A/N: Here we go with another of my patented plot twists designed to cause you to go "huh?" No one heretofore has guessed (though someone came close) as to the roles certain characters play within the story. However, that will change here. I've played this one as close to the vest as possible, while not completely firing it out of left field.
I almost included a line from Caliban that would have clued you in further, but decided against it. Instead I make it the chapter title here, so that might clear a few things up right off the bat. Read on for some more answers. Just remember that as far as magic is concerned, all things are possible. It may be a shorter chapter, but I couldn't resist the cliffie.
Chapter 29: A Fate Worse Than Death
Arthur Weasley sipped at his morning tea, glancing over the Daily Prophet as he did so. The daily rag carried most of the usual stories about nonsense and other things, though the lead story was of particular importance to him, as it concerned the latest jailbreak from Azkaban. The two imprisoned Lestranges and Antonin Dolohov had been sprung from the wizard prison, something which unnerved Arthur greatly. Combined with the still on the loose Caliban de Montesquieu and Bellatrix Lestrange, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had reassembled most of his inner circle.
Much to his surprise, he felt little vindication or satisfaction at the barely mentioned news item that Lucius Malfoy had been found dead in his sleep upon further inspection of the prison.
As he continued scanning the paper for anything else of note, his mind wandered back to the conversation he had with Percy the day prior. He wanted to believe his son was sincere, he truly did. But there was something about the suddenness with which Percy seemed to warm up to him. Maybe it was simply a young man realizing his mistakes and wanting to reconnect with his family, a motivation spurred on by the fact that his mother had died.
Whenever he tried to think of an ulterior motive for Percy, he kept coming up empty. In actuality, Percy stood to lose more than he did to gain by Arthur becoming minister. Yes, he would be the son of the minister, but he would lose his position as assistant to senior undersecretary Delores Umbridge in the bureaucratic shakeups of power that always followed a new administration (Arthur was taking delight in thinking of ways to sack the afore mentioned undersecretary).
Perhaps that above anything else was the greatest case for his son's sincerity, simply because he had no other place to go. It might not exactly be the reconciliation that Arthur was hoping for, but it was the start of something at least. That brought something of a smile to Arthur's face as he took another sip of tea.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a slight glimmer of light. Tossing down the paper, he immediately tried to see what was causing the faint image. Before his eyes a silhouette began to appear out of thin air. At first the image was blurry, more an incongruent mass than the visage of anyone in particular. But as a few moments passed by he began to notice details in the person. After several seconds the figure came into enough focus that Arthur immediately knew who it was. "Colin?" he asked in a disbelieving voice.
Colin's visage sheepishly grinned and nodded his head. "Sort of," he explained, "It's actually a form of astral projection mixed with legilimency. Hermione was reading about it and so we decided to give it a try. I was the only one who could do it though, even Harry wasn't able to." Arthur blinked a couple of times before Colin continued, "They sent me to tell you we'll be flooing over if that's alright." Arthur shook himself out of a stupor and nodded his head.
"Yes, of course." Colin smiled again and his image faded just as quickly as it had arrived, and a few minutes later Arthur's fireplace flared to life with emerald flames. Out of the hearth emerged six figures, and Arthur felt tears come to his eyes as he saw two of them.
Harry & Hermione had changed the least, though their faces spoke of another year's wisdom under their belts. Neville had transformed the most it seemed, turning a large portion of his bulk into a leaner, muscular form, and Arthur was amazed at how much like his father he now looked. He turned to Luna and saw a confident young woman. Gone was much of the spacey detachment that she had left the house with just 24 hours prior. He also couldn't help but notice how closely she stood to Ron.
His son…Ron had shot up like a weed, towering over pretty much everyone else in the group. He too had filled out considerably, bearing a striking resemblance to his oldest son Bill more than anyone else. He felt his eyes sting as he saw Ginny standing behind him, also more grown up than she had been, now looking more like her mother than ever before. Finally he saw Colin, but didn't really notice how much everyone else had changed drastically in comparison to Colin, who appeared relatively similar to what he had before.
"Welcome back," Arthur cracked, clearing his throat and wiping away any lingering tears of happiness, "I trust everything was successful?"
"It was wicked," Ron said with enthusiasm, "You'll have to see their house dad, it's literally got everything." Everyone laughed at Ron's enthusiasm, and Arthur motioned for them to follow him into the kitchen. Once they were situated, he began to listen to the stories of the year and a half they had spent in the time warp, captivated by every single one of them.
