“If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions." —Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction
Harry shifted uneasily in his sleep, frowning. He opened his eyes, looking with annoyance at the setting moon, wreathed in clouds. Someone was at the edges of his wards again. He rolled over, unwilling to get up to see whoever it was. The person kept circling the edge of his property and refused to go away for the next thirty minutes. He rolled back over and glared at the moon again as it peeped over the trees and into his bedroom as he got up. Huffing in irritation, he pulled on jeans and a robe, grabbed his wand and left his house, setting out for the western edge of his wards.
He followed a deer trail out to the edge of the woods. “Whoever you are,” he announced crankily as he stepped out of the brush, “what the hell do you want?”
“Just to confirm something—Harry.”A familiar voice drifted in from the glen.
Harry sighed. “I suppose I was a little indiscreet, especially at the beginning,” he admitted, peering at the emerging silhouette of the Headmaster. “And I shouldn't be surprised you put two and two together.”
“You did throw the pieces out there rather causally. Someone would have eventually put them together,” Dumbledore commented, transfiguring himself a squashy chair out of a rock.
Typical, Harry thought, staring at the chair. He thought it might be blue. “True. Now, have I satisfied your curiosity?”
“Not yet, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said calmly, conjuring a few glowing balls of light to hover in the glen, casting the area in a soft golden glow.
“I haven't heard anyone call me that in ages,” Harry chuckled. “Not in at least thirty years.”
“I imagine you'll be answering why in a bit,” He said evenly before an abrupt glare. “Why are you risking the sanity of a child?” His voice was harsh.
“I'm quite sure I'm not,” Harry responded evenly.
“People have gone mad, Mr. Potter, when they see themselves in such a situation,” Dumbledore reminded him.
“Weak people, Headmaster. The weak are driven mad when they see themselves instead of making inferences or asking questions,” Harry replied. “I am not weak and he won't be either.”
Dumbledore shook his head, “You are hanging the world and a child's mind on an assumption—not a certainty.”
Harry raised an eyebrow, “I don't think Lily Evans could raise a weak child and James Potter would prank it out of him if the unthinkable happened. More than that, I don't think we'll ever share the key elements of personal identity which would be required for any potential time traveling madness. He's not going to grow up under the cloud of a misheard prophecy. I didn't grow up with my parents.”
Dumbledore's face went suspiciously blank, and Harry choose to interpret that as shock. He chuckled and conjured himself a chair. Perhaps this would be worth the lost sleep, Harry thought.
“Oh yes, I know about the prophecy,” Harry smiled, “and I fulfilled it, too, in 2002.” Harry's smiled widened as Dumbledore was unable to prevent a little of his surpise from showing. He launched into an explanation of his past, from early childhood to the summer after his sixth year, skimming over the history of the horcruxes along the way.
“Two friends and I went on the run,” he went on, starting in on what should have been his seventh year. “Intending to hunt down the remaining horcruxes and we figured out along the way that I was one, too. One of my friends abandoned us under the malign influence of the locket horcrux, and then came back and destroyed it with us. Voldemort put a taboo on his own name, which I stupidly triggered. We were captured and because Voldemort was frothing mad at that point, we spent a considerable period as prisoners instead of being immediately killed, as would have been sensible.
“Bella took considerable delight in one of my friends, as she was muggleborn. I should have died at the hands of Rookwood, towards the end, but the fact that Voldemort had used my blood in the resurrection ritual allowed me to survive, though I shed the horcrux. Ron did die and Hermione barely scrapped through. We finally escaped with the subtle help of Snape.
“The Order had been decimated by the time we got out—most of the Weasleys, all three Tonkses, and dozens of others. Hogwarts was a ruin, the Ministry overrun by Voldemort, and then we lost Remus, Charlie, and Molly in a battle shortly after Hermione and I escaped. Almost a year later, I managed to kill Voldemort. After that, there was hardly anyone left. Maybe three hundred witches and wizards, and only five of the Order—McGonagall, Arthur, Percy, Bill and Kingsley Shacklebolt. Only Arthur and McGonagall stayed in England. Hermione and I left for Prague, Kingsley went to St. Andrews in the Caribbean, Percy left for Canada, and Bill went back to Egypt. We returned for Arthur and Percy Weasley's funerals and then came home for good in 2060.” Harry shook his head sadly. “Hermione died in 2065 when a spell she was playing with backfired. I came back in 2080.”
