Introduction to Resolution
This is the third story in a trilogy that begins with the stories Resonance and Revolution, which I would strongly recommend reading before this. You can find them on this website by clicking on the author name somewhere on this page.
To quickly catch you up: Harry is nineteen in this story and an Auror Apprentice. He lives with his adoptive father, Severus Snape, in the mythical village of Shrewsthorpe. As the story opens, the characters are dealing with the aftermath of the most recent prophecy and the destruction that accompanied it.
- 888 -
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- 888 -
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
- 888 -
Chapter 1 — On the Coast
Harry lay sleeping with the warm breeze languidly flowing over his skin. A magically enlarged umbrella stretched over him, reducing the hot sun to manageable brightness. Red, blue and green bands of light discolored his chest and more obviously, the white bandages encasing his left arm.
"Do you really have to wake him?" Candide asked from behind oversized sunglasses when Snape glanced at his pocket watch. Snape did not reply, simply rose from the awkwardly low beach chair and crossed the white rocks. Unlike the others, who had donned swimwear, he wore shorts and a white starched shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Snape tapped Harry on his unbandaged shoulder, saying, "It is time again."
Harry woke slowly, groggy from the heat. It was as though he had been dreaming his surroundings and some time was required to adjust to the coincidental reality. Rubbing his eyes, he asked, "It's 2:00 already?"
"Yes," Snape said, collecting his shoes to change out of the ridiculous plastic things they had needed to purchase from a vendor.
"If you're coming back, I'll stay with the stuff," Candide said, putting aside the fat magazine she held.
"We'll come back," Harry assured her. If nothing else, he wanted to finish his nap. He tugged a shirt on but skipped buttoning it, and instead ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. The sunlight sparkling on the water made him squint and he gratefully turned away from it to follow Snape up the beach.
The pervasive scent of briny water was stronger inside the small hotel room. Snape selected from the supplies spread out on the tiny dresser. Harry looked around at his things layering the room and considered that he was going to have to make some space when Ron arrived the next day. He held still while the current bandage was unwound with care because they had to reuse it.
"It is doing much better," Snape observed. "Your forearm is almost completely healed."
Harry gave the remaining wounds a closer look. The skin was almost normal, just lacked hair. "Well, I have been taking it easy, finally." While his arm was being treated he said, "Thank Merlin the Healer let me go."
"I believe after you shrugged when he threatened to remove all the flesh from your arm upon your return, should that be necessary, he could not argue further."
Harry spied his Auror books on the marble window sill. They felt farther away than two yards. "I needed a break more than an arm."
"We all did," Snape agreed, while methodically rewinding the old bandage.
Harry gave him more scrutiny. "How are you doing?" When Snape made a non-committal noise, Harry asked, "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"
"What sane person could not have second thoughts about marriage?" Snape returned with some sharpness. "Let's arrange one for you, shall we? See how you cope."
Harry chuckled and moved to put his shirt back on. He felt revived after being out of the sun and his eyes had relaxed in the dimmer light. Pushing his shoulders back to bolster himself to return outside he said, "It's nice in here, but we should get back."
"Mad dogs and Englishmen," Snape commented.
At Harry's questioning look, he prompted toward the door, "Go on."
"You two are good together, you know," Harry said as they walked down the narrow staircase of the hotel. A stiff breeze blew in off the Mediterranean, ruffling the promotional brochures lined up on a side table across from the front desk. Snape dropped the rubber-edged, heavy brass key on the desk as they walked by it. Outside, the wind bullied along the curved, cobblestone street and on the shady side it was almost chilly, but as they reached the quay the heat and light poured on once again.
Harry returned to his former seat after assuring Candide that he was fine. He clasped his hands over his abdomen, and stared out at the red and white ferry boat passing by just below the horizon. Despite the high-pitched squeals of children playing nearby, he fell back to sleep.
"Can we have pizza again?" Harry asked later, when they were packing up their things with surreptitious glances in all directions to ensure no one noticed them shrinking the umbrellas back down to their normal size.
"Again?" Candide asked at the same time as Snape said, "Whatever you wish."
They picked their way over the craggy, bleached rock and around potholes filling with the tide. On the road, the locals were reopening shops for the evening, rolling up gates and unlocking glass doors. Pizza was nearly the only option for anyone wanting to eat before 10:00 p.m.
After a quick clean up they were settled in at a small place open wide to the pavement. While they waited for their order, Harry watched bicycles roll by and the occasional car, that he instinctively believed must have been charmed to fit on so narrow a road. Frequent horn honking—which echoed violently in the canyon of stone buildings—seemed a requirement of driving through the narrows of the old town.
Harry sighed. He had finally relaxed and found some perspective on recent events. A glance at Snape's hooked profile reminded him how tenuous life was, but he had grip on that now, having overcome bad odds once again. It made him feel more confident that should he need to, he could force things to work out again.
