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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
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Chapter Eight—Had My Lips Been Smitten
“Harry! You’re looking well, dear.”
Harry bends forwards with a smile and lets Molly hug him. No matter how distant he grows from some of the goals that he knows she supports, no matter that he broke up with her daughter, he knows she’ll always consider him part of the family.
“Thank you,” he says, and glances up and down at her red hair, her warm eyes, her flour-dusted hands. “And you. You look more and more like the perfect mum every year.”
Molly chuckles and swats his arm, making some of the flour fly into the air. “If you’re going to come in and at least pretend to be serious, then you can have some of the biscuits that I’m making.”
“How could I resist?” Harry asks, and follows her.
The Burrow has grown a bit, since there are so often grandchildren visiting—Bill and Fleur’s three, Percy’s two daughters, George and Angelina’s children, and now a grave little Rose and a toddling Hugo. But the kitchen still feels too small and warm and crowded, exactly the way Harry likes it. He bends down and picks up Hugo, spinning him around so that he shrieks in delight.
“I’m going to breathe fire at you,” he hisses to Hugo, and takes out his wand and casts a small charm that marks sparks leap between his teeth. “RARRRR!”
Hugo shrieks again, Rose looks up from her book with a slightly annoyed expression, and Lucy, Little Molly, Fred, and Roxane promptly jump on him, demanding their turn to have “Uncle Harry” breathe at them. Harry obliges all of them, although he has to keep casting the charm on his breath as it wears out. Louis looks as if he’d like to join in, but Dominique and Victoire obviously consider themselves too old, and Louis stays beside them. Harry grins at him and conjures a small ball of flame that Louis can try to juggle with his own magic. He isn’t Hogwarts age yet and is having a great deal of fun in a few seconds.
“Hello, Harry.”
Harry glances up, blinking. The children were making enough noise that he didn’t hear Ginny coming. She stands in the entrance that leads to the drawing room, frowning at him a little. Harry inclines his head to her. “How are you, Gin?”
Her lips thin. Harry doesn’t understand that. They fought enough when they were together, at least at the end, that it was a relief to break up and stop fighting. But sometimes he gets the impression that she wants him to yell at her. “Fine. Simon is in the drawing room.”
“Oh, okay. Do you want me to come meet him or what?”
“You’ve met him before.”
“Not for very long, though.” Harry pauses, then rolls his eyes. Honestly, with their breakup, he considers Ginny like an annoying little sister. “You have to tell me outright, Gin. Do you want me to come spend time with him, or would you prefer that I go outside?”
Ginny folds her arms so tightly that she looks like she’s going to break her shoulders. “Come and spend time with him,” she grits out, and then she turns and vanishes back into the other room as if it truly makes no difference to her.
Harry sighs, puts Hugo down, and kisses his forehead. “Uncle Harry has to go play dragon with the adults now,” he says, and sees a small grin on Rose’s face. He wouldn’t be surprised if Hermione’s daughter is smart enough to understand all the tension that the other children don’t even notice.
Walking into the other room isn’t like walking into a battlefield. Maybe Ginny would be more comfortable if it was tenser for him, but Harry is really and truly over the small fling they had. He shrugs in response to her glare, and turns to Simon Morreth—as his name apparently is—with a polite smile.
Simon is a tall man with dark hair and blue eyes. He looks familiar, slightly, but then, Harry has met him before. He shakes Harry’s hand and looks down at his hand for a second.
“You are Lord Potter and Lord Black.”
Harry doesn’t take his wand out, but it’s an effort. Great, a Lordship fan. “I am,” he says, as neutrally as he can. “But it’s only because my family members died or became fugitives before they reached thirty. I’d give a lot to have them back.”
Simon doesn’t seem to notice this cue or the way that Ginny is making sharp, cutting motions at him with her hand. He grins at Harry. “But it’s so brilliant, isn’t it, being a Lord? One of the people who control the fate of magical Britain! And you’re a double Lord to boot?”
Really? Harry would say if he cared more, to Ginny. This is what you replace me with?
But he doesn’t. He very carefully doesn’t. He simply nods to Simon and says, “It’s been interesting so far. But I find politics so boring. An Auror deals with more of them in day-to-day life than I ever knew when I started training as one, you know. Why don’t you tell me more about what you do? Something to do with brooms, right?” He honestly doesn’t remember, but it ought to—
“But I think being a Lord is much more interesting. Let’s talk about that!”
“Maybe not, Simon,” Ginny says, her eyes darting back and forth between Harry’s fixed smile and Simon’s open, cheerful face. “We could talk about how we met. I don’t think Harry’s heard that yet.”
“No, I haven’t,” Harry agrees, bright as new Knuts. “Was it at a meeting for people who are neutral on the current regime?”
