Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror
Chapter 9

~*~

They were gathered back in the suite that had all too briefly served as a dining room. The food was gone from the table, replaced by a map of the British Isles, the chairs moved to the side. With his robes gathered tightly about his thin frame Severus perched on one of the chairs closest to the door, obviously unwilling to be there but equally unwilling to leave them unsupervised. The Headmistress had been called away by an incident apparently involving forty pounds of tuna salad and the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Considering how dissatisfied she’d looked as she’d left at only getting to torture him for a few seconds before Harry had yanked her wand away Angel sincerely hoped she stayed gone. Angelus would have loved ‘crucio’ing people; he was still shaking off the painful muscle cramps.

“Will this be good?”

Willow accepted the handkerchief from Angel with barely an “eww”, careful of where he’d soaked the silk in recently ingested blood. “Okay, yeah, this should be good.”

Except it wasn’t. Willow repeatedly tried the locator spell, but something was clearly rebuffing her. The map would flash white and then a duller light would ripple up from the vellum. Angel’s internal sense of Riley’s whereabouts pointed them west, but Willow’s spell could do nothing to narrow it down. “I don’t understand why this isn’t working,” Willow cried in frustration. Harry looked equally disappointed.

“Maybe it’s this place,” Buffy lamely suggested.

“More likely he is being magically hidden,” Harry disagreed, scratching one ear. “If we were closer to wherever he actually is then it might work better.”

“Can we do that?” Willow asked, perking up at the idea. “Angel has a general sense of direction of where to point us on the map. If we could follow somehow . . .”

“It’s broad daylight outside,” Severus helpfully contributed. “The vampire could point the way with his flaming body, a trail of ashes perhaps? Is there anyone here of discerning intelligence who doesn’t think the boy is at Malfoy’s estate?”

“Malfoy has several properties all over Europe. Should we get a warrant to search them all ‘cause that would only take a few weeks to work through all the bureaucratic tape,” Harry replied dryly. “You don’t actually think Malfoy would have him at his main house, do you? Not even Malfoy is that arrogant.”

“It’s not arrogance, you nitwit, when the law is on your side.”

“Point taken,” Harry said.

“I’m not leaving Riley alone with whoever has him, father or not,” Angel growled.

Harry smiled. “I might have an idea.”

~*~

“You are all insane,” Severus snarled.

“Just get on the broom, Snape,” Giles lightly admonished.

“No, I think this could work,” Harry said at the same time with possibly more confidence than he should have felt. “My invisibility cloak reflects light so it should in theory protect Mr. Angel.”

If Angel had been possessed of his rational faculties he would have flatly refused to play guinea pig with unknown magic for people he’d barely known a day. Rational and sane could not, however, be applied to his current mental state. The siren call of his mate was drowning out all reason and doubt. While Snape continued to rail at Giles and Harry with the reluctant support of Weasley he carefully draped the yards of invisible fabric around his head and shoulders. Harry had earlier given him a heavy robe designed for riding: hooded, with slits up the sides and straps dangling from the sleeves to tightly belt them to his arms. The young man had even thought to morph his shoes into tall boots and had leant him gloves. The only skin exposed was his face. Angel was not worried about the sun. No, the most daunting prospect of Harry’s plan was ‘how’ he intended to go about finding Riley.

They were clustered in the shadows of an arch that overshadowed the door behind them leading back into the school. The door let out onto a stone garden prohibited to the students, surrounded on all sides by windowless walls that stretched up several stories. Angel figured they were probably somewhere still in the castle proper, a private means for the teachers to come and go without alerting the students. Out there in the garden, bobbing gently by an unseen force and warmed by the sun shining down afternoon light, were several brooms. Floating waist height. Certainly he remembered the picture of Riley agilely flying one of these things, but it had inspired no compulsion to fly one himself.

