Chapter 14: It's For The Greater Good 1/2

DISCLAIMER: Could the Death Eaters have won the war if they'd made all their personnel take a half-day course on basic prisoner-handling at any time before half way through Deathly Hallows? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

NOTE: I didn't realise this needed to be said, but there are appropriate spaces for online airing of sadomasochistic kinks and the reviews column of a Harry Potter Self-Insert Fanfic is not one of them. It's deleted now, but please don't do that again.

CHAPTER 14

I rise and go into the hall. Framed in the front door is a tall figure in a long, dove-grey robes with lilac accents. With long silver hair about his shoulders and a beard gathered in a luminescent cloisonné ring at belt level, and a tasseled hat. I can't pick out much more detail, the light is behind him and Vernon's eyes haven't adjusted yet. Not that that is necessary: there can't be more than one individual answering that description and only one that'd turn up here.

Fuck me, it's Albus Bloody Dumbledore.

"Ah, Mr. Dursley," he says, and suddenly the blue of his eyes is fierce and bright, no matter the lack of light to see them by.

-oOo-

That eye-shine - it's not a simple scan. It's a full-scale legilimentic attack.

It's suddenly very crowded in Vernon's head.

The smell of macassar-oil. Father's belt. The noise of the souk at Tangier. Steel ripping through my chest. I'm sorry, the best we can do for poor Jessie is put her to sleep. The crunch of a breaking nose. I want a divorce. Arianna's dead, Albus, you killed her, you and your fucking sweetheart. I could have had you aborted, you little shit. I'm sorry, Albus, but there are things - I'm afraid it's a blackball -

WHO'S THIS FUCKER? Vernon's roaring in here.

Deck him before he hurts Dudley, I manage to grind out, and then I'm throwing all of the grief and upset I can find at Dumbledore. Every tear and pang of heartache in vets' offices, courtrooms, by hospice beds and in A&E wards. Riddle was always shit at this particular kind of emotional attack, since he mostly didn't have emotions (although by the same token he was mostly immune). I, by contrast, am armed with a lifetime of mental illness to throw. It leaves Vernon free to -

What on earth -? Dumbledore's eyes go wide.

Vernon has covered the distance in three quick strides - I'm not in charge of this body's movement right now, I have BIGGER problems - and given Dumbldore a right feint and left uppercut combination that didn't connect properly but rung the old git's bell. It stops the mental onslaught, so I take back control and grab and lock Dumbledore's wrist and use it to drop him on the doormat. (I know only one formal martial arts move, but I am good at it. Largely because it puts one's opponent in prime putting-the-boot-in position.) There's a hard shape under his sleeve that I feel as I'm giving him the choice between going down or having his elbow dislocated - his wand - and it's the work of an eye-blink to yank the thing out of its holster and toss it over my shoulder while planting Vernon's knee on the bearded face that's now being ground into the hall carpet.

I hear a sharply-snapped incantation in what I think is Hebrew and Dumbledore goes limp under me.

"He'll be unconscious until I wake him," Mme Flamel says from behind me.

"I should resist the urge to give him a good kick in the fork, then, I suppose," I say, a little winded from the burst of speed Vernon put on. "Unsportin' if nowt else. Turns out wizards don't expect to get smacked in the teeth. Worth rememberin', that."

"Sam has said, for a long time, that you shouldn't overlook the possibilities inherent in just hitting the other fellow with a big stick. Crudity has its place, as he puts it."

I knew I liked Sam Hartlib. "I don't think Dumbledore - this is Dumbledore, isn't it?"

She nods.

"I think he expected to be attacking a muggle, not two minds in one head. So while I was dealing with him on the psychic front, Vernon was able to get close enough to lamp him one. Nearly knocked him out, too."

I've added that last for the benefit of Vernon, who's crowing about the whole thing. As well he might, it takes presence of mind to remember your training when it all goes wahoonie-shaped.

