Blaire Harrowgate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blairewhich) wrote2019-01-31 12:00 am
blairewhich) wrote2019-01-31 12:00 am
Entry tags:
{HP AU: Blood Will Out}
~
Blaire Harrowgate. 'Blood Will Out.'
When Corrin wouldn’t meet his eyes after their last Occlumency lesson, when the little Ravenclaw’s reserved expression and his closed body language and even the surface-level thoughts that Blaire sometimes couldn’t help reading now all but shouted I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t even know if I want to see you, Blaire Harrowgate had decided that it would probably be best to give Corrin some space, and to give them both some time away from each other.
Blaire wasn’t staying at Grimmauld Place any more--he’d healed up enough to return home to Harrowgate Hall, to take up his duties as a Death Eater and a spy again--so it actually wasn’t all that difficult to avoid Corrin. Blaire really only stopped by Scarlet HQ on rare occasions anyway, to deliver particularly important or time-sensitive reports, and if he didn’t have to give Corrin lessons...well then, there wasn’t really much reason for him to go there at all. His news and information drops could be made by owl (or by raven, if need be), and it was probably better for now if he didn’t do anything that would arouse suspicion in the other Death Eaters, considering how long he’d been recovering after “double-crossing the Order, for the sake of Lord von Cromwell.”
The only indication he’d had that anything might be wrong was a note delivered along with the mail one evening, not even a full week after that last lesson. It had looked like the usual newsletter from Hogwarts, something sent out to alumni every so often; but when Blaire murmured a quiet code-word over it, the ink reformed itself into one small, simple line that read:
Is Corrin with you?
-R
It was Reed’s handwriting, and it was clear from the slant of the letters, from the splatter of the ink, that he’d written it in a hurry; but although he took note of those details, they’d just left Blaire feeling bemused.
Why would Corrin be with me? he’d wondered, murmuring the code-word over the letter again to change it back to its previous appearance (and even if that word was spoken again, it wouldn’t shift again, a One-Time Secret Message Charm--a clever bit of magic thought up by Valanthe, but mostly brought into reality by the far more patient Varis). If Blaire had to guess, he’d assume that Corrin must’ve gotten tired of being bothered by everyone, and had found somewhere else in the house to hole up, to give everyone a bit of a scare and get some reading and spellwork done. Or perhaps it wasn’t intentional and he’d simply wandered somewhere in the house, found some unused secret room that had more books, and lost track of time and his very self amidst the words…
Blaire found himself smiling faintly at that thought, at the mental image of the little Ravenclaw’s bright blue eyes fastened on the open page, his cute little nose almost quite literally buried in the book, oblivious to the entirety of the world around him. The contents of the tome held in his hands were his new world, the only thing that existed for him in that moment.
That tiny smile hadn’t completely faded as Blaire took his place at the dinner table, and despite the fact that Lyra’s behaviour towards him was, for some reason, noticeably more smug and sadistic than usual, it couldn’t fully displace that feeling of warmth and affection glowing in his chest.
Then he just so happened to drop his napkin, and as he bent to pick it up, Blaire saw the blood on his sister’s boots.
It was fresh, he could tell that much by the way she’d accidentally (or not, with Lyra who knew?) smeared some of it on the legs of her chair...and in that terrible instant, there was some part of Blaire Harrowgate that knew where Corrin Wiseacre was right now, that had read it in the speckles of crimson dotting the tops of those light brown leather high-heeled boots.
But no, that was madness. He was just being paranoid, reading into things far too much, letting years of past trauma overwhelm his logic and good sense.
...And yet...and yet, what if.
What if he wasn’t mistaken?
What if his gut feeling, his instinctive fear, had been right?
Despite the growing weight of doubt clouding his mind and the building concern tightening his chest, Blaire didn’t allow himself to give any outward reaction; he simply sat up in his chair again as if he hadn’t noticed anything amiss, and did his best to more or less finish his meal. At least he didn’t have to fake an appetite; it had been a long time since he’d finished a meal, particularly while living here at home.
