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Chapter Text

Set me as a seal upon your arm
As a seal upon your heart,
For love is as strong as death
And jealousy as cruel as the grave.
Many waters cannot quench love
Neither can the floods drown it
If a man were to give up all his wealth for love,
He would not feel he had lost anything.
-Song of Songs 8:6,7

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His most august Lordship, Lucius Malfoy, wanted to stab someone. He had been wanting to stab someone for a long time. This was an uncomfortable feeling for him, as he usually outsourced his stabbings. Not that he minded a little unpleasantness or a few macabre tasks - he was an unpleasant man himself. What he did mind was the calamitous chain of events that had led to feeling it so intimately.

During the first war, he had deemed it advantageous to ally himself with The Dark Lord’s crusade. Though this alliance had come to a rather disappointing end, he had still deemed it advantageous to make the same alliance during the second. Similarly, as he had watched Lord Voldemort’s methods go from merely inconvenient and distasteful to unpredictable, illogical, and unproductive, he had soon realized it would once again all end in woe. For one thing, the ancient dark arts required an elegance and reverence that the Dark Lord’s histrionics lacked. One simply did not frolic about with dementors and feed people to snakes in formal dining rooms like a demented zookeeper. Secondly, he had begun to worry about the safety of his family. His beloved bride had been threatened and insulted. His usually sanguine son was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His ancestral home was overrun with unsavory people who had no respect for basic hygiene, let alone the nobility of the ancient wizarding heritage he wanted to protect. He, himself, had thrice borne the agony and indignity of cruciatus! The whole situation had become untenable.

It was clear that, beyond how the resources of pureblood families could be leveraged to gain power for his megalomaniacal ambitions, the Dark Lord cared no more about preserving pureblood values than he did about winning a game of exploding snap on a Sunday afternoon. Lucius had nearly reached the point of packing up his family and disappearing from the face of the earth when his deliverance arrived in the form of a letter from Draco to Narcissa, sealed with the mark of The Order of the Phoenix, and containing the following:

Dearest Mother,
I am very sorry to have failed you and Father, but it seems that, despite excelling in all other forms of the dark arts, I am incapable of committing murder face to face. Please accept my deepest apologies.
Your Loving Son, Draco

It also contained an offer of asylum from The Order in exchange for help bringing about an end to The Dark Lord.

Narcissa informed him with her usual serenity that:

1. They would be accepting the offer.
2. She did not give a damn about blood purity and had already lost enough of her family for this damn antiquated ideology.
3. So help her Hecate, she would go without him if she had to and would use every knut of the Black fortune to raze the Death Eaters to the ground if they came between her and the life of her son.

(Gentle reader, as has been established by the romantic among us, the Malfoy men, while they can be arrogant, implacable, and prone to fits of dramatic melancholy, love their wives with the fervent ardor of a lost sailor following the North Star. Lucius was no exception. He had worshiped his wife from the tender age of sixteen, when his eyes had met hers on the first day of their betrothal negotiations.)

Lucius had never heard Narcissa use expletives or invoke violence in his life. He didn’t argue. He did not want to argue. If she was a phoenix, he was a phoenix.

And so they had thrown their lot in with The Order.

Despite the relative tranquility of no longer being under the thumb of a maniac, being a member of The Order of the Phoenix was not without its irritations. For instance, when people had been used to seeing you a certain way - say as a heartless blood purist intent on making everyone around them miserable - it was difficult to get them to see you differently. Draco, after a few brawls with various Weasleys and shouting matches with the Granger girl, had gained a grudging acceptance among his peers. Narcissa’s level-headed diplomacy and handiness with medicinal herbology had also gained her a place in the Order. Lucius was having a harder time adapting. He had a lot to contribute – the locations of Death Eater lairs, the details of evil plans, names of spies and foes, lashings of money - he just could not seem to offer it in a way that didn’t make people want to punch him in his arrogant face.

It was partly this rare moment of self-awareness, partly his real desire to see the Dark Lord defeated, and partly a sense of duty and affection towards his family that inspired his current task and provoked his current violent mood. He had been in a meeting with Allistair Moody, who was no picnic himself, about how best to use the Malfoy resources, when the need for a larger base of operation was brought up. It occurred to Lucius that liberating Malfoy Manor from the Dark Lord would be of mutual benefit to the order and to himself. He made a deal with Moody that morning to secure the Manor as a base of operation, provided that his home be fully vacated by the Order upon the defeat of the Death Eaters and returned to his family with no conditions. They had agreed.

