Variations

Chapter 10: The Story of the Aristocrat

"Lucius Malfoy," Bellatrix Lestrange said, fixing him with her cruel gaze and terrible smile and leaving no doubt that whatever was about to follow would be unpleasant for him, but he was spared finding out for the moment because Bellatrix continued along a short list of names.

When those she'd beckoned had gathered, all looking wary, Bellatrix began giving her instructions.

"The Dark Lord has a special task for you. He wishes to ensure that no one can enter Hogwarts once his Death Eaters are inside."

Lucius shifted his gaze to those who'd gathered with him, counting, and came up short. Hogwarts' grounds were wide and vast; there was simply no way to defend them with only six people. Their task was impossible.

"Therefore," Bellatrix said with another of her twisted smiles, and Lucius knew that she'd purposefully paused just long enough for them to draw that conclusion, "the Dark Lord has arranged for a Chimera to be placed in the mountains several miles from Hogwarts."

Lucius blinked. A Chimera? Surely not. Bellatrix's smile widened.

"You will travel there and bring it through the Forbidden Forest and to the grounds."

They all waited silently, hoping to catch Bellatrix in a joke, but she was deadly serious. Lucius toyed momentarily with the idea of trying to talk his way out of this, but soon concluded that there was nothing he could gain by arguing and much he could lose. The others seemed to have reached similar decisions.

"Leave the Chimera on the grounds," Bellatrix continued. "Once you're inside you'll be free to battle any opposition you like, but if you encounter Potter, he is to be brought to the Dark Lord. You may go."

Nodding morosely, Lucius turned to leave with the others, but Bellatrix caught his arm and pulled him back. He tried to control the shaking limb, but it was difficult and she didn't let go.

"I suppose news of your son's victory last year has reached you, even in Azkaban," Bellatrix said, an odd but unreadable note in her voice.

"Of course," Lucius replied. "He did his family proud."

"And I suppose also that you are aware of just how he achieved that victory," Bellatrix prompted, lips curling.

"He repaired a set of vanishing cabinets and used them to allow Death Eaters access to Hogwarts," Lucius replied.

"Both vanishing cabinets are now utterly destroyed," Bellatrix said dismissively, "what interests the Dark Lord is the room where Draco carried out this feat."

"The Room of Requirement," Lucius replied, exhausting his limited knowledge about the place.

"Take anyone you deem worthy," Bellatrix continued. "You will go to the room and use it to change the wards around Hogwarts so that our opposition is repelled and we are not."

She turned to go, but after a moment's hesitation Lucius called her back. She returned, smirking.

"You don't know the location of the Room of Requirement."

"No," Lucius admitted.

"It is on the seventh floor, opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy," she explained patronizingly. "Walk past the stretch of wall three times, thinking of what you require."

"Thank you," Lucius replied.

"Have you realized yet what else you do not know?" Bellatrix added, smirk creeping into an eerie smile.

"No," Lucius said again, knowing that his sister-in-law was enjoying every minute of this, the chance to lord over him some of the power he'd wielded during their time in the Department of Mysteries.

"The location of the Chimera," Bellatrix replied, grabbing his wrist and slapping a piece of parchment into his palm before turning to leave once again.

As he made to rejoin his group of unlucky Death Eaters, Lucius unrolled the parchment and discovered a roughly drawn map of the area surrounding Hogwarts with a wide black X indicating where the Chimera had been left.

"We'll arrive here," Lucius said, pointing to a location a short distance from the X then shoving the map into the nearest person's hands, turning, and Disapparating without allowing them time to argue.

He appeared on a wide grassy slope with the tree line of the Forbidden Forest a few hundred meters further down the mountain and, fortunately, no Chimera in sight. It took perhaps thirty seconds for the rest of the Death Eaters to arrive after what was probably a mad scramble to memorize their destination and leave without being last and risking more of the Dark Lord's wrath. Lucius would have dearly liked to watch, but he was just as afraid of the Dark Lord's anger as the rest of them.

