Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Night Flight	By : Massanie Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 77567 -:- Recommendations : 6 -:- Currently Reading : 30
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me and I'm not making any money with this story

Chapter List
- 32
- 33
- 34
Carraci and Spina did not return, even when Blaise and Draco finally got up and observed the chaos in the room, the broken chairs and table. In the edge where they had crouched the walls were blackened and warped as if they had tried to liquefy, as if creatures made of teeth and claws and wings had tried to rise from them and only just been held back. Feathers, claws, beaks frozen in silent screams...
Disquieted, Blaise and Draco moved to the other side of the room in silent agreement and tried not to look at the destruction behind them. They stretched their legs and their wings as much as they could, shaking out the stiffness left behind by the cold stone floor. They listened to the faint voices their exceptionally good ears detected somewhere beyond the boundaries of their small interrogation room.
And they waited.
During that time the voices became the only distraction they had, the only reprieve from worry and guilt, from the embodiment of their own and Harry's darkness. After a while the two Vykélari lost themselves to the hypnotic swelling and fading of sound, muffled by a layer of magic covering the naked walls. Almost unconsciously, driven by their unrest, they started to pick at the web of silencing charms, pulling them apart thread by thread.
Gradually, whispers and murmurs started to drift into their room, a gently flowing amalgamation of numerous conversations all over the ministry, humming with life.
"...bisogno di più caffè per questo…” ”...visto quei mostri che hanno..." "...e poi mio figlio ha detto..." "...una conferenza stampa, con un preavviso così breve..." "...dal punto di vista personale..." "Il primo drago è stato avvistato..." "è un incubo da organizzare, ma finora..." "... interamente negra..." "...quasi tutti uccisi, la Guardia..." "...will know whether they tell the truth or not."
Blaise and Draco stopped short at the unexpected English words in the endless, musical stream of Italian. More than the language it was the voice that jarred them, that tugged at their chests with a nauseating lurch. A distinctly male voice it had been... young, and ... devastatingly familiar. Their gazes met, stormy and dark, awash with the realisation of just who that voice reminded them of, but unwilling to give words to the notion even in the sanctity of their own minds. It would be a crippling blow to get their hopes up only to have them inevitably smashed to pieces.
And yet... it couldn't be ignored either, because what if?
Hearts in their chests, in their throats, both Vykélari rushed closer to the door, ripping at the silencing and muffling charms isolating them with brutal magical force and none of the finesse they usually prided themselves for. Within moments the voices got clearer, sharper, and it was all too easy to hone in on the one English conversation that was pulling their attention closer with the aching familiarity of the words.
"It is too risky." Another man said slowly. Blaise and Draco had just spent hours listening to that particular accent, and would recognize Generale Carraci's mild, deep voice anywhere. Instinctively, they hissed and snarled, the feathers in their hair rising menacingly, cold bluish sparks of magic gleaming in their eyes.
"We don't know how they will react to seeing you. They are volatile and might lash out." Carraci continued. "And if that happens there is almost nothing we can do to interfere."
"Darkened Vykélari are not mindless beasts, just somewhat closer to their base instincts." Someone else spoke up, a voice brittle with age, tinged with the sting of a reprimand. "They are very much capable of differentiating between friend and foe, you just happened to put yourself in the latter category. "
"Be that as it may..."
"Part of the submissive is inside of them." The old voice said sternly, the truth of his words echoing inside Draco and Blaise, resounding in the magic coiled tensely, anxiously in their chests. "They are simply incapable of attacking his closest friends."
Time slowed to a crawl. And then it was like a gas explosion in slow motion.
Blaise and Draco's eyes met, black and wide, smoky around the edges. Several faces flashed up in their joined minds, the sickly pale face of a certain werewolf, multiple redheads including that annoying weaslette... only to be discared again and again, their thoughts returning to the only two that mattered in the here and now. The only two that could be described as ‘his closest friends’.
Harry's magic started to fill the room, pulsing, frantic, hissing, sizzling, waiting for that spark to ignite it.
Draco shook himself, a strangled croak escaping his throat, his wings fluttering restlessly behind him. They couldn't be here. That was nothing more than wishful thinking, fallacies of two melded minds egging each other on in their surreal fantasies, plagued with guilt and influenced by the echoes of a third consciousness.
