Chapter Thirty-Nine of 'Made of Common Clay'- When Once The Storm Is Past
Chapter Thirty-Eight.
Title: Made of Common Clay (39/48)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Minor mentions of Ron/Hermione, Molly/Arthur, Neville/Hannah, Luna/Rolf, and past Harry/Ginny; otherwise, this fic is gen and will remain so.
Content Notes: Angst, violence, torture, politics, present tense, cynical Harry
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Harry has reached a very bitter and jaded thirty. His efforts to reform the Ministry haven’t lessened the corruption or pure-blood bigotry one bit. That’s when he finds out that he’s apparently a part of a pure-blood nobility he’s never heard of before; he’s Lord Potter and Lord Black. Unfortunately, that revelation’s come too late for him to be a reformer. All Harry wants to do is tear the system down and salt the earth. And with a double Lordship, he just might have the power to do that.
Author’s Notes: This fic is partially a parody of some of the tropes common in Lord Potter/Lord Black fics. The title and most of the chapter titles come from one of Oscar Wilde’s poems: “Sweet I blame you not for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay/I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.” I don’t yet know how long this fic will be, but it will get pretty dark.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Nine-When Once The Storm Is Past
“Did you think that you would be able to get out of the Ministry unhindered?”
“Oh, no, not an evil monologue,” Harry tells the Auror trainee who’s halted him. She has her wand pointed directly at him, but it’s shaking. Harry looks at her in interest. He knows enough magic to blast her through a dozen walls.
And he can’t use any of it right now, since he’s magically depleted. Not that that’s the kind of thing he’s about to tell anyone soon.
“Not a monologue. Not evil. But you’re a Dark Lord.” The Auror trainee edges towards him and then stops as if she’s run out of bravery. “And you’re the one who caused that big blast of magic a while ago, I think.”
“Big blast of magic? What big blast of magic?”
“The one that knocked everyone unconscious and burned holes in their memories!”
Harry shakes his head solemnly. “Then I’m afraid you must be mistaken. I didn’t do anything that knocked holes in anyone’s memories.”
The trainee’s face crumples in confusion, and Harry moves. He might not be able to summon more than a pallid spark from his wand right now, but that doesn’t matter, not when he has fists and feet. He kicks the wand out of her hand, grabs her, and twists her around so that her arm is pinned behind her back.
She utters a long, breathless scream, and tries to kick him backwards. Harry approves of her technique, if not her intent. He kicks her in the back of the knee and catches her as she crumples. “You still talked too long, even if it wasn’t an evil monologue,” he tells her.
The Auror trainee tries to bite him. Harry frowns. “The angle of your neck is all wrong for you to do that. What are they teaching you in training these days?”
“You-you’re a murderer!”
Harry thinks about that one. “Well, it’s true that I don’t always abide by the dueling rules, but-” Then he remembers about Kingsley, and the fact that most people don’t know he’s currently under the Draught of Living Death in Harry’s house, instead of in pieces in a coffin somewhere. “Oh, yeah. Reckon I am. Hear my mighty roar of evil.”
He thinks even the trainee might check at that, but apparently it’s too close to what she expected to hear. This time she tries to slam the back of her head into his nose. Harry dodges. “Better,” he tells her. “At least the angle was closer this time.”
He begins herding her up the corridor towards the lifts. She tries to step on his foot, head-butt him again, spit on his hand and distract him, and shriek loudly enough to probably attract help. She appears displeased when none of it works.
Harry sighs a little as they’re riding the lifts up and she tries to bite his arm this time. “Look, the cloth is in the way. Do you want your mouth to taste bad for an hour, or what?”
The trainee goes silent and still as the lift stops at the Atrium, but Harry knows better than to think that’s going to last. “You’re not gloating the way I thought you would,” she says suspiciously as they get off.
“Well, I’ll remedy that. I’m a better Auror than you’ll ever be, despite having been out of training for a lot longer. Seriously, what are they teaching you these days?”
Harry is hoping for at least a semi-serious answer to his question, but he never gets it. The trainee opens her mouth and screams again, but this time it’s words instead of mere noise. “Dark Lord Potter! Dark Lord Potter! He’s here, he’s here!”
