A Dream For The Dead

A Dream For The Dead

Chapter 36

A Madman and Polluted

The pull of Apparition ebbed and left Harry stumbling in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. The whole of the cavernous room rumbled violently and Harry braced himself against the black tiled wall, pinching his nose and taking deep breaths. His entire world had been thrown into disarray as a result of two simple letters. He wasn’t sure now if the vertigo was caused by the Grim hounding him still, or the chaos that had stormed into his life along with Draco Malfoy.

The thought of Draco made Harry’s heart skip and his chest tighten all at once. He regained his footing and walked briskly through the hall towards the lifts. He needed to find Hermione and he needed to find her soon. Sifting through his feelings –however rushed and inexplicable –for Draco would have to wait until later.

When there was time to sit back and weigh out his thoughts.

Now there was no time. Now there was only panic.

Harry exited the lifts at the appropriate floor and rushed down the halls toward Hermione’s office. He glanced at his watch. Half three. Hermione should still be at the Ministry. She had to be. She must have heard of what Ginny had the gall to do.

To try, Harry told himself sharply. She hasn’t actually accomplished anything yet.

His heart was pumping blood into his ears as he pushed through the throngs of Ministry workers to find Hermione’s office. The door was closed when he arrived, which generally meant that Hermione was in a meeting with someone, but Harry had no time to linger of courtesy. He flung open the door and stepped over the threshold in a flurry.

“I trust you’ve heard what my traitorous ex-wife is trying to do?” Harry snapped at Hermione before he even noticed who was in the room with her.

“Harry!” Hermione cried. Ron was standing next to her, behind the desk, holding a copy of the Prophet in his hands. His face was taut and grim. Harry’s attention snapped to him and he glared expectantly at Ron, waiting to be assaulted in defense of Ginny.

“Did you really let Malfoy kiss you in front of everyone?” Ron asked, his voice tense with anger and fear, though age and maturity demanding that he try to stay calm. Harry tilted his chin defiantly at his best friend. “After threatening Ginny with arrest and a lawsuit if she didn’t go back to her maiden name?” His face was red, along with his ears, and he crumpled the newspaper in his hand, holding it as though it were a sword he could use against Harry.

“So what if I did, Ron?” Harry asked sharply, daring the redhead to lecture him, to tell him he’d been wrong. “She’s been using my name for years without being married to me, without my consent. Probably to attract more publicity for the Harpies.”

Harry only half believed his words to be true, but anger coloured them and his judgment, bringing him to say things he would otherwise have bitten back. He couldn’t keep his anger with Ginny and what she was doing to himself any longer. He had tried, for years, to take it and let it go, to force his hurt to disappear and push away his pain. He had tried for years to pretend as though he was alright, as though he and Ginny could still be friends and raise their children in a perfectly happy household. But he couldn’t pretend any longer. He couldn’t pretend not to notice the sword that was sticking out of his chest with her name on the hilt. He needed to release his anger so he could move on and give his –however wounded –heart to someone else.

I deserve to be happy, don’t I?

“You take that back!” Ron snapped at him, brandishing the paper at Harry. He pressed his lips together in a firm line that only made them white and bloodless, a strange white mark against the red of his freckled face. Harry felt the urge to laugh but it would have been a wicked and sneering laugh that didn’t fit him. Ron was not to blame, either way. “Ginny only kept your name because she loved you! She still –”

“Does she, Ron?” Harry asked, his voice low and dangerous. His eyes flashed and the darkness of them became obvious to his two best friends. “Did she ever really love me? I don’t know, really. Would she have fucked around with Dean if she ever really loved me? Wouldn’t she have loved me enough not to betray me? Or, at least, to tell me the truth before doing it?”

Ron shut his mouth and the colour drained from his cheeks in the face of Harry’s hurt, of Harry’s truth. His eyes became pleading and apologetic. Guilt curled itself in Harry’s chest but he could not pay attention to it now.

“But, mate, you let Malfoy kiss you,” he went on. Hermione placed a hand on his arm to stop him, but he ignored her. Harry thought he saw Hermione fight back tears. “I mean, what was the point of that if not to hurt Ginny? How is that better than what she did?”