Ron and - Weasley and Granger were dead and gone and no amount of magic would ever bring them back. Draco had seen their gruesome deaths, and now through the bond, Blaise shared the horrible memory of blood splashing against a mirror.
A ripple went through the clouds of energy.
But still... there had been that tiny spark of doubt when Draco had seen the strong Gryffindors brought so low, broken beyond anything that even Bellatrix Lestrange in all her cruelty had been able to achieve. They were living in a world of magic, of illusions... What if... what if?
A sudden urge to find the origin of that oh so familiar voice set their minds ablaze, the same moment that all magic rushed back into their bodies. There was a disturbing sense of disintegrating, of not exactly falling apart, but more of being pushed apart. As if their bodies were a puzzle pieced together by smaller and larger elements and something had slithered in between the gaps undetected and now forced their components away from each other. Painlessly, but impossible to fight.
Their senses fractured, their minds splintered, suddenly handling the movements of hundreds of small, winged bodies with one shared consciousness. The swarm condensed in front of the door, a black chaos of flapping wings and scratching claws, screeches and hacking beaks.
Under the force of their attack the door burst within seconds and a cloud of swifts and goshawks flooded the corridor. Two wizards stood there, wand at the ready, alerted by all the noise but unprepared to defend themselves from a mass of bodies exploding out of the door. They cried out, stumbled, fell, enveloped by a storm of wings and sharp, deafening shrieks.
Blaise and Draco saw them with hundreds of eyes from all possible directions, a kaleidoscope of impressions, immediately losing interest, because they were not them.
The swarm dispersed, following both sides of the corridor. One of the wizards rolled over, and still lying on the floor, attempted to halt them, whipping up a shield charm to close off the way, to protect the rest of the ministry even if it locked them in with hundreds of potentially murderous, dark magical creatures.
The shimmering surface stretched out before them, iridescent and treacherously beautiful. In their minds, Blaise and Draco raised their arms, ready to break through the barrier by brute force alone. In reality, the hawks flew faster, ahead of the smaller swifts. Like bullets they pierced the shield, breaking through and shattering the shimmering surface, paving the way for their smaller cousins.
More aggressive spells followed them closely but with eyes ahead and eyes behind, reflexes much better than a human's and an agility to match, the birds evaded the hexes easily. Blaise and Draco evaded them easily, parting their fractioned bodies as needed.
Like the shockwaves of an explosion they spread through the ministry, halting neither at closed doors nor windows. Wherever they went, a multitude of sensible magical objects began to vibrate, to hiss and rattle, some sounding shrill alarms. The dramatic overture was accompanied by the clashing of breaking porcelain, by gasps and startled outcries, by papers fluttering to the floor, and the one or other stumbling and falling body.
The darkened Vykélari took no heed of them or the chaos they were spreading. None of the wizards and witches were of any interest, none had the vibrant red shock of hair that they were searching for, or the bushy brown...
More hexes were thrown at them as more and more ministry employees overcame their initial surprise, following the birds down the corridors and trying to take them out. A hawk in the eastern parts of the ministry was hit with a slashing spell and promptly burst into smoke, making screeches and cries erupt all over the floor, unnaturally loud and painful to the ears.
In the northern wing, a smaller swarm encountered Guardia members, faces alight with determination, wands flashing red and orange and blue. Blaise and Draco curled away from the pain as some of the hexes hit their targets, screaming with the agony and the feral, undimmed need to find their friends, their closest friends.
Only a single swift managed to evade the spells and curses and grasping hands, turning around a corner just as in another corridor an explosion spell hit the ceiling, burying no less than eleven black birds under debris and dust.
For a moment, Blaise and Draco were blinded by the sudden pain, everywhere on the current floor hawks and swifts crashed into walls and doors and the odd wizard or witch, fluttering helplessly, some managing to fight their way back into the air. Some not.
They came to barely a second later but with half their sight gone. It made the corridors, halls and offices look different, made it difficult to remember where was what.
Somewhere a door opened and out stepped Carraci.
Having lost their orientation, Draco and Blaise could not say where that was, they could only see the Generale through this one pair of eyes, from this one single direction.
It didn't matter. All of their focus was drawn to Carraci like a beacon. This must be where they had heard The Voice. This was where they had to go. This one pair of eyes, wherever it was, would have to act as an anchor for their vastly spread consciousness.