“What about the horcruxes now?” Dumbledore asked, not certain where else to start.
Harry sniffed, “Destroyed. You hardly think I'd leave bits of him around, do you?”
Reginald Spoon was a man who might have been a wealthy dandy in a previous life, or perhaps a fence post; he wore a monocle and a black and white three piece suit and he generally had a jaunty little hat on his head. He was also thin and lanky to the point of reminding a viewer of a walking iron post, with shoe-polish black hair and a curly-cue mustache.
Through his pack he had something he thought might be of value to Lord Ibex and it always paid to have something to offer to men like his lord. He had arranged for an audience. He stuck his head around the door and peered at Lord Ibex at the appointed time, adjusting his white tie. He knocked gently on the study door, and the dark haired man looked up sharply before smiling.
“Reginald, welcome. Come in, come in,” he waved the werewolf towards his desk. “What can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly.
Spoon smiled as he settled into the chair, “Well, actually I thought I could be of some use to you. I have connections with the vampire clans and I thought that perhaps I could feel them out for you?”
Ibex hummed for a moment, staring at him with critical eyes and Reginald fidgeted with the brim of his hat. “I think so. Thank you,” Ibex nodded. “Do keep me posted,” he added.
“Of course, my lord,” he said with a bow, and left.
Achelous Doric had been here since the Romans and had watched humans come and go, and they often did more damage than good. Very few had ever been worth his time and unsurprisingly, given his own past, all those he deemed worthy were originally magic folk. They made up his clan and it was through them that this Ibex person came to his attention in June 1982. He was reported to be immortal and held a powerful position in wizarding society. Achelous was both curious and incredulous of his claim to human immortality.
Achelous arranged his appointment for the end of June and arrived at the manor Ibex used as his headquarters looking decidedly muggle in a freshly pressed white pinstriped suit. He and his clan rather enjoyed using wizarding prejudice to make them as uncomfortable as possible (when one is immortal, it pays to be easily amused) by looking disconcertingly like muggles.
Reginald Spoon greeted them at the door.
“Good to see you again!” said Chloris, her eyes searching for her Spoon's beta Lycaon, who was her lover, even as she smiled at Spoon. “This is Achelous Doric, Callisto, Ampyx, and Niobe,” she pointed at each person in turn.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Spoon, holding out his hand for a handshake. Callisto, being the youngest and therefore more familiar with modern custom, gently encouraged the others to accept the gesture they were all staring at with uncertainty. With a smile, Achelous recovered and shook the offered hand, and the others followed in turn.
Lycaon appeared out of the shadows and Spoon, knowing exactly how she was, allowed Chloris to slip past to greet his beta before asking, “Shall I lead on?”
Achelous nodded and they followed the nervously babbling Spoon up four floors and through a maze of corridors, arriving at last at a study where a dark haired man sat at an opulent tiger oak desk. Upon seeing them, he stood and made his way around the desk to greet them in the center of the room—like an ally or an equal.
He decided that he liked this young man, or at least so far.
As he greeted the vampires, Harry was impressed. Achelous was tall, tan, and fit with broad shoulder and he spoke with a light accent of some sort. He knew Achelous was originally Greek, but was unfamiliar with the dialect that he must speak.
Cholris had golden blonde hair and blue eyes and was dressed in a soft, draping dress that was elegantly modest. She reminded Harry of a maiden in an art nouveau painting, soft, gentle and serene. Niobe was Chloris' opposite, in coloring and personality, being pale skinned, and having dark hair and smirking green eyes the color of olives. She was wearing precious little and both Spoon and Richard were eying her—not that Harry found it easy to ignore her either. She was much closer, he felt, to the general opinion that many held that vampires were the snobs of the undead. Callisto looked like she had walked in off the beach, with platinum blonde hair and ice blue eyes against golden brown skin. Very nice legs peeped out from under her blue sarong skirt and she wore a barely-buttoned blue shirt, open at the collar, buttoned over the necessities, and it hung open again from there down. A faint smile hovered on her lips and she seemed to be examining Harry rather intently.
Ampyx was smiling, dressed in sweeping midnight blue robe. He looked faintly amused, an archaic smile hovering on his lips.
“Please,” Harry smiled, gesturing at a circle of chairs and couches, “sit down.” As they complied, Harry called an elf and within a few minutes there was pot of tea and a green glass bottle on the small table that sat in the middle. There was a small china cup in front of the lowest seat, which also sat a little bit out of the circle. Crystal flute glasses sat before the other seats and Callisto raised an eye brow.
