl me, Lord Potter, Lord Black, but I came with my cousin-in-law for moral support.”
Harry nods. He and Lord Abbott haven’t interacted before this. At least he’s giving scathing glances at the Malfoys, so it’s probable that he’s on Harry’s side.
The last person is a small wrinkled woman that Harry has sometimes seen in the Wizengamot’s chambers, but whose name he doesn’t know. He also doesn’t think she’s a Wizengamot member, but more like an adviser or secretary or companion to someone who is. She nods distantly when she catches his eye.
“Prudence Ottery,” she says. “I’m a half-blood. I keep records of the cases tried before the Wizengamot in easily accessible places.” Her hands clench. “And I received an owl that I should come to Malfoy Manor to see how the mighty have fallen. They were telling me to destroy court records that could have been damaging to pure-bloods.”
“Well, then I suspect that you’ll have some new records to compile or move after this,” Harry says with a pleasant smile, and faces the Malfoys.
Narcissa drops a curtsey, her eyes fastened on his face. Harry isn’t sure how quick she actually is on the uptake, but it looks as though it’s quicker than her husband and son. “Cases involving members of the Sun Chamber and the pure-blood families that belong to it are not usually tried before the Wizengamot, Lord Potter.”
“Not usually,” Harry agreed. “Then again, it’s not like there’s usually three Lords and a Lady as witnesses.”
After a second, Narcissa tilts her head, conceding the point. “For the sake of the lives that you spared in the war,” she asks, her breath soft, “will you spare them Azkaban?”
“Not this time.” Harry looks her fearlessly in the eye as her face jerks up. “I already spared them, and all they did was turn around and prove why they can’t be trusted. No, Mrs. Malfoy. I won’t do it this time.”
“My son—he will succumb to the Dementors. He has no defenses against them.”
“I thought he knew Occlumency?”
“Such mental defenses are no use against them. I beg you, Lord Potter.” To Harry’s intense embarrassment, Narcissa kneels in front of him and reaches out to embrace his legs. It’s something he read about in some of the books he read on pure-blood nobility, but nothing he thought someone would actually do to him. “For the sake of the House whose name you bear, and whose blood Draco and I carry in our veins. Please spare him Azkaban.”
“Are you making the same plea for your husband?” Harry looks at Lucius, who leans on the wall cradling his broken arm, his eyes full of the same mindless hate that Harry usually sees when someone is spitting about Mudbloods.
“My husband made his choices. But from the day that Draco was born, we have forced him to obey us.”
“He’s the same age as me, Mrs. Malfoy. He has to start taking responsibility for his decisions at some point.”
Narcissa swallows and leans back without releasing her hold on his legs. “Please, Lord Black. Let it not be now.”
Harry stands there for a while, thinking. Neville and Susan don’t interrupt; Susan still has her hands clasped in front of her mouth as if afraid of what words are going to escape her if she speaks. Abbott and Ottery look as if their main fascination in this situation is what he’s going to do, and they don’t move.
“There’s one thing I could do,” Harry finally says, grinning a little as he comes up with it. It would be a way to neutralize Malfoy entirely, at least as a family with any power in the Sun Chamber. And probably the Wizengamot, too, now that he thinks of it. No, definitely the Wizengamot.
“What is it?” Narcissa immediately acts as if she would go into the Forbidden Forest to hunt centaurs if he commanded it.
“He can swear allegiance to me as Lord Black,” Harry says blandly. “Renounce his family and the Lordship that would otherwise be his someday. Accept a position that will never result in him becoming my Heir. And then his father goes to Azkaban.”
Narcissa quivers for a moment. But maybe because she wasn’t born into the Malfoy family and the Lordship doesn’t mean as much to her as it means to Draco and Lucius, she says, “I agree,” almost at once.
“Mother!” Draco seemed to have fainted from the pain of his broken leg the last time Harry looked at him, but he’s awake now and staring at them with horrified eyes.
“That’s the deal, Malfoy,” Harry says pleasantly. “You stop existing as a threat to me. Azkaban would do that, which is why it’s an option I’m holding in reserve. Your choice. Become a Black or go to prison.”
Draco flinches, and Harry smiles as his guess proves correct. Draco is squeamish about blood, but he’s also squeamish about pain of any kind. Harry reckons that he was less susceptible to the Dementors than Harry during third year only because he had less painful memories at that point.
Now, he has plenty of them.
“I—I’ll become a Black, then,” Draco whispers.
Narcissa sinks back with a hiss of relief, and finally removes her damn arms from Harry’s damn legs. Lucius snarls, “Draco!”
“We’ll need a formal vow,” Narcissa says, and her voice is soft and determined. “A formal swearing of allegiance.”
“I know,” Harry says, with a nod, and then casts the spell that will heal Draco’s broken leg. Most of the time, it wouldn’t be so easy, but he chose the curse he did for a reason. It hits at a weak spot in the bone and shatters it, but in a way that means little splinters of bone aren’t hanging around in the limb. Draco stands up slowly, feeling his leg and staring at Harry with wide eyes.
“If you think that I will welcome you into my home after this,” Lucius says in a voice so guttural that it’s hard for Harry to understand the words.
“He’ll be welcome in Grimmauld Place and the rest of the Black properties I own,” Harry says with a shrug, and meets Draco’s eyes, which are filled with hero-worship. “As long as he never acts against me again.”
Draco nods frantically, and Narcissa stands and walks off in search of, presumably, the materials they’ll need for this vow.
“Lord Abbott, would you mind calling the Aurors?”
And Harry binds Lucius, just in case, before the Aurors can arrive or Draco can swear his vow.
- 19
- 20
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Made of Common Clay