Chapter Seventeen of 'An Alchemical Discontent'- All the Power in the World
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Chapter Seventeen-All the Power in the World
Hermione cried out as the first Acromantula leaped at her. Harry swiveled towards her, but the next Acromantula was already on him, and half-grown or not, it was still immensely swift and strong.
He turned fast enough to cut off one of his attacker’s legs and rip a hole in its abdomen with a Slicing Hex. But it still didn’t die. It landed on the ground in a puddle of mushy green slime, made a shrill burbling sound, and rushed at him, clacking its mandibles. It was taller than he was, and for a moment he was occupied with the thought of how in the world it could have fit into the small shawl Cordelia had flung at them.
Stop thinking like Hermione! Even she isn’t thinking like that right now! he scolded himself, and whirled out of the way of the mandibles. At least, I really hope she’s not.
The spider skidded to a stop and turned around to face him again, throwing out two legs to make a cage to hold him in place. Harry found himself smiling grimly, his newly released anger surging. No, Draco wasn’t here, and therefore he didn’t feel half the terrifying rage that he had when he was looking at Theodore Nott. But he could still use his anger to fuel his spells; he wasn’t acting out of the calm, cool dispassion that he normally would have brought to a fight like this.
And he had to admit, it felt wonderful.
Harry stepped forwards and let the Acromantula have it, right in its ugly face.
Two of its clusters of staring eyes ruptured, and Harry had to duck as white goo flew at him. He slipped in something-probably the spider’s trailing guts-and fell, then rolled out of the way just in time as one of the strong legs came down, wickedly fast. Or, at least, it was almost just in time. He felt a flaying, flicking pain from his left arm, and thought the leg must have sliced off a sliver of skin.
Back on his feet again, kicking himself up with the speed that he’d used on a broom chasing the Snitch or when he was fighting Death Eaters in that last year, and you really never did forget how to do this, did you, Potter? he asked himself, aiming a Blasting Curse into the bloated belly right above him.
The curse turned out to be more powerful even than he knew. Some of the spider flew backwards; some stayed in place, and bits and pieces rained down on him. Harry dodged, a hand over his face, spitting out a thick coating of black liquid that fell on his tongue-it tasted like spoiled meat-and rolled over to see how Hermione was doing.
He nearly laughed aloud when he saw her. She had sewed the Acromantula up in some strong netting that looked like its own web, but toughened so it couldn’t get out, and she was calmly cutting off its legs where they dangled over the tops of the net and writhed in furious struggles.
And then a spell cut into Harry from behind, and he reminded himself that it never did to turn your back on an enemy, especially one like Cordelia Nott.
He let himself fall whilst his legs tingled and went numb, trying to analyze the nature of the spell. Then licking pain, like being caught with a dragon’s tongue and a blast of fire at the same moment, traveled up his shoulder blades towards his head, and he decided he didn’t have time.
Harry yelled a charm that Hermione had taught him to preserve a wound as it formed. Normally it was meant for healing, to staunch the flow of blood, but Harry hoped it would work as well to stop a curse in progress.
It seemed to; at least, the pain dropped to a tolerable level. Harry scrambled up to his knees and turned around, aware of Hermione glancing anxiously at him. But her Acromantula set up a ferocious kicking, and Harry heard a sound like rotten cloth ripping; it was probably managing to find a way out of the silk bag Hermione had confined it in. He knew he would have to handle Cordelia alone.
She advanced now with a very faint smile on her face. Strangely, Harry saw more of her beauty now than he had before. The smile wasn’t amused; it was grim, utterly determined to ensure that he was wiped from the face of the earth.
She snarled something low and angry at the same moment as Harry invoked the Shield Charm. A shimmering silvery field spread before him, and Cordelia’s thick purple spell splashed into the middle of it and flew back at her. She spun away, swearing.
Harry still went to his knees behind the shield, though-something his knees were beginning to complain about. Cordelia was no lightweight where magic was concerned.
