Harry Catches a Break.

By Nemo Blank

The characters in this story belong to JK Rowling.

Percy would never have realized there was a problem but for the alarm ward. He had designed it as an exercise in spellcrafting, consulting with his father and brother to make it work within the intrusive ward structure of Hogwarts, but it was by no means perfect.

He was after all the sixth year prefect of Gryffindor Tower, a position of some importance, the first rung of the ladder of honors that Percy meant to climb to the very top. His father Arthur, himself a Department Head of the Ministry of Magic, had assured Percy that eyes were already upon him and had advised him of several clever ways to shine through 'working smart.' The process of constructing and perfecting the alarm ward would serve as an impressive bit of extracurricular activity, improve his performance as prefect and build his skills, with the added benefit of getting him out of the sleep-robbing chore of bed checks.

Or that's what it was supposed to do. The long night had revealed some serious flaws in his work. Percy had never imagined dealing with so many absconders at once and so the night's activities had revealed an error in the definition table that had the alarm continuing to sound randomly in his ear even after it was dismissed.

Amid preparations to fully deactivate the malfunctioning ward, Percy was being forcibly reminded every few minutes that some of the students that he was responsible for had gone missing during an emergency lockdown. Especially galling was that two of them were his siblings, the third being a national celebrity whose death could reflect quite poorly on him and subtly grease the rungs of that ladder. Then the fourth alarm sounded.

This was the impetus enabling Percy to throw off the compulsion laid over the inhabitants of Gryffindor Tower to remain calm and docile during the lockdown. It took great willpower to throw off such a thing, but Percy's incandescent wrath at the wretched toe rag called Seamus Finnegan had provided the necessary wrench to break the spell and turn him out of the tower looking for the missing students.

It was an even greater fluke that Percy actually found out what had happened, as calamities befalling Hogwarts typically remained a not-much-thought-upon mystery.

Though his siblings were involved, the compulsion had been strong enough that Percy hadn't felt anxiety over the matter until he'd gotten clear of the tower. He'd then made a beeline for the Headmaster's office, crossing the causeway over the sunken courtyard only to find no response to his entreaties from the impassive gargoyle that guarded the stairway.

Now swamped with gut wrenching terror for Ginny and theorizing that Madame Pomphrey would be consulted in any case, he made for the infirmary, where Percy was just in time to overhear the entire tale of the diary recounted. Standing unnoticed in the infirmary doorway, he reddened with rage as Ron's story unfolded.

Ron had survived, Ginny was safe under the mediwitch's care, Potter had been detained by Dumbledore and Finnegan could damned well go and hang himself for all Percy cared. Sneering at the thought of a barely thirteen year old drunkard, Percy slipped out of the infirmary to let the twins know what had happened. He hoped that they might be able to recall this cursed diary that Ginny had spoken of, as Bill would certainly make it a Weasely Brothers priority to find out exactly how she had gotten it, and most importantly, from whom.

Descending the steps, Percy slowed as he caught the sound of Lucius Malfoy's affected drawl drifting up from the ground floor. Halting and listening, he picked out the high pitched insolent tone of a house elf disputing which floor the duo was on, clearly toying with the man.

Having no desire to confront someone as dodgy as Malfoy when he was in such an obvious pet, Percy sidled into an empty wall alcove that had probably once held a suit of armor. The somewhat blackened stone of the alcove had been hidden behind a pair of narrow tapestries depicting rather unconvincing deer and pheasants, mismatched and badly hung with a hand sized gap between them.

Malfoy sounded murderous and feeling much the same, Percy resolved not to get caught up in the old feud between the families. Though a peace oath had been sworn by the previous heads of the two families to expel any member for attacking the other, that wouldn't stop a back stabbing Death Eater like Malfoy from spitefully scuppering his hoped-for Ministry career before it ever got started.

