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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Tracking Bellatrix

            Harry walked slowly beside Black into the house Black had Apparated them to. Harry had no idea where it was, other than a dark moor. He’d smelled crushed plants as they walked to the front door, too. But that might only mean the house had its own garden.

            Black had forbidden Harry to bring any of his animals with him. Of course, that really only meant that Harry had to leave Cross and Yar behind. He still carried three mice tucked into the bottoms of his pockets that had stayed silent and invisible through Black’s harsh pats across his robes.

            “Welcome to the Dark Manse.”

            Black had that odd tone in his voice he got so often when he talked about his family, or Sirius. As if he was mocking them and not mocking them at the same time, Harry thought, tilting his head as he stared around at the house. It was entirely dark inside except for a little glimmer of starlight through a tiny window shaped like a half-circle.

            The steps that met them immediately inside the front door were unsteady. Harry reached out in search of a railing and then pulled his hand back with a little hiss.

            “Oh, yes, that’s the Eating Moss,” said Black casually, lifting his wand. It glowed, and the slimy black stuff on the walls that Harry had recoiled from recoiled in turn, lifting and waving angrily back and forth like black tendrils growing underwater. “My ancestors turned it loose in here long ago to make sure it would eat rats and the like. It’s too small to swallow humans,” he added, with a glance at Harry.

            But it feels disgusting. Even that little touch had made Harry feel as if his fingers were coated in slime. He just nodded and turned to examine the rest of the house.

            For right now, he could only see the stairs immediately in front of them. Black led him through and upwards, and Harry shivered in silence as he saw how dark the walls were. They were made of basalt or some other black stone in the first place, and then the Eating Moss had grown over most of them.

            “A long time since people lived here regularly,” Black muttered, and set a coil of the moss that had tried to hang down behind his head like a noose on fire. Over the stink of its burning, he explained, “You have to have a certain kind of madness in you. Not many of our people do.”

            Harry twisted to stare at him, and Black laughed outright, his eyes gleaming like little stones in the light of his wand. They came into a room that Harry could feel stretching away around them, a lot bigger than the entrance, and Black lashed his wand down again. This time, torches on the walls lit up.

            “Even among the Blacks,” he murmured, “there are different kinds and shades of madness.”

            And you probably have most of them, Harry thought. Including the kind that makes you interfere in things that are none of your business.

He turned to study the room Black had led him into. It had grooves pressed into the stone floor as though some heavy furniture had once stood in the center, but right now, it was entirely empty. The torch sconces were carved like rampant dragons, clinging to the wall with their mouths open and the fire coming out of their parted jaws. They were all black. Probably iron, Harry thought.

            A huge fireplace stood on one side of the room, and a blackened oak door on the far wall. But around them all was a dense silence. Harry shifted under it before he could stop himself.

            Black nodded. “Good to see that you can recognize silence isn’t natural to human beings,” he said.

            But I’m not a human being, you said. Half the people in Harry’s life had never treated him like one. He looked around the room again. He thought there must be some reason Black had brought him here, but he couldn’t understand what it was.

            Black stood and waited. And waited. Harry finally realized what he was waiting for, and scowled at him.

            Black smiled. “Scowl all you like. You’re entertaining, little Harry.”

            Harry opened his mouth and shaped his breath into a question. “Why bring me here, if there’s nothing that would interest me here?”

            “Ah.” Black nodded. “There is something important about this very room that should tell you the answer!” He swept out a hand to indicate the length and breadth of it. Harry followed the gesture doubtfully.

            He started with the torch sconces, since they were the most varied objects—and not all the same, he could see when he concentrated on this dragon’s lashing tail, that dragon’s turned head and gleaming eye. He had always preferred looking at animals, even carved ones, to people anyway.

            But the dragons revealed nothing in this case. Harry had to turn to the grooves in the floor, the second feature of note.

            They could tell him nothing, since Harry had no idea how long they had been there. He didn’t even know if friends or enemies or family had removed the table that had once been there. Or if it would have mattered if he could know. Since Black said his family hadn’t lived here in a while, maybe it had been something as simple as taking all the furniture with them when they left, so the moss wouldn’t eat it.

            He turned to the fireplace, the last large feature of the room. The stones it was made of seemed to be exactly the same as the stones of the walls. Harry shuffled to the side so that he could see inside. There were a few scratches on the inside walls, maybe made by children playing in there, and lots of ashes.

            And then Harry reeled back a step and blinked, and turned to Black.

            “Say it,” Black said. “I won’t confirm it one way or the other unless you say it. Out loud. With words,” he added, as though Harry could have missed his frankly ridiculous requirements.