"Where's the Chimera?" one of the Death Eaters asked stupidly.

"What's your name?" Lucius demanded impatiently.

"Maxwell Jugson?" he offered, losing confidence.

"Would you have preferred to Apparate directly to the Chimera, Jugson?" Lucius spat. "Offer yourself up as a snack, perhaps?"

"No, sir," Jugson replied meekly.

"I thought not," Lucius said, feeling satisfied. He turned around just in time to see the Chimera, perhaps attracted by the sound of the Apparations, envelope Cassandra Rosier's entire upper body in its huge lion head, one of three, lift her off the ground, shake her around a bit, and fling her aside. The rest of them didn't wait to see if she'd survived or even where she'd landed, they simply turned and ran toward the Forbidden Forest, the Chimera right behind them.

Thinking was difficult with most of his mind on the impossible task of outpacing the Chimera, but Lucius could not afford to fail again in the eyes of the Dark Lord, so he tried anyway. However, it was Jugson who hit upon the solution. Lucius thought it likely that the other Death Eater hadn't realized what he was about to do until after he'd done it, but in either case, one second he was running alongside the Chimera, far too close to the snapping goat's head and attracting some attention from the snake, the next he'd Apparated to a point several meters out of range.

Immediately seeing the benefit of this method, the others started doing the same, both to keep themselves from becoming the Chimera's next meal and to lure it along its way to Hogwarts.

However, it was all too easy to last. They hadn't progressed very far through the Forbidden Forest when they crossed the anti-Disapparation wards and were reduced, once again, to running for their lives, only now they had trees, undergrowth, and, before much longer, rain to contend with. However, those problems were soon superseded by a setback they had never anticipated: spiders.

They were horrible monstrosities and Lucius would never have believed that spiders could grow to that size if he hadn't seen it for himself. For a moment he found himself entertaining the notion that these gargantuan spiders might hinder the equally disproportionate Chimera long enough for him to reach Hogwarts, but it was not to be. Inconvenient as it was, Lucius at least had to admire the spiders their strategy: never pick a fight you can't win. In accordance with that, the spiders were ignoring the Chimera entirely, focusing their hungry stares on the Death Eaters instead.

Breath ragged and side aching, Lucius raced on, concern for the Chimera and the other Death Eaters gone, replaced by desperation to escape the spiders' domain. He narrowly dodged a spider that tried to jump onto him from above, only to trip over a second spider that had staged an echoing attack from below.

He fell to his knees and surged to his feet again a moment later, but it was long enough for a spider to jump onto his back. Lucius didn't even notice until a few steps later when he discovered a thick, hairy leg dangling over his shoulder. It might have been his mind playing tricks on him, but Lucius thought he heard a hoarse, clicking voice whisper, "You will make an excellent meal."

Forgetting that he already had his wand in his hand, Lucius panicked and ripped off his traveling cloak, fortunately leaving the spider behind with it. He ran as he had never run before, scarcely noticing the branches that ripped at his face and clothes, nor the roots underfoot, and never pausing to find out if he was still being pursued.

Eventually, Lucius found himself on a path and allowed his pace to slow. A brief survey of his surroundings indicated that there were no spiders or any other creatures in sight. Still, his situation had grown, if anything, more perilous now that he'd lost track of the Chimera and as much as his aching limbs complained for rest, he knew he could not oblige them and jogged on.

A few minutes later, Lucius crossed the tree line onto the grounds of Hogwarts. Even though he was now receiving the full force of the storm, he was immensely grateful to be rid of the forest. Still, his situation had not improved much, for now he was faced with the daunting task of finding a way to the seventh floor and the Room of Requirement without alerting the people inside Hogwarts to the fact that they were under attack, and he didn't have long at all to think of a solution, for if the Chimera hadn't reached the grounds yet then it would certainly be along shortly.