Not that he technically would be. There was a wizard and a broom for each of them: all they were required to do was straddle the things and stay on. Angel’s memory did not stretch back far enough to remember if he had ever played horsey with his mother’s broom. The prospect now was daunting. Not even his mad Dru would voluntarily clasp a broad length of rough hewn wood between her thighs. No, stepping out into the sun was a small thing to this.

And as he hesitated what vileness was being dripped into his too trusting mate’s ear? He’d heard enough spoken about these Malfoys to know he could not trust them not to turn Riley against him, against their bond. The Malfoys sounded worse than Wolfram and Hart’s finest: conniving, heartless, greedy and power hungry. Never mind they were well steeped in dark magic. Angel had seen the fatherless longing in Riley’s eyes and had sympathized for his abandonment. Riley wanted a father and if Lucius Malfoy was as manipulative as Angel was told then he was going to entertain Riley’s every dream of a parent until the younger wizard was too deep into his clutches to escape.

“Okay, let’s go,” the enraged vampire spit out, stalking into the sunlight. Time to go kill daddy.

Thankfully his dramatic gesture wasn’t ruined by a burst of flames. Dead silence cheered this miracle, followed by a few awkward coughs and of scrape of shoes on flagstones as the others shuffled out after him.

Buffy stopped to stare at Angel’s booted feet and calves, the only parts of him visible. He twitched a fold into place and they too vanished. “This is much with the odd and creepy. How do we know you’re not making faces at us or sneaking off?”

If he had been Will he likely would have been doing both, but as he was little inclined at the moment to entertain childishness on anyone’s part he growled his frustration at her stalling. “Buffy, get on a broom.”

The blond threw up her hands defensively. “Hey, I’m just saying! If all this is true then Riley probably left with his Dad on his own. I mean, it’s his Dad, not the Big Bad of the Week.”

“Oh, Lucius could hold up for longer than a week,” Severus muttered, impatiently gesturing for Tara to straddle the broom he held the end of. “Staring has yet to make the seat capacity any bigger, Miss McClay, so you might as well spare us both the agony of arguing the point and get on the broom already.”

“The Ministry never could prove his guilt, but everyone knows he was the right hand of He Who Shall Not Be Named,” Percy added. “No one should ever trust a Malfoy except to be an evil git.”

“Percy, enough,” Harry warned. The redhead looked sullen, but he did as told, lips pressing together.

“Buffy, did you know Riley didn’t know his Dad?” Willow asked of her friend. Percy was sitting side saddle primly on his broom, black shoes dangling, so she gamely copied his casual seat.

“No.” She was riding with Giles, who looked a little dubious about his rusty broom skills. “We never really talked about his life,” she bitterly continued. “Guess now we know why.”

“I don’t recall you were completely honest with Riley about everything you are,” Giles gently chided.

“You’re the one that drummed it into me that Slayerage was to be kept a secret!” Buffy protested.

“Yes,” Giles calmly replied, nudging her onto the broom, “and you’ve only carried yours for three years. Wizard children are warned against revealing themselves to normal people from their first sparking of magic.”

Willow watched Harry spiral up into the air, Angel an invisible passenger. “Hold on,” Percy ordered curtly, belying the gentle, perfectly horizontal ascension as they followed after. What Giles said made sense but Willow could tell by the mulish anger still darkening Buffy’s eyes as she watched them that her friend was not so easily going to set aside this betrayal.

~*~

After seeing Riley to his rooms and placing a discreet monitoring spell on his door Narcissa walked arm and arm with Lucius down into the Malfoy vaults. They made this journey by unspoken agreement though they did not do so in silence. So many plans were needed making Narcissa was almost giddy with the exciting possibilities of it all.

“It still surprises me that our son’s form is the same as McGonagall’s,” Lucius murmured. “If asked before had I would have said it was statistically impossible.”

Narcissa smiled, patting her husband’s arm. “I would think much the same, if McGonagall’s Animagus form was not merely coincidental.”

They rounded a corner, entering the Ancestral Hall of Portraits. Stepping up to one in particular Lucius helped his wife step through the painting of Great Aunt Millicent before following after. “How so?”