Pizzas arrived. Harry downed two slices in rapid succession, wondering how he could have grown so hungry for not having moved all day. When her salad arrived, Candide pushed her remaining pizza in Harry's direction.
"Still growing, I see," she teased him.
Harry's mouth was full, so he did not reply right away. Snape filled in with, "It's the Thewsolve."
"Is it?" Harry asked after swallowing a gooey lump of cheese.
Snape nodded and Harry moved to consolidate her pizza with his on his plate. He ate another piece while the two of them sat comfortably across from one another, sharing a second beer. Harry felt comfortable with this too and mildly regretted that Ron was arriving the next day because it would disrupt the rhythm the three of them had settled into.
By the time they were walking back to the hotel, though, the thrumming of the various small night clubs vibrated through the night air, calling him to spend some time out late. He had decided to wait for Ron before exploring the night scene and looked forward to his arrival on that account.
Instead of exploring on this own, Harry left the others and went to his own room to attempt some assigned reading. He propped a book on the windowsill in the glow of a streetlamp and sat on a chair, hunkered over the pages. Outside the open shutters, motor scooters whined, bicycles dinged, conversations outside the shops drifted up to the window; all of it fortified by the unceasing wash of the sea waves surrounding the peninsula. As lulling and relaxing as it was, it made Ministry evidence handling policy a rather meaningless, or at least remote, topic.
Harry read as long as he could bear to and then lay on the bed. The plaster above him had an organic feel as though he were inside a big handmade clay pot rather than a building. Harry imagined his own room at home and considered that he could probably just return there in an instant. At Candide's insistence, they had come by aeroplane, but now that Harry knew where he was, he could slip into the Dark Plane and home again with little effort. The thought made him feel less distant from home than he wanted to actually be.
On the other hand, he could go visit Tonks, which sounded highly appealing and indeed his core warmed at the thought. Except she did not know that he had worked out a kind of Apparition to go such distance and Snape did not want him to tell anyone who did not absolutely need to know. But Harry would not mind her learning about it, and he could spend a few hours with her—if she were not on duty—and return back and Snape would not know the difference. Harry mostly resisted because afterward he would truly not feel properly separated from home the way one on a holiday should be.
As he mused upon this, a knock sounded on the door and it opened. Harry sat up suddenly; he had forgotten about his next treatment and was grateful that he had not gone anywhere.
As Snape worked at unwrapping his arm, he said, "I believe this is the last treatment your forearm will need."
"Good, I want to go out to the clubs tomorrow night with Ron," Harry said.
"Wear the sling in that case."
"I was hoping to hide the bandages altogether under a long-sleeve shirt."
"Then you will be tempted to use the arm, which you should not do. Observe how well it is healing now that you are resting it."
Harry could not argue with that, the streaks of pinkish new flesh were otherwise perfectly formed. "I can avoid using it," Harry insisted.
"You will wear the sling or you will not go," Snape stated.
Harry took that in until his surprise passed. He sighed and propped his arm up to be rewrapped. "All right," he said, staring at the mirror over the dresser.
"Look at me," Snape said.
Harry did, but his mind was Occluded.
"You have grown far too good at that," Snape complained.
"I'll wear the sling," Harry said. "You're right, of course. Daft to have it not heal right because I wanted to go dancing one night."
Snape did not acknowledge Harry's reasoning, simply collected the supplies together into a sack and set it aside. He left Harry alone again and Harry returned to reading in the window, this time rereading a book on advanced double blocks. Conversation from the next room drifted in, and despite wanting to pull back out of hearing range, he held still.
"... the matter, Severus?" Candide asked.
"Nothing is the matter," Snape insisted. A chair scraped the floor. A scooter sounded in the distance, blotting out everything else, and Harry returned to his reading, nearly forgetting he could overhear if all else was quiet. Quiet descended again and between the calls of a nightingale Harry heard Snape saying in a low tone as though specifically not to be overheard, "There will come a time when he will simply cease to obey."
Harry forgot his book, certain he was topic of conversation.
Candide's voice came next, clearer over the low rumble of the waves, "He's very nearly nineteen," she said, as though that explained everything.
"It isn't his absolute age that matters, it is that his power is far ahead of his maturity."
Their voices were drowned out again. Harry ran his fingers through his salty hair, curled unusually in the humidity. He did not mean to concern Snape so much. He did not mean to be difficult. He was glad he had given in on the sling so easily and very glad he had not Apparated back home and gone missing. That narrowly missed possibility gave him a spark of panic. That he had even contemplated it supported Snape's assertion.
Snape's voice came through again. " . . . wish to control him. No one could control him. I merely am concerned that he may not submit even to guidance long enough to come to terms with his own power." His voice dropped, more to make a point than hide his voice. "He is extremely powerful."
