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Tender Vengeance Part V
Tender Vengeance Part V -

Disclaimer: Harry Potter (the boy-wizard, as opposed to the Harry Potter, Sr. and Jr. of Troll infamy fame) and the other denizens/artifacts/spells/etc. of the Wizarding and Muggle worlds are the creations of J.K. Rowling. No profit is made from this work, which is intended as a commentary on the original, not as a derivative work. No infringement on the rights of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Publishing, et al is intended. To the extent permissible by law, I retain the rights to my language/text/story.

Pairing: HG/DM References to GW/V, GW/HP and HG/RW
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Non-con, violence, language
Genres: Angst, Romance, Drama, Smut
Spoilers: Through HBP

Tender Vengeance
Part V- Plans
by
Margot Le Faye


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Molly Weasley had been sitting in front of her family clock, staring fixedly at the hand bearing Ginny’s name, for more than forty-eight hours without food or sleep when Arthur finally slipped a draught of Dreamless Sleep past her guard. She hadn’t been willing to take it. Arthur’s insistence that she would be no good to the girls when they needed her--because they would be rescued, and they would need her--unless she took care of herself carried no weight with her. Rational arguments meant nothing in the face of the desperate belief that so long as she kept watching that hand on the clock, it would not change from its current designation of Captured, would not move back to Mortal Peril, or further to some other, even more fearful, reading on the dial. She could not think of sleep while in the grip of the insidious, unreasoning terror that failing in her vigil, taking her eyes off that precious hand for a single moment, would see her daughter lost to her forever. Molly would have continued sitting at the kitchen table, staring at that hand on the clock, if Arthur hadn’t resorted to drastic measures, drugging the tea he set in front of her, determined not to lose his wife, as well as his daughter.

Molly, then, was safely tucked up in bed when Harry and Ron Apparated into the kitchen at the Burrow, to find an exhausted Arthur ignoring his own advice, not sleeping, but staying up to go over another useless report on Death Eater activity, trying to find any clue that might help him recover his daughter and Hermione.

“What’s happened?” Arthur said by way of greeting, instantly alert, reaching for his wand. There was no reason why either boy would Apparate to the Burrow in the middle of the night unless something had, indeed, happened.

“Voldemort sent us a message,” Harry said grimly. “About the girls.”

“They’re not...” Arthur, wand slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers, couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, voice his deepest fear.

“He’s got them with him, wherever he’s gone to earth,” Harry said, dropping wearily into a chair at the table near the older man, Ron taking one on his father’s other side.

“Is he demanding you surrender to him in exchange for their freedom?” Arthur asked, sitting up as, one anxiety laid to rest, another rose before him. He leant toward Harry intently. “You know you can’t--”

“It’s not that, Dad,” Ron said miserably. “He. . . the bastard’s performed some sort of ceremony, claims Ginny’s his...his wife..”

Arthur stared at his son in horror, his face graying, aging before their eyes. “Wife?” he finally choked out “Oh, sweet Merlin.” His gaze was drawn to the clock, understanding, now, why Ginny was no longer in Mortal Peril. “The ruddy bastard! What does he want with my baby girl?” His voice broke on the last words, and it seemed, for a moment, that he would weep.

Harry swallowed hard, forcing back his own tears of grief, knowing that what Voldemort wanted with Ginny was to torment Harry, himself. That, if only he hadn’t been so selfish as to think he could have a normal relationship, if he had never acted on his desire for Ron’s sister, Ginny would be sleeping in her own bed upstairs, even now. . .safe as houses. . .

“He wants what he’s always wanted,” Ron said fiercely. “Power over the entire Wizarding world, and to torture his enemies. Anyone who stands against him--which is every Weasley worth the name--is in danger, and will be until we’ve got him sorted. And we will, Dad. We’ll sort the ruddy bastard and we’ll get Ginny and Hermione back.”

“Hermione,” Arthur Weasley shook himself, as if trying to clear his head of the horrible images the news had brought to him. “She’s alive, as well?”

“She’s been given to Draco Malfoy as a reward for his part in killing Dumbledore,” Harry said stiffly.

“Merlin,” Arthur shuddered. “What sort of cur has that whelp turned into that he could take an innocent girl as a reward?”

“It’s not like that,” Ron said grudgingly. “I think he’s trying to protect her.”

“Protect her?” the elder Weasley asked. “How could you possibly know that?” He stared at the boys as a suspicion dawned. “Exactly what sort of message did Voldemort send you?”

They told Arthur about the public post owl and it’s two little vials of memories. Arthur was furious at the chance they’d taken, using the Pensieve without first having the memories checked by someone from the Order. Neither Harry nor Ron apologized. Arthur tried to persuade them not to be so cavalier with any future messages, but received no promise in return. And, the boys flat-out refused to let anyone else look at the memories they’d been shown.

