Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.

Chapter Eleven

Impetus

Part A 

It was the sound of voices that attracted Draco to the sliver of light shining through the crack in the study’s door.

His father stood in front of the elaborately carved wooden cabinet that he kept all of his most expensive beverages; firelight gleamed off of rows of glass decanters, some of the liquids within as dark and thick as spilt blood and others, a rich light gold. Lucius pulled out a crystal decanter carved with a delicate ivy pattern and a pair of short, fat glasses with a matching detail of vines. They went onto the table with a muffled thump and then another man came into the view from the crack of the door.

Huge and daunting, Connor Blackwood, or Uncle Connor as Draco had known him in his early years, towered over even his father’s impressive height and seemed even more colossal by the breadth of his shoulders. Wizards were not generally a very tall race of people, valuing power, swiftness of thought and skill more so than strength or height. Most wizards and witches were less than 5’9, save for a few of the pureblooded families like his own, the Blacks or God help him, the Weasleys.

“I had the most unpleasant encounter in Diagon Alley the other day,” his father announced, settling back in his chair.

Blackwood chuckled a he poured himself a glass of Lucius’ finest whiskey. “Really?” he drawled. “Was it as bad as the Weasley incident in the bookstore last year? Aren’t you a little old for fisticuffs, Lucius?”

Draco muffled a snicker.

“Oh do shut-up,” his father replied, glowering at Blackwood through a curtain of fair hair.

“I keep hearing you described as this calm, collected individual, cool-headed in the face of perilous situations and I go, ‘That’s not the Lucius I know’,” Blackwood replied teasingly. “Sometimes I wonder if it was I who should have been the Slytherin and you the Gryffindor considering that temper of yours.”

“Ah, but therein lies the difference. I am capable of controlling my temper whereas you…”

“All in fair play, old friend. All in fair play,” Blackwood said with a smile. “What was this ‘unpleasant encounter’ about?”

Lucius knocked back the rest of the whiskey in his glass and leant forward, arms braced on his knees, eyes pensive and distant. He spoke finally, voice just as far away as his eyes.  “He was young, I’ll give you that. But I am sure he was much older than he appeared. It was only for a moment, one bare, pale second, but the last time I tasted magic like that was over fifteen years ago when the Dark Lord tried to summon a demon of the Old World.”

The Ministry agent’s face drew tight and worried. “You never told me about that,” he said softly.

“That’s because it ended horribly. Fourteen of us dead or worse and it seemed like a hole had opened in the universe. The demon was almost through when it collapsed; it looked at me, past where the Dark Lord had fallen to the ground, and saw me, saw all of me, my magic, my mind, everything I’d done. And the air around me grew faces of dead things and they whispered, so hungry, so violent that I was afraid to breathe because they would slip inside me and tear me apart. The air was so full of dark magic I could feel it like knives on my skin and I thought I would choke on the smell of death. Sometimes even now, I look at shadows and wonder if there’s something staring back at me.”

“Merlin,” Blackwood breathed, looking more than a little staggered by his revelation. Draco had only heard vague references to demons before; they were considered to be a fairy tale at best by most of the wizarding world.

Lucius smiled grimly. “The follies of youth, I suppose.”

Blackwood exhaled and set his tumbler down with a solid thunk on the table. “Let me guess. That young man in the Alley: nineteen, green eyes, black hair, pale skin, looked like some pretty boy whore’s get.”

“Crude, but succinct,” Lucius replied dryly.

“I think you’ve had the dubious pleasure of encountering the latest Sharr Lord.”

Lucius’ hand seized and his glass shattered on the floor. “I… wasn’t aware they were still alive,” he said blithely as if the luxurious Persian carpet at his feet wasn’t covered in broken crystal. “When did this one turn up?”

“That’s a very good question,” Conner said, cleaning up the remains of the glass with a flick of his wand and conjuring Lucius a new glass. The heavy quartz tumbler wasn’t the same quality as his father’s original glass, but conjured objects were funny like that. “Apparently he’s been under George’s command since the beginning,” the man continued.

