Chapter Thirty-Nine of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror'- To the Rescue
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Chapter Thirty-Nine-To the Rescue
The Malfoy army came up in the middle of Draco’s bedroom; Draco found his wrist gripped by Julia so that she could haul him up more easily. He winced and rubbed his wrist unobtrusively, but then moved out of the way as the other figures of iron and silver and platinum streamed up behind them.
There was his grandfather Abraxas, whose metallic face Draco had always watched in the crypts with the sensation that he would have liked to have known him; he had not imagined how terrifying that face would be when combined with living, Malfoy gray eyes. There was the older Lucius, who had been Julia’s nephew, and who had always said that his aunt taught him more about politics and terror than a hundred other relatives could. He carried a sword that Draco had not noticed settled at his side in his resting niche. In fact, peering at it more closely, Draco could see it was actually a large splinter of stone that Lucius had broken off, probably from the wall of his tomb.
And there was Octavius, with wild carved hair and a sour sneer, and Regulus, who was rubbing his hands together in ghoulish glee, and Septimus, the only other platinum figure in sight besides Julia, who had guided the family grimly through one of their many losses of fortune and then back into wealth and prestige again before he died. He was looking about Draco’s bedroom with a slow, considering air, as though trying to judge whether the decorations and furniture were ostentatious enough for a Malfoy. Draco felt a faint prickle of nervousness. Unlike a visiting aunt or cousin, he wasn’t sure that Septimus would confine himself to insults.
“Come, Draco,” Julia said. “Your son is this way.”
Draco felt the hot sting of his own blush. How could he have forgotten about Scorpius, even for a moment, in admiring the dead army he’d raised? He shook his head fiercely at himself and turned towards the door.
A Salazar’s Snake opened it first, charging through with a wild yell and a brandished wand that flung a burning hex. Draco knew the spell. It was designed to singe an enemy’s hair and clothing and catch him off-guard. Rather a good spell to use, when the man couldn’t know who was behind the door and whether the Masked Lady would want them alive or not.
Of course, the hex utterly failed to ignite on Julia’s metallic body. And as the man slowed to a halt, staring at her in slowly dawning terror, Julia’s fist slammed forwards. Draco winced in involuntary sympathy as he heard bones splinter and crack, and saw the man slump as if suddenly turned to mush.
“I hope all of them are that easy,” Draco said.
“I don’t,” Julia said, and strode through the door, casually banging it open when it would have fallen shut against her. “I want an excuse to shed blood. You need experience in the joys of fighting, nephew.”
Draco was beginning to see why his father had told him never to raise the crypts save in dire need.
*
Harry’s kick slammed into a startled Andromeda, catching her off-balance and making her stagger. She wasn’t quite out of reach, though, and she hadn’t dropped her wand, so Harry didn’t consider his task over. He swung himself back against the clutch of the spell-it was rather like hanging from a tree branch and gathering momentum by pushing off the trunk-and then kicked again on the forward swing.
This time, his foot connected with the side of her head. Her eyes crossed. Still not down, much less dead, but dazed, and Harry knew he could use the moment to do something.
“Help!” he yelled, as loudly as he could, in case Draco had no idea where they were. Then he focused his will and reached past the pain of the minor wounds, which his rage and fear had almost dulled, exerting all the wandless magic he could against the spell holding him still.
The hex broke with a brittle snapping sound. Harry sobbed as he dropped and caught himself; Andromeda had partially skinned one leg, and he hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to tear open the clotted blood on the wound.
But he was still committed to his children first, before his own pain or attending to his own pain, and he limped stubbornly forwards. Andromeda had almost recovered from his kick. Her hand was firm around the wand, and Harry experienced a brief moment of regret that he wouldn’t be able to yank it away this time, either.
But he had done all right without a wand so far. He was still alive. The children were unhurt. He didn’t know if ever Hermione or Ron could have managed the same thing, in his situation.
He put himself between the children and Andromeda first. Then he picked up Al and gathered him close with one arm, offering the other to James. James came without complaint, his eyes wide. Al buried his face against Harry’s robes and utterly refused to look up.
Harry snarled silently as he looked at Scorpius and Lily. There was no way that he could carry both of them as well as James and Al, and he couldn’t trust Lily to James; he wasn’t strong enough to support her head.
In the end, Harry curled himself around Scorpius, shielding him with his torso, and dragged Lily close with his right arm; Al was holding on like a monkey of his own free will and strength. And then he turned to face Andromeda, whom he knew must be completely recovered.
She was staring at him. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes wide. Harry couldn’t read the expression on her face at all. He tensed and lifted his head, determined to stare her down, ready to twist in any direction that might provide a modicum of protection for the precious lives he carried.