Harry's skin prickled, even in the presence of the sultry evening breeze.
Snape continued, "At least he understands that he must hide his power, but I fear circumstances will continue to force him to reveal more of it." Silence fell and a chair moved again. "I am glad his power does not disturb you."
Again Candide's bell-clear voice, chastising: "He's a sweet young man, Severus. I think you're worrying too much."
Harry backed up, and carefully and silently pulled the windows nearly closed so the noise bounced off them instead of floating in. He took his book to bed and sat back with it, but he did not recall what he read after that.
Harry tried not to behave subdued the next day, but large thoughts weighed upon him that he could not shake off even with a bright sunny hot day at the shore ahead of him. He was glad to have something to plan. At breakfast he said, "Ron is supposed to come in by portkey a few miles up the coast. Then he is catching the bus."
"Where is he connecting again?" Candide asked, sounding doubtful.
"He wasn't sure. Said someone at the bank was going to let him use a private portkey but he hadn't figured out the best connection yet."
"He may not be in shape for nightclubs this evening," Snape said. "That distance by portkey is quite nauseating."
"He's here three days; he'll have time to recover."
When Ron arrived—after waiting four hours for a second portkey in St. Petersburg, and indeed looking peaked—Harry was glad for his company. As soon as they returned to the hotel, Ron fell straightaway onto his narrow bed and lay there moaning until Harry fetched him something from the chemists that Snape recommended.
Eager, Harry sat beside his friend on the bed while he drank the prescribed chalky liquid and asked, "Any chance you'll be ready to go out tonight?"
"Out?" Ron squeaked. "Like, to drink?"
"Well, you can have soft drinks," Harry said. "You can hear the music from here . . . hear it?" The dull thumping was indeed audible if one tuned into it.
"Loud music?" Ron whispered, sounding more pained.
"Tomorrow then," Harry conceded, wishing for a distraction other than his books, but seeing nothing for it. "I need to read more anyhow. Take a rest so you're better for tomorrow." He sat on his own bed and opened the top book to a random page. Ron fell back on the bed and, within minutes, began to snore.
The next day flew by. Each new day did this as though it were half the length of the last. Ron spent the day under a large black umbrella, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. He did not seem to mind keeping company with Snape as Harry had feared he might. The day was exceptionally hot and they swam frequently to cool off, especially mindful of the sea urchins hiding, black and spiky, among the crevices as they climbed out. Harry had a waterproofing spell on his bandage, but the edges of it still became wet and salty and by the afternoon, he was grateful to have it changed.
Harry sat on the bed, less tired from the sun than previously, while Snape bent to untie the wrappings. Snape's face had lost its unhealthy paleness and with his features relaxed, he did not look nearly so harsh and angular. He pulled out the tin of Thewsolve and Harry asked, "Any chance I can lose the bandage today?"
Snape shook his sun-lightened hair. "I expect you can lose it about the time we depart."
"Too bad we can't stay longer," Harry said, thinking less of getting around freely than that he thought Snape could use a bit more time to get used to being relaxed.
"We have much to do. Moving home, for example."
"That'll be nice," Harry confirmed.
"And you have a birthday party to plan, as well, I believe." He was rewrapping Harry's arm as he spoke.
"Hermione said she'd do it while we were gone." He picked up his wand and renewed the waterproofing. "I'm so glad it wasn't my right arm that got hurt. I think I'd go mad trying to cast with my left."
"I doubt it would slow you down for long," Snape said, stashing the supplies away.
Harry would have disregarded this comment, previously. He wanted to say something, to reassure his guardian, but did not want to give away that he had overheard anything. He held up the borrowed wand from the Ministry that he was using. It was short, only 9 inches, and made of ash wood. "This wand is really slowing me down," he commented as a distraction. "Although I like that it is easy to hide."
"I am surprised you did not replace it sooner."
"I keep hoping mine will turn up," Harry said, slipping the pale wand back into his pocket. He had been hoping this partly because it avoided the decision about whether to have one remade exactly the same.
Snape pulled a heavy wooden chair over and sat down facing Harry, as though detecting his ambivalence. He steepled his fingers and said in an oddly reassuring tone, "I sense there is some larger issue at work here."
Harry had a vision then, of Snape's years placating Voldemort. The careful phrasing and tone sounded too well practiced.
"What is the matter?" Snape then asked more pointedly, which broke the vision.
Harry decided it was best to stick with the first topic. "I sort of want a different wand now."
"That is understandable."
"But I want one that works as well."
"You are unlikely to find one to meet that criterion without duplicating the wood and core. You are a match for such a wand, as I understand it."
Harry frowned. "I bet if I cut Voldemort out of myself I could use a different one just as well."