Carraci saw them, his eyes widened, his wand raised.
But not quickly enough. The single swift that had bypassed the Guardia moments earlier now headed for him with a speed made possible only by magic. It changed shape, its wings melding into the small body, the head hardening, becoming sharper, more streamlined. Directly above Carraci's head, the little thing burst through the door with a loud crack, leaving a hole barely more than an inch wide.
Immediately Blaise and Draco spread the little wings out again, pushing strengthening magic into them, halting their mad dash in the middle of a luxurious office.
Frantically they looked around, taking in the intricately carved massive wooden desk sitting in front of a row of tall windows that showed the awakening city of Pompei sprawling far beneath their feet. The leather arm chair behind it, however, was deserted.
A hiss behind them. Breathing from more than one person, sharp and hitched; and heartbeats. More than a single bird could take on, or escape from.
Literally regrouping, the Vykélari focused inwards, calling their magic, their physical selves, together. In a matter of moments the swift lost its form and grew even as all over the ministry, smaller and larger birds vanished into thin air.
Behind them they could hear a whispered “Don't, don't!”
Soon a tall, heaving, breathing mass took shape, limbs and muscles growing more defined. The upper part seemed to bulge outwards grotesquely for a moment, before wings unfolded, two pairs of them. The shapeless column in between parted into four grotesquely long legs, two torsos un-melding. Fresh bruises, burns and cuts littered the bodies, oozing dark red blood sluggishly. But even as they emerged the wounds slowly filled with bluish sparks of healing magic and faded into nothingness.
Blaise and Draco stepped apart and turned, dark and terrible to behold like the winged death. Their gleaming, black eyes unerringly focused on the group standing in shocked silence in front of the door. Amidst the dark, fine robes, uniforms, mousy grey, brown and black hair, there were drops of colour, flashes of red sprinkled like rubies in the dark. They drew the Vykélaris' focus unerringly, magnetically, they made the world freeze, had their feelings and thoughts stumble to an abrupt halt and their breath catch in their throats: red shocks of hair, pale eyes and paler faces.
One precious, freckled face in particular caught and held their eyes, directly next to a very pretty, young woman with still too large front teeth.
Blaise cawed lowly, brokenly, half in denial, half in desperate, painful hope. Draco's memories flashed across the surface of their joined minds, the doubt he had felt at seeing the usually so annoyingly proud and strong Hermione rocking herself back and forth in that mirror, murmuring senselessly. Repeating something short, again and again, like a broken record.
They recalled clearly what had roused Draco's suspicion then, aside from her atypical behaviour: her lip movements hadn't fit to anything that made sense. No plosives whatsoever, nothing that required closed lips. No 'I'm sorry' or 'help me' or 'stop' or 'please'...
Reeling, torn between feeling gutted and relieved, confused and full of doubt and afraid to be hopeful at all... an odd sense of detachment settled over them, a shutter half-closing on the chaos.
Draco’s wings fluttered behind him, restlessly, carrying him forward a meter or two, to better see, to understand, to... He stopped short immediately as almost the entire group flinched or brandished their wands. Almost. But not them. No, they didn't flinch. They didn't ever flinch.
And how could he have thought otherwise? How could anyone, how could Harry have thought otherwise? But then their Gryffindor hadn't thought, had he? Too panicked, too shaken from seeing his friends tortured before him, because of him...
Hermione's eyes were reddened, as if she had cried recently, but her face was steeled with determination, as was Ron's.
'Non è reale' Blaise whispered in his head, and Draco agreed numbly, this was unreal.
Then he cawed throatily once more, almost a whine, and a shiver ran down their spines as the deeper meaning of the words finally sunk in: it was what the dead Hermione had mumbled, or at least it might be. Non è reale, it's not real.
The prayer of someone who had no understanding of magic and felt their world collapse in the face of the unthinkable. Someone who, rather than facing reality, had tried to escape into the belief of experiencing a nightmare.
Muggles.
Of course Valerio had never intended to actually kill a wizard or witch, foreigners who would be missed, whose disappearance could and would prove his crimes beyond a doubt, even if he had managed to bind Harry to his son.
Valerio had played them.
It wasn't the pure, cathartic relief they might have expected it to be, hollowed out by the sudden realisation that all the hurt that had been endured and caused this past night had been absolutely, entirely pointless. Harry's closest friends had never been in danger.
