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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Two—Iron and Silk
Given everything, Dolores wasn’t as surprised as perhaps she should have been to receive a threatening letter from Lucius Malfoy. She checked it thoroughly for curses and contact poisons before she opened it.
Between her name and his flourish of a signature was a single sentence.
This isn’t over.
“Miss Dolores, who’s it from?”
Dolores smiled at Harry as she laid the parchment side. “Someone who has better things to do than write to me,” she responded, entirely truthfully. “Now, I want you to tell me what you would do if you suddenly found yourself in a Muggle area without protection.”
Harry frowned a little. “How would that happen? I mean, you and Sirius don’t let me out of your sight, and if you were sick I would have Remus to take me somewhere and get help, and—”
“It’s a hypothetical scenario, Harry. Answer the question.”
“How can it help to train me if I don’t know how I got there in the first place? Did I use accidental magic to Apparate?”
Dolores held back her sigh and slowly nodded. “Say it was that. I know that you used that kind of magic once when you were younger. Imagine what you could do with it now that you’re older and understand it was magic, not—something unknown.” She disliked speaking the word “freakishness” aloud. Harry did not need the prejudices the Muggles had drilled into his head reinforced.
“Can it be accidental when I know about it?” Harry asked, but he subsided when he saw how she looked at him. He closed his eyes. “All right. Where is the Muggle area, Miss Dolores? Is it London, or somewhere else?”
“Make it London.” In some ways, getting out of a populated Muggle area was harder for a wizard than an isolated rural one; there were more people around to see any mistakes that he might make.
“All right. Then I’ll try to find directions to the road where the Leaky Cauldron is, and go there.”
“Why?” Dolores asked in interest. That wasn’t anything like what Harry had said when they played this game before. On the other hand, she didn’t have a habit of asking him to find his way around London.
“I know they have Floo powder there. I would Floo home as soon as I convinced Tom that it was okay for me to wander around alone and that I was all right.”
Dolores blinked. She had not anticipated such a simple way of bypassing her game. And she was impressed that Harry had remembered the bartender Tom’s name after exactly two exposures.
“Very well. We shall make the next game more challenging. You are lost in the middle of a small forest near Muggle homes. Rural ones. You have no idea where London is. What would you do?”
“Go to the Muggle houses and beg for a ride to London.”
Dolores paused. “Why would you do that?”
Harry opened his eyes. “I don’t like my relatives that much, Miss Dolores. They aren’t—kind to children.” It sounded like there was a sticky clog in his throat. Then again, Harry didn’t like talking about his relatives much, as Dolores well knew. “But that doesn’t mean other Muggle would hurt me. I could find someone who would feel sorry for me and get me in touch with people in London. It would probably be a woman. Muggle women were always kinder to me when they didn’t know the stories Aunt Petunia told about me.”
Kinder than men. I wonder if that is one reason he trusts me, and took some time to warm up to Sirius? “Very well. And if you could find no one in the immediate vicinity who would help you?”
“I would walk until I found someone who could.”
Dolores studied him, waiting to see if this was a joke or a test in return for her test. But it did not seem so. Harry’s eyes were clear, his voice firm, and there was no glint of amusement anywhere in his face.
Indomitable.
That might or might not be a good thing for her, in the long run, but at the moment Dolores had to admit it was just the thing to help them win Harry’s place in the world. She relaxed and smiled at him. “Dumbledore is never going to know what hit him,” she said.
“Or Malfoy, either.”
Dolores blinked. There was a tone in Harry’s voice that made her wonder if he’d been talking to Sirius about Sirius’s plans for revenge. “You can’t forgive him even though he’s Draco’s father?”
“He would have taken me away and tried to control me. I won’t forgive him.” Harry spent a moment staring at the wall, and then shook his head and stood up. “Thank you, Miss Dolores. I’m going to find Sirius.”
That probably does mean that he’s talking about revenge with him. I only hope that neither of them causes us too many problems.
*
“A please to meet you again, Madam Umbridge.”
“Do call me Dolores. Such good allies shouldn’t stand on formality. I presume I can also call you Ernest?”
“Of course,” said Bolton, and kissed the air over the back of her hand. He looked around the sitting room in interest as Dolores ushered him to a chair. “You’ve decorated the old home in a splendid way. I’d have thought all the Potter properties and the goods in them would have crumbled to dust with no sustaining magic.”
“There were still some house-elves watching over them, and of course the elves are overjoyed at being able to be here and help take care of Harry as he comes of age,” Dolores said, taking the chair across from him. She turned her head. “And here’s the boy of the hour now.”
