Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Wait	By : Meggie Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female Views: 2046 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Three
You could have been great, you know

"After five years, finally, you return." His father's appearance was putrid-- rivulets of grime almost seemed to dribble down his long, tangled hair and onto what was left of his dress robes. His grey eyes were shadowed, but he clutched a yellowed newspaper in his hand, watching his son with all the sanity that he had once possessed. He seemed, somehow, to be holding back the effects of the oppressive dementors. Draco regarded him carefully, as one would a caged manticore. He knew that, even behind bars,

Lucius Malfoy was still dangerous.

"Yes, I came back." he watched his father cautiously, keeping his distance

from the bars. His father popped the rolled-up newspaper once in his palm,

then opened it up and opened it to a page about midway through.

"The daily prophet," he read in a smooth quiet voice, "is pleased to announce the engagement of Master Draco Vlad Malfoy of the esteemed Malfoy family to Miss Diana Anne Apollo." He stopped, looked up, and fixed his son with an unmelting steady gaze. "Is this your idea of a joke? Perhaps some prank? Or is it a longstanding mission from our Lord in order to undermine the Potter family?"

"VP>"Voldemort is dead, Father," Draco spat, "he has been for four years."

"I don't believe you," his father snipped, "you always were a disgrace to our family. You couldn't even win a simple game of Quidditch." Draco flinched at the memory of a few past defeats, then looked back up at his father. "We won seventh year. But I don't suppose you'd remember. The dementors don't let you listen to the WWN in here do they?"

Lucius narrowed his eyes. "You ungrateful brat. After all we sacrificed for you, you throw it all away for a silly little girl. A Potter, no less."

"All you sacrificed for me?" Draco asked incredulously. "You meant for me to be a death eater. That was always your plan. That isn't sacrifice, in my opinion. That's homicide."

Lucius looked at him for a moment, then chuckled. The eerie, unfamiliar sound echoed off the walls quietly. "Ignorant boy, I never meant for you to be a death eater."

"What?" Draco stared at him intently. "What are--"

"I meant," he interrupted smoothly, "For you to lead the Death Eaters."

Draco stared at him, not quite sure if his father was entirely sane. After a moment, he decided that he wasn't.

"Our Lord was ingenius, that much is true. He had the right idea. But he wasn't strong enough-- oh, no, not he. He was a mudblood, Draco, and mudbloods will never be strong enough to achieve the goals he was aiming for. We knew that, eventually the Potter boy might defeat Him, but you-- you we knew could prevail."

"This is ridiculous," spluttered Draco. "Absolutley bloody ludricrous."

Lucius just shrugged, and went back to reading the newspaper. "Suit yourself. You could have been great, you know."

Could have? Draco fumed silently on the way back to shore, the dreariness of Azkaban fading away slowly from his mind. The sun was just rising over the land, the clouds reflecting a penetrating dark red hue. Could have been great was, in Draco's opinion, barely good enough. But then again, how was his father to know what "great" was? He was successful, he had money, a fiance, and he wasn't constantly scurrying to hide dark arts paraphenalia from ministry raids.

<I> This should be more than enough, </I> thought Draco, <I> to convince anyone that I'm "great." </I> Still, something was niggling in the back of hind, nd, and he took

this moment to consider it. The thought made him shiver, and he tightened the clasp on his robes slightly as he stepped off the boat-- His father had never meant him to serve the Dark Lord-- he had meant him to *be* a Dark Lord.

***

Harry was lounging in the office chair in his cubicle, levitating it so he could keep an eye on events in his office when the call came. His office was in the Department of Magical Law Enforement, in the Auror's Office room, filled with a few dozen cubicles for working aurors. His tiny space was decorated sparsely, with a few pictures of Hermione, Diana, and Ron, and on one wall a large map of Briton, marked by shining pins where dark activity had occurred in the past year.

As director of Auror operations, he had been offered by the ministry a large office, complete with "windows" operated by Magical Maintenence, but he had turned it down. He preferred to work near his aurors.

Work in the last year had been slow, with only a few sporadic incidents that required the aid of an auror team. Lately, though, intelligence lines had been buzzing with information about a rising force. Who or what this is, none of them had been able to divulge, but Harry had the office on alert.

Today, however, had been their slowest yet. With a sigh, he let his chair settle back to the ground. Just as he was leaning back to close his eyes for a few moments, the alarms went off.

A high-pitched shrieking filled the room, and Harry lept up to look for the source of the emergency. On one wall of the room was a gigantic clock, with over two dozen hands, each labeled with busy wizarding locations. Most of the hands on the clock were pointing at "peaceful" or "boring," but the hand labeled "Diagon Alley" was pointing straight at "Emergency."