Lucius finally had an idea when he happened to glance across the grounds and catch a glimpse of the Quidditch pitch, though he nearly forgot it when Jugson came stumbling out of the forest nearby. Lucius wanted to be angry with the Death Eater for disturbing his thoughts, but he supposed he would need someone to guard the door once he found this Room of Requirement, and Jugson had at least shown enough cunning to abandon the rest of the Death Eaters to the spiders and the Chimera.

With two flicks of his wand, Lucius summoned a pair of brooms from the broom shed. A moment later, they arrived and Lucius found himself wondering if he ought to have put more effort into the charm instead of simply settling for the two brooms he could get most easily: the two ancient Shooting Stars he was holding were an insult to the term broomstick, he wouldn't have even allowed one of his house-elves to sweep the floor of his manor with it. Still, Lucius knew that time was short, so he contained his distaste, passed one broom to Jugson, mounted the other, and took to the air, motioning for Jugson to follow him.

The pouring rain and shoddy brooms conspired to make the task difficult, but Lucius succeeded in finding the astronomy tower eventually and landed, dropped the broom, and forced his way inside and out of the rain almost immediately. Jugson landed right behind him, making his way eagerly down the spiraling staircase and only stopping some ways down when he noticed that Lucius was no longer with him.

Lucius had only wandered down a few steps, for the moment he was much more interested in drying, mending, and straightening his robes and hair then any forward progress. He'd been forced into meaner situations and taken more hits to his pride and dignity than any Malfoy in history, and he'd accepted those willingly enough because they served his eventual goal, but he'd be damned if he was going to storm a castle looking like he'd just run for his life through a forest in the pouring rain, even if that was precisely what he'd just done. He joined the impatient and ragged looking Jugson soon enough and they descended the rest of the stairs leading to the seventh floor.

Immediately upon reaching the hallway, Jugson turned to make for the nearest staircase, but Lucius grabbed his arm and pulled him in the opposite direction.

Jugson looked first confused and then excited and said, "We goin' to knock some kiddies?"

"No, we are not know going knock some kiddies," Lucius hissed mockingly. "The Dark Lord has set me a special task and I need your help."

Jugson seemed disappointed at being denied the chance to do any actual fighting but knew better than to argue and followed Lucius, though not before yanking his arm out of the man's grip.

Lucius quickly discovered that his knowledge of the seventh floor was not quite as accurate as he'd thought and he belatedly realized that he'd led them through two wrong turns and had to take the long way round, though Jugson seemed not to notice. Eventually, he located the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and, more importantly, the bare patch of wall across from it.

Feeling a bit foolish but determined not to show it, Lucius paced through the hallway several times as Bellatrix had instructed, concentrating on his demand for a room that would show him the wards around Hogwarts. Still, he couldn't help but be skeptical, so when he looked back at the wall and found that a door had appeared where there was none before, he had to fake a mild coughing fit to mask his compulsive sigh of relief.

Lucius pulled the door open to find a darkened room within.

"Blimey," Jugson whispered, echoing Lucius' sentiments, though certainly not his phrasing.

What sat in front of them could only be described as beautiful. On a wide table was a perfect replica of Hogwarts and its grounds, with many colors shimmering around it like a cross between auroras and magnetic fields.

"Guard the door," Lucius ordered, turning to Jugson and realizing much too late that if he'd asked the room for a locking door it probably would have been given to him. Still, it was nothing that a simple colloportus couldn't fix.

Confidant now that he would at least have some warning if he was about to suffer an intrusion, Lucius turned his full attention to the visible representation of the wards around the school. Some were ancient, probably as old as the castle itself and as essential as any stone in its foundation. Those extended further than the rest, one encompassed Hogsmeade, and their light was dim but unwavering. There were the wards that made Hogwarts Unplottable and a dozen other forgotten things that held no use anymore. They were of no interest to Lucius. Instead, he leaned closer to each of the other bands, the modern ones, inspecting them, searching for a weakness, something he could exploit. He wasn't long in finding one.