Snape's dark gaze did not waver, but he held back on repeating what he already had firmly threatened in the past. "Do you still sense him?" he asked instead.
"I had a dream I was in prison the other night." Harry shrugged as though it was not important. "I don't know if it was just a dream or I was seeing out of his eyes." He had not planned on confessing this, but Snape's tone was persuasive, even knowing it was intended to be.
"If it happens again, do let me know."
"There isn't anything you can do about it," Harry pointed out.
Snape stood and returned the chair to the wall beside the window. "I wish to keep track. I certainly cannot help you if I do not know what is happening to you. With that in mind, they are going to wonder what became of us."
Ron and Harry headed out that night, following the siren call of the thumping music. Despite spending the day under a hat and dark umbrella, Ron appeared reddened as though he were stuck in a blush.
They quickly discovered that the clubs were far quieter in terms of other patrons than their loud music implied. So, at the third one, where only a few people gathered at the bar, he and Ron took their icy beers out on the balcony where they could talk. For an hour they talked of nothing in particular, a luxury Harry had not considered before. When times were bad, one could not afford to relax and speak of things lacking importance—not planning, not worrying, not plotting contingencies for the worst case—just idle thoughts expressed in no particular rush.
Ron, though, grew more serious when he spoke about Gringotts. "They've put me on a promotion track."
"That's great, Ron. Congratulations."
Ron shrugged. "It's a long-term track. It may never lead anywhere."
"It's already lead somewhere," Harry pointed out. "You said that only Goblins ever got promoted higher than where you are now in your department."
Ron flipped his tall beer bottle back and forth between his hands. "I heard rumors that they only did it because they realized I was friends with you."
"What?" Harry burst out. "Don't be ridiculous. I don't even have enough Galleons left in their bank to be interested in what they're doing with them."
"That's not the point," Ron argued. "They, well . . ." He trailed off.
"They think I'm dangerous," Harry filled in for him.
Ron nodded reluctantly. "That's my impression. They call it hedging their bets." At Harry's shake of the head, Ron said more strongly, "You got your Misfortuna Mutual pay-out on the spot for the house."
"How'd you know that?" Harry asked, certain he had not bothered to bore anyone with that information.
"I work with the people- goblins who process these things." He leaned forward to add, "Sometimes it can take a year to get gold on a claim."
Harry could not dispute that because Snape had already indicated that his living in the house had rapidly moved things along. In the middle of these annoyed thoughts, Ron said, "I wonder now if that's the reason they hired me in the first place."
Harry left his own concerns to lie. "Ron, don't be silly. If anything it's because Bill worked there already." Harry immediately wished he had not said that, but Ron came back with a hopeful, "You think so?"
"I'm certain," Harry confirmed, glad in this case that Ron thought nepotism an acceptable alternative.
Their beers had run out so Harry fetched two more, thoughts moving faster than being on holiday justified. "I don't think their promoting you, or putting you in line for it, has anything to do with placating me, Ron. Think about it. Imagine they believe I'm a dark wizard." Ron avoided his eyes as he sipped his beer, but Harry went on. "The last thing they would want is my best friend in a high position at the bank. Come on, that's what Voldemort was always doing: getting his Death Eaters into high positions so he could manipulate things more easily. Wouldn't they expect you to do things for me, not that I'd . . . what . . . leave them alone because you're my friend?" It occurred to Harry only after this speech that through the Dark Plane he could probably slip into any vault he wanted.
Ron shrugged, unconvinced. "That's just what I'm hearing."
Harry took a deep swig of his beer. "Two more days of holiday before we return to this nonsense. I plan to make the most of them."
Next: Chapter Two:
Harry tried a few spells. The hover came out strangely. The book floating before him visibly vibrated.
"That wand is looking for someone," Ollivander said, almost confessing. "I don't know whom. Doesn't like charms as well as hexes, in my practice with it at least."
Harry handed it back and another box was lifted off a healthy pile of two dozen still to go. "Coral tipped Palissandre," Ollivander announced as he held out a pastel pink wand streaked with brown. "The core is harpy feather."
Author Notes:
Chapter two will be at least two weeks. Sorry for the short chapter one but that was the only good cut-point between one and two. I have a lot written on this story but it is not contiguous. I need to connect the first chunk to the next big chunk before two is safe to give you. Next weekend I'll post my much-worked-over post book 7 one-shot. For status updates, please go to darkirony dot livejournal dot com.
Chapter 2 — Yielding
Harry tried to convince Ron to join them in flying home, but Ron, while staring with discernible consternation at a photograph of an aeroplane in one of the travel magazines in their room, said, "I'd havta figure out how to use the telephone and everything to make arrangements. Doesn't seem worth it."
"I'll see you back home then," Harry said, stuffing the last of his expanded possessions back into his trunk.
