[From Litha to Lammas]: Huntsman's Honor, Harry/Lucius, R, 2/3
Part One.
Title: Huntsman’s Honor (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Lucius, mentions of Lucius/Narcissa
Content Notes: Angst, not epilogue-compliant, ritual magic, violence, gore, animal harm, dark Harry
Wordcount: This part 4600
Rating: R
Summary: Harry has long wanted to perform a ritual that might let him bring Sirius back through the Veil, but he needed help to both gather the ingredients and cast the ritual itself. And accepting that that help could come from Lucius Malfoy took him even longer.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is in response to a request by nia_kantorka, who asked for Harry/Lucius with the prompt of Harry always wanted to try that ritual. Now he’s got the partner(s) to actually do so. There will be three parts total. Also, please look carefully at the content notes.
Thanks for the reviews!
Part Two
“You trust me to cast this spell on you?”
“I wouldn’t be in the middle of this forest with you if I didn’t.”
Lucius let out a shuddering breath and nodded. Potter, who baffled him more and more lately, stood naked in the middle of the Forest of Dean. Sitting next to him was a tiny chunk of obsidian that would be the subject of the next harvesting.
They needed an altar, and there were specific circumstances that had to come about to turn the obsidian into one.
“I’m ready now,” Potter murmured, eyes as distant and clear as they had been on the day he had told Lucius he intended to lay his virginity down as sacrifice. The conversation, and now the look, had disturbed Lucius. Not that Potter intended to give it, not that he hadn’t told Lucius, even, but that he was-
So cold about it.
Lucius swirled his wand in a slow pattern, and began the chant. The spell was one of the most powerful curses he knew, and it seized control of him a few minutes after he started it. The magic flowed on and waved his hand in specific, careful patterns, whether or not Lucius willed it so.
It meant that he had time to watch Potter.
Potter shuddered, his head bowed. Invisible knives carved open the skin on his chest and shoulders, flooding his naked form with blood. The cuts continued, down his arms and then his legs, to his hands and feet. The blood was only the first part of the spell, though, and while it lapped the piece of obsidian, the stone did little more than shudder.
Then Lucius slashed his wand down and began the second part of the curse.
Potter’s caught breath was the only sign that he had even noticed. He lifted his head and stared past Lucius into the trees, while the curse took its sacrifice of pain from him. Lucius had been subjected to this spell once by the Dark Lord. He knew it was agonizing.
Potter stood there as if it was nothing, every tendon and ligament in his body dedicated to bringing his godfather back.
It made something cold and tight grow in Lucius’s chest, as well. But the spell still had control, and the obsidian was finally growing in response to the waves of pain that had joined the blood.
In a few seconds, it had snapped into a much longer, broader plank, but it still didn’t look much like an altar. Potter turned to face it and held up his hands, his face still blank.
Lucius cast the third part of the spell, because he couldn’t not.
Potter did close his eyes as the spell severed the little finger on his left hand and spun it around in the air, stripping the skin and meat from it before entombing the bone in the obsidian. But that was all.
Lucius wished there had been some reaction. But he got more than he wished for when the spell ended and Potter abruptly sank to his knees, then to his back, passing out with spectacular quietness.
“Shit!” Lucius scrambled towards him, his chest beating with his own pain and fear, just imagining the repercussions that would happen if someone decided that he had murdered Harry Potter here in the Forest of Dean. His shaking hand could barely open his buttoned pocket at first and draw out the Blood-Replenisher, but he closed his eyes and willed himself to calm, and then he had it. He forced open Potter’s jaws and drained the potion down his throat.
He didn’t bind the wound where the finger had been, however. This harvesting process was as much a part of the ritual as the final preparation that he and Potter would do within the pentagram, as much a part of the curse that had been placed on Borgin. The Blood-Replenisher would ensure Potter didn’t die of the wound, and that was all Lucius could do.
“Lucius.”
The name hit him like a Blasting Curse. Lucius found himself staring down into Potter’s muddled eyes and willing them to clear, to show that he was coming back to life and not in danger of-what? Lucius didn’t know. As he had admitted to himself, the wounds wouldn’t be fatal.
Potter blinked at him once, then sat up. The wounds on his chest and hands were already closing, except for the place where his little finger had been. The ones on the rest of his body would take a while, and the pain would linger in his bones and body for as much as a month afterwards.
“Thanks,” Potter said, and reached out to pick up the robes that he had dropped on the ground near him. He was smiling as he looked at the altar.