There was a wide yellow band encompassing the entire grounds that was so dim in some places that he could hardly see it at all, and so bright in others that it was almost blinding in contrast to the dark room. Lucius could only assume that the original ward had been constructed by Dumbledore and weakened upon the old fool's death, and that his replacement had elected to try and strengthen the original ward rather than replace it. McGonagall must not have known about this room, or else she never would have deemed those measures sufficient, but it only made Lucius' task easier.

By the time Lucius finished inspecting the wards he'd found a dozen more in disrepair, most for the same reason as the yellow band, but a few for reasons unknown. In either case, Lucius was now left with the difficult task of determining which bands correspond with which wards and he found himself wishing that he'd thought to ask the room for a legend while he had the chance.

The anti-Apparition ward was simple enough to identify, at least. For the most part it looked similar to the other ancient wards, covering the entire grounds and part way into the forest, but from time to time it would brighten and fade, no doubt due to centuries of being removed and restored in certain places to allow the older students to practice for their Apparition exams.

The other wards, however, refused to present their properties quite so readily and Lucius was reduced to performing minor wards of his own to try and compare the colors. Still, he much preferred the intellectual pursuit, the chance to challenge his mind and cunning, to the idea of becoming cannon fodder for the Aurors. When Bellatrix had told him of this task she'd made it sound like punishment, and she'd probably thought it was. She'd deigned it impossible and assumed that the Dark Lord had only created the task so he'd get a reason to punish Lucius for his failure. Well Lucius was well on his way to proving her wrong, he'd already determined which ward was responsible for blocking up the floo network and found that the ward that prevented entrance to Hogwarts' grounds by broomstick was either the orange band that encompassed the entire lake or the red one that didn't.

Bellatrix ought not to have been so skeptical. After all, it was Draco who'd found a way to get Death Eaters past these same wards last year, outsmarting Dumbledore himself, and he had to get his brains from somewhere. His mother certainly wasn't particularly well endowed in that respect.

Lucius had just begun contemplating Narcissa's other more endearing qualities when his thoughts were interrupted by a faint pop.

"Damn it, Jugson," Lucius began, intending to tell him off for leaving without permission even if he was no longer present. However, he cut himself off when he glanced back at the model of Hogwarts and found that the anti-Disapparation ward was still quite intact.

Lucius turned around and found Jugson giving him a quizzical look, then happened to glance down and found that they had much less desirable company. Dobby was glaring up at him, wearing the most eclectic selection of clothes Lucius had ever seen on a single being at one time.

"What is you doing here?" Dobby demanded icily.

"Get rid of him, Jugson," Lucius said in lieu of a reply.

"Dobby will not be going," the house-elf said, and Lucius was almost surprised to hear a hint of a threat in his voice.

"You will leave," Lucius replied.

"Dobby will not."

"You've been a very bad elf."

Dobby's ears drooped and he shifted half an inch in the direction of the nearest wall, but ultimately held firm.

"I am your master," Lucius threatened.

"Dobby is a free elf, he has no master."

Lucius snorted in irritation. The elf had finally grown accustomed to his freedom, but he had to get rid of him soon. Even dim as he was, it was only a matter of time before Dobby would deduce their purpose here.

"If you don't leave, if you tell anyone that there are Death Eaters in the castle, I will go down to the kitchens and kill every last one of your fellow elves."

That, at least, had an effect. Dobby cringed visibly, looked for a moment as though he wanted to argue, and then disappeared with another pop.

After treating the empty air, where Dobby had been standing, to a smirk, Lucius turned and resumed his work.

Forty five minutes later, he'd deduced the remaining wards and found a way to alter them to the Dark Lord's advantage, but also stumbled across a problem: he couldn't change the wards from the Room of Requirement, it was simply too far from the center of the spells and he'd nearly dismantled the Muggle repelling charm when he'd tried to press on regardless. That had taken several minutes of quick thinking to repair, but along the way he'd decided that if he did his work closer to the center of Hogwarts it was unlikely that he would repeat the fiasco.