Once within the alcove, Percy centered himself, cooling his anger and remembering his reading. He was enthusiastic about self-improvement and lately trying to cultivate the useful habit of active observation, which required him to question what he saw and to think about his surroundings. Deliberately, he followed an internal checklist that he had developed. What was Malfoy doing here?

It was difficult not to devolve back into useless fretting over a Ministry career that he didn't yet have, but with some effort Percy dragged his observations back on track. Malfoy was a Hogwarts Governor, so why bring a personal house elf to Hogwarts? From the sound of it they didn't exactly relish each other's company.

Percy wasn't really that familiar with the creatures, but he had never detected such obvious contempt in the voice of one before. What could a rebellious elf do for Malfoy at Hogwarts that a Hogwarts elf could not? Perhaps not report to Dumbledore? What exactly was the man after?

Percy knew from his father's dinner conversation that Malfoy was a bitter foe of Dumbledore's Progressive faction in the Wizengamot. Arthur had further speculated that Malfoy's stint as a Hogwarts Governor was yet another attempt by the Traditionalists to flank the old man and cut him out of one of his many positions of power. Though House Malfoy was a 'new' family, without standing in the Wizengamot, Malfoy himself sat as proxy for various 'hired' seats and was the major financier of the Traditionalists.

How, Percy wondered, could events at Hogwarts affect the Wizengamot? No scenario that he could imagine resulted in any gain to be had here for the faux aristocrat. Noting that the gap between the hanging tapestries looked quite a bit wider at the bottom, the prefect stepped all the way back against the wall of the alcove and set his feet wide to insure that he wouldn't be glimpsed.

Something clattered as he disturbed it and squatting, Percy felt around and picked up a wand, holding it in the dim light coming through the gap, recognizing it immediately.

Bowman had started something among the impoverished purebloods last term, bringing in some of the largely useless but traditionally revered ancestral 'dead sticks' that pureblood houses typically enshrined, crassly offering his extras for trade. After some initial resistance the other poor purebloods had eagerly reciprocated, hoping to trade the useless wands of long forgotten relatives for a useable match.

The ICW generously subsidized muggleborn education worldwide in order to protect the secret, but galleons were hard to come by for the natives and many purebloods, Percy included, had to make do with a poorly suited hand-me-down heirloom until they could afford a better match. Most Purebloods simply never bothered, the cost not being worth the added convenience.

The wand that Percy had almost stepped on was very distinctive and he had seen Barton Hall hand it over to Flint for twenty sickles. Percy gave it a swish and frowned at its poor suitability. He remembered Barton saying that it was elm and kelpie whisker, having belonged to some obscure relative.

Percy stiffened and went still as the approaching voices became clearer. Malfoy was sounding particularly icy, hissing out orders to the recalcitrant house elf and being sassed in return if the creature's high pitched evasions were any guide.

lf

"Do not dare test me on this, Elf!" Malfoy lost his temper as the insolent thing once again pretended not to understand. Voice dropping into a raging whisper, he ground out, "You will search out only the diary, specifically the diary embossed with the name 'T.M. Riddle,' that I showed you in the library of my manor! You will continue the search until you retrieve the Master's diary, encounter the Master himself or at last drop dead, I care not which! Start with an examination the possessions of the Weasley girl and then the rest of the blood traitors, but leave no stone unturned!"

Dobby smiled.

Malfoy almost had a stroke at the rage that he was trying to contain. "You damned elf! Leave no trace of your presence or your search, but find that diary!" Turning away, Malfoy took ten rapid steps up before he finally killed the miserably contrary thing.

The elf caught up with a pop and flicked his eyes toward the alcove that the two had drawn even with on the stair. "Can Dobby ask Hoggywarts Elfs if they has seen the bad whores-crux-spirit-diary of He Who Is Nameless, Dobby's Master's Master?"