“There are no damned clues, Dad,” Ron finally exploded. “You think I wasn’t looking for heraldic symbols, tapestries, bits of art, or, hell, just really weird pieces of furniture, anything that might help us find them? But the place is nothing but a pile of plain gray stone, with blank walls and undistinguished furnishings, and there’s nothing to show you which of a million old and abandoned stone castles in the world they’re hiding in. Just that there was a great hall, that Voldemort’s got Ginny in one room and Draco’s got Hermione in another, and that Draco’s got his own bathroom, with modern, if old fashioned, plumbing. That narrow it down for you?”

It didn’t, of course, though Arthur insisted that there might be some clue in the surroundings which Harry and Ron were too emotionally involved to miss.

“There isn’t, Mr. Weasley,” Harry said tiredly, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to overcome his exhaustion. “There’s nothing in the memories that we can use. Did you think he’d be that careless? There’s just. . .intimate details of what’s happening to them that neither girl will thank you for making public.”

“I don’t want to make them public,” Arthur said, voice thick with horror at the thought of the kinds of intimate details the memories contained. “I just want someone who can be objective about all this to see if there’s something in those memories that can help us suss out where the girls are being held.” He looked at the two younger men, realized from the mutinous expressions that they were having none of it. He tried a final time. “Just one person. Moody. You know that if there are clues to be found, he’s the man to find them. And you know he won’t....he will respect their privacy about...” His voice trailed off.

Ron and Harry exchanged a glance over Arthur’s head. Ron gave a brief, sharp nod.

“All right,” Harry said. “Moody, and only Moody, yeah?”

“I’ll floo him now,” Arthur said, getting up to do so. As soon as he’d left the kitchen, Ron turned to his friend.

“I saw your face when Dad asked what he wants with Ginny,” he said bluntly. “You’ve got to stop it, Harry. You can’t blame yourself for what the old bastard’s done.”

“Can’t I, though?” Harry returned bitterly. “Going to tell me he didn’t go after the girls because they’re important to me?”

“No, I’m not,” Ron surprised him. “Of course that’s why he went after them, in particular. But that’s his fault, his evil, not yours.”

“And I’m the one who knew he was evil, who knew he’d just come after anyone important to me--”

“Yeah, well, that’s why you broke up with my sister, isn’t it? Because you wanted to protect her. But here’s the thing, mate,” Ron told him, “there is only one way you really can protect her. We’ve got to finish what we’ve started.” He glanced toward the living room, making sure his father wasn’t about to return, lowered his voice. “We stick to the plan, yeah? Go back to Hogwarts, find the Horcruxes, destroy ‘em, make him vulnerable. And then we go after him, put paid to him for good and all. But if you keep beating yourself up over what he’s done, then you might as well just walk away from the fight, because you’ll defeat yourself before he has to lift a finger, let alone raise a wand.”

“Right easy, that,” Harry scoffed. “Just how do I make myself stop thinking about her, about what he’s doing to her, and how it’s all my fault?”

“Same way I do about Hermione,” Ron told him. “Every minute, I fight it back. And then I fight the next minute. Until I’ve got a clear space to think and I can move on to what has to be done.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Harry asked wryly, not entirely convinced.

“It works,” Ron insisted. “Bit at a time. Takes practice though. You might want to get started.” There was no guile in the blue eyes meeting his own. Ron was not simply trying to buck up his best friend’s spirits. The older boy was struggling with what had happened the same way Harry was. The only things to be seen in Ron Weasley’s eyes were loyalty, steadfast determination, and grim purpose. He was giving Harry the best advice he could.

Advice he should take, Harry realized. He’d have to practice putting Ginny out of his mind, moment by moment, so that he could focus on accomplishing the tasks that would see Ginny safe. There wasn’t any other choice.

“Might at that,” he admitted, finally.

“Good man,” Ron said with a wry smile.

Arthur returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, a grim Alastor Moody trailing behind, ready to try his hand at identifying the castle where the girls were being held. But in the event, not even Moody could share the memories Ron and Harry had been given. The memories themselves would not allow it.

“Dark Arts?” Ron sighed, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against a wall, watching Moody’s fourth attempt to view the contents of the Pensieve be repelled by some force that would not let him get near enough the magical item to fall into the memories. The four had returned to Grimmauld Place, leaving a hastily summoned Fred and George to watch over the sleeping Molly Weasley. “Guess we should have figured he’d protect them with something like that.”

“Then why didn’t our revealing spell show it?” Harry, standing at Ron’s side, wondered uneasily.

