A/N – Chapter 13 here, dragged out of me with much blood, sweat and cursing. I had a serious case of writer’s block.
Thanks to all who have reviewed.
Disclaimer – I don’t own any of the canon characters or concepts. I’m making no profit from this. Don’t sue. Euan Abercrombie is a canon character. He was sorted into Gryffindor in OotP.
Chapter 13
Just after one, the impromptu council of war broke for lunch, and Ginny headed to the shop down the road to fetch some food. Higgins, catching Draco’s nod, followed after her, leaving Neville alone with him in the conference room, as no doubt he had intended it all along. Something about the assumption of such easy authority irked Neville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Malfoy?” he demanded.
Draco sat slouched in his chair, hands shoved insolently into the pockets of his robe. He regarded Neville’s show of spirit with interest. “You know, if you’d shown this much backbone at Hogwarts, Longbottom, you’d have fared much better.”
“You mean you’d have stopped bullying me?” Neville sneered. “That’s right; you always went for the weak and the vulnerable, didn’t you? You never bothered anyone who could fight back.”
Draco nodded, smiling congenially. “Exactly. If you’d shown the smallest sign of backbone, I might have left you alone.”
Neville turned on him, hardly believing what he had just heard. “You made my life a living hell,” he breathed incredulously.
“You allowed me to,” Draco retorted.
There was an odd, half-beat of silence. Neville reached out and grabbed the back of a chair, glad of its support –
“Don’t twist it ‘round, you bastard!” he shouted, incensed and unsteady and quite thoroughly shaken. “Hogwarts, last night; you can’t just whitewash it like that.”
“Whitewash what?” Ginny repeated cheerfully, carrying in a brown paper shopping bag. “What happened last night?”
Draco turned to Neville and raised an ironic brow. Neville wondered if he would ever have the courage to call Malfoy’s bluff.
“Oh,” he said, “nothing too important.” He’d always been a miserable liar.
Unfortunately for them both, Ginny was no fool. She may not have questioned Draco’s word that he had not harmed Neville earlier this morning, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t had her own doubts –
She had no illusions about her former lover.
“Draco?” she asked pointedly, no longer cheerful, no longer Ginny but Ginevra, the Auror.
Neville saw Draco recognize the shift, saw the crooked irony of his smile. “Are you sure you want to know, Ginny?”
As much as he wanted to see him groveling and forced to swallow his smug amusement, Neville could see disaster straight ahead, in the form of Ginny’s stubbornness and Draco’s pride. “Really, Ginny,” he intervened hastily, “it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Ginny eyed him incredulously. “Why are you protecting him? You can’t tell me that nothing happened here last night.”
Neville winced. “Ginny…” he said pleadingly. He avoided Draco’s gaze; the irony was too pointed, and the other man’s eyes would convey it all too clearly.
She turned her focus towards Draco, gave him a very long, very sober look. Neville didn’t see the way he responded to it, but he must have known better than to make light of her anger at a time like this.
They had been lovers for four years.
“Very well,” she said flatly. “Later. For now, we have Carlisle to worry about…”
*****************
It was dark now, the sun setting on the wild celebrations that eclipsed even the ecstatic extravagance that followed Voldemort’s first defeat in 1981. Ginny wandered away from the noise and the slightly hysterical laughter, seeking cool air, sanity, and Draco.
He’d been troubled when Moody and his handpicked team had dragged Lucius Malfoy in, filthy and bleeding, thoroughly bruised in a way that owed nothing to self-defense or the Auror Code, and everything to the infamous words that none of them had needed to worry about during the war –
Auror brutality. The hardliners scoffed and jeered at the term, deeming it left wing, bleeding heart liberalism; accountability had fallen by the wayside as the war escalated, and the Aurors and Unspeakables were granted more and more powers. Both sides committed acts that would be unforgivable in a saner world, by a public less terrified, or less vengeful.
Voldemort’s hatred and malice had poisoned their whole society. It had been more than forty years since he had begun to spread his doctrine, more than thirty since he had begun to act on it; it would take generations to heal, for the divisions and distrust to ease. But now that Voldemort was dead, they could begin. She and Draco, one of the most unlikely matches in a society known for its eccentricity, had already made a start at overcoming prejudice and hatred.