Lucius swallowed and nodded. He didn’t know what unnerved him more, the smile or his own reaction to hearing Potter speak his name.
*
“I should do it. My purity is already tainted.”
“That’s exactly why this won’t work,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. Had Malfoy not read the instructions Harry had left for him? Or the text of the ritual at all recently? He hadn’t seemed surprised by any of the requirements before this, so Harry had thought he knew it well. “I need to make a sacrifice of my own innocence.”
“You could tear your soul.”
“I don’t think so,” Harry said, glancing over his shoulder as he picked his way through the thick forest that surrounded the hippogriff sanctuary. “It’s a rejection, not a murder. And isn’t that an odd thing for you to say?” he added, coming fully to a stop and facing Malfoy. He wondered if he had made the wrong choice after all, if Malfoy would begin to act increasingly unreliable. Merlin, he hoped not. “I wouldn’t think that you thought of hippogriffs on the same level as humans.”
Malfoy flushed and averted his eyes. They were both carrying their wands lit with Lumos Charms although it wasn’t full dark; it was raining so hard that they stood a chance of losing each other in the thick branches and encircling dusk otherwise. “I am only-I don’t like the thought.”
“Nothing about this ritual is remotely likeable.” Harry shook his head and faced forwards into the gloom again, studying the thick fence of thorns in front of him. It was meant to keep young hippogriffs from escaping into the wild before they were ready and poachers from approaching too easily, but its real value was as an anchor for the Muggle-Repelling Charms. It wouldn’t do for the Muggles of Edinburgh to know there was a hippogriff sanctuary not far from them. “Except the end result.”
“Why did you decide to resurrect your godfather? Why weren’t you content with your friends and your victories after the war?”
“They had families. I didn’t.”
“I still was under the impression that the Weasleys regarded you as part of their family. Despite what you said to me the other day.”
Harry turned to stare at Malfoy, and kept his stare piercing and incredulous enough that eventually the man shifted in place. “Are we going to discuss this now? Or are we going to get the ingredients that we came here for?” he asked.
“Of course we are going to get what we came here for. But I would like to discuss your motivations with you later.”
Harry shrugged. “I don’t mind. We need trust between us for the ritual to work.”
Malfoy took a breath as though he would dispute that, but he never ended up releasing it. His reasons to keep it to himself were all fine with Harry, as long as they meant Malfoy didn’t get in the way at a crucial juncture. Harry was busy reaching out with his wand in one hand and the Resurrection Stone in the other.
Softly, he spoke to the Hallows, in the ringing, drifting tone that he couldn’t say was aloud or in his mind even after eight years of using it. But they listened to him and spread waves of destruction and time up and down the fence, simultaneously ruining the magical parts of it and regressing others, so that the fence was a young thicket of thorns and not nearly so imposing. Harry hopped over it after a few minutes and began to jog across the wet grass.
Malfoy followed perhaps a minute later. Harry shook his head. The man was acting strange, and over an ingredient that he didn’t need to help collect. Harry had actually suggested that he stay at the Manor, but he’d refused. Perhaps they did need to have that talk after all.
In the meantime, a hippogriff was running parallel to them, wings spread as though it would launch into flight to warn the herd at any second. It appeared to be a dapple grey on the horse part of its body, as much as Harry could see something that far away through the rain and the murk.
Harry stopped and bowed. The hippogriff gave a cautious stamp of one foot, but when Harry stayed in the bowing position, it moved closer. A large female, Harry saw after glancing up once and then directing his eyes back to the ground, and yes, she was a dapple grey, with even the eagle feathers around her neck a bedraggled misty color in the rain.
Harry snapped his eyes away again when the hippogriff tilted her head to regard him. Then she saw Malfoy behind him, or so Harry supposed, since she stared pointedly past his shoulder and screeched.
“Back away,” Harry snarled under his breath.
Malfoy presumably had the sense to do so, since Harry heard crushing grass. The hippogriff, in the meantime, was right in front of Harry now, and she bowed her head in a regal way, nearly to her knees. Then she knelt down to invite him onto her back.
Harry smiled and stepped closer to her. It felt, oddly, easier than it should have been, to be this deceptive.
But then, he had always known he was coming here since he investigated the structure of the ritual and how they had to hunt down the ingredients. He would do anything for Sirius. Anything to bring him back.
The Elder Wand was in Harry’s palm, seemingly unnoticed by the hippogriff until Harry raised it to the height of her shoulder. Even then, she merely turned her head to look curiously in his direction.
So she could do nothing to prevent Harry from casting a long slashing curse down her shoulder.