Harry smiled a little, “I took the liberty of providing appropriate refreshments.”
They smiled as they settled into their seats. “So,” Achelous said, “what exactly can you do for us?”
“Well,” Harry said, as he perched on the edge of his chair, “what I was thinking...”
Later—much later—Achelous knew he liked Ibex. The man had a plan and it was a good one. "We'll join," he said, "but we will not carry your mark."
Ibex nodded, "I hardly expected as much. You will need, however, something to show that you are our allies, so I had something forged." He pulled out a small box, which turned out to contain several small gold and silver pins in the same shape as his mark.
Achelous picked one up and examined it, feeling the magic imbued in the metal. "They will do," he said, pinning it to his lapel.
Fenrir became aware of himself as the pale moon set on the western horizon, standing over the sprawled body of a girl. She was young—not yet out of Hogwarts, perhaps, and had been pretty in life. Her face was slack and her mangled corpse had had vast chunks of flesh ripped out of it now. Snapped bones stuck out of her skin, pulling it grotesquely taut; snagged flesh on shards of bone. Wild snarls of long, curly black hair splashed around her head and there were threads of her hair in his mouth.
He tasted panic on his tongue.
Reginald Spoon came scurrying into the study, a looked of spiteful joy on his face. “My lord!” he called as he crossed the carpet, “my lord! There is news!”
Harry cocked an eyebrow, “I assume there must be, if you're invading my study when you would otherwise be recovering from last night.”
Spoon flushed as he came to a halt before Harry's desk. “My apologies, my lord. But Greyback failed you last night, and a girl is dead because of it!”
Harry's eyes narrowed, “What?”
“A girl—Metope Pigeons—died last night. Greyback killed her.”
His expression darkened, “Capture him—use whatever resources you have but do it quietly! Bring him in alive. I will deal with him. You are dismissed. Richard!” he called.
Spoon fled as Richard came into the study from a side room.
“My lord?”
“Call Rabastan, Rudolphus, Malfoy, and Dolohov. Now!” Richard, having never been actually yelled at by Ibex, rushed towards the fireplace to place a Floo call to the Lestrange brothers and calling a house elf along the way to summon Dolohov.
Harry would be damned if he'd let the backlash from Greyback's enormity harm everything else he had built.
The news sounded through the pack grapevine and Remus looked shocked as Ferdinand Berry, beta of the ragtag Welsh pack, recounted the story.
“...and Ibex is absolutely out for his blood. I almost pity Greyback. This time he didn't intend to target anyone and he's going to be killed.” Ferdinand fiddled with the chain of his pocket watch, “'Almost' being the key word there. He bit me 'coz my mum rebuffed his advances. I don't blame her a bit, though,” he laughed. “She wad married, a mother, and he's dreadfully ugly!”
Remus shook his head, both at the news and his friend. “You think it'll hurt us?”
Ferdinand shook his head. “Ibex has too much invested in the packs to let it affect anything. The poor girl's death will be played off as something like a rabid animal or a nasty fall, but Greyback will die none the less—Ibex will have a spectacular punishment up his sleeve for the bastard. I heard from Ibex's own aide that he wanted to kill Greyback instead of letting him join after he heard what Greyback did for fun. Didn't though. He didn't want to scare off the rest of the packs, or so Richard said.”
Remus looked over at Ferdinand over his pint, “Did you join?”
“Yup!” he said cheerfully. “Good thing, too. He encourages his human followers to hire us, and I got a nice little job as a coach driver for one of his advisers. Pays decently, and he keeps me on retainer.”
“He keeps you, his coachman, on retainer?” asked Remus dubiously.
“I think he might be gay, actually. I don't mind; a job's a job and as long as he doesn't do more than ogle me, I don't actually care. I don't blame him a bit, though. After all,” Ferdinand spread out his arms, puffing out his chest with a grin. “I'm gorgeous.”
“Dunno,” said Remus with a laugh, “Can't say the gay blokes I know would go for a skinny redhead with an unhealthy love for velvet green vests.”
Ferdinand sniffed. “Just because you have a never-ending love affair with cardigans does not mean my affection for green velvet is unhealthy. I do, if you recall, have a maroon one for special events.”
“Like I pay attention to your wardrobe,” replied Remus with an eye roll.