“George Pryce? He was the one who started the Special Forces program, yes?” At Black wood’s nod of confirmation, his mouth tightened visibly. “Do you think Sharr was Pryce’s pet project?”

Blackwood laughed and the sound was cruel and insinuating. “Amongst other things, probably.”

Lucius smiled. “He does have a fairly interesting background. His mother was Dark Veela?” At Connor’s nod he continued. “Is Sharr one of Lilith’s Brood or is he a common parasite?”

“We don’t know,” Blackwood said, lifting his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “There are no records of him actually Changing. He might not be able to at all.”

“You never can tell with half-breeds. It certainly explains why he was assigned to the ‘Potter’ job if he couldn’t. Can you imagine the havoc a half-Dark Veela could wreck at Hogwarts? Let alone an awakened one,” murmured Lucius, a thin smile crossing his face.

“Ha! Glad I’m not there anymore. I’m just not sure of what I think about Shorner. He’s never been a big player in anybody’s game. In fact, that’s half the reason why he got the job as Head of Experimental Magics. He was busy doing his own thing and running the department. A bit of a loner, really. Or at least that’s what I thought,” he said.

Lucius leaned over and topped up his glass, amber liquid gleaming in the firelight. “How long do you think they’ve known each other?”

Connor snorted humourlessly, setting the glass down with a muffled thunk against the solid oak table. “Before today I didn’t even know Hadrian Sharr existed – let alone that he’s friends with Shorner. I thought we had…” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if to ward off a headache. “…just some random lunatic pinging the alarms. Turns out we actually have a Sharr Lord on our hands. Isn’t this bloody wonderful?”

Blackwood shook his head, a soft exhale of laughter escaping him. “Shorner began working for the DoM at nineteen and just out of school, so he’s been there about eighteen years. Sharr, on the other hand, was fifteen when the Dark Lord fell. He entered the program about two years later when Shorner became Head of Experimental Magics.”

The pale haired pureblood’s eyes widened incredulously. “Fifteen?” he breathed. “A bit more believable than a baby, but fifteen? Sweet Merlin, what did he have to sacrifice for that?”

“His sister apparently, whom you know of as the late Lily Potter,” Connor said dryly. “James Potter married up from his station. Isn’t that a laughable irony?”

“I never saw any of that in her; she covered it too well. We always thought she was just another Muggleborn at Hogwarts. After I left school and fell in with the Dark Lord, well, I didn’t hear much about her until the Potter child was born. Or was that a hoax as well?”

Blackwood shrugged. “Sharr claims Harry Potter to have been his nephew. The child allegedly died that night, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have secreted the kid away to keep him safe – this is becoming increasingly convoluted! Where does Sharr end and the truth begin?”

Lucius’ mouth curled into a shadow of his usual smirk. “Truth is often the first casualty in war.”

“Funny you should say that.”

“Oh?” his father replied, a pale eyebrow climbing towards his hairline.

“Sharr also claims that he and his sister only defeated the Dark Lord. He said, ‘My sister and I banished Voldemort back to his souly bits, but we didn’t kill him.’ Not sure what you’ll make of that, but I have the uncomfortable feeling that the Dark Lord is not as gone as we hoped.”

Lucius’ hand spasmed again, but this time he managed not to drop the glass. “No,” he said, the word barely more than an exhale. “No.”

The larger man fixed him with a steady look, taking the glass from Lucius’ shaking hands. “You know I never agreed with your decision to join the Dark Lord. For someone who fanatically believes in the purity of blood, you were surprisingly ready to cast aside your pride and kiss the feet of a half-blood. You know good and well what the Dark Lord was before he gained power.”

His father bowed his head, pale hair hiding his features from view and Draco felt an unusual pang or concern for his father’s well-being. “I cannot put my family through that again. Draco was barely two years old when He fell. At this age, I would be commanded to groom my son for recruitment. I cannot, will not do that to him. Draco deserves to grow-up free of His influence. As much as it disappoints me to say this, he is the kind of person who would be grossly warped by the Dark Lord rather than made stronger because of his experiences.”