Now, Lucius and Arthur Weasley (Why was there always a Weasley bumbling about?) stood in a small antechamber under the dungeons, gazing at the Manor’s lodestone. Lucius ran his fingers over the runes carved into the black stone that tied the ley lines of Malfoy Manor’s magic together, his eyebrows drawn together in thought. The ancient wards were settled centuries deep into the ley lines, predating wand magic and spell magic, using blood and earth and fire as intuitive conduits instead. It would take immense power to completely reset them. Particularly, it required blood - and a lot of it. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem. Unfortunately, these were not normal circumstances and the stasis vessels of Malfoy blood, usually kept full in the antechamber, were scattered on the floor, empty and broken.

Lucius was not without a sense of humor, and it struck him now how often comedy and tragedy seemed to interweave with one another, as if the tether of one had to be balanced with disorder of the other. For all his murderous hopes and all his dreams of revenge, it was ironic that the person who was going to end up on the receiving end of his desire to stab someone was himself. He looked at Arthur Weasley. Why did it have to be a Weasley? Perhaps it was for the best though. He supposed if anyone would understand what a man was willing to sacrifice for the safety of his family, it was probably Weasley. He jerked his head toward the entrance to the room and Weasley stepped outside to keep watch.

Lucius could feel the ley lines pulse around him as he stepped up onto the plinth of the lodestone. The magic recognized him and prodded around the edges of his thoughts, humming a little mournfully as it discerned his intentions. Fussy sometimes, was family magic, but he didn’t need a steadying breath or a moment to collect himself. His hands found the athame tucked under the stone and he pressed it into his chest, falling forward until it pierced his heart. As his blood ran along the runes and out onto the web of lines that descended into the earth, he sent his full intentions along with it, “Sanctum sanctorum.” He felt almost gleeful as the images passed through his brain. The Dark Lord, his selection of pet Death Eaters, and his bloody psychopath-in-law Bellatrix being flung out of the Manor with force and deposited outside of the ward lines. Dark artifacts and valuables being whisked away to his vaults at Gringotts. The wards resetting and weaving around his home like climbing vines, the magical signatures of Narcissa and Draco tattooed and stitched into each tendril of protection. He could hear Weasley shouting behind him, but it was too late – he considered having him flung out of the Manor as well, but decided he needed someone to let the Order know the job was done.

And then, it was over. His magic sank into the lodestone as he breathed out a final breath. And as Lucius Malfoy died for love (and a little bit for spite), his last thought was an inelegant curse on the man who had ruined his life. “I hope that noseless motherfucker dies slowly and painfully.”

Chapter Text

“A woman's heart is such a complex problem—the owner thereof is often most incompetent to find the solution of this puzzle.”
― Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

When shall I be dead and rid
Of all the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother’s curse?
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

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It was a shame, lamented society, that fate had bound Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age to that buffoon, Draco Malfoy. War heroine, academic genius, accidental fashion icon, and all-around force of nature, married to an absolute, albeit charming, idiot.

And it wasn’t as if she had had to marry him. The ministry’s marriage initiative had hardly been announced when they had run off to Las Vegas, in AMERICA for Merlin’s sake, and eloped. It was all very romantic, but not what one would have expected from practical, lawful, studious Hermione Granger. To further scandalize society, when a ministry matchmaker had gone to investigate, she had flashed the runes on her ring at him and said “Sorry! Soul bond. Can’t be undone without blood magic.” She didn’t sound sorry. Then she had launched into a lecture on the history of soul bonds, the nuances of the Malfoy bonds in particular, and an analysis of the anatomical and psychological anomalies that allowed for the bond. To the official’s great horror, Hermione had tapped her wand on her wrist to illuminate the magic flowing from the ring, through her veins, and into her heart. When she projected an image of her brain between them and began dissecting and prodding at it with squelchy sound effects, the matchmaker had fled out of pure anxiety and exhaustion. The amount of paperwork he was going to have to do was astronomical. Was this even legal!? It was legal, he discovered; the magic was so arcane that no one had thought to regulate it. The ministry had dropped the investigation.