Harry’s eyes widened before hardening. He did not need to justify his actions to Ron. Why should he? He was an adult. Ron was his friend, not his keeper. Still, Harry was powerless in the face of Hermione’s pain.

“I did not let Draco kiss me just to hurt Ginny,” he said firmly. Ron’s eyes widened slightly. “I did it because I love him.”

As the words reached his own ears, Harry wasn’t entirely sure they were true. Still, then was not the moment to mull them over. He decided to trust them for that moment.

“You… you what?” Ron asked as confusion, surprise and disbelief chased themselves across his face. Harry glanced at Hermione. She looked sadly at him.

“I’m not married anymore, Ron,” Harry said. “I’m free to love who I choose, aren’t it? Don’t I deserve to be with whoever I want?” Were he and Draco together? Were they a couple? He didn’t know for sure, but he wanted them to be. That was he could tell for certain. “Ginny got to have the man she wanted. Why can’t I, without having to give up my children for it?”

Ron gaped at him for a few moments but said nothing. He was no longer angry, that was clear, but neither did he seem to know exactly what to feel.

“Harry, you do deserve to love,” Hermione told him. “Whoever you want. Ginny doesn’t have a right to take your children from you, for this reason or any other. We know that…”

“Then why the third degree?” Harry asked imploringly. Ron had settled on anguish.

“We don’t know who you are anymore, mate,” he said quietly. “You don’t tell us much. We… we miss you.” He dropped the Prophet on Hermione’s desk and made a vague gesture. “Ginny came to Mum’s last night to pick up Lily and she was in a strop and screaming things about how you had betrayed her and Malfoy had poisoned you against her and against the family. She said that you had lost your mind and were turning on her, threatening her and that the kids weren’t safe with you anymore.” Harry wanted both to laugh and set fire to the Ministry building at once, but he did neither. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything just then. “She said she wasn’t going to let you expose the children to Malfoy’s… “ Ron paused, apparently uncomfortable with the word he was about to say. “Skullsucking ways and that Dean had told her that you needed to be taught the truth the hard way. He apparently said that you were blinded by Malfoy’s magic and that taking the kids would clear your vision, or some other rubbish. I… I thought she was just angry at losing the match and venting… but then I saw this,” he gestured to the newspaper. “And I didn’t know what to think.”

Harry’s anger only increased at Ron’s explanation. What business did Dean Thomas have interfering in Harry’s family or his love life? The sod had no right to an opinion at all. The matters did not concern him in the slightest.

“So you thought you’d listen to Dean Thomas before giving me the benefit of the doubt?” Harry snapped. Ron shook his head.

“No, mate, never,” he answered earnestly. “Dean’s… well, he was acting a bit off lately. I don’t know why Ginny’s with him to be honest, but the point is I didn’t know how to defend you. I don’t agree with what Ginny is doing or what she’s done throughout this… this all,” he said vaguely. Then he gave Harry a pleading look. “But she’s my sister, Harry. I… I can’t just stop loving her. She’ll always be my family.”

Harry stared at him for a few moments before sighing and nodding.

“Right,” he said, looking away. “Well, can you file a counter-suit against her? Or stall the proceedings in some way?” Harry looked to Hermione.

“Yes, of course,” she said immediately. “I’ve been working on the appropriate forms already, anyway. The only reason Ginny’s claim is moving as fast as it is is because she got someone in the Department to put a rush on it.” Harry narrowed his eyes.

“Not you?” he asked. He screwed up his face. “Who else does she have connections to?”

Hermione shrugged.

“Apparently, Dean knows Astoria Greengrass,” Hermione said slowly. “Her sister, Daphne, is Head of the Department of Familial Law and Children’s Services.” Hermione flipped through some papers. “This kind of application would otherwise take months to go through officially. Though I’m not surprised that she intervened if Ginny mentioned anything about Malfoy. Daphne’s husband is one of the people chiefly responsible for refusing the Malfoys’ appeals to have the Manor returned to them.”

Hermione went on as she often did but Harry absorbed pieces of the information as she did. His mind was racing and his breathing was shallow. Why was Astoria Greengrass’ name flaring red in Harry’s mind?