“Niveus is because of my veela inheritance,” Narcissa smugly answered. “Draco shares my veela powers directly because he is of my blood, but Cygnus was still influenced through my magic that went into his making. Recessive, yes, but still there.”

“And veela can manifest feline traits,” Lucius mused, pleased by Narcissa’s explanation. “It would made sense that his veela inheritance would try to emerge somehow and Niveus hardly looks like a normal house cat.”

They at last came to their destination, the vaults beneath the manor. It was down here that the Malfoy dead were interred and the family’s most valued secrets kept. It was also here that the great tapestry detailing the Malfoy line was hung and it was to this millennium old tree stitched in gold they arrived at.

Every legitimate descendant’s name appeared on the tapestry at birth and could only be removed by the direct action of the family’s head. Spouses were added in silver as wed and burned away if divorced. Students learned to make a similar tree in school though one such as this, much like the family legacy, took on a sentience of its own. Riley might in all appearance look a Malfoy but this tree of gold thread and dragon hide would tell them if he truly belonged.

Legitimate children were added with no direction on their part. Bastard children were another matter. Their existence were not acknowledged unless done so by the ruling matriarch or patriarch. Not even the Malfoy parent could claim an illegitimate child without the head’s acknowledgement. Such children’s conceptions were often too steeped in scandal to claim unless there were no other viable heirs to be found. And, of course, they had to be pure blood.

From out of a pocket in her skirts Narcissa handed Lucius a silky length of hair, taken from their son while he had slept for just this use. Before the tapestry was a metal tripod stand holding a bowl carved of obsidian, filled with an oily substance that Narcissa did not care to investigate. The oil was collected from the tapestry itself and shimmered at their proximity. A flick of Lucius’ wand and the oil ignited. Carefully Lucius fed in the hair, turning the flames from yellow to white, and then held his hand steady for Narcissa to quickly slice open his life line with a slash of her own wand. This truly was easier to do with two people. His blood splashed into the oil with a flaring of the flames, joining the fragrant smoke.

Though Lucius had never had cause to perform the claiming spell he knew what to do just as his ancestors before him, drawing on knowledge of his legacy. When the smoke turned gold he drew it into his wand and then aimed it at the tapestry, smoothly intoning the invocation of a siring he had before read but never said aloud. There beneath his name and the burn mark where Turan’s should have been the smoke blew out, curling and twisting until it at last dissipated. At first nothing happened, but then the tapestry rippled and gold thread burst forth, quickly stitching in a new name: Cygnus Rilius. The Malfoy line had acknowledged his rightful claim.

For the last four generations only a sole male heir had been born to carry the legacy; Lucius smirked with virile pride to see two names beneath his own, sons. “There can be no doubt now: he is our son.” The flames extinguished though Lucius thought with a merry cackle. Malfoys were known for their avarice.

They quickly quit the cold chamber now that their task was done, the great stone doors sealing behind them. Narcissa laughed. “McGonagall will shortly know you’ve claimed your sire rights.” She did not sound the least worried at the prospect, nor doubting that the Headmistress would have claimed Riley for her own house. The woman had no other heirs. A father’s claim, however, superseded a mother’s: if Riley’s name was on the McGonagall tapestry then it was now unstitched. In the centuries long battle between their houses, the Malfoys had just accomplished quite the coup.

Before Lucius could give his opinion to that happy event the wards about the manor suddenly shrieked. Someone was trying to break in.

~*~

Harry proved why he was lauded as the World’s Savior, blowing open the great front doors to Malfoy Manor with an impressive display of lights and shrieking wind. He broke through the strong wards surrounding the estate like an elephant trampling a sand castle, his control of the broom never faltering. As soon as they came close enough to the ground Angel leapt free, striding for the gaping entryway with Harry at his heels and the others quickly following.

“Riley!” He called with voice and power. Through the blood they now shared he reached for the boy, determined to draw his mate to him by any means necessary.

~*~
TBC.