She heard Draco’s voice, and automatically walked towards it. The chaos of the first flush of celebrations had kept them apart, when they hadn’t had any time alone for almost three months. She missed him, missed his intelligence, his warmth, and his body…
“Are you afraid, Draco? Is that why you hesitate? Do not tell me that I have raised a coward…”
“Don’t bait me, Father. After all that I’ve done, for the Order, for us –“
“If you have worked so hard for House Malfoy, Draco, then why do you deny me this? You know what they will do to me.”
“I know that you deserve it.”
“Spare me the Gryffindor morality. The difference between good and evil is knife-blade thin, and entirely a matter of perspective; none of us, no matter what side we’re on, can claim lily-white hands.”
Lucius Malfoy’s voice was smooth, urbane and utterly reasonable. However, it did not seem to affect his son.
“Yet you dirtied yours deliberately, and wallowed in it. Don’t try to distract me with philosophy; you knew the penalty when you committed the crime. Why should you be treated any differently from every other Death Eater?”
“Because I am your father.”
There had been a long, long moment of silence, and then Draco spoke, as coolly and calmly as if he were discussing the weather, and if he had not just had a shattering confrontation with a father he had loved despite all his sins.
“Aveda Kedavra.”
There was a thunderous, ear-popping implosion of sound, a flash of green light, and the heavy, dull thump of a dead body hitting the ground. Ginny ran forward, panicked, to find Draco, wand extended, staring blankly at his father’s body slumped at his feet.
They stared at each other, unspeaking, for a very long time.
Then the Aurors came.
*****************************
Ron stood beside Tonks on the street outside Shadowlands. They were part of a larger task force of Aurors under Carlisle’s leadership, specifically formed for this one purpose – to bring down and destroy Draco Malfoy. Most of the Aurors on the team bore grudges against Malfoy – whether because he had actually harmed them, or because he was an aristocrat, or a pureblood, or a Slytherin, or a renegade Auror – and had been personally recruited for the job. He, himself, was a case in point; everyone knew that he’d hated the man for decades, and no one would be surprised if he took advantage of any opportunity offered to him to do Malfoy harm.
Normally, he would have jumped at it. However, there was the small matter of his sister. Despite what Carlisle and Tonks said about Draco’s ruthlessness – and he could well believe it – he could not bring himself to believe that Malfoy would ever hurt Ginny. He was perfectly willing to think the worst of him, but his imagination stuck on this one, single point.
Therefore, he could only wonder at Carlisle’s insistence that there was no other choice but to attack, and the Unspeakable’s willingness to sacrifice Ginny when she had been his main justification for this invasion. Ginny, and Neville, and the very thin, as yet unproven claim that Malfoy was laundering money, or holding Death Eater meetings, or else brainwashing important Ministers in preparation for another attempted revolution.
Ron was not a subtle man, but nor was he a stupid one. There were too many assumptions, too many generalizations, and not enough solid evidence. They had arrived at this point far too precipitously, swept away by Carlisle’s overwhelming determination and insistence on immediate, pre-emptive action.
“What the hell are we doing here, Tonks?” he asked quietly, watching Carlisle out of the corner of his eye as the older man strode up and down, possessed of a manic energy now that his goal was finally in sight.
“Carlisle’s bidding,” she answered dryly.
He grunted.
“And what is Carlisle doing here? Seems less like justice and more like revenge, to me.”
Suddenly, Tonks smiled, a genuine, unexpectedly warm smile. “You’re a good man, Ron Weasley.”
He was spared the need to reply by the timely arrival of the Ministry’s elite team of anti-terrorist special active service Aurors. They were dressed in treated black leather armour, each of them carrying two or three killing wands, authorized to kill on sight and take no prisoners – unless it be for interrogation. Once, Malfoy had been one of them, one of the most dangerous of them all, and what they thought about this business was anyone’s guess.
The squad leader listened for a while to Carlisle’s orders, saluted, and waved to his troops, ordering them into formation. He pulled out a black mask – disturbingly like the white Death Eater equivalents – but instead of drawing it on, effectively hiding his humanity, he came to stand by Ron and Tonks.
“You’re Tonks, aren’t you?” he asked without preamble. “Malfoy’s cousin.”
She eyed him warily. “For my sins, yes. Why?”
He held out his hand. “Euan Abercrombie. I served under him for three years, before the end.”
She did not take his hand. “Then that should make you all the more eager to bring him down, shouldn’t it? Wipe out the blot on your spotless record?”