Malfoy gasped and whirled to confront the elf, now directly before Percy's alcove, whitening with a fine killing rage. "You dare to compare me to a house elf?" Even worse, the infernal rodent had just made a subtle slur against the Master himself! Malfoy would have dispatched it on the spot if he hadn't relied so heavily on its services at the bank. It took two of the Master's keyholders to authorize a new elf's entry into the Master's vault, and the vault required near constant service. Tasking a goblin would be very expensive and The Master had ordered it done by elves.

Unfortunately, the creature understood its significance as the last living elf so authorized, the Lestrange elf having been destroyed as a security precaution lest it fall into Ministry hands. With Bellatrix in Azkaban and only one keyholder available, the insolent creature had grown ever more truculent. It possessed a certain low cunning, but it did not seem to understand that there would be a deadly reckoning in store for it when the Master returned. The Master would be eager to test his magic and had always enjoyed tormenting the things. The elf's comeuppance would make for an amusing interlude.

Peering out between the tapestries, Percy almost shouted an objection when the blond swung the cane so hard that it made a 'whoosh,' striking the elf and knocking it tumbling down the stairs.

"Insolent elf!" bellowed Malfoy. His voice dropped to a harsh, hissing whisper. "No one is ever to know of the Dark Lord's business! Not elves, not men, no one! Now come!" He started back up the stairs.

Percy had to swallow rage at this final confirmation of the originator of the attack upon his family. The wand in his hand itched to be used. One killing curse and he could snap it, vanish it with his own wand and disappear.

Dobby, slowly crawling up the steps on all fours, looked straight at Percy as he went by, blood wreathed black eyes blazing with triumph. He grinned wickedly at the boy, but made no other acknowledgement as he crawled after his rotter of a master.

Percy stood still, sanity asserting itself even as he trembled with rage, getting hold of himself but continuing to listen as he tried to fully grasp an impossible situation. By the Laws of Magic there should be no way for a treaty-bound Malfoy Head of House to attack a Weasley, or a Hogwarts Governor that had sworn the Governor's Oath of Office to knowingly allow harm to befall a Hogwarts student, yet Malfoy had somehow managed to engineer an attack upon numerous students, Weasleys in particular, without losing his magic.

Watching Malfoy reach the landing and pass through the stone arch leading to Dumbledore's tower, Percy processed the logic and came to an epiphany. There were no loopholes in the Laws of Magic.

No Malfoy Lord, no Hogwarts Governor by the terms of witnessed magical oaths, could possibly attack his sister or knowingly arrange for a basilisk to be loosed on Hogwarts without instantly losing his magic. The conclusion was inescapable. The man with the rebellious elf was in fact not truly what he seemed, neither a true Malfoy nor a Hogwarts Governor. Taking that as an immutable fact, then what was he?

Clearing his mind of emotion, Percy thought carefully of what the elf, Dobby, had said on the stair and belatedly realized that it had been speaking directly to him all along. It had loudly proclaimed Malfoy's secret and taken a beating in order to do so. Dobby had told him to his face that Malfoy had a master, just like an elf, which meant that 'Malfoy' was no longer the wizard born Lucius Malfoy. Shockingly, he must have somehow become Voldemort's actual property, a magically bound servant exactly as the elf had proclaimed.

Percy frowned, considering what he knew of House Elves. A magical servant couldn't take oaths or be called upon to testify in court due to their lack of responsibility for their own actions. Though human chattel slavery was no longer legal, in common law and in magic such slaves were the master's responsibility to control. If a master had a bound servant that murdered a man, then the master would be the one prosecuted for the murder, the slave disposed of with the rest of the property or put down out of hand as a public nuisance.

Perhaps that was why a magical servant like Dobby could defy his 'master,' as they were fundamentally the same order of creature. House elves, bred from magic-scavenging brownies over the millennia, now served wizards in exchange for magic. Could a servant draw upon another servant's magic? Percy didn't know, but the Hogwarts elves drew upon the castle. Perhaps Dobby was surviving on the ambient magic of the places that he toiled, only nominally tied to the false Malfoy.