But the wizarding press did not drop their speculation.

Undeniably Malfoy was handsome- if you liked your men tall, romantically pale, and… empty headed. Heaven knows, there was always a would-be harem of women glancing at him furtively beneath their lashes and giggling like school girls whenever he was around. But Hermione’s romantic history did not indicate that she cared much about looks. Or brains.

Obviously, he was rich – hadn’t it been his family’s money that had funded the Order’s war efforts? Death Eater money, but that could be forgiven and forgotten, one supposed, considering the outcome… and his beautiful face… and his family’s considerable philanthropy. Hermione had her own money; her Order of Merlin had come with a small fortune and her exploits during the war had guaranteed her any job she wanted.

Certainly, he had status and influence. After all, the Malfoy family had ages of history and magic behind it. And he was a war hero, too – though, only Merlin knew how! Whatever his deeds had been, no record of them existed anywhere that journalists could find. There were rumors, of course- that perhaps his money, rather than his acumen, had bought him his reputation for valor. Darker rumors, too, suggested that his methods and moral compass were not consistent with the image the ministry wanted to project. Gruesome stories of assassinations, torture, kidnappings, and general death eater ominousness circulated amongst those who didn’t like him and, to the amusement of his friends, amongst certain women with particular proclivities who let it be known that they would not object to a little kidnapping and torture. Hermione didn’t need to borrow anyone’s power. No one asked how she felt about kidnapping and torture.

None of their friends gave anything away, either. Harry Potter flatly refused to answer questions. Ginny Weasley and Theo Nott competed to see who could feed the press the most creative innuendos about Malfoy’s positive attributes. He was, they informed rapacious reporters, an “impressive pillar of society” and “advantageously endowed.”

“A veritable centaur when you need someone in a lengthy endeavor,” vowed Theo.

“Massively competent, I would say,” added Ginny.

There was no accounting for it. Perhaps genius had its quirks. Perhaps she knew something they didn’t. Perhaps the heart just wanted what the heart wanted.

At any rate, Hermione continued to be brilliant, fascinating, and talented and Draco continued to be gorgeous, harmless, and pleasant. Society wrapped them in the mystique of fairy tales and daydreams - the dark prince turned hero and his peasant born queen – and made them safe. So, despite the fact they had managed to bollocks up the ministry’s plans and political machinations for their separate futures, they were left to their own happiness.

Besides, there was plenty going on for The Prophet to capitalize on if they couldn’t get the full story on the unlikely pair.

Ginny was 3 months pregnant and only engaged to Harry. And still playing quidditch! It wasn’t polite! Society had been pining for that particular wedding since Ginny had come of age and, by all the gods, they deserved it!

Harry was in auror training, but it was clear that he was bored. He skipped writing assignments and instead handed in pages of textbooks with corrections scrawled all over them in red. He wouldn’t practice spell work with the other trainees because he “didn’t want to hurt anyone,” but defended himself, competently, if somewhat lazily, when attacked in a combat session. His test scores though, were the highest administrators had seen in years, and he was obviously competent, so his antics were overlooked.

Theo had refused to accept summons from the ministry to be matched with a witch, declaring that he was already married to Blaise Zambini, who was comatose in St. Mungo’s and couldn’t corroborate or deny Theo’s claim. Though he did try when his nurse congratulated him weepily as she gave him his sponge bath. The public swooned.

Pansy Parkinson had at first tried to tell the ministry that she was married to Blaise. Upon finding out that Theo had beat her to the punch, she agreed to meet with her matches only to terrify them each so much that soon no one else could be convinced to meet with her. She packed up her troubles and moved to Italy to study fashion. Other young women took inspiration from her example and the marriage initiative stalled while officials reevaluated the loopholes.

The entire group was traumatized, beloved, and doing whatever the hell they wanted.

The only person who might have had a chance of influencing them was Narcissa Malfoy, who had been entrusted with their feeding and care during their post war therapy and rehabilitation. She had only shrugged elegantly and said “Children will be children.” But they weren’t children insisted the representative who had come to meet with her. “I suppose they never were,” Narcissa sighed.