That makes some of the people in the Atrium spin around, the ones who aren’t still unconscious from the firestorm. Most of them are aiming their wands at him. Harry sighs. This is something a hostage might not help him with. There are Aurors here who are sensible enough to Stun them both and apologize to the trainee later.
But then there’s a jostle, and Weston steps to the front, followed by Londer. “Dark Lord Potter!” says Weston. “We meet again.”
There are murmurs from behind her, people who don’t know about Weston’s “duel” with Harry in Diagon Alley asking questions and being answered. Weston strikes a dramatic pose, flinging her cloak over her shoulder. Harry admires her acting. It’s better than most of what he can do right now.
“Do I need to make threats?” he asks, and then shakes the trainee. “Do I need to say that she gets if it you attack me?”
“You will not win, Dark Lord Potter!” Weston struts towards him. Londer comes in from the other side. “We can save her and still incapacitate you!”
“You would try,” Harry corrects, and wishes he had one more emergency Portkey on him. But he doesn’t, so physical fighting will have to do. He whirls and throws the trainee into Londer-who he’s still a bit uncertain of-and then rushes forwards and seizes Weston’s wand, cackling madly.
Weston struggles heroically with him for the wand, putting up such a show of flailing elbows and yelping mouth and swinging air that Harry wants to break off and applaud. But people would think it was so strange if he did that that he probably couldn’t pass it off as a thing a Dark Lord would do, regrettably. He ends up flailing for her wand, too, and then he seizes it and backs slowly away, aiming it at all of them.
The wand is useless to him with his magical exhaustion, but they don’t know that, and apparently no one thinks to ask why he didn’t take the trainee’s wand. Londer hesitates-although of course she would anyway-and so do the other Aurors who were working their way forwards. Weston, who’s somehow managed to bloody her own nose, raises a dramatic hand.
“I think he’s using blood magic!” she bleats in a whisper, and then collapses in a dramatic faint.
Harry cackles wildly and flicks a few drops of blood off his hands onto the floor. That makes them cower. Blood magic has a well-deserved terrible reputation, but also, most of the Aurors don’t understand what it’s capable of and what are the limitations. They might think he could set them on fire just from a few drops, or control them as if he’d cast the Imperius Curse.
Harry races straight towards one of the Floos. But the nearest Auror proves that not all of them are dazed or cowards, and casts a Stunner at him.
Harry rolls under it. He’s panting now. The magical exhaustion only prevents him from using magic, not running, but on the other hand, it does affect his body, too. He slides under yet another one and then jumps to avoid an Incarcerous, and he’s by the fireplace he aimed for, fumbling desperately for the Floo powder.
“He must be magically exhausted or he would have done something to us by now!” someone yells. “Seize him!”
Why do you have to ruin that moment of genius with such a generic exclamation at the end? Harry thinks in irritation. On the other hand, why did you have to have that moment of genius at all? He throws the Floo powder in and barks, “Black Hole!”
Someone grabs hold of his shoulder as he jumps into the flames, but Harry kind of expected that, which is why he barked the address he did. Well, that and any other Aurors who heard and feel capable of falling him.
Harry and the Auror who grabbed him stumble headlong out of the fireplace in the Black Hole, a safehouse he’s used a few times but kept mostly for storage, like the one in France. It’s dark all around them, and the Auror steps back and tries to get a Lumos going. Then he or she freezes.
Harry, hating his own disgraceful panting, backs a step away and snaps his fingers. Light comes up, the wards responding to the owner of the house.
Of course, for that Auror and the frozen expression of horror on his face, it’s still dark. Harry nods as his panting calms down. Anyone who comes into the Black Hole without being added to the wards or protected by the owner of the house sees only blackness swarming with things. They actually frightened George when Harry tested it out.
And they also feel as if they’re falling through endless space and time to a hidden ground far below. Harry was sorry for that when a shaking, pale-faced George described the situation, but somehow he doesn’t feel as sorry for this Auror.
