Chapter Twenty-Four of 'The Long Defeat'- Call out the Vengeance
Chapter Twenty-Three.
Title: The Long Defeat (24/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa, mentions of Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Some violence, some angst, ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Harry thought that becoming a slave to the goblins was about the worst thing that could possibly happen, except the sinking of the wizarding economy that the goblins had threatened if he didn’t. Then Lucius Malfoy showed up and offered to buy him instead, and maybe that was the worst thing. Or maybe not-at least, not if the Malfoys are sincere in their efforts to help him fool the goblins.
Author’s Notes: This is being written as a thank-you fic for
helenadax, who’s given me several virtual gifts and a lot of reviews over the years. She left this prompt of Harry being enslaved by the goblins and the Malfoys stepping in to help for the Draco Tops Harry fest a few years back, but although I intended to claim it, I didn’t get around to doing so before time ran out to submit fics for the fest. She asked for a happy ending and focus more on the con side than the angst side of the story. It does eventually get there, although with some angst at first. This story will be updated every Saturday evening.
The title is a phrase from The Lord of the Rings: “And together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Four-Call Out the Vengeance
Draco lay awake, frowning into the distance. No matter how many hours went by, or how many old tricks-like counting the dragons carved into the panels and hidden corners of his room-he used to try and fall asleep, he was still awake.
He thought he shouldn’t sleep. There was something out there, something that might take his resting his eyes as permission, and come for him…
Draco shook his head and rolled over for the millionth time, letting his head thump onto the pillow. Then he called a house-elf and had it plump up the pillows for him, watching the gleam of its wide green eyes in the dark.
“There’s nothing wrong in or around the house, is there, Memer?” he asked.
The house-elf looked at him and twitched her head. “Is being quiet. Master Draco is sleeping,” Memer whispered, the way she had when he was small, and she vanished with a pop that would have destroyed sleep if he’d achieved it. Draco snorted and closed his eyes. Then again, there was a reason that most people didn’t call house-elves when they were on the verge of sleep.
Gradually, the pounding of shadows in his head lulled him towards sleep. If there was something wrong, the house-elves or the wards would have taken care of it, he knew. No use worrying about it now. He sighed, and let his breathing wash him even further towards the dark shore he was seeking.
He was there, he thought later, or he might have got there. But a horny hand on his shoulder yanked him rather abruptly out of sleep.
His first thought was that Memer had come back with a warning, and Draco turned over, grabbing his wand and with a sharp word on his lips. He might order Memer to punish herself, as long as Harry and Granger never found out about it.
But the face behind him was grey, not green, and the grin it gave him was more terrifying than anything else could be. Draco found his fingers numb on the wand, and it dropped to the floor as the goblin dragged him out of bed and pressed him close to its chest in an obscene parody of a hug.
“Draco Malfoy is secured,” said the goblin into something small that hung around its neck, what looked like a stone amulet on a chain, and then held a potion up to Draco’s mouth.
Draco finally kicked and fought, and all the harder when he tasted one corner of the viscous potion and knew what it was. Thick and cold like that, it would make him thick and cold, and there was no way he knew of waking on his own. The goblins wouldn’t even have to dose him again for months. He didn’t like the implications, and he tried to drum the goblin’s ears, to pound its skull in, to scratch its eyes out.
But his parents had always taught him to depend on his magic, and even to despise Muggle ways of fighting. Long before Draco was ready to do so, he felt his struggles weaken and stop, and the last sensation he had was of his head falling on a bony shoulder that didn’t make a comfortable pillow.
He was too frightened, in those last moments of consciousness, to appreciate the fact that he had sleep at last.
*
“Master Harry! Master Harry Potter!”
Harry shot to his feet and out of the bed, ending up almost on the other side of the room. He shook his head roughly and turned around, doing what he could to control the magic that leaped and danced on his fingertips. He didn’t want to kill a house-elf, even more than he didn’t want to damage the fine sheets or the wood in his room. “What is it?” he asked, leaning into the waterfall. There was little he could do to that.