            Harry gritted his teeth and managed to speak without shouting. “There are lots of new ashes in here. And—” He looked around the room, sure, this time, what Black had wanted him to notice. “And no dust.”

            “Exactly.” Black smiled. “I promise that the moss on the walls doesn’t eat dust. It’s only interested in living things.” He flicked his wand casually and drove back what seemed to be a curling coil of moss that had sneaked down the walls without Harry noticing.

            “So someone is living here?”

            “It would seem like it, wouldn’t it?” Black’s mouth hitched up in a secretive little smile. “I said that most of my family doesn’t have the kind of madness it would take to live in the Dark Manse. It used to be that Bellatrix didn’t, either, even when she was more insane than the rest of us. But maybe Azkaban mixed with what was there to give her the right kind.”

            Harry turned in a slow circle. He didn’t think anyone was hiding in here to attack them. It was just too open, and Black would have raised some defenses.

            “How did you know she was likely to be here?” he asked, without looking back at Black. “Is there some kind of alarm that rang when someone entered the property?”

            “You could say that.” Black sounded incredibly amused for some reason, but Harry didn’t turn around. He was breathing deeply, trying to get even more air into his lungs, while at the same time lamenting that he hadn’t brought more animals with him. He might be facing battle without them, not something he had thought would happen. “Yes, that would be a good name for the system that alerts me. Alarms. That ring. Yes, I like that.”

            Harry decided that ignoring Black’s words was the best thing he could do for his sanity right now when he didn’t have any idea of the context and Black would take far too much delight in being asked. “Why did you bring me to a house you thought Bellatrix was hiding in?” he asked, gripping his wand.

            He could probably use his wand here for the same reason he could at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, but that didn’t mean he relished the idea. He’d always planned to track down Bellatrix and her husband, watch them for a while, and then set up an ambush that would work with whatever place they were living in. That didn’t include pouncing on them in a house they would know better than he did.

            “Because you need toughening.”

            Harry glanced at Black. “I thought part of your problem with me was that I was too tough.”

            Black shook his head. “There’s a difference between the way animals are tough and humans are tough, Harry. And you simply won’t survive in battle if you keep trying to sharpen your claws instead of your skills.”

            Harry didn’t have time to respond to that, because Black lifted his head. He looked like a hunting hound when he sniffed, Harry thought. So he should pay more attention to his surroundings, and less to what Harry was doing.

            “Company,” Black muttered. “I really did think they would be out this evening. I suppose not.” He turned casually so that he was facing the blackened oak door on the far wall, and Harry was behind him.

            Harry didn’t waste time asking how Black knew those things, or rather why he didn’t know them. He faced the door himself and coaxed the few mice he had with him out onto his arms.

            He thought Black might be upset to see them, but he only shook his head, his eyes wearily amused. “I suppose I should have known you would defy the rules,” he said. He was casting a spell that filled the air in front of them with thick smoke, like some of the things Harry had seen the Weasley brothers selling. “But I don’t think they’ll be much use here.”

            Harry silently watched the door open. A thin man came through, stumbling a little as though in surprise. Maybe it was. The expression on his face as he stared at Black was hard to read.

            Harry supposed he was Rodolphus Lestrange, even though he didn’t look much like his picture in the papers, and the even thinner, almost skeletal man clutching a black wand who came through behind him was his brother Rabastan. But there was absolutely no mistaking Bellatrix when she strolled through the door.

            She had long, wild dark hair that brushed the floor, and dark eyes. They fixed on Harry immediately, even before they looked at Black. Then she laughed. Harry felt as if he had been hearing that laughter in dreams all his life, even though what he had really seen was her picture and the results of her having tortured his parents.

            “I know you,” she told Harry, and spun her wand faster and faster. “Little Baby Potter. Your eyes can get so big and so green.”

            Mum. She’s talking about Mum.

            Harry didn’t even think, much the way he hadn’t when Snape tried to corner him in Lupin’s rooms. He drew his hand back and snapped it forwards, imagining power reaching out from his claws and his wrist, following the snapping motion, touching Bellatrix, making her writhe—

            Bellatrix screamed. Her hand rose to claw at her throat, and Harry saw the way her neck was twisting out of shape. Harry smiled. The change was flowing down Bellatrix’s throat to her chest, and in a few seconds she wouldn’t be able to breathe. He could picture her lungs coagulating into useless messes, and he knew the way her ribs would pop out like the struts of bat wings, and the way she would start coughing—

            Something struck the back of his head and broke his concentration. Harry danced away, rolling at once the way he used to when Dudley tried to kick his face in. He came up near the enormous fireplace and stared at Black.

            Black was looking back at him, his eyes wide and his wand hanging almost limp in his hand. “You were going to kill her,” he said. “With wandless Transfiguration.”