There was nothing secretive or guarded about Euan Abercrombie’s face. He winced, and looked uncomfortable, actually looking over his shoulder to see if Carlisle was listening. “Yes. Right. The thing is, I just don’t believe that he would ever harm Ms Weasley.” He looked to Ron, nodded in acknowledgment. “For the last six months, after McCartney died, I was Malfoy’s second in command. He used to talk about her sometimes…” He trailed off, fidgeting awkwardly, and Ron wondered what Malfoy had seen in him to justify the promotion to his right hand position.
“Then why are you here?” he asked harshly. “Did you think you could stop Carlisle on your own?”
“No. But I won’t be on my own, will I? My men are loyal, and positioned at key strategic points. I only need to give the signal.” He looked at both of them, eyes straight and intent despite the remaining undercurrents of nervousness. Here it was, the steel that Malfoy demanded in every one of his followers since he’d ditched Crabbe and Goyle. Abercrombie was a hopeless conspirator, his face was hopelessly expressive, but when faced with direct, practical action there was no one more confident and assured.
“And what will persuade you to give the signal?” Tonks asked, not denying the implication that they were, indeed, willing to see Carlisle’s operation foiled.
“Reassurance that I’m doing the right thing. That the man I once knew hasn’t changed beyond all recognition.”
Tonks laughed harshly, and would have replied, but at that moment Carlisle applied the Sonorous charm to his voice and called out in a deep, booming voice, “Malfoy! Can you hear me?”
********************
The doors and all the windows but one were boarded up and reinforced with spells, and Kelly, Higgins, Longbottom and Ginny were at their posts and ready, leaving Draco himself to answer Carlisle and go through with this farce of a negotiation.
“I can hear you, Carlisle,” he shouted, his own voice amplified even though he doubted his ability to talk his way out of this situation. He merely wanted his words to be heard and witnessed.
“Let me speak to Ms. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom, Malfoy. At least let me know they’re alive and well; their families are worried about them.”
Draco sighed. He had known it would come to this. “Mr. Longbottom and Ms Weasley are here of their own free will. This is not a hostage situation, Carlisle.”
“Let me speak to them, then, so they can tell me so themselves.” Carlisle’s voice was rich, smooth and reasonable, and any attempts to thwart him would only be seen as shrill and petty. However, Draco was no stranger to such tactics, and only his father had ever been able to manipulate him in that way.
The difference between good and evil is knife-blade thin, and entirely a matter of perspective…
He had believed that, once. He believed it still. However, to those who had never balanced on that knife-blade, who had never fought for their lives and the lives of others in one of the darkest, dirtiest wars in wizarding history, Carlisle’s oratory would be all too persuasive.
Ginny’s face was flushed and angry. He knew that she hated being used; Carlisle had set her up in more ways than one. Neville merely looked dismayed, as if the full import of the situation had just dawned upon him. Draco looked at them, questioning; but Ginny shook her head.
“He will twist everything we say. Nothing will stop him storming this place; he only waits for the right cause and opportunity.”
Neville nodded. “Carlisle will claim that you coerced us into supporting you, or that we’re under Imperius.”
Draco shrugged. “At least say it once, in public, that you’re here of your own free will. It will be on record then, no matter how he twists it afterwards.”
Ginny’s expression was supremely skeptical, but she stood up and went to the window. Her hair was immediately recognized and there was a flurry of interest in the street below. She leaned out, careful not to create a target of herself so she could not be magically snatched from the building, and shouted out, “Carlisle, you bastard, why are you setting us up like this? You’ve been after Malfoy from the beginning; is there anything you won’t do to get him?”
On the other side of the room, Kelly laughed. “There’s a girl, Ms Weasley. Go straight for the throat.”
However, Carlisle did not look at all phased. His face assumed a sorrowful, nobly resigned look, and he called out to Draco now, not Ginny, “Is this what you have come to, Malfoy? Using an innocent woman as your unwilling puppet? After all that you’ve done to her in the past? You have truly fallen far from what you once were…”
Draco’s mouth tightened. Ginny looked at him and raised her brows; her expression said it all.
********************
“Carlisle, you bastard, why are you setting us up like this? You’ve been after Malfoy from the beginning; is there anything you won’t do to get him?”
