A Dream For The Dead

A Dream For The Dead

Chapter 13

Burning Bridges

Draco stared at the hearth as though he expected, at any moment, a man to appear there. Being in the wizarding world, this was not an unusual expectation of one’s hearth. Still, the only person who was meant to visit Draco today had already showed up and was sitting opposite him.

The man in his company was not the man Draco wished, however.

“How is Pansy, Blaise?” Draco drawled, swilling his the brandy in his cup off the edge of his armrest. His lips spread in a polite smile, but the joy of his interactions with Blaise had long since been lost.

“Complaining, as always,” he responded in his low timbre. His dark face had grown ever more attractive over the years, it was sure, but Draco no longer spied any kind of friendship in his dark eyes. “Apparently the chateau in France I purchased for her was simply not luxurious enough. “ He laughed a false laugh and sipped his drink. Draco watched him with an eagle eye. “I warn her that if she doesn’t learn to behave I shall have to treat her to my mother’s favourite punishment, but of course, Pansy only beings rows for attention as well as the ravishing rounds of make-up sex that follow.”

Draco fought a look of disgust and hummed noncommittally. He downed his own drink and placed it carefully on the table.

“She never took well to death threats,” Draco mused, offering Blaise a knowing smile that was undercut by his disdain. Blaise ignored the veiled insult, if he noticed it at all. He laughed and nodded.

“No, certainly not,” he agreed, finishing his drink and placing it down on the table as well. “So tell me, Draco. When are you going to shed your mediocre surroundings,” he began, motioning to the room and apparently suggesting the house as a whole. “And move back into the Manor? Nothing was ever quite so lavish as your childhood home. And those peacocks,” he made a noise suggesting pleasure. “They were brilliant. Your father certainly had a flair for luxury.”

Draco tensed and pressed his fingertips into the armrests of the chair so hard that it might have looked as though he was trying to puncture them. He tilted his head back and gave a short, curt chuckle.

“Soon, surely,” Draco answered, his voice clipped. “The repairs and renovations are always running into complications. You understand, I’m sure, the mess the Ministry left of it once they were done. That and hundreds of years of wards have been disrupted thanks to their incessant nosing.”

Blaise nodded in a knowing manner that Draco knew was empty. Blaise knew nothing of the Ministry backlash after the war, nor anything of having to deal with they destroying his childhood and youth. He knew nothing of having to lose absolutely everything in order to gain a measured freedom.

And Blaise wouldn’t know, would he?

He had abandoned Draco, like Pansy, like both Gregory and Vincent, eventually, in sixth year. They had turned their backs on him when he probably needed them most. Vincent and Gregory had returned to his side in seventh year, instructed by their parents no doubt, but they did not return as friends but rather guards. They dogged his every move in seventh year, ensuring that he never felt, for a moment, better than Voldemort thought him to be.

No, Blaise did not witness any of Draco’s suffering, of his family’s suffering, during or after the war. The only reason he was at Draco’s side now was his fame. As soon as Draco had been turned into a heartthrob for the British and Irish League, Blaise and Pansy had flocked back to him, proclaiming how much they had missed him and how pleased they were he had found his way back to the top, where he belonged.

“I’m sure you’re excited to have Scorpius experience the Manor,” Blaise offered. Draco swallowed and his stare became stony, though his eyes were fixed on the glasses on the table. “It is the family home for all Malfoys, is it not? Surely you wouldn’t want him to miss out on that.”

“Scorpius likes this house,” Draco said, his tone more snappish than he intended it to be. He took a deep breath and then tried to smile. “But, yes, of course. I would like him to see where I grew up.”

And where our family was destroyed, where I was broken and Marked, where I stared down my death… yes, of course I want to expose my son to that, Draco thought bitterly.

“Say, I know we’re in the thick of the Quidditch season,” Blaise said, his dark eyes empty to Draco’s mind. “But what say you and Aurora join Pansy and I at our new Chateau for a weekend? Between games, you know. I’m sure Pansy would simply die for the chance to show it off, regardless of what she says.”

Draco smiled uncomfortably. He got to his feet and picked up his tumbler, walking over to the table in the corner of the room. Blaise got to his feet as well and straightened his robes.

“Sounds lovely,” Draco drawled, the sneer only just covered by his breathy delivery. “I’ll have to speak with Aurora first, of course. As well as Wood. He’s a bloody slave-driver during the season.”