The hot bite of shame bubbled in Draco’s stomach. Was he not powerful enough to please his father?

Blackwood was talking again. “…perhaps Sharr could take care of the problem for you.”

“Trade one dark lord for another?” his father replied scornfully. “Mayhap I’ll be lucky and they’ll kill each other off.”

The Ministry agent laughed. “Yes! And I could move Shorner into a little dead-end office where he can happily tinker away the rest of his days and be a thorn in my side no more.”

His father snorted inelegantly. “Your grasp of the dramatic is paltry at best, my friend. I’m grateful you didn’t pursue theatre. I’d hate to see a man of your size in that ridiculous getup.” Lucius tossed back the last of his whiskey, fair hair flying back. “How did Shorner even get involved in this particular mess?” he drawled, a hint of the heavy liquor roughing his voice.

“He made this big stink about Potter and Sharr being the same person. Kind of sloppy if you ask me,” Blackwood rejoined.

Lucius’ eyebrows rose. “He might not have known. They could very easily have lost touch with each other.”

Connor chuckled, dark and weary. “How? The two of them are as thick as thieves. It worries me though. Shorner never makes mistakes, not heavy-handed moves like that.”

“It could be a ploy. You’ve told me many times that Special Forces is rough on the operatives. The average life span of a field agent is what, three, maybe four years? Sharr’s made an eleven year career out of this; Shorner has probably been helping him this entire time.”

Blackwood leaned forward, tracing his lower lip with his index finger – a curious gesture of deep contemplation. “I thought of that.” He stood pacing towards the large picture window. “If it is a ploy then what do they want? Money? Power? Revenge?” He shook his head. “But I can’t find anything wrong with their story or Sharr’s files as suspicious as it all seems. Sharr was… is supposed to be the bait in a one man trap to capture and kill Death Eaters.”

“Sharr Lords are noted for being mavericks.” Lucius chuckled and crossed his ankles on the low-lying table. “I suppose when he starts doing things that actually make sense we should truly be worried.”

Blackwood said nothing, a giant black shadow outlined in moonlight and fire looming in the window frame.

“Connor?”

“Sharr took out La Muerte over a month back,” he said turning from the window, an unpleasant smile gracing his features. “I hear they’re still finding pieces of him and a few hundred of his friends in the surrounding jungle.”

Lucius’ eyes went comically wide. “Sweet Morgana, no!” He stood and paced in front of the fireplace. “How many people were on his team?” he asked, unusually harried.

“Just him. Apparently, it was on Pryce’s last orders, but the way the necromancer was executed smacks of revenge. Hadrian Sharr is an arrogant bastard, but he seems a cold and calculating one. If he’s making a move now…” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I’m not comfortable with this. I don’t know what he wants or what he’s going to do next. And I haven’t the foggiest idea of how the hell I’m going to deal with him and Shorner,” he said joining Lucius in front of the fireplace.

“I would recommend stepping very carefully around Sharr. You don’t want him going to ground again or we’ll never find him. Shorner is our leverage against that and we don’t want to provoke either of them. My… encounter has left me rather leery of Sharr and his magic. There are few I would put up against him and bet on coming out alive in a fair fight. If what Sharr claims is true, there’s a good reason why he won against the Dark Lord. The Sharr Family is rumoured to be the mortal offspring of a dead god. There is much we don’t know about the Old World outside of myth and fanciful stories.”

Draco could recognize a dismissal when he heard one. Scrambling back from the door, he tip-toed down the corridor to around the corner. When the hiss and whoosh of the Floo sounded he walked calmly back to his father’s office and tapped on the door.

His father’s voice, tired and wan, drifted through the door. “Come in, Draco.”

He winced. Not as subtle as he thought. Draco pushed open the door and stopped short at the sight of his father slumped in the chair, looking far older than his thirty-nine years and like the world had been ripped from under his feet. “Father?”