“Because not all magic the Dark Lord commands is, in and of itself, dark,” Moody told them, as he waved his wand at the Pensieve, and studied the patterns of colored light that appeared around it. “This is merely a privacy spell, though a very intricate one, interwoven with a few other things, none of them particularly dark, all of them ensuring that only the ones for whom the messages were intended are able to see them.” The colored patterns glowed brightly for a few moments more, then faded away. Moody shook his head, and turned back to the others.

“You’re damned fools to have looked at those memories without calling the Order first,” Moody said, bending a disapproving glare Harry’s way.

“We cast a revealing spell, should’ve sprung any traps,” Harry said coolly.

“Oh, and you know all the ways to put traps on a message like that?” Moody demanded.

“Now, Alastor--” Arthur began, but Harry was tired of letting others speak for him.

“I know enough,” he told them, pulling his weary body upright, staring the old Auror down. “I may not have done my seventh year, may not have passed my NEWTS or trained as an Auror, but if you think I’ve spent the months since Dumbledore’s murder larking about for the summer hols, think again. I’ve had Ron and Hermione with me, and you won’t find anyone better at researching spells, or teaching them, than Hermione. I knew what to do with those bottles.”

“You knew what spell to cast,” Moody allowed. “But you didn’t have the sense to call for support. Just in case there were new traps, new charms or hexes, that your damned reveal spell hadn’t caught.”

“Ron was here,” Harry said, unmoved. “He’s all the support I need.”

“So, not just a damned fool, but a damned arrogant fool,” Moody nodded.

“For the love of Merlin, Alastor,” Arthur began again. “This isn’t helping. They’re seventeen, adults. Little as either of us like it, they have the right to take their own risks. Instead of harping on them about what they should have done, why don’t you show them something to help them if this happens again?”

“If this happens again, they’d be wise to call us before opening any more bottles,” Moody insisted.

Harry merely shrugged. “Might not be time,” he said simply.

Moody shook his head. “Damned arrogant, idiotic fools. But you’re seventeen, and I can’t force you to do the smart thing. All right, Potter, show me the revealing spell you used.”

Harry complied, waving his wand in the intricate motion, reciting the complex incantation, Hermione had taught him. Moody’s brows rose in unwilling admiration.

“Quite the clever witch, is Miss Granger,” he said finally. “That’s a pretty piece of work. Let me see it again.”

Eventually, Moody reluctantly admitted that Hermione’s revealing spell was incredibly comprehensive, and ought to spring just about any sort of curse lain on the memories. But while it was a strong protection, it wasn’t infallible and opening those bottles had still been a risky undertaking. It proved impossible to extract a promise from either boy to avoid such messages in future, despite Moody’s arguments and Arthur’s best attempts at persuasion. Finally Moody fell silent for a few moments, frowning in thought. They had moved downstairs to the kitchen, were drinking rapidly cooling cups of tea while Arthur made another effort to make the boys see reason.

“Of course it’s dangerous!” Ron finally exploded. “We’re bloody fighting Voldemort! But it’s only going to get more dangerous if we stop, and I, for one, am not going to overlook any advantage we can find. He wants to send these things to torment us? Fine. At least we know the girls are alive, that we have more reason to fight than ever.”

“Just because those memories weren’t cursed, doesn’t mean others won’t be,” Arthur said, as he had been saying for hours. “He may be trying to lull you, sending painful, but harmless, memories until he sends something that’s not so harmless.”

“You can’t think we’ll let up our precautions, though,” Harry pointed out.

“The question is and has been, are the precautions you are taking enough?” Moody said. “You know our opinion, you’ve made yours clear, and we’re none of us convincing the others. The only thing left, it seems to me, is to teach you better precautions.”

Dead silence greeted that pronouncement, then, “You know, you might have saved us three hours of arguments if you’d said that right off,” Ron informed him dryly.

“Do you think I’m going to simply teach you another spell?” Moody said softly, one eye glittering coldly while the other whirled. “Some special incantation? Hand you a device that will spring traps? Do you honestly think, if there were something easy I could have given you, I wouldn’t have done, right off?”

“Then, if you aren’t going to teach us new magic, what’s this precaution you’re on about?” Harry asked.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to teach you,” Moody informed him. “But it’s old, not new. Very old, and very difficult to work. Let’s see how well-prepared you are for your NEWT year. What d’ye know about Avalon, and deep magic?”

Had the question been posed by Professor Binns in the History of Magic courses, Hermione’s arm would have shot straight up. She would have said that deep magic was the art of Avalon, ancient and arcane, and difficult to work. It wasn’t as simple as casting a spell or brewing a potion, but involved time and care, use of various elements and complex rituals. Magic, like science or technology, or civilization itself, had evolved from its ancient roots, each century’s magecraft building on the work of the century before. Some basic spells remained unchanged, but others became streamlined, refined, improved. And certain old, old magics, languished, forgotten by all but the small scholarly community that remained at Avalon, where those ancient magics had enjoyed their first fierce flowering, nearly fifteen hundred years before.