Simon laughs. “Neutral! I’m not neutral!” Meanwhile, Ginny looks like she wants to slap them both.
“It was actually in Diagon Alley, at—”
“There’s no Lord Morreth, but there could have been,” Simon goes on, leaning forwards. “I mean, we always thought my mum’s mum slept with a Lord. But she would never tell us who it was, and Mum looked a lot like her dad, so I reckon not. But there could have been. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“All sorts of things,” Harry says, gaze locked on Simon’s face.
Ginny hurries on, looking up at the ceiling as if she’s actually hoping it will cave in and prevent them from having to have this conversation. “It was at Madam Malkin’s in Diagon Alley. I’d gone in to look for a new robe, and Simon was there. He actually argued with Madam Malkin over the color of the robes I’d chosen, imagine. He said they would make me look too washed-out. She would have sold them to me, but my dear Simon was watching, and he had a care for my complexion.” She reaches back and squeezes his hand. Simon gives her a look of soft, beaming adoration.
Harry knows at least part of that little story is a dig at him. He never cared about what clothes Ginny wore when they were dating, and more than once he failed to notice a new set of robes or a new haircut or something similar. But the blow isn’t going to land. He smiles back at them, the kind of smile he’s had a lot of practice giving in the Ministry.
“I’m so happy for you both.”
Ginny’s eyes narrow a little, but Simon just picks up her hand and kisses it. “I’m so lucky in my Gin-Gin,” he murmurs, never looking away from her.
Molly comes into the room then, which is a good thing, since Harry doubts throwing up all over Simon would improve the atmosphere. “Harry, dear, if you could help me get the soup served? The bowl is so big that I’m afraid I’m going to spill it!”
Harry immediately stands up, nods to Ginny and Simon, and walks into the kitchen. Molly grabs his hand and squeezes it. “I’m sorry that you had to be subjected to that,” she says, and wrestles the bowl of soup to the table all by herself, although Harry does at least flick his wand to line up the bowls conveniently. “I know you and Ginny have a bit of a strained relationship.”
“It’s not because I wish I was dating her, though,” Harry says, watching as the soup pours into the bowls with a steaming smell of carrots and onions and beef and other things that make his mouth water. “It’s for the best that we broke up.”
Molly pats him on the back with a soft, disbelieving look. “I do appreciate both of you being willing to keep the peace,” she says, and bustles away.
Harry smiles after her. It’s just as well that she doesn’t know the truth of how he and Ginny broke up. He doesn’t feel bitter, but he knows Molly would after hearing his words.
But Simon’s the kind of man Ginny needs, Harry tells himself, as Molly hands him cutlery to lay out and shoos the children out of the kitchen. Which is only more proof that we never would have worked.
*
Harry has barely Apparated to his front doorstep when he feels his eyebrows rise. There’s a heavy scent all over the stoop, as if someone has let a Kneazle spray there. Well, he supposes it’s slightly sweeter than a Kneazle when you concentrate.
But certainly as thick as one, Harry thinks, and casts a spell that makes his walls transparent, allowing him to see inside.
There’s a young blonde witch sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, as still as someone caught in the middle of one of Hermione’s house-elf rants, her fingers folded properly in her lap. Her face is so pale and devoid of emotion that Harry wonders for a second if she can really be there for what he thinks she’s there for.
But the heavy scent hits him in the face again, and Harry snorts. Yes, she’s there to seduce him. That’s perfume based on Amortentia.
Looks like Malfoy and the rest are attempting to disgrace me, since they couldn’t kill me.
Harry smiles even though he can feel rage bubbling up within him. There are very few people who have either the raw strength to break through his wards or the magical signature key to walk through them. Since he doesn’t feel bits and pieces of broken spellwork trembling in the air, this was someone he trusted.
He will be having a talk with certain people, he thinks as he opens the door.
The witch immediately starts to her feet on seeing him, and stares for a second. Her eyes are a pale, watery blue. Harry lets the door fall shut behind him and stands there looking at her without saying anything.
The woman gulps. For a second, Harry thinks she’ll snatch up the cloak that’s draped over the back of the couch and leave.
But she doesn’t. Malfoy and the others must be paying her a lot, because she clenches her hands in the edges of her robes and spreads them out around her like a puddle of skirts as she curtsies. “My Lord Potter,” she says in a throaty voice. She rises back to her feet and gives him the sort of look Harry learned long ago to be immune to, the one that says he’s impressive to her. Harry knows he isn’t impressive to anyone except fools. The ones who should know better overlook why he’s dangerous, and the fools admire him for defeating Voldemort. “I have heard of your loneliness and come to soothe it.”