"How's Harry?" I ask as I grab Dumbledore under the armpits to drag him out of public view.

"I charmed him invisible and told him to hide. He went in that cupboard just there."

The cupboard under the stairs. So he's been driven back in there. Thanks, Dumbledore. "You can come out now, Harry!" I call out, and the door cracks open just a little bit.

"Is there a baddy still?" Harry says, only just above a whisper.

"Not any more. Your Uncle Vernon knocked him out. While I was fighting him with magic, Vernon punched him." And hurt his hand in the doing, by the feel. I'll ask Mme. Flamel to look at that in a bit.

"Cor!"

"Harry, go upstairs to the tent and in the non-magical stores you'll see a box with those white paper boiler suits in. Go bring one down for me, please."

"Righto!" Harry, eager to be helpful, goes off like a ferret up a trouser-leg. Mme. Flamel only just catches him with the counter to her invisibility spell as he goes by.

"Boiler suit?" she asks as I'm hauling the surprisingly-scrawny but awkward to handle Albus Dumbledore into the living room.

"Basic custody discipline. Deprive the prisoner of anything that could be used for escape or self-harm."

"So we're stripping him."

"I'm stripping him. Your involvement we should discuss and think carefully about, no? I mean, you're the most capable person in the vicinity by centuries of experience alone, but I want to think about the politics of this before Albus wakes up and discovers that you, and by extension Nicolas and all the other alchemists, are involved."

Harry comes back in. "Got a suit. And I found this stick in the hallway! Is it a magic wand?"

"Yes it is, and you're too young to be holding it, Harry, put it down."

"Why?" He does, in fact, put it down, but it's a fair question.

"For the same reason you're not allowed to drive a car. You have to be old enough and you're not, yet. When you're ten, just before you go to magic school, if you've worked hard at normal school and eaten all your greens, we'll get you a wand of your own."

"Oh. Can we keep this one 'til then? I like how it feels."

"It's not ours to keep," I tell him, trying not to think about the possible consequences of giving a ten-year-old the Elder Wand to learn with, "and it's not the right sort of wand for schoolwork anyway."

"Oh. When I'm ten, though? I get my own?"

"If you work hard at school and eat your greens, like I said. Now, do you think you can manage by yourself getting a shower and changed into normal clothes? We've finished all the magic science, and Madame Flamel and I need to have a grown-up talk with this baddy we caught."

Harry nods and dashes off. He likes doing things for himself, it shows what a Big Boy he is, and the showers in the tent are safety-charmed to a fare-thee-well.

Once he's gone, I heave Dumbledore on to the sofa and start unbuttoning and unfastening.

"Once you've got him stripped?" Flamel asks, in a tone of fascinated horror. Apparently she's used to a more … chivalrous standard of prisoner management.

"Tied to a chair. I want a word with this bugger."

"The kind of word that involves pincers and hot coals?"

"No. What made you think I was going to do anything that crass?"

"The way you said 'word'. When Sam takes that tone he generally goes on to remind me he was born in what historians are pleased to call the Dark Ages."

I can't help the snort of laughter. "I'm not saying he's about to have a comfortable experience, but torture wasn't my thing even before I learned what a massive waste of time it was." There have been studies, proper peer-reviewed ones.

"Well, getting back to the point you raised earlier, my presence is neither here nor there, but I think we want Nicolas present while you question him."

"Why's that?"

"He's someone Albus would trust to vouch for you. Also, Nicolas is much better at the binding magic you're going to need to keep Albus under control while you question him. Which will leave me free to keep young Harry safe and comforted."

"That would be helpful, means I don't have to wait for Petunia to get back. And Harry likes you."

"Of course he does, I gave him lollipops. If I might use the telephone?"

"Of course," I say, "and when you've spoken to Nicolas I'm going to need a hand getting this on our guest." I hold up the boilersuit, white and shiny and rustling. Dumbledore is now as naked as the day he was born, his robes and effects piled on the coffee table.