“Oh my god.” Hermione mumbled, her large eyes set on them, unafraid but stricken, full with the knowledge that whatever had happened to create the creatures in front of her was a direct result of what had happened to one of her best friends.
Carefully, not taking her eyes off of them, she moved around a small, old man who partially stood in front of her.
Someone tensed, someone reached out, someone said “Hermione, no, stay back!” But Blaise and Draco couldn't take their eyes off her, off Ron.
“It's okay.” Hermione answered reflexively. The barely perceptible tremor in her voice did nothing to lessen the air of stubborn relentlessness and durable strength surrounding her. She smelled of it, and though they had never been able to scent her like this before, with the senses of a predator, it made her more real. This version of her was real, she was actually real, and she behaved far more like Hermione Granger than the pale spectre they had seen in the two-way-mirror.
She stretched a hand out towards the two humanoid birds of prey in a placating gesture. Ron hurried to follow, and both inched towards them, a wall of raised wands at their back.
A wall of weapons.
Held by Aurors, by Guardia, by the ministers of both Italy and Britain, the werewolf, McGonagall and others...
With a jarring suddenness the darkened Vykélari became aware of the threat, and a frightening snarl rose in their throats, quickly growing in volume and ferocity. The Gryffindors, their Gryffindors were in front of a dozen armed fighters ready to attack and even if a tiny part of them realised that the wands were not pointed at Ron and Hermione, the fact that they were in between the weapons and their real targets was already too much to bear.
Draco crouched down, one wing tucked close and the other reaching forward in a half turn. He threw his hands out, tethering the two Gryffindors to him with thin strands of magic. And pulled. Hermione and Ron were catapulted forward with startled outcries, tumbling and sliding across the floor. The moment they were close enough, Draco grabbed them, claws sliding back into his fingertips in an instinctive refusal to hurt. He hauled them around into the curve of his wing with unnatural strength, using their momentum in his favour. The other wing followed their bodies, herding them in, enveloping and shielding them with more than feathers and bone.
At the same time Blaise half jumped, half flew over his bonded lover and their two precious protégés. With both hands stretched out before him he warded off the hasty spells send their way: Spina, Carraci, Shacklebolt and even the werewolf trying to retrieve Ron and Hermione, to stun the out-of-control Vykélari.
He pushed magic into his taloned feet, into his wings, and landed hard on the ground. The stone shattered beneath him, a shockwave throwing the group in front of him backwards. Bodies tumbled against one another and the wall. Astoria was buried under her sister and McGonagall, one of the red-haired twins’ flailing limbs caught his brother's nose and Blaise heard it break even amidst the outcries and crashes. The werewolf and the elder Weasleys lost their footing, the Weaselette lost her wand.
Shacklebolt, though, caught himself, years of experience holding him upright. And Spina managed as well, light footed and nimble as a cat, eyes wide and teeth gritted.
Seeing them, a deafening snarl ripped out of Blaise's throat, his open beak becoming jagged and sharp, gleaming like steel, his eyes glowing in the blackness of his mask as if he was made of darkness and filled with light and power. The feathers on his head raised, his wings towering and flapping behind him. Shadows emanated from the Vykélari’s body, enveloped him, pulsing and curling like a living thing.
He felt the magic thrumming through his veins, wild and feral and as alive as Ron and Hermione behind him. He could feel them in Draco's arms, their fervent struggle against his hold, and knew with unprecedented certainty that nothing and no one would take them away again. Nothing would get past him!
The former Auror and Guardia stood firm in the face of his fury, one arm out for balance, one gripping their wands. But their stance was defensive, their breathing ragged, tense with the irrefutable knowledge that should a fight break loose, they might not walk away from it.
Behind them, Mrs Weasley fought her way out of the tangle of limbs, stumbling to her feet. “Ron? Ron! Hermione!” she cried, her voice shrill and filled with fear.
The sound was jarring and for a moment neither Blaise nor Draco realized why, flinching at the entirely unexpected, uncomfortable tugging sensation in their chests, the way that Harry's magic curled back inside of them, it’s fury doused by the shock of hearing a loved one cry out in desperation.
Her husband and Lupin jumped forwards immediately to intercept her, several others called for her to stop, a cacophony of shouts and cries filling the entire room.