Cordelia had begun a long, complex incantation Harry didn’t recognize by the time he climbed back to his feet. He didn’t know what it did and didn’t want to pause long enough to find out. So he yelled, “Levicorpus!” and grinned a little as the spell snatched her into the air by one ankle and hung her there. She didn’t drop her wand, as he’d hoped for, but at least it interrupted whatever dangerous spell she had been about to put into motion.
Harry flung a quick glance at Hermione, but was confident she had the Acromantula under control after that glance, though she was still too busy to help him. He looked back at Cordelia, who was writhing in silence as she tried to fight the magic holding her. A simple Finite Incantatem wasn’t working, Harry noticed; it rarely did on any of Snape’s invented spells, at least when the spellcaster was trying to aim her wand upside down and backwards.
“Expelliarmus!” he called.
Cordelia scrambled and flicked her fingers, but she was already at an awkward angle and more focused on undoing the magic that held her captive than retaining her wand to do the magic with. Harry held his palm up, and a moment later, a solid length of chestnut smacked into it. He gripped the wand firmly and performed a Sticking Charm with his own, to ensure it stayed. Then he backed up and turned to Hermione.
She had just cut off the Acromantula’s last leg, and now she exploded the body. Harry flinched instinctively, but the silken bag of netting contained the explosion and didn’t let the parts rain onto them. The bag sagged and then turned green from a liquid dripping into it, but that was so much better than what could have happened that Harry relaxed.
“Accio shawl,” Hermione said.
The purple piece of cloth flew from a corner of the alley into Hermione’s hands. She held it up and peered at it critically, then nodded, apparently to herself. “Acromantula eggs sewn into the lining,” she explained to Harry. “With quick-aging spells and curses that inspire hostility towards anyone but the shawl’s owner implanted. A clever thing. Either she came up with it herself or she paid good money for it.”
“Maybe the money,” Harry muttered, turning to stare up at Cordelia. After what he had experienced of her spellwork, he wasn’t ready to think that she was such a very good witch.
“The bargain remains the same, you know,” he told Cordelia casually. “You swear an Unbreakable Vow to withdraw from supporting Diggory and to stop seeking vengeance on us, and we give you your brother back and swear to keep our mouths shut about your money.”
Cordelia said nothing for long minutes. Her hanging skirts covered her head, so Harry wasn’t sure what she was thinking. When she finally spoke, her voice was light, amused. “You realize that it’s a rather Slytherin thing, to negotiate so gently with the woman who almost killed you?”
“You attacked us,” Harry said. “You didn’t almost kill us. To me, that makes a difference.”
Hermione snorted into her hand, but didn’t say anything. Harry was relieved. He had half-feared that she would start insisting they take Cordelia to Azkaban again, this time for using illegal quick-aging spells.
“Hmm,” said Cordelia. “It is not often I encounter people who can appreciate such a fine distinction and are not politicians. Do you plan to enter the race for Minister yourself, Mr. Potter, and oppose Charlemagne? I know that is his ultimate nightmare, though he would not admit as much to me.”
“Good God, no!” Harry said. “He knows what I’m like. If he thinks I want to be Minister, he’s stupider than I imagined. Why didn’t I take it after the war, when I had the entire wizarding world eating out of my hand?”
“Charlemagne finally convinced himself you didn’t want it for that reason,” Cordelia said, “but he could never get over the suspicion completely.”
“This doesn’t have much to do with the subject of the Unbreakable Vows,” Hermione said crisply. “Do you swear it, or do we turn both you and your brother over to the Minister, and break open the story of what you’ve done?”
