Title: Instruments of Shadow
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Gen, with references to past Fleamont/Euphemia and James/Lily
Content Notes: AU, angst, violence
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3800
Summary: AU. Sequel to "Fruit of the Golden Tree." Fleamont remains committed to the protection of his grandson Harry Potter as Harry turns seven. And if that has to involve the Wizengamot and blood purists and the mysterious locked room on the seventh floor of Potter Place…so be it.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year. It's a sequel to my fic "Fruit of the Golden Tree" from last year, so read that one first. This will have three parts.

Instruments of Shadow

Fleamont Potter leaned back in his chair as he watched the face of Lucius Malfoy. The man was obviously trying to appear unimpressed, and just as obviously enjoying the old Firewhisky Fleamont's ancestors had laid down, so old it had become the drink called Dragon's Breath.

"What you ask might be impossible, sir," Lucius said. He sneaked another sip of the whisky and closed his eyes. Fleamont knew exactly what that red-gold taste was like going down.

Well, he knew it from other times. So far, his tumbler rested in his hand as he watched Lucius, and Lucius was so enchanted with the taste and the honor of being entertained in Potter Place by Harry Potter's guardian that he hadn't noticed.

"But only might," Fleamont noted, tapping his finger against the side of his own glass. It rang sweetly, the sound joining the soft murmur of the fire and the muffled whispers of the portraits on the walls. All of them in this sitting room had gilded frames. Impressing and lulling Lucius was part of the point.

"It is close to impossible."

"That's why I came to you, Malfoy." Fleamont smiled at him and let a single golden swallow pass down his throat. The heat that was scorching in Firewhisky hummed pleasantly in his belly, and according to old stories, gave the unwary drinker self-confidence. Lucius would probably need every bit he could grasp. "The rest of the Wizengamot told me that you were the man who could do anything you wanted."

"Except break the Dark Lord's Imperius Curse, of course." Lucius stared down into his glass. "One of the sorrows of my life."

Fleamont held back a vicious snarl. Even in his cups, Lucius had enough wits to maintain that lie. Fleamont, of course, knew that such magic as pulsed from the Dark Mark on Lucius's arm was the sort that could only be taken in willingly.

"Of course," was all Fleamont said, bland and sure, because this was for Harry. "But I'm only asking you to look into that old case and ask a few questions. Not bring Albus Dumbledore up on charges."

"An old case. A few questions." Lucius made the Dragon's Breath revolve within his glass. "Then it might be possible." He tilted back his head and drained the glass to the dregs.

"Of course," Fleamont repeated, and held out the decanter that his house-elves had brought to him the minute Malfoy entered the sitting room. "More whisky?"

"I don't like that we're conspiring with these bloody traitors."

"Traitors against their own good sense, yes," Fleamont said, as he sat down across from Sirius and made sure that Harry had some eggs on his plate as well as bacon. Apparently the Muggles had never given Harry bacon, and he had taken to it to the point where Fleamont had to make sure he didn't eat a whole breakfast of it. "But you have to drop this idea that you're on a certain political side and they're traitors to the Order of the Phoenix, Sirius. It's harming your intelligence."

"What's the Order of the Phoenix, Grand?" Harry chirped, sucking in a piece of bacon and then poking his fork at his eggs. He gave the sigh of a martyr and picked up an actual forkful of them when Fleamont looked at him.

"It's an organization your parents fought with," Fleamont said. "During the war, before you were born."

Harry nodded and nibbled on the very smallest edge of egg he could get into his mouth. "And why would Malfoy be a traitor?"

"Mr. Malfoy," Fleamont corrected. As far as he was concerned, Harry could call the arrogant blood purists whatever he wanted, but it was true that as a young child, he couldn't distinguish between private and public contexts very well yet. Fleamont wanted him to get used to always being polite so that he could get away with more important kinds of rudeness than leaving honorifics off.

Harry sighed, and went on sighing until he caught Fleamont's eye. "Okay, Grand. Why is Mr. Malfoy a traitor?"

"He fought with You-Know-Who!" Sirius exclaimed, leaping into the fray because he was seemingly unable to help himself. "He's a traitor to all good wizards who fight for the equal rights of Muggles and Muggleborns, Harry!"

Harry hesitated, and squirmed in his seat. "If I say that Muggles are the equals of wizards and they have all the rights we do," he recited, very fast, the way Fleamont had often heard Sirius say it, "does that mean I have to go back and live with the Dursleys?"

Sirius blinked. Fleamont sipped his tea and waited. "No," Sirius finally said. "We would never send you back there. Why did you think we would?"

He sounded injured. Fleamont sighed. A year out of prison had repaired much of Sirius's lacking manners and some of his mind-wounds, but he still took Harry's questions that were a result of the boy's own mind-wounds too personally.