"Yeah. I should do a bit of gift shopping before I go," Ron said, sounding relieved that Harry had let the suggestion drop.
Harry hefted his trunk and slapped Ron on the arm. "Later then."
Snape behaved better on the flight home since he was not so mystified by everything and he withheld further commentary on how enthralled Mr. Filch would be with the torturous seating. This time, he was only really curious about the silvery material composing the miniature pretzels' packaging. This generated the only very strange glance they received from the stewardess, when Snape refused to give up the empty package for rubbish because he was still examining it. Harry and Candide kept their noses in their respective reading and their smiles sucked between their teeth until this mini confrontation ended.
Snape glowered at the blue-uniformed staff for a while afterward. Harry leaned over and whispered, "No hexing."
"I was not considering it," Snape countered. He crossed his arms and huffed. "Even though there is no magical jurisdiction up here, eight miles in the air." He closed his eyes then as though staggered by the thought.
Harry laughed. "Should have brought a broomstick as backup."
"That would not help." Snape glanced across at the white oval of window. "You'd freeze to death before you had a chance to even attempt a warming charm."
Without looking up from the magazine propped on her tray, Candide asked, "Can we drop this topic? Some of us are closer to the window of frozen perpetual drop here."
"I'll switch seats with you," Harry said. "I like looking out the window."
She timidly glanced out while biting her lip. "You're on."
- 888 -
Harry returned to training with mixed emotions. He was simultaneously sad to be no longer relaxing but glad to be losing his boredom.
He arrived early on his first day back. The quiet atrium was almost completely repaired. The paintings and their gilt frames were brighter for the cleaning they had received and the gates sparkled, but the grand ceiling, while cleaned of the black streaks of spell burn, had yet to have the gold leaf reapplied in the gaps. What felt most normal was the echoing sound of the Ministry staff and visitors chatting amiably as they crossed paths in the vast open space.
In the corridor leading to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Harry encountered a new face on an unusually tall body, standing uneasily outside the training room door.
"Tridant," Harry said, more a statement than a greeting.
"Mr. Potter," The blonde man said deferentially.
"Sheesh, call me Harry."
"I don't prefer Trevor, particularly; if you don't mind."
Harry shook his head, opened the door to the empty training room and led the way in. "This your first day?"
"Yup," Tridant replied, taking in the room. He walked over to the training dummy and gave it a push, making it swing on its hook. His obnoxious attitude was missing, but Harry expected it would reappear presently.
Harry left Tridant alone to check if Tonks was about. He could not find her and did not feel like deciphering the log in Shacklebolt's presence to try to figure out where she was.
By the time Harry returned to the training room, Kerry Ann had arrived. She gave Harry a friendly welcome-home hug.
"Did you see that Tri-D starts training with us today," she said.
The pained annoyance Tridant turned on Kerry Ann boded poorly for his new demure attitude. "Please don't call me that."
"Sure," she replied, but her eyes sparkled. "How's the arm, Harry?"
"Good." Harry waved his arm. "All healed."
Tridant asked quietly, "Is that the injury you received at the award ceremony that you're talking about?" As he was asking this, Vineet and Aaron came in and rather than take their seats, joined them in standing around.
"Yeah," Harry confirmed. "I messed it up more changing into my Animagus form so it took a long time to heal."
"Did you get the award?" Tridant asked.
"Minister gave it to me after the battle was over."
Tridant turned to the others. "How many medals get doled out every year?"
"Hoping for one already?" Kerry Ann teased, but Tridant just shrugged cockily. She said, "Harry's the only one with medals I think. I'm sure he'd let you polish them . . . if you asked nicely."
Harry moved to a desk and unpacked his books. A fifth desk had been added to the room, upsetting the symmetry. "Medals don't matter."
"How could they not matter?" Tridant asked, disbelieving.
"Staying alive is all that matters," Harry stated with authority.
Tridant stepped closer, head low to better be at Harry's eye level. "It doesn't matter to you whether people recognize what you've done or not?"
"I prefer to be left alone," Harry said.
"No wonder your press is so rotten awful," Tridant commented, taking a desk for himself. He barely fit his tall, burly self into it.
Rodgers came in then, distracted as usual. "I assume you've all introduced yourselves. Mr. Tridant is going to be mixed in with you for training purposes because Merlin knows we can't spare anyone to train him separate. On that note, we'll have your belated advancement ceremony tomorrow afternoon so we don't have five Firsters." He bent over his papers and muttered, "I think I would die if we did."
The anticipation in the room was palpable the first time Tridant was called up for a demonstration. Harry rubbed his nose, trying to hide a smile that kept tugging at his mouth. But Rodgers disappointed them all by being relatively gentle with the first round of spells he used to test Tridant's basic counters. Harry frowned then, thinking that Snape and his trainer had changed an almost disappointing amount.
