Chapter Twelve of 'Parsimony'- Natural-Born Killer
Chapter Eleven.
Title: Parsimony (12/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Harry/Draco eventually (mostly pre-slash), Ron/Hermione, mentions of Harry/Ginny and unrequited Snape/Lily. Gen relationship between Harry and Snape.
Warnings: Angst, violence, torture, AU after the last chapter of DH, ‘eighth-year’ fic.
Summary: After the war, Harry thinks he can finally focus on his friends and the dead instead of the whole world. But an enemy-turned-potential-friend and the dead coming back to life change his mind. Learning how to draw the line between selfishness and selflessness is only one of the things Harry’s going to learn.
Author’s Notes: This is a mostly-gen fic, despite the listed pairings. It will likely be pretty long and relatively slow in pace, though I hope to update it regularly.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve-Natural-Born Killer
“You understand that something will have to be done about you.”
Harry, eating one of the scones that Olversvald had ordered his Aurors to serve, didn’t bother to look up. Klein had been saying things like that since she’d found out he’d killed Greyback. He’d expected it, after the way she’d reacted to his former killing.
Killing? Murder? Assassination? Self-defense? How should I think about it?
That was the weird thing. Harry knew that he should think about it more. He should worry about it the way Klein was doing, or at least be more concerned that he was killing Death Eaters trained Aurors couldn’t handle. But instead, he sat there and ate his scone without thinking much about it.
He had expected Malfoy to speak up, either saying he agreed with Klein and Harry was mad or contributing some anecdote about how Harry had put him in the bubble and was therefore a horrible person. Instead, Malfoy just sat across the table with his arms folded and his mouth shut. They were back in the interrogation room, but this time without the Death Eaters.
And with Malfoy’s eyes staring at Harry as if he planned to burn a hole in Harry’s forehead with them. There was that, too.
Harry pushed the scone away from him and looked up. Malfoy promptly focused on the wall. Harry shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about settling the score between them, or whatever Malfoy thought he should do, if Malfoy wouldn’t look at him.
“Pay attention to me, Potter!”
Harry blinked and turned to face Klein. “Sorry,” he said. “Are you speaking as Professor Klein? Or an Auror who thinks that I ought to be arrested for saving people’s lives? Or someone who’s concerned that I’ll infect others with a werewolf bite because I got sprayed with Greyback’s blood? I know someone who got scratched by him and still hasn’t turned into a werewolf, so I’m not that worried about it.”
“Blood is less infectious than a scratch, that is true,” Olversvald mused. He was the only one in the room other than Harry who seemed to be thinking about the fact that they had just survived a fight and it might be a good idea to relax and celebrate. He was looking at Harry, but he looked at Klein too, and Malfoy, and the nervous Aurors near the door who didn’t look reassured that Harry wouldn’t turn into a ravening monster at any moment. “Otherwise, Potions masters couldn’t use it.” He leaned forwards, rapping a wand into his palm thoughtfully. “But you do have a natural talent for killing, Mr. Potter, and it could be a cause for concern if used improperly.”
“I would kill someone who was attacking me and looked like they wanted to kill me,” Harry said. “But unless you think that you have to do that because you’re an Auror, then it’s just going to be Death Eaters.”
Olversvald’s lips flattened for a moment, and he shook his head. “And what about people who might want to duel you as practice for their own reputations, to be able to say that they beat Harry Potter? Will you be able to hold back from practicing lethal violence on them? So far, it does not seem as if you can.”
Harry blinked. “Why? I dueled plenty of times in school and taught people how to survive duels, and I even dueled Voldemort once in my fourth year and didn’t kill anyone!”
Olversvald sighed. “Teaching is different. The wonder in your fourth year is that you survived, not that you did not kill anyone.” He eyed Harry in a way that reminded him of Fawkes. “And, speak the truth, now. Did you survive that duel by sheer skill alone?”
Harry had to shake his head, thinking about the Priori Incantatem.
“Well, then.” Olversvald hesitated, then said, “There is also the matter of your age. What was a wonder and precocious in a child will seem considerably different now that you are of age.”
“So, basically, I’m fucked no matter what I do,” Harry summarized. He heard Klein gasp, probably because he was using language like that to a Head Auror, but he didn’t care. She had run off when Greyback attacked, leaving him and Malfoy alone instead of trying to protect them. She ought to be ashamed of herself, and if her job really was to keep him from harm, she should think about that and not the amount of points she could have scored if she’d brought Greyback down herself.
“One might put it that way.” Olversvald waited, and Harry waited with him, because he didn’t understand what the man wanted him to say. A moment later, Olversvald sighed and prompted, “One might also ask what one could do to change it.”