Lucius didn’t reply. If Draco hadn’t known better he would have said his father was shell-shocked. “Sir?” he asked again, coming further into the study. “Dad?” he said softly, grasping his father’s hand.

Perhaps it was the crude honorific that did the trick and perhaps it hadn’t even registered, but his father blinked and smiled, turning grey-blue eyes upon his own similar ones. “Draco,” he said tones warm and fond. “Never doubt how proud I am of you. I simply wish…” He trailed off.

“Wish what, Father?” Draco prodded enquiringly.

“Many things, Draco. I wish I had taught you patience instead of ambition.” His gaze took on the glazed look of seeing through someone without actually looking at them. “But mostly,” he paused and sighed. “I do so wish you had made friends with Potter instead of driving him away.”

Draco tilted his head to the side in a silent question. When his father didn’t continued, he decided to boldly plunge ahead. “Is it because the Sharr Lord is working with Harry Potter?”

Lucius’ eyes cleared and focused, a smirk gracing his lips. “Partially,” he replied, taking a moment to glance at the clock over Draco’s shoulder. “It’s late. You should get some rest.”

“Yes sir.” Draco rose from his crouch in front of his father’s chair and walked towards the door, robes whispering as they brushed against the study’s furnishings.

“Draco.” His father’s voice didn’t grow louder, but it seemed to fill the study with sound. He glanced back at Lucius, now sitting straight in his chair.

“Sir?”

“Under no circumstances are you to provoke Potter.”

Draco bowed his head, mind overflowing with unanswered questions and information that led nowhere at all. “Yes Father.”

---

Perhaps May Sarton said it best: Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed.

Platform nine and three quarters was just as soggy as the rest of London, but it didn’t hold quite the same level of “Wet”, “Grey” and “Miserable” as the Muggle part of the city. Maybe it was vibrant red steam engine with its smoky plumage. Maybe it was the candy-coloured wizarding robes and the brilliant haze of magic floating through the air. Or maybe it was the children. Harry hadn’t seen this large of a group of children together since Voldemort stormed Hogwarts.

He stumbled through the crowd feeling drunk and stupefied by the sheer amount of people crammed into one small space, leaving him gawking like a goddamned tourist of all things. ‘Like you’ve never seen a witch wearing an orange-feathered tutu with sherbet striped tights.’ 

No, wait! Harry looked again.

Was that even a witch? He shuddered. “This many wizards in one place trying to out-Muggle each other and it’s like the fucking Love Parade has come to town,” Harry muttered to himself. One of the passing sixth year girls heard him and laughed. He remembered himself in time and managed to suppress the leer and smiled bashfully instead.

‘Down boy. Shy and insecure, remember?’ He ducked his head down and shuffled off towards the gaggle of redheads by the train, trying vainly to ignore the gleeful repetition of Jailbait! Jailbait! his mind kept crowing at him.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley seemed to be looking over their shoulders for something, but the children were keeping it together well-enough to have some fun. Harry eased his way over to them as much as he could in his “Potter shuffle” as he’d dubbed the slow, ungainly shamble.

It was heartbreaking to see them all alive and well.

Fred was bent nearly double, whimpering with the sort of helpless laughter that screwed up blood flow and coherent thought.

“…See, now. Mine’s longer than yours.” Ron declared waving his wand around under George’s nose.

George snickered. “You know, it’s not the size of the wand that counts,”

“It’s where you get to put it,” Fred finished, beginning to wheeze for breath.

Ron, by this time, had begun to turn a brilliant shade of tomato and Hermione was holding both hands over her mouth, eyes the size of dinner plates. She seemed a strange combination of both shocked and amused, like she couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of their mouths.

Harry grinned. “Or where you don’t depending on how cheesy your pick-up line is.”

Heads swivelled to stare incredulously at him and Harry didn’t have to fake a blush.

“Hey,” he said softly, looking down at his feet.

