Harry went instinctively for his wand, but a vaguely familiar voice rang out before he could even get close.
“Expelliarmus!”
His wand flew out of his pocket and across the room. He found himself suddenly frozen, shocked into a state where he was unable to do anything more than stare into the darkness of the closet, the shadows of which hid his attacker perfectly. After facing off with the most dangerous wizard of his time and winning”after hunting down the last of his Death Eaters and walking away unscathed”after watching without fear as Voldemort used the killing curse against him, not once…not twice, but three times”after DYING, and coming back, he was caught completely off guard in his own bedroom. He laughed in spite of himself. The wand pointed at him faltered.
“Shut up, boy!” the shadow hissed, and this time, Harry recognized the voice. He watched as the figure stepped out of the darkness, revealing eerily familiar heavily lidded eyes. They were wild and desperate and focused only on him. Somehow, after successfully evading an entire squadron of aurors and finding her way through the countless protection charms and counter curses that now protected the Black House, Narcissa Malfoy had found her way home.
"Crucio!” she hissed without blinking.
The spell hit him in the forehead just centimeters from his lightning scar. Pain like red hot embers shot instantly down his spine, taking root and shooting flaming daggers down through his extremities. He writhed and curled in upon himself. The pain was too great to think or even to let out the yell that he knew would send Ron and Hermione rushing to help him.
“Where is he?” Harry heard through the mad rush of the spell in his ears. “I know you have him!” The voice was right by his ear, cooing to him softly from inches away as he flailed helplessly. “I know your people took him! Blood traitors, all of you! After he was cleared of any charges!”
Harry tried to turn”tried to knock the wand from Narcissa’s hand, but the pain was too intense. His fingernails had drawn deep half moon shapes into his palms, and he realized that he was biting his lower lip, which was torn and bleeding now. It took every effort he had to open his mouth and gather what little breath his burning lungs would allow.
“Stop!” he managed. It was intended to come out with enough force to sound defiant, and perhaps to reach the lower floors. Instead, all that Harry managed was a pathetic squeak that sounded almost as if he were begging. He didn’t care how it sounded. He wanted the pain to end. Then the voice came again.
“Petrificus totalus!”
The pain disappeared instantly”gloriously”leaving his entire body motionless and reeling from the aftereffects of the Cruciatus curse. He wasted no time in trying to call out again, but found that his vocal chords, like the rest of his body, were completely petrified.
From his place on the floor, he could not see Narcissa’s face, but he heard quick, sharp footsteps as she came nearer and felt the cold tip of her wand poke hard into his neck. For a short moment, she did nothing, almost as if she was contemplating something, and then the wand disappeared. Harry could do no more than lay there, feeling the stiffening heat from the pain before as it left his aching limbs. Now that it had diminished, a surreal sense of confusion was beginning to replace it. They had been searching for Narcissa since the night of the battle, but she had eluded even the keenest aurors. Why was she here now? How had she gotten past the ministry's most powerful spells to enter his room, and just who had disappeared that had caused her to come out of hiding?
“Muffliato!” Narcissa called toward the door, and Harry's hopes of third party rescue were destroyed. The wand was at his neck again, and she used it to draw a sharp line across the base of Harry's throat while whispering something that he could not understand. He felt a liquid warmth spread rapidly over his face, and he realized that he could blink again. Cautiously, he tried to move his mouth and found that he could, but further examination of his hands and legs revealed that they remained as still as stone. But he had his voice.
“Accio wand!” he called, almost as a last resort, not knowing exactly what he hoped to accomplish. He had seen Dumbledore and other powerful wizards use magic without wands before, and had even done it himself on occasion, but never on purpose. His wand did not move from it’s place in the corner of the room. His attempts were as futile as calling for Ron or Hermione would have been. Narcissa had planned her attack well. Her wicked laughter came from his left and he turned his head to fix his attacker with a defiant gaze.
“What do you want!” he yelled at her with more force in his voice than he felt in his body. Narcissa was not shaken.
"I want to know where you took my son!" she yelled back. Her hands were shaking with an anger that was only barely under control. "He was proven innocent! He was paying what you people said he owed! He has no idea where she is! We wanted nothing to do with her. I've always kept them apart!”
It was as if Harry’s mind had also been petrified. Pieces were beginning to fall into place. Draco was missing, but...
“Who are you talking about?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. Narcissa slapped him, stopping any further questions in his mouth, and sending blood from his mangled lip flying across the room.
“Don’t play dumb with me!” she snapped. “I know your aurors have him held without charge. Your new ministry is just as corrupt as the last one!”
Harry did not know what to say. The pain in his lip was growing by the minute, for the moment overpowered by his hatred for the woman who stood before him”who had managed to enter what he had grown to believe was impenetrable. His ears swam with the sounds of Hermione screaming as Narcissa and her sister Bellatrix tortured her in their own home not two years ago. His memories were tainted by the images of her and her husband at Voldemort's feet, torturing anyone at the will of their Dark Lord. He would have liked nothing more than to tell her that they had arrested Draco, but he did not have the slightest idea what she was talking about. As far as he knew, Draco was at Malfoy Manor, sitting alone on a mountain of galleons. All of this must have registered on his face because the anger threatening to ignite inside of Narcissa blazed anew and she stabbed him hard with her wand.
"Carignitus!" she screamed, and this time, Harry screamed with her. His head was suddenly on fire! Deep blue flames engulfed the part of his body that was not petrified, and Harry suddenly understood what it must have been like to be burned at the stake. His eyes bulged and he felt as if his skin was growing taut as the heat consumed it.
Then it was gone once again, and his face was left with no more injury than his torn lip. Narcissa was screaming at him once again.