"Wait here," Lucius said, brushing past Jugson on his way to the door. Jugson gave him an irritated look, but no argument. Lucius had to resist the urge to smirk until he was outside. There was simply no denying that he was enjoying his position to keep the other man from what he so obviously wanted to do.

However, only a few minutes later, Lucius found himself wishing that he'd brought Jugson along. He was feeling exposed in the wide hallways after spending so long in the dark, enclosed space of the Room of Requirement and would have welcomed an extra wand. Instead, he double and triple checked every hallway and staircase before setting foot in it, and even took to darkening some of the hallways he entered, but still only narrowly escaped detection by passing Aurors on several occasions. All told, he was quite on edge by the time he'd reached the third floor, the level he'd decided would be best for tampering with the wards. However, as he was searching for a secluded place to work in, he happened upon a rather unwelcome distraction.

He was midway down a hallway that was so long and with so many branches that he'd decided to extinguish the lamps through the whole stretch of it before entering. He was beginning to search for a hallway that would lead him deeper into the center of the castle when he realized that the footsteps he was hearing were not his alone. Lucius paused, listening carefully, but the other person seemed to have realized that he or she was not the only person in that hallway. When Lucius whirled around to where he thought the footsteps had been coming from, he just barely caught a glimpse of a wand light as it was extinguished.

However, Lucius had an advantage that this intruder did not: after spending so long in the dark he was now quite accustomed to it. Indeed, if he looked hard enough he could see a figure cowering in the shadows, dim but unmistakable. Lucius didn't care if the other person was a Death Eater or an Auror, he was about to have a bit of fun in either case, either by punishing a Death Eater for running from the battle or sneaking up on an Auror. Smirking in anticipation, Lucius strode forward, his hand connecting at last with a shoulder draped in bushy hair.

"Lumos!" the other shouted, just as he turned her around, and Lucius blinked and found himself face to face with the Mudblood Hermione Granger. In a flash, he'd turned her back around, disarmed her, and pulled her tightly to his chest so she had no chance of escape.

"Hermione Granger," he sneered. "What a surprise."

He felt her shiver under his arms and laughed.

"You've been a horrible nuisance over the years, Mudblood," he continued, dragging her toward an empty classroom he'd discovered just before hearing her footsteps. "I think it's time someone taught you your place in this world."

Which gave Lucius an idea. His wand and Granger's were together in one hand, and he gave both a flick, pointing them at her. It wasn't a very sophisticated spell and only temporary at best, but it would be enough to prove his point, enough to show her that she ought to have stayed in her own world.

She began to fight back, kicking and scratching in every way she could, resisting his attempts to drag her away. She should have known that it would be no use. Her strength was no match for his. Finally she simply bit down on the hand that was covering her mouth.

"Expelliarmus!" she cried as soon as Lucius had pulled his bleeding hand away, but her attempt at a spell had no effect, as Lucius had known it wouldn't, for he'd blocked her ability to perform magic.

At last, Lucius forced her the final few steps into the empty classroom, kicked the door shut behind him, and threw Granger away from him. She tried to run, but he stopped her with a full body bind, which caused her to topple forward, flat on her face. A few seconds later she managed to unfreeze herself, which, Lucius grimly noted, must mean his spell was wearing off, but before she managed to regain any ground at all he flicked his wand again, lifting her into the air. She tried to return herself to the ground, but he simply redoubled his efforts.

"Not so clever now, are you?" Lucius gloated, inspecting her wand, the wand she was unworthy to own, before tossing it away. "You are a freak. You possess the magic that allows you into this world by mere chance and you only gained entrance here because of the charity of Muggle lovers like Dumbledore. You will never truly understand what it means to be a witch. You are lower than the lowliest house-elf. At least they understand their place."