Harry sighs and pushes his hair back from his forehead, then collapses on the couch to his right. Part of him knows that he really needs to get in contact with Ron and Hermione and make sure that everyone in the extended Weasley family is okay. Harry can only remember a few of the glimpses he saw during his time as the fire; already that overwhelming experience is fading from his mind.
That part of him is going to have to go hang for right now. Harry doesn’t even remember closing his eyes, much less falling asleep.
*
Harry opens his eyes and stretches luxuriously. He doesn’t know how long he’s slept without using a Tempus Charm, but on the other hand, that doesn’t matter. The house is still standing and there’s no Patronus screaming at him from the other side of the room. The wizarding world must still be standing, too.
Well, at least partially.
Harry sits up, and then the Floo flares. Harry turns to face it with a slight frown. He actually did forget that he tied the wards to his state of awareness, so that no one could open the Floo or pass the wards, even if they would ordinarily be welcome, while he was unconscious.
Ron tumbles through and immediately picks himself up. He stares at Harry, his eyes wide, and launches across the room. Harry isn’t sure if he’s going to be hugged or punched until he feels Ron’s arms around him.
“You made it out of the Ministry. You didn’t lose your magic or your sanity. Shit, mate.”
Harry winces a little as he hugs Ron back. He knew Ron and Hermione were mostly fine because of how he could see them through the spell, but of course they wouldn’t have anything like the same assurance about him. “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t contact you right away. I was just so magically exhausted that coming back here and collapsing sounded good.”
Ron draws back and seems to notice the frozen Auror for the first time. “Who’s that?”
“Someone who grabbed onto me as I came through the Floo.” Harry waves his wand, more pleased than he can say by the return of his magic, and hangs a wreath of red roses around the Auror’s head. He might as well be decorative while he stands there. “They aren’t intimidated by that stupid Lordship status any more. But he was caught by the Black Hole’s defenses, so.”
Ron pales a little. He experienced those defenses one time when he came through the wards before Harry could tie him into them. “Right.”
“What about the rest of your family?” Harry asks, patting the couch insistently until Ron sits down. “I was riding the fire of the spell, and I saw a few things, like how Susan woke up with her beliefs reconciled and that Hermione has lost that patronizing concern she had for werewolves. Oh, and your Dad thinks of Muggles as more than funny little people now.”
Ron gives a faint smile. “Well, Mum and Ginny weren’t hit as hard as Dad, but…”
“Yeah?”
Ron glances at Harry out of the corner of his eye. “Neither of them understood what had happened. So I might, uh, have explained it.”
Harry just shrugs. Sooner or later the Weasleys were going to learn about it, and they’ll probably take it better from Ron than him. “Yeah? What did they say?”
“Ginny feels really betrayed. She doesn’t understand why you didn’t just tell her.”
Harry blinks. That’s not the reaction he would have expected-well, the betrayal, but not the reason why. “Did you tell her that I wasn’t trusting anyone with anything much, except for you and Hermione?”
“Yeah, I did.” Ron rubs the back of his neck and looks uncomfortable. “But she says that you could have trusted her, that she would have been loyal. At least we know the Memory Charm worked,” he adds, in a hollow attempt at cheerfulness. “She obviously has no memory of what she did when she actually did find out.”
Harry sighs. Well, honestly, his relationship with Ginny has been destroyed for a while. He could never be what she needed after the war, and then she dated that idiot Simon, and then he Obliviated her. “If you want to tell her that she did find out and she betrayed us right away, you can.”
“You have that conversation with her, mate. From the other side of a continent, preferably.”
Harry manages to smile, but his attention is all focused on Ron. “And your mum?”
Ron glances aside, all traces of a smile fading. “She knows what you took from her. I mean-there wasn’t a lot. She’ll think about Muggles more kindly now, and she already told me that she can think of Muggleborns without ‘Poor dear’ coming to mind. But she thinks you should have trusted her. Not used that spell because the biases she did have weren’t influencing anyone negatively.”