Tonks laughed. “That sounds like Ginny. You know Carlisle came down hard on her for changing his first brilliant plan? I’m not surprised the bastard’s using her like this.”
Euan Abercrombie looked at her. “You think he is using her? Carlisle, I mean?”
“I know he is.” She shrugged. “I’ve seen his type before – they fixate on one Death Eater, one target, and won’t stop until they bring them down. Moody used to be like that with old Lucius. If Draco hadn’t killed him, Moody would have.”
Ron frowned. “Carlisle’s nowhere near as crazy as Moody.”
“No, he’s crazy in another way, a much less obvious one. Listen,” she said, lowering her voice and drawing closer to them both, “after he pulled this operation ready-made out of thin air and suppositions, I had a quick look at some of his sealed files. I’m no stranger to things that Dumbledore wouldn’t approve of, but some of the things the Ministry have so secretly hushed up for him…!”
“He gets the job done,” Abercrombie said heavily. “Ten years ago, that’s all that would have mattered. But these days…? The war is over.”
They heard Carlisle’s reply to Ginny’s attack. “…After all that you’ve done to her in the past? You have truly fallen far from what you once were…”
Abercrombie all but vibrated with fury. “What he once was? What does that spying, creeping bastard know about what Malfoy once was? I don’t remember him out there on the front line. All he did was lurk in the shadows, trolling for crumbs that he hoped would lead to arrests!”
Tonks coughed, but it was an accurate – if extremely simplistic – description of Carlisle’s duties. She wondered at what Malfoy had done to so secure this man’s loyalty. Then they stopped talking to listen to Draco’s next sally.
“What do you want, Carlisle?”
“What do I want?” came the reply. There was a disturbing note of triumph in Carlisle’s voice now, and he was having trouble holding onto the serious hostage-negotiator characterization. “I would like to see Ms. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom walk free of your evil influence. I would like to see your operations shut down once and for all. I would like to see you pay for your crimes, as you should have done ten years ago! I will see you pay, Malfoy; one way or another, you will pay for everything that you have done.”
Ron shifted uncomfortably. Even for him, Carlisle had sounded far too strident. “He’s gone mad,” he said under his breath. “There’s no way he can back down now.”
********************
After that outburst, there was no way either of them could back down. Draco knew it, and only put a seal on it with his next words. “I am not responsible for your sister’s death, Carlisle.”
Down in the streets below them, the listening crowd fell unnaturally silent as Carlisle stiffened and his face whitened. Here it was, exposed for all to see: the terribly private hatred and grief that had been festering inside the Unspeakable for years. Draco’s words stripped him of all protection, laid his soul bare and terribly vulnerable.
They had, all of them, reached the point of no return.
Hatred came to Carlisle’s rescue.
“Liar!” he shouted, abandoning all pretence. “You seek to turn me from my purpose but I will not be distracted!” He waved his hands at the Aurors surrounding Shadowlands, their wands at the ready. “Your time ends here and now. Attack him!”
The Aurors moved forward.
*********************
Euan Abercrombie gazed for a long time at Carlisle’s all-too-expressive face, and then up at the redbrick façade of Shadowlands, and the window from where Malfoy had spoken.
“Is it true?” he asked absently. “Is Carlisle doing this for his own sake?”
Tonks shrugged. “I don’t know.” She paused, and then spoke again. “Would it matter?”
The three of them stood in an isolated little circle of their own, a still spot in the river of Aurors moving forwards, preparing to storm the building and rescue Ginny Weasley and, of course, Longbottom. Euan wondered when it had become certain that Auror Weasley was an unwilling hostage – he wondered how Carlisle had managed to convince everyone who had ever seen those two together that Malfoy would harm her.
He remembered Commander Malfoy, the grim, sardonic leader who had taken him in hand when he’d first joined the active service units. He had never truly smiled, except for the very rare times when he saw his lover; no one, watching them, could ever believe that they were anything but happy together.
Tonks said that Auror Weasley had gone to Shadowlands without backup because she believed that Malfoy would never hurt her. Abercrombie, too, was willing to believe it…
“No,” he said roughly. “No, it wouldn’t matter at all.”
Trusting in a man he had once known, ten years ago, he gave the signal. His men were loyal – to him and to the memory of Malfoy – and stationed in key positions…
******************************
A/N – OK, no more foreplay. Next chapter is the showdown at Shadowlands – Malfoy vs. Carlisle. I hope that it won’t take me another four months.