And still, her voice stood out.
Blaise clicked his beak shut, thrown by the feeling of unease flooding his being, the grim sense of déjà-vu. Which was positively paradoxical in itself. Blaise and Draco couldn't have seen Molly Weasley more than half a dozen times in their lives, short moments and vague impressions caught in Diagon Allay or the train station in London, the last stand at Hogwarts. But this, this mindless animal desperation, this blind panic, the instinctive need of a mother to be her childrens’ shield even at the cost of her own life... It was uncomfortably familiar. They had seen Molly Weasley distressed like this before. And it hadn't sat right with them then, just as it did now.
Disconcerted, Blaise took a step back and folded his wings in just enough to reveal the edges of his lover behind him – who still struggled to contain their charges. Just as quickly he stretched them out again, confused yet still angry, still... still very unwilling to let anyone come closer. Come what may.
He widened his stance, fixed Spina and Shacklebolt with a deadly glare, readied himself to...
“It's fine! We're fine!” a voice called out suddenly from behind Blaise, muffled by a layer of flesh and feathers, fading away unheard in the chaos of struggling bodies, unheard by everyone but the two Vykélari who were primed to see and hear and breathe in the very presence of their Gryffindors, their miracles, their closest friends.
The voice didn't give up, though, came back stronger, more determined: “I said we're fine! BLOODY HELL! MALFOY!”
Everyone froze at the booming curse and Blaise turned, not quite believing what he saw with Draco's eyes, felt with his lover's skin and flesh. Unintentionally, the movement revealed the curious scene behind him:
There, cradled within the black wings of a nightmare sat Ronald Weasley, both hands firmly around Draco's sharply gleaming beak as if it wasn't a deadly weapon, pressing it up and away from himself, exposing the Vykélari’s long throat in the process. Behind him, a bushy head of wild curls briefly bobbed up between black feathers, before disappearing again as Draco curled his wings closer, trying to keep the Gryffindors near, refusing to let go. They were safe, here where Blaise and Draco could see them and hear them and protect them and control what and who had access to them. Which was nothing, nothing and no one! They would keep them safe...
“Bloody asshole! Will you let go already?!”
...even against their will!
“Ron, I don't think they can help themselves...” Hermione interrupted, but even though her words were reasonable, her tone was strained and she kept on pushing, trying to pry Draco's hand away from her arm. “God, Malfoy, no one here is a danger to anyone! Except you!”
Which was plain wrong, and Hermione was very naive to think so. Blaise turned back towards the group, raising his wings threateningly as he saw that they had used his distraction to come closer. Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. If they valued their life...
“They are going to be so embarrassed!” One of the Weasley twins snorted suddenly, a sound absurdly out of place in the tense atmosphere. “I'm so going to sell copies of this memory.” Behind him his brother huffed out a laugh even while he winced in pain, spraying blood from his broken nose.
Blaise snapped into the air, annoyed and vaguely confused at the utter lack of fear and respect. Thrown by how very much the smell of blood was not enticing...
The curling shadows he had gathered around himself stretched out and thinned, disintegrating into nothingness.
“Ms Granger, Mr Weasley, are you alright?” McGonagall called out.
“We're fine!” Hermione returned, voice tense with exasperation, and finally resigned herself to relax into Draco's wings.
“And the Tiwaz runes are intact.” Ron added, almost grudgingly. ”They haven't gone against Harry.”
The words mattered less than the voices that spoke them, the familiar timbre, the surety, even if it was laced with frustration: it entirely lacked any hint of fear. Neither Hermione nor Ron thought they were in danger, and some foreign part inside the two Vykélari, that knew to trust them implicitly, gradually calmed.
Cautiously Blaise stepped back, his wings held out but no longer actively threatening. One step after the other he retreated until he stood with one calf pressed against Draco's wings.
Behind him, his bond-mate let go of Hermione and reached up carefully, laying his hands around the wrists so close to his beak. The skin was warm, blood pulsating directly under his fingertips, perhaps a bit quicker than normal, but strong and steady. And Ron smelled of life, of toothpaste and a bit of the hearty stew he had eaten the last evening. Of stress and frustration and the fear for his friend, of the fruity shampoo he had used only a couple of hours ago, of floo powder and a million smells of the city, feint traces of sex, printing ink, owls, a cat...