Ferdinand merely grinned.
"More than being careful of what you wish for, be careful what you ask! You may not always like the answer."--CRA
Dumbledore, Sirius, James, and Lily all looked up expectantly at him from their dinner as he entered Lily's kitchen. “Sorry I'm late. Took me a while to get Ferdinand to let me go,” he said with a laugh.
“Good friend of yours?” asked Sirius with slightly narrowed eyes.
“Jealous, Padfoot?” Remus asked with amusement as he hung up his cloak. “Yes, a good friend, but not a Marauder. Never fear, your status as one of my best friends isn't in jeopardy! You shall always hold a special place,” he said gallantly, “as my all-time favorite git.”
Dumbledore sighed impatiently at their banter as Sirius responded. “I'm glad to see you in a good mood after your meeting. May I assume that your mood is indicative of a fruitful conversation?” he interrupted.
Remus could see why Ibex called it 'prodding.' “Yes, Albus,” he said, settling down at the place that had been set for him and accepted the bowls of food that made their way to him, scooping salad and green beans onto his plate and snagging a pork chop. “Ibex is going to kill Greyback—who is indeed responsible for the disappearance of Metope Pigeons.”
“Why is he so angry?” asked Lily curiously. “I'd have thought that he wouldn't care about someone as insignificant as Pigeons.”
Dumbledore debated the wisdom of revealing a little about Ibex as the others murmured curiously. “I suspect he may be a time traveler, Lily, and many of his interactions with us are colored by what he knew of or experienced with what would have been our future selves. I'd say he knew of someone who suffered at the hands of Greyback and so that magnified his importance in Ibex's eyes.” Dumbledore privately suspected it was Remus who had suffered.
Lily's eyes rounded to enormous proportions. “A time traveler?” she breathed. “He just violated every SINGLE law governing time travel!”
“I'd say not,” said Remus as he speared a few green beans, “since he's not overtly insane, and we seem to be still in existence despite his presence for almost a year. It certainly explains a few things that have been puzzling me, too.”
“Too right,” muttered James. He squinted at the green bean bowl for a while and his eyes widened as he came to a conclusion. “What could have possibly happened to make him like that?” James was horrified, angry, and confused.
Sirius watched Dumbledore sigh to himself as Lily and Remus followed James's thought process, leaving him in the dust. “Can someone explain to me what epiphany you just had?”he asked plaintively.
“Ibex is what Harry could have become if he hadn't interrupted the time line!” Lily exclaimed. She turned on Dumbledore, “When did you figure it out?” she demanded, glaring at him furiously.
Dumbledore looked calmly at her, “Recently. I put two and two together, as he put it, and confronted him. He was obliging enough to explain. Apparently, if he hadn't interrupted, the future would have been extraordinarily bloody. Voldemort would have killed you two,” he pointed at James and Lily, “and would have tried to kill Harry and would have failed because of the prophecy, ending with his almost-not-quite death. Harry would have been raised by your sister, Lily, because, among other things, Sirius would have ended up in Azkaban.” He mowed over James and Sirius's angry exclamations, explaining briefly the events that would have lead to Harry and his friends' months of torture, the massive casualty lists (“Including you, Remus.” “What?!”), and the ruination of England.
“So far,” Dumbledore finished, “he's not been nearly as bad as anything he saw out of Voldemort, and has, if nothing else, helped the werewolves.”
Remus, still shocked by the revelation that the little black haired cherub in the next room could have become a Dark Lord, nodded. “And most of us have joined him, even Ferdinand.”
“That could be useful,” hummed Dumbledore.
“We could be, too,” said James uncertainly, and Sirius nodded.
Dumbledore hesitated, “He has placed some mental distance between people he loved and their current selves. You're not the person he knew as his godfather, Sirius and he hopes you will never be—Azkaban is not a kind place. While I think his remaining affections might make him less likely to kill you, I don't think it would stop him if you pushed him far enough.
“And James,” he said, looking at the man who was still adjusting to the idea that he was, biologically speaking, Ibex's father, “he never knew you as anything more than a memory colored by other people and you stand less of a chance than Remus or Sirius, his father or not. I think it would be best for you all to stay away from him. He'd prefer that his younger self grows up with family and be who he never got to be, but if you irritate him enough, he wouldn't hesitate to kill you.”