"Because if they're equal to Grand, wouldn't they mean I have to live with them, too?" Harry was staring at the plate now.

Sirius appeared absolutely bewildered about how to respond, so Fleamont reached out and gently clasped Harry's shoulder, shaking his head when Harry looked up. "No, Harry. I won't ever make you go back to them. You have my word."

Harry nodded, his face clearing up for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and said, "So I don't understand what Mr. Malfoy was a traitor to."

"There were three sides to the war," Fleamont said gently, before Sirius could get himself more tangled up in trying to explain. "Voldemort, the one who left the piece of soul in your scar, was on one, opposing Headmaster Dumbledore and the Ministry. Many wizards followed him. Mr. Malfoy did. But he lied to people who confronted him about it after the war and claimed to be enchanted. You remember me reading you the story about the wizard under the Imperius Curse the other day?"

Harry nodded carefully, then puffed his chest out. "And you said lots of people used it for 'cuses! And that makes Mr. Malfoy a bad person if he was lying, because lying is wrong!"

"Is it?" Fleamont asked curiously. "Then why did you lie the other day when I asked you who let the chickens out of the garden and you said you didn't remember and you hadn't been anywhere near there and it must have been a magic fox?"

"It must have been," said Harry, staring up at him with big innocent eyes that made Fleamont fight to keep a smile off his face. He could imagine Lily looking exactly like that when she was a child, although admittedly he hadn't known her then. "Only a magic fox could get into the garden!"

"But you remember that you admitted you were lying, Harry," Fleamont said gently. "So why did you lie then? And were you a bad person when you were lying?"

Sirius started to speak, but Fleamont shook his head at him and sat back to watch the show. Harry kept opening his mouth and then closing it again with a little frown. He was obviously struggling with the situation.

Fleamont didn't think that a bad thing. Harry would encounter far worse more dilemmas and needs to make up his mind outside the walls of Potter Place, after all.

"I reckon," Harry said finally, watching Fleamont from the corner of his eye as if he assumed his grandfather would turn on him at any second, "that I was a bad person in that second." He articulated the words carefully. "But maybe somebody who lies 'bout something like the Imperius Curse is bad all the time."

"An interesting defense, Harry," Fleamont said gravely, picking up his cup of tea. "Why don't you think about what makes a second of lying better than a month of lying, and then come and tell me this afternoon? After you work on your magical practice and your history."

"Graaaaaand," Harry whined softly. "It's sunny today."

"What about it?"

"When it's sunny, I should get a holiday from lessons!" Harry looked up angelically and broke a heart across the table by adding, "Uncle Sirius said so."

"Well, Uncle Sirius can explain to you why weather is not an excuse for skipping lessons," Fleamont said, and ignored the whine that came his way. "While I look at the room on the seventh floor."

Harry stuck his lip out and said, "I want to look at the room with you, Grand."

"I know you do, but you can't right now." Fleamont finished his tea and stood up. "And stop sneaking eggs under the table to Monster, Harry," he added over his shoulder, nodding at the blurred shadow in the shape of a leopard that lay next to Harry's chair legs. "You know he doesn't actually eat. The house-elves have complained to me about finding sticky eggs all over the floor."

Harry folded his arms and pouted. Fleamont just strode out of the kitchen. As far as he was concerned, Harry had probably picked up that tactic from his Muggle cousin, and the most effective way Fleamont could conceive of to show him that it didn't work was to ignore it.

His heartbeat came a little faster as he walked towards the staircase that led up to the seventh floor. No more shadows shrouded it than normal, but it always felt that way to Fleamont. The seventh floor of Potter Place had once been the dwelling of the heads of the family and their children, but a slaughter had happened in the 1670s when a supposed friend led a detachment of assassins over the top of the wards and landed on the roof, cutting down from above. After that, future Potters had lived lower in Potter Place and more towards the interior.

The enemies who had slaughtered the Potter head of the family at the time had more than paid for their crimes. Fleamont thought he could still hear little whimpers when he walked this floor, and none of them came from Potter ghosts.

He stopped in front of the door two left from the top of the stairs. Of course it wasn't dusty, despite what Fleamont thought would have been an immense temptation, if he was a house-elf, not to clean around here. The wood gleamed. But the shadows that stretched across the floor from underneath it were longer than normal, and Fleamont knew well that was not his imagination.

He rested his hand on the lock. It quivered, coming to life. The lion's head that made up the leftmost portion of it turned towards him, and the nostrils lifted and sniffed. Then the jaws opened and clamped down on his flesh.

Fleamont stood silent, staring straight ahead. The shadows projecting from underneath the door had started to writhe. This was always the point that he thought he might not come back, despite how many times he had come back before, and the thought of leaving Harry orphaned was heartbreaking.