Harry knew perfectly well what to do, given that she’d told him about the owl she’d got from Bolton and the payment he would probably demand. Certainly a few moments of Harry’s time would be part of that payment. Harry walked into the room with the tea-tray and put it down carefully on the covered table between Dolores and Bolton, then bowed. “What kind of tea do you take, sir?”
“I’m impressed. Not many people keep the old pure-blood courtesies anymore.” Bolton glanced at her, and Dolores could see the glitter in his eyes. He would be wondering why Dolores had bothered, since neither she nor Harry were pure-bloods.
“Oh, it helps that Harry’s godfather is a Black, of course,” Dolores said, with a little turn of her wrist. “He could tell us all about the niceties.”
Perfect truth. Sirius could have, and that he would rather be ripped apart by wild hippogriffs than actually do it didn’t need to be mentioned. From the small smile Bolton gave her, he might have noticed. He turned to Harry. “Two sugars and a good deal of milk.”
Harry made the tea perfectly and gave it to Bolton, then glanced sideways at Dolores. “You know the way I like it,” she said softly. She knew he was wondering if she was going to speak her usual order aloud in front of Bolton, but she didn’t intend to. It was not that they were such a great secret, but she wanted the tea service to show, in part, how intimate she and Harry were.
Harry nodded, and immediately set about making her tea. Bolton gave her a somewhat sardonic look. “It appears that young Mr. Potter has recovered from his time with the Muggles rather well.”
“He always does,” Dolores said, and touched Harry’s shoulder in thanks as he held her cup out to her. “As long as someone is raising him who understands him.”
“Is that all Mr. Malfoy would have had to do to win you, Mr. Potter? Just show you a little understanding?”
“No, sir. More than that. Because he got in my way.”
There was a trace of that glint in his eyes again. Bolton’s brows crept up, but he didn’t seem to be inclined to snap. He only waited while Harry gave them both another polite little bow and left.
Then he turned to Dolores again. “Have you considered what kind of potential political mastermind you’re training up?”
“I think neither Harry nor I would call him a mastermind quite yet,” Dolores said pleasantly. “But he has trained very hard, and he understands the kind of position he could hold one day, not only because of his wealth or because his father was a Potter, but because of his fame. It’s a lot to grasp for a seven-year-old. He’s done remarkably well.”
“Indeed, he has.” Bolton paused. “And I imagine you would appreciate knowing why I helped you in the trial in front of the Wizengamot.”
“Yes. I could come up with a number of different motivations, but I wanted to hear you explain them yourself.”
“As wise as you are political,” Bolton murmured, and put down his cup. “I don’t suppose you know a lot about how Malfoy came by his influence in the Wizengamot.”
“I assumed it was his wealth and his connections in the Ministry.” It was the usual way. In fact, now that Dolores thought about it, she couldn’t think of any other way, except by being absurdly prominent in another field the way Dumbledore had been, or the sort of pure-blood whose family had always been on the Wizengamot and the other members going along with the pressure to do it “as it’s always been done.”
“Part of it was that.” Bolton’s lips were tight. “What I tell you cannot go beyond this room. You cannot tell Mr. Black.”
“What about Harry?” Dolores asked, even as she cast the sort of charm that would disable any eavesdropping spells Sirius had left lying about. He had a bad habit of doing that, and of pouting when she found them.
Bolton paused. “If you think he would be mature enough to trust with the knowledge…”
“Hard to answer when I don’t know what you’re going to tell me yet, Ernest.”
Bolton took the bait. “Lucius challenged and dueled a friend of mine, Shirley Linden. There was bad blood, a feud between their families; I don’t know what it was about. But he set up a challenge that seemed to play to her strengths, and when she fell into the trap, then he demanded that she cease all political activity immediately. That meant leaving the Wizengamot.”
“And you think…”
“I think he’s done it many times. Not always with duels, and not always to friends of mine. Sometimes with blackmail, at least once with what I’m sure was a direct threat, and once with—well, if I could have proven it was the Imperius Curse, he wouldn’t still be there.” Bolton took an angry sip of his tea. “He might have merited an influential position there anyway, but he secured it by maneuvering people who opposed him out of the way. That means he’s more powerful than just his presence in the room would suggest.”
Dolores nodded. “You want to limit his influence?”
“And get revenge of a sort, and ensure that he doesn’t accrue any more. Yes. I think that you’re one of the very few methods of doing it. Mr. Potter is a new enough player on the board that Lucius doesn’t have a strategy for countering him yet. Well, of course Dumbledore could hold him in check, but everyone knew about the bad blood between him and Lucius. That made his opposition worth less than it would have been otherwise. You understand?”