"I think I'll help you with that before I get on the phone. Not only will the poor thing catch his death like that, Harry might come down."

"Good heavens, yes. He's not a pretty sight, is he?" Scrawny and hairy all over is the summary. Not bad shape for a centenarian, which I'd put down to the magic but I know of at least one muggle who was running marathons at 104. While we're getting the suit on him, I check on that scar over his left knee. It might be the Underground, but it's the Underground from a very long time ago. Most of the modern system is missing.

While she's on the phone I bring in one of the carver chairs from the dining room and lash Dumbledore into it securely.

While I'm waiting, I take a look at what I presume is the Elder Wand. It does have the mark of the Hallows faintly incised on the butt end, amid the only carving of an elderberry motif on the thing (it's a lot plainer than the movie prop, as most wands seem to be. Mine's the fanciest I've seen yet.) It's long, slender, tapered to a businesslike point and slightly yellowed with age from the natural creamy-white of freshly-cut elder wood. With it in my hand, I get a sense of calculating, ruthless approval and the feeling that it's happy to be in the hands of someone who is actually dead. Not sure which is creepier.

It feels far more like a weapon than my own wand, or any of the ones I tried in Ollivander's shop. Sure, any wand can be turned to warlike use, but with this wand, the peaceable uses are strictly secondary, however well it may take to them. There may come a time when I need a wand for making war, but I'm not expecting that time to even start before '91, and there's a non-zero chance we'll be able to head the bugger off entirely.

I could hang on to it to keep it out of Dumbledore's hands, but I don't know the man well enough to say how he'd react. Giving it back to him would be safe until he connects me with the body cooking in the garage. If he does - he likely will, it's not going to be difficult to figure out from what I have planned for this meeting - I'll just have to hope that he doesn't administer too serious a beat-down to get the wand's allegiance back. If he bothers at all, that is. He did beat the last owner without it after all, and having the wand's allegiance obscured would fit with his stated aim of breaking its power. Although I have my doubts that it works that way.

I permit myself a small chuckle over the possibility that the wand is confused and that the current Master Of The Wand Of Destiny is actually Vernon Dursley. Unlikely, but hilarious if true.

Mme. Flamel comes back from getting changed and checking on Harry - she has had to explain to him why we can't call the police - and relieves me on watch while I get cleaned up and changed.

"You were right to strip him," she says when I come down. Harry has the telly on upstairs and will be fine by himself for a bit.

"Oh?"

"Indeed. He brought a spare wand, two portkeys, a small case of potions, his spectacles are enchanted in some quite ridiculous ways, his watch is a portable magical surveyor as well as telling the time, and I could be here all night cataloguing the runes stitched into his underthings. Then there's this thing that I'm entirely baffled by for the moment."

It looks like a big, chunky lighter. "It's a put-outer," I tell her, making an educated guess, "possibly the put-outer if he only ever made the one. It's for putting out and reigniting lights. For when he needs temporary darkness for whatever he's up to." There may be more to it than that, of course, it did some additional things later on, but I'm hazy on the details.

She snorts, rather unladylike. "Ridiculous," she remarks. "There's a whole lot of other rubbish, but those were the potential risks." She's got the bag that Dumbledore's smart new boilersuit came in. A deft little bit of wand-work and she's got all his stuff sealed up in it, and a Sharpie from her inside pocket marks the bundle with cursive Hieratic script. "A spell of sealing," she says. "It won't last long in felt pen on plastic, but we shan't need all of the day or two it'll serve."

"Is M. Flamel able to come?"

"He is, and should be here shortly. Your hand, there - let me have a look at that."

"Just bruised, it feels like. If you can do something, I'd be obliged." It's almost certainly not broken, Vernon has boxer's knuckles that wouldn't have broken by just one glancing punch.

"You're right," she says, passing her wand over the outstretched hand, "A soothing charm -" she suits action to words - "and it'll be right as rain in an hour. If it's not, a cold compress and some paracetamol will sort you out by morning."