For a moment, the vision of that tempted Harry. Surely Minister Shacklebolt would have to understand how corrupt Diggory was, if he was letting a family like the Notts support him-
And then Harry pulled himself up short. Veritaserum was still voluntary, and without that, it was his, Hermione’s, and Draco’s word against Cordelia’s and Diggory’s. Cordelia probably had enough money to bribe key people in the Ministry hierarchy, people whose names Harry didn’t even know. Diggory would deny any involvement with her if he had to, and he had the time and cunning to cover up his tracks. And then they would become entangled in the long, drawn-out battle in the courts, their time consumed with giving testimony and arguing over evidence with recalcitrant judges. Even if the trial went to the Wizengamot, there was no reason to think that Cordelia couldn’t bribe people there, too.
No. Draco had been right. The Unbreakable Vows were their best solution after all, and the only way to absolutely ensure that Cordelia’s money would no longer be at Diggory’s disposal.
“I’ll swear the Vows,” said Cordelia, sounding a little angry, a little tired, and a little amused. “You’re certainly more formidable opponents than I thought. And during the war, there were three of you, imagine. I would have hated to face you. Of course, I was well out of the country by then, keeping myself clear of Father’s idiotic errors in judgment.”
“You should still be wary,” Hermione hissed at her as Harry waved his wand and lowered her to the floor of the alley. “We are three now.”
Harry whipped around to stare at her, lifted to heights he had not imagined he could attain by that simple statement. Hermione blinked and stared at him, looking unnerved, and then her cheeks turned pink.
“I didn’t mean that we were three all the time,” she said hastily. “Not like-not like Ron.” She spoke his name with only a faint catch in her voice, Harry noticed. “Just that it was Malfoy’s plan that got us this far.”
Harry grinned at her.
“I didn’t mean that,” Hermione said, folding her arms. “Malfoy is still a conceited bigot and a pompous arsehole and I have every right to dislike him.”
“Oh, yes,” Harry said, and then knelt and held out his hand to Cordelia. She joined him, not seeming at all reluctant. Indeed, she had almost a cheerful air, the way that Draco had told Harry she probably would have if they could get her to agree to the Vows. She knew when to give up and admit that an enemy had outwitted her. “Hermione, will you be the Bonder for the Vows?”
Hermione nodded sternly and stepped forwards. Her expression told Harry she would insist on feeding him the wording of the Vows, too, which was perfectly fine. He would hate to lose their chance to take Cordelia out of the game because of a stupid slip of the tongue.
So Cordelia took the Unbreakable Vows with them, and then Harry and Hermione gave her their Unbreakable Vow back, swearing not to tell her secrets. Cordelia stood, stretched, and shook her head.
“Well,” she said, “dear Charlemagne will be disappointed, but I did tell him that he would probably regret not making me fall in love with him someday. Relationships started on blackmail rarely end well.” She extended her hand and snapped her fingers, and reluctantly, Hermione dropped the purple shawl into her hand. Cordelia swung it around her shoulders and looked at Harry. He blinked, then realized she was waiting for her wand.
He handed it over carefully, his own wand held at the ready. Cordelia rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to worry about my attacking you when I would die over doing so,” she said. “I am not really that stupid.”
“You seem to be taking this awfully calmly,” Harry said, scowling at her. No matter what Draco had said about that being likely, he didn’t like the sense that something was off somewhere, that there had been something their careful Vows and preparation had been unable to cover.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Cordelia lifted an eyebrow. “There are other ways to play the political game-and there are methods of indirect revenge that I can experiment with. I haven’t hitched my cart to Charlemagne’s star so closely that I’ll suffer if he loses the election. The wasted time and money are irritants, but no more. You really do not comprehend how rich I am.”
And she turned and sauntered out of the alley, Theodore floating bound and unconscious behind her, after a small nod at both Harry and Hermione, as though to congratulate them for a good chess game well-played. Hermione blinked and shook her head.
“Even if we are three,” she said, her glare at Harry daring him to make more of the words than she’d meant by them, “I highly doubt I’ll ever understand how their minds work.”