Of course, amid the gaiety and gossip, more sobering matters occupied the wizarding papers as well.

Running under the exhilaration of victory was the almost forgotten knowledge that the gods of war were never merciful, and their blood lust was not satisfied simply because mortal men decided enough had been given and the outcome for which they fought had been achieved. They did not reward the victorious or comfort the fallen. When they were robbed of the fuel that sustained the fires of war – lust for power, love of money, prejudice, and pride - they forged the wounds of war into weapons of new destruction. Grief into bitterness, loss into vengeance, and uncertainty into fear and mistrust.

And France was overwhelmed with grief, loss, and uncertainty as the romanticism of victory faded and the reality of dealing with the aftermath of war began to sink in. In the courts of newly formed French Wizengamot, and in the court of public opinion, debate ran amok as to how to deal with Voldemort’s supports. Some Death Eaters came to trial flaunting the dark mark like the glow from a lover’s kiss. Other supporters came swearing they had only served the Dark Lord under duress or curse.

In England, where a respectable ratio of Death Eaters had chosen to defect the minute Voldemort fled to France, there was sympathy for those who swore they only served the Dark Lord out of fear for their lives. It became rather fashionable to have a friend or a friend of a friend or a neighbor who had a chilling story of being coerced into serving Voldemort that could be rehashed over cocktails with mild gasps of horror and clutching of pearls. And, for the most part, the defectors had turned out to be both fervently desirous of and cheerfully obliging in bringing about his downfall.

The people of France had a harder time believing such claims. All their Death Eaters had seemed pretty committed to chaos and calamity. Consequently, very few were pardoned by the newly formed French Wizengamot. Those who were able to convince the Wizengamot of their innocence didn’t walk away without being held accountable in some way – all of them were required to make reparations, monetarily or through community service, which they did with varying degrees of enthusiasm or sulkiness depending on the sincerity of their repentance. Still, there were those who clamored for harsher consequences no matter how few pardons or verdicts of innocence were declared.

When some of the pardoned began to turn up dead or disappear, there was little surprise and less sympathy. Fear crept into the hearts of those awaiting their trials that perhaps being found guilty and sentenced to a stay in Azkaban was safer than being found innocent. It was a greater surprise when a mysterious figure began snatching them out of harm’s way. Not all of them – there seemed to be a method or a morality to his madness in choosing who to rescue. It was always someone for whom the courts could not find evidence of acts of violence or of positions of authority. It was almost always someone who happily agreed to reparations or volunteered access to their homes and records. And it was usually someone very old, very young or at a disadvantage within the power dynamics of the day.

Naturally, as the accused desired mercy and the accusers demanded punishment, there was always someone unhappy with the rulings made by the newly formed French Wizengamot.

And here, where mercy and judgment war with each other, passion and pride cling to their defenses, and new lovers and enemies find each other, our tale begins.

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“You are making the same mistakes that England made after the first war!” shouted a new judge on the French Wizengamot. “You cannot believe every wizard and witch that claims they aided Voldemort under duress!”
“And you cannot indiscriminately punish everyone who passes through these chambers!” Chief Warlock Bellamy shouted back from his raised dais.

This was supposed to have been an easy trial – Daphne and Astoria Greengrass were no more war criminals than they were fire-dwelling salamanders, but the sentencing of their parents seemed to have strengthened rather than assuaged the hatred against the Greengrass family. Some of the Wizengamot were obviously determined to make examples of them. He cast a pitying look at the two girls as they stood hand in hand. Astoria stood directly in a beam of late afternoon sun and its rays lit her golden hair like a halo. Her older sister, with her sorrowful dark eyes, could have stepped out of a renaissance painting. They both looked terribly young and vulnerable.

The chief warlock was reminded of his own stifled youth, trying to please the illiberal expectations of his family. The girls’ gossamer robes reminded him of the dress the muggle girls used to wear at the parties in muggle Paris he and his friends used to sneak into as young men. Those parties and dances had offered a healing reprieve from the harsh expectations of his pureblood family. Yes, he was familiar with the helplessness of limited choices that came with familial expectations and how a little kindness could change one’s future for the better.

Bellamy tried appealing to compassion and reason, “They were children when this began and are barely more than children now.”