“Have you?” Harry moves across the room to the tall, glass-fronted cabinet where he keeps his drinks. She turns to face him, and takes a deep breath for obvious reasons. Harry can see the slight twinkle of glamour charms around her chest, and wants to snort, but that would break his façade. “I can’t imagine where you would have heard it. It’s not the sort of thing even the Daily Prophet gossips about now.”
That’s mainly because, when Skeeter moved to covering political news, another reporter got assigned to monitor his love life. Harry wasted no time in threatening him. He had to carve a permanent hole in the man’s hand with a spell before he got the message, but in the end, he yielded and the Prophet really hasn’t printed stories about Harry’s romances since.
“I mean—I know that you must have been lonely since Ginny Weasley left.” The witch shifts her weight and watches him. “The ungrateful trollop,” she hazards.
“Now, now,” Harry says, shaking his head. “The Howlers I received after she left me called her much more creative insults.”
The woman stares at him, obviously trying to gauge his mood. It’s too bad that she isn’t sensitive to magic. She probably would have run out the door by now.
But Harry doesn’t mind that she hasn’t. He doesn’t know yet who let her in. For now, his magic is rising and wreathing around the room, creating small sparks that can easily be mistaken for sparks of light from the lamps and the like echoed in the bright glass fronts of the cabinets and the facets of the chandelier. By the time she notices it, it’ll be too late.
In the absence of his real target, she’ll do nicely.
“I—of course I won’t insult your past lovers if you don’t want me to.” The witch finally decides that’s the correct thing to say, and casts down her eyes with a modest little pout. “I just thought you might want to know that I despise the woman who was so unwise as to abandon you.”
“It’s been years.” Harry takes out a bottle of Firewhisky he doesn’t intend to drink. “If I can get over it in that time, so should you.”
“Of course.” The witch flinches a little, and then stands back up and tries to draw Harry’s attention to her chest again. “Do you prefer Lord Black or Lord Potter as your title, my lord?”
“In bed? Neither.”
The woman smiles. “Of course. Please let me introduce myself. I am Isabella Carzel.”
Harry recognizes the name. He’s hauled more than a few wizards and witches with that name in front of the Wizengamot. And watched them walk. The Carzel family is related to the Goyle family.
Now he knows why they walked. And his rage soars up until he knows his magic is dancing and sparking around his hair. Why did they send a pure-blood to seduce him? Are they stupid?
No, he realizes a second later. It’s probably because they don’t know anyone but pure-bloods. They wouldn’t have any Muggleborn or half-blood contacts.
Almost amused, Harry gestures with the bottle. Carzel walks towards him, her eyes cast down towards the floor again. Harry wants to shake his head. They really didn’t study him at all, if they think that timid women appeal to him.
She’s almost to him when Harry swings the Firewhisky bottle and shatters it on the corner of the cabinet.
Carzel flinches back from him and nearly draws her wand, but Harry’s magic has already reached out and pinned her hand to her side. In the meantime, the Firewhisky spreads out and ignites before it can fall to the floor, caught by Harry’s raging power. In seconds, a net of flames spreads out and surrounds Carzel, dancing with menacing heat at her throat and wrists and lips.
Carzel stands there, breathing so fast that Harry thinks she might burn her own vocal cords. He calls the flames back a little and takes a step towards her.
The fire promptly turns to flank him as he moves. Carzel sways, on the edge of fainting. Harry smiles. This is a trick he’s perfected when he faces criminals in the field, although there it’s not usually Firewhisky that carries the flames.
They never knew he was like this. Or they wouldn’t have sent her.
“I know exactly what you’re here for,” Harry says softly. “And you’re going to give me the names of the people who hired you.”
“H-hired me? My lord—”
Harry moves his fingers a little. The flame whips out and catches her eyelashes. Carzel screams as she burns—
For one second. Then Harry calls the fire back before it can burn her eyes. Carzel stands there, panting and wide-eyed.
The lesson isn’t lost on her. Harry is perfectly in control of his magic. Far more than she, or anyone who would have hired her, thought she was.
That means that, if she gets hurt, it will be deliberately.
“Their names,” Harry says. His voice echoes with the thunder of his awakened power, and Carzel shudders and would probably try to fall back a step if it wasn’t for the net of flame surrounding her. “You can start with the easy ones.”
Carzel lowers her head and begins to whisper. “Lord Malfoy. Lady Shafiq. Heir Malfoy. Heiress Parkinson…”
On the list goes, and on. Harry listens, smiling, knowing his crystalline memory when it comes to enemies will preserve it all.
And his flame tightens, and does make Carzel faint at the last.
That’s okay. Harry has plans for her. He calls Kreacher and lets him take the witch, minus her wand, to a secure cellar in Grimmauld Place.
This time, he’ll bring a witness with him.
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Made of Common Clay