They all nodded, seeming to be having trouble getting around the idea that Ibex was capable of warm emotions at all. Admittedly a difficult task after the likes of Voldemort. More than that, they were reeling in shock from the fact that Ibex was family.
“Why?” Sirius asked, “Why did he come back?”
“Power,” Dumbledore said simply, “and a need to connect with or control people who shaped his life. He's fundamentally twisted—the torture and loss may have snapped something within him and I think he's a bit mad. He came back but can't connect with us, so he changed the course of events. I don't think he sees quite it that way, though." Dumbledore paused, attempting to frame this delicately, “I suspect he knows that you would eventually figure out that he was your son, as he stressed that Harry is never going to be him, and he can never be who Harry will become. Don't let him taint your relationship with Harry.”
All four of his dinner companions puffed up indignantly, and Lily squawked, “I would never let that man interfere with my son!”
"For the great Gaels of IrelandAre the men that God made mad,For all their wars are merryAnd all their songs are sad."Eamon de Valera
Severus Snape well and truly hated Deluge meetings. They always began with a positive progress report, followed by the induction of ever more members, and ended with a rousing speech that informed them of what was still to be done. After that, Severus had to deal with the various captains he had set up to lead the teams that carried out the assignments that made his section of the Deluge tick.
Part of the reason Severus hated meetings so much was that they always had good news and Ibex was slowly building a solid framework for his eventual take over. Another part had to do with the deep devotion so many carried for Ibex. It was every bit as much a cult of personality as Voldemort had had, but of a different sort; Ibex was revered while Voldemort had been utterly feared.
The world was improving under Ibex's hand, and if there was anything people liked, it was idealism and the lining of their pockets. Ibex did both, as he had been right when he said that the more people involved with the economy, the more money there would be.
Tonight, however, was a meeting of a different kind and it could be felt in the very air. The crowd milled restlessly as they waited.
Something dropped out of midair and landed on the marble floor with a clang and a moan. Severus was almost sickened when he realized that the charred mass of flesh and carved lead runes was a man. Ibex appeared out of the shadows, his face set in an icy mask as he glided up the steps. Reaching the top of the dais, he turned and surveyed them. Silence immediately descended on the crowd and they turned their attention to their lord.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called, “what you see before you is what results when someone disobeys me. Who you see before you is Fenrir Greyback, the man responsible for the death of Metope Pigeons. He had all the tools to prevent her death at his fingertips but failed to take advantage of them, both deliberately disobeying me and causing an unnecessary death that could have spelled disaster for all the progress the werewolf community has made. I want you to witness the last stage of his punishment. If you have a weak stomach, I advise you to avert your eyes,” he finished and with a flick, summoned a vat of silver liquid; an enormous obsidian rod was stirring the concoction, clicking as it hit the side of the tub. Greyback whimpered when he managed to pry open his eyes and he started sobbing when Ibex descended the stairs.
He made a complicated little motion with his wand, and a ball of liquid arose, hovering in the air and spinning slowly as it glinted in the light. “This is an alloy of mercury and silver,” he explained over the sobs. With astounding gentleness, he guided the ball lower and brushed it across Greyback's skin, leaving behind a gelatinous trail of shimmering liquid. The skin began to smoke and bubbles formed under the hardening metal. He brushed the ball across another swathe of flesh, rolling over shoulder blades and ribs that were etched with metal.
Greyback screamed, the high pitched howl echoing in the room. Severus's neighbor winced and a young man to his left didn't seem to be breathing. He tapped the young man's shoulder, intending to prevent the silly prat from passing out as he tried to ignore the howls of pain as Ibex turned Greyback over and continued painting.
The werewolf had nearly screamed himself hoarse and was making pitiful little whimpering noises when Ibex finally took a brutal kind of pity on his and guided the ball of silver into his mouth, and presumably down his throat. Greyback convulsed violently, arching off the floor in a gran mal seizure and then lay still.
Ibex looked up at the crowd, eyes narrowed dangerously. “Obey me.”
Severus had forgotten the brutality.
*
That night Harry drank himself to sleep, humming drunkenly along with the Wireless to Danny Boy.
"But if ye come and all the flowers are dying If I am dead, as dead I well may be, You'll come and find the place where I am lying And kneel and say an Ave there for me."
Later, when he was sober, he would wonder why this death—it was only Greyback after all—had effected him so much.
*
Lily closed her eyes against Snape's report and leaned over to James. “We're raising Harry as a pacifist.”
James nodded fervently.