            The man Harry thought was Rabastan attacked before he could say anything, and he struck at Black with a long spell like a black whip. Black wasn’t there when it landed, running to the side and then around behind the Lestranges. He cast a spell that made Rabastan slump over unconscious, in the seconds before he and his cousin started to duel.

            Harry backed up when he saw how fast the duel was moving. He wouldn’t be able to interfere in that without getting killed and getting his mice killed, and Black and Bellatrix were using spells that he didn’t recognize: claws of fire that snatched the air, attacking birds that flashed in and out of existence, charms that turned the floor to boiling tar.

            But it did mean that he had Rodolphus Lestrange to contend with.

            Lestrange came towards him slowly. Harry didn’t know if that was because of what he had done to Bellatrix or some legacy from Azkaban or something else. But when he cast one spell that did nothing as far as Harry could tell, he seemed to become more confident. He laughed breathlessly and dragged his wand across the air in front of Harry, whispering, “Frango ossa.”

            Harry dodged as the air suddenly turned yellow in a sheet-like way and rushed to fall over him, but he couldn’t escape all of it. The sheet hit the edge of his left hand, and he felt the bone in his wrist snap.

            It hurt. But so did the thought of his parents never recovering because Harry had never managed to find the knowledge he needed. And he didn’t hate Lestrange the way he did Bellatrix, so he didn’t feel that instinctive longing to kill him.

            He held up his other hand and concentrated this time. Lestrange was trying some other spell, but he did squawk and drop it when a mouse launched itself at his eyes.

            Harry could see in his head what he wanted. It started out as Cross’s shape, and then it became something else, something considerably more squashed and horrific.

            The change started in Lestrange’s legs first, which was probably why he took so long to notice it. He was striding towards Harry, and suddenly the stride became clipped. He turned and stared at his foot.

            He screamed. Harry smiled. He knew Lestrange would be feeling how Harry had already reshaped his foot into a paw, without bothering to grow fur and claws. It was just deforming his toes and crushing them to fit into the new small space, whether or not they fit.

            And all Harry had to do now was concentrate and that meant…

            A spell blasted out of the duel whirling away on the side of him, and disrupted his concentration. Lestrange fell over gasping, but that didn’t matter, not when Harry had lost control of his magic altogether. He gave Bellatrix an angry glance, and saw her wink at him in the instant before the tip of her wand began to glow green.

            Neville had told Harry, over and over, about what memories he saw when he faced Dementors. That was the color of the Killing Curse.

            Harry drew his wand at once, his mind smooth and calm and the ache in his wrist stopping. He just had no time for it right now. Bellatrix was mouthing something and winking at him again, but he had no time to listen to her, either.

            “Commuto scipionem felinam,” he said, and the words tasted right on his tongue, and the spell leaped away from him lazily and towards Bellatrix, twining tightly around her wand.

            The green gleam of the Killing Curse was suddenly the gleam of light in the eyes of the sleek grey cat that twined around Bellatrix’s wrist and bit her. Then the cat jumped into the darkness, claws scoring Bellatrix as it soared, and the woman was screaming in an unhinged way and running straight at Harry.

            Harry’s first thought was how much her upraised fingernails looked like claws, but he couldn’t see the point of Transfiguring her hands into something that would make her more dangerous. He filled his mind with another vision and hissed, “Commuto digitos mures.”

            The shriek Bellatrix gave was satisfying, and she slowed down and started jerking her hands back and forth. Harry watched as small humps broke out under her knuckles. A second later, her fingers were mice, erupting from her hand and leaping into the darkness of the room the way the cat had. Harry spared a thought to hope the cat wouldn’t eat them.

            “Enough, Harry. Enough.”

            Black was beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Harry looked at him sidelong, not knowing what he meant. He wished he did, because Black looked sick and shaken. Harry thought making him look even a little more like that could make him let his guard down, and then Harry would find it easier to run away.

            “Bella, Bella,” Lestrange was moaning, limping towards the woman and dragging his misshapen foot in his boot.

            Bellatrix didn’t respond with words. She simply screamed on and on, shaking her hands. They were bleeding, stumps sticking out of her palms where her fingers had been. Harry frowned a little. He had imagined things neater than that, her fingers just entirely gone. How was he going to keep someone alive to practice Transfiguration on if he couldn’t even get something this small right?

            Black cleared his throat and hit both Bellatrix and Lestrange with whatever spell he’d already used on Rabastan. They slumped to the floor in turn. Harry studied them and then turned to face Black, who was crouching down in front of him.

            “I was wrong,” Black said.

            Harry eyed him, not knowing what that meant, either.