Blaise watched as Draco poured himself another measure of brandy but shook his head when Draco politely offered him some. Putting the stopper back on the bottle Draco turned to see Blaise with a somewhat grim look on his face.

“Ah, yes, Wood,” he murmured, letting the word fall from his mouth as though he had never intended for it to be there at all. “You and he are –er –close?”

Draco sipped his drink, arching one fine eyebrow before pursing his lips in a bemused smile and shaking his head.

“Blaise,” he began with laugh. “Surely you haven’t been reading Rita Skeeter’s gossip column.” Blaise shifted oddly and Draco barked a more pitying laugh. “And you believed her. Honestly, you should know you can’t trust a think that woman writes. She makes her living on lies.” He shook his head and pushed past Blaise, glaring at the ground as he did, having had quite enough of this meeting. He unconsciously braced himself against the movement of the ground beneath him. When he caught himself, he played it off as though he was trying to adjust the chair.

“So you and Wood are just coworkers?” Blaise inquired, the interest in his voice quite clear. Draco rolled his eyes, his back to the other man.

“Team mates, actually,” he corrected, his tone dry. There was no humour in the words that followed. “It’s not quite the same thing. But yes. I assure you, you and Pansy need not worry I’m being corrupted by a stubborn Gryffindor.”

Blaise offered him a polite laugh and clapped him carefully on the shoulder before turning to the hearth.

“I should get going now, Draco,” he explained, taking some Floo powder from the container on the mantle. “It was a pleasure to see you. Do let me know about France.” He tipped his chin to Draco, who responded in kind, and then hopped into the hearth.

“Chateau Corbeau!”

With a lick of green flames, Blaise was gone and Draco was glaring at the empty fireplace.

He was in the mood to burn some bridges.

+++++

Harry used to believe that Hogwarts would always be his favourite place in the world. It had held so many powerfully pleasant memories, after a childhood filled with disappointment and loneliness. It had been the one place on earth he could be himself, could enjoy himself, learn and improve and never be alone. The school was filled with people he loved and held all the memories of those that had left him.

But the final battle of the second war, the final showdown between Voldemort and himself, had tarnished the memories slightly. The Great Hall was only a dim, shadowy place in his memory, holding the bodies of his fallen friends and foes. The warm and bright dinners from his schooling were by dim spectres in his mind.

The hallways were stained in imaginary blood; the dormitories were ruins to his mind. The grounds… the grounds were muddy trenches, littered with death. He could not walk those grounds again without facing the knowledge of what had transpired there.

No, Hogwarts had lost its title as Harry’s favourite place on earth. Though he would never let his happy memories fade completely, he could neither go back and hope to meet the same feeling of nostalgia, the same feeling of homecoming. No matter what he tried to tell himself.

Harry’s favourite place on earth, now, was precisely where he was standing: in a shop in Diagon Alley, surrounded by bright colours, whizzing devices, inexplicable sweets and happy, laughing faces.

Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes was one of the few places Harry truly felt at home again. It was a childhood he never really had. It was a shining beacon in all his dark torments. Even the Burrow, for reasons all to painful for his mind to consider, held none of the comfort that the wizarding joke shop did.

Harry took a deep breath and began to make his way through the winding aisles and displays. There were always new products being advertised in the windows. There was a perpetual sense of excitement flavouring the air of the store. The item of the moment was their diverse line of TransfiguTarts. They were enchanted to transform the eater into a particular animal for a set time limit. They were heavily tested by the Ministry before the receiving approval for sale. The various animal options included rats, owls, rabbits, dogs, cats, snakes and pigs, along with some larger, more powerful beasts. The lion TransfiguTarts were quite the popular seller, as well as the horse and kangaroo ones.

Harry had pointedly refused to purchase the wolf TransfiguTart for Albus Severus when he had asked. He did not believe that it was particularly safe for his eleven year old son to transform himself, for whatever period of time, into a wolf in front of other inexperienced young wizards. Memories of Remus Lupin flooded through him. While he knew that there were obvious differences between Werewolves and regular wolves, he did not trust that any of Al’s classmates would be so well informed.

Harry sighed as he watched some young kids fighting over the last lion batch and made his way to the counter. A smile touched his lips when he saw the red-headed man behind the counter flicking his wand to arrange a ridiculously high stack of Puking Pastilles with his back turned to Harry.

“Never would have imagined there are that many people out there aching to vomit their guts out on cue,” Harry mused, flicking the counter. The man turned around abruptly and a wide grin spread on his face.