Lyra spent the whole rest of the meal needling him, dropping all sorts of terrible hints and vague references to the countless times she’d broken his toys as a child, which wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary. Surely it was his imagination, the way that her jeering seemed more pointed than usual, the manic light in her eyes brighter and more triumphant than he’d seen it since...
Since Falstaff.
Something like panic was rising inside Blaire now, but he didn’t let himself show it. He spoke and looked just as calm as ever, and he clamped down hard on all his thoughts and feelings and emotions, using every scrap of talent and skill that he’d discovered and built up over the years to keep Lyra out of his mind to block her out now, and remain steady, in careful control of himself.
And so Blaire didn’t rush through dinner, and he didn’t rush away after dinner either. Instead he made a show of lounging about the library reading for a few hours before finally (supposedly) going to bed. Then, and only then, did he slip outside, changing into his Animagus form and flying a safe distance away from Harrowgate Hall, where he dropped the raven form and Apparated as close to Grimmauld Place as he could.
There wasn’t anyone in the kitchen or any of the ground floor rooms, though a note on the table indicated where everyone was: out looking for Corrin.
Blaire’s jaw tightened, his heart and lungs feeling as though an invisible fist had grabbed hold of them and was squeezing relentlessly.
Stop it. You don’t know anything for certain, so don’t make any assumptions. Corrin might’ve just run away, or found a secret passage, or fallen asleep under Dumbledore’s Invisibility Cloak. Have a look around before you go thinking the worst.
Still, it didn’t help that he could hear the sound of someone crying in a room upstairs. He knew it must be Harriett, but he pushed aside his concern for Corrin’s mother and instead started to go over the house himself, inch by inch.
First the Slytherin checked for Corrin’s coat and shoes, and to his minor relief, he found those items missing. There, wasn’t that reason enough to believe that the little Ravenclaw might’ve simply taken a walk and decided not to come back for a while? It should have been, but somehow...somehow, it didn’t alleviate the churning, swirling morass of anxiety that had welled up inside of him, and continued to lap at the edges of his consciousness.
Second, Blaire decided to go straight to the scene of the possible crime: Corrin’s room.
Corrin’s room was still the same sort of semi-organised mess that he remembered. Books of (nearly) all sorts were piled everywhere, and most of the available surfaces had stacks of papers or rolls of parchment, all filled with line after line of Corrin’s small, cramped handwriting. Various magical objects were scattered about as well, most notably a battered old lunascope, which was holding down a large stack of notes about the differing effects phases of the moon had on certain spells and potions; and there was also a long, low table along the far wall that was full of phials, flasks, and other potioneering equipment, all of it quietly hissing or smoking or bubbling away. A few things looked as though they’d boiled over, or had been simmering too long, and Blaire frowned at that, bothered by it more than he generally would be, because as angry as Corrin had been at all of them, he still wasn’t the sort to start an experiment and not see it through.
Moving further into the room, Blaire began to examine Corrin’s desk proper, resisting the urge to gather up the heavy scattering of scrolls and parchment on the floor all around his chair--but, well, the avalanche of papers could’ve been easily explained away as the result of some other member of Corrin’s family frantically looking through whatever Corrin had been working on for some possible clue as to where he’d gone. Blaire looked through the pages as best he could without moving them much, but nothing in particular leapt out to him, aside from Corrin’s sudden, obvious (and justifiable) interest in werewolves and potential cures for lycanthropy.
...Honestly, I’d’ve been more surprised if he wasn’t researching this now, Blaire thought to himself as he carefully replaced a sheaf of papers containing several proposed alterations and hopeful improvements on the standard Wolfsbane Potion.
A quick scan of the rest of the desk revealed a few more details that Blaire didn’t quite like: the inkwell on the desk was open--and dried up, the Slytherin wizard noted. The quill-pen Corrin must have been using hadn’t been properly put away either, and while that wasn’t terribly unusual, not taking proper care of his ink was much more uncommon. It could be expensive, at least when purchased in the quantities that Corrin used it in, and the Wiseacres could ill afford to waste much of anything, much less something that was a little pricey. Regardless of how upset he was at his family, Corrin wouldn’t squander what hard-earned money they had, for any reason.