A house-elf he didn’t recognize stood wringing its hands in the middle of the room, immense tears in its eyes. “Master Harry Potter is coming at once! Master Draco Malfoy is taken!”
Harry felt as if he had turned to steel. There was sharpness and clarity in his mind, and his gestures were mechanical as he nodded and asked, “Who’s taken him?” His fingers could have cut if he’d touched something.
“Memer is not being sure!” the house-elf wailed, and wrung its hands harder. “Only that Master Draco Malfoy is being here one moment and gone the next, and Memer is not sure, but Memer thinks it was…” The elf sniffled.
“Louder, Memer, please,” said Harry, and bent down so he was on the same level as the elf, so that he wouldn’t miss a word if the elf spoke it.
“Goblins!” the elf cried then, and fell at Harry’s feet as if expected to be struck dead by the magic that yawned around Harry.
It was a blue vortex, a whirlwind that made the walls glow, and it was a long moment before Harry could wrestle it back under control and ask the next question that mattered. “How did they get past the wards?”
“Memer is not knowing.” The elf sniffled and wiped its eyes, standing back up again. “Memer is only knowing that they were there, and then they were gone, and Master Draco Malfoy is gone with them.”
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed he ought to have thought about this. The goblins would want revenge on him even if they didn’t know about the con the Malfoys were running, because they knew he was part of the reason that Lucius had withdrawn his wealth from Gringotts. And there was nothing the goblins reacted to more violently than the threat of treasure loss.
His mind was a whirl of steel lights in the middle of a case of steel. He knew he should wait, let people know where he was going, wait for help and backup and maybe someone the goblins would be inclined to listen to. Maybe Narcissa could negotiate with them for the return of her son.
But Harry didn’t really believe that. And while he would leave a message for his friends and the Malfoys, there was no question but that he was going now.
“You need to tell Narcissa and Lucius that I’ve gone to Gringotts to rescue Draco,” he told the house-elf. “All right? I’m sure that’s where they’ve taken him.”
The elf moaned a little and stared at him with wide eyes. “Master Harry Potter is being so brave!” it cried, in tones loud enough that Harry winced. Then its head drooped, and it looked as if it might crawl on the ground again. “But Master Lucius and Mistress Narcissa are being so angry.”
“I don’t want you to punish yourself, all right?” Harry asked. His heart was pounding and thudding, and his thoughts were a long way away, hovering near Draco, wherever he was. Maybe the goblins hadn’t reached Gringotts yet. He could hope. “No matter how angry they get, this wasn’t your fault.”
The elf just gaped at him. Harry shook his head. He was through trying to reassure people and help those left behind. There was only one person who really needed his help right now, and Harry was going to go give it.
He grabbed his wand and Invisibility Cloak. If the goblins hadn’t reached Gringotts yet and Harry went there and waited for them, there was the chance he could sneak in behind them without being seen. The Cloak was one of the Deathly Hallows, it might protect him.
But he knew as well as the elf had that he wasn’t going to be relying on objects for most of his threat to the goblins.
Once again, the blue magic dazzled around him, and Harry gave a grim smile. He sort of hoped that the goblins had reached Gringotts already, actually.
It was time to show them that they’d pay for what they’d done.
*
Narcissa woke in one of those fast transitions from sleep to full alertness that had been necessary during the war. She wondered for a moment why it was necessary this time. There was no longer a Dark Lord to call her out and punish her for the sins of her husband or other followers, and the reason why was sleeping safely in one of the rooms below.
But then she saw the bowing house-elf at the end of the bed, and understood. When they were disturbed or agitated enough, elves could cause changes in the emotional atmosphere of a room. Normally, Lucius would feel it first, since he was linked to the house’s elves by blood and Narcissa only by marriage, but he had always been a heavy sleeper. He was only stirring now.
Drawing her robes close around her and picking up her wand, ready to Transfigure them if she needed to move, Narcissa asked, “What is amiss?”
“Goblins were coming through the wards and taking Master Draco, Mistress,” said the elf, a trustworthy one Narcissa recognized after a moment as Memer. “Master Harry Potter is be going to rescue him.”