But the thought of leaving him open to political machinations was worse. Fleamont had created bargains with powers that would ensure Harry was protected physically and magically, but someone could still manipulate other people into hating or adoring Harry.

Fleamont intended that that not happen.

The lock finally clicked open, a sullen little sound, and the ruby light died out of the lion's eyes. Fleamont pushed the door with the bitten side of his hand only. He stood in the middle of a room that was dusty, because not even house-elves could get past the enchantments that guarded it.

The shadows gathered in thick drapes of black in the center of the room. There were two pedestals there, but Fleamont knew it only from experience; the drapes concealed every sign of them. The shadows that lay on the floor fluttered as though wings were passing through them, or as if they were growing wings. Knowing what awaited there, Fleamont wouldn't be surprised.

He stepped up to the nearest drape and tapped it with the wound that the lion had put into his flesh. It shuddered and fell back, and Fleamont smiled a little at the black wood revealed. Or what looked like black wood, like the side of a harp. Underneath the other drape, which was smaller, a lute made of the same material waited.

Fleamont watched the trembling, oil-like motion in the wood, and licked his lips a little. An eager flame sprang up in the harp in response. The strings stirred and a hand reached for him, a hand made of shadow that grew directly out of those strings. Fleamont watched in detached interest as the fingers closed around his wrist.

"We have threats to make, you and I," he told the harp, and the strings sang in response to the sound of his voice.

"These robes are itchy."

"I trust that you'll put up with it, Sirius, and not do what you did last time," Fleamont said, not looking over his shoulder as they entered the Wizengamot's Meeting Chamber. Overhead arched a dome the color of mother-of-pearl. Fleamont, though, watched the defensive runes carved around the bottom of that dome. They were professionally done, but no matter how hard he searched—and he looked at a different portion of them each time he came into the Chamber—he could find none that protected against mental manipulation, let alone the weaving of ordinary words.

"There were some people who doubted that I had an Animagus form!"

"And of course," Fleamont said, pivoting on one heel to watch Sirius, who had his hand shoved up his sleeve to scratch, "you had no choice but to transform right there, fling yourself on the floor, and roll around in the robes. Then piddle on them."

Sirius's face turned the color of dusky amber. "I had to go, and they don't consider that a good excuse to let you out of one of these bloody meetings," he muttered.

"You could have made a dignified, united front with me," Fleamont continued in a mild voice. "But you didn't. You acted like a dirty animal. Not even an animal. A dog who couldn't even be housebroken."

"I said I was sorry already, didn't I?"

A soft laugh sounded behind him. "You much bely your fearsome reputation, Mr. Potter. I've seen more even-tempered people driven to distraction by my cousin."

Fleamont turned with a polite smile to face Narcissa Malfoy. "Sirius knows me," he said. "He knows what I mean and don't mean." He didn't add that Sirius had seen him sacrifice Peter Pettigrew's soul to an abyss to protect Harry, and so Fleamont could afford to take a milder tack with him. "Mrs. Malfoy. You're looking well."

"Thank you, Mr. Potter. The same." Narcissa let her eyes drift to the floor, her eyelashes drooping gracefully above them. "I don't know if you knew, but Lucius and I have a son exactly Harry's age. Draco. I think the boys might enjoy playing together, and I wanted to extend the invitation."

"Like we'll ever let Harry," Sirius began.

"We'll take it into consideration, Mrs. Malfoy," Fleamont intervened. In truth, he felt the same way as Sirius, at least if they were being invited to Malfoy Manor. No way would he let Harry traipse into a Death Eater's nest where there might be alarms or wards that would reveal the protections on him before Fleamont was ready to let it happen. But playing together at Potter Place might be permissible.

"You could learn some manners from him, cousin," Narcissa murmured with a glance at Sirius. She smiled at Fleamont and drifted away.

"How can you be so courteous?" Sirius complained under his breath as they walked towards their seats. "You know they fought on the side that killed Lily and James."

"And I'm going to make them into my own instruments," Fleamont said calmly. "I find that a much more satisfying vengeance than simply killing them."

Sirius's eyes widened. "Ohhhh. I never thought of it that way."

Fleamont glanced back at him with his lips twitching. Sirius didn't think of it "that way" most of the time, it seemed.

But Fleamont could do more than put up with Sirius; he could love him. Sirius was still the boy he and Euphemia had sheltered for two years, and he would never do anything to endanger Harry. And to his credit, when Fleamont had shown him that some of his pranks could endanger Harry, he had backed off and never done anything like them again, despite how addicted to them he was.

"How are you going to do that?" Sirius whispered to him as Fleamont reached the level of the seats where they would sit.