Thanks to all who have reviewed.
Disclaimer – I don’t own any of the canon characters or concepts. I’m making no profit from this. Don’t sue. Euan Abercrombie is a canon character. He was sorted into Gryffindor in OotP.
Chapter 13
Just after one, the impromptu council of war broke for lunch, and Ginny headed to the shop down the road to fetch some food. Higgins, catching Draco’s nod, followed after her, leaving Neville alone with him in the conference room, as no doubt he had intended it all along. Something about the assumption of such easy authority irked Neville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Malfoy?” he demanded.
Draco sat slouched in his chair, hands shoved insolently into the pockets of his robe. He regarded Neville’s show of spirit with interest. “You know, if you’d shown this much backbone at Hogwarts, Longbottom, you’d have fared much better.”
“You mean you’d have stopped bullying me?” Neville sneered. “That’s right; you always went for the weak and the vulnerable, didn’t you? You never bothered anyone who could fight back.”
Draco nodded, smiling congenially. “Exactly. If you’d shown the smallest sign of backbone, I might have left you alone.”
Neville turned on him, hardly believing what he had just heard. “You made my life a living hell,” he breathed incredulously.
“You allowed me to,” Draco retorted.
There was an odd, half-beat of silence. Neville reached out and grabbed the back of a chair, glad of its support –
“Don’t twist it ‘round, you bastard!” he shouted, incensed and unsteady and quite thoroughly shaken. “Hogwarts, last night; you can’t just whitewash it like that.”
“Whitewash what?” Ginny repeated cheerfully, carrying in a brown paper shopping bag. “What happened last night?”
Draco turned to Neville and raised an ironic brow. Neville wondered if he would ever have the courage to call Malfoy’s bluff.
“Oh,” he said, “nothing too important.” He’d always been a miserable liar.
Unfortunately for them both, Ginny was no fool. She may not have questioned Draco’s word that he had not harmed Neville earlier this morning, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t had her own doubts –
She had no illusions about her former lover.
“Draco?” she asked pointedly, no longer cheerful, no longer Ginny but Ginevra, the Auror.
Neville saw Draco recognize the shift, saw the crooked irony of his smile. “Are you sure you want to know, Ginny?”
As much as he wanted to see him groveling and forced to swallow his smug amusement, Neville could see disaster straight ahead, in the form of Ginny’s stubbornness and Draco’s pride. “Really, Ginny,” he intervened hastily, “it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Ginny eyed him incredulously. “Why are you protecting him? You can’t tell me that nothing happened here last night.”
Neville winced. “Ginny…” he said pleadingly. He avoided Draco’s gaze; the irony was too pointed, and the other man’s eyes would convey it all too clearly.
She turned her focus towards Draco, gave him a very long, very sober look. Neville didn’t see the way he responded to it, but he must have known better than to make light of her anger at a time like this.
They had been lovers for four years.
“Very well,” she said flatly. “Later. For now, we have Carlisle to worry about…”
*****************
It was dark now, the sun setting on the wild celebrations that eclipsed even the ecstatic extravagance that followed Voldemort’s first defeat in 1981. Ginny wandered away from the noise and the slightly hysterical laughter, seeking cool air, sanity, and Draco.
He’d been troubled when Moody and his handpicked team had dragged Lucius Malfoy in, filthy and bleeding, thoroughly bruised in a way that owed nothing to self-defense or the Auror Code, and everything to the infamous words that none of them had needed to worry about during the war –
Auror brutality. The hardliners scoffed and jeered at the term, deeming it left wing, bleeding heart liberalism; accountability had fallen by the wayside as the war escalated, and the Aurors and Unspeakables were granted more and more powers. Both sides committed acts that would be unforgivable in a saner world, by a public less terrified, or less vengeful.
Voldemort’s hatred and malice had poisoned their whole society. It had been more than forty years since he had begun to spread his doctrine, more than thirty since he had begun to act on it; it would take generations to heal, for the divisions and distrust to ease. But now that Voldemort was dead, they could begin. She and Draco, one of the most unlikely matches in a society known for its eccentricity, had already made a start at overcoming prejudice and hatred.