How are you even alive? The thought echoed in Blaise's and Draco's joined minds. The first clear, rational thought in minutes.
“Tell them they need to return Signore Potter!” Nascimbeni ground out from behind Spina's back, annoyance oozing from every pore.
Daphne pursed her lips, narrowed eyes piercing the Italian minister like a cockroach “Potter is in a Fidelius protected safe house. Do you really want to set Draco and Blaise free to get him? I'd say that’s highly inadvisable, what with their current unstable condition. It would be best to wait for Prof... for Mr. Snape to return with him.”
“Or,” Shacklebolt interrupted with his deep, calm bass, “we could go for the secret keeper. There are only three candidates for the position and one of them can't leave his home.”
Ignoring the conversation, Draco pried Ron's hand away from his beak with firm but gentle pressure. His black eyes snapped down to the blue ones frowning at him as if he were a particularly obstinate child.
Seeing those pale gates to the redhead’s mind, Draco and Blaise wanted in. They wanted to be closer, wanted to know, desperately know how Ron could be sitting here in front of them, alive and well, with his throat still unmarred and his blood still where it should be, driven through his veins by a heart that should have stopped beating hours ago.
Backed by Severus’ thorough teachings and the force of Harry's magic, the Slytherins would be able to pry into the walls of Ron's mental walls with the unassuming strength of a tree drilling its roots through stone, slip right in... Draco leaned forward.
“Don't!” Ron ordered, his voice like steel and only a touch higher than normal. “Whatever you’re about to do: don't!”
Draco blinked in surprise,thrown out of his trance. He cocked his head, voicing his protest with a series of high-pitched whistling notes. They had to know!
“We don't have time for this.” Shacklebolt sighed to their right, making Ron turn his head – his eyes – away. Both Vykélari hissed in annoyance at the interruption, at the lost opportunity. Draco tugged at the redhead’s wrists, trying to regain his attention but only managing to draw the Gryffindor’s focus back to his firm grip.
“Let go!” Ron ground out through gritted teeth, pointedly glaring at Draco's claw-less hands wrapped around his wrists and very carefully not meeting the Vykélari’s black gaze. Did he suspect what the Slytherins had been about to do?
“Alright.” Shacklebolt rose his voice, demanding attention. “Mr Zabini, Mr Malfoy.”
It took a while until Draco shifted his focus reluctantly away from Ron, but the minister waited patiently until both pairs of smokey black eyes turned to him. ”I want you to accompany us back to Britain. If we don't find the secret keeper at Malfoy Manor, you are the only ones who can get to Harry Potter.”
He paused for a moment, quiet and serious, contemplating perhaps how much the two darkened Vykélari were capable of understanding. ”But if you don't get a grip of yourselves, not only will I leave you here in custody until you are safe to travel – and that, I'm told, could take months – you will also be acting against your Tiwaz oath. You swore to do right by Harry Potter, and to do right by him means to make sure he is safe. Now let them go.”
During the ministers speech, the crest feathers on Draco and Blaise's head had slowly flattened against their hair, sleek and gleaming in the morning sun.
The last thing they wanted was to be left behind in some Italian prison cell, with no way to know what was happening outside of it, no way to protect what Harry held dear. And Harry... If he even still lived, then they would have to make absolutely sure that neither Amalyne nor Narcissa ever gained access to him.
For a moment, a spark of rage-fear-protectiveness threatened to reignite the storm of chaos and magic inside of them, until...
“Let go!” Hermione repeated, her pale face regarding him over Ron's shoulder, determined and unrelenting. She was so sure of herself, bold and ... Draco let go, instinctively widening the circle of his wings. Not enough to allow the Gryffindors to walk away – that was unthinkable, unbearable – but enough so that they could stand. Immediately Ron shot up, Hermione following only a minute later. Impatiently, the red-head pressed against the black feathers, his lips narrowing into a thin line when the wings wouldn't budge further.
“Really?” The exasperation dripped from his voice, oozed from his every pore.
The twin with the intact nose snorted in the background. “I think they want to keep you!” He cackled and easily danced out of the reach of his mother's swatting hand.
“Good enough.” Shacklebolt nodded even while Ron hissed an annoyed “shut up” at his brother. “Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, please remain with Mr Malfoy and Mr Zabini for now. And fill them in.”