“Yes, I do. But you know that Harry is far too young for any serious political influence in the Wizengamot itself.”
“Not too young to have serious allies. I think you’re one, and the Minister is another, although she had her hands tied last week.” Bolton’s hand tightened on his teacup. “There’s a power gap with Dumbledore fading out now. We have to fill it before Lucius does. Would you be willing to help me?”
“We owe you for your help the other day. I would be willing to do it. But you must understand that Harry is still a child, and I cannot always tell him what to think.”
“What cause is dearest to him? I mean, besides learning about the wizarding world and staying with you.”
“He is worried about Muggleborn children being abused by their Muggle guardians.”
“For reasons I can understand. So. Does he want to work through legislation?”
Dolores had to laugh. “I doubt Harry has thought that far ahead, honestly. What I know is that he wants to stop Muggleborn children from being abused any way he can. If that means going around knocking on doors and asking blunt questions, I think he would do it.”
Bolton was quiet for a time. Then he said, “What are you going to do when he goes to Hogwarts?”
“Encourage him to communicate with me the instant Dumbledore does something designed to place him in danger or control him.”
“And you think that would be enough?”
“I thought about tutoring him at home through his Hogwarts years, the way I am now, but then everyone would say that showed I was afraid of Dumbledore and his possible influence on Harry, or afraid to let Harry out of my own control. What I hope is to make him independent enough that he won’t have to fear Dumbledore. He’ll be able to see through him.”
Bolton nodded slowly. “Will Dumbledore leave you alone for long enough?”
“At the moment, he has been stymied,” said Dolores, with a slight shrug. “He tried to get custody of Harry through legal means. He tried to manipulate Harry into choosing him. He tried to make Sirius his legal guardian and get Sirius under his thumb, too. I don’t see why he would try another tactic right away.”
“Perhaps not right away. I would still be on my guard, if I were you.”
Dolores beamed at him. “I am.”
The details after that were more technical, discussions of how to curb Lucius’s power without moving so openly against him that other Wizengamot members might begin to think Harry had been acting. Dolores was well-satisfied when Bolton left the house, though. Here was an ally where she understood exactly what he wanted, and it wasn’t custody of Harry, and moreover, he was someone who had been in the Wizengamot for a long time. This could be a strong partnership.
She went to find Harry and tell him so, but he wasn’t in the schoolroom with Lupin where he would usually be having his lessons this time of day. Wondering, Dolores went up to the second floor, and found Harry standing with wide eyes next to a half-open door. When he saw Dolores, he shook his head urgently and laid a finger alongside his lips.
Dolores edged closer and listened.
“…and you’d better listen close, Malfoy. One more stunt like the one you tried to get Harry out of my custody, and you’ll end up homeless.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that threat, Black?”
Dolores wanted to close her eyes and bang her head against the wall. No, of course Lucius didn’t, and of course Sirius had overstepped in his desire for revenge. Honestly, could he go five minutes without trying to turn a stupid plan into reality?
“Yes, I do. Because I spent the last week reactivating the Black investments and buying up new properties and looking at family ledgers, and what do you know, one of your ancestors gave Malfoy Manor outright to my ancestor Arcturus Black in payment of a debt. Of course, Arcturus died of what certainly wasn’t poison a week later and he hadn’t made a will to bequeath the house anywhere, so it went back to the Malfoy family. But I found that sort of suspicious, you know. One of my paranoid ancestors, not making a will right away and taking precautions to ensure his new property went to the family? So I started doing some digging.”
Lucius was absolutely silent. Dolores, too, didn’t think she could have spoken if she’d tried.
“And what do you know,” Sirius crooned, sounding like a crocodile, “it turned out he had bequeathed the house somewhere. Just not to his daughter, who apparently hid the will because she was infatuated with Henri Malfoy. Not destroyed it, of course. Black documents are usually charmed indestructible. And the house was left to Arcturus’s son ‘and the heirs of that son in perpetuity,’ and I’m the heir to his son because my mother was, and I could come and prove lots of nasty things against you in open court if I ever wanted to, which I don’t necessarily want to, because Harry’s where he belongs right now and I don’t want to distress Cousin Narcissa, but I could do it if I wanted to, which you’d better give me a reason not to want to. Do you understand, Lucius?”
Silence hard enough to freeze an Abraxan, and Lucius’s choked voice said, “I understand.”
“Good!” said Sirius in his usual cheerful tone. “That will be all, then. Have a good day.”
He shut the Floo. Dolores was still feeling wrongfooted when Harry turned and beamed up at her.
“He’s wonderful,” Harry said sincerely.
Dolores nodded. And much more dangerous than I thought.
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The Daring Win