/ - / - / - /
Professor Dumbledore closed the last book he could scrummage out of the restricted section about the ancient manor houses and their locations in frustration. Once more, any mention of Potter Manor was frustratingly mum about its location, outside of the general area of the British Isles. Given what he could remember of the family's history, Dumbledore guessed that it was somewhere in the Scottish lowlands. He had no way of proving this of course, but it was as close as he had come.
He was beginning to get desperate. He had even contemplated going to Lazarus as a sign of friendship in order to at least track Potter down and have a bead on his whereabouts. He dismissed such thought quickly of course; he wouldn't have put it past Lazarus to have been the catalyst that caused this whole mess to begin with.
He had even tried to get Minerva to go along with the idea of opening the book of Hogwarts students, which would list their current location for distribution of letters. Even though he was headmaster, he could not directly access the book without the agreement of his deputy, and once Minerva had learned of the reasons for his wanting to access the book, she flat out refused him. Dumbledore snarled, he would have to deal with insubordination at a later date, he decided.
More frustrating was that Snape had reported that the Death Eaters were becoming quiet. Aside from Dolohov beginning to hunt down some of the more ancient wizards in Britain, including Florean Fortescue and Nigelius Ollivander and sending emissaries to the giants and merfolk, Dumbledore had no idea what his son, and by proxy Voldemort, was up to.
He slammed his fist onto his desk and stood up angrily, turning away from his desk and glancing out of the window. His carefully laid plans were now in ruins. Things were going exactly as the prophecy intended, what he knew of it anyway, and with each passing day he knew that his day of atonement was drawing closer. He snarled in anger and frustration.
"Watch your temper please. I'd hate to see you keel over so soon." Dumbledore's eyes widened and his face went as white as a sheet as he immediately recognized that voice. He pulled his wand out of his robes and flipped around, pointing it directly at the image of his son. "You might as well put that away," Caliban said smirking, "We both know I'm just a projection." Dumbledore stared at him angrily, before lowering his wand and sighing.
"What do you want," he muttered as he slumped down in his chair. Caliban snickered and circled around the desk, examining Fawkes' perch and finding the newly reborn chick sleeping in a nest of his own ashes. He shook his head in a mixture of annoyance and happiness and turned back towards his father.
"Why do you always ask questions you already know the answer to?" he rhetorically asked, smirking at his father. "But who says I'm here for malevolent purposes? After all…can't a son worry about his father? Can't he drop by unannounced and visit him, even if it is only a mere figment of the mind?" He dropped the sarcastic tone and rounded Dumbledore, who sat firmly rooted in his chair.
"What makes you think I'll tell you anything?" he asked, not playing games with his son.
"I don't expect you to tell me anything," Caliban confessed, "But I thought I'd offer nonetheless. You can't blame someone for simply going through the motions after all."
"Go away," Dumbledore finally said with force, "I have nothing to say to you." Caliban's smirk faded, and he glared at his father.
"I thought as much. But I suppose I can be a good boy and listen to you just this once." He turned and started to walk away, but stopped suddenly, "Oh by the way, have you ever read Hogwarts: A History?" Dumbledore simply glared at him. "I thought not. It really is a fascinating book. You learn so many things, like how the elves use something called the Come and Go room to get whatever they need, like how there's a secret passage out of the Slytherin common room to the basement of Zonko's joke shop and…" Caliban's eyes suddenly became very fierce and he forcefully rushed towards Dumbledore's desk. "How anyone of the headmaster's bloodline can use the right spell to circumvent the school's anti-apparition wards!"
Dumbledore realized a second too late the implication that this was, in fact, not Caliban's astral projection, but rather Caliban himself. He quickly threw up his mental defenses, but found himself under a severe mental strain as his son bombarded him with a terrible assault. For several minutes the two of them stood there, their eyes locked in a never-ending staredown, as their minds did vicious battle. Suddenly Caliban closed his eyes and began to get the information he was looking for…"Harry….Potter…may be found at….Potter…Manor….now, where is that? And once more…why Potter?" He continued to search for several moments longer, and Dumbledore felt himself pushed back in his seat, before the onslaught suddenly let up. Dumbledore lurched forward, exhausted from the attack. "So, you think Potter is the Heir of Merlin, interesting." Caliban smirked. "I'm ashamed father," he said snidely, "I thought you would know where the Manor was by now. No matter…there's always Plan B." Dumbledore struggled to reach for his wand, but before he could point it at his son, Caliban vanished into thin air.