Ready to shed your blood and use your body as a defense, aren’t you? asked a voice in his head that sounded a lot like Draco’s. You always were good at that.
And you were good at the unexpected and devious, so get in here and help me, Harry snapped back. Another crash echoed from behind Andromeda that might be the real Draco’s answer to his silent prayer. Harry hoped so.
Andromeda might as well not have heard the sound. “You’re like me, aren’t you?” she whispered. “You want to defend your children at any cost. You would do anything to fulfill your duty to them.” A note of hurt crept into her voice. “You were the one person I thought would understand me, because you were the one who cared most for me and Teddy in the wake of the war. And yet you struggle and fight and protest that what I’m doing is wrong. Why can’t you understand it?”
Hope fired in Harry’s heart. Unexpectedly, he had been handed another chance to persuade Andromeda. And he could rely, now, on Draco’s ability to rescue himself and battle the Salazar’s Snakes, and, hopefully, to rescue Teddy and Narcissa. From the sound of falling walls and screams, whatever help Draco had brought along wasn’t small.
“I understand, Andromeda,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I agree with you. And you lost most of my sympathy when you attacked Al.” He felt his son’s hands tighten their grip on him, as if he had heard his name and understood what Harry was referring to.
“That was only to frighten you,” Andromeda said quickly. “I would not have cast the Cruciatus on him. I swear I would not have cast the Cruciatus on him.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “But I heard you casting the spell. Why should I trust you now?”
Andromeda took a step forwards, her free hand extended. Of course, the other still held the wand. Harry paid as much attention to that as he did to her pleading eyes and the soft biting of her lip. “I didn’t want to kill you. It was only political necessity that drove me, in the end. Why do you think I fled the battle at Hogwarts instead of pressing the attack with the dragons, when I could have? I thought you were dead, and I needed time to deal with that. Does that sound like someone beyond all human sympathy to you, Harry? I swear to you that I would have gone back to normal when the war was done. Or else I would have died and been happy with my daughter and my husband.”
“Did you consider what it would do to Teddy when he found out about you?” Harry asked.
“He would have understood,” Andromeda said. “He loves me.”
“Learning bad things about my parents almost destroyed my image of them,” Harry said, thinking of the taunting, bullying James he had encountered in Snape’s Pensieve. “And that was a schoolboy prank. This is much worse. Did you really think you would still have his love and loyalty, undisturbed, once he grasps how much pain and suffering you’ve caused? Even if you do now, what about when he gets older? When he meets people who lost family members in your attack on Diagon Alley? When he realizes that George Weasley, whom he regarded as an uncle, died because of you?”
Andromeda’s expression changed like a pool of rippled water with shadows moving across it. Harry watched intently, ready to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself, hardly aware he was holding his breath.
*
“No match for us.”
So Julia had casually estimated the Salazar’s Snakes and the other wizards and witches clad in light blue robes with golden masks-Draco was sure he’d learned about them during one of the meetings with Granger and other high officials at the Ministry, but he couldn’t remember which group they’d be-who ambushed them as they marched out of Draco’s bedroom. And she was right. Some of the attackers paused to stare when they finally grasped what the “enchanted statues” actually were. A few fainted or ran away. And the rest cast spells that were absolutely useless against metal driven by powerful, ancient magic and backed by animated corpses. Regulus and Septimus had already cleared a path of bodies and were taking great delight in stepping on outstretched arms, dropped wands, and vulnerable heads. Draco had not known there were quite that many sounds for a shattered skull to make. Meanwhile, Octavius called out derisive judgments on their skill in playing “head-music” when he wasn’t slamming his fists into stomachs or spines.
Draco was sure he recognized one of the men who had marched him down to the closet; the harsh, panting breaths he gave were familiar. He focused all his will on that particular coward-he hovered at the back, pretending to strategy but probably just afraid to approach Julia-and snapped, “Accio hawthorn wand!”
The pocket of the man’s robes rippled, and he tried to clap a hand over it too late. Though the burst of wandless magic left Draco lightheaded, he had his wand in hand in the next moment. He pointed it at his captor, whose eyes widened slightly in the moment before Draco used a Blasting Curse to send him flying backwards through the wall.
Julia clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. “With not much more practice, you’ll be striking as strongly as we are,” she said in approval, and then turned and delivered a graceful kick that broke apart the wand of a witch who had thought herself safely out of range. Draco was sure he saw her pale behind the golden mask just before Julia fell on her like a mountain.