He thought hard and fast as Hermione flipped through more pages. Astoria Greengrass, Astoria Greengrass…

Then it hit Harry. Hadn’t Draco mentioned something about how his parents had tried to arrange a marriage between him and Astoria Greengrass? Before he found Aurora and decided to marry her instead?

He had said that Astoria bore him an unusually powerful grudge that had burned bright enough within her to bring her to join the Quidditch League as reserve Seeker for the Catapults, which would ensure her a position on the team if ever Draco failed to play in a match and missed a Snitch.

Which was almost guaranteed given the attacks on Draco lately… and the clause Aurora had put in Draco’s contract.

Harry’s heart was beating dangerously against his chest as he gripped his wand and stared into the void that opened in the wall next to him. It pulled at his soul just as it always did, but this time, as Harry stared into the depths, he saw a flash of white-blond hair and pale skin. Then a flash of green light hit his eyes and blinded him briefly.

Harry was grasping at fragments that he knew formed the right picture but they were all slipping out of his reach and scattering across the void.

“I have to go,” Harry said suddenly. He turned. “Someone kidnapped Scorpius Malfoy and I know who did it.” He rushed from the room before they could say otherwise. “I just don’t know how to tell myself the answer.”

+++++

There was more darkness than there had ever been. The shadows moved and danced before him but there was no warmth of a flickering fire to feign their music. There was cold. So much cold.

It seeped within his body and settled in his bones, chilling him to the core and trying to crystallize his soul. He had felt this cold many times before. Too many times. He had never wanted to feel it again.

It was the creeping cold of Death and eternity, threatening him with every condensing breath, every foggy flicker, every painful memory. Draco scrambled to reinforce his mental barriers, to lock up his horrid memories and shield them with all of his power, but he was fighting in vain.

The cold could neither be contained, nor withheld. It would permeate his every fiber and destroy him from within. He knew it would.

But the memories did not flood his mind immediately. They did not but bubble and threaten to surface. Draco took a deep and rattling breath and wondered vaguely how one became a monster of Death, a soulless being who fed of misery.

”Crucio!”

Then there was pain. A blinding, white-hot agony pressed itself to the sinuous threads of his nerves and set him on fire with the cold. The cold intensified to burn. A contradiction in terms. The worst of all pain imaginable.

Draco could feel himself screaming, he could feel the scrape of air on the back of his throat as he shrieked from the agony that coursed through him and rocked his mind. He just couldn’t quite hear it. Not in himself. He heard a distant and hollow sound. It echoed.

There was stone and damp around him. There was cold iron at his wrists. He knew that. He could feel it. But he couldn’t feel it either. The pain was too much and too little.

Draco was only under the surface of consciousness.

Then the pain ebbed but the cold remained and it took Draco a few minutes to realize that there was no reason to scream anymore.

“Ennervate,” a voice told him coldly. It was familiar. So familiar. He hated the familiarity. He hated the voice. He wanted it to disappear. He wanted it to fade forever.

But then his eyes were open and he could feel things more acutely. He knew where he was and he did not want to be there. But he did. He needed to be. He was here for a reason, wasn’t he?

Scorpius.

Draco cracked open his eyes and met more darkness. It was the kind of consuming, pregnant darkness that only Death and Dementors could bring. He knew they were here. He just didn’t know how many. They were too far from him still to make him relive his terrors, but close enough to freeze the air he breathed.

He let his eyes become accustomed to the shadow, as they were wont to do, and finally made out some familiar grey stone and a cement floor that he had hoped to scrub clean from memories. There were stains and dark spots on the floor. He shifted experimentally and felt the thick, cold shackles against his arms.

He was vaguely aware that he was shirtless. The Sectumsempra scar was cracked and pebbled with blood. He was sweating, despite the cold.

“You’re going to need to be awake for this,” the voice told him, sharp and hateful in tone. Draco lifted his head slowly, feeling as though it weighed a ton. His blond hair was disheveled and falling in matted locks around his eyes, blocking out a clear image of the attacker. “Where would the lesson be, otherwise?”

Draco tried to speak but only air escaped his lips. He groaned slightly and made little sound.

“Don’t talk, filth,” the voice ordered him angrily. “I have no use for your empty promises and pleadings. And I cannot be bewitched by your silver tongue. Your Dark Lord won’t save you now. I’m the only Judgment you are worthy of.”

