Chapter Twenty-One of 'Bard of Morning's Hope'- Conversing With the Dead
Chapter Twenty.
Title: Bard of Morning's Hope (21/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa
Warnings: Minor character death, violence, angst, gore
Rating: R
Summary: The Bard of Morning's Hope is a seemingly unstoppable murderer stalking former Death Eaters and former Slytherins, enacting vengeance on them in an untraceable way. In the wake of Lucius Malfoy's savage death, Harry Potter becomes the Auror assigned to guard Draco and Narcissa Malfoy from a similar fate.
Author's Notes: This is based on a prompt by Kain, who requested, among several other things, Harry being hired to guard Draco and Narcissa from a killer who was murdering Death Eaters in revenge, Harry having a good relationship with the Weasleys, and a slow-burn romance between Harry and Draco. This story should be somewhere between twelve and twenty chapters, and will be updated every Saturday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-One-Conversing with the Dead
Kingsley sighed as though someone had taken away all his air and sank slowly back into the chair behind his desk. His eyes were watching Harry with a desperation that made Harry want to wince.
But he reminded himself that he had solved the problem of the Bard’s persistence, and made sure that he wouldn’t come back and claim any other victims, either. He waited, and Kingsley finally nodded and lifted his hand in a weird gesture, as if he was going to bless Harry.
“Who would have thought a ghost was a problem?” he asked in a mutter. “All of the ones I know have coexisted with humans for years without hurting them.”
Harry smiled tightly, and didn’t say anything. He was starting to think that was because the violent ghosts got absorbed or imprisoned by stronger ones, but he didn’t want to involve Kingsley in a philosophical debate. The point was that Harry had succeeded in safeguarding the Malfoys and stopping the Bard, the way he had told Kingsley he could. He didn’t need to worry about anything else.
“Well.” Kingsley returned to himself and looked hard at Harry. “Not that you don’t deserve a holiday after all you’ve done, but I did hope you would consent to appear at the official announcement about stopping the Bard.”
Harry shook his head. “I need to do a few other things on the same day.” Kingsley looked curious, but at least he didn’t interrupt. “But I want to be there when you explain this to Dennis.”
Kingsley blinked. “Explain? In what way? I thought you said that he already must have suspected his brother’s ghost was the Bard.”
“I don’t know how much he really suspected,” Harry said shortly. “And after all, he deserves to know what happened to Colin in the end.”
Kingsley shrugged with one shoulder. “No one else is dying to talk to him. He’ll be here a while yet, of course, with the information on the smuggling case that you found.”
“Of course,” Harry said, and Kingsley turned away from his smile.
“Good work, Potter,” he said, busy with paperwork once more. “You’re one of the few people who didn’t let yourself be blinded by the Malfoys’ reputation in one direction or the other.”
It was useless to argue with that kind of Ministry politics, so Harry simply nodded and left. He strode through the corridors in the direction of the holding cells, and saw a few people staring at him. All of them were Aurors he wouldn’t have trusted within a mile of Draco and Narcissa while the Bard was still active, so he stared back, and just like Kingsley, they turned away. Harry rolled his eyes.
You can’t present yourself as in favor of justice until it applies to people you don’t like, he thought, as he came to Dennis’s holding cell and knocked once in the pattern that would tell any visiting Aurors he was someone here to visit the prisoner. Just the same way that you can’t apply it more harshly to people you do like because someone might accuse you of favoritism.
Harry’s lesson to himself in the wisdom of the universe wasn’t interrupted by any comments from inside, except a low, rough voice that might have been Dennis’s. “Who is that?”
“Harry,” said Harry, because Dennis was someone he intended to call by his first name, even after all this, and opened the door. The protections on it briefly jumped like stung cats, then calmed down. Harry stepped into the cell, shut the door behind him, and engaged the protections before he looked at Dennis. It was necessary.
Dennis sat in the single chair usually provided in this kind of cell, a week-old Daily Prophet spread in front of him. He was combing through it with the kind of roughness that meant he didn’t care if the pages ripped, and he looked at Harry like someone starved of news. “What’s happening with the Bard?”
“The Bloody Baron captured Colin and he’s holding him in a captivity that will involve keeping him from hurting anyone else,” Harry told him. He didn’t sit down. He didn’t intend to stay that long. “It’s over.”
Dennis shut his eyes. “What will happen to him?”
“I just told you.”
“But you didn’t-you didn’t say how long he’s going to stay imprisoned.” Dennis opened his eyes again and shook his head.
“That’s because I don’t know,” said Harry. “But considering he’s a ghost and the Bloody Baron is a ghost, it might be centuries.”
He had, he thought, told only the truth, but Dennis flinched and turned away with one hand over his face. Harry sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, also only the truth. “I don’t think the Bloody Baron will really torment him. He cares more about ghosts than he does about the living.” He hesitated, and decided that he might as well tell Dennis the rest. “And the ghost you were protecting and helping wasn’t really your brother alone.”
Dennis dropped his hand, but still didn’t turn around to face Harry. “I know my brother’s presence. I know what-what he wanted.”