“Harry!” Ron cried, throwing his hands up in surprise. Harry grinned back, any unease he might have felt outside the store now completely gone. “What’re you doing here in the middle of the day?” Ron paused and then gave Harry a sly look. “Still bored out of your mind at work, then?”

He nudged Harry knowingly as he walked out from behind the counter and flicked his wand towards some empty displays. Harry eyed them as they began to replenish themselves and then followed Ron to the back room.

“I told you you should’ve done what I did,” Ron informed him with a strange Hermione-like tone to his voice. He rarely got to tell anyone ‘I told you so’. Harry didn’t like being that person. He snorted and shook his head, idly picking up a clump of Peruvian Instant-Darkness Powder before dropping it back down lightly.

“I’m not going to quit, Ron,” Harry informed him for the umpteenth time. Ron looked back, somewhat offended.

“I didn’t say anything about quitting,” he corrected. Harry rolled his eyes. “I retired from the Auror Corps. Never quit.”

“Right, I forgot about the careful divide you set up between those terms,” Harry sneered. “Though frankly I don’t think many people would call it retirement when you do it at twenty-five.”

Ron ignored him and began sorting through some seemingly innocuous rubber ducks. They were all different colours and the innocent nature of their painted eyes made Harry distrust them immediately.

“They create a thick layer of impenetrable bubbles,” Ron explained, squeezing on of the toys until it hissed a high-pitched squeak at Harry. “Cover you completely as you try to get out and then sink into your skin so that everything you touch afterwards sticks to you. Still too strong, though, I reckon.” He tossed them back into the box and turned back to Harry. “George says we should come up with a counter-jinx of some kind before they go on sale. Otherwise people’ll start walking around with tables and chairs dragging behind them. Or get stuck to a wall or a door at home and never be able to leave.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he nodded his agreement.

“Certainly wouldn’t want to have to haul you both into the Ministry for something like that,” Harry intoned, hoping that Ron would indeed create some way to counter the effects before he sold them.

“Please,” Ron snickered. “Like you wouldn’t kill to have any kind of case.”

“Actually, I have a case,’ Harry shot back, his eyes narrowed. “That’s why I’m here. I need to ask you and George a few questions.”

Ron cocked his eyebrow briefly before crying out.

“Oi, George!” The cry wasn’t nearly as loud as Harry would have assumed he needed to call George from their testing area. But after only a few moments, George appeared from behind a door, his face smeared with purple and some glowing pustules growing underneath it. Harry was momentarily distracted by the growths but then realized how it was George had heard Ron. He had one of his Extendible Ears attached to the spot on his head where his ear was blown off during the war. Harry supposed it was useful not only to correct his hearing, but also to keep track of any customers he might be wary of.

“What’s up, Fred? I just fixed the problem with our Anti-Ageless Cream,” he said very quickly. Ron ignored George’s slip-up with his name. Harry ignored it as well.

After George was released from St Mungo’s, his reclusive behaviour only worsened. He refused to talk to anyone, refused to come out of his flat above the shop. He wouldn’t show up at the Burrow at all. He wouldn’t let anyone in.

Finally, Ron had had enough and had barged in on him, refusing to leave when George tried to curse him. They fought violently, first with wands and then with fists. Ron would not let up, he wouldn’t let George push him away. Eventually, George gave in and collapsed. Ron stayed with him afterwards. He helped his brother back on his feet.

Harry didn’t know precisely what Ron had done, nor what George had said, but by the end of it they were much closer than, Harry was sure, either of them could have imagined. George steadily started to come up with ideas for new items again, and Ron helped him make the ideas reality. Ron’s magical skill, while perhaps never as focused as Fred’s was, was very fitted to their endeavours. He quickly found a love for it and could offer insights into curses, jinxes and hexes that Fred and George had not had before. The war, if nothing else, offered Ron a chance to bond with his brother in the wake of having lost another one.

It was because of Ron, more than anyone else, that George was smiling and working at all. They had all worried deeply for him, fearing that he might do the worst, the unthinkable without Fred by his side.

The only sign that George was forever changed by the events of the war was his ear and occasional slip-ups with Ron’s name.

Harry also noticed how much Ron had grown up. He knew it must be painful to be called by his late brother’s name, but he never showed sign that he minded.

Harry felt his throat tighten at the knowledge of what they all went through. He still blamed himself for Fred’s death, like he blamed himself unfairly for Lupin and Sirius and all the others.