“Many who fought against Voldemort were children!” argued the judge.

“And many of them died! Do you wish to see more lives wasted?”

“I wish to finally have France and the world free from this threat!”

“We cannot imprison half the country! This is not 1789!”

The room erupted into shouts as judges and spectators on both sides of the debate voiced their opinions. Bellamy banged his gavel to no avail. He should have known better, he thought, than to let the trials continue this close to the Memorials of The Final Battle. Emotions were too near the surface on all sides of the issue. He pointed his wand at his throat and muttered “sonorous.” His amplified voice rang out. “Silence!”

All eyes turned to him.

“This court will adjourn and will resume after the Memorial Holidays!”

Murmur still ran through the crowd, and he repeated himself. “Court proceedings will cease until after the holidays! Astoria and Daphne Greengrass, you will remain under house arrest until sessions resume. We will owl you with the date of your next appearance. This court is dismissed.”

The pair of aurors assigned to guard the girls quickly moved them through the doors behind the judges’ galley away from the crowd surging towards the tall double doors in the back of the courtroom. As the crowd dispersed, undercurrents of dissatisfaction mingled with cautious waves of relief in a tide of charged emotion that overflowed out into the city square and ran in rivulets along the streets. It seemed that this trial would be the tipping point in the ever increasing tension between mercy and judgment in France.

In a dark corner of the room, a tall red-haired figured sat hunched over, elbows on his knees and eyes on the floor. Ronald Weasley didn’t claim to be in the service of anyone’s gods, bloody or benevolent, but if there was any proof that the wounds could be weaponized, it was embodied his dogged allegiance to The Cause. He told himself he wanted justice. If vigilante justice was all he could get, he would take it. If the price was more bloodshed, he was willing to extract it.

Today, he had seen and heard all he needed to. He rose and slid out the door with the crowd, pulling his cap down to cover his hair and jamming his hands into his pockets. He had developed a habit of slouching to disguise his height and help him blend in while out in public. It would certainly not do to be recognized today. The success of his current mission made anonymity and secrecy his best allies. He made his way through the familiar streets of Paris, avoiding eye contact with passersby, and finally ducking in a small cigarette shop tucked into a narrow alley. “Pity is treason” he said to the shopgirl, who waved him towards a back room without looking up from her magazine.

“The Greengrass girls’ trial has been postponed,” he announced upon entering the dim, dusty room. “It’s too soon to know for sure, but I think they’ll be cleared of charges.”

Paul Chauvelin looked up from the sheaf of papers he was thumbing through and stroked his black beard in a way that Ron should have found hilariously cliché. Chauvelin was an absolute caricature of a villain who, had he been born in a happier time in history, would have been consigned to skulking in the corners of the courts of kings and whispering treason in the ears of discontented princes. Possibly, he would have become a used broom salesman.

It was most unfortuitous then, that his talent for conspiracy developed into full blown mania in the darkest part of times. It was unfortunate also, that he had met Ronald Weasley just when the light in Ron's heart was most ready to be extinguished. The disillusioned young man had stumbled into Captain Paul Chauvelin’s small camp of volunteer soldiers mere hours after leaving Harry and Hermione. Chauvelin had immediately recognized his disillusionment and anger and took him under his wing. Over the course of the war, Paul Chauvelin had nurtured Ron’s tendency toward spitefulness and thirst for status, along with his talent for strategy, and shaped him into the very useful and very loyal tool in his campaign.

“You are sure?” Chauvelin asked. “What was said?

“There were too many arguments. Bellamy shut down the courts until after the Memorial Holidays. He feels sorry for the Greengrass bitches.”

“Bah!” Chauvelin spat out. “He is hoping that a week of magnanimous speeches and sentimental ceremonies will soften hearts. Perhaps he is right, but it won’t matter. It will give us time to set a trap.”

“What do you need me to do?” Ron

“Keep gathering information on the Scarlet Snitch.” Chavelin threw a copy of The Prophet over to Ron. “Have you read this?”
Ron sat on one of the dusty stools and folded the paper in half to read.

THE SCARLET SNITCH – ROMANTIC HERO OR DEATH EATER SYMPATHIZER?