“But he absorbed other ghosts from the battlefield,” said Harry. “Other ghosts who might not have become spirits on their own, or remained for as long. That’s why he was so vengeful against people who hadn’t harmed him. He was hunting down Death Eaters in general because so many different people were part of him.”
Dennis turned around. “And so you took away the only chance at justice that most of those spirits might ever know.”
“Why is murder justice?” Harry shook his head. “Besides, sooner or later he would have run out of victims who were directly connected to the ghosts that made him up. Or he wouldn’t have been able to kill some of them because they were already dead in the battle. Then what?”
“It would still have been justice.”
Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering to argue with you about this,” he muttered, and turned to the door. “The ghosts had already reached the point of killing random people who didn’t have anything to do with their deaths, I think. The Bard attacked Narcissa Malfoy, and the Ministry proved that she didn’t raise her wand against anyone in the Battle.”
“She was still on the wrong side. She could have been indirectly responsible for someone’s death.”
“But we don’t know whose,” said Harry quietly. He looked at Dennis. “You’re the lucky one, you know. You’ll be tried for what you did, not what someone imagines you did or thinks you did or ‘just knows’ you did because of your blood.”
Dennis shook his head. His face was composed, but in hard lines that told Harry how little he had listened, how little he had learned. “When you finally wake up to the injustice that Muggleborns face in this society, I’ll be waiting.”
“I would say that I’m waiting for the same thing with you in regards to the injustice of killing anyone who kills someone else, but I know you’re not going to wake up,” said Harry tiredly, and walked over to the door. Once again, the protections flamed, calmed down when they felt who he was, and let him out.
Dennis tried to tell him something, but Harry shut the door and shut the words out with it. He wasn’t interested in listening to Dennis anymore. He had the truth, and that would have to be enough.
Now, Harry had a few other things he wanted to do.
*
“Strange. I’d have thought you’d leave sneaking out after dark with your Invisibility Cloak behind at Hogwarts.”
Harry jumped enough that Draco winced, reaching out a concerned hand to stop him from bumping into the wall. But he didn’t, and he didn’t knock anything else down, instead turning around with a glare. “What are you doing out of bed?” he whispered. “You know that Healer today said a ghost’s touch could be fatal without rest!”
“I’ve had plenty of rest. I slept the whole day except for that appointment with the Healer.” Draco folded his arms and batted his lashes a little at Harry. “Now. Are you going to answer my question? Or are we are back to the petty secret-keeping that was also part of Hogwarts?”
Harry swallowed. “Not-petty. I would have asked you to come if I thought it was safe.”
“I thought we were staying here because it wasn’t safe, because you were afraid that some adherent of the Bard might be seeking to finish his work.” That was the excuse Harry had given for inviting Draco and Narcissa to stay at his house, anyway. Draco had been happy enough at the time not to question it further. “Now you’re sneaking out and leaving us?”
Harry closed his eyes and spent a moment working one hand into the collar of the Invisibility Cloak. Draco just waited. Harry would have to crack and explain what he had meant sooner or later.
“I found a graveyard where I was going to test my powers,” Harry said, and opened his eyes. “I was afraid of telling you because I thought you would want to come with me. And I don’t know what’s going to happen if I have a living audience.”
“You have someone who can tell you when you’re going too far and exhausting yourself,” Draco said lightly, although his skin crawled. He wouldn’t have done this for anyone but his parents or Harry. He placed a hand on Harry’s hand where it was pulling at the Cloak and stopped it. “And someone you can show those powers to.”
Harry smiled shakily. “I wasn’t really counting on an audience.”
“Then why did you want me to come with you?”
Harry blinked. “Because I want you with me a lot.”
Draco felt as though someone had put him in a warm bath. The Healer was wrong. This is what I really need to heal me.
“Lead the way,” he said, and Summoned his own cloak while Harry scribbled a swift note for Narcissa, and strengthened some of the wards on the house. They wouldn’t have held back the Bard, but there was no Bard anymore.
*
Harry paced slowly along the sturdy stone wall that surrounded the graveyard. It looked as though it had stood a thousand years, and maybe it had. Harry wasn’t an expert at sensing the age of graveyards or ghosts, no matter what the powers of the Deathly Hallows had turned him into.
“Ready?” he asked quietly, glancing at Draco.
Draco’s face was a pale blur in the darkness, which was broken only by the lights of their wands and the lights of the village a distance away beyond the trees. Harry thought that it had once been built closer to the graveyard, but the only houses he’d seen near it were all abandoned. “Ready.”
Harry nodded, faced the graves-most of which were simple headstones and crosses, with here and there the larger bulk of a tomb-and drew the Elder Wand.
The darkness suddenly seemed colder and more restless around him. Harry would have said alive, but he didn’t think that was the point. He could hear voices and whispers and hisses on the outer edge of understanding. There might have been a hint of Parseltongue in some of the voices, but he honestly didn’t think so.
“I want to see a ghost,” Harry said. Maybe he would be able to command the spirits to rise by will eventually, but he was working almost blind on this, and it seemed simpler to follow what he knew. Spoken magic was less complicated than non-verbal magic.