"He was helping at St. Mungo's when he disappeared! Your people are the only ones who could take him from there!"
Harry's mind was reeling. His people? He didn't know who his people were. He searched frantically for anything that he could say to buy him time”anything at all that would keep her from using that last spell again. His mind was only able to focus on one question.
"How did you get into Sirius's house?" he asked, not really believing that it would serve as much distraction, but unable to think of anything else. To his surprise, the fire that had crept into Narcissa's eyes subsided and was replaced with a look of surprised arrogance as she approached Harry once again.
"This was my home more than it ever was Sirius's!" she retorted with a note of childish greed. "You’re in my room, not Sirius’s! It was mine before it was his, and it passed to me again when he betrayed his own family. I have ways of entering my own room!”
“How?” Harry asked. He was struggling to find any information that he might have missed, but once again, nothing more than questions came to him. Narcissa was again at his ear, whispering.
“Enough questions, boy,” she hissed malevolently, pointing her wand at him once again. Harry braced himself for more pain. "I can stay here all day.” She grinned in anticipation. “I have many more curses. You can’t possibly believe that the Cruciatus curse is the worst pain that you can experience.” And now Harry did not believe this. Narcissa continued. “I am very practiced in the art of torture. I'm sure you know that."
Anger surged in him. "I don't know anything about Draco!" Harry replied defiantly. "I don't care where he..."
"Foolish child!" came the interruption. "I know there have been reports! Even a minister as dim-witted as this one would see that she's not dead! I know your aurors took him because they think he's helping her. He would never help her. Especially not now!"
A stream of ice ran down Harry’s spine as he tries to think of a “her” that was supposed to be dead. Only one possibility came to his mind, and he spoke her name aloud before he knew what he was doing.
"Bellatrix…" he said, and he saw the confirmation etched into her sister's face. "Bellatrix is dead!" he shouted, more as a form of assurance than as a retort, but for some reason, he was not reassured. Everything that he had experienced was there in his memory to tell him that Narcissa was mad, but the cold calculation in her expression did not carry the look of the insane.
As he watched, that expression was contorting into a look of fear as it dawned on her that Harry truly did not know anything. “The ministry doesn't know,” she said, and Harry recognized a note of panic in her voice. “Then why would they have taken Draco?”
“They didn’t,” Harry said in a plainly bewildered tone. Narcissa was no longer facing him. She was pacing the room, suddenly oblivious to her prisoner.
“Then she took him.” Her voice had become a contemplative whisper. She turned her eyes back to Harry determinately, as if she had come to a very difficult decision and continued. “Draco knows nothing! He doesn't have what she’s looking for. The ministry can help him!”
Bellatris is dead!” Harry yelled, and this time he managed to convince himself. He had seen the look of shock that had distorted her evil face as Mrs. Weasley's curse finally hit home. Narcissa’s mouth curled into a snarl and her wand moved to curse him again. He closed his eyes in horrid anticipation.
And then a thundering crash to his left caused him to open his eyes again and he found himself engulfed in a cloud of dust. A series of red and purple flashes were flying near him from somewhere just beyond his line of sight. He heard Narcissa scream in frustration, and then Hermione's voice rang out from somewhere in the dust.
"Stupify!"
The scream was cut off abruptly, replaced by a dull thud as Narcissa hit the ground. Harry's heart lurched with the desire to participate, and he yelled out.
"Hermione! I can't move!"
Then Hermione was above him, and he could move again. The dust was already beginning to clear as he ran past an enormous hole in the bedroom wall toward the prone body of Narcissa. Ron was conjuring ropes to tie her with. He was white with shock as he stared back at Harry.
"Blimey, Harry," he said. "She could have killed you! Look at your face!"
Harry brushed off this comment and turned to retrieve his wand. Now that Ron mentioned it though, the pain from his mouth was growing more noticeable by the minute. He pointed his wand at his bloodstained face and thought, “Expingo!” The pain disappeared, but his lips did not heal He found himself suddenly missing Madam Pomfrey. “How did you know I was in trouble? She knew Muffliato.”
“Kreacher heard you yelling something about Bellatrix,” replied Ron. “Must not work on house elves. Good thing too! How’d she get in here?”
The question was answered by Hermione, who had disappeared into the closet, wand first.
"It’s a Caminus Charm," came the muffled reply from what seemed like a great distance. Her head appeared out of the darkness, and the volume of her voice increased suddenly. "It's used to make a portal from one place to another. Narcissa must have made it when she was living with her aunt. It’s been open all this time." She shivered, no doubt thinking of the years that the house had served as headquarters for all resistance.
Harry stood up. “Let’s see where it leads,” he said determinately.
“Harry, no!” said Hermione, who seemed more concerned with the state of Harry's face now that she had secured the room She reached out to touch a swelled cheek and Harry pulled away. “I already called for help. You’re not going in without them.”
“Hermione! She said that Bellatrix is still alive!” Harry protested. “She could be on the other side right now! She could be getting away!”
Both Hermione and Ron’s faces drained completely of color.
“Then she’s mad!” said Ron. "We all saw mum kill her."
“We all saw her die. Narcissa was trying to trick you,” said Hermione.
“I don’t think she was mad,” said Harry. He turned gravely toward Hermione. “And I don't think it was a trick. I don't want to make the mistake of thinking someone else is dead that turns out not to be. We have to see where that portal leads."
“I already know where it leads,” whispered Hermione growing paler.
"Where?" asked Ron and Harry together.
"Malfoy Manor," said Hermione.
The Legacy of Four by spaniard
Chapter Notes: An unwelcome visitor. You are prewarned. There is a bit of violence in this chapter.
Chapter Endnotes: Up next: Voldemort's Last Disciple