herumtreiber

Title: The Privy Councilors 11/35
Chapter: Family trouble
Author:

herumtreiber
Genre: AU to HBP, romance, adventure
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or related characters. Nor do I make any money from the writing of these stories.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Epilogue compliant? No way!
Chapter length: ~4,148 words
Summary: Draco/Harry, Luna/Neville, Ron/Hermione, Narcissa/??? Harry is about to be sent to Azkaban. The story explores Wizengamot politics and the fight against evil Dumbledore - where he gets vanquished early and does not prattle on and on - but is he gone? Plus de-aging. Someone returns whose name begins with a S. (And my revenge on characters whose accents are hard to read – like Hagrid and Fleur ;-)

Table of contents

The book and its secrets

Some are like water
Some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later, they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young?
(Forever young, Alphaville)

Harry continued writing on the diary until he was interrupted by Narcissa, who came back.
"We need to get you out of here, Draco is coming back!"
"How do you know? Did you put a tracking charm on him?"

"Of course not, silly boy! Madame Malkin is a good friend of mine and was persuaded to let me know when Draco leaves her shop. Right now he is headed apparently to Fortescue's. If I know my son, we have some time before he gets back."

Narcissa wondered aloud, "Do you think Sirius will want to talk to me? I tried to speak with him after he got here, but he was angry with me and refused."

Harry acted as the go-between for the solid Black and the book Black. He wrote:

Sirius, do you want to talk to Narcissa? She's OK for being a Malfoy, and we had a great time shopping!

(Groans) Better you than me! OK, I'll talk or write to Cissa.

Harry handed over the book and the feather to Narcissa. She grabbed the feather, dipped it in ink and began writing tremulously.

Are you ok, Sirius?

Yes, I am, considering that I've been kidnapped, currently reside in the Manor and have to listen to the secrets of two teenage boys!

But how can you be kidnapped when you are a book, you can at most be book-napped!

Cissa, that wasn't funny (glares)!

So come out and fight, get your lazy self here and we will discuss this thoroughly, with hexes if you like. We're working on ways to get you back.

As you remember, we were discussing songs that came out while you were imprisoned.

(Grumbles) Falsely imprisoned!

Yes, falsely! At any rate, there was a great Disco revival from 1985 to 1990, one of the notable songs was a remake of Good times.

(Sigh). (Groans). That's awful! You know I don't like Disco music much. Is this true, Cissa, or are you trying to get a rise out of me (wink, wink)?

Only one way to find out, grouchy! Get yourself over here. You have two boys who need you.

Harry poked Narcissa gently, reminding her of the time. She wrote hurried goodbyes to Sirius and grabbed the diary and put it in its hiding place. She swished her wand and the diary disappeared. She made sure the ink container did not appear touched. She knew how Draco was an acute observer of the environment, and more if this boy was concerned.

She took the golden key and said to Harry, "I'll make sure the key goes where it should. Why Draco insists on riling Mathilda I will never know!

Harry replied, "She is a mean woman, she likes to provoke people and wants to lord it over them, even if she's dead."

Narcissa answered, "Wouldn't you be sour if you were cursed into having a face like a giant, when you had been very pretty? Some people were so incensed by her cutting remarks that they cursed her so, and she remained that way until death."

"See you around, Harry. Draco'll probably look for you in your room."

oOoOo

The situation at the Burrow was a little tense at the moment. Molly was in the kitchen, preparing tea. Her husband would probably just come to stay for a little while, because he had been elected Speaker for Magic in their reunion. Fortunately that title only lasted three months, not something durable, like Dumbledore would choose.

The living room held some threadbare furniture, but it was immaculately clean and well-cared for. The wood gleamed, the metal vases and handles of the drawers were shining magnificently. It could be easily deduced that a family of modest means lived there. It could also be sensed that a lot of love had been used to care for the room and its occupants. Charlie, Bill and his girlfriend Fleur, Ginny, Ron and Hermione and the Twins were sitting there. After some brief glares between Bill and Ron, discussion started on the safest subject: Quidditch. Ron was sanguine about the chances of the Cannons, especially now that he'd managed to convince the blond Slytherin to support them too.