“Hogwarts was a long time ago, Hermione,” Harry said, echoing words she’d spoken often before Ron’s death, usually when Ron complained about some sneaky Slytherin player on an opposing team. “Don’t you think you should look for ways to classify people beyond House affiliation?”
She scowled at him, and took his arm for the Side-Along Apparition. Harry grinned at her again and took them both back home, already anticipating how he would casually mention her words in conversation before Draco.
*
Draco opened his eyes slowly. The first thing he became conscious of was a terrible, hurtful pounding in his head. He’d felt it before. It meant he’d been hanging upside-down for a long period of time, and probably only a spell had returned him to consciousness.
He tried to move his arms and legs instinctively, and discovered they were bound tightly to his body. By the pain that cut into his skin when he struggled, he thought it was probably wire tying him. He winced and closed his eyes, remembering the things Daphne had done with wire when they’d first been together. He still bore some of the scars, though he had insisted they be in less noticeable places on his body.
That had been long ago, when he still had some control over what she did to him.
“Well, Draco,” Daphne’s voice said, and the next moment she stepped up in front of him, upside-down, but still recognizable, with her blonde hair bound tightly to her neck and her green eyes shining like summer. Well, and she was naked. That helped too, Draco thought, slightly crazed with blood and despair. “Alone together at last. I had not thought that I would have the chance, when I saw you vanish into Potter’s flat. He destroyed all my lovely uncertainties.” She sounded as if she was pouting, but Draco’s vision was coming in flashes again and he couldn’t be sure.
Daphne sighed and moved her wand. A flash exploded behind Draco’s eyelids in the front of his skull, and he jerked back to awareness. Yes, it had definitely been that spell that awakened him when he shouldn’t have been able to open his eyes.
“I made a mistake before,” Daphne said. “I let you go. I thought it would be more exciting if you lived as the passive victim under my spells, about to be killed at any moment-or able to be killed at any moment, never knowing what random word or action might trigger one of the invisible curses.”
Draco swallowed, and realized that he had almost stopped living like that in the past few days, as he recovered from the wounds that Daphne inflicted on him and brewed his potions. Harry had made him forget. Of course there were still the times something hinted at Daphne and Draco panicked, but life had become almost ordinary. Certainly, Daphne had not been as present in his mind as she wished to be.
“What?” Daphne asked, in a tone of gentle, girlish dismay.
Draco flinched. She was a Legilimens, of course, and she had just read the thoughts that preoccupied him off the surface of his mind. Perhaps she had even summoned them in the first place. Draco had never been good enough at Legilimency to feel the subtle probe of someone entering his mind, one reason that his mother had been wild with fear for him when he began to serve the Dark Lord.
“I didn’t know Potter did that,” Daphne said, sounding perturbed now. “I’m so glad I brought you out of that nasty flat, and into a place where we can be alone and play together.” She stepped up and laid her wand along Draco’s cheek. “You like to play, don’t you, Draco?’
And as if that phrase had been the key unlocking a hidden door, memories suddenly tumbled into Draco’s mind, clicking into place. He flinched as he remembered, all at once, the things he had done with Daphne in the past few weeks, and trembled, and was sick, and wanted to faint.
The flash exploded in front of his eyes again, bringing him gasping awake.
“You really are very fragile,” Daphne said. Draco saw her smile, upside-down and looking all the wider and more devouring for that. “I like that in a toy.”
*
Harry put up his arm to bar Hermione’s way the moment they stepped into the corridor where his flat was located. He could feel something wrong, a tingle of magic lost or abandoned that made every single hair on his neck rise.
“Harry?” Hermione asked tentatively from behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, and whatever she saw on his face made her fall into a battle stance. Harry drew his own wand, uncaring for once if any of his Muggle neighbors were looking curiously out, and carefully walked towards his door.
It was magic lost, he realized, when he stepped onto a certain patch of floor that should have brought his wards crowding round him, welcoming and caressing. Someone had completely destroyed the defenses on his home, removed them like someone removing the skin from a banana, and thrown them as contemptuously away.