Any way Blaire looked at it, leaving his inkwell in that state was really out-of-character for Corrin...which only made him all the more determined to find some sort of evidence, some indicator as to where his best friend might’ve gone.
Blaire moved in closer to the desk, shifting things around cautiously, trying not to move anything so much that he couldn’t put it back in the same position he’d found it in...and as it turned out, his sleuthing was actually very productive. Intending to do as thorough a job as possible, Blaire lit the tip of his wand and peered behind the back of the desk, as well as down the side, where it was nearly shoved up against the wall.
...And there, wedged in that space between the desk and the wall, was the book he’d stolen from the other Death Eaters and brought here to Grimmauld Place, nearly at the cost of his own life.
For a moment, Blaire could only stare at it--what in Merlin’s name had happened to cause it to fall back there?--but then he hurriedly summoned the book to his hand, flipping through it with an urgency born of mounting desperation.
It made no more sense to him now than it had before--most of the pages were blank, and none of them seemed to be the same thing he’d seen whenever he’d flipped through it before--and he very nearly hurled the book at the floor in a thoroughly atypical show of hot temper. Even if there was a clue somewhere in this stupid, esoteric tome, he most likely wouldn’t be able to see it, or if he did, he wouldn’t be able to interpret it-
Then the last pages fanned through his fingers, and Blaire was left staring at the back inside cover of the book...and a previously-hidden, now unlocked hatch. It was intricate work: the hatch had clearly been held closed by a series of puzzle-locks that would’ve taken Blaire himself days to solve, if not a full week, and behind that now-opened hatch was an empty space. It was too deep, a little pocket of emptiness that should’ve passed well beyond the green leather cover of the volume, but of course magic could easily create something like that. Inside that space was...nothing. But no, that wasn’t quite true; because pressed into the crushed velvet interior of that magically-too-deep pocket, Blaire could see the outline of what had rested there before: a heavy, ornate key with what looked a lot like a certain, familiar crest.
He had seen a key of that exact shape and size before, Blaire slowly realised: the key to the huge, always-locked wrought-iron gates outside Harrowgate Hall, which meant-
Before what he’d found had parsed itself into words in his head, Blaire was halfway to his knees, sinking slowly to the floor, book still in hand, as the horror of it all settled around him like a shroud and then shook through him like an earthquake because he’d been right, Merlin help him, he’d been right, Lyra had Corrin. There was no mistaking it. There was no-one else who it could be, who would have come up with something so clever, and so twisted.
...And so distressingly, obviously pulled from Blaire’s memories of Corrin, too.
The Medici puzzle-box! Damn me for a fool! Lyra must’ve seen him slipping away to have it made, must’ve managed to catch a glimpse of the person he’d been planning on giving it to or else stolen a snippet of the recollection of Corrin’s happy face. Blaire’s mental defenses were strong by now, nigh on impenetrable even for someone as powerful and gifted as his sister; most of the time he could shut Lyra out entirely. But when he was truly happy, when he felt some other strong, real emotion powerfully enough, she’d sometimes found a chink in his armour, and had managed to steal away a small scrap of a memory.
Just his luck that one time, it must have been that one.
Blaire’s hand tightened around the spine of the book, closing it with a snap, and just as suddenly as he’d ended up on the floor, he was on his feet and moving towards the door. He had to get back to Harrowgate Hall right now, before--no. No, he...what he had to do was find Garrett Wiseacre, and then go to Hogwarts, and then he had to return home.
First finding Garrett, because Corrin’s eldest brother was the one person in the Order who Blaire could tell about where Corrin must be right now, without the risk of him doing something impulsive and brave and utterly stupid that would get a lot of people, possibly including Corrin himself, killed needlessly.
Then on to Hogwarts, because as much as he disliked the conniving old headmaster, Dumbledore would know if von Cromwell had Corrin, and if that wasn’t the case, then Dumbledore should know that Lyra had Corrin, and that Blaire was going to do everything he could to save him. Blaire knew Dumbledore well enough to know that while the ancient wizard could very well have marched straight back to Harrowgate Hall with him, blasted Lyra into next week, and saved Corrin that very hour, that wasn’t how he operated. He never seemed to do anything that he didn’t have to, that someone else could do instead, even if it wouldn’t be done as well or as quickly. There was no reason for Dumbledore to not help him save Corrin, and Blaire would certainly ask--on hands and knees if need be, casting his dignity aside without a second thought--but he already knew what the answer would be. A small smile and a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder and some obscure and would-be-comforting and inspiring comment that any properly cunning Slytherin worth their silver-tongued salt could see was nothing more than utter bullshite.