Moving up the steps after Voldemort's creature, Percy couldn't help but feel a trace of admiration for Voldemort's cunning. He must have found a way to mimic the effects of a magical oath for his slaves to lie so convincingly. The incomprehensible terror of the Blood War, where ancient protections inexplicably failed and no one seemed safe from betrayal must have been based upon that deception and a series of simple swindles, that and an unthinkable act of ultimate submission by a hand-full of pureblooded toadies in positions of trust. It wasn't understood to this day, because no one could imagine a wizard of power choosing to become a slave. He wouldn't have believed it either if he hadn't just witnessed it with his own eyes.

Percy felt a curious excitement. If the magical servant calling itself 'Lucius Malfoy' was neither wizard nor a true Malfoy, then no peace-oath bound the Weasely wands against him. Voldemort, the murderer of his Prewett uncles, the blood-enemy of the Weasely family, had struck at Ginny through this hidden servant. Any of Voldemort's slaves were legally and morally fair game and liable to be dispatched out of hand, all in accordance with ancient magical custom, along with their despicable master.

Not that Percy was naive enough to consider arguing the point before the corrupt mess of a Wizengamot, no matter how legally valid his defense. Was Magical Britain even worth trying to serve if a well-known Death Eater like Malfoy could control a substantial political faction through open bribery? Those old men were neither slaves nor stupid, just petty, venal and fundamentally corrupt.

Thoughtfully, Percy sized up another empty niche. The path to the Headmaster's tower lead up the stair to the third floor landing. From there one passed through an archway to a vast courtyard, with a sort of bridge across it to the entrance to the Headmaster's office. The bridge was designed to be flooded judging by the watermarks on the roadbed and the courtyard walls, perhaps as a way to detect the approach of invisible enemies.

There were niches for suits of armor all along the path. Staring down the causeway after Malfoy, Percy wondered how it was that he had never noticed that every suit of armor on the path leading to the headmaster's tower was missing. Had the tower's defenses been destroyed in some internal fight?

More than one Headmaster had been assassinated, overthrown or imprisoned by rebellious teachers over the millennia, and the entire faculty had been killed at least once in the large scale student mutinies of the 1690's, but Hogwarts a History was so filled with politically acceptable lies that only the portraits really knew.

Fear and anger balanced almost perfectly, Percy shifted uncomfortably, then urinated on the floor. Vanishing the wet spot and then stepping back into his hiding place, Percy began thinking through the necessary steps to accomplish the task ahead. He absolutely had to do this thing.

Bill had recounted some chilling tales of his time in Africa and the even more lawless green hell of the Amazon, battling with ghouls, guerrillas and claim jumpers as well as something of the awful fate of prisoners taken in those camps. It seemed that human sacrifice could depower a ward just as easily as power one and pragmatic curse breakers saw no need to waste a bandit's death. If Bill were here, he would plan his actions meticulously and then make a swift end to Malfoy, leaving no trace or loose end.

Father didn't have that in him. He would rage and inevitably tell Mother before going after Malfoy. Mother wouldn't hesitate an instant or think at all before running straight to Dumbledore, seeking 'justice,' and incidentally exposing Father for the culprit should Malfoy vanish. Percy loved his parents but he understood their flaws.

Dumbledore was a powerful wizard who could doubtlessly enforce his will upon the Wizengamot and set everything right in a week or so of sustained effort, but he simply wouldn't. The man had played the harmlessly bumbling old buffoon for so long that it had become true. In Dumbledore's careless hands the matter would end in a welter of useless accusations, sad sighs and very likely Arthur Weasley's death.

Shaking his head angrily, Percy could see only one outcome of involving his parents in this bit of Family Business. Malfoy would be warned of his peril and shift the ground of the affair, spreading his galleons around and easily winning a political battle. This would leave the cur free to strike through proxies until there was no more Weasley Family.