Then Hermione’s weight hit him like a train and nearly bore him down. A high-pitched ringing in his ears told him that the young witch was squealing in delight. Harry struggled with shock, her warm weight feeling like a particularly vivid dream, one he would wake from to real world of blood, tears and madness. When it came down to it, Harry had gotten used to hurting. It was just something that was there; he accepted it, he moved on. He’d become so used to carrying a burden that when was finally gone, Harry didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He blinked back the wetness in his eyes, something raw in his throat and it felt suspiciously like a sob.

‘I think I’m going to pass out.’

No.

Not here.

Not now.

Not after he’d been through all of that and worse. He wrenched himself away from the memories and managed to hug Hermione back.

“Damn, it’s good to see you guys,” Harry murmured, voice gone husky and thick with repressed emotion. “How have you been?”

Fred whistled slowly. “You got big on us, mate. What have they been feeding you?”

Harry blinked then frowned. “You didn’t expect me to stay a midget forever, did you?” he replied indignantly.

Hermione gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Don’t mind them. They’ve been winding everyone up today.”

“Ron too, apparently.”

She smiled, a glimmer of humour sparking in her expression. “He did set himself up for that one.”

Harry stifled a laugh as Ron whirled on them. “What’s this? Pick on Ron Day?”

‘It should be difficult being around them,’ Harry thought as Ron and Hermione harped at each other. It should have, but it wasn’t. He should be feeling disconnected from them, feeling anguished, feeling lost. But mostly, he just felt content.

This was enough. Just looking at their faces and hearing their voices was enough to silence the thin cry of misery inside himself that he had long given up appeasing.

‘Archie was onto something when he said “absolution”.’

Mrs. Weasley came up and enfolded him in a hug. “How are you doing, dear? You were looking a bit peaky there for a minute.”

Molly Weasley, mother that she was, keenly picked up on his suffering with the kind of pinpoint accuracy that scared him. This woman could pick apart his Potter guise with almost no trouble at all; she’d known him before the whole time-travel gig. Any inconsistencies would be instantly spotted. Harry immediately felt guilty though, for regarding her with such callous consideration.

“I’m alright, Mrs. Weasley. Just a little tired. This summer was far more interesting than I liked,” he replied with a soft smile.

A motherly look lit her face, one Harry remembered from the orphaned children she’d taken in once the war got underway and she briefly touched his cheek. “My, you are growing so tall.” She smiled and Harry could see the faint touch of nostalgia in her expression. Then Ginny drew her away and Fred and George sidled up beside him.

“We had a hectic time trying to get everyone out of the Leaky Cauldron this morning,” George muttered to him.

Fred snorted. “It probably didn’t help that Percy was going off the deep end on us on top of trying to keep Hermione’s new pet from attacking Ron’s ankles.”

Harry could feel the smile creeping its way onto his face “Uh-oh. What’s this?”

“Well, it’s a scraggly looking thing. And we’re not quite sure,” Fred began.

“But it’s either a very small lion or a something that got dipped into one Snape’s potions experiments,” said George, voice gone dry with sarcasm.

Fred looked thoughtful. “Sorta looks like it got bashed in the face with something as a kitten.”

Harry laughed. Crookshanks wasn’t winning any beauty prize contests anytime soon.

“And that’s not all,” Ron said, coming up on Harry’s other side. “That mad cat of hers went dashing across the table and managed to spill tea all over Percy’s picture of Penelope Clearwater. You know, his girlfriend? Thought he would go into fits.”

He frowned, not being able to bring up a clear picture of the girl in question. “Penelope? I know this person, I know I do. She’s a Ravenclaw, right? Long, curly brown hair, very leggy, very curvy?”

“That’s the one,” Fred chirped merrily.

Oh. Yeah. That one. Ahhh, many a pleasant teenaged fantasy spawned from her. “Wow, not bad, Perce, not bad at all.”

George guffawed. “Seems wee Harry started growing in more ways than one.”

Hermione rolled her eyes as she came up beside them. “Oh come off it. He didn’t say anything you weren’t already thinking anyways.”