And then home, because while he couldn’t do anything obvious, he could start trying to find some clue as to where Lyra was keeping his best friend.
He would have to be careful, he would have to be subtle, he couldn’t let his sister know that he knew she had Corrin. Lyra having that knowledge increased the risk that she might simply murder, to prevent Blaire from having even the slightest chance of rescuing him. If she wasn’t certain, if she had to wonder if he knew, then Corrin might be alive--not safe, never safe, not with Lyra--just a little longer, and a little longer, until finally...
...Finally what, though? Even if Blaire did figure out where she was hiding the little Ravenclaw, he was no match for her strength, or speed, or cutting-edge cunning, and to further unbalance the scales, he would most likely be weighed down with Corrin’s battered, abused, half-dead form. Even if he did learn where Corrin was, he didn’t have a good way of getting other members of the Order into Harrowgate Hall, and there was no guarantee that Lyra wouldn’t figure out his plan and time things so that she’d finished off the youngest Wiseacre just moments before his family arrived to rescue him.
No, no. He needed a better plan than that. He needed any sort of plan at all, really. Hopefully, by the time he found out where Lyra was keeping Corrin, he’d have one.
By now Blaire had reached Number 12’s front door, and after shooting a quick glance around to be certain there were no Muggles about, he shifted into his raven form and took wing, beady eyes trained on the streets, searching for Garrett. Find Garrett, deliver the message, then go to Hogwarts, was the only thought in his limited bird’s mind, urgency and fear the only things he had the capacity to feel.
Which was just as well, really: the hot, slow-growing anger he’d felt rising, burning in his chest and throat wasn’t going to do him or Corrin any favours. Hating Lyra even more than he did wouldn’t help Corrin.
But then again, it couldn’t hurt, either.
Blaire Harrowgate. 'Blood Will Out.'
When Corrin wouldn’t meet his eyes after their last Occlumency lesson, when the little Ravenclaw’s reserved expression and his closed body language and even the surface-level thoughts that Blaire sometimes couldn’t help reading now all but shouted I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t even know if I want to see you, Blaire Harrowgate had decided that it would probably be best to give Corrin some space, and to give them both some time away from each other.
Blaire wasn’t staying at Grimmauld Place any more--he’d healed up enough to return home to Harrowgate Hall, to take up his duties as a Death Eater and a spy again--so it actually wasn’t all that difficult to avoid Corrin. Blaire really only stopped by Scarlet HQ on rare occasions anyway, to deliver particularly important or time-sensitive reports, and if he didn’t have to give Corrin lessons...well then, there wasn’t really much reason for him to go there at all. His news and information drops could be made by owl (or by raven, if need be), and it was probably better for now if he didn’t do anything that would arouse suspicion in the other Death Eaters, considering how long he’d been recovering after “double-crossing the Order, for the sake of Lord von Cromwell.”
The only indication he’d had that anything might be wrong was a note delivered along with the mail one evening, not even a full week after that last lesson. It had looked like the usual newsletter from Hogwarts, something sent out to alumni every so often; but when Blaire murmured a quiet code-word over it, the ink reformed itself into one small, simple line that read:
-R
It was Reed’s handwriting, and it was clear from the slant of the letters, from the splatter of the ink, that he’d written it in a hurry; but although he took note of those details, they’d just left Blaire feeling bemused.