Charlie was a bit out of the Quidditch loop, so the others filled him with information about their favorite teams and England's chances to win the World Cup.

Molly returned with the tea and it was duly served with the help of Ginny and Fleur.

Eventually Ron started the serious discussion. He explained that he had only pretended to dislike Harry so he could learn about the headmaster's machinations. Examining cold-bloodedly the facts of the case, there had only been one option to believe in: Harry had been framed, and by the most trusted individual in the world!

This man had sought to destroy Harry's spirits by showing him that all his friends distrusted and hated him. He cast spells that would cause people sympathetic to Harry to miss his trial.

In all of that, the headmaster had been enthusiastically supported by half his family. It pained him so much, that sometimes he thought about casting the ritual of Disownment on himself and choosing a new family name.

Molly and Bill gasped. Molly started crying, and Bill said, "What you say Ron, is true. I would like to offer my explanations, if I may."

"The last few days we have been subjected to the news of Dumbledore's web of corruption and deceit. It seemed that nothing was sacred to the man, not riches, nor life, nor death. But in the time leading to the trial we were not privy to that information."

"For us, Dumbledore was still the shining hero who conquered Grindelwald, the defender of the light and someone we could trust with our very lives. Indeed, many of us did that on a routine basis."

Ron countered, "But how could you trust him when he decided single-handedly to give Harry to some Muggles to raise? Didn't that ring any bells in you, Mother? Year after year Harry faced the most insurmountable odds in Hogwarts, didn't you wonder why this was allowed to happen, Charlie?"

"I know you didn't become friends with Harry until later, but weren't you even a little worried about Dumbledore's stupid orders to the Order, his policy of no letters and his decision to sequester Harry in Privet Drive?"

Charlie replied, a little angered, "Dumbledore made a good case when he pointed out that Harry was acting like a loose cannon, going where he willed. It was time he learned to dominate his impulses or we would be in a lot of trouble!"

Fred glared at his older brother and answered curtly, "I hate it to break it to you, Charles, but the Wizarding World is not arranged like one of your bucolic and idyllic Dragon preserves in Romania. What is needed is not brainless obedience to stupid rules, but imaginative thinking and attention to people!"

Not to be outdone, George glared at Bill, "And the world does not revolve around the principles of Gringott's, Bill! While you are in utter thrall to the goblins, there might come a moment when even they want you to seize the moment and do something on your own. Harry does this, and has saved scores of people with this gift. If you don't believe me, you can consult your girlfriend. He saved Gabrielle, Fleur's sister, during the Triwizard Tournament."

The snide voice of Ginny interrupted with, "He didn't. Gabrielle would have been picked up eventually by the staff!"

Hermione replied smugly, "Just shows how little you really know, Ginny! Given all that we know of the man, do you think that even for a moment he cared enough for the people to have a contingency plan? Probably it would fit his schemes very well if someone died and Harry felt responsible. It would be a huge step for his faux-prophecy thing or his need to break Harry."

Ron turned to Ginny with a saddened look in his eyes, "Your attitude makes me sad, Ginny. After all, it was you who Harry rescued from the Chamber. If he hadn't, you would be dead and we'd have gotten Voldemort some years before. You should have remembered this and worked for his release. You would not have been alone. As it is, you might end up alone if you keep going in this manner."

Molly went to the kitchen to get more tea and called Bill, Charlie and Ginny to her. Eventually, she said, "Can you come here and give me a hand, Ron and Fred?"

The two Weasleys went to the kitchen, as they opened the door, Fred could see a pale hand, not moving, near the floor. He took out his wand and motioned for Ron to do the same.

They stood in the doorway and observed a scene of mayhem and confusion. Bill, Charlie and Ginny were reclining in the chairs, obviously unconscious or dead, while Molly prepared to go after them.

They hastily made their way out of the room. Ron cast a spell to prohibit movement out of the room, the spell also slowed time within the room. Ron could not forget the scene inside, the bodies of his siblings. His mother standing there, utterly cold. He could not, he would not believe that any of them were dead, until he absolutely had to.