But he could not let himself slip back into self-destructive patterns and self-hating thoughts. He had moved on from that, grown up. He had a case.

“Harry says he has a case,” Ron informed his brother, his arms crossed over his chest with mild bemusement playing on his face. The emphasis on the word case, however, was enough to suggest his disbelief. There was no need to overdo things. Harry pursed his lips briefly. “He says he needs to ask us questions.”

George’s grin was lopsided as he turned to Harry and mimicked Ron’s position. Harry rolled his eyes.

“There is a letter in evidence,” Harry began slowly and calmly. Auror training urged him to make his voice more authoritative, more demanding and intimidating. Auror training knew nothing of having to question a Weasley. Probably not a Malfoy, either, Harry found himself thinking absently, considering how unwilling Malfoy had been to answer even the slightest question. Though they should have been obvious candidates for interrogations. “My detections spells have revealed that the letter was written by a recorder quill.” George and Ron’s faces both seemed to lose some of their amusement. “This is the only lead I’ve got, really,” Harry admitted to them, knowing he was safe in doing so. “I know you sell dozens of different kinds of those quills. I need to know if anyone else, any other joke shops or quill shops you know of, sell them as well.”

Ron shifted and looked at George. The Recorder Quills had been released just before the end of the war, just before Fred’s death. George’s face was steady and Harry took that as a good sign.

“I know that Zonko’s and some other small shops tried to imitate them,” George offered, thinking hard. He scratched his chip with one purple hand and left a line down to his neck. “But none of them managed to make them effective. They all fell out of production pretty quickly.”

“When? How quickly?” Harry inquired quickly. George shook his head as he considered.

“Probably six, maybe seven years ago,” he offered. George’s attention to time had become uncannily accurate. Harry wondered if he was really as alright as he seemed. He wondered, sometimes, if George really just put on a brave face and counted the days to his death.

Harry sighed, anyway, at the information. However long ago the letters started, the trail on quills from shops other than Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes would have long ago run cold. Particularly if they had not been effective from other stores. The magic in the old quills eventually wears out, with or without use. This was his only option.


“Alright,” he sighed. The tone of his voice seemed to admit defeat and betray his determination to remain optimistic. “Then I need to know all the details of the magic used to enchant the quills, as well as all the physical information about them. What kinds of feathers do you use? What size and weight, why and how do you change the colours of the inks? What inks? How do you control the handwriting? Everything, I need to know it all.”

Ron’s eyebrows shot to his hairline and he leaned back against nothing.

“That’s a lot of information, Harry,” Ron admitted, running his fingers through his red hair. “We take different bird feathers for each different colour of ink. Some feathers respond better to some inks. Some absorb the stock of ink more effectively.”

“The spells we use to enchant them are complex interlocking incantations,” George offered as well. He grinned cheekily. “Nothing we learned at Hogwarts.” He picked up a spare quill from the shelf behind him and flicked his wand so it floated in the air. This quill was for a deep, plum ink, given the colour of the plumes. “The purples are mostly raven feathers. There’s a purple undertone to the right ravens. The ink is pretty common ink with one fifteenth part Augury blood mixed in, for the right colour. All the quills should be around eleven inches in length, but the weight varies every time.” George swirled his wand and the quill was surrounded by a faint white glow. “The spells involved, at the basic level, are a simple Echo charm, along with a Levitating spell and a Pressure-release spell for when the quill touches the paper to release the ink in acceptable amounts.” He grinned wider and Harry watched in muted awe. “But we had to mess for quite some time with the Echo charm so that the ‘echo’ would be expressed through writing, rather than sound. “ He drew his wand lazily across the air and the quill shivered and began to dribble ink onto the floor. When it hit the floor, it curled into the words George was speaking. “As for the handwriting,” he continued, his eyes glazed over with nostalgia. “That was Fred’s brilliance.” Harry felt Ron tense next to him. “It relies on mimicry.” Harry gaped slightly, unable to understand quite what George meant. He smiled and nodded, clearly aware that he needed to explain. “You see, if the quill is put to parchment with nothing else surrounding it, then it will scrawl out a generic typesetting built into all writing spells. It looks a lot like Ministry documents do.” Harry thought back to his official documents and realized that they did indeed always have the same scrawl. It was somewhat clinical. “But if you place the quill in more colourful surroundings,” George offered, choosing his words carefully. His eyes were alight with an excitement Harry had not seen in years. “Such as room themed with serpents, or a cave, or a Victorian tea shop, then the quill will adopt a writing style to match said surroundings.” A Cheshire grin split his face and Harry found himself somewhat disconcerted. “It’s an altered Chameleon Charm.”