            “I thought you couldn’t really handle yourself in a battle without knowledge of other magical branches.” Black rubbed his mouth, still staring at Harry. “That was one reason I wanted to bring you to battle soon with my relatives. I was never intending it to be a long one. And I thought only Bella would be here, and you’d duel with her, just a little, and see a different way to learn how to defend yourself.”

            Harry racked his mind for the meaning of that, and finally thought he had it. “You mean, by watching you,” he said. His throat seemed full of dust. “How you fought.”

            Black inclined his head. “I thought you’d be impressed enough to ask for help after that.” He scratched a shallow, bleeding gash on the side of his scalp for a moment, and then shook his head and sat back.

            “But I was wrong,” Black repeated. “You are already fantastically dangerous in battle. At least when you can use your wand. And even the way you Transfigured and started damaging Rodolphus’s foot…”

            That pleased Harry a little, since it confirmed that his guess was right and the Death Eater he’d been battling was indeed Rodolphus instead of Rabastan.

            Black frowned at his arms for a second, then looked up and eyed Harry. “I like proving people wrong,” he said. “I was going to prove you wrong. Wrong that you didn’t need anyone, wrong that you already knew all you needed to know, wrong that you could just sink into being an animal and everything would be fine.”

            He drew his wand across the gash to heal it, and added, “You can handle yourself better than I ever suspected. But I still think you’re wrong on the last point, you know. Handle Transfiguration like a human instead of an animal, and you’ll be…fantastically dangerous aren’t the words for it.”

            Harry shook his head a little. “But I don’t know what the difference is,” he said. “I fought like a human. An animal wouldn’t be able to imagine turning someone’s fingers into mice or their wand into a cat.”

            “I know,” said Black, with a little bob of his head. “So. I’ll show you some of what the difference is. The mirror I learned about you from isn’t the only artifact in the house that was made to give people a clear view of themselves.” He gave Harry a lazy, arrogant smile. “We rather needed that, ourselves, to know when we were beginning to descend into madness instead of clever battle tactics.”

            “I’m not a Black,” Harry said. “I’m a Potter.”

            “That doesn’t mean you can’t go mad,” said Black, and shrugged. “And the pure-blood families have intermarried for centuries, you know. No one else good enough.” This time, his smile had edges sharp enough to cut. “Hell, no one was good enough for my parents but a second cousin each.”

            Harry blinked. It was probably only because he had a single cousin and was revolted at the thought of having anything to do with Dudley, but… “That’s sick.”

            Black chuckled and slapped his hands together. “There we are! A human reaction. Animals wouldn’t care if they mated with cousins. Well, they might follow natural instincts that would make it less likely, but they wouldn’t be thinking of human cultural concerns if they did decide to mate with them.”

            Harry folded his arms, but his mouth twitched as he did so. He reached up curiously and ran a finger along his lip with his claw sheathed. His mouth had moved into a smile without him even realizing it!

            Black’s face was somber when Harry looked back at him, but not so much so that Harry couldn’t make out the gleam in his eyes. “There you are,” Black breathed. “There you go. You need to become more conscious of what you’re doing, Harry. Reacting with instincts only gets you trapped.” He glanced at the Lestranges. “And the advantage you had against them in battle this time was mostly one of surprise. Now that they know what you can do, they’ll take precautions to protect themselves.”

            Harry tilted his head back. “You speak as if I’ll face them again.”

            “Of course you will.”

            “But I want to keep them prisoner.”

            “To turn over to the authorities?” Black’s lip curled a little. “That would be dangerous for both of us. You because you’re underage and me because I would have a hard time inventing a story to account for them that doesn’t include you.”

            “No,” Harry said patiently. He could hardly believe that a man like Black was so dim sometimes. It had nothing to do with human and animal, he thought, and everything to do with different priorities. “To experiment with human Transfiguration on.”

            Black made a noise in his throat that sounded like he was either laughing or about to vomit something up. Harry relaxed and shrugged. He had expected Black to be disgusted by that. At least Black was doing something understandable now.

            Black scratched another small wound on the side of his brow and said, “I’m going to take them with us. But not for that. There are a few rooms in Grimmauld Place where we can keep them.” He stood up and shook his head at Harry. “I’m going to teach you why what you want is wrong.”

            “You’ve already been proven wrong once yourself,” Harry pointed out, and looked up at Black as he began to swirl his wand, creating long streamers of red rope that picked up the Lestranges and bound them at the same time. “Aren’t you worried you will be this time, too?”

            “No,” said Black, without looking at him. “Because this time there’s more at stake.”

            Harry said nothing, but smiled, and went in search of the cat and mice he had Transfigured. He wouldn’t trust Black as far as he would Bellatrix, because she was more predictable. But it was nice to see that Black had been shaken out of his posture of stupid certainty about what Harry was and what he wanted.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning