Vengeance and Pacifiers

Hijja

Story Summary:
Of all the possible reasons Harry could have to want Voldemort out of the way....

Chapter Summary:
Of all the possible reasons Harry could have to want Voldemort out of the way...
Posted:
05/11/2005
Hits:
1,504
Author's Note:
Unabashed badfic, inspired by and dedicated to Djin7. Yes, I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself!

"This is so seedy," Lucius complained - again - and cast the night's sixth cleaning charm on sheets so threadbare they were practically quivering in fear every time the wand pointed at them.

"Seedy but safe." Harry shrugged and swung his legs of the bed in all his nude glory.

Lucius licked his lips and surreptitiously rearranged his nether regions. "I'm not so sure. Bellatrix has been giving me that weird grin for the second time in a row when I left to meet you."

"Perhaps taking your Sunday cane on a Wednesday night tipped her off?" Harry speculated, brushing the stick in question with an affectionate look. He quite liked the special effects of Lucius' Sunday cane.

"Mmh." The tip of Lucius' tongue slid over dry lips again.

"Although Ron and Remus have both grilled me over my weekly absences as well," Harry admitted.

"There has to be a better meeting place than the most decrepit inn in Knockturn," Lucius groused again.

"Like what?" Harry sneered, and Lucius admired the way his own expression mirrored itself on the face of his lover. "You could just as well confess to old Voldie and hope he won't mind. Or change sides," he proposed slyly.

"Why, you could join us, Harry, dear," Lucius smirked. ""You'd cut a dashing picture next to Draco in a twin set of Death Eater robes."

"Yeah, sure!" Harry grinned and preened himself in front of the cracked, dirty mirror. It sported some rather dodgy stains on its lower half, and gave him a wheezy wolf-whistle.

"Did you have to try and gnaw them off?" Harry complained and fingered the bite marks on his swollen nipples.

"Shush, imp. You loved it."

Harry grinned and fell back on the mattress. The bed bounced. Harry's prick bounced rather fetchingly, too, Lucius noticed.

"Dumbledore I could talk round, if I pile on the guilt," Harry ploughed on doggedly. "It's Voldie who's the problem."

"Don't mangle the Dark Lord's name," Lucius admonished without fire.

"Oh, shut up. You love it." He giggled when Lucius' hand slapped his behind.

"Even if I agreed - and I have not been too impressed with my Lord's record since his revival..."

Harry nodded and pulled the Death Eater's head up to kiss the angry lines off his lips. No, it hadn't gone over well at all with Narcissa Malfoy that she had to bribe, blackmail and worse to get her husband out of Azkaban. Not that Harry blamed her - having to shag Fudge could put a woman off men a lot faster than Cho's tears two years ago had put him off girls. And he'd got Lucius in return, of course.

"Impressed or not, so far you haven't done anything but hope he'll die of old age sometime within the next 200 years," Harry complained, voice dripping sarcasm.

And then he frowned when Lucius' arm shot without warning, grabbed him around the middle and pulled him bodily onto Lucius' lap. He went limp and his eyes fluttered shut. Lucius brushed wild hair away from Harry's ear and bent down to whisper to him. His eyes snapped open again.

"What? And the prophecy?"

"No problem," Lucius announced confidently and shoved an indignant Harry off his lap as he reached for his robes. "You'll get to brew it."

"But-"

"No buts, Potter. Same time next week - I'll bring the cauldron, you'll bring the ingredients."

***

"Is it supposed to be quite so pink?"

"You're the one studying for a Potions NEWT, Potter - you tell me." Lucius frowned down at the scrap of parchment with the recipe. "Four drops of Phoenix blood and thirteen Augurey tears - it looks well enough. But your handwriting is atrocious."

"You can read it just fine," Harry protested. He'd copied the recipe down in the Restricted Section at midnight in the light of the weakest Lumos imaginable. Lucius could thank Merlin he'd got more than doodles, he thought as he reached for mortar and pestle to prepare the final ingredient.

"Careful with the Phoenix egg shells," Lucius admonished. "They're rare and valuable, and you've only brought one batch. Grind, not pulverise."

"Bugger!" Harry groaned and poured the rather finely grounded egg shells into the blubbering concoction. "Snape is going to eviscerate me if he ever finds out it was me who cleaned out half his rare ingredients shelf."

"For a good cause," Lucius smirked. "I'd thought the Phoenix blood would give you more trouble."

Harry flushed. Sneaking into Dumbledore's office and poking Fawkes with one of Hermione's knitting needles wasn't among his proudest memories. The ruddy bird had pecked him, too, and had continued to eye him leerily even after Harry had pacified it with a whole bagful of slices of marinated Flobberworm.

"Stir twice, counterclock-wise, and remove from heat," Lucius read the last scrawl. "Potion will thicken as it cools."

Harry pulled out the ladle, wiped his sweaty face and slumped down on the bed - unused for the first time since they'd started meeting here.

"And how are we going to feed it to him?

"Now that," Lucius admitted, "that might be ever so slightly risky."

Harry peered up at him suspiciously through potion-stained glasses.

"How far do you trust me, Harry?"

"Pretty far," Harry admitted grudgingly. "We've been shagging in secret for six months, and you've had three dozen opportunities every night to off me or carry me off to Voldie dearest."

"That's the spirit!" Lucius' voice rang with approval. He drew his young lover into a possessive kiss. "Same time next week, Harry. No need to bring your wand."

***

The Dark Lord leaned back on his ornate throne seat, a satisfied expression on his hideous face.

"Lucius, my friend," he announced to the wizard who rose from one bended knee to stand before his master. "You have surpassed my most ambitious dreams." He stared down at the bundle at his feet. "Victory is ours tonight."

Harry lay where Lucius had thrown him down onto the floor, cheek pressed against the icy stone, hands tied behind his back. He squirmed feebly as Voldemort prodded his prone form with his boot.

One scaly loop hooked around the armrest of the throne, Nagini undulated forward until her tongue touched Harry's ear. He flinched and advised her to do something unmentionable in Parseltongue. The huge triangular head swung back to coil behind Voldemort's heel in a huff.

"Not yet, my sweet." Voldemort petted her coils lovingly. "You'll have what's left of him after vengeance has been served." He licked his lips. "What do you think, my friend? Shall we celebrate our triumph by sharing out this little morsel among my loyal inner circle?"

Lucius tilted his head and cold eyes raked over his victim's bound body, taking in his torn robes. Harry squirmed some more under the merciless scrutiny.

"I wouldn't be averse to it," Lucius finally drawled. "He's got quite a delicious arse on him."

Harry squinted up at him in outrage, and the Dark Lord chuckled.

"And I'm sure his mouth could be occupied more productively than by insulting innocent snakes in Parseltongue," Voldemort added, placing his foot on the back of Harry's neck in an eloquent threat. Harry bit his lip and kept silent.

"A toast before the festivities?" Lucius asked and casually held out a spiderwebbed bottle and a goblet from one of the side tables.

"Why not?" the Dark Lord replied, accepting the goblet and holding it up to the light, all the while pressing the tip of his boot into Harry's vulnerable neck. Harry let out a pained whimper, and felt Voldemort's gaze linger heavily on him.

The Dark Lord observed as Lucius took a deep swallow from his own goblet before following suit.

A bitter taste settled in Harry's own throat as Voldemort rose from his seat, seemingly unaffected by the potion. If Lucius had used it at all...

Then the Dark Lord's hand came up to claw at his throat. His whole frame shook once, twice, and he brought his wand up, but before he could strike, a scream broke from his throat. It spiralled higher and higher into a pitiful wail, and then his whole form seemed to crumple and fall in on itself, until black robes and whatever was left of the body fell back onto the throne with a quiet thump. His wand clattered to the ground, and Lucius Summoned it to his hand and snapped it in one fluid movement. The dry crack made Harry flinch where he lay on the floor.

Lucius stepped up next to him and Vanished his bonds before reaching down and pulling him up onto shaky legs. A long, cool finger tilted up Harry's chin, and Lucius scrutinised his face for a long moment until Harry nodded.

"It's all right. I was just... nervous there for a moment."

Pale lips pulled back from sharp teeth at that, and then Lucius took his cloak off his shoulders and wrapped it around Harry, who shivered in his strategically ripped robes.

'He's evil, not blind," had been Lucius' sardonic reply when Harry had balked at walking into Voldemort's lair in quite such a rudimentary outfit.

The ex-Death Eater went over to the throne where Nagini poked the discarded robes with her tongue. Lucius thwacked the snake on her triangular head just as she opened its considerable jaws to devour what remained of the Dark Lord. Nagini swayed, uttered a strangled hiss around a mouthful of bitten tongue, and then slithered behind the throne with shuddering coils and amidst foul-mouthed hissing.

"Whoa," Harry breathed, following her with his eyes. "I didn't know that was anatomically possible, even for a snake..."

He fell silent as Lucius continued to stare at the bundle on the throne.

"Now this worked well," he finally stated, and Harry hurried over to stand next to him. And gulped.

Inside the bundle of robes curled a tiny baby with angrily shut eyes under a tuft of black hair. Harry gulped again and picked it up gingerly. One blue-grey eye opened and a deafness-inducing wail insinuated that, no, it had been comfortable on Voldemort's robes, thank you very much and never mind that they smelled somewhat mouldy. It was beyond the immediate state of new-born wrinkliness, but not much.

Lucius took the howling infant from Harry and proceeded to examine it. There was no sign of snake tail or tongue, and it had regular, rosy skin with no scales anywhere. It wailed like the combined forces of hell, though.

Harry quickly ripped the hood of Voldemort's robe and wrapped his de-aged body up in it.

"It seems as if the Dark Lord has expanded his life expectancy far beyond what I'd estimated," Lucius admitted and plucked the baby's fingers off the end of his braid. It screeched even louder after that. "Using Phoenix blood in an Age-Reversal Elixir would have catapulted everybody else right back into the pre-conception stage."

"Ah, well, it still worked." Harry shrugged, trying to rock the infant against his shoulder. "It's even kind of cute." He grinned as the wailing subsided into an occasional hiccup, and the former Dark Lord took to sucking Harry's hair into his toothless mouth instead.

"How about a son along with a consort?" Harry asked, not quite daring to look up at Lucius.

"You want to keep it?" Harry flinched at the incredulous note in his lover's voice.

"Well, I always wanted a family, and this way we won't have to battle about who drinks the M-Preg Potion. And little Tommy here didn't have too much luck with his childhood the first time round..." He looked up, a glimmer of challenge in his eyes. "Unless you doubt your parenting skills...?"

"I'll have you know that I'm an exemplary father," Lucius announced with an arrogant tilt of the head.

Harry sneered and rocked the baby some more. "Yes, of course, I've seen the outcome. He'll be my main responsibility."

"We'll see," Lucius drawled. "Does that mean that I'll have a divorce, a trial before the Wizengamot to clear my name and a marriage-plus-adoption on my agenda?"

Harry felt a grin break out on his lips, so wide that the corners of his mouth hurt. "Make that divorce, marriage-and-adoption and the trial afterwards - I can imagine that being married to me will speed up clearing your name."

"Well," Lucius smirked darkly, "we'll schedule it as soon as you're out of detention again."

Eyes widening in panic, Harry stared. "You told Snape?"

"Well, he asked, and I couldn't have him suspect Draco." Lucius grinned. "And if I'm going to have you for good, I won't begrudge him the pleasure of watching you scrub cauldrons on your knees for a bit."

Harry hoisted little Tommy up against his chest and glared. "You know, if you hadn't just poisoned Voldemort for me and proposed to make me husband and father, I'd hex you." A scraping sound on the tiles made him turn his head. "Oh, not again!"

Nagini, who had crept closer again, probing the air with her tongue and hungrily eyeing the body of her former master in Harry's arms.

Lucius shook his cane at her. "You better slither off, worm, before I peel you alive and sew your teeth inside your skin to make a baby rattle for my son." He watched with narrowed eyes as the snake sped off and out the door, before turning to Harry. "I hope you did not want a pet, too."

"Not quite," Harry grinned. "And she'd make a rather big rattle for shrimp here - I think you should start with a pacifier."



~ finis ~