"Feels better already," I tell her. "Could you put a silencing charm around him, please? I'd like to be able to chat without the risk that he's shamming."

"Cautious; I approve," she says, lifting her wand and setting a shimmering circle in the air around Dumbledore's head. "Although I shouldn't fancy his chances of breaking that sleeping spell unaided. What do you hope to achieve when we wake him up?"

"Well, I have some questions, but I much misdoubt we'll get straight answers out of him and I don't have any truth serums handy. Not that I think they're much use, mere honesty still limits you to what you think to ask and as a trained lawyer, I know just how much lying you can do without once saying anything untrue. I'd go with one of the friendliness potions and repeated obliviation and re-interviewing if we had time for it."

She outright laughs at that. "You've taken the time to think about it?"

"Used to be a boy scout, Madame. Be Prepared was the motto, and I try and live by it when I remember." I flop down on the sofa: Vernon's adrenaline is running its course and he's a little weary. And hungry. Speaking of which, "We should eat before we go to work on Dumbledore. I'm not up to offering you any more than takeaway, I'm afraid."

"Already taken care of, I told Nicolas to pick up enough Indian for the three of us, plus something mild for Harry. He will eat curry, won't he?"

"He's not a fussy eater, so long as there's not too much heat in it he'll be fine. I've cooked biryani for him and he liked that."

"Oh good, Nicolas will have picked some of that up, he knows I like it. Or, at least, the local takeaway version of it at any rate."

"Partial myself. Anyway. The main point of talking to Dumbledore - besides making good and sure he knows he's made a prize arse of himself tonight - is to get him on board if we can, and not interfering if we can't. I suspect it's going to mean the latter, because I can predict some of his likely responses to me and how I've been working."

"Some would say that possession raises ethical concerns, certainly."

"Oh, it does. But it's blatant hypocrisy coming from a wizard. They've all, as a culture, bought into the might-makes-right nonsense that led Albus to his current misfortune. Broke into Vernon's house and attacked him on sight, purely because he could and nobody, as he thought, could stop him. So, after we've let him make a revealing choice of lies and prevarications, we're going to play a little game I've devised called 'Messing with Albus Dumbledore'. He's a schemer, a manipulator and a planner, so if we throw enough complete bollocks at him we should at least give him decision paralysis. If not outright baffle him into cooperation."

"I rather think you're going to have to explain that."

I grin at her. "Seriously. It's one of the great fallacies of human reasoning, the long-range plan. The real world is stochastic, not a chessboard. Dumbledore will probably be trying to play chess, well, fine, but I'm crap at chess, so I'm playing Mornington Crescent."

She gets the reference, and chuckles briefly. "The tactics of the absurd. Appropriate, when dealing with wizards."

We nod at each other. The Trickster is a well-known archetype for a reason and while you can never invoke it - some things you just don't speak the name of aloud if it at all matters - if you play it hard enough and sincerely enough, your opponent ends up with no idea whether it's Duck Season or Rabbit Season.

Nicolas Flamel arrives with two bags of gently steaming foil cartons. While the Flamels are helping Harry choose dishes to sample - Nicolas got a wide selection - Petunia gets home and asks me to carry Dudley in to bed, as he's spark out in the car. I get him upstairs and ready to be tucked in, and go back down to meet Petunia at the bottom of the stairs.

"The Flamels seem nice," she says, contriving to imply that she's not at all influenced by my having told her how legendarily rich they are, "but why do we have an unconscious old man in a boiler suit tied to a chair in the living room?"

The look on her face makes me thank all the powers that be for Petunia's desire not to cause a scene while we have company over, "That would be Albus Dumbledore, who broke in and tried to attack Vernon."

"What, the Albus Dumbledore?"

"The same. While I was dealing with him magically, Vernon took over and thumped him across the jaw."

"Oh." She looks like she's going a little lightheaded.