/ - / - / - /
"So we need to figure out how Voldemort survived that night in Godric's Hollow," Harry finished explaining, lining out his final plans. "The problem is we spent the last three months of our time searching for something, but we couldn't find a thing. Sadly the one thing my family library is lacking is information on the dark arts."
"You could check Grimmauld," Arthur suggested, "Even though I think Sirius threw away most of the really dark books, there's liable to be a lot more information there then there is anywhere else." Harry nodded, but was distracted by a groan of pain from Colin, who held his head in pain.
"Sorry," Colin mumbled, "Just another headache. I guess the astral projection took more out of me than I thought it would." Colin took an offered glass of water from Ginny and drank it rather thoroughly. "If you don't mind, I need to go for a walk." Arthur nodded and Colin moved out the back door to get some fresh air. Hermione noticed out of the corner of her eye Ginny biting her bottom lip, as if she needed to tell him something, but kept this notice to herself.
"As much as I hate to say it," Harry said finally, "Dumbledore may be our only option." Everyone looked grim at the prospect, and spoke nothing more of the increasingly likely possibility.
"Maybe Remus has some ideas," Ron suggested, and Harry nodded his head.
"He's been staying at Grimmauld with Tonks, looking up things in the library and doing some degree of research. We'll have to see if he came up with anything there." He turned towards Arthur, "Did anything happen while we were away?"
Arthur smirked, and told them the tale of Percy asking him to run for Minister of Magic. To say that Harry and his cohorts were gobsmacked would be a small understatement. "Bloody hell," Ron whispered, an exclamation shared by pretty much everyone else at the table. He shook himself back to reality and looked at his father, "I think you should do it. We need all the help we can get to beat You-Know-Who, and having you as Minister would be a great asset." Everyone else seemed to share the sentiment, and Arthur sighed, sipping the last of his tea.
"We should move forward carefully," he said finally, after contemplating everything in his head. "I doubt very much that Fudge will go down without a fight, and we can't afford to lose our newfound credibility with the public." Everyone agreed, and slowly started to break apart, with Neville and Luna returning to their respective homes and Harry going to Grimmauld to check on Remus. Hermione stayed behind to talk to Ginny, trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
/ - / - / - /
Colin sighed contently as he walked through the trail towards Ottery St. Catchpole. It was hard to believe it had actually only been three days since his parents and brother were killed, and though he still felt the pangs of loss at thinking of them, but they had lessened considerably.
Behind him he heard a noise, and he instinctively had his wand in his hand and turned around to see if he was being followed. He scanned the wooded area, calming himself down when he didn't see anyone. Sighing to himself in relief, he pocketed his wand and turned back around…
…only to see a man staring straight at him…a man with piercing violet eyes. Colin became gripped with fear as he saw the man once more, the same one who plagued his nightmares, and the man who had killed his parents. He saw the violet eyes flicker to a deep shade of blue before becoming the other color once more, and he finally had a name to put with the face…
…Caliban de Montesquieu.
Colin pulled out his wand again and fired the first curse he could think of. The cutting spell skittered harmlessly off of Caliban's wordlessly cast shield, and Caliban pulled his own wand out and pushed Colin back with great force, slamming him against a tree and causing his wand to clatter to the cold ground below. Colin stood up and rushed him, hoping that his martial arts training would give him the advantage.
"PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!" Caliban yelled, causing Colin to stop dead in his tracks and fall to his back. Caliban smirked and pointed his wand at Colin, lifting him slightly off the ground, "Now is that any way to great your old friend?"
Colin literally spit in Caliban's face. "You're not my friend, murderer!" he said harshly. Caliban feigned hurt.
"You have no idea how deeply that strikes me my dear boy. I'm just here to help you." Caliban cocked his head as he moved Colin to a sitting position. "After all, I can explain your headaches are so sever…and why your memories still aren't in tact. It's really quite simple, it's merely a side effect of…me."
"What are you talking about?" Colin demanded to know. Caliban chuckled.
"Ah my poor young fellow, I see you haven't changed a bit. But perhaps dropping the façade would allow a bit more light on your current situation." Caliban flicked his wand and caused Colin to stand up, a full-body mirror appearing before him. Colin internally screamed in fear as Caliban let out a deep sigh, and a great weight seemed to be lifted from his mind. Colin literally saw his appearance melt before his eyes, becoming something much more monstrous and much more terrifying.
Caliban smiled at his newly returned apprentice. "You've been saved from a fate worse than death young dragon. Welcome home Draco…Welcome Home."
A/N: *dodges tomatoes* Okay, honestly, did anyone see that coming?
The strange explanation next chapter, as well as a drastic choice that Draco must make.