Draco held out his wand. They could probably learn the location of the prisoners just by watching the direction in which the guards fled, but he didn’t have Julia’s Scorpius-sensing powers, and he didn’t want to wait. The Masked Lady might have stepped up her torture as soon as she realized rescue was coming.
“Point Me Scorpius Malfoy,” he whispered.
The wand barely twitched before it was pointing dead center down a side corridor. Draco sprinted off at once, unafraid; he could hear Julia snapping at Lucius and Abraxas to follow him.
*
Andromeda moved.
Harry whirled to the side, and then froze, caught between the necessity of not crushing his children and still offering some protection to Scorpius, whose hands had locked in the back of his robes. That was when the spell hit, and when Harry heard what it was and knew it was aimed at him, he was inclined to think that Andromeda might feel a spark of mercy towards the children after all.
“Imperio!”
The dizziness and drifting sensation he just barely remembered slammed into his mind and began gnawing away at his will. Harry reckoned Andromeda thought the pain and the wounds he had endured would slow him down and make him vulnerable to the curse. Or had he even told her about his being able to throw off the Imperius during the duel with Voldemort in the graveyard? He couldn’t remember.
And he shouldn’t waste time remembering. Andromeda had given him a golden chance to fake obedience, but he could only take it if he set his will against the spell, and wandering thoughts wouldn’t do that.
He let his face fall slowly slack, his jaw open and his eyelids droop as if he had started to fight the curse but found it too much effort. His arms loosened their hold on the children, but just slightly. Not even for the sake of perfecting his deception could he hurt Lily or James by dropping them.
“Harry,” Andromeda said softly. Her voice was much more persuasive and charming than Barty Crouch’s had been, and of course easier to resist than the sharp command Voldemort had tried to hit him with.
“Hmmm?” Harry turned his head inch by inch, trying his best to calculate the speed that would convince her he was entranced. Too slow or too fast could both be deadly. “Andromeda? Dromeda?” He deliberately used her husband’s old nickname for her, and saw her blink rapidly. “What are you doing here?”
“Asking you questions, Harry,” Andromeda said gently. “And asking you to do something for me.”
Harry let a dopey smile widen across his face. “Of course, Andromeda,” he said agreeably. “Anything for you.”
“Daddy?”
James sounded terrified. Harry regretted the imposture then. But this was still better than watching her curse his children with Unforgivables, so he just patted his son’s head absently and set him down. Lily went onto the floor beside him. Al continued to cling to his robes, and since Andromeda hadn’t specifically ordered him to do it and Harry knew the bodily sensations of people under the Imperius were supposed to dull, he didn’t bother to remove him.
“Good,” Andromeda breathed. “Now, Harry, I would like you to smother that little brat clinging to you, if you would be so good.”
The grasp of Al’s hands grew tighter and tighter; Harry couldn’t be sure he understood, but he wouldn’t put it past him. James drew in a harsh breath. Scorpius began to cry.
“I…” said Harry, and frowned while he thought it over, playing for time. He had already heard the sharp footsteps coming nearer and nearer.
*
Draco had not realized that the path the wand pointed might take him to more than one prisoner. Why wouldn’t the Masked Lady have separated the children from each other, after all? It would make it easier to control and frighten them.
If she had not killed them already, and Draco’s wand was not leading him to a corpse.
But the wand tugged him straight through a door-perhaps guarded once, but the guards had fled-into a sitting room where Narcissa started to her feet, pulling a boy protectively behind her. Draco had enough time to catch sight of familiar slanted features and purple hair that told him the boy was a Metamorphmagus, and thus probably the missing Teddy Lupin, before Narcissa said, in a strange, harsh voice from which hope was deliberately stripped, “Draco? Are you real?”
Lucius and Abraxas came in behind him then, and halted at the sight of Narcissa. Both gave low bows. Lucius said, “It is comforting to know that the heirs of our house have not lost their taste for beautiful spouses.”
Abraxas snorted and pushed Lucius in the back, nearly causing him to drop his sword. “She is well enough, and it is the boy we have come for,” he said shortly. He strode around Narcissa to the far door, which flared with wards Draco recognized as capable of unleashing fire. Of course, when a shield of flame manifested around Abraxas, he simply ignored it. The door was pushed open then, and he went in.
“There is something you must know first,” Narcissa said. “The Masked Lady is your aunt Andromeda. I recognized her wand.”
Draco blinked, reeling, trying to absorb the blows and understand what was happening, but his attempt was interrupted by a pair of screams from the next room. One was the sound of something living, the other the sound of something dead.
*
In the end, the decision was simple to make. What else could he have said? Harry had shaken his head and murmured, “No.”