And Ron the strategic thinker came to the fore, and he knew what he had to do. He ordered the Twins to stand guard and not let anyone in or out of the Burrow. He apprised them of his mother's apparent attack. Then he and Hermione left.

oOoOo

Harry made it to his room safely and was putting on his silk pajamas, courtesy of Narcissa, when someone knocked on the door.

Smiling to himself, Harry opened the door and beheld a grumbling Draco, flicking his wand lazily to order the movement of many cloaks using Mobilicorpus.

Draco entered, sent the clothes to the closet, and sauntered up to Harry. Suddenly Harry felt a little exposed, being here in his pajamas and Draco dressed completely.
Draco smirked and had that disturbing glint in his eyes, which Harry realized with a shudder, he had also seen from time to time in Sirius, damn grey eyes!

Draco asked innocently, "Could you levitate that small box from my bag and unshrink it? You will find the other cloaks you wanted there."

Harry prepared to do just that when he realized he didn't have his invisible wand. He must have left it in Draco's room!
Draco continued sounding menacing and amused at the same time, "Or are you looking for this, Harry?" He shoved what was the wand into Harry's fingers.

Harry gulped, pouting wouldn't help here.

Draco continued, "I know you were intrigued by the book, Harry, and I wanted to tell you, but he didn't. In fact, he came up with a lot of abstruse reasons involving a quest, and growing wisdom, and other vapors of Gryffindor's thinking. He even threatened me with a prank if I spilled the secret unasked! Now, I am as courageous as every Gryffindor." Draco glared and continued. "Though some doubt it, but a prank by him could be awful."

"But you didn't have to skulk to my room and prance around like a small deer, Harry. I will be avenged!"

Draco walked up to Harry, grabbed him by his lapels, and gave him a resounding kiss. Harry resisted the first milliseconds, but soon surrendered to the heat of the sensations running through him. He was about to open his mouth and invite that entrancing tongue inside, when he heard a sound like apparition.

Ron and Hermione took the news of Draco snogging their best friend seemingly nonchalantly. Inwardly, Hermione was kicking herself, 'This is awful. It's exactly what I want them to do but I interrupt them. If it were a Quidditch game it would be like I put one of those balls with the weird name, Waffle or something, into the wrong post. Hermione 1, Seekers 1.''

Ron immediately started explaining, "Sorry to interrupt, but I need your help. We were having a discussion at the Burrow, when mom called Bill, Charlie and Ginny, then she called Fred and me. We had time to see that our brothers and sister were thrown haphazardly into chairs, maybe victims of hexes or something. Mom looked so cold and forbidding, we left and I sealed the door and slowed time inside to keep anyone in. Fred and George are doing sentry duty at the Burrow, I went to get reinforcements, you."

Draco took out a small flat case and started punching on it. Soon a tone was heard and a sleepy Blaise asked what was up. Draco ordered him to come to Harry's room as soon as possible, meaning right now. He also called Pansy and invited her on an adventure. Finally he called Neville. When Neville intimated that Luna was there, Draco basically asked him to bring her too.

Hermione and Harry were flabbergasted, they couldn't speak. It was Ron, in his steady way, who asked the penetrating question, "That functions like a fellytone, did you just use a fellytone in the Manor?"

Draco replied seemingly angered, "It's not a fellytone, Weasley, it's a telephone! How many times must I repeat that before you finally understand?"

Ron glared at Draco and the blond was content. For the moment at least, the red-head would not sink into despair at the thought that half of his family might have been murdered.

Draco continued, "It's a portable telephone. It's a celluling phone. It can function in the Manor because it's being powered by a special kind of battery that can withstand the effects of magic. Also the main elements are carefully insulated from any magical contact. There are relatively few of these devices, Ron, so that's why you haven't seen one."

Suddenly there were multiple apparition sounds and Harry was concerned that maybe they were under attack by the Death Eaters and the wards had failed, when he recognized Neville, Luna, Blaise and Pansy.