“Harry?” Hermione asked again, but in the sharp whisper that meant she’d used a spell to project her voice towards him without moving from her position.
Harry shook his head and didn’t turn around. He thought he knew what he would find, but he nudged his door open cautiously and cast a Shield Charm in front of him anyway as he stepped inside.
His flat was empty. Hauntingly empty. Draco’s potions ingredients might still be there, and maybe even his wand, but his magic and his presence had left it.
Harry closed his eyes as he remembered the broken leg and ribs Draco’s enemy had left him with, and a scream rose up his throat. He didn’t let it out. He leaned on the door instead and rhythmically pounded his fist into the wood a few times until he felt better.
He had thought leaving Draco behind was the right thing to do, the safest thing. He had never thought someone could get through his wards.
But of course the witch who had come to his door the other day was a scout, a spy, either the enemy herself or someone in her pay. And of course he should have known that someone Draco feared was clever, and would find a way around the defenses to her prey sooner or later.
I shouldn’t have left him alone.
Hermione didn’t immediately enter, though Harry expected her to, given the way he’d hit the door. Instead, perhaps three minutes later, she rested her hand on his shoulder. Harry looked back at her, knowing his eyes were large and moist. He didn’t care.
“I found this,” Hermione said quietly, and held up a coil of silver wire. “I can feel the magic on it, though I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She shook her head slightly, baffled. “Basically, whoever left this here must have created a spell that does the impossible-unravel wards-and then attached it to the wire. Then she dropped it in the corridor, and just let it work on the wards, hollowing them out. By the time she came back, she probably had to do almost no work to remove them.”
“Then why didn’t I feel the wards losing strength?” Harry whispered, his throat thick and tight as fever. Draco.
Hermione gave him a sad smile and turned the wire over. A rune was etched on the bottom. Harry frowned at it, but couldn’t tell what it meant.
“The rune for invisibility,” Hermione said softly. “Anyone who was closely connected to the wards-which meant you, me, and Draco-wouldn’t have noticed a thing. A stranger who came in from outside would have, but she probably noticed that few people visit you. I think she was willing to take the risk.”
“I should have known,” Harry whispered, fighting the urge to beat the door again. “The wards around Draco’s shop-they were weak, enough that Theodore Nott could just slip right through. I thought he’d done it, but he was just taking advantage of an opportunity, wasn’t he? I should have known-“
“Harry.” Hermione shook him. “The important thing right now is to find Draco and stop this enemy from hurting him further, not to wish for impossible chances.”
Harry nodded dully. “But we don’t have a clue who she is, yet. Two names, but either one of them could be the one, and we’ll be wasting time searching for someone who-“
A sharp tap sounded at the window. Harry rushed towards it, nearly tripping over a stool on his way. He opened the window hastily and extended his arm to the owl who waited there, half-convinced it would be a ransom demand or a taunting invitation from Draco’s enemy. Maybe Hermione could work out who it was if she had handwriting to perform a spell on it. Hermione could do anything.
The owl that landed on his arm didn’t look particularly evil, though, and the envelope that Harry pulled out bore simply his name, without any wicked slant to the letters. He tore it open anyway. Sometimes evil hides behind good.
It was from Ollivander. Harry blinked, and stared. The letter he had written him about the young witch’s wand seemed a million years gone by.
Dear Mr. Potter:
The wand you describe, and the circumstances you have placed it in, make it very likely that you encountered Daphne Greengrass. I gave her just such a wand when she came to visit me seventeen years ago: ebony, with a unicorn hair core. I hope this was helpful.
Harry let the letter flutter to the floor, where Hermione snatched it. His head was full of pounding blood, which washed over him and transformed into something so strong he barely recognized it at first.
Then he did.
A swell of rage.
Daphne Greengrass. I will annihilate you.
Chapter Eighteen.