Chapter Eleven of 'Leopard's Choice'- Building
Chapter Ten.
Chapter One.
Title: Leopard’s Choice (11/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of canon background pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU (Harry Sorted into Slytherin at the end of second year), violence, gore, torture, present tense
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Sequel to Wolf’s Choice. Harry enters his fifth year with the Ministry demanding he retract his stories of Voldemort’s return, his allies demanding sacrifices he may not want to make, and the world becoming sharper with every breath.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to Other People’s Choices and Wolf’s Choice, and the third part of the Choices series. Seriously, don’t try to read this without having read the other stories first. I anticipate this being 60 chapters, like the others in the series. Also, please take the violence warning seriously. Like OoTP, this fic will get considerably darker than the others.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven-Building
“What do you think, Hermione?”
“I think it might look too prosperous.” Hermione glances critically around the inside of the flat her parents have shown her. “I mean, the building from the outside. A lot of the Death Eaters and so on are rich. They’re probably more likely to think that we’re hiding in a place they would consider luxurious than one that isn’t.”
“I am not renting a tumble-down place so that you can hide better,” Mum says flatly. “What if you get hit by a falling brick?”
Hermione opens her mouth to argue that that’s less likely to happen to her than getting cursed, and then thinks better of it. Besides, her father is speaking now. “What about illusions?”
“You mean, weaving them around the building?” Hermione smiles at her father as her mind catches up with what she’s pretty sure he’s thinking. “So that it looks like a ruin to Death Eaters?”
“Only if we can do it so that it doesn’t look that way to Muggles,” Mum says. “We don’t have enough money to buy the building, Hermione.”
Hermione smiles wider. “Of course not. And I don’t want to put the people who live here in danger, anyway. It would be better to Apparate somewhere else and walk here, or even Apparate right into the flat.”
“I thought there were spells preventing that.”
“Only in places like Hogwarts where witches and wizards have been there a long time,” Hermione murmurs, thinking about it. Do they want spells that will prevent Apparition in, or Apparition out? She can see disadvantages both ways; they can’t access it immediately themselves if the spells prevent Apparition in, but leaving those off means that then they’re vulnerable to their enemies if the Death Eaters ever learn the Apparition coordinates. On the other hand, lifting spells to prevent Apparition out could prevent them from escaping if they ever need to.
Well, she has people to discuss this with, and figure out if it’s even possible to weave illusions around the building that the Muggles won’t see.
Her mother squeezes her shoulder and guides her into the open room of the flat. “Then let’s look it over and find out if it’s going to work for you.”
Hermione leans against her mum a little as they walk. It’s wonderful to know that at least some parts of the wizarding world are no longer a secret from her family.
*
“I must admit, I came mostly out of curiosity. I can’t believe what you’re saying, but I also don’t know what you would have to gain from propagating a lie.”
Minerva smiles thinly at Augusta and settles back into the chair behind her desk. “Why would you have a hard time believing it? Did you imagine that Voldemort came into being fully-formed and with no mortal name?”
Augusta sniffs and accepts the cup of tea that Minerva hands her. “I did not believe that he was a half-blood. A bastard pureblood, perhaps. Someone abused by Muggles as a child.”
“And his Parseltongue?”
“That was one reason I thought he had to be a pureblood.”
She’s not going to ruffle Augusta, Minerva can see that, so she lets it go and moves on. “In reality, he is the descendant of a pureblood family that speaks Parseltongue, the Gaunts. They’re gone or dead now. But his father was a Muggle from the same village where the Gaunts lived. Riddle’s mother seduced him.”
Minerva thinks that a love potion might have been involved, actually. But Phineas Nigellus Black admitted that was only a guess on his part, and not something he actually knew.
“Hmmm. That is something provable.” Augusta stares at her over the teacup. “Or disprovable.”
“We have the words of portraits who knew him on it-”
“Which portraits?”