Remus and Tonks had just returned from their movie expedition. They'd gone to a cinema in London that specialized in older films. They had seen a film about space aliens.

Admittedly Tonks had not appreciated Remus guffawing and saying that the alien looked like a flobberworm. Still, they had a good time.

They entered the Manor, still holding hands. Remus observed, "Something's off. I feel Harry is concerned, I feel a lot of them are worried upstairs. We have to get there." Remus started running and transformed into a wolf in mid-stride, who could run rings around the old Remus. Tonks just watched disconsolately as the wolf ran away. She continued running and promised the wolf a good kick when she caught up with him.

In the room, they had all been acquainted with the situation and were prepared to apparate, following the instructions of Ron, when they heard strong knocking at the door. Harry opened it and found Remus there. Tonks was just arriving, glaring at Remus.

Harry invited them in. Remus explained that he felt their anxiety in the air. They told Remus the reason and he agreed to go with them.

They Apparated to the Burrow, first Ron and Hermione, who did the needed ritual to open the wards. After checking for the Twins and finding them in commanding positions overlooking the entrance, they awaited the second wave.

Harry and Draco apparated in, followed by Neville and Luna. Blaise and Pansy were next, and at last, Remus and Tonks showed up.

Harry, Draco and Remus stormed the kitchen. They were unnerved to find the unmoving Weasleys amd Harry cast Stupefy on Mrs. Weasley, Draco checked the bodies and found them in good health, they had only been stupified and told so to the others.

Remus couldn't see anything, but he could sense something. A shadowy presence, a whisper of a doubt. His sense of smell told him there was someone else still in the room, and he pounced. He wished for claws, got them and used them to rip apart an invisibility cloak in front of him, he grasped the man's arms, and started to cut into them.

Draco said, "What are you doing here, Avery?"

McNair replied, "Shut up, you traitor! The Master will get you in the end!"

Draco took out a bottle of Veritaserum he had hastily grabbed at the Manor, and gave McNair the needed three drops. Then he asked, "Why are you here?"

"We are here to show the Wizarding people that no one is safe. Their Speaker for Magic would come here and be killed, along with his family, for daring to oppose our Lord. It was easy to use the Imperio on the woman and force her to stupefy her children. We would do it with all of them until the man showed up, and then we'd kill them all."

"How many are with you?"

"5 more, including the leader."

"Who is the leader?"

"I can't say."

"Where are the other ones?"

"In the shed."

The Twins and the Slytherin and Gryffindor-Ravenclaw couples went to the shed.
Blaise was grumbling moodily to himself when he was whacked by Pansy, who said, "Cheer up, Blaise! Soon it will be over and you can go back to your beauty sleep."
Neville was walking warily ahead, when he asked Luna if she sensed something unusual. She replied, "There's a high concentration of snorkack pheromones, also the presence of something very malign and old, and finally some glundings are present."

Neville knew he would repent of asking the question, but he wanted to know, "What is a glunding?"
Luna replied eerily, her voice held commanding confidence, "A glunding is an essential being of the Universe. It can be any species, what it must do is observe, see. These are true Seers, not like the ones you are familiar with who talk about prophecies. This beings See and watch and feel, and their presence confirms the Universe. The Muggles have arrived at some snippets of this information in their Quantum theories."

Finally, they decided to storm the shed. Neville blew up the door and the other three immediately charged in. The Death Eaters defended themselves ferociously, using Dark curses. Pansy used one herself to sever the leg of one of her assailants, while surprisingly, sweet Luna used a fearsome curse on the other Death Eater attacking Pansy and caused him to lose his head.

The remaining two miscreants, watching how fiercely the new attackers reacted, decided to surrender then and there.

Remus walked through the Burrow, he felt the presence of all these smells, he could identify much of the sources, except one, that kept teasing his mind. An old scent, that he hadn't smelled in years. He hesitated a little opening the door of Percy's room, and thus was unable to see the figure of a phoenix as it burned and disappeared completely, he just had a few of the after-images, without grasping what had caused them. He mused that the assailants seemed to know entirely too much about the Burrow and its daily life. Still he felt he was poised on a revelation when…

"Remus, there you are!" A visibly enlightened Tonks said. "We captured all the miscreants. All the Weasleys are fine, but this attack is unsettling."