For a moment, Narcissa closed her eyes. The fear was cold, soaking, as though someone had buried her in the mud at the bottom of an icy lake.
Then she pushed that moment away. There would be time for fear later, if Harry didn’t succeed in getting Draco back or if Narcissa was confronted with his body. Right now, there were other things to do.
Lucius had sat up by now, and had heard enough that he didn’t require the house-elf to repeat everything, but he did demand incredulously, “What does the Potter boy think he’s up to?”
“I thought you had had enough reminders by now not to consider him a child,” said Narcissa, and swung her legs out of bed. A thought and an easy motion of her wand had her robes Transfigured into battle-robes, the heavier and spell-protected ones that were one of the few good innovations the Death Eaters had come up with. “I am going.”
“We don’t know where Potter went running off to,” Lucius protested, reaching for his own wand. He was more powerful at Charms than she was, but he had never been able to Transfigure objects as fast.
Narcissa shot an impatient spell at him and Transfigured the robes for him, then shook her head. “He went to the place they are most likely to have taken Draco, of course. Gringotts. They’ll think they can hold him behind impenetrable wards there.”
“I thought our wards were impenetrable.” Lucius was still unwinding the sheets from around his waist, but at least his tone was alert now. “What happened?”
“Memer is not knowing,” said the house-elf, bowing and pulling on her ears. “But Master Harry Potter is saying that it is not important. He is leaving the message with Memer and telling her not to be punishing herself.”
Narcissa nodded briskly. That had been a good idea on Potter’s part, since sometimes elves couldn’t give messages because they were so busy mangling their ears or hands or whatever body part they thought they should hurt. “Then we will divide our labor. Stay here, Lucius, and guard the house. The goblins might try to come back and get their hands on the wealth we removed. I’ll go join Harry and Draco.”
Lucius gave her an appalled look. “You don’t think I care more about my son than about my valuables?”
Narcissa leaned across the bed to give him a quick kiss. “I know you do. But I also think that your battle style is more well-known than mine, and I can give the goblins some surprises that they won’t even think of.”
Lucius grumbled once more, but nodded in apparent acceptance. Narcissa smiled, relieved. It would be hard enough to deal with her own emotions as she was going after her son; dealing with Lucius’s at the same time would make the rescue far more difficult than it needed to be.
And in the meantime…
I am coming, Narcissa thought to her son and son-in-law, and diverted her path only enough to pick up a bloodline artifact she might need before she left the house.
*
Harry arrived at the facade of Gringotts and stood still for a moment, his head turning back and forth. He couldn’t feel any recent expenditure of spells or see any scorch marks, the way he thought he would if Draco had been fighting when the goblins tried to get him in, but on the other hand, they might have Draco bound and unable to fight.
Then there was a noise from behind him, and Harry turned around, carefully concealed under the Invisibility Cloak.
A flying carpet was landing gently on the street in front of the bank, with no more noise than a swish of cloth. Five goblins stepped off it, hooded figures in folded robes that seemed to be made of a single piece of fabric, and hastily lifted a still figure with white-blond hair off the carpet.
Or they might have drugged him into unconsciousness, Harry thought, and his anger burned as he lifted one hand and pushed the Cloak back.
The goblins turned around, lugging Draco with a strength surprising for their sizes, and then froze when they saw Harry’s one hand hovering in apparent midair. A blue flame burned on the edge of Harry’s fingers, his magic coiled and ready. At the moment, it felt like nothing would be easier than to destroy either a stone building or living flesh.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Harry whispered, and pushed the Cloak’s hood back so the goblins could see his head. “Release him to me.”
For a moment only, the goblins continued staring, and then they exchanged toothy grins. One of them moved forwards, shaking his head. He was a goblin with brick-red skin and eyes, and he looked at Harry as though he was appreciating a conjuring trick.
“Most of my people thought you were a helpless slave,” he croaked. “Not me. I never thought that.”
“Aren’t you glad that you didn’t try to enslave me, then?” Harry kept his voice mild, and only tilted his hand so that the blue fire aimed at the red goblin. “Let my friend go.”