“I am,” Harry said. “I don’t want everyone to be afraid of me. I’ve tried that once already, in second year, and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
He became aware that Malfoy was looking at him. Harry didn’t look back. Maybe Malfoy would come out of his sullen trance, or just the fear he was feeling now, if Harry didn’t look at him.
I don’t want him to be afraid of me, either.
Olversvald nodded. “Fine. Then let us put out the word that we killed Greyback. That will keep others from fearing you as someone who can take down a werewolf who baffles our best wands, and some of the more stupid and stubborn from insisting you be tried as an adult would be for murder.”
“Someone would insist on that?” Harry asked, and then he shook his head, thinking of the lengths that the Ministry had gone to to get him expelled or in trouble his fifth year. “Of course someone would.”
Olversvald smiled at him again. “I see your understanding of Ministry politics as well as your talent with curses is in advance of your training,” he murmured. “Yes, someone would insist. I don’t think you have any idea how you are regarded by the wider wizarding community in general, Mr. Potter, or you could not sit there so calmly.”
“Oh, no,” Harry said. “I know they want to interview me and think I’m the Savior of the World and stuff like that.” He thought about the summer and the way he had given himself permission to focus on his friends instead of the things people would have wanted his opinion on, like totally unimportant Ministry politics. Could he explain that? Probably not.
“I just decided that it wasn’t important after the war,” he said at last. “They’re going to think of me how they want, and spread rumors that I’m sleeping with people, and the best I can hope to do is ignore them. So I do.”
Olversvald gave him a long look Harry didn’t understand until he said, “But you don’t mind doing things that would exacerbate the spread of the rumors.”
Luckily, that was one of the words Hermione used a lot. Harry debated pretending not to understand anyway, but decided Olversvald, and even Klein, were too smart to be fooled that way.
“I do the things that are in front of me,” he said. “Anyway, I’ll let you spread the rumor you took down Greyback, or use it as the official story to the press, or whatever. I don’t really care. Is there someone who can test me for any effect his blood might have on me, and make sure Malfoy is all right before we go home?”
“I will bring one of our Potions masters who should be able to feed you a potion that will show the risks of infection,” Olversvald said, and his voice was a bit choked as he stood up. Harry folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“You could at least laugh in front of me, if I said something really stupid,” he pointed out. “I’d like to know what the really stupid thing was.”
“Nothing stupid,” Olversvald said, and the smile broke out on his face. “I’m only glad that if we have to have a Chosen One who saved the world and kills as easily as he breathes, then it’s someone like you.”
Harry wanted to say he didn’t kill as easily as he breathed-it was more like another state of mind, and anyway, he only did what he had to do, what was right-but he decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. He just nodded instead, and Olversvald walked across the room and had a word with one of the Aurors by the door. He nodded and left. Olversvald remained over there talking with the other one, and Klein folded her arms and gave Harry the kind of stare that reminded him he hadn’t written his Defence essay that was due tomorrow yet.
“If you have fooled him, I know what you are,” she said quietly. “They taught us to recognize people like you during our training. We don’t have one name for them-some people call them Dark wizards, as if you were no different than the vast majority of the criminals we bring in-and some people call them the irredeemable. But I have heard Muggles talking, and they used a name I like better.”
“What’s that?” Harry asked. He knew she was hostile to him, and he might as well let her have it out. It would be better than having her stab him in the back later. He thought she was someone who would get more resentful if she was ignored.
“A serial killer,” Klein said. “Someone who uses the same patterns to kill, except that they become more intense over time, and claims many victims.”
Harry sighed. “I promise I’m not one of those,” he said. “I know what you mean, and that’s ridiculous. I’ve only killed two people so far. Both times, they were trying to kill me. I even waited until the second that Greyback couldn’t change his leap. I was giving him the chance to decide he didn’t want to kill me and break away.”
“Two people in less than a month,” Klein said, and her eyes were not friendly. “And there were tactical reasons to wait that long. You wanted to make sure that he couldn’t change direction, and your spell would kill him.”
“Yes,” Harry admitted. “If I left him alive, there was the chance I wouldn’t be able to contain him either. You lot have loads more training and experience than I do, and you weren’t managing to contain him. I didn’t think I could.”
“You wanted to kill him,” Klein whispered. “An Auror’s first trait has to be mercy, but I can find it nowhere in you.”
“Bollocks.”
The word was so low and intense Harry at first didn’t know where it came from. It sounded like the kind of thing Olversvald might have said if he was close enough to hear what Klein was saying, but he was still over by the door talking. Harry looked around, and finally made out Malfoy, leaning forwards with his arms folded around himself like a cloak.
“You’re wrong, and you’re making a hash of handling this diplomatically,” Malfoy said, choking on the words. “You think he’s dangerous and kills as easily as he breathes, and yet you’re giving him reason to consider you an enemy?”