"All right, then. Your Titan, let's try that one again," Rodgers said, stepping back to the wall for more room, which in general would give his opponent more time to react.
Tridant landed on his rear this time when the spell poured out at him, and in response to his stunned expression, Rodgers said, "I don't use the same power every drill, Tridant. Stand up and do it again."
Like a Great Dane, who has tripped over his overlarge paws, Tridant stood and shook himself out before raising his wand. He was rattled still from the last fall and did no better with the next spell.
"Take a seat . . . at a desk this time," Rodgers said, gesturing with his wand. "Kerry Ann."
Kerry Ann stood and took on the exact same spell. Her block threw the spell around the room, knocking a book off Tridant's desk. He reached too late to catch it and had to scoop it off the floor. He still appeared stunned as though wondering whether he perhaps was in over his head.
"Modulate those, Kalendula," Rodgers snapped to Kerry Ann's sly expression. "Again."
They were paired up for drills, Rodgers taking the new apprentice. Harry was hoping for a chance at him, but by the time drills were done Tridant seemed befuddled by the long string of corrections and criticisms only rarely interspersed with praise.
As they broke for lunch, Harry hung back after everyone else left to say to Tridant, "You're lucky he's going easy on you."
Tridant stared at Harry. "This is easy?"
"You haven't been sent to the Ministry Healer yet, have you?" Harry pointed out.
"You have?"
"I can't count how many times," Harry said, truly enjoying himself and starting to understand why the program selected apprentices for their seriously oversized attitudes. By the time they were reshaped and could hold their own they had also learned to deal easily with defeat and rough treatment. Harry was tempted to tell Tridant that things would get better, but he did not quite like him enough yet. "Come on, lunch time," he said instead.
In the afternoon Harry was very pleased he could answer all the questions sent his way regarding the readings, especially since Rodgers had gone into some kind of intense examination mode due to Tridant's presence.
"Did your readings while sunning on the Dalmatian Coast. Amazing," Rodgers observed, after Harry recited or passably recreated the policy for interdepartmental magical equipment loans.
Harry's mood continued to rise, given that his evening entailed moving the rest of his things from Hermione's flat and the Burrow back to his house. And to top it all off, he could use his arm as much as he liked while doing so.
Hermione helped Harry convey trunks of stuff through the Floo network and then hover them up the stairs. Ron was working late, which did not seem to disappoint Hermione any. On one such trip, they encountered Snape in the main hall, hovering a new pair of couches onto the rug placed in the far half of the hall, near the small windows.
"Those look nice there," Hermione said, letting the trunk she herded clunk to the floor by the steps where she abandoned it. She went over to examine the new furniture.
The couches were black suede. Even the throw pillows were black. "More places to sit will be good for the party," Hermione observed, sounding approving.
"The invitee list is long, then, am I to presume?" Snape asked.
"Harry's not to know," Hermione informed him. "He's just to show up, not to worry about anything."
Harry said, "I live here, showing up isn't a problem."
She gave him a knowing smile and went back to ferrying the trunk to the first floor.
"She's up to something," Harry said, running his hand over the soft fabric of a cushion. "Wow."
"You are sufficiently skilled to already know what she is planning," Snape pointed out in a low tone.
"I don't do that," Harry said. "It's cheating."
"Surprising you are still alive," Snape stated airily. "How is your arm, by the way?"
Harry ran it through a range of motion with no pain, just extra tickling sensitivity where the flesh was new. "Great." Just sitting down on one of the couches and not moving a muscle seemed highly appealing. "I need to unpack," he said reluctantly. "I was hoping to stay the night in my own bed for once. Where's Candide?"
"Dinner with her parents," Snape said, domestically adjusting cushions as a distraction, which made Harry have to swallow yet another smile that day.
"You're not there?" Harry prodded.
Snape's shoulders curled and his head angled to the side, but he did not seem angry, just disturbed. Hermione came back down the stairs just then and, being the very intelligent person she was, took in the scene and said, "I'll meet you back at the Burrow, Harry," and disappeared.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked Snape. He wanted this marriage thing to work out, so he was not going to sit idle if warning signs began appearing.
In a disgusted voice, Snape mocked, "Dinner with the parents."
"So? She's been through dinner with your dad."
"My father has far lower expectations."
Harry, thinking of Snape's intensely critical father, said, "Are you joking?"
"I think he is more easily satisfied in matters such as this," Snape restated.
Harry gave in to the siren call of the couch before him and dropped onto it. It absorbed him with a sigh. "Uh oh," Harry muttered, but returned to the topic at hand. "Are you afraid they're not going to accept you, or something?"
A hard tone appeared. "They have no choice."
"So then, what does it matter? Go have dinner and get it over with." He stared at Snape, who was clearly unconvinced. "Severus," Harry criticized.
