Pathway to Perdition

Part 2

Percy procrastinates for two days after his interview with Malfoy before seeking out Potter's relatives' house in Little Whinging. Two days during which he makes a perfunctory report to the Minister, only to receive a verbal pat on the head and the double-edged assurance that 'the Malfoy affair' was entirely his to handle, and that - 'as a family friend' - he would be perfectly suited to speak with 'the Chosen One'. The sarcasm of it is treacle-thick.

He spends a whole day digging for hints about Horcruxes in the Ministry Archives. The few vague references are surrounded by the sort of panicked, evasive gibberish with which wizarding tomes tend to skirt topics that make their authors nervous. Percy remembers encountering the same when he tried to research Parselmouths during the Basilisk year at Hogwarts. Of course, the Ministry libraries are even more heavily purged than Hogwarts', which has already invited Malfoy's scorn. For the first time in his career, Percy wishes he'd seriously pursued an apprenticeship with the Unspeakables; if anyone has that sort of information, they will.

When it has become painfully obvious that the whole affair will not just miraculously resolve itself, he grudgingly Transfigures his work robes into a smart pinstriped Muggle suit in the best style of Mr Crouch - Percy didn't receive an 'Exceeds Expectations' NEWT in Muggle Studies for nothing, after all. He Apparates to Little Whinging, arriving at a careful distance from the Dursleys' house. Potter's friends have undoubtedly - and as undoubtedly without a Ministry permit - set up Anti-Apparition wards around the place. Percy is aware that he's one of the few people who know Potter's address, ever since the twins and Ron so irresponsibly flew father's Ford Anglia there a few years back.

He isn't quite sure what to expect of Potter's relatives. He's heard tales of abuse from his brothers, but Potter himself has always been suspiciously silent on the matter. And Number Four looks very respectable - a tidy house, a neat garden with flowers peeking brightly out of well-pruned flowerbeds.

The Muggle suit is uncomfortably warm for a mid-July afternoon, and the sunlight flashes on Percy's horn-rimmed glasses as he crosses the street to Number Four Privet Drive. When he rings the doorbell, a heavy-set moustached Muggle tears the door open from inside, beaming at him from under a flat tartan cap.

"Ah, Mr Wayne, how splendid to meet you at last!" he bellows, shaking Percy's hand like a pump while holding on to a bag full of what looks like a crossover between wands and Beaters' bats. "You left your equipment in the car, I assume? Shall we head for the course?"

Nervously, Percy disentangles his hand. "Mr Dursley, my name is Percy Weasley, junior aide to the Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour." The Muggle retreats a few steps, trying to hide behind his wands as his face darkens alarmingly. "I'd like to speak to your nephew, Harry Potter."

"I don't want your kind in my home!" the Muggle - Dursley - roars.

"I'd have owled you beforehand, but Ministry policy frowns on such disturbances in a Muggle locality," Percy adds in his politest voice.

Dursley shuts his mouth audibly, and peers at him sideways. "Well, at least you're more civil than the old one," he mumbles, then turns to yell up the carpeted staircase to the upper floor. "Boy!"

After a pointed pause in which the Muggle's already red face assumes a distinct shade of frenzied purple, a door opens upstairs, followed by the pitter-patter of feet on the carpet. When Potter appears on top of the landing, he looks as messy as always: uncombed hair, old, battered clothes, the same sullen expression on features that have become thinner and somewhat more sharply defined since Percy saw him last, at Albus Dumbledore's funeral.

"What did I tell you about any more freaks visiting, boy?" Dursley growls.

Potter, who stares down at Percy with a murderous expression on his face and his wand barely concealed behind the banister, ignores his uncle completely. "What do you want here?" he hisses.

Drawing himself up to his full height, Percy repeats, "I'm here on Ministry business." He directs his words at the irate Muggle, who seems a less worrisome antagonist. At least he has no wand!

Mr Dursley's thick throat swells like something frog-like, but then he squints at Percy maliciously. "He's in trouble again, is he?"

Confirmation is on the tip of Percy's tongue, especially since it might rid him of the bothersome man faster, but he settles for, "Not right at the moment." It won't do to have an even more hostile 'Chosen One' on his hands.

"All right, then," Dursley snaps, and, with a dark glower at his nephew, "And none of your funny business when Mr Wayne calls, or..." The last bit is accompanied by an eloquent slashing motion across his red neck. The Muggle stalks back into what must be the living room, where nervous voices start chattering as soon as the door slams shut behind him.

Potter keeps staring at Percy, his face a study in hostility. After a long, unpleasant moment of silence, he shrugs. "All right, then. Come up if you must."

He hovers uneasily until Percy has made it up the stairs, and twice looks back as he precedes him to the last door of the upstairs corridor, as if he's never had a visitor, or a mate over for the afternoon.

Potter's room has a complicated bolt lock at the door, which Percy assumes is a security measure. Not much use against a Death Eater attack, of course, but evidence that the Dursleys are concerned about their protege, where the boy himself is thoughtlessly negligent. He's not even made an attempt to verify Percy's identity, although he has been issued the relevant Ministry pamphlets.

Inside, the room is small, starkly lit by a single ecklectical bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling. Crates full of discarded toys line the far wall, while the floor is littered with crumpled socks and lint and crumbs of messily devoured owl treats, especially around the cage that holds Potter's snowy owl. There are no chairs, only the bed, unmade and with a copy of Viridian's Curses and Counter-Curses thrown face-down onto the pillow. Percy scrunches up his nose - he keeps his flat in Margin Alley painfully neat, after having had to live with the chaos at the Burrow all his life.

Potter closes the door behind him and straightens his back, giving Percy leave to sit on the bed with an unconvincing wave of his hand. Percy ignores it.

"You know, you shouldn't come to me to make up for your betrayal," Potter drawls after it's become evident that neither he nor Percy intend to move. "You should go and apologise to your parents instead."

Percy's neck stiffens, and he takes a furious step forward. "I'm not here to apologise, Potter," he spits. "Not to my father, and least of all to you!"

"Well," Potter replies coldly, " you should. Or can't you see how much it's hurt your mum and dad that you turned against them like that?"

A sharp laugh escapes Percy's mouth. "Me, turned against them? I don't know who told you that story, but you couldn't be further off the mark."

"You helped Fudge go after Dumbledore," Potter snaps, looking hard-pressed to keep his voice level. "You were heckling him at my hearing, although all your family are in the Order." He grimaces, rubbing a finger absently over the back of his right hand. "And you wanted Umbridge at Hogwarts, where she was threatening to use the Cruciatus Curse on students!"

Feeling hot under his collar, Percy yells, "That's ridiculous. Dolores Umbridge is a valued colleague and I won't have you bad-mouthing her like that. And as for 'betrayal'-" He has to pause to gulp in air, too angry to think coherently. "My father, Potter, was so sure Fudge would only want to employ me to spy on him, as if I was as useless as him and hadn't run an entire Department and an International Tournament on my own at eighteen. Oh no, just because he never bothered with a real career - even if it would have meant not keeping us at the brink of poverty - I couldn't have one either!" Percy is shaking with rage now, but Potter just narrows his eyes.

"Fudge did use you," he says. "And keep your voice down. My uncle is going to throw a fit if he hears you."

"You think I didn't know that Minister Fudge would want me to keep an eye on my parents?" Percy's voice wavers, although he's trying hard to stay calm. "I was willing to keep an eye on the Minister for the Order in turn, but father never even asked me." He almost chokes on pent-up bitterness, although he's never expected to spill his rage to Potter, of all people. "He just assumed I'd betray them for a chance to make my way in the Ministry. Because I could not possibly be competent, and anybody who manages to be successful where he couldn't has to be crooked." He let his lip curl into a vicious sneer. "How would you've liked it, Potter? If Dumbledore and that crazy godfather of yours had told you 'No, we can't let little Harry go and fight You-Know-Who, he'd go and join him at the first opportunity'?"

Potter cocks his head and looks Percy over quietly for a moment, in which Percy goes even redder at the thought of having so lost his composure.

"I think you misunderstand a lot of things," he says slowly, then shakes his head. "What is this, then? Another of Scrimgeour's attempts to get me to become the Ministry's figurehead?"

Percy eyes him resentfully. "Perhaps you over-estimate your importance."

Potter's mouth curves down in a way eerily reminiscent of another expression Percy has seen not very long ago. "Or maybe Scrimgeour is over-estimating yours. I've seen that little letter you wrote to Ron two years ago - that I was deranged and that Professor Dumbledore was finished, and how Ron would be so much better off without me." Eyes glitter almost black with hostility. "He showed it to me."

Percy flushes hotly. He'd hoped Ron would have the good sense to keep that letter private; it hadn't been intended for anybody else's eyes. He meets Potter's accusing glare as coolly as possible.

"And you think I was wrong?" Ignoring Potter's snort, he ploughs on. "Only a few weeks earlier, you brought in Cedric Diggory's dead body." Percy has known Cedric, two years his younger, practically predestined to make Head Boy in his final year. "Cedric was a sixth year, a brilliant student - if he could get killed in your company, what chance does Ron have?"

He can see Potter's jaw set, and decides to cut a little deeper, just because he's wanted to scream at him for a long time. "And then you dragged him and Ginny into a Death Eater trap at the Ministry! Hermione nearly died there, and Ron will wear those scars for life!" Percy can still hear his mother's tears hissing on the hot coals when she firecalled him that night.

Potter's face looks white right down to the lips in the harsh light. His eyes are very dark, and Percy feels a moment's flash of regret. He's been vicious, almost like, well, Malfoy. He opens his mouth, but Potter nods at him once, a jerky movement.

"Yes. I almost got Ron and Hermione killed." He laughs sharply. "I got Sirius killed for real there, and Dumbledore..." Potter grimaces, looking as if his mind is very far away. "If I hadn't done - that - to Dumbledore, Snape would never have been able to kill him..." What is he ranting about now? Percy wonders. "You're right, of course. Someone like me should have no friends. At least I broke up with Ginny - that should make you happy, right?"

"Broke up?" Percy echoes. His baby sister and this mad boy? Heat rushes into his face again, this time from anger.

"Are you finished?" Potter trails those injured eyes over his face and away, and Percy goes quiet. "You could just have sent me a Howler instead of coming here, you know?"

Stung, Percy takes a small step towards the young man. "I already said I wasn't here to talk about you."

"No?" Potter turns his head a fraction, though not enough to look at him. "It sounded as if you wanted to say that for quite some time. What did you come here for, then?" He moves over to the birdcage, fiddling with a discarded owl biscuit.

"To talk about Horcruxes."

There is an instant of complete silence, and then Potter moves so fast that Percy finds himself knocked into the wall with Potter's wand at his throat before he can take another breath.

"Who told you about that?" Potter snarls.

Percy gasps, head ringing from the sudden impact. His eyes flicker from the wand that digs into the vulnerable flesh of his throat to Potter's menacing expression. Deranged, and no doubt about it! He sucks in a gulp of air around the pressure on his windpipe and swallows.

"Get that wand away from me right now!" he hisses. "Before I make sure you'll have another Hearing very soon, for manhandling a Ministry official!"

The boy eyes him coldly, although the pressure against his throat lessens a little.

"I haven't even started to manhandle you, Percy," he observes, in that infuriatingly superior way of his. "But if you don't tell me right now who sent you, I might."

Although Percy is not intimidated - Potter will not be trying to hex him, he's just grandstanding, and even the twins do a better job at bullying - Percy decides to oblige. It's what he's come for, after all.

"Put that wand down," he repeats shakily and reaches up to push the tip away. Potter allows it. "Two weeks ago, the Minister was approached by Lucius Malfoy out of Azkaban-"

"Malfoy..." A disconcerting flicker of hatred runs over Potter's face, and his hand grips the wand harder.

"He offered information on how to defeat He Who Must Not Be Named in exchange for his freedom and protection for his family."

"Information on Horcruxes," Potter states flatly.

Percy nods. "Yes. He said You Know Who... split his soul for immortality."

The boy's lips twitch, and his eyes ghost absently over Percy's shoulder and to the barred window. "And you believe him. Because he's such a respectable man and such a good friend of Fudge's..."

Percy rolls his eyes. "No, Potter, I think he's shrewd and extremely dangerous and would lie just to spite me. And the Ministry's archives provided no help at all. But he sent me to you because he said that Dumbledore will have told you if he has told anybody."

Potter's eyes narrow again as he mulls it over for a long minute, and then a sinister line forms around his mouth. He looks like the twins when they're up to a particularly nasty prank. Just scarier.

"I think I know what he's trying to do," Potter finally says. "Malfoy, I mean. I didn't think he knew about it, but Professor Dumbledore said that Voldemort" - Percy flinches, and Potter repeats the name with emphasis - "that Voldemort is so furious with Malfoy because Malfoy played one of the Horcruxes into our hands." He looks up at Percy, eyes glittering. "I think you can go right back and tell Malfoy his offer is worthless. I already know, and that Horcrux is destroyed, and I hope he rots in Azkaban forever!"

Percy sighs. He's seen this coming ever since Malfoy leaned forward to whisper in his ear like a lover. "He said it's not the diary."