Harry nods. “Yeah, but there was no way to use the spell to separate out the people who were causing harm from the people who weren’t. Or the people who read the Prophet and shook their heads over werewolf attacks from the ones who were actively hunting them or trying to pass legislation to make their having jobs and kids illegal.”
“I know that. But-I didn’t try to explain it to Mum. I just told her that she should talk to you if she has questions. She’s probably going to be sending you a Howler any minute now.”
“Not until I leave the wards of the Black Hole, anyway,” Harry says, which makes Ron look a little cheerful again. “Besides, you shouldn’t have had to explain it. I’ll do it, and I’ll do it by letter.”
“You’re holding onto your plan of going into the Muggle world, then.” Ron’s voice is less a question than a statement.
Harry nods quietly, eyes not moving from Ron’s face.
“You realize that-to some people you’re always going to be a hero?” Ron asks in a rush. “To people like Weston and Neville and Hermione and me. You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to. We could hide-”
Harry snorts and shakes his head. “I have no desire to hide for the rest of my life, Ron, and that’s precisely why I have to go. The wizarding world would have to put me on trial, even if the crime I’m being tried for doesn’t precisely exist yet. They would find something.”
Ron closes his eyes. “And that means that we’re barely ever going to see you again.”
“There’s such a thing as Apparition. And Floo connections that can be hooked up to a private network instead of the official one.”
One of Ron’s eyes pops open. “There’s no such thing as a private network.”
“Of course there is. Didn’t George tell you that he figured out how to create one?” Then Harry claps a hand to his chest and falls back on the couch, gasping. “Oh, no, I’ve ruined the surprise!”
“Wanker,” Ron mutters. “But-seriously, how?”
“Don’t ask me how George’s brain works. He’s bloody brilliant. I’m just the person who goes around changing the world when other people tell me how to do it.” Harry sits up and grins at Ron. “So we’re going to see each other still.”
“What are you going to do in the Muggle world, though? You don’t have the kind of skills that you need to get a job there, do you?”
Harry tips his head to the side. “I think I can go to a university and work at odd jobs that no one will notice me accomplishing with a bit of magical help. And in the meantime, I won’t be short of gold.”
Ron leans back and studies Harry warily. Of course, he’s learned to be wary when that grin appears on Harry’s face. “What did you do?”
“A lot,” Harry says happily, but ducks with a laugh when Ron tries to punch him in the stomach. “But specifically, I figured out how to negotiate with the goblins for the spoils of defeated enemies. It’s an old law and they don’t like people knowing about it, but Hermione found it when we were researching ways to try and bring the goblins to our side.”
“Spoils of defeated-they gave you the Selwyn vault.”
“And the Parkinson one,” Harry agrees. “They’re not Lords and Ladies now. They’ll have to find other things to pride themselves on, and that will take them a while. Anyway, most of them have other vaults to their names. I just have the main ones.”
Ron blinks several times. Then he says, “You know, sometimes you act so much like a hero that I forget you can actually be a selfish monster when you want to.”
Harry rests his chin on his fist and shakes his head at Ron. “Ron, I did this because I’m incredibly selfish. Sure, I wanted the prejudice against Muggleborns and werewolves and non-pure-bloods to stop to benefit other people, but mostly I wanted it to stop because it was hurting my friends. Luna’s eyes when she talked about the unicorns, and Hermione’s when she got rebuffed by someone not a tenth as smart as her because of her blood, and the memory of Dobby, and the memory of Firenze, and you being despised as a blood traitor…I’m so selfish I would make myself sick.”
“Would?”
“But I already got sick of all the stupidity the wizarding world was marinating in. That took all my time and attention. So I got rid of it. And I got rid of their perceptions of me as a hero.”
“So that was part of it, too.”
“That was the first impulse.” Harry leans back on the couch and sighs a little. “Before I came up with the idea of getting rid of prejudice, I wanted to get rid of the Deathly Hallows and this stupid impression they had that nothing could shake. That I was some kind of hero, some kind of good person.”
Ron just stares at him.
Harry winks at him. “I’ve proven that I’m not a hero, haven’t I?”
“Comprehensively,” Ron says, a little weakly.
Chapter Forty.
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