Not awaiting any response, the minister turned to his colleague. “If you would lead the way, we will require one or two more portkeys...”
Together Nascimbeni and Shacklebolt left, followed by Carraci and the elderly, unknown wizard. In their absence a heavy silence fell upon the minister's office, full of awkward apprehension.
Huffing, Hermione ran her hands through her dishevelled hair. “Well...” she started, only to be interrupted sharply.
“I'd very much like to open your skulls and see for myself if there is anything in there but dried out crap!”
“Daphne!” Astoria gasped while everyone turned disbelieving eyes to the proud Greengrass heiress.
Blaise closed his wings, wrapping them around his shoulders like a protective cloak. He felt Draco's feathers against his back, felt his apprehension brimming through his own body. Because Daphne was still and quiet and icy like the Great Lake at midwinter.
She was truly angry.
“You announced a Vykélari fledgling at your engagement party in front of dozens of purebloods!” She pressed put. “When no announcement was made the morning after anyone present could have deduced that it was in fact a submissive.”
Anyone present. Their families, closest friends and allies.
The Lanais.
Suddenly sick to the stomach, Blaise and Draco closed their eyes, hunching in on themselves. They had been so arrogant that night, so caught in the moment, so very assured of their own invincibility after Draco's acquittal. How naive they had been, how stupid, to think that they had been safe amongst family and friends.
”They probably learned Harry's identity either from someone at St. Mungo's or by watching your manor and seeing us visiting.” Arthur Weasley continued endlessly more gently. “From then on, they must have observed our house. They could have seen Miss Parkinson hand over her mirror. And this way they managed to intercept Harry's letter and ...”
“... And later Harry's House Elf.” The Weaselette continued implacably. She stood next to her parents, her eyes filled with the kind of worn hardness one might regard their nemesis with after fury, hate and fear had died a slow and quiet death during years of confrontations, too exhausting in their upkeep.
“We didn't want to see your Death Eater parents again, so we sent Harry's Elf creature with the stuff you requested.” She said in a matter-of-fact style. ”His glasses, his wand, clothes. They used creature to get around the wards we set up and into our house.”
“We warded the house, the fireplace, the mirror. But not against us and not against creature.” Hermione’s voice was bitter with self-accusations and when the Vykélari looked up to her, her wrists were balled into fists and unshed tears made her eyes glisten.
“Arthur personally helped me protect the mirror against theft, against magic... if someone aside from us had even touched it, we'd have been notified. But they didn't touch it, they imperioed creature and had him put another two-way-mirror in front of it, spelled to the exact same size, the back showing the room you'd given Harry. They just channelled the connection through with simple physics. Nothing magical about it.”
Carefully, Ron reached for his girlfriend's hand, squeezing it gently. His frowning gaze was fixed on their tangled fingers. But both Blaise and Draco knew that he was seeing something very different: slit throats and blood splattered against a mirror. A moment later Ron confirmed that Valerio's helper had not even taken the time to clean up behind himself and remove evidence. The man had fled in panic.
“When we removed the second mirror there were two corpses looking like... like me and ‘Mione.”
“With the House-Elf they also had access to hairs of both signore Weasley and signora Granger.” Spina explained. ”A polyjuice potion would not have been too difficult to acquire on the black market for someone of Valerio Lanai’s means.” She shrugged. “We are searching for the scene of the crime but whether we find it or not, we will most likely never know the identity of the victims. Muggles I guess. Homeless, most likely.”
Neither Draco nor Blaise had thought much about the two look-alikes that had died in place of their Gryffindors, and once the powerful hold Harry's magic had on them abated, they might again feel differently. But looking at Hermione now, seeing her lips tighten, her brow creasing into a bitter frown at the obvious indifference to the lives and deaths of muggles, it suddenly seemed an unbearable injustice.
“I think that is enough for now.” McGonagall said, her bright eyes wandering from one grief-stricken or angry face to the next. “We should focus on finding Mr. Potter. This is not the time to place blame and we should all remember that none here had any malicious intent.”
Daphne clicked with her tongue. “I doubt that’s a great comfort for anyone involved.”
For a long moment, McGonagall regarded her young student, an oddly regretful expression shadowing her wrinkled features. “No, Miss Greengrass, it isn't.”
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Night Flight