Minerva feels a light stab of annoyance. She’s not sure if Augusta wants to believe that Voldemort is an immortal monster, or is being combative for no reason. “Phineas Nigellus Black, for one. And Armando Dippet, who was Headmaster when Riddle was here as a student.”
“Why is his name Riddle instead of Gaunt?”
“His Muggle father’s name. Apparently his mother was enough in love with his father to want him to carry it.”
Augusta take a different tack. “And you’ll trust the word of Phineas Black, the most hated Headmaster the school ever had, and Armando Dippet, the weakest one? You’ll need more than that to convince me, Minerva.”
Minerva sighs. She hoped it wouldn’t come to this, and Augusta would trust what they had. She doesn’t like to admit what she did to get the memory she has as proof. But she bends down and retrieves the Pensieve that Albus once used from the cabinet behind her. “All right. Here is a memory I took from an Azkaban guard who kept one of the last Gaunts in prison.”
“How did you know to go and get it?”
“Because of the information I had from the Headmasters’ portraits.”
Augusta frowns, as if she wants to find a reason to object to that, and finally settles back with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Fine. I’ll watch it. But I have to tell you, Minerva, that very little of this seems substantial. And you’ll need more than this to make people believe that You-Know-Who was mortal once.”
So that is it. She’s reluctant to think that someone whose minions destroyed part of her family is mortal. Maybe she thinks that I’ll expect her to sympathize with him. Minerva looks Augusta right in the eye and says quietly, “The more we can keep it in mind, the easier it will be to defeat him.”
There’s a long pause. Then Augusta nods, and waits for Minerva to place the memory in the Pensieve before she leans over it.
It’s a beginning. Not as much of one as Minerva wanted, but she’ll take it.
*
“Can you describe the process of the Black magic to me again? It sounds fascinating.”
Sirius hides a grimace with difficulty. He knows very well that he doesn’t need to worry about Adele Greengrass being able to perform the Blacks’ secret magic if he describes it to her; it will still take training and the kind of study that would rule Greengrass’s life for a decade.
He’s wary, instead, of the gleam in her eyes as she leans forwards from her chair across the room. Of the way she turns her head to the side to draw attention to the arch of her neck.
At least one of his allies wants to court him for his power, and Sirius has no idea what he should be doing with this.
Remus steps into the drawing room and studies them for a second before his eyebrows go up. Sirius looks pitifully at his best friend, hoping for a rescue, but Remus only gives him a devilish grin before he says, “How is your tea, Miss Greengrass? Did you need anything else? Scones, maybe?”
Greengrass blinks at him and then says, “Oh. No. Thank you.”
“Well, I hope that you won’t be chased away by Sirius’s lack of hospitality,” Remus goes on in a false hearty tone. “He takes after his mother, you know, always hiding all the food. If you get hungry, just ask, and remind him that he should take more after his father instead. That was a man who always had a lavish tea.”
I hate you, Sirius mouths to Remus over Greengrass’s head.
Remus winks at him and ducks out of the room. Sirius sighs. Greengrass focuses back on him, and mercifully changes the subject. “I received a message from Hecuba Selwyn the other day asking what actions we’re going to take in reaction to the Ministry’s continuing assault on your godson.”
Sirius clenches his hand into a fist down near the side of the chair, but forces himself to keep his expression bland. “Too many overt actions right now would make it seem as if we’re desperate to deny their accusations, which means that more people are likely to think we’re lying. Instead, we’ll proceed with having Harry tell the truth calmly and-and maybe offer his Pensieve memories of the night he confronted Voldemort to the people who would like to see them.”
That’s something Sirius is opposed to unless it’s absolutely necessary, but he already knows that Harry thinks it will become necessary. He offered to do it with a mask over his face like hard iron.
Sirius knows, because he watched a lot of curses demonstrated during his childhood, exactly how brittle iron is.
“He would let someone see an encounter with Voldemort that private?”