“I didn’t ask you for your opinion,” Klein said, and made an unsuccessful effort to look down her nose at Malfoy. Since he was looking down his nose at her at the same time, Harry pictured their gazes colliding and knocking sparks off each other. He had to conceal a snort with the back of his hand, and try to look properly sober when Olversvald glanced back at them. He nodded as though Harry had been successful about that and faced the Aurors again.
“Too bad,” Malfoy said, and he sounded smoother and more controlled than Klein. Harry didn’t know if that was much of an accomplishment at the moment, but he noted it. “You’re hearing it. You antagonize someone you think is dangerous and who has the fame to make your life seriously uncomfortable if he wants to. What’s intelligent about that? Let the Ministry take credit for this, the way he wants you to, and the next time guard him. Then a point like this might not come up.”
“It is hard to guard him in the middle of a battle, when we are trying to kill the one he killed,” Klein said, and Harry thought that nothing but him killing someone else could have possibly got her to look away from Malfoy right now.
“How did Greyback get in here?” Malfoy asked. “Why did it take so many Aurors so much time to subdue him, but Potter was able to do it at once?”
“I’d like to know that, too,” Harry added, just so they didn’t forget about his existence.
Malfoy glanced at him and then back at Klein. “Quiet, Potter. The adults are talking.”
Harry hissed. It was nice sometimes-in the sense of the word that people used when they talked about a party at the Dursleys’-to be reminded Malfoy was still a prick and hadn’t really changed.
He would have said that Malfoy was only two months older than he was, but Klein started talking again. “He came through our wards with the help of someone on the inside,” she said, and her teeth were probably scraping against her tongue at having to give that much away. “He could not have done otherwise.”
“Are you sure?” Malfoy leaned forwards and gave her the kind of smile that Harry never saw in Hogwarts anymore, only in forests and interrogation rooms. Maybe Malfoy should be the one considering a career as an Auror, he thought. He has the face for it. “Perhaps your wards are simply that old and rotten.”
Klein’s shoulders tightened for a moment as if she would surge up from the table, and Harry’s mind immediately brightened and focused on all the ways that she might go and how he could stop her if she did so. He leaned back in his seat and blinked. He didn’t remember that happening in battles during the war. Was this a tendency he’d had all his life, this tendency to be so good at Defense that he could kill easily, and he just hadn’t known about it?
“We’ve had new wards replaced last month,” Klein said. “An organization that we hadn’t used before, but which came highly recommended. We will now have to check the wards for loopholes that might have allowed a werewolf to slip through.”
“A start,” Malfoy said, and examined his hand with a bored look that made Harry have to eat laughter. No, not an Auror. He should be a solicitor. “Wards or no, you still haven’t answered the question about why Potter was the only one in this mess able to defend himself effectively.”
“That’s not quite fair, Malfoy,” Harry said. He didn’t think before he said the words, which McGonagall and Hermione would probably say was the whole problem. “Greyback was defending well, too.”
Malfoy nodded to him while Klein spluttered. “That’s true,” he said. “A good point, Mr. Potter.” He turned back to Klein. “Harry agreed to let you guard him and put tracking spells on him even when he wanted to be alone,” he said, making Harry raise his eyebrows. Apparently they were on a first-name basis when not speaking directly to each other. “But why should he keep that agreement when you can’t competently keep up your side of the bargain?”
Those words ended with him leaning into Klein’s face, and Klein hunched back in her seat, serpent-coiled. Harry stared between her and Malfoy and felt there hit him, like a thunderclap, the realization of how absurd all of this was.
No wonder Klein found him hard to deal with. Here he was, younger than most of the Aurors not in training and he was already a war hero and someone who could kill criminals they couldn’t handle. He had done that to two of them in one month, and captured others, more than Klein had in that one battle and more at one time than most of the other Aurors had managed. And now Malfoy had backed her to a standstill despite being much the same age as Harry. She wasn’t prepared for this.
This wasn’t the way the world was supposed to go.
Then again, neither was him and Malfoy being friends-or allies of a sort, that was probably a better term-or Hermione having lost her parents to a Memory Charm she’d cast herself, or Harry having survived the Killing Curse. The wizarding world was weird and had been for a bloody long time. Harry thought he was probably in a better place to deal with that than most people, and perhaps Malfoy was, too, if only by virtue of what had happened to him this summer.
Klein was sitting up, though, coming back to the attack. Malfoy’s tactics had been good, Harry decided, but he’d left her too long to think. Which meant it was Harry’s turn to attack if they were going to get what they wanted.
“I’m curious, Auror Klein,” he said, leaning forwards and making his voice as polite as he could. Klein’s head snapped towards him. Malfoy sat down and nodded to him. The nod could have meant a lot of things, Harry thought, but he would take it as approval unless Malfoy actually interrupted him. “I know that that spell I used isn’t rare, and some of the Aurors must have known it. Why didn’t you use it? Or some other spell based on silver that would have slowed Greyback down?”