Fleamont shook his head and said nothing else. Sirius sank into place beside him, pouting (less adorably than Harry). Here, he had no power to speak. The Wizengamot was received for the oldest witches and wizards in society—well, and the "important" ones, of course. The reputation of the Black family had been tattered in the last war, given the unapologetic actions of Bellatrix Lestrange and Walburga Black. Fleamont's age had earned him a place.

And coming towards the front of the room was Albus Dumbledore, who stood among the oldest in this room, if not the oldest.

Albus swept the room with a smiling gaze, and then oriented on Fleamont and nodded. "Mr. Potter has asked special permission to address the Wizengamot before the session begins, about his grandson," he said, without indicating that he found the request at all unusual, or that he might have been the reason for it.

"Thank you, Chief Warlock," Fleamont said, and noted the faint flicker in the man's face. Albus was used to people being more impolite than he was, and he liked it. That way, he could twinkle at them.

But Fleamont didn't intend to be anything less than exquisitely courteous. He inclined his head and continued, "Many of you might not be aware of it, but the owl post brings daily threats to Harry's health and safety."

"How devastating," said Lucius Malfoy, right on cue. "I know I would feel that way if it were my son at stake."

Fleamont nodded again, while not glancing at Lucius's left arm. Someday, if Voldemort returned and Lucius joined him again, he would get to find out how it felt. "I simply wanted to confirm a very old story that I sometimes hear being whispered about, by people who are unsure of the reputation of my family and what is real or not."

"You must admit," Albus murmured, on cue for him, "the reputations of old pure-blood families do so often turn out to be exaggerated."

Sirius was fuming next to him, Fleamont knew, but at least he wasn't standing or shouting out. Fleamont smiled faintly. "Indeed. In this case, I want to ask how many people have heard of Herodotus the Golden."

There were uncertain glances among many members of the Wizengamot, but no one spoke until Albus said, "Please tell us, Mr. Potter."

His voice was bland, too bland. Fleamont gave the same faint smile around the room and said, "He was a Chief Warlock who envied the wealth and might of the Potters in the seventeenth century. He had been invited to their home and knew that they lived on the seventh floor. He led a detachment of warriors over the top of the wards on brooms and landed on the roof. He slaughtered the head of the family, his two daughters, their husbands, and most of the children. Only a young daughter escaped."

"While this story relates, perhaps, to the determination with which you guard the young Mr. Potter, I have to admit that I do not see the relevance," said Albus.

"The daughter lived," Fleamont said quietly, "and Herodotus and his attackers died. You see, she made it to a particular door where we kept specific weapons—instruments that, when strummed, can pick up the range of any living heartbeat in the house, or any heartbeat the player knows. She played the harp, and made them all dance to their deaths."

There was silence for a moment. Then Lucius asked, "And the reason you want to tell us this legend, Mr. Potter? Is it simply so that no one will attack your home?"

Fleamont didn't think it was his imagination that Lucius looked paler than before, although of course with his coloring it was hard to be sure. He tilted his head. "That is one possibility, Mr. Malfoy. But one thing you should consider is that in the seventeenth century, Pensieves had not developed to the level of sophistication that they have now."

He paused. The silence spread out in ripples. Sirius was bouncing in glee next to him, but at least managed to hold his teeth shut and the excitement down to a dull whistle.

"Are you suggesting," said Augusta Longbottom, who sounded as if she were about to choke on her own spit, "that you could take a Pensieve memory, isolate a heartbeat from it, and play this harp to match that heartbeat?"

"Oh, yes," Fleamont said softly. "I could do that." He paused again. "Not that I would need to, of course, you understand, as long as no one threatens my grandson."

"That would be murder, Mr. Potter." Dumbledore was frowning.

"It would be a specialized form of suicide," Fleamont said, staring at him, "given that it would have happened after a warning. And so would attempting to harm my grandson."

"You gave us this as a warning, then?" Narcissa was staring up at him from her seat beside her husband.

"I like to give me warnings. Mostly because my house-elves do fuss so about the blood," said Fleamont, and shrugged, and sat down.

The rest of the Wizengamot meeting proceeded much as normal, except for the cautious glances that various members gave him, and the chuckling and hand-rubbing of Sirius next to him.

It was Albus Fleamont watched. The twinkle in his eyes had gone out, and Fleamont was content. He had received advance warning from a number of sources that Albus had intended to start hinting, delicately, at this meeting, that Harry Potter was so vital to the future safety of the world that his custody should never be left to one person, even if that person was his grandfather.

Fleamont hoped that he had warned Albus away from that idea. But he had plans in motion, with Lucius as a cog in one of them, in case Albus chose to be deaf.

And in one important matter, today, he had lied. Fleamont almost hoped that Albus knew that.

He's the sort who needs his hand burned before he believes anyone else that the fire is hot.