Andromeda’s face altered again, but this time towards sadness. “I had hoped that you would wake to a sense of my own grief, and understand then, if you lost one of your children,” she said. “And yet, I still did not want to kill them.” She shrugged, and her expression was once more as calm as it had been when she first removed the mask. “Enough games, now.”
And then a statue smashed the door down and barreled straight at Andromeda. Harry caught a glimpse of reaching metallic hands, a carved death mask lit by living eyes, and a hungry expression, half-snarl, half-smirk, on the thing’s face. He had a moment to wonder what this was and how he was going to protect the children from it.
Then Andromeda swung around, aimed her wand, and cried, “Flamma draconis!”
Harry thought all the children screamed at once when the fire rose around Andromeda, pure and coruscating white, streaking blindness across Harry’s vision even as he shut his eyes and ducked down underneath the heat. He still screamed as his clothes began to burn in the backwash, more terrified than hurt; the children might be burning and he would not know. And he heard the statue that had attacked Andromeda scream, too, with a sound like grating metal on stone that went on and on and on. The flame she conjured must have been hot enough to melt it.
He rolled frantically on the carpet, trying to put the flames out, trying to dislodge the children’s hands as they reached for him. And then he was scrambling up again, certain he was free of fire, panting and more aware of the wounds Andromeda had inflicted on him than he wanted, desperate to see.
The flames had swallowed the statue, but spread on and around the door, a solid wall. Andromeda stood coolly considering them as if nothing had happened at all. Harry glanced back at his children and saw James holding Al, who cried with frantic sobs. Lily was wailing. Scorpius looked too terrified to weep anymore.
James looked up at him solemnly. “It’s bad magic, Daddy, innit?” he whispered.
Harry nodded. He had no idea if Draco would be able to get through the flames. He’d never heard of a spell that conjured such intense fire; it was one that Andromeda had probably learned from Dragon-Keepers.
But he had no choice now, and so he drew upon his tattered magical strength and focused all of it on her wand.
“Accio Andromeda’s wand!” he screamed.
It flew out of her hand, but abruptly lost momentum and fell to the carpet midway between them, almost into the burned patch where he had rolled to put his clothes out. Harry sprang for it at the same instant Andromeda did.
*
Lucius halted where he was, his stone sword nearly falling from his hand, a terrible expression on his face. Draco knew he couldn’t grasp what the death-perhaps-of Abraxas had done to him.
But Draco knew exactly what to do about the white flame now surging around the doorway and getting ready to advance into the sitting room where he, his mother, Lucius, and Teddy stood. Marian had taught him this spell, during the years when they had still been friendly, just as she had probably taught it to the Masked Lady-Andromeda.
And now was not the time to lose himself in the strangeness of his aunt being the Masked Lady. What mattered was that Marian had also taught him the counter.
“Glacies aeterna!” he bellowed, and threw all his outrage that Andromeda still stood between him and Scorpius, and maybe Harry, into the spell.
The white flame creeping around the doorway froze and hardened. Pieces of it were breaking off a moment later. It had become ice as forbidding as the flame was, but Draco knew he could cross ice as he could not cross fire. He sprang forwards, flailing as he slipped but grabbing the doorway to sustain his balance, barely aware that Narcissa was right behind him.
Draco saw the puddle of melted slag that must have been the remains of Abraxas. He saw the children, looking terrified but physically unharmed; his heart gave a leap at the sight of Scorpius’s small blond head.
And he saw Andromeda and Harry-Harry with skin flapping all over his body, horribly wounded, bleeding-struggling frantically over a wand. As he watched, Harry got his hands on it between their tangled legs, but Andromeda twisted and kicked, apparently determined to deprive him of it if she could not have it herself. The wand spun through the air and flew straight past Draco. He ducked to avoid it, then aimed his wand at Andromeda. There was only one spell he deemed safe enough to use on her.
“Avada-“
“Lethargus aeternus!” another voice called, strong and steady. A dark cloud whirred past Draco, so close he lost his concentration on the Killing Curse, and settled around Andromeda like a swarm of insects.
Draco’s aunt opened her mouth, probably to scream. But she only had time to draw in one long, huffing, terrified breath. The next moment, her eyes closed and she went to sleep with a finality that stunned everyone into silence. Draco could hear Harry swallow.
A voice broke the silence.
“She always feared most to go to sleep and never wake up. She would rather have died violently, in battle, so she could see it coming. She told me that when she was seven years old.”
He turned to find Narcissa standing behind him, staring at her sister. Her face was closed and cold and had no expression at all. In one hand was Andromeda’s wand.
Chapter 40.