At least Greengrass’s voice is hushed in a way that makes it clear she understands the seriousness of the situation. And she can call Voldemort by his proper name. That’s interesting, since she often flinches when Sirius says it.
Sirius holds her eyes and nods. “He would do whatever he has to do to fight this war. And I would do whatever is necessary to protect my godson.”
Greengrass seems to understand the implicit threat in the words, which makes Sirius think better of her intelligence, the way her saying Voldemort’s name made him think better of her courage. She sits back and picks up her teacup, sipping delicately from it. When she puts it down again, she’s all business.
“Do you think it would help if we showed the memory of your defenses injuring Voldemort? That might win some of the people who are wavering to our side. Right now, many of them think they’ll have no choice but to join the Death Eaters, whatever the cost in money and lives and power, because there’s no way to resist him. Seeing that someone can fight Voldemort, and that man the guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived, might sway some of them.”
Sirius blinks. Yes, she can come up with good ideas when she resists the ridiculous urge to flirt with him, too. “I’d be willing to show it, but I don’t know if it would have the impact you’re talking about. Since I only drove him away and didn’t kill him permanently, they might think-”
He trails off as he realizes that Greengrass is staring at him with slightly raised eyebrows.
“You did more than anyone but Potter himself has done,” Greengrass says flatly. “Do you know how long it’s been since someone even injured him in battle? And that’s despite him taking the front lines and almost recklessly flinging himself into danger, in some cases, to flaunt his strength and show his followers that he was supposedly invincible.”
“I suppose I didn’t think of it that way,” Sirius mumbles. He didn’t take the field against Voldemort himself in the first war, except once, and then he was far away from the actual knot of power thrumming around Voldemort and Dumbledore. He fought and killed “ordinary” Death Eaters instead.
“This will have a much greater effect than you think it will,” Greengrass says firmly. “I can promise you, we will attract allies to us if we can but show them what we have to offer.”
“And would they be the sort to stay loyal?” Sirius asks quietly. “I won’t expose Harry to danger for any reason.”
Greengrass rolls her eyes a little. She thinks him stupid for his compassion and his loyalty, Sirius knows, but all he needs is the answer to that question. And he thinks it’ll be honest. Greengrass is the sort who won’t want to be embarrassed by weak allies, so she won’t deliberately introduce weakness to their ranks, either.
“They’re the sort who understand oaths and alliances of necessity,” Greengrass says. “But more than that, they’re the sort who understand vengeance. Make it clear what the cost will be if they betray you.” She smiles a little. “And if you show them the magic of the void…”
“All of them will think that I’m waiting to come after them and kill them with it,” Sirius finishes.
“No.” Greengrass pushes hair out of her eyes, looking annoyed. “They would see that you are powerful and can resist someone they thought couldn’t be resisted. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You did something no one else except Mr. Potter himself has done. You are unique.”
She looks as if she might start flirting with him again for a second, but luckily she holds back. Sirius finds himself nodding. “Then you have my permission to bring a few of them to the house, and we’ll speak.”
“Oh, thank you so much, gracious Mr. Black. You can’t know what this means to me. I can only hope…”
Sirius tunes her out, sipping at his tea and already plotting how far he’s going to allow them into the house. Nowhere near the family rooms, that’s for certain. And he’ll want Narcissa at his side when they get here. She’s a good hostess.
Remus leans into the drawing room to grin at him from the doorway, which Greengrass can’t see because it’s behind her chair. It’s hard, but Sirius manages to control his scowl. Just you wait, he mouths.
I look forward to it, Remus’s whole face says before he turns and disappears in the other direction, leaving Sirius to listen to Greengrass’s mixture of plotting and insulting him.
*
It’s a stupid thing to worry about, when there are so many better things to worry about, but Theo can’t shake the feeling that there’s a strange scent in the house tonight.
He lies in his bed, his eyes fastened on the door. He knows that Harry is just down the corridor in his own bedroom, and that he isn’t wandering around tonight. For one thing, Black has been firm about Harry staying in bed, and for another, Theo’s senses are starting to sharpen with the Animagus training. He’s pretty sure that he would hear Harry wandering if he did decide to leave his room. Leopards are nighttime predators.