She heard Draco’s voice, and automatically walked towards it. The chaos of the first flush of celebrations had kept them apart, when they hadn’t had any time alone for almost three months. She missed him, missed his intelligence, his warmth, and his body…
“Are you afraid, Draco? Is that why you hesitate? Do not tell me that I have raised a coward…”
“Don’t bait me, Father. After all that I’ve done, for the Order, for us –“
“If you have worked so hard for House Malfoy, Draco, then why do you deny me this? You know what they will do to me.”
“I know that you deserve it.”
“Spare me the Gryffindor morality. The difference between good and evil is knife-blade thin, and entirely a matter of perspective; none of us, no matter what side we’re on, can claim lily-white hands.”
Lucius Malfoy’s voice was smooth, urbane and utterly reasonable. However, it did not seem to affect his son.
“Yet you dirtied yours deliberately, and wallowed in it. Don’t try to distract me with philosophy; you knew the penalty when you committed the crime. Why should you be treated any differently from every other Death Eater?”
“Because I am your father.”
There had been a long, long moment of silence, and then Draco spoke, as coolly and calmly as if he were discussing the weather, and if he had not just had a shattering confrontation with a father he had loved despite all his sins.
“Aveda Kedavra.”
There was a thunderous, ear-popping implosion of sound, a flash of green light, and the heavy, dull thump of a dead body hitting the ground. Ginny ran forward, panicked, to find Draco, wand extended, staring blankly at his father’s body slumped at his feet.
They stared at each other, unspeaking, for a very long time.
Then the Aurors came.
*****************************
Ron stood beside Tonks on the street outside Shadowlands. They were part of a larger task force of Aurors under Carlisle’s leadership, specifically formed for this one purpose – to bring down and destroy Draco Malfoy. Most of the Aurors on the team bore grudges against Malfoy – whether because he had actually harmed them, or because he was an aristocrat, or a pureblood, or a Slytherin, or a renegade Auror – and had been personally recruited for the job. He, himself, was a case in point; everyone knew that he’d hated the man for decades, and no one would be surprised if he took advantage of any opportunity offered to him to do Malfoy harm.
Normally, he would have jumped at it. However, there was the small matter of his sister. Despite what Carlisle and Tonks said about Draco’s ruthlessness – and he could well believe it – he could not bring himself to believe that Malfoy would ever hurt Ginny. He was perfectly willing to think the worst of him, but his imagination stuck on this one, single point.
Therefore, he could only wonder at Carlisle’s insistence that there was no other choice but to attack, and the Unspeakable’s willingness to sacrifice Ginny when she had been his main justification for this invasion. Ginny, and Neville, and the very thin, as yet unproven claim that Malfoy was laundering money, or holding Death Eater meetings, or else brainwashing important Ministers in preparation for another attempted revolution.
Ron was not a subtle man, but nor was he a stupid one. There were too many assumptions, too many generalizations, and not enough solid evidence. They had arrived at this point far too precipitously, swept away by Carlisle’s overwhelming determination and insistence on immediate, pre-emptive action.
“What the hell are we doing here, Tonks?” he asked quietly, watching Carlisle out of the corner of his eye as the older man strode up and down, possessed of a manic energy now that his goal was finally in sight.
“Carlisle’s bidding,” she answered dryly.
He grunted.
“And what is Carlisle doing here? Seems less like justice and more like revenge, to me.”
Suddenly, Tonks smiled, a genuine, unexpectedly warm smile. “You’re a good man, Ron Weasley.”
He was spared the need to reply by the timely arrival of the Ministry’s elite team of anti-terrorist special active service Aurors. They were dressed in treated black leather armour, each of them carrying two or three killing wands, authorized to kill on sight and take no prisoners – unless it be for interrogation. Once, Malfoy had been one of them, one of the most dangerous of them all, and what they thought about this business was anyone’s guess.
The squad leader listened for a while to Carlisle’s orders, saluted, and waved to his troops, ordering them into formation. He pulled out a black mask – disturbingly like the white Death Eater equivalents – but instead of drawing it on, effectively hiding his humanity, he came to stand by Ron and Tonks.
“You’re Tonks, aren’t you?” he asked without preamble. “Malfoy’s cousin.”
She eyed him warily. “For my sins, yes. Why?”
He held out his hand. “Euan Abercrombie. I served under him for three years, before the end.”
She did not take his hand. “Then that should make you all the more eager to bring him down, shouldn’t it? Wipe out the blot on your spotless record?”