The Elder Wand twitched as though someone had tied a string to it, and Harry instinctively tightened his grip on it. The Resurrection Stone in his pocket uttered a low, steady hum. The Cloak fluttered out and settled again on his back like the touch of an urgent, heavy hand.
A spirit wandered towards him, staring at him curiously.
Harry swallowed. This ghost didn’t look like Colin, or the ones around Hogwarts. It was less transparent, for one thing, with silvery-dark eyes that seemed to look past him as well as at him. It seemed to be of an old woman, although the whole body was so pale it was hard to be sure. Harry thought he could see wrinkles in her face and that her hair was whiter than the rest of her, though.
The woman stopped at the stone wall and stood there with her folded arms resting on top of it. “I haven’t seen the night in a long time,” she said, a small tremble in her voice. “There’s no night there.” She tilted her head back, and Harry saw a ripple fall down her back, as if her hair was growing longer. “No stars.”
Harry had no desire to really question her about where spirits went. He thought it might be the kind of knowledge he wasn’t supposed to know, as the Master of Death. He asked quietly, “What was your name?”
“Esther Matthews,” the woman said at once, and looked back at him. “You’re a young one to summon me.”
“Has someone summoned you before?” Harry asked. He could feel Draco breathing tensely behind him, and he knew Draco was probably thinking the same thing. Was there another Master of Death out there?
“Oh, no,” said Esther. “I just knew the one who did would be older.”
Harry blinked and glanced back at Draco, but Draco shrugged, looking as lost as he did. If there was a wizarding story that explained this, Harry thought, Draco must not know it.
“Er,” said Harry, and realized that he had been bracing as if the first ghost he met through using his powers this way was automatically going to be as hostile as Colin. He sought for a topic to talk about. “Do you like death?”
“It’s not about liking it,” said Esther. “It’s just what happens.” She looked around and smiled. “But I do like seeing the world again. Hasn’t changed much, has it?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry, wondering if she thought the electric lights were more stars. On the other hand, maybe she hadn’t lived centuries ago. “When did you, er, die?”
Esther thought about it, then laughed. The sound made a soft prickling like mouse’s claws run up and down Harry’s spine. “Can’t remember the year. Funny, isn’t it? The thing that happens to everyone, and I can remember when other people died, but not me.” She shook her head one more time, and leaned over to the side as if she wanted to study a pattern in the tree branches behind Harry’s head.
“Yeah, it’s strange,” Harry said. He wondered if he would remember the year of his death when he died. It was an uncomfortable thing to think about. He coughed and managed to speak through the tightness in his throat and chest. “Why do you think you remember your name when you don’t remember anything else?”
“It’s carved on my stone, isn’t it.” Esther made a motion back into the graveyard without really appearing to move. It was more like another ripple and shimmer that ran through her. “Hard to forget something like that.”
Harry felt his cheeks burning. He coughed again. He supposed he would have to ask the questions he dreaded, because not asking them would make him a poor Master of Death. “What’s it like? Where are you now?”
“No night. No stars.” Esther leaned around him even more obviously. “No trees. It’s-endless.” She spread her hands when Harry stared at her. “Can’t describe endlessness more than that. That’s why it was invented, the word. Endless. That’s just what it is.”
Harry wondered idly for a moment whether the difference between Esther and the Bloody Baron was the difference between Muggle and wizarding ghosts, or simply because the Bloody Baron had come back and stayed around on his own, while he had summoned Esther.
“If I asked you what you want most,” he said, “what would that be?”
Esther looked around for long enough without answering him that Harry started to wonder if she was going to say she wanted to stay here and look at the world. Then she shook her head with that rippling motion again and looked at Harry.
“Endlessness,” she said. “It’s nice enough here, but it’s not endless.”
Harry nodded. He supposed he hadn’t done too bad, for summoning his first ghost. He hadn’t hurt her, and he certainly hadn’t destroyed her. He raised the Elder Wand and murmured, “Return to your rest.”
There was a surprised expression on Esther’s face for a minute, as if she had thought he would do something else. Then her eyes slipped shut, and she appeared to drift sideways along the wall. In seconds, she was a thin, tattered sprig of mist; in a minute, she was gone.
Harry stood there shivering until Draco came forwards and put a hand on his arm. Harry turned around and buried his head in Draco’s side.
“I know she wasn’t threatening or anything like that,” Harry whispered. He was colder now than Esther’s presence had made him. “But to have that power, and yet…I couldn’t even understand her answers to my questions. I don’t know what to do now.” His head was spinning and pounding.
“You’ll get more used to it in time,” Draco said soothingly, as if he knew. Well, maybe he did, Harry thought, and slowly straightened up. “Come on, now. My mother will wonder where we are if we stay much longer.”
Harry took a single look back at the graveyard before they Apparated. It looked utterly ordinary, the stones gleaming a little amongst the shadows, and that was all. He couldn’t even tell which one was Esther’s.
But maybe, he thought slowly, that isn’t so bad, if it teaches me that I have a lot to learn.
I mean, I knew that already. But it’s good to be reminded.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
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