Screaming in pain, the hippogriff leaped to her feet and tried to fly away from him. The slashing wound interfered with the movement of her left wing, and she galloped in a circle for a moment before she was able to half-fold the wing and back away from Harry. Her haunting cry this time seemed to ask him what she had done to be punished this way.
Harry stared at her, and indifference welled up in him. This had been the hardest part of the sacrifice, the hunt, the part he wasn’t sure he could do. He had to feel truly that this was a worthwhile sacrifice, and not care about her pain.
That he had hurt her so, even if the wound would heal, and perhaps ruined her trust in humans forever was a detail.
There was a crunching feeling in the center of his chest, as if he had been carrying a pane of glass there and had just cracked it. Harry nodded. He had tainted his purity, his innocence. This particular part of the harvest was concluded.
He turned around and walked back towards Malfoy, who had stood motionless behind him and seemed to be watching the wounded hippogriff instead of Harry. “You wanted to have that talk? Let’s get back to your Manor.”
Malfoy twisted his head quickly and watched Harry walk past as if he were a dangerous predator. Then he fell in behind him.
Dangerous predator might be right, Harry thought, as he lengthened his stride and felt something like a cool breeze travel through him. Maybe he needs reassurance that I won’t hurt someone who helps me. Easily enough given.
*
“I want to know what you meant about not feeling like part of the Weasley family.”
Potter frowned at him across the glass of hot chocolate that the elves had pressed on him the minute he came in the Manor, for some reason. Lucius certainly hadn’t ordered it. “That’s what you want to talk about?”
“You did say that we would talk about it when we returned to the Manor. Was that a lie?” Lucius could feel a harsh pulse beating in his throat at the notion that it might have been. There was no way for them to successfully conduct the ritual if their trust broke.
“No,” Potter said slowly. “I just thought that you might want to talk about something-never mind.” He shrugged. “It was simple, really. My friends had a lot to go through with their families after the war. Ron’s family had lost Fred. One of his brothers,” he added, probably seeing the blank look in Lucius’s eyes. “And my friend Hermione Memory-Charmed her Muggle parents so they would go to Australia. She had to find them, had to reverse the Charm, and had to work to rebuild trust with them.”
Lucius raised his eyebrows. He would not have thought the self-righteous girl his son had described would have the courage to do that.
But then again, he couldn’t rely on Draco’s descriptions, he had already ascertained that. Draco had never described Potter in a way that would have resolved into the young man in front of Lucius, this researcher of ritual magic and practitioner bound for the Ritual of Bone and Soul.
“Hermione had to spend a lot of time in Australia. With her family. And the Weasleys…” Potter shook his head. “They drew in on themselves. They tried to protect Mrs. Weasley and George, Fred’s twin, as best as they could. I was never told that they wanted me to go, but I saw that it was more difficult for them when I was there. They couldn’t look at me without being reminded of the war and what they lost.”
“So your survival was not enough for them.”
Potter looked at him, steady and calm, which made it all the harder to bear his gaze. “If the war had cost you your son, would you have wanted one of his friends in your Manor all the time? Would you have been able to look at him without bitterness?”
Lucius grimaced. “A point well-made, then.” It struck him as incongruous that Potter could so rationally argue about things like this while being utterly irrational about the sacrifices that he was making for Sirius Black’s sake, but it wasn’t the time to talk about such things. “And so you distanced yourself from the family.”
Potter nodded. “By the time Hermione came back from Australia and the Weasley family had finished a year of mourning, they were bound by their experiences. Changed. Hermione is much closer to her parents now, and the Weasleys are much closer to each other. They’ll start to talk about something-the Grangers, Ron and his brothers-and then stop and speak to each other with just their eyes. I’m outside.”
It was said without bitterness, something Lucius was not sure he could have managed. He poured more Firewhisky, at a loss to do anything else. “And Sirius Black can provide you with that family you are missing? How?”
“He knows more about my parents than anyone else alive right now.”
Lucius swallowed. The way Potter spoke as if Black was already among the living…
He glanced at the man and then away. There was a fire in those eyes, banked but living, that he should have noticed before. Of course, no one who wanted to perform the Ritual of Bone and Soul was exactly sane.
And Lucius wanted to remove the Dark Mark. And he wanted to see this through to the end.
He would be lying if he said that he wasn’t dreaming of what would happen in the ritual pentagram, too.
Either oblivious to or ignoring Lucius’s thoughts, Potter leaned back on the huge couch he’d taken up nearly all of and added, “And I barely got to know Sirius in the two years we had between the time I found out he was innocent and the time he died. We spent a few hours or weeks together here and there. I want to know him more.”