“That would do little good,” said the goblin, glancing at the blue fire but not retreating. Maybe he didn’t know what it was. “He is under a strong potion, and you have no idea what the antidote is or where to get it.” He smiled pleasantly at Harry.
“You will fetch it,” said Harry.
“I begin to find your assurance when you stand upon our threshold tiresome,” said the goblin. “But you can have him for the right price, as with any trade. Let it not be said that we are unfair.” He gave Harry another smile. “Become our slave, and convince Lucius Malfoy to return his wealth to our keeping. That is the only price we will accept.”
Harry thought he would have considered it, a few weeks ago. A few months ago, before the Malfoys took him in. Before he started thinking of himself as someone who had already done great things and deserved a bit of consideration.
But now, he didn’t give a fuck about the goblins’ price.
“Perhaps that would be acceptable if I was still the same boy you wanted to enslave,” he responded, and started walking slowly forwards. The goblins tracked his movement with narrowed eyes, although the brick-red one still didn't back away. “But I’m beyond that now. I’ll give you another price. You surrender Draco to me, and I don’t destroy your bank.”
“Ah, yes, the magic of rage,” said the red-skinned goblin, with another complicated bob of his head. “You think that what we chose to ignore is significant. Destroying us will not bring your friend back, or retain the antidote.”
Harry smiled. “I don’t need to destroy you.”
He whipped his Cloak back over his head, and saw the goblins scrambling to try and adjust, to figure out where he was. Harry made sure that his footsteps were silent as he glided back across the flagstones separating him from the bank and touched one of the marble walls.
It wasn’t an effort to focus the rage and hatred towards the goblins that he had felt since Apparating here. The hardest thing was controlling it, and making sure that the goblins saw only a crack spreading up through the stone, instead of the immediate crumbling effect that he wanted.
Two of the goblins cried out, and let Draco’s legs fall to the ground as they rushed forwards. The lead goblin shouted something at them, but Harry turned around and held out his hand, once again free of the Cloak and visible.
“If you come nearer, I can do the same thing to you,” he warned them.
The goblins halted at once. The red one marched towards him, his head up and his yellow eyes shining wickedly above wrinkled lips. Harry could see fangs under the edges of those lips.
“You have no idea what disturbance of the political balance you are causing,” the goblin whispered.
“You’re right, I don’t,” said Harry. “And I don’t give a fuck. I want my friend back, and the antidote. Do that, and your bank is spared. I don’t care enough to keep hunting vengeance once I have him back.”
The goblin was trembling in what looked like rage. Harry continued to watch him, impassively. It wouldn’t matter to him if the goblin expired of his emotions.
“We will claim our price from the wizarding public, then,” the red goblin murmured. “From the money that you own in your vaults, and the Black fortune. We will take that away, and it will vanish once again into our walls and never emerge.”
Harry laughed, and it was a high-pitched and eerie sound even to him, one he hadn’t known he was going to make before he made it. “Do I look like I care? The wizarding world abandoned me. Let them suffer for not protecting me.”
The red goblin glared at him and parted his lips enough to reveal most of the passage down his throat. “And your money? How will you live without it?”
“I already wasn’t going to get to use it for the next year, if you’d made me a slave.” Harry shook his head, smiling. He felt light and free, as if the literal weight of a vault of money had been lifted off his back. “But go on. Take it. I have other means of existing. And I’d trade the whole Black fortune for the chance to see Sirius again.”
He glanced at Draco, and a sweet ache went through him, a little similar to what he’d felt when he lost Sirius. At least this time, the person he loved was still alive.
Loved. Draco would celebrate when he heard that.
“You would destroy the bank and all the money in it?” The red goblin was tilting his head slowly up and down, as though Harry’s priorities would make more sense when looked at from another angle.
“Yes,” said Harry. “I don’t care about it. I want Draco.” He held up his hand and leaned it on another place in the wall, this time envisioning a sort of accelerated decay. Spots of grey and green and black like mold began to spread across the marble, and the goblins moaned like a strong wind. “Are you going to give him to me? Along with the antidote?”