Granger crossed her arms insolently. Her nose was bleeding but she made no attempt to staunch it

"No?" Lucius asked, eying her spitefully. "I can see, then, that a demonstration is in order."

Lucius flicked his wand upwards and Granger soared toward the ceiling at equal speed, only stopping when her head struck a crossbeam.

"Defend yourself, if you can," Lucius sneered, watching her try to shake off her blow to the head. He rotated his wand and she turned obligingly into an airborne headstand, now so distracted by the blood that had been flowing out of her nose that she could do nothing to prevent it.

"Well," Lucius continued, turning her right side up again. "Since you don't seem inclined to defend yourself, maybe you'd like to offer a suggestion about what you'd like to do next. A dance, perhaps."

With a flick of his wand, Lucius forced Granger's legs to perform a flailing Irish jig. She tried to hide it by shaking her head in defiance, but he could see the tears in her eyes. He was finally getting his point across.

"An impression of a top, then?"

He stopped the dance, then set Granger spinning. However, as he watched her he had a new idea, a better idea. Lucius allowed this to carry on a moment more before he started to slow Granger down. She was so dizzy that it took her some time before she could find his eyes.

"Or something more?" he asked, staring up at her.

Once more he flicked his wand, and this time Granger's arms stiffened then began inching toward the hem of her shirt. He felt her trying to resist, but he was too strong for her.

"No," she begged, her estimation of his intentions apparently going one step further than he meant. He had no desire to see any more of her than he needed to, nor to touch any more of her than he already had, but if scaring her like this was what it took to force her away from a world that never should have been hers in the first place, then he was willing to keep this going a bit longer.

However, not ten seconds later, the door to the classroom burst open and the great meddler himself, Harry Potter, burst in, followed closely by his sidekick Weasley. Without even pausing to consider his options, Lucius released the spells over Granger and raced out a second door to the classroom. He'd hoped that the two intruders would stop to help the Mudblood, but they gave chase instead, following him out of the classroom and down the hall. Lucius took advantage of the first corner he turned and made himself invisible while he was out of sight. Potter and Weasley seemed not to have anticipated that, and soon gave up their chase.

Seething over his close call and the interruption he'd suffered before he'd truly been able to convince Granger to leave the Wizarding world, Lucius returned to the task he'd been set, found an empty room that was satisfyingly close to the center of the castle, and began his work.

Lucius felt blinded somehow, manipulating the wards without the model of Hogwarts there to show the effects of his work. He could have dismantled the Unplottable charm and he'd never know it, but he was confidant in his plan and carried on unflinchingly, winding spells around himself before sending them out to Hogwarts as a whole.

After nearly half an hour of exhausting wand waving and chanting, Lucius declared his task finished and began making his way back up to the Room of Requirement to survey the results of his handiwork.

The going was much easier now. It seemed that sometime while he was occupied the battle had reached a peak. He couldn't traverse a hallway without passing some still form, unconscious or dead, Auror or Dead Eater. As he climbed, Lucius couldn't help but wonder if the Dark Lord had found Potter.

When Lucius returned to the Room of Requirement, Jugson looked, if anything, even more irritated than he had when Lucius left, but he ignored him and focused instead on the model of Hogwarts, inspecting the changes he'd made to the wards.

Everything seemed to be in order, only a few minor modifications were required, ones he could make without returning to the third floor, and Lucius set himself to it without delay. He was almost finished when he was interrupted by a series of pops from behind him and spun around to face Dobby and six other House Elves. Dobby snapped his fingers and Jugson slumped to the floor.

It was obvious that Lucius' former servant was no longer afraid of the threat against his fellows and Lucius didn't want to wait around for Dobby to do to him what he'd done to Jugson. Lucius scrambled for his wand, and then the first likely object he could think of, his wristwatch, and, taking advantage of his modifications to the Portkey ward, he tried to turn his watch into a Portkey, but he didn't have enough time to complete the spell before he heard another snap and all went dark.