“Will he be grateful to you for pulling him back from the Veil?”
“How should I know?”
Lucius paused. He had thought he’d come to the end of the surprises Potter could throw at him, but no, it seemed not. “What if you go through all this performance of the ritual, all these sacrifices and harvesting and hunting down ingredients, and he tells you to put him back?”
Potter laughed in a low, dangerous way. Lucius wished that he didn’t feel such a pull towards him when he did that.
“I can’t do that.” Potter shrugged. “We’ll argue about it and make up and have cracks between us, the way family does. But either way, he’ll have to be alive to deal with it.”
*
Harry woke slowly from an intense dream of Sirius standing in front of him and yelling at Harry for disturbing his rest. It could have been a nightmare, and it probably had been inspired by Malfoy’s question earlier that evening about what would happen if Sirius got upset about being resurrected, but it made Harry smile anyway. All his dreams of Sirius did that, no matter what the content.
He heard someone pounding on his door. The fact that the wards hadn’t activated and yanked him out of sleep with the first knock pretty much left only one person it could be.
Yawning, Harry fetched the Elder Wand and went to open the door to Malfoy. Malfoy stepped in and glanced suspiciously over his shoulder. Harry did the same to appease him, but he wasn’t worried. Other wards in the corridor would have warned him even earlier than this of anyone’s approach.
And, well, even though Harry only lived in one flat in the building, that hadn’t stopped him from blanketing the whole thing thoroughly with wards.
“What is it?” he asked, as he shut the door behind Malfoy and turned to face him. Malfoy hadn’t bothered to remove his cloak, although it was warm in Harry’s flat. He was pacing back and forth across the drawing room, staring around as though he expected the carpet to come to life and attack him.
“There was an Auror raid on my home today.”
Harry blinked. “I thought that was a normal occurrence.”
Malfoy swung to glare at him. “They seemed surprised to find nothing, and said specifically that they had tracked my magical signature near a hippogriff sanctuary. There is no telling where else they might have found it.”
Harry scowled. They had scattered the harvesting of the ingredients widely enough that he hadn’t thought discovery was a problem, especially considering the short time that would elapse between the start of the hunting and the ritual actually being performed. But then, they’d left behind more evidence at the hippogriff sanctuary than usual.
“All right,” he said. “Then we’ll step up the timing of the ritual.”
Malfoy’s head snapped back as if Harry had punched him. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not? It doesn’t depend on the phases of the moon.” Harry did think Malfoy would have known that, but he was going to make some allowances for the man’s rattled state.
“We aren’t ready. We don’t have all the ingredients.”
“Yes, we do,” Harry said. “The only ones remaining were the homunculus, which I had made by an alchemist before I visited you the first time, and your willingness and mine. Unless you’re unwilling.” The dread that clenched his heart was real-to have wasted all this time, to have found a perfect candidate and to have to let him go-but then the still waters of his own determination settled into place. If Malfoy refused to help him, Harry would find someone else. He would perform the ritual. Sirius would come back.
“You didn’t tell me about the homunculus. Just as you didn’t tell me about your virginity.”
Harry paused. This objection wasn’t a refusal, but he didn’t understand it. “I meant to relieve you of worry about the homunculus tomorrow. And I really did think I’d already told you about my virginity being a sacrifice. I’m sorry.”
“Listen to me, Harry.” Harry started, but Malfoy was stepping forwards to regard him from so close, eye-to-eye, his hand reaching out to touch Harry’s shoulder-the first time he’d touched him at all other than after the sacrifice to create the altar, when he’d needed to feed him potions. “This ritual won’t work without trust. You know we have to move as one when it begins.”
“We won’t have a problem with that. The magic of the ritual itself, and my determination to bring Sirius back, and your determination to get rid of the Dark Mark, will-”
“I cannot achieve that state of determination if I do not trust you.”
Harry stilled himself the way he had stilled his panic over possibly losing Malfoy’s help a few minutes earlier. “What do you need to know?”
*
Lucius withheld the urge to gasp. It had worked. He had been sure that Potter would turn his back and tell him to leave, preferring to cling to his secrecy rather than admit Lucius to the inner sanctum of his motivations.
But looking into Potter’s eyes again, Lucius realized he should have known better. What was important to Potter was performing the ritual. Nothing mattered in the face of that.
“I want to know why you didn’t tell me right away that you were a virgin.”