Alastor Moody now disclosed to the fascinated boys that he had been admitted to that community, had lived there for several years, and had learned to master certain of those ancient arts which he now proposed to teach them.

“So, what is it about these ancient arts that are going to help where modern spells won’t?” Harry asked.

“They’ll work because Voldemort won’t be expecting them, and because he won’t have the time to break them,” Moody explained. “The ancient protections aren’t as simple as casting a spell to build a ward, or finding a counterspell to demolish the ward, the way we do now. We’re going to do something more cumbersome. More permanent.”

“Permanent?”

“I want you to dedicate a room to building a protective circle, ideally one made from a thin band of pure silver. The room will need to be cleared out, ritually purified, the circle will have to be built with care, it’s protective properties re-invoked before each use, and rescinded after. It won’t be easy to build, and it won’t be quick. But once you’re inside it, it should be safe enough to look at whatever other memories you’re sent. It should be safe from just about anything Voldemort can fling at you. Even hold off a few dementors, though it won’t scatter them the way a Patronus will.”

“How long will it take to build something like that?” Harry said.

“Clearing a room and cleaning it...well, pick something small. A day or two? If there’s paper on the walls, it’ll have to come off. You want to get down to the wood, and cover it over with paint, white paint, mixed with St. John’s Wort for protection. But, before you paint it, we’ll need to purify it. Clean, purify, paint, purify again, and hang the lot with protective herbs, inside and out. Then you can build your circle. Hardest part will be working the silver,” Moody said. The boys exchanged startled glances. “Yes,” Moody chuckled sourly, “You’ll have to work it yourselves, if you’re the ones it’s protecting. Figure a week, ten days.”

“No point, then,” Ron said. “We’re going back to Hogwarts. We’d only have the use of the thing for a few days before we had to leave.”

“No point building it here,” Harry said thoughtfully. “Might be plenty of point building it at Hogwarts.”

“Ah,” Moody said. “That’s an idea. Though it does present problems.”

“You can’t think Minerva will object to the boys building a circle of protection within the school?” Arthur said. “That old castle is full of secret rooms and passages. There’s bound to be one she can give them to use.”

“Oh, there are rooms aplenty they could use,” Moody agreed, “and I’m sure Minerva would be happy to let them... provided what they’re doing won’t open up a weakness in Hogwarts’ own wards and defenses.”

“How could a protective circle do that?” Harry asked him.

“Ordinarily, it wouldn’t,” Moody said. “Because, ordinarily, you’d build a circle like this in a place you could Apparate to and from, freely, in any case, even if you’d warded it to keep others out. But Hogwarts is warded against Apparition by friend and foe alike, except when they lift the wards, in a limited fashion, for Apparition lessons. But your circle would override those wards, altogether, for the pair of you.”

“You mean, if we built it, Ron and I could Apparate from within it?”

“And back into it. Yes. And so could anyone you chose to take with you.”

“Dead useful, that,” Ron opined with a smirk to Harry.

“I could see why Minerva might be wary about something that would compromise the Apparition wards,” Arthur said. “Could the circle be subverted? Could someone else use it to get into the school?”

“Not if it’s done properly,” Moody said, and leant closer to the two boys. “And it will, by Merlin, be done properly.”

For the next several hours, they listened as Moody explained to them the ways of the deep magic of Avalon, learning what would be needed to build the protective circle within the school, trying to decide what might persuade Hogwarts new headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, to let them construct one there.

The material elements were simple enough to obtain. A few hundred galleons, which Harry could easily obtain from his vault in Gringotts, would purchase a bar of pure silver, one hundred troy ounces, which could be worked into a thin circle some ten feet in circumference. Apple wood and thyme for purification, St. John’s Wort, Rosemary, Dill Seed and Rowan wood for protection, were all easily and readily available at Diagon Alley.

Harder were the ways in which these material elements would be put to use. Moody explained the process by which the metal would need to be forged--the Room of Requirement would be needed, there--and described some of the runes that would have to be etched into the metal. Once that was done, there were more cleansing, purification and protection rituals and the herbs would be needed to perform them. The process was too long, too intricate, too delicate for the boys to have a hope of carrying it all out on their own. Moody would have to oversee their work, work which would be too time consuming to be completed once the school year started. In the end, it was agreed that Moody would visit Minerva as soon as the day was well begun, and get her to agree not only to the building of the circle, but to allowing Ron, Harry and Moody to come to Hogwarts immediately, that the work might be finished before the start of term.

There was much to plan, much to decided, there in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, as four tired wizards sat about a table in front of half-drunk cups of tea. None of them found their beds again before the last dew of morning had been burned away by the late summer sun.