Why would Corrin be with me? he’d wondered, murmuring the code-word over the letter again to change it back to its previous appearance (and even if that word was spoken again, it wouldn’t shift again, a One-Time Secret Message Charm--a clever bit of magic thought up by Valanthe, but mostly brought into reality by the far more patient Varis). If Blaire had to guess, he’d assume that Corrin must’ve gotten tired of being bothered by everyone, and had found somewhere else in the house to hole up, to give everyone a bit of a scare and get some reading and spellwork done. Or perhaps it wasn’t intentional and he’d simply wandered somewhere in the house, found some unused secret room that had more books, and lost track of time and his very self amidst the words…
Blaire found himself smiling faintly at that thought, at the mental image of the little Ravenclaw’s bright blue eyes fastened on the open page, his cute little nose almost quite literally buried in the book, oblivious to the entirety of the world around him. The contents of the tome held in his hands were his new world, the only thing that existed for him in that moment.
That tiny smile hadn’t completely faded as Blaire took his place at the dinner table, and despite the fact that Lyra’s behaviour towards him was, for some reason, noticeably more smug and sadistic than usual, it couldn’t fully displace that feeling of warmth and affection glowing in his chest.
Then he just so happened to drop his napkin, and as he bent to pick it up, Blaire saw the blood on his sister’s boots.
It was fresh, he could tell that much by the way she’d accidentally (or not, with Lyra who knew?) smeared some of it on the legs of her chair...and in that terrible instant, there was some part of Blaire Harrowgate that knew where Corrin Wiseacre was right now, that had read it in the speckles of crimson dotting the tops of those light brown leather high-heeled boots.
But no, that was madness. He was just being paranoid, reading into things far too much, letting years of past trauma overwhelm his logic and good sense.
...And yet...and yet, what if.
What if he wasn’t mistaken?
What if his gut feeling, his instinctive fear, had been right?
Despite the growing weight of doubt clouding his mind and the building concern tightening his chest, Blaire didn’t allow himself to give any outward reaction; he simply sat up in his chair again as if he hadn’t noticed anything amiss, and did his best to more or less finish his meal. At least he didn’t have to fake an appetite; it had been a long time since he’d finished a meal, particularly while living here at home.
Lyra spent the whole rest of the meal needling him, dropping all sorts of terrible hints and vague references to the countless times she’d broken his toys as a child, which wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary. Surely it was his imagination, the way that her jeering seemed more pointed than usual, the manic light in her eyes brighter and more triumphant than he’d seen it since...
Since Falstaff.
Something like panic was rising inside Blaire now, but he didn’t let himself show it. He spoke and looked just as calm as ever, and he clamped down hard on all his thoughts and feelings and emotions, using every scrap of talent and skill that he’d discovered and built up over the years to keep Lyra out of his mind to block her out now, and remain steady, in careful control of himself.
And so Blaire didn’t rush through dinner, and he didn’t rush away after dinner either. Instead he made a show of lounging about the library reading for a few hours before finally (supposedly) going to bed. Then, and only then, did he slip outside, changing into his Animagus form and flying a safe distance away from Harrowgate Hall, where he dropped the raven form and Apparated as close to Grimmauld Place as he could.
There wasn’t anyone in the kitchen or any of the ground floor rooms, though a note on the table indicated where everyone was: out looking for Corrin.
Blaire’s jaw tightened, his heart and lungs feeling as though an invisible fist had grabbed hold of them and was squeezing relentlessly.
Stop it. You don’t know anything for certain, so don’t make any assumptions. Corrin might’ve just run away, or found a secret passage, or fallen asleep under Dumbledore’s Invisibility Cloak. Have a look around before you go thinking the worst.
Still, it didn’t help that he could hear the sound of someone crying in a room upstairs. He knew it must be Harriett, but he pushed aside his concern for Corrin’s mother and instead started to go over the house himself, inch by inch.
First the Slytherin checked for Corrin’s coat and shoes, and to his minor relief, he found those items missing. There, wasn’t that reason enough to believe that the little Ravenclaw might’ve simply taken a walk and decided not to come back for a while? It should have been, but somehow...somehow, it didn’t alleviate the churning, swirling morass of anxiety that had welled up inside of him, and continued to lap at the edges of his consciousness.
Second, Blaire decided to go straight to the scene of the possible crime: Corrin’s room.