"He said what?" Potter yells, eyes fairly bleeding disbelief.

"He said he does not mean the diary you destroyed as a 'precocious, arrogant twelve-year-old'," Percy quotes, the insult imbuing him with a warm glow in the face of Potter's glare. "He said he was referring to the Phial of Ravenclaw that Salazar Slytherin refused, and which was then buried with him."

He watches Potter fall silent, mouth still rounded in shock. The flicker of hope that Malfoy's arrogant certainty was just a scam Percy will be able to expose as such to Minister Scrimgeour is dashed in his chest.

"It is true, then?" he asks shakily.

Potter sucks the inside of his cheek between his teeth and bites down hard. His face, half-averted against the light from the naked light-bulb, looks almost sinister.

At last, he says, "It could be."

Potter's battered trainers scuff at the floor, sending a few flocks of lint flying. "Professor Dumbledore said there are probably six of them. Two are destroyed, one has been stolen and may have been destroyed too. But we know Voldemort was after artefacts from the Founders. The only thing of Gryffindor's is at Hogwarts. He couldn't have got that, but something of Ravenclaw's, associated with Slytherin... he'd have wanted that for sure."

"There were no references to the location of Salazar Slytherin's grave in any of the Ministry's tomes," Percy points out. His search has thrown up a variety of locations associated with the deranged Founder, most of them designed to appeal to Slytherin holiday-makers, but no hint as to where he might have been buried.

A slender hand comes up to mess with that horrendous hair even further. "I just don't know!" Potter's voice sounds shrill in the quiet of the room, and the snowy owl rustles its feathers in its cage. "It sounds too good to be true - like getting everything we'd hoped for on a silver platter..." He bites his lip. "I need to talk to him, Percy. There's no other way."

Percy stares at the agitated boy, remembering again how he's really just a child still, and pushes his glasses up his nose.

"If I draw on the Minister's authority to free Malfoy and it turns out to be a trap, my career will be ruined."

"Your career!" Potter sneers.

"Just because you don't give a damn about what becomes of those around you doesn't mean it's meaningless to me," Percy shoots back. "And yes, you're right, the Hat did consider Sorting me into Slytherin because I was ambitious. I know you've all been saying that behind my back anyway." Sometimes, he still wonders what would have happened if he'd not protested that idea so frantically for fear of disappointing mum and dad.

"Me too."

Hardly listening, Percy's forehead twists itself into a frown at Potter's quiet words. "What?"

"The Hat wanted to Sort me into Slytherin too, Percy."

The idea that Gryffindor's poster child might have ended up among the enemy is enough to make Percy's mouth fall open in shock.

"That's why I don't care about your precious career, or the Minister, or how risky it might be," Potter continues just as softly. "I want you to promise Malfoy whatever you have to to get him to cooperate. Just get him out and set up a meeting, and we're even."

Percy frowns. "We can't trust him!" he repeats.

Potter shakes his head. "There is no we - you do your part with the Minister, and I'll deal with Malfoy."

It gives Percy the strongest urge to thwack the little git over the head. "Oh, honestly, Potter, do you think I'd let an underage schoolboy meet with a known Dark Wizard and just walk away?" He is not Albus Dumbledore, after all!

"I thought you hated me for endangering your family?"

"I'm not a child, Potter!" Percy snaps. "I'm a highly qualified wizard, a former Hogwarts Head Boy, and," he adds pompously, "I have taken my Defence Against the Dark Arts NEWT with 'Exceeds Expectations'. Unlike my little siblings, I can take care of myself."

Potter glares, but has to realise that Percy will be implacable on this matter. He'll never be able to look at himself in the mirror, or face his parents again, if he throws the boy at Malfoy like that. No matter how much he despises him. No matter that he doesn't plan to come face to face with his father again in the foreseeable future.

Now that the decision is made, some of Potter's manic anger seems to evaporate. He walks over to the owl cage, and crouches down to stroke the glossy feathers.

"It'll have to wait until August," he says quietly. "I promised Professor Dumbledore to stay under my relatives' protection till my seventeenth birthday." The snowy owl nips at his fingertips affectionately.

There is something very brittle about the boy whenever he speaks the former Headmaster's name, which makes Percy wonder about his mental state, and makes him disinclined to object. And he'll need the rest of July to set matters in motion with the Ministry without compromising secrecy; he hasn't forgotten Malfoy's threat.

He nods, and turns for the door.

"I'll send you a message by owl when everything is arranged, Potter."

~ tbc. ~