Sometimes Bad is Good

Chapter Twenty-One

The dungeons underneath the Slytherin quarters certainly weren't a place for the young and naive, but it was the place to be if you wanted to find out why Werewolves were constantly reigning attacks on the Hogwarts populace and guests. Harry had been there once already to torture out the information from reluctant lips, and he had eventually managed to weasel out at least a small portion of information from one of them.

And it incidentally seemed that he might have to do it again.

"You want him to what?" Draco asked, for what felt like the fifth time in the span of two minutes, his face a mask of cold only a shade up from frozen and his slate grey eyes alight with something akin to a magnificent fiery rage.

It was strange for Harry to think that Draco looked equal parts the Ice Queen Narcissa found herself presenting when angered, and the ready to erupt volcano that was Lucius Malfoy, but the heady mixture of both Black and Malfoy in Draco was something not to be messed with, and it seemed to be the calm before the storm. It gave Harry the slight poke of a memory that showed itself to be an expression he'd seen many times on the blonde's face when fighting him, only when he looked at Draco now, he could see that the expression in the past had been a trifle diluted. 

Maybe it was just Dumbledore that had the effect on Draco to piss him off, even if Harry had been able to get so far under the blonde's skin he was poking bones.

Speaking of anger, Harry himself was annoyed, but it wasn't just Dumbledore that irked him. Lucius and Narcissa themselves had boxed him in between them on the settee he and Draco had rested on just before Dumbledore had made an appearance, and each had a hand on Harry's forearms as if barricading him in. The effect was not lost on those in the Nest, and there were a few anxious looks thrown his way every so often. Hermione and Ron seemed to understand that it wasn't just from Dumbledore intruding on his peacetime activities, either.

Dumbledore observed Draco with the calm grace he usually affected when speaking with a recalcitrant child, though the matching smile was nowhere to be seen on his wizened, old face. "The Werewolves in the dungeons will not rise to Severus' baiting, Mr Malfoy," he said in a particularly solemn voice. "It has been requested that Harry join the council in the dungeons to pry the information from their reluctant minds, as it seems to be that they are highly susceptible to Harry's own form of questioning, rather than our own. The means are neither here, nor there, but we must get their knowledge of what is to come, regardless."

"You want Potter to interrogate the wolves he previously slaughtered?" A horrified Pansy Parkinson asked, paler than ever and no less shocked at the turn of events. "Why him? Why can't Professor Snape handle this? Potter's just a student like us! If you can command him to do such an atrocity as that, what could you possibly make the rest of us do?"

"He has done it before, Miss Parkinson," Dumbledore informed her, rather blandly, an absent smile snaking its way onto his face. He turned to face the more involved of the guests and students. "I do not mean to speak out of turn or harry anyone into any hasty decisions, but I believe, as do the others in the chamber, that our Harry is the key to unlocking the secrets of the Werewolves' plans for the future of the Wizarding world. With just a little persuasion and a dab of elbow grease, I believe that he will be able to succeed where others seem to fail and prevent another war from beginning."

"At the cost of Harry having more sleepless nights tossing and turning and writhing in pain and guilt," Draco snapped at the older wizard, stalking forward with a deadly grace to stand before his parents and mate protectively. Not that he had gone too far from Harry's side in the first place. "I won't have him upset by the sight of their mangled corpses, Professor. It's nothing that Harry of any one of us should be involved in! There are other means to getting the enemies plans, and I don't -- cannot understand why you should always choose the most difficult paths!"