Corrin’s room was still the same sort of semi-organised mess that he remembered. Books of (nearly) all sorts were piled everywhere, and most of the available surfaces had stacks of papers or rolls of parchment, all filled with line after line of Corrin’s small, cramped handwriting. Various magical objects were scattered about as well, most notably a battered old lunascope, which was holding down a large stack of notes about the differing effects phases of the moon had on certain spells and potions; and there was also a long, low table along the far wall that was full of phials, flasks, and other potioneering equipment, all of it quietly hissing or smoking or bubbling away. A few things looked as though they’d boiled over, or had been simmering too long, and Blaire frowned at that, bothered by it more than he generally would be, because as angry as Corrin had been at all of them, he still wasn’t the sort to start an experiment and not see it through.
Moving further into the room, Blaire began to examine Corrin’s desk proper, resisting the urge to gather up the heavy scattering of scrolls and parchment on the floor all around his chair--but, well, the avalanche of papers could’ve been easily explained away as the result of some other member of Corrin’s family frantically looking through whatever Corrin had been working on for some possible clue as to where he’d gone. Blaire looked through the pages as best he could without moving them much, but nothing in particular leapt out to him, aside from Corrin’s sudden, obvious (and justifiable) interest in werewolves and potential cures for lycanthropy.
...Honestly, I’d’ve been more surprised if he wasn’t researching this now, Blaire thought to himself as he carefully replaced a sheaf of papers containing several proposed alterations and hopeful improvements on the standard Wolfsbane Potion.
A quick scan of the rest of the desk revealed a few more details that Blaire didn’t quite like: the inkwell on the desk was open--and dried up, the Slytherin wizard noted. The quill-pen Corrin must have been using hadn’t been properly put away either, and while that wasn’t terribly unusual, not taking proper care of his ink was much more uncommon. It could be expensive, at least when purchased in the quantities that Corrin used it in, and the Wiseacres could ill afford to waste much of anything, much less something that was a little pricey. Regardless of how upset he was at his family, Corrin wouldn’t squander what hard-earned money they had, for any reason.
Any way Blaire looked at it, leaving his inkwell in that state was really out-of-character for Corrin...which only made him all the more determined to find some sort of evidence, some indicator as to where his best friend might’ve gone.
Blaire moved in closer to the desk, shifting things around cautiously, trying not to move anything so much that he couldn’t put it back in the same position he’d found it in...and as it turned out, his sleuthing was actually very productive. Intending to do as thorough a job as possible, Blaire lit the tip of his wand and peered behind the back of the desk, as well as down the side, where it was nearly shoved up against the wall.
...And there, wedged in that space between the desk and the wall, was the book he’d stolen from the other Death Eaters and brought here to Grimmauld Place, nearly at the cost of his own life.
For a moment, Blaire could only stare at it--what in Merlin’s name had happened to cause it to fall back there?--but then he hurriedly summoned the book to his hand, flipping through it with an urgency born of mounting desperation.
It made no more sense to him now than it had before--most of the pages were blank, and none of them seemed to be the same thing he’d seen whenever he’d flipped through it before--and he very nearly hurled the book at the floor in a thoroughly atypical show of hot temper. Even if there was a clue somewhere in this stupid, esoteric tome, he most likely wouldn’t be able to see it, or if he did, he wouldn’t be able to interpret it-
Then the last pages fanned through his fingers, and Blaire was left staring at the back inside cover of the book...and a previously-hidden, now unlocked hatch. It was intricate work: the hatch had clearly been held closed by a series of puzzle-locks that would’ve taken Blaire himself days to solve, if not a full week, and behind that now-opened hatch was an empty space. It was too deep, a little pocket of emptiness that should’ve passed well beyond the green leather cover of the volume, but of course magic could easily create something like that. Inside that space was...nothing. But no, that wasn’t quite true; because pressed into the crushed velvet interior of that magically-too-deep pocket, Blaire could see the outline of what had rested there before: a heavy, ornate key with what looked a lot like a certain, familiar crest.
He had seen a key of that exact shape and size before, Blaire slowly realised: the key to the huge, always-locked wrought-iron gates outside Harrowgate Hall, which meant-
Before what he’d found had parsed itself into words in his head, Blaire was halfway to his knees, sinking slowly to the floor, book still in hand, as the horror of it all settled around him like a shroud and then shook through him like an earthquake because he’d been right, Merlin help him, he’d been right, Lyra had Corrin. There was no mistaking it. There was no-one else who it could be, who would have come up with something so clever, and so twisted.