There was nothing secretive or guarded about Euan Abercrombie’s face. He winced, and looked uncomfortable, actually looking over his shoulder to see if Carlisle was listening. “Yes. Right. The thing is, I just don’t believe that he would ever harm Ms Weasley.” He looked to Ron, nodded in acknowledgment. “For the last six months, after McCartney died, I was Malfoy’s second in command. He used to talk about her sometimes…” He trailed off, fidgeting awkwardly, and Ron wondered what Malfoy had seen in him to justify the promotion to his right hand position.
“Then why are you here?” he asked harshly. “Did you think you could stop Carlisle on your own?”
“No. But I won’t be on my own, will I? My men are loyal, and positioned at key strategic points. I only need to give the signal.” He looked at both of them, eyes straight and intent despite the remaining undercurrents of nervousness. Here it was, the steel that Malfoy demanded in every one of his followers since he’d ditched Crabbe and Goyle. Abercrombie was a hopeless conspirator, his face was hopelessly expressive, but when faced with direct, practical action there was no one more confident and assured.
“And what will persuade you to give the signal?” Tonks asked, not denying the implication that they were, indeed, willing to see Carlisle’s operation foiled.
“Reassurance that I’m doing the right thing. That the man I once knew hasn’t changed beyond all recognition.”
Tonks laughed harshly, and would have replied, but at that moment Carlisle applied the Sonorous charm to his voice and called out in a deep, booming voice, “Malfoy! Can you hear me?”
********************
The doors and all the windows but one were boarded up and reinforced with spells, and Kelly, Higgins, Longbottom and Ginny were at their posts and ready, leaving Draco himself to answer Carlisle and go through with this farce of a negotiation.
“I can hear you, Carlisle,” he shouted, his own voice amplified even though he doubted his ability to talk his way out of this situation. He merely wanted his words to be heard and witnessed.
“Let me speak to Ms. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom, Malfoy. At least let me know they’re alive and well; their families are worried about them.”
Draco sighed. He had known it would come to this. “Mr. Longbottom and Ms Weasley are here of their own free will. This is not a hostage situation, Carlisle.”
“Let me speak to them, then, so they can tell me so themselves.” Carlisle’s voice was rich, smooth and reasonable, and any attempts to thwart him would only be seen as shrill and petty. However, Draco was no stranger to such tactics, and only his father had ever been able to manipulate him in that way.
The difference between good and evil is knife-blade thin, and entirely a matter of perspective…
He had believed that, once. He believed it still. However, to those who had never balanced on that knife-blade, who had never fought for their lives and the lives of others in one of the darkest, dirtiest wars in wizarding history, Carlisle’s oratory would be all too persuasive.
Ginny’s face was flushed and angry. He knew that she hated being used; Carlisle had set her up in more ways than one. Neville merely looked dismayed, as if the full import of the situation had just dawned upon him. Draco looked at them, questioning; but Ginny shook her head.
“He will twist everything we say. Nothing will stop him storming this place; he only waits for the right cause and opportunity.”
Neville nodded. “Carlisle will claim that you coerced us into supporting you, or that we’re under Imperius.”
Draco shrugged. “At least say it once, in public, that you’re here of your own free will. It will be on record then, no matter how he twists it afterwards.”
Ginny’s expression was supremely skeptical, but she stood up and went to the window. Her hair was immediately recognized and there was a flurry of interest in the street below. She leaned out, careful not to create a target of herself so she could not be magically snatched from the building, and shouted out, “Carlisle, you bastard, why are you setting us up like this? You’ve been after Malfoy from the beginning; is there anything you won’t do to get him?”
On the other side of the room, Kelly laughed. “There’s a girl, Ms Weasley. Go straight for the throat.”
However, Carlisle did not look at all phased. His face assumed a sorrowful, nobly resigned look, and he called out to Draco now, not Ginny, “Is this what you have come to, Malfoy? Using an innocent woman as your unwilling puppet? After all that you’ve done to her in the past? You have truly fallen far from what you once were…”
Draco’s mouth tightened. Ginny looked at him and raised her brows; her expression said it all.
********************
“Carlisle, you bastard, why are you setting us up like this? You’ve been after Malfoy from the beginning; is there anything you won’t do to get him?”
Tonks laughed. “That sounds like Ginny. You know Carlisle came down hard on her for changing his first brilliant plan? I’m not surprised the bastard’s using her like this.”
