A Scoundrel's Staycation Ch. 55 (Harry Potter AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Revenge!

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Silence reigns for a moment longer before Alice slowly shakes her head.

“I don’t want justice… I want revenge.”

Her eyes blaze as she looks up at him. Harry can see the hatred in her gaze, the sheer desire to find Bellatrix Lestrange and wring the life from her.

“I want to kill Bellatrix. I want to put my wand between her eyes and blow her head off. And maybe that says something about me, that I want that more than I want to be with my husband and son again. But… I like to think Frank will understand why he has to wait a little longer.”

Rising from her chair, Alice fully turns away from the window she’d been staring out.

“Wake me up. I’m ready.”

Privately, Harry wasn’t so sure. She might not be insane to the point of incapacitation, but she certainly wasn’t going to be mentally stable if this was the headspace for her last remnants of sanity. Still, he wasn’t about to deny her. He’d given her the choice… and she’d made it for better or worse.

Wordlessly, Harry offers Alice his hand. She reaches out and takes it, allowing him to finish metaphysically connecting the repairs he’s done to her memories to these last fragments of her mind. Together, they make a whole person, though what that person will be, even Harry can’t say with absolute certainty.

He returns to the real world a moment later, ignoring the still frozen form of Augusta Longbottom and watching Alice on the bed before him. Eyes flutter open as she wakes up for the first time in years. For a long heartbeat, Alice just stares up at the ceiling, as if it hadn’t worked… but then she blinks and looks at him and Harry knows it did. She’s fully, terribly sane.

Slowly rising up off of the bed, Alice grimaces as her arms shake a bit from the effort of propping up her torso. She’s a bit weak for sure after being on enforced bedrest for so long, though the magical stasis that Augusta had put her in has kept her in relatively decent shape. Otherwise she would have been skin and bones.

Alice pulls the blankets she’s under back from herself and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Carefully, she lifts herself to her feet. It’s the first time in two decades that Alice Longbottom has been sane. But again, that doesn’t mean she’s stable.

As soon as she has her legs under her, the witch stumbles forward until she’s looking a still-falling, still-frozen Augusta right in the eye. Harry hesitates behind her, not sure whether to step in or not. On the one hand, for what Augusta tried to do to her, he couldn’t blame Alice if she wanted to extract her pound of flesh. On the other hand, he’s not sure he can let Alice outright murder the older witch.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter because Alice does neither of those things. Instead, she just scoffs.

“If your son were still alive, he’d be thoroughly ashamed in you, Augusta.”

The Longbottom Matriarch can’t speak but her eyes blaze with outrage and indignation all the same. Alice just sneers at her before straightening up and shaking her head.

“In honor of his memory and the memory of your grandson, I won’t kill you. But I’m also not letting you keep me like some… incubator, you insane old hag.”

Planting her hands on her hips, Alice growls imperiously.

“Where is my wand?”

Augusta can’t exactly answer, as she currently is. But Harry is loath to let her go at this point, truth be told. When Alice looks at him with a raised brow, he simply lifts the Elder Wand up on the flat of his palm instead.

“Point Me Alice Longbottom’s Wand.”

The Elder Wand spins for a moment before focusing on a certain direction. Harry leads the way out of the bedroom as Alice follows on his heels, leaving Augusta Longbottom behind. It doesn’t take long at all for them to eventually arrive in front of a portrait… a portrait that holds a silent Frank Longbottom, who smiles sadly down at his wife.

Alice freezes at the sight of him… but both painting and woman seem to realize there can be no words between them, because the painting swings off of the wall a moment later, revealing an ensconced magical safe a moment later.

Normally, the Point Me spell would not be capable of penetrating the warded lining of a magical safe, but with the Elder Wand such things were rather trivial. Just as opening it is rather trivial as well, a quick flick of Harry’s wrist seeing the magical protections of the safe unraveling and the safe door swinging open in front of them.

Alice blinks but doesn’t let the display of power distract her for long. Surging forward with a determined glint in her eye, she reaches in and begins rummaging around. After a few moments she pulls out not just one wand, but two.

Harry’s jaw tightens as he sees Frank Longbottom’s wand alongside Alice’s. It would have also been Neville’s first wand, foisted on him by his grandmother even though it wasn’t suitable for him. But it would seem he’d never gotten a proper wand before he died in this world.

Regardless, Alice doesn’t hesitate to take both and Harry doesn’t stop her from doing so. Stepping back to his side, Alice looks to him and nods… and so Harry grabs her by the elbow and proceeds to apparate them both out of Longbottom Manor, right through Augusta’s defunct wards.

The paralysis charm he’d used on Augusta will only last for a half hour more… hopefully long enough for her to reflect on her actions and just how monstrous she’d become.

“When can we go after Bellatrix?”

Of course, no sooner have they arrived back at his home then Alice is already chomping at the bit. Even as she tucks her husband’s wand away, she holds her own wand aloft and looks ready to go and do battle right that very moment. It’s almost enough to make Harry chuckle… but he can tell that Alice is dead serious so he refrains.

Instead, he shakes his head.

“We don’t know where she is just yet, but I do have a couple of leads that might give us her location. We just have to wait for them to come to fruition.”

That brings a dark scowl to Alice’s face, but Harry is quick to arch a brow at her.

“In the meantime, you should focus on regaining your strength so that you’re actually ready to fight when the time comes. Bellatrix has had years since escaping Azkaban to recover. I faced her myself once already and though I escaped with my life, she proved to be a capable combatant. I can safely say that as you are now, she would simply kill you outright.”