Draco drew in a sharp breath but it was hampered by something. He thought his ribs might be broken.

“Where is my son?” Draco asked gruffly, his voice sounding unlike his own.

Pain laced through him again and he screamed, despite his inability to make much noise. It stopped quickly and he panted for breath and consciousness.

“I told you not to speak!” the voice cried. “Your disobedience earns you a taste of your own favourite curse. How does it feel, skullsucker, to be treated to your preferred form of torture? But you never meant it like I do. You didn’t have the courage to mean it like I do.”

“I don’t think I’m the one lacking courage, of the two of us,” Draco croaked, unable to stop himself. “I’m not the one attacking a restrained and unarmed man with delusions of grandeur, now, am I?”

“Silence!” the voice shrieked, sounding less and less human. Pain shot through Draco again and this time the ground opened up to pull at his soul. He cried out but his voice was lost into the void. “You are a liar, Draco Malfoy. A filthy liar. I’m going to make you finally pay your dues. I am the Justice the world has sought.”

“You are nothing more,” Draco rasped. “Than the madness that righteousness brings.”

Then there was only pain.

+++++

Harry nearly flew back to the lifts and down to the Atrium, seeking desperately a place where Apparition was possible. As soon as his feet reached the hall with the grand golden statue, Harry concentrated on Draco’s study and felt the Ministry of Magic disappearing around him, to be replaced with a room both painfully familiar and terrifyingly unknown.

He gasped, a pain shooting through his side as he Apparated with the corner of the desk pushing into his waist. He stumbled to the side and glanced around, clutching his side and looking for Draco.

There was no sign of him. Harry called out to the house but it echoed back with silence. Harry’s pulse raced as he took in the image of the room.

Everything was plastered with the letters from The Dementor’s Kiss. Every surface was covered with parchment and the ink glittered up at him in a dizzying swirl of threats and mad ramblings. Harry blinked away the confusion and called out to the only person he could think of.

“Inky!” he screamed. With a moment and a pop, the house-elf appeared before him, his wide eyes betraying Harry’s fears. “Master Draco isn’t here, is he?”

“N-no, Master Harry Potter, sir,” Inky said shakily, wringing his hands. “He is gone and Inky does not know where.”

Harry nodded and looked back around the room. He cursed himself. He knew that Draco wasn’t in his right mind when they left the Hogwarts grounds. He knew that he would do something stupid. He could tell by the way Draco pushed him away, by his coldness, by his… by everything, damn it.

“I shouldn’t have listened to him,” Harry scolded himself. He dragged his fingers through his hair and tried to calm his breathing. His knuckles were white around his wand. “I was too grateful for a chance to deal with my own problems… fuck.”

I’m a fucking wretched Auror.

Harry hated himself but forced himself to concentrate. He had no time. He needed to think and do it quickly. He picked up the most recent letter and looked at it again.

Astoria Greengrass was involved in this somehow… but he couldn’t quite figure out how. She had a grudge against Draco, which was enough to ensure that he never got Malfoy Manor back. But would she go as far as to hurt him?

But then, she couldn’t be the one responsible for it all, in the end. She was only a part. An accomplice.

Harry glanced through the letters. Astoria had no way of sabotaging Draco’s broom. Furthermore, why would Aurora do anything to benefit Astoria? Or why would Astoria work with Aurora (or Ophelia, or whoever she was) if Astoria’s begrudged Draco’s abandoning their marriage contract in order to marry Aurora.

Unless Astoria wasn’t angry with Draco for that, but had a grudge against him before the marriage business even began.

But then who sabotaged the broom? And who kidnapped Scorpius? How could Astoria have taken Scorpius? She would have no way to get onto Hogwarts grounds, would she?

And something Ron said still irked Harry. Why was Dean even involved? Surely it wasn’t only because of Ginny. Surely he wasn’t just doing this to help Ginny exact revenge on Harry for a momentary hurt, for the stupid things he might have said in a fit of anger…

The letter in Harry’s hand burned as he thought and then something hit him.

“I’m here representing the sponsor for the game. How do you think you get your broomsticks free of charge?”

Who sponsored the Quidditch matches?

Firebolt.