In the living room, the rescue party and the Weasleys were trying to calm down. Suddenly a ringing tone had them all scrambling for cover until Draco sheepishly took out his cell phone and answered his call, the elder Weasleys glared at him, and Ron and Hermione glared in retaliation at Bill and Charlie. Ginny was suspiciously silent.

Mrs. Weasley had observed Draco, and although he remained outwardly the Slytherin Prince, she had seen how worried he had been about Ron and Hermione, and ultimately all of them. Ron had confided in her about the fellytone thing, and though she didn't understand it, she felt that it had been used to protect her and her family. It was high time to let the past go.

It was Draco's mother who called, she had been apprised of the attack.

Narcissa peremptorily suggested, more like ordered, that the Weasleys could make their abode in Diamond Manor, a property belonging to the Blacks which was situated 20 miles north of York.

Draco told Ron and Hermione and the Twins about his mother's offering. They agreed immediately and put the idea to the other Weasleys.

At first Bill and Charlie didn't want to go to a property controlled by Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, whereupon Ron lost his patience and nearly shouting, said, "Draco helped me a lot in order to rescue you. Without him it's very probable that one of us would be dead. So how is it possible that the fact that his last name is Malfoy changes completely this contribution? Really, you have to start operating at least with a mental age of 17 years."

Ron also knew how to engage his mother's attention. He mentioned that the property, Diamond Manor, belonged to the Blacks and had been left uninhabited for 10 years, so surely they would need to face the herculean task of making it livable, helped by some house-elves.

Mrs. Weasley looked at them with hope, Hermione frowned, disturbed about the apparent elf-slavery.

After being chastised by their younger brother, the older siblings finally agreed and Draco made the arrangements to transport them to Diamond Manor. He also prevailed on Remus to send a Patronus message to Arthur indicating the change in plans, so the Speaker for Magic wouldn't go to a possible Death Eater trap.

Draco had Kreacher apparate himself and Draco to the Diamond Manor, where he noticed the coordinates and just grabbed several books. He made the portkeys with the same password: Constance . Draco made sure that there was enough food and shelter at the Manor, he told the house-elves about the Weasleys and what to expect. Then he apparated to the Manor and gave the portkeys to the Weasleys.

Finally, after a trying day, they made their way to the Malfoy Manor. They were ready to go to their rooms when Hermione asked, uncharacteristically timid, "Can I use your phone, Draco?"
Draco replied, "Sure Hermione, here it is."

He took out his phone, flipped it with panache and put it on her palm. Hermione soon got the hang of it and used it to call her parents. She told them that she missed Crookshanks now and asked them if they could please take him to the Leaky Cauldron and she'd be there at 10 to pick him up.

Hermione quickly bade them goodbye and went to her room. The three males went to Harry's room, to see the piece of paper where Harry had written his bet.
As was to be expected, he had won the bet. Where Draco opined that Hermione would call for Crookshanks very soon, and Ron thought she would endure weeks, Harry had been right, to the day.

What had Ron and Draco sputtering and glaring balefully at Harry were the conditions of the bet, which were nothing too imposing, in Harry's opinion. At any rate, they would soon grow weary of giving him such malevolent stares.

When Ron challenged Draco to a game of chess, Harry was secretly relieved. Surely the lofty atmosphere of chess would soothe their egos.

After some time, Harry noticed with chagrin that the redhead and the blond seemed to be following a particular brand of chess, where it didn't matter how many pieces you had, but how many pieces you destroyed. They were muttering, "Take that, Potter-bishop, yeah, hack off his arm!" and "Down with Harry-rook, make him suffer, yes I want to see that smirk off his face!"

Harry couldn't believe that the intellectual, haughty atmosphere of chess had been reduced to such an unwholesome and thuggish outlook!

Consequences - II