Euan Abercrombie looked at her. “You think he is using her? Carlisle, I mean?”
“I know he is.” She shrugged. “I’ve seen his type before – they fixate on one Death Eater, one target, and won’t stop until they bring them down. Moody used to be like that with old Lucius. If Draco hadn’t killed him, Moody would have.”
Ron frowned. “Carlisle’s nowhere near as crazy as Moody.”
“No, he’s crazy in another way, a much less obvious one. Listen,” she said, lowering her voice and drawing closer to them both, “after he pulled this operation ready-made out of thin air and suppositions, I had a quick look at some of his sealed files. I’m no stranger to things that Dumbledore wouldn’t approve of, but some of the things the Ministry have so secretly hushed up for him…!”
“He gets the job done,” Abercrombie said heavily. “Ten years ago, that’s all that would have mattered. But these days…? The war is over.”
They heard Carlisle’s reply to Ginny’s attack. “…After all that you’ve done to her in the past? You have truly fallen far from what you once were…”
Abercrombie all but vibrated with fury. “What he once was? What does that spying, creeping bastard know about what Malfoy once was? I don’t remember him out there on the front line. All he did was lurk in the shadows, trolling for crumbs that he hoped would lead to arrests!”
Tonks coughed, but it was an accurate – if extremely simplistic – description of Carlisle’s duties. She wondered at what Malfoy had done to so secure this man’s loyalty. Then they stopped talking to listen to Draco’s next sally.
“What do you want, Carlisle?”
“What do I want?” came the reply. There was a disturbing note of triumph in Carlisle’s voice now, and he was having trouble holding onto the serious hostage-negotiator characterization. “I would like to see Ms. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom walk free of your evil influence. I would like to see your operations shut down once and for all. I would like to see you pay for your crimes, as you should have done ten years ago! I will see you pay, Malfoy; one way or another, you will pay for everything that you have done.”
Ron shifted uncomfortably. Even for him, Carlisle had sounded far too strident. “He’s gone mad,” he said under his breath. “There’s no way he can back down now.”
********************
After that outburst, there was no way either of them could back down. Draco knew it, and only put a seal on it with his next words. “I am not responsible for your sister’s death, Carlisle.”
Down in the streets below them, the listening crowd fell unnaturally silent as Carlisle stiffened and his face whitened. Here it was, exposed for all to see: the terribly private hatred and grief that had been festering inside the Unspeakable for years. Draco’s words stripped him of all protection, laid his soul bare and terribly vulnerable.
They had, all of them, reached the point of no return.
Hatred came to Carlisle’s rescue.
“Liar!” he shouted, abandoning all pretence. “You seek to turn me from my purpose but I will not be distracted!” He waved his hands at the Aurors surrounding Shadowlands, their wands at the ready. “Your time ends here and now. Attack him!”
The Aurors moved forward.
*********************
Euan Abercrombie gazed for a long time at Carlisle’s all-too-expressive face, and then up at the redbrick façade of Shadowlands, and the window from where Malfoy had spoken.
“Is it true?” he asked absently. “Is Carlisle doing this for his own sake?”
Tonks shrugged. “I don’t know.” She paused, and then spoke again. “Would it matter?”
The three of them stood in an isolated little circle of their own, a still spot in the river of Aurors moving forwards, preparing to storm the building and rescue Ginny Weasley and, of course, Longbottom. Euan wondered when it had become certain that Auror Weasley was an unwilling hostage – he wondered how Carlisle had managed to convince everyone who had ever seen those two together that Malfoy would harm her.
He remembered Commander Malfoy, the grim, sardonic leader who had taken him in hand when he’d first joined the active service units. He had never truly smiled, except for the very rare times when he saw his lover; no one, watching them, could ever believe that they were anything but happy together.
Tonks said that Auror Weasley had gone to Shadowlands without backup because she believed that Malfoy would never hurt her. Abercrombie, too, was willing to believe it…
“No,” he said roughly. “No, it wouldn’t matter at all.”
Trusting in a man he had once known, ten years ago, he gave the signal. His men were loyal – to him and to the memory of Malfoy – and stationed in key positions…
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A/N – OK, no more foreplay. Next chapter is the showdown at Shadowlands – Malfoy vs. Carlisle. I hope that it won’t take me another four months.
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