"Once we've had a bite to eat, we're going to give him a hearty bollocking for everything he's dumped on you and Vernon, among other things."

"You look like you're set up to interrogate him!"

"Well, we'll ask him some questions, but I don't really care overmuch what the answers will be. We're going to rather lay down the law with him about what he can and can't do, which nobody has, or at least not recently judging from the way he behaved."

"And you say Vernon's already punched him in the face?"

"Yes."

"I suppose it would be going too far for me to give him a slap as well?"

"Rather, I'm afraid." Although, you know, tempting.

"Well, good luck. I'll get some pyjamas on Dudley, read him a story if he wakes up, and read quietly in bed while you get on with it. How's Harry?"

"He's had a whale of a time today, and I believe he's getting his bedtime story from Madame Flamel tonight, while Monsieur Flamel helps me with Dumbledore. We'll have him out of the house and everything cleaned up before you're up in the morning."

"Good. Good night, if I'm asleep when you bring Vernon up."

-oOo-

Nicolas Flamel may just be the most genial and affable human being I have ever met. Also, he looks at least a decade older than his wife despite being almost certainly several centuries younger. After dinner, and while I'm leaving Harry in his wife's capable hands for bedtime drills, he busies himself with drawing a magical geometry and a runic spell - Linear A, which I can recognise but not read - around the chair I tied Dumbledore to.

"How long will that contain him?" I ask.

"As long as we need. Unless Albus has learned Mycenean, which I don't think he has by the way, in which case he would need perhaps half an hour undistracted to get through this without his wand."

"I'm thinking of blindfolding him before he wakes up anyway, purely to stop him trying legilimency while we're talking."

"Not through this, he won't."

"Ah."

"Well, we're in business. I've applied a catheterisation charm and some cushioning charms to ensure he's comfortable, and intubated a mild calming potion into him. He's capable of being quite hot-headed, so I thought it wise to forestall the possibility of any abreaction." Nicolas Flamel: genial, affable, and scary. He said that in the same cheerful slightly-French-accented tone he'd used earlier to ask I'd care for another bhaji.

"Good idea. Shall we begin?" I'm probably coming off as rather more calm than is really the case. Albus Dumbledore has the potential to be truly dangerous, little though he's apt to use it, and he has a lot of people with the propensity to follow his orders without question. Vernon, however, wants to punch him again, and the effort to keep that under control is forcing me to be focussed and a bit poker-faced.

Flamel nods, flourishes his wand and incants in probably-hebrew.

"Albus Dumbledore," I say as I see him begin to stir, "it comes to something when you can fail a test of character nobody has even set. Would you care to explain why your actions this evening included breaking and entering and an unprovoked attack on a man who, as far as you knew, was a defenceless muggle?"

There's a pregnant pause. I can see his eyes twinkling as he tries legilimency. Nicolas is behind him, so his attention is fixed on me. "Harry. What have you done with him, whoever you are?"

"Well, most recently," I drawl out, "I made sure he'd brushed his teeth after the hearty dinner he had, and put him to bed. Right about now Madame Flamel is reading him a bedtime story."

"Fox in Socks," Nicolas adds. "Most charming. I shall have to buy a copy of my own. Socks on chicks and chicks on fox! Delightful stuff!" Like he hasn't just forcibly medicated a bound prisoner.

I smile at Dumbledore. "I asked an entirely civil question, you know. And while I've answered yours, you haven't answered mine. You came into this house and committed actual crimes, surely you want to put your side of the story on the record?"

"Is that you, Nicolas?"

"It is, Albus, and I should very much like to hear your answer to Mister Reynolds' question. I knew you were a trifle hot-headed and high-handed, but this does seem a bit much even for you."

"Who is Mister Reynolds, Nicolas?"

"Ah-ah, Albus. You first."

"I have reason to believe that Harry Potter, who I placed in this house five years ago, may have been robbed of his inheritance. I came to investigate."