Obviously Alice is even less happy hearing that… but as bloodthirsty as the witch is, she can see where he’s coming from. She’s just not happy about it.

“… Fine then. What should I do to fix myself?”

Harry smiles.

“Fortunately, the stasis spell you were under has kept you reasonably healthy so you don’t need to take a dozen potions a day or anything like that. But there will still be a potion regimen I expect you to follow… and we’ll also do daily training sessions to make sure you’re ready for a magical duel.”

It would also have the added benefit of helping Harry touch up on his fundamentals as well. He’d been finding moments to train here and there ever since he’d practically drawn in his duel against Bellatrix, but having someone else to duel against would go a long way to showing him if he’d knocked the rust completely off yet or not.

Before Alice can respond, the door opens and Fleur finally arrives. She pauses at the sight of Alice with him but recovers admirably, bowing at the waist.

“Welcome back my lord. I see we have company.”

Nodding, Harry gestures between the two women.

“Indeed. Fleur this is Alice Longbottom; Alice this is Fleur Delacour. Fleur, Alice will be staying with us for the next while so please prepare a room for her. As well, there will be potions she needs to take on the daily, but I’ll brew those myself and give them to you later.”

Alice still doesn’t look entirely convinced but Fleur is quick to bow at the waist before standing up and gesturing with an arm behind her.

“Right this way, Lady Longbottom.”

In the end, Harry’s latest ally hesitantly follows Fleur down the hall, shooting him one last uncertain glance before disappearing from view. Harry watches them go for a long moment before letting out a sigh and running a hand through his hair.

Suffice to say, this was not how he expected today to go. But he couldn’t complain too much, all things considered. Augusta Longbottom had to be stopped and at least now Alice was free of her machinations…

After all, it wasn’t like the older witch would be foolish enough to continue pursuing her madness after everything that had happened today, right?

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“Confringo!”

The Blasting Curse explodes from the end of Alice’s wand, crossing the distance between them in a moment. But a silently cast Protego makes the magical fire it expands into cover the magical shield Harry conjures instead.

Snarling, Alice tries again, throwing every offensive spell she can at him. Harry blocks, deflects, and dodges each and every one, even as the training room he’s constructed for them continues to get even more and more demolished.

In the end, Alice’s physical strength runs out before she’s truly ready to be done yet again, her wand arm lagging and her spells growing sloppier by the second. Until finally, she swishes when she should have flicked and Harry is forced to step in, grabbing a hold of her wand and yanking it out of her hand with a wordless Expelliarmus right before it releases a magical backlash.

Collapsing to her knees in the aftermath, Alice is left a panting mess as she tries to recover. Harry is quick to bolster her with a bit of his own magic, turning her gasping and rasping and shuddering into something more even and calm over the course of the next few moments.

It’s only been a few days since he’d rescued Alice from her mother-in-law’s clutches, but she’s proven that she’s not the type of woman to just sit around and take her time in recovery. She’d wanted to get to work as quickly as possible and since they were still waiting to hear back from Narcissa, the only ‘work’ they could do was training.

And so Harry had gone ahead and made this training room, warding it specifically so that it would repair itself after each session. It’s doing so now, rebuilding its destroyed walls, ceiling, and floor even as Harry walks up to Alice and smiles down at her.

“You were faster that time. Your improvement is noticeable.”

Alice glares up at him, clearly not pleased with her own performance.

“Still not fast enough.”

Harry huffs out a laugh and shakes his head.

“You need to stop comparing yourself to me. It’s not fair to you or anyone else. I’m almost certainly the most powerful magical creature in this world.”

That wasn’t a brag either, but of course Alice just scoffs, only half believing him. It probably sounds ridiculous to her, even with all of the crazy feats she’s seen him pull off. Still, so long as she continues to try and match him, she should be rather well off against Bellatrix when the time finally comes. Shoot for the Moon and you’ll land among the stars, or something like that.

Before either of them can say anything else however, the door suddenly opens and Fleur pokes her head in. Seeing her cautiously looking around, Harry just grins.

“Come in Fleur, we’re done for now. What’s up?”

Biting her lower lip, Fleur steps inside… and it’s immediately obvious her nervousness isn’t because of how hard they’ve been fighting. Rather, there’s a letter in her hands.

Initially, Harry assumes its from Narcissa and that they’re finally getting somewhere on that front… but no, as Fleur gets closer and he sees who the letter is actually from, his eyes narrow. Surely not, right? The audacity…

“This letter just arrived from the Ministry my lord…”

Harry grunts as he takes the letter from Fleur’s hands. Indeed it has all of the signs of an official piece of government correspondence. However, it’s not from the Ministry… rather, it’s from the Wizengamot. Tearing the envelope open, Harry pulls out the letter within and reads through it quickly. Then, he reads through it again a bit more slowly, rather amazed by its contents.

Gathering enough strength to get back to her feet, Alice makes a curious noise in the back of her throat.

“What is it?”

Harry gives her a look and sighs.

“The Chief Warlock is summoning me before the Wizengamot to answer for my crimes.”

Fleur chokes on her own spit while Alice jolts for a moment before looking absolutely outraged.

“Seriously?! Does that bitch really think she can get away with that?!”

Harry just shrugs, already considering how he’s going to respond. Is he even going to attend? Heh, that might cause quite the kerfuffle if he just no-showed… but at the same time, he doesn’t necessarily want to let Augusta Longbottom get away with smearing his good name.

The problem is, if Harry attends this Wizengamot meeting… he has a feeling that it just might end with him as the new Chief Warlock. And that would be a headache and a half.  

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