"I don't like caring," Snape hissed.
"Caring about . . .?" Harry prompted.
"About what people think," Snape clarified, getting angry with Harry now it seemed.
Harry's neck was getting sore. "Sit down," he suggested. "I'm tired of looking up at you. And clearly you need to relax."
Snape looked like he might resist, but moved slowly to sit on the edge of the other couch, set at a right angle to the one Harry sat on. Unfortunately for him, the couch did not allow for uptight sitters and he fell backward into it.
Harry laughed from his fully slouched and comfortable posture. "You shouldn't have bought charmed couches."
Snape fought for a more upright sitting position. "I didn't. They are Muggle furniture, through and through."
Harry closed his eyes, drifted a minute, and said, "If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you of not only caring what they think but fearing they are going to reject you outright." There was no response, so Harry, still staring at the darkness behind his eyelids, added, "But I know better, so that can't be it." Harry tilted his chin to his chest and looked over at his adoptive father, reclining awkwardly with his hand propped under his chin. Quietly, Harry said, "To hell with them, Severus, if they don't accept you."
Snape came back with, "Watch your language," but it lacked force.
"I think you should just get it over with," Harry said after a pause. "Do you want me to go with you?"
Snape shook his head. "I should not use you as a shield, or a distraction, for that matter."
"Do they know about me?"
"Yes, of course."
Harry waited for more, and finally had to ask. "Am I helping? Or . . .?"
Snape snorted lightly. "Your presence in this family does help I am told, yes."
Harry felt more relieved to hear that than he wished to be. With a great heave, Harry pushed himself to sit forward, hands clasped between his knees. The couch felt unstable if one sat on just the edge, as though it might let you slip to the floor without warning. "Let me know, Severus, what you think will help. I'll do whatever you ask."
Snape did not reply so Harry, thinking he was feeling awkward, changed the topic. "We're at last having our advancement ceremony tomorrow. If you wanted to come."
"I most certainly wish to attend," Snape stated.
"It's at 2:00, but I don't think it will be really formal or anything. It's being held in the Aurors' office."
"I shall be there."
"No bells on though, I suppose," Harry teased, trying to lighten the mood.
"I never wear bells," Snape stated with finality. He rocked forward and made it to his feet on the second attempt. "Let's finish moving back in, shall we?" He stretched his neck as though he had strained it and added, "And perhaps return these couches . . ."
- 888 -
The next afternoon in the changing room, Harry donned his Auror dress robes, which felt a little tight across the shoulders. They looked fine in the full length mirror, so he ignored the constricted feeling they gave him. He transferred his borrowed wand to the wand pocket of the robes and joined his fellows in the Aurors' office.
Kerry Ann appeared flushed with excitement as they allowed themselves to be lined up in the narrow space between the cubicles. Aaron by contrast was more subdued, unusually matching Vineet's attitude. They had an impromptu moment of silence for Munz who would have been made a full Auror that day. Kerry Ann lost her bubbly attitude after this and stopped sending bright glances over at Ambroise beside her mother. The Minister was not attending, so Belinda had come bearing the box of new adornments.
Tridant stood off to the side with the other visitors while Mr. Weasley went down the row of them, Belinda on his heel holding the box and seeming distracted. Mr. Weasley shook each of them by the hand and added a chain to their shoulder, starting with Blackpool, who now had two gold and one silver.
While Harry waited his turn he glanced over at Snape and Candide standing in the doorway and for a moment he felt dizzy with the alternative endings to the close calls that could have left either or both of them dead. A deep breath later, he felt less fragile but not as strong as he wished. He was distracted by Mr. Weasley adding a second gold chain to his left shoulder.
"Good job, Harry. Knew you could do it," he said, shaking Harry's hand vigorously.
Harry fingered the chains, finding that they meant more than expected. Even though they were just a symbol, they provided solid evidence that the last year was over and therefore could be put behind him. Mr. Weasley finished up with Aaron, gave then all one last round of accolades and then chided everyone to return to work. Snape approached, clearing the doorway.
"Loads to be proud of, Harry," Candide said when they reached his side and the tide of people had washed the other way.
Harry wanted to repeat what he had said the day before, that being alive was all that mattered. But he could not say it again now; their pride in him did matter.
"Shall we have a celebratory dinner somewhere nice tonight?" Candide suggested.
Harry had to hold himself from glancing at Tonks, with whom he was planning to have precisely that. "Er," Harry hemmed.
Snape said, "I think Harry's birthday will have to do for the celebratory dinner."
"Oh," Candide said, clearly not understanding.
The room had nearly emptied. Only Tonks hung back, fiddling with papers on her desk. "I have to get back to my training," Harry said to dismiss them. "Thanks for coming, even though it was short."