By Rita Skeeter

The Scarlet Snitch, the name on everyone’s lips and the inspiration for some interesting uses of snitches in fashion and fetish. What is it about his exploits that has captivated the wizarding world? What is the significance of the red training snitch he leaves behind at the scene of his "rescues?" As snitch sales soar like firebolts, your most dependable reporter is on the case, beginning with an interview with the owner of Quimby's Quidditch Emporium and Bakery about the uptick in business.

“I can’t keep the red ones on the shelves, yeah?” says Mrs. Quimby. “They’ve always been our most popular training snitch, but everybody wants them now. We had a group of mediwitch students in yesterday, drunk as Lords, who cleaned out my stock. Then they bought all my apple tarts and ate them while they put on a fashion show in the fitting rooms.”

When I asked what people were using the snitches for, she replied “I pray to Merlin that I never find out.”

Apart from shop owners appreciating the spike in Quidditch supply sales, opinions on the Scarlet Snitch are as varied as the colors of training snitches themselves.

Says C. McLaggen, an apparition point security agent “He’s a bloody traitor. I’d like to see him try to get through one of my checkpoints. Then we’d see what he’s made of.”

Says L. Brown, a first year mediwitch student “My shifts end at 10 this week if he wants to meet me outside of St. Mungos.”

But is The Scarlet Snitch a hero or a menace in this post war game of cat and mouse? What is his (or her or their) true motive in bringing former death eaters to England? And why does he choose to be known by such a stupid name?

Hoping to discover the true story, I visited Adrian Bellamy, the first to be rescued by the Scarlet Snitch. As is well known, Mr. Bellamy was the first of Voldemort’s supporters to receive a pardon for his activities during the war - pleading innocent to colluding with death eaters. Bellamy claimed that any aid he gave Voldemort’s followers was out of fear for his life and the life of his ailing father.

“I did not welcome those vile creatures in my home,” he told this reporter. “Of course I did not, you eggplant. They drank all my wine. They intimidated my poor elves. They threatened my dear father until stress weakened his heart. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no one to help us.”

A story that is all too common and all too convenient in France these days. And a story not everyone believes – as the events that unfolded following his trial prove. Shortly after his pardon, Mr. Bellamy began to receive death threats that became real one summer night when, it is alleged, a Guillotine member broke into his home and attempted to execute him.

Not much is known about the group Guillotine, named after the gristly execution device of the French revolution, beyond its very vocal opposition to anyone accused of death eater sympathies not being thrown into prison forthwith. Accusations that they have been involved in the disappearances of witches and wizards accused, but cleared, of death eater involvement, have circulated widely, but Guillotine denies any responsibility for these acts, stating that they are men of principle and order.

But perhaps Mr. Bellamy can be believed. The Scarlet Snitch certainly believed him.

When asked if he recognized the enigma known as The Scarlet Snitch or any of his band of outlaws, he was less that forthcoming.

“Three men in balaclavas apparated into the room where I was being attacked. One of them went to get my father. One of them untied me. The other one punched my attacker and tied him to a chair. Then he stood there tossing a red snitch into the air and catching it and eating almonds. He stuffed the snitch into the brute’s mouth and pulled the wings across his cheeks, eh.” Bellamy demonstrates by drawing his forefingers from the corners of his mouth to his ear lobes. “He called him sexy and kissed him on the forehead, and then we all left. That’s all I know.”

“Stupid name.” Ron grumbled, tossing the paper back onto the table.

“But not a stupid man!” Chauvelin slammed his fist down on the table. “Since his appearance, we have had nothing but setbacks! He took the Bleu family right from under our noses and will almost certainly try to get them out of France in the next few days. Have you been able to find out where he is keeping them? It’s bad enough that the ministry keeps pardoning traitors without his interference. I want them intercepted and dealt with before they can leave the country.”

“I have spies at the international apparition points. They won’t make it through.”

“Good. Are you any closer to learning his identity?”

“I have some ideas, but I’ll need to go to London to follow them.”

“You think he is English, then?”

“How else could be so well hidden and so well-funded?”

“Fine. In the meantime, I’ll have people watch the Greengrass estate. If the Scarlet Snitch or his men try to contact them, we will know. If we lay our trap just right, we may have an opportunity to eliminate him as well.”