“That you can ask that question,” Klein said, and touched her forehead for a moment and then her wand, as though one of them would give her answers that would make sense. Then she sighed and said, “Can you think of it? What would have happened if we had used that spell on Greyback?”
“You would have stopped him,” Harry said, but with the hard feeling in his chest that something had gone wrong. He’d spoken as quickly as he could, as confidently, but she had still recovered faster than he had thought she would. She looked at him tolerantly now, and then shook her head.
“We would have killed him,” she said. “Which means we couldn’t have questioned him, learned for sure how he broke through the wards, and why he wanted to come here in particular. Was it to kill the Death Eaters we captured? He did kill Macnair, and that didn’t look like an accident. How did he know which part of the building to break into? How did he know that Macnair was away from the interrogation room at that moment, with only two escorts?” She sighed. “All those things we could have learned. And because a child decided he had to kill just then, we’ve lost the answers to those questions forever.”
“So you would have risked getting people hurt, getting them turned into werewolves and shunned, for the sake of a capture,” Malfoy said. He was testing each word, Harry thought, and finding it wanting as he did. “Because you wanted to follow the law more than you wanted to save someone.”
Klein’s face was the color Dudley’s had sometimes turned when he had to do running exercises in primary school. “You have no idea what concepts you are speaking of with such contempt, Malfoy,” she said. “You’ve never served the law in your life. It’s never been important to you. But if your precious Potter does become an Auror, it will have to be important to him.”
“I don’t know that he’ll want to,” Malfoy said, and glanced at Harry as thought they had been in communion. “Considering how much idiocy there is around here, who knows? It might be catching.”
Klein sat, now, her arms held stiffly in front of her. She seemed to have learned the best lesson of arguing with Draco Malfoy, Harry thought: just don’t answer back. She stared past him, and Malfoy leaned in as if he would snap his fingers in front of her eyes.
Harry caught his hand, and shook his head. Malfoy looked back, his head tilted to the side, his throat and his face so visible that Harry’s breath caught. This was the way he had wanted to see Malfoy looking at him since that night in the Forest, while he had gone back to the dull eyes and the nonsensical answers and the looking away as if he had something to be ashamed of in having a spell cast on him.
Malfoy grasped the thoughts that were going through his head-maybe, Harry thought, with an insistent leap of his heart, better than Harry himself did. He turned his head to the side and was gone for a moment behind that mask. Harry dropped his hand and waited. If he had driven Malfoy away from him by pushing too hard, then he would-
Well, he wasn’t sure what he would do, but it would involve lots of spell practice by himself in the Room of Requirement to get rid of some of his own stupidity.
“Gentlemen. Auror Klein.”
Harry started. Olversvald had come back to the table, carrying a vial of magenta potion in his hand. He looked between them and closed his eyes, shaking his head as though he was Professor McGonagall finding the remains of one of their post-game parties.
“Here is the potion that should tell you whether the werewolf blood has infected you,” Olversvald said quietly, and held out the vial to Harry. “Please drink it all as soon as possible, since it has to be swallowed while it’s hot.”
The glass against his palm was already lukewarm, so Harry drank the potion as quickly as he could. He gagged, of course, since it tasted as well as smelled like vomit. But he had to do it, and so he gripped his throat against the tendency to send it right back up and showed that he had more control over his body than a potion did.
He looked up to find Klein staring at him, Olversvald waiting with his eyebrows raised, and Malfoy…Harry had to look away from the expression on Malfoy’s face. “What?” he asked. “Has it done something it shouldn’t have? Am I infected?” He could say that more calmly than he had thought he could, especially considering who would know about his infection.
“It should have made your face turn blue if you were clean, and green if you were infected,” Malfoy whispered in response. He leaned closer still. “Instead, your face is the color of the potion.”
“Well, wait a minute, maybe it’s that way because of what I had to do to choke it down,” Harry suggested.
Malfoy shook his head. His hand rose and hovered next to the side of Harry’s face, but didn’t actually touch it. “And your skin feels hot,” he said, sounding half-awed. “Potter, what did you do?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course, yet another bloody weird thing has to happen in my life,” he said. “And it has to be my fault, doesn’t it?”
Considering everything, especially how long the magenta color was taking to leave his face, Harry thought Klein didn’t have to say, “Ten points from Gryffindor for language, Mr. Potter.”
He understood it, though. It was her desperate attempt to regain control of a situation that had gone strange.
There just isn’t much that’s normal or controlled about me, though, he thought, and slumped back against the back of his chair to wait the extra time it would take for Olversvald to find a Potions expert who could tell him what the new color meant.
But hey, at least it made Malfoy continue looking at him with clear eyes, instead of pretending he was stupid again.
Chapter Thirteen.