...And so distressingly, obviously pulled from Blaire’s memories of Corrin, too.
The Medici puzzle-box! Damn me for a fool! Lyra must’ve seen him slipping away to have it made, must’ve managed to catch a glimpse of the person he’d been planning on giving it to or else stolen a snippet of the recollection of Corrin’s happy face. Blaire’s mental defenses were strong by now, nigh on impenetrable even for someone as powerful and gifted as his sister; most of the time he could shut Lyra out entirely. But when he was truly happy, when he felt some other strong, real emotion powerfully enough, she’d sometimes found a chink in his armour, and had managed to steal away a small scrap of a memory.
Just his luck that one time, it must have been that one.
Blaire’s hand tightened around the spine of the book, closing it with a snap, and just as suddenly as he’d ended up on the floor, he was on his feet and moving towards the door. He had to get back to Harrowgate Hall right now, before--no. No, he...what he had to do was find Garrett Wiseacre, and then go to Hogwarts, and then he had to return home.
First finding Garrett, because Corrin’s eldest brother was the one person in the Order who Blaire could tell about where Corrin must be right now, without the risk of him doing something impulsive and brave and utterly stupid that would get a lot of people, possibly including Corrin himself, killed needlessly.
Then on to Hogwarts, because as much as he disliked the conniving old headmaster, Dumbledore would know if von Cromwell had Corrin, and if that wasn’t the case, then Dumbledore should know that Lyra had Corrin, and that Blaire was going to do everything he could to save him. Blaire knew Dumbledore well enough to know that while the ancient wizard could very well have marched straight back to Harrowgate Hall with him, blasted Lyra into next week, and saved Corrin that very hour, that wasn’t how he operated. He never seemed to do anything that he didn’t have to, that someone else could do instead, even if it wouldn’t be done as well or as quickly. There was no reason for Dumbledore to not help him save Corrin, and Blaire would certainly ask--on hands and knees if need be, casting his dignity aside without a second thought--but he already knew what the answer would be. A small smile and a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder and some obscure and would-be-comforting and inspiring comment that any properly cunning Slytherin worth their silver-tongued salt could see was nothing more than utter bullshite.
And then home, because while he couldn’t do anything obvious, he could start trying to find some clue as to where Lyra was keeping his best friend.
He would have to be careful, he would have to be subtle, he couldn’t let his sister know that he knew she had Corrin. Lyra having that knowledge increased the risk that she might simply murder, to prevent Blaire from having even the slightest chance of rescuing him. If she wasn’t certain, if she had to wonder if he knew, then Corrin might be alive--not safe, never safe, not with Lyra--just a little longer, and a little longer, until finally...
...Finally what, though? Even if Blaire did figure out where she was hiding the little Ravenclaw, he was no match for her strength, or speed, or cutting-edge cunning, and to further unbalance the scales, he would most likely be weighed down with Corrin’s battered, abused, half-dead form. Even if he did learn where Corrin was, he didn’t have a good way of getting other members of the Order into Harrowgate Hall, and there was no guarantee that Lyra wouldn’t figure out his plan and time things so that she’d finished off the youngest Wiseacre just moments before his family arrived to rescue him.
No, no. He needed a better plan than that. He needed any sort of plan at all, really. Hopefully, by the time he found out where Lyra was keeping Corrin, he’d have one.
By now Blaire had reached Number 12’s front door, and after shooting a quick glance around to be certain there were no Muggles about, he shifted into his raven form and took wing, beady eyes trained on the streets, searching for Garrett. Find Garrett, deliver the message, then go to Hogwarts, was the only thought in his limited bird’s mind, urgency and fear the only things he had the capacity to feel.
Which was just as well, really: the hot, slow-growing anger he’d felt rising, burning in his chest and throat wasn’t going to do him or Corrin any favours. Hating Lyra even more than he did wouldn’t help Corrin.
But then again, it couldn’t hurt, either.