The Ordeal Of Being Known

10

The kitchen was thrown into a tense, shocked silence, before Ron used the cool head that had gotten him the Head Auror position and slowly lowered his wand. Harry and Hermione reluctantly followed suit, still buzzing with adrenaline from the sudden invasion. Timsy was no threat, even though he certainly looked quite threatening at the moment: glaring venomously, holding onto the wife of someone who'd tried to kill Harry, and the woman who'd tried to hand him over to Voldemort.

"Right," Ron began slowly, "I'm going to assume you got through the wards with Timsy's house-elf magic, but how did you find us?"

"We weren't looking for you," Parkinson sneered. "We were looking for him." She jerked her head at Harry.

"Timsy is being following Harry Potter's magical signature," Timsy grumbled, and Harry mourned that he wasn't Master Harry anymore. It had become quite endearing. "It is being very loud and easy to follow."

"Where is Draco?" Harry asked loudly, because wasn't that the important issue here?

Narcissa seemed to crumble a bit, her usual ethereal grace now transformed into something ghostly, completely despaired. Harry noticed she was shaking.

"We don't know," Pansy replied, sparing a concerned look for Narcissa. "Narcissa doesn't know where he is, but she's pretty sure she knows with whom." She opened her other hand, which held a crumpled and folded piece of paper, and thrust it in Ron's direction. "Found that on the floor of his sitting room, next to an open window."

Harry walked around the table to stand next to Ron, his heart pounding as Ron opened up the little sheet. Something is very wrong.

Prophecy
9
Me
Weapon

Lucius

"He couldn't write anything, with those fucking bonds," Ron muttered. "But it sounds like there's a prophecy, he'd thought that'd be the case... but if he was able to hear it, that means it was about him-"

"He was the target," Harry mumbled. "Of course, that curse sent me directly to him, he's the only one in England... Fuck, I'm an idiot."

"Seconded," Parkinson spat. Harry ignored her, turning a stony gaze towards Narcissa.

"Lucius is supposed to be in Azkaban, Narcissa, so why is his name written here?" Harry's voice was ice, and Narcissa winced, her expression filled with utter misery.

"He appeared at the Manor, this afternoon, claiming he'd just been freed," Narcissa began, in a much more timid voice than Harry would ever expect from her. "He was so happy to see me, he said he'd wanted it to be a surprise, and I hadn't heard from him in months, and I-I'd missed him so terribly-I didn't call anyone at all-"

Harry's anger was rising, and the room was growing hotter. He felt a firm grip on his arm-Ron's hand, a warning to control himself. Parkinson was staring at him with wide, furious, kohl-lined eyes, arms now crossed in front of her chest.

"-I should have done something, Draco had just written me with an update from the Warden that had called Lucius a 'model prisoner', but I didn't, and-and he said he wanted to find Draco, to see his son, and it was then I knew something was truly wrong, because he would never have wanted to visit Draco, he would have insisted Draco come to the Manor. I told him that he shouldn't, that Draco was probably working, anything to try to hold him there, but he insisted, and when I tried to deny him, he... he Imperiused me-"

Narcissa choked on a sob, and her breaths were heaving.

"-he stepped into the floo and he-he made me call out the name-"

She was fully sobbing now, and Harry felt like a huge hand was squeezing him so tight he would surely pop. Draco's wards were impenetrable, allowing in no one with ill intentions. Draco's floo was only accessible to Narcissa from the Manor, as long as she called out the name of the house. Apparently, Lucius had had time to figure that out, and find a way to Draco using the path of least resistance-his own devoted wife. Typical.