Potter stirred impatiently and walked down the short corridor that led towards the kitchen. Lucius followed. It was a plebian place, he saw, with nothing of the grandeur that he knew Potter could afford. Of course, he hadn’t seen the library yet. “That was an oversight. I honestly thought I’d told you.”
“Then let me ask the question in a different way. Why did you stay a virgin?”
Potter turned and considered him from where he’d started a kettle brewing with a casual wave of his wand. He didn’t appear to have a house-elf, either. “At first because there were more important things to me than dating. Then because I had a few terrible dates with people who were just interested in having sex with the Boy-Who-Lived so they could go report it to the papers. Then because I started my research into rituals and realized that my virginity could be a valuable sacrifice.”
Lucius swallowed with a click of his throat. “Your desire to reclaim your godfather sounds to me like obsession.”
“Oh, it is.” The tea had finished with a swiftness that made Lucius think it must have been half-made already. Potter Summoned a tray with lemon, milk, sugar, and half a dozen other things on it, and shoved it towards Lucius. He used nothing but milk in his cup. “I used to be obsessed with defeating this Dark wizard after my life, and then with learning more about my family, and now it’s this.”
“You know it’s obsession and you’re not interested in curing it?”
“What would curing it leave me?” Potter shook his head. “Still with no family and with no connection to family to speak of.”
“You could start over,” Lucius suggested. “Make new friends if you no longer feel comfortable with the Weasleys and Granger. Go on holidays. Research the Potter family in some of the old archives in Britain.”
“I tried that,” Potter said unexpectedly. “For two years. Everywhere I went on holiday, I got recognized-unless I was in Muggle communities, and frankly that’s hard for me to do now, after I’ve been out of them so long. I tried to make new friends, and people were either so in awe of me that they had no normal reactions left, or wanted to use me for their own gain, like the people I dated. Everyone was so disappointed in me when I didn’t become an Auror, when I didn’t settle down with Ginny Weasley or some other fresh-faced girl, when I didn’t continue to be a shining beacon for them.” He shook his head. “Maybe it’ll be easier with a solid rock to build on.”
“And you think Black could be that rock for you.”
“He’s the only chance I have left.”
Lucius found himself looking away from the honesty in Potter’s face. He’d asked, and he felt like a fool for expecting a different answer. Of course only desperation and obsession would drive Potter to seek Lucius’s help in the first place.
“Is that enough for you to trust me?” Potter asked quietly. “Or do I need to find someone else for the ritual?”
“No, I can do it,” Lucius said, hoarse in spite of himself. He turned back and blurted out the idea brewing in his head before his native caution could override it. “I-I thought you were softer and more naïve than you are.”
“Eight years of longing hardened me even more than eight years of studying ritual magic.” Potter gestured to Lucius’s cup and the tray. “Your tea is getting cold.”
Lucius drew his wand and heated it again. Potter lifted his own cup in a mocking salute, his mouth twisting a little.
“Do you have any other questions that I might answer?”
“I was still seeing you through the lens of what I expected,” Lucius admitted. “The innocent boy who was going too far on impulse and who I’d probably have to catch and redirect. It’s not soothing, exactly, but it’s somewhat reassuring that you have studied ritual magic as much as you said, and that you’ll see this through.”
“And I promise that you won’t be in any more danger than the Ritual of Bone and Soul would usually entail.” Potter studied him for a moment. “If getting rid of the Dark Mark isn’t temptation enough for you, I’ll see you rewarded after the ritual, too. If that’s something you want instead of disassociating yourself from someone who resurrected the dead.”
“I don’t care about that,” Lucius said.
“Then why did you bring it up?”
In the end, Lucius had to fall back on what he had said about being glad that Potter was fully committed to the ritual, and Potter nodded and began discussing plans to conduct the ritual that night.
Lucius wrapped his cloak around himself as he stepped outside Potter’s flat and looked back at the closing door. Long after it had closed, he stood there, staring at it and trying to understand the man who had been behind it.
The anger and frustration of the Auror raid had rolled away from him like rain in the face of an Impervious Charm. Lucius’s mind lingered on the way Potter’s eyes had gleamed with eagerness as he discussed the ritual pentagram instead, and the habit he had of twisting his head to the side so that he could frown at Lucius when he made a point about getting the harvested ingredients safely to the pentagram.
They would be doing the ritual in the tangled, half-ruined garden of Grimmauld Place.
As Lucius turned away, he decided that that was, in a way, a kind of hopeful omen: what was half-ruined might yet half-grow.
Part Three.