The broomstick company sponsored the games and provided the brooms for the players. Dean worked for Firebolt. He would have known that Draco had had problems with his delivery and the quality of his broom. He would have known that Draco had been forced to order a broom specially made. It would have been custom made. Outside of a batch. All alone.

Delivered specifically to Draco.

If Dean worked for the company it would have been easy enough for him to mess with the fundamental spells of the broom before it was polished and finished. He would know all the intimate details of the spellwork associated to the Firebolt broomsticks, wouldn’t he?

And Dean would have easily been able to make his way onto Hogwarts grounds if he went with Ginny. Even without her. He could pretend he was visiting Neville. And if Dean purchased a boatload of Recorder Quills from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes no one would think it odd. Dean was dating Ginny. Ron and George would never even consider him.

Then, there was the most telling detail.

Dean was held captive at Malfoy Manor during the war. He only escaped because I saved him.

Harry shivered, consumed by a chill that threatened to freeze his blood and stop his heart. It wasn’t possible. Dean was his friend, once. Dean had been his roommate at school. He was a good man, wasn’t he? He was always around people who had known him for years. He was…

Never the same after the war.

But then, no one had been the same after the war, had they? Harry sure hadn’t been. They had all been changed. Everyone suffered and everyone had to grow and deal with what happened.

But, maybe Dean never did. He’s been acting off lately. Even Ron noticed.

But he must have been planning and working at this for years.

Harry thought back and remembered the crazed look in Dean’s eyes when he had been restrained on the Fourth Floor of St Mungo’s. Spell Damage. He had been tortured at Malfoy Manor, that was clear. And he had been attacked with all manner of Dark curses during the last battle.

The Healers had never figured out just how many and what they all were.

Harry’s breathing was ragged and his eyes were wide. He looked around at the letters in front of him. He knew that Draco found something in these letters that must have lead him to go after Dean himself. Whether or not Draco knew it was Dean was something Harry couldn’t tell.

But Dean had not taken Draco from Star’s Fall. The wards would have shown it. There would have been alarms.

Harry stared at the last letter and tried to remember what it was Ron had said about the quills weeks ago. He had let the knowledge pass to the back of his mind in favour of understanding the meaning of the treats better. There was so much, so many letters, so many threats, so much anger and hatred.

Dean is really threatening children, now? Harry shut his eyes. And punishing me and my kids because he thinks I’ve been tainted by Draco.

Harry opened his eyes again and pushed the panic away. He needed to focus.

He focused on the lettering of the writing, rather than the words themselves. It was sharp and jagged, but blocky in places. It was angry writing and it was rushed. It was spontaneous and vengeful. The ink was black, unlike all the other letters. It was scratchy and the paper was blotted in several places. This letter was unclean. It was stained and tainted with malice.

And it was cold. There was a quality to the ‘p’s and ‘t’s that reminded Harry of icicles. Or stalactites. Then he noticed the way the ‘o’s looped together, as though chained.

The quill mimics the surroundings in its scrawl.

It was a dungeon. Somewhere with shackles. Somewhere cold, dark, damp.

Harry’s pupils contracted and he gasped. He dropped the letter and held out his wand.

Of course. Where else would Dean take Draco to torture him but the place where he believes Draco tortured him?

Deciding that it was not a good idea to Apparate directly into the cellar itself, Harry focused on a pair of iron gates that only showed up in his nightmares, and watched as Malfoy Manor appeared before his eyes.

He stepped through the gates as he had done when the Snatchers pulled him through, and almost immediately stopped dead. There was a very familiar animal staring at him from the middle of the path. The shaggy black fur of the massive dog fell around its muzzle and barely shaded its fiery green eyes.

But this time, Harry could take no comfort in the sight. This dog was most certainly not Sirius.

“The Grim.”

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A/N: So I think there should only be...mm... three... MAYBE four more chapters of this before the end. I THINK. We'll see how it goes :) I hope you enjoyed this part! the figuring everything out and... yeah. All that. XD I was so scared of giving it away too early. I hope you don't think I'm mad, lol. LOVE you all for your reviews! Thank you and I will provide more sooner I hope this time around. School and life are getting in the way *shakes fist* But fret not. I will perservere. :D

*love and hugs to all*