“But that isn’t the point, Hermione,”

“We’re supposed to take the mickey out of him,”

“Rites of Passage and all.”

Her hands went to her hips. “So that thing with Percy this morning, you hiding his Head Boy badge, that was just a rite of passage too?”

“We didn’t hide it from him,”

“We only borrowed it,” George finished, an unholy light of glee gleaming in his eyes.

“They changed it to say ‘Bighead Boy’ last night. Percy hasn’t found a way to spell it back yet,” Ron whispered to him, mindful of his father and the owner of said badge talking intently not four feet away. Harry made a quick note of how harried Mr. Weasley appeared and caught enough of the conversation to know he was asking Percy to “…keep an eye on Harry. Make sure he doesn’t go off alone or…” Ron dragged him back into the other conversation before he could finish reading their lips. “’Course I don’t feel bad for him and all. Not when he’s been so insufferable this summer.”

Harry’s teeth ground together involuntarily. Percy stalking him would throw a cramp in his plans. ‘Fucking hell, man! Gimme a break! God save me from people who think they’re doing me a favour.’ 

“Hate to see what he’ll be like at Hogwarts,” Harry said, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione rolled her eyes again; he got the feeling she’d been doing that a lot in his absence. “He’s not that bad. To hear these two jokers go on about it, you’d think he was some kind of tyrant. They even tried locking him in a pyramid to get rid of him.”

‘Can’t fault them for a crime of opportunity. I’m all out of convenient pyramids to leave the pompous asshole in.’

“We didn’t lock him in there, we just shut the door,” retorted George.

Fred nodded. “Bill would have found him eventually.”

Ron laughed uproariously, voice cracking and squeaking in the middle, initiating a whole new round of teasing.

Mr. Weasley tapped Harry on the shoulder, seeming oddly nervous for such a well-balanced person.

This time around, Harry could pick out the lines of tension around his mouth and eyes, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and a barely noticeable tremor in his hands. His Godfather’s escape had not been kind to Mr. Weasley. “Harry, if I could have a word with you?” he said, jerking his head towards the shadows of a support column.

“Of course,” Harry replied, following the older man. ‘Ah, I remember this.’

“I need to tell you something before you leave for Hogwarts.” Mr. Weasley took off his Muggle cap and made a few half-hearted attempts at starting a conversation. Harry let him fumble about for a bit before taking pity on him.

“Is this about Sirius Black,” he inquired.

Mr. Weasley looked surprised. “Yes, how… How did you know?”

Harry smiled despite himself. “I had the opportunity to meet him this summer.”

The Weasley patriarch’s mouth flopped open like a fish’s.

‘Dance fast, Harry.’ 

He continued. “I mean, I was alright, a group of Ministry wizards got to me before he could.”

“Aurors?” Mr. Weasley queried, looking a little less pole-axed.

“No,” Harry replied, shaking his head. “They weren’t dressed like any Aurors I know of. They wore a black uniform with a blue stripe down the side – kind of like Muggle soldiers actually.”

“Good Lord!” the red haired man breathed, brown eyes gone wide and shocked.

Harry tried not to take too much amusement from the situation. “Oh, I’m fine,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and smiling sheepishly. “One of them took me to a safe-house in London before moving me to Germany, somewhere tropical and then I think the States. It was a lot of fun other than, you know, not having a whole lot of people to talk to.”

A loud whistle sounded and people started loading onto the train.

“Gotta run,” Harry said to Mr. Weasley.

The man gathered up his composure and nodded, patting Harry on the shoulder. “Off you go now.”

Harry dashed over to where Ron was holding the door open for him and jumped in. As the two of them waved to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, a small twinge of guilt started in his heart before Harry ruthlessly shoved it away. If anyone in the Order had the clearance needed to acquire his new and improved files, Shorner would confirm his story as the proprietor of Harry Potter’s folder.

Luck, as he had found, was a combination of opportunity and preparedness. After the last ten hellish years of his life, Harry was prepared for just about anything. Opportunity was just how he interpreted his present situation.