But that scent.
It’s odd and greasy and strange and familiar. As if Theo smelled something like it once before, but he can’t remember where.
Of course, Black’s house is full of scents like that, and so is Professor Snape’s. Until his senses started to sharpen, Theo never realized how much information he absorbed about Potions ingredients, leather, shampoo, sweat, and many other things through his nose. And Black smells like dog half the time even when he doesn’t transform often.
But all the same, this scent makes Theo wary. Maybe because he knows that Black has a similarly sharp nose, as an Animagus, and he hasn’t mentioned smelling it, or reassured Theo that it’s not something to be wary of.
Fuck it. He can’t sleep. He’ll get up and go down to the kitchen, and maybe the smell of hot chocolate prepared by Black’s house-elf-who approves of Theo-will soothe him enough to sleep.
Theo slips out of his bedroom and moves down the corridor, wondering idly if his growing Animagus gifts have started to affect his footsteps, too. He thinks he moves more silently, but it’s not like he memorized the sound of how he moved before he began his training, and he hasn’t managed to successfully surprise Harry or Black yet-
There’s a movement ahead of him.
Theo finds himself freezing and drawing back into a shadow, and those instincts are the cat’s, the leopard’s, the night hunter’s. He squints his eyes and stares, and watches as the small shape trundles along the wall towards the bedrooms.
It comes into a patch of moonlight and sits up, twitching its whiskers. Yes, it’s a rodent.
A rat.
Theo feels his lips drawing back in a feral snarl, and he transforms his left arm before he even thinks about it, growing spots and fur and, more to the point, claws. He springs forwards, claws aiming to capture the rat.
The creature squeaks and dodges left, then right. But it doesn’t retreat, the a way a normal rat would have. It still tries to get past Theo and towards the bedrooms, and he’s sure, now, absolutely sure, that this is Peter Pettigrew, and that he’s come to spy on Harry and Black, maybe even capture Harry if he can.
Over his dead body, Theo thinks, and lunges again as Pettigrew briefly pauses near a wall.
He doesn’t catch him, but it seems that he’s finally convinced Pettigrew that he won’t give up the chase and it’s not worth persisting when he’ll get captured or killed. He pivots and scrambles towards the stairs and down them. Theo follows immediately, but alas, he’s not as fast as he would be if he knew how to transform into a leopard completely yet, and he ends up near a hole in the wall that Pettigrew squeezes through, panting with rage.
“Nott?”
That’s Lupin’s rumble, behind him. Theo snarls in response without taking his eyes off the rathole that Pettigrew went down. Lupin circles around to his side, and Theo sees his eyes, direct and yellow and threatening.
“I need you to calm down, Nott. If you don’t, you might go into an involuntary transformation, and that would mean-”
“You can’t smell Pettigrew?”
That brings Lupin up short. He starts to speak, frowns, and then takes a deep whiff. In seconds, he’s staring down at the same hole that Theo already is, and his fingers are tightening to the point that Theo wouldn’t be surprised if he breaks his wand.
“How did you know that he was here, when we didn’t?” Lupin’s eyes slide back to Theo.
Theo shrugs. “I’ve been smelling this rotten scent for a while. I don’t know. Maybe he’s been here before and you and Black got used to it. Or maybe I’m paranoid.” He stares at the hole again. “But I know that I’m damn tired of Black leaving weaknesses in the wards, even if sometimes they protect Harry.”
“Sirius is doing his best,” Lupin begins, but then sighs and trails off in the way that means he probably agrees with Theo. “Come on. We’d better speak with them.”
Theo nods, but satisfies himself by sealing the hole shut first. He knows that Pettigrew is probably gone, not cowering on the other side, but it still soothes him to imagine as they go to walk Black and Harry.
Chapter Twelve.