Percy wasn't having it. There had to be justice for this outrage, real justice served directly and at once, without benefit of demented proclamations about 'the light.' It all came down to will. He had always thought himself a cut above his peers, but did Percy Weasley have the necessary will to answer this cowardly attack upon his family? Could he finish Voldemort's wretched slave before the bastard vanished behind the protection of impenetrable wards, dirty money and corrupt politics?

lf

Waiting in the alcove, Percy fingered the beater's bat that he had transfigured from a quill. There was no other exit from Dumbledore's office for Malfoy. He would have to walk the long dark causeway and pass the empty niche, his back wide open to attack.

Going over his ambush in his mind, Percy cast sticking charms and affixed the metal shaving mirror that he had carried in order to avoid the basilisk onto the keystone of the first arch, facing it down the causeway and carefully adjusting the angle with bits of parchment until he could keep a covert watch from within the alcove without exposing himself to view.

The stairs had conveniently moved away from the landing so that no one was likely to come along that way without giving him plenty of warning, so Percy didn't bother disillusioning himself. He could almost fancy that Hogwarts was intent on helping.

Percy swallowed when Malfoy emerged, kicking irritably at the elf. He hadn't considered the possibility of the elf still being there, but he didn't have time to panic before Harry Potter came running after the Death Eater. What was that child doing? Dumbledore must be insane to let him go chasing after a Death Eater like that, and was Harry giving him the diary?

Nerves caused a shaking Percy to fumble the draw and he dropped the unfamiliar wand when the elf pulled the sock from the diary. Scowling at his shoddy performance, Percy picked the wand up, stepped out and pointed it down the arch bordered stone causeway a beat too late as the Death Eater's wand flared green.

The elf struck hard, breaking the Death Eater's wand and smashing him away. "You shall not harm Harry Potter!"

Percy lowered the wand and shrank back into his hiding place, trying desperately not to guffaw as Malfoy tumbled along the rough stone flags like one of Ginny's old rag-dolls. Percy was both impressed and a bit incredulous that Potter could display such cunning. The boy usually came across as rather painfully earnest, but a mind lived behind those guileless green eyes, a sly and even somewhat ruthless one that had just coolly and deliberately cheated the Death Eater out of his elf.

Potter shook hands with the jubilant elf and they returned to the Headmaster's office together, taking the diary along in order to complete Malfoy's humiliation, noted Percy with dark amusement. Smiling, Percy stilled himself, his unseemly bout of nerves receding into a calm and deadly concentration.

lf

Lucius Malfoy rose, groaning. Picking up his broken wand lest the residue of the curse be discovered by the aurors, he snarled and stared after the boy, simmering with hatred. He had just made a nearly unforgivable mistake and compromised his usefulness to the master out of anger. The public would have demanded the kiss if his killing curse had connected, in spite of his pervasive influence over the biddable 'elders' of the Sitting Quorum, thus depriving his master of a servant. It was fortunate that the elf had intervened.

After he recovered from his self-administered punishment for the loss of the master's horcrux, Lucius would set about using the newspaper that his master now owned to turn the boy's fame against him.

Once the credulous idiots that constituted the public had been properly conditioned to despise the wretched brat, Lucius would be free to defile everything that Potter loved before giving the miserable half-blood over to await the master's pleasure as a guest of the master's most fearsome servants, the dementors of Azkaban.

It amused Lucius to think that Potter would consider himself hard done by at that point. He would learn to long for the comfort of dementors and wish that he had a freezing cell to hide in when the master came for him personally.

Cheered at the thought of the brat's upcoming physical, mental, moral, and spiritual unraveling at the infinitely capable hands of the master, Lucius turned away, limping down the causeway as quickly as he could manage, anxious not to be seen looking so disheveled in public. As Malfoy stepped hurriedly onto the last flagstone of the causeway, his foot stuck fast, causing him to tip forward. Then there was nothing.