Harry immediately clapped his hands and whistled to gain the attention of the wide-eyed aurors, none of whom were expecting a situation today. "Groups of five, to Diagon Alley. Find the source and stop it." With nods to him, the aurors turned and apparated out of the room. Harry cast a nervous glance at the picture of Diana before apparating out as well.

***

Diana was arranging a half-dozen violet irises into a boquet for a waiting customer when the blast shattered her storefront windows and half the vases in the front of the store. Immediately, she and the customers in the shop dropped to the ground, looking around frantically. Diana cautiously stood up for a moment, looking around and doing a quick survey to assure herself that no one in her store was injured, then pulled her wand out and raced into the street.

As the smoke cleared, she saw several dark-cloaked figures retreating into the distance. Without another moment's hesitation, she took off after them, wand gripped tightly in her right hand as she ran. As she passed Quality Quidditch Supplies, Oliver Wood, the new owner, stepped out and help out a broom. The handle read Firebolt III and Diana raised an eyebrow.

"Here." Oliver was red-faced and wide-eyed. "Take this."

Diana was not Harry. She knew this, but she could certainly ride a broom well enough to catch the retreating Dark Wizards, whoever they were. She vaulted onto the broomstick with a "thank you," to Oliver and raced away, urging the broom to speed up as she flew. Diagon Alley was large and crooked, and she found herself jerking the brook around hard corners in pursuit of the figures. She was catching up quickly, and soon was within finger-reach of the farthest one back. She aimed her wand. "Stupefy!" she yelled, and an arc of light shot out and hit the hindmost figure, who stumbled and fell, headfirst, into a stack of cauldrons. The rest, without looking back, instantly apparated.

Diana dropped to the ground, setting the broom down, and ran over to the unconscious wizard. "You’re under arrest," she said, as she rolled him over. "You’re also very fat and—"

"and its lucky he’s unconscious," Harry muttered as he raced up behind her. "Um.. good job, Di…" he leaned over the masked man. "Who’ve we got here?" Reaching out, he tugged the mask off, widened his eyes, and immediately dropped the mask. "Dudley?"

***

Hermione was sitting in a curiously crowded little house near the quarter, sharing dinner with Delia and her parents, both of whom seemed obviously delighted to have an English witch in their house. Between the main course of blackened fish and the pecan pie for desert, she6;d 6;d explained almost the entire British system of magic law to Mr. And Mrs. Sinclair and was throroughly tired of speaking—a rarity for Hermione. In a moment of desperation, she asked about the American system—and was pleasantly surprised by an in-depth explanation from Delia’s father as her mother cleared the table.

According to him, the American Magical Government functioned very similarly to the muggle government—they had a constitution, a legistlature, and a court circuit. Their executive—called simply Head Wizard—was chosen by a convention of all of-age witches and wizards in the country.

Hermione, fascinated, listened in, catching every detail. While a Hogwarts education certainly impressed much of the wizarding world, not much detail had ever been given to explaning other systems of government, and it was a subject that Hermione, amazingly, had never thought to research.

After what seemed like only a few moments, she was finding hersef thanking them for a pleasant evening and dinner, and slipping out of the door before apparating to her hotel. As she slipped her light coat over the back of the hotel chair, she glanced in the mirror, reaching up to unconsciously straighten a misbehaving bit of hair. As she lowered her wrist, something caught her eye, and she turned her hand over to glance at the wristwatch she wore, which Harry had given her for Christmas.

It was similar to the Weasley’s kitchen clock, with hands labeled "Hermione," "Diana," "Ron," "Harry," and, recently, at both Diana and Hermione’s insistance, "Draco," as well. Earlier, she had seen Draco’s hand fixed firmly on "Prison," which Hermione suspected meant he was visiting his father, the slimeball. Now, however, Draco’s hand was set on "Home," and she watched in growing horror as the hands labeled "Diana" and soon after, "Harry" swung around to point directly at "Mortal Peril."

Feeling helpless, she grabbed her wand in desperation, fully prepared to apparate to wherever it was they were, but then the logical part of her realized that there was no way of knowing where they were. She grabbed her coat, re-buttoned it, and swiftly apparated to the place she knew she would get information the quickest.

When she arrived at her destination, she stepped into the phone booth and dialed the correct number. A clear woman’s voice reverberated through the booth. "Welcome to the Ministry of Magic, visitor. Please state your name and business."
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