Ron and Harry both stared in dumbfounded amazement. Ron, clearly, was not fully aware of the complexity of some of the products he sold. He had also, apparently, slightly underestimated his brothers’ brilliance. Harry blinked and watched the quill dropped slowly to the floor where it began to brush away its own ink strokes with the plumes, as though they were nothing but dust.

“That’s brilliant,” Harry found himself saying as though he was thirteen again and had just been given the Marauder’s Map. George seemed quite pleased with himself. “Then, how does it all work together?”

“We use runes,” Ron murmured suddenly. Harry turned to him, one eyebrow raised. His cheeks were tinged pink. “If you look closely on the quills, between the individual plumes, there are tiny runes imprinted.” Harry realized that they must use runes on a large portion of their joke items to bind all the magic together.

“Runic magic is the most effective binding magic,” George explained. “Pity we never took Ancient Runes at school. We would have figured it out sooner. Took us a good few months of research to figure out the exact order of them too.”

Harry found himself laughing without quite realizing it. He turned to Ron, who seemed to understand why he was chortling.

“Don’t tell Hermione,” he muttered meekly, his cheeks turning a darker red. “She’ll never let me hear the end of it. I’ll have to read with her.”

Harry couldn’t control himself any longer and burst out laughing, a hysterical and deeply inexplicable laughter. He clutched his side quickly, feeling a stitch coming on and tried to calm himself.

“I can’t believe,” he said between little chuckles. “That after all that time you prodded fun at her for her interest in Ancient Runes, you actually started using them to make a living.”

“Yeah, well,” Ron shot, mildly disgruntled. “At least I don’t spend my days napping at my desk.”

Harry abruptly stopped laughing and shot him an angry stare. He turned back to George, who was scratching some of the dried purple cream from his hand with his brow furrowed. Apparently, it wasn’t supposed to harden and crack off like flakes, leaving green spots behind.

“Alright, well that’s…” Harry pondered, wondering at the right word. “Helpful.” It was not quite as useful as he had hoped, but perhaps it would come to something. “I’m also going to need a list of customers who have purchased a large number of them in the past… year or so.” He decided on a somewhat arbitrary timeline.

Of course, my timeline wouldn’t have to be arbitrary if Malfoy would just cooperate.

“Er, I don’t think so,” George responded. Harry frowned and shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Because almost everyone who buys one of those quills,” George explained. “Buys twelve of them. In every colour. And we sell thousands just before the start of term, then again during the winter and spring hols.” He shrugged. “Plus it would be impossible to keep track of every customer and what they bought. We’d have more files than room in our shop.”

Harry’s face fell and he let his jaw set, his lips thinning. This was going to be a problem.

“So there’s no way of identifying any of the customers?” Harry asked, more to himself than to George or Ron. He stared resolutely at the ground as though hoping the answer would write itself there, much as the quill had written upon it.

“No,” Ron said quietly. “But there might be another way.” Harry looked up, his eyes wide at his friend. Ron shifted oddly, suddenly aware of the attention on him. “There was more than one letter?” Harry nodded. “And some, at least, must have different handwriting, I imagine.” It wasn’t a question but Harry nodded again, slowly following his train of thought. “Well, if you can analyse all the different writing…”

“Then I can figure out where they were written,” Harry finished for him, his tone similar to that a person might have when exclaiming ‘Eureka!’ “Or at least, what the surroundings were. And if even one of those surroundings is unique enough, then I might be able to track down the letter writer.” Ron was not necessarily known for coming up with useful ideas, but when he was struck with inspiration, it was a stroke of brilliance. “That’s genius, Ron!”

Ron put on a look that was half-way between offense and modest pride.

“You and Hermione both,” he murmured. “Always the tone of surprise.”

-----

A/N: I hope you liked this! I enjoyed writing this one A LOT for some reason. :) Poor George. Thank you so much for the reviews.

Also, I used to have an alert list to let people know when I posted something new (chapter or fic). If you are interested, let me know and leave me your email address. My other list was lost because my computer had to be wiped completely clean. The memory was fried. *sob* Anyway. Yes. Let me know!

Love for reviews! And pron. Eheheh It IS coming, I SWEAR. XD