“This is extraordinary,” said the red goblin. He made a little clutching motion with one hand in the air, that made Harry tense. He didn’t know what it meant, and he was afraid the goblin might be signalling that he wanted someone to use a spell on Harry. But nothing happened, except the red one peering even more intently at him. “You’d give us your money?”
“Surrender it,” Harry corrected tensely.
“What about the living descendents of the Blacks?” The red goblin nodded at Draco, hanging helplessly in the arms of the goblins who weren’t staring at the ruined part of the bank. “They might oppose your surrender of the fortune.”
Harry laughed sharply. “What kind of legal nonsense is this? Do you want to see what else I can do?” He started to close his eyes. He didn’t have the ritual equipment to set up on of those circles he and Draco had practiced with, but he thought he might be able to affect some of the money in the bank anyway. He was close, and he was pretty angry.
“Do not!” The red goblin raised his voice enough to disrupt Harry’s concentration, and he opened his eyes with a snarl. The goblin waved his arms. “If you surrender the gold in three vaults to us, we will leave you alone and give you your friend and the antidote.”
Harry paused. “What about the vaults themselves?”
The goblins all turned their heads and looked at him as one. Harry saw the same gleam in their eyes that had been there when Lucius talked about surrendering one of the Malfoy vaults. And he remembered why that had been Lucius’s preferred tactic to pay back a life-debt. The space itself under the bank was valued by the goblins.
“You would give us the vaults?” The red goblin looked rapturous.
“Surrender,” Harry corrected. “Trade.” He gave the goblins a tense smile. “That’s something you ought to understand.”
“The vaults of the Black fortune, and the fortune itself,” said the red goblin.
“The Black vaults and the money and vault space in the one that my parents left me,” Harry countered instantly. “The fortune itself returns to the Black heirs.” He stifled the urge to laugh. He wondered if Draco would be disappointed that he was bargaining with the goblins instead of destroying them, but he had to admit he wanted this ended, this futile contest between him and the goblins. At least this would keep them from demanding any more vengeance, and free Harry and Draco of the need for some of their pretenses. Harry wanted to be free to love Draco more than he wanted the goblins dead or penniless.
“In exchange for what?”
“The payment of the debt you think I owe you,” Harry said. “And my friend and the antidote. No more talk of slavery and no more efforts at vengeance on the Malfoys.”
The red goblin turned his head back and forth as though consulting with invisible advisors on either side of him. Then he turned to Harry and croaked, “Done,” and the others scurried forwards to deposit Draco at Harry’s feet. One of them put down a thick green bottle of some kind of black liquid at Harry’s feet, too.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Potter,” said the red goblin, and he probably meant it. Goblins valued different things than humans, and just like they had been angry enough about Harry’s break-in to the bank to threaten to sink the wizarding economy, they were satisfied enough by what he’d given up to back away now.
“Well. Perhaps you did not need me after all, Harry.”
Harry started and looked up. Narcissa was standing in front of him. She gave him a faint smile and crouched down, using her wand to cast a complicated-looking spell on Draco that made his belly and some of his veins light up and turn blue. A second later, she nodded.
“He’s under a certain kind of potion that causes unconsciousness for weeks. But this is the antidote if it smells of cinnamon.” She picked up the potion and carefully smelt it, then smiled. “It does.”
Tentatively, Harry smiled back. Narcissa laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment.
“You’ve done well,” she said, and then she turned and poured the antidote down Draco’s throat while Harry supported his head.
There was a long moment when Harry thought it wouldn’t work, but then Narcissa massaged Draco’s throat briskly and he swallowed. Draco opened his eyes, blinked, stared around, and muttered, “What? Where are the goblins?”
“Your mother’s here, and I’m here,” Harry said, laying a hand on Draco’s shoulder. More detailed explanations could wait for later.
Draco gave him an extraordinarily sweet smile. “Of course. I knew you would come for me.”
And Harry bent down and kissed him, unable at that moment to do anything else, or imagine any other way that he’d want to respond.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
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