Snape nodded in acknowledgment. He shot a last level glance at Tonks before turning and departing. Candide squeezed Harry's arm and followed.
When they were alone, Tonks said, "You could have gone out with them tonight instead."
"I'd rather go out with you," Harry said quietly, stepping closer.
She held a hand up. "Rodgers is about to come hunting for you, I'm certain."
Harry dearly wanted to wrap her up in his arms, something he had not had a chance to do in a week and a half. He sighed and departed for the training room, thinking the evening could not come fast enough.
Indeed, their dinner out was delayed because Tonks was late returning from an assignment. After having too much time on his hands during holiday, Harry found himself impatient with things not happening exactly when he wanted them to. He loitered in the corridor after the other apprentices had left for the day, hoping Tonks would make an appearance. When this failed, and various passing people glanced up at him questioningly, Harry decided to give Belinda a visit. Her mood during their advancement ceremony had declined again, in contrast to most everyone else's around the Ministry.
Before Shacklebolt could pass by a third time with a raised thick eyebrow, Harry headed for the stairwell to go up a level. He reminded himself that Tonks would be a while finishing reports, if she did return before he did.
Belinda sat at her desk, scowling at a sheaf of parchments in her hand. The outer office was a hive of activity; a meeting was going on around the low table and workers were repairing shelves in the corner, so books, crystal balls and gifts from foreign dignitaries were stacked on the floor along the walls.
"Hi," Harry said.
"Hallo," Belinda said dully, making Harry believe that she was upset with him about something, although he had no idea what it might be.
"I, er, didn't get a chance to talk during the ceremony earlier and I realized, well, that we hadn't in a while."
She set the stack of parchments before her and smoothed them, not meeting his gaze. "Congratulations," she said, almost out of the blue.
Harry's awkwardness increased. He could not ask her what the problem was here in the office. "Do you want to go out for coffee sometime? You can sometimes get out for lunch, right?"
"Not a good idea," she said.
"Oh." Harry fidgeted and turned sharply when a nasal voice said, "Problem Potter?" Harry turned to face Percy Weasley, who had one boney elbow propped outward, fist on hip.
"No," Harry replied easily, glad he now understood why Belinda had been giving him such chilly responses. "Just came up to chat."
"It's a bit busy here," Percy pointed out as though Harry were ten years old. A drilling spell from the dismantled corner loudly accented the accusation that Harry may be in the way.
Harry shrugged and said goodbye extra sweetly to Belinda as he departed. The corridor was blissfully peaceful in contrast. Harry shrugged inside his robes, feeling like he needed a shower after simply talking to Percy.
Late in the evening, Tonks and Harry finally made it to a small Muggle restaurant in the West End. It was so dark inside, Harry at first thought it was closed for the night. But it was not and they were seated at a candlelit table beside a mirrored wall that reflected myriad, cascading candlelit tables and orange-hued faces from the mirror on the opposing wall.
Harry appreciated the darkness as he took hold of Tonks' hand across the table. "I missed you," he said.
Tonks replied, "It felt like more than eight days. More like eighty days. You look gorgeous with that bronzed skin. Makes me jealous."
In the flickering darkness, her usual tall pink hair appeared orangish, or perhaps she had changed it to orange. She wore a form-fitting knitted top that made Harry wish they could just skip dinner and go straight to her flat.
"Next time you and I should go."
She teased, "I didn't have an injury serious enough to keep me from working, unlike some people."
Harry said, "You seem more relaxed, or is it just me assuming you are because I am?"
"No, things quieted down nicely. We've caught up with the worst of the escapees from Azkaban. The Ministry's getting cleaned up." She shrugged. "Let's not talk about the Ministry."
Harry fished in his head for another topic while the warm hum of conversation and the clink of silver surrounded them. "You're coming to my birthday party, right?"
"Late. I'm on duty until 9:00."
Harry frowned. "Which means you probably won't make it until 11:00, at the earliest."
"I'll make it eventually, Harry. I promise." She gave him a smile to seal it.
At her flat, they curled around each other on the couch and Harry silently agreed that it felt like it had been eighty days since they last were together. Despite believing he would take it slow and relish things, it did not work out that way, and too soon they were threaded around each other, spent.
Harry was half asleep, in spite of not being entirely comfortable, when Tonks stirred and said, "I could use a cup of herb tea."
Harry unwound himself to let her rise, then pulled random articles of clothing back on as she made tea.
"Want some?" she asked, standing just outside the kitchen holding a teapot, wearing only an unbuttoned shirt.
"Sure," Harry said, thinking that she could skip the tea and just stand there for a while and that would be fine too.
From the kitchen, she asked, "How's it feel to be a Second-Year?"
"I thought we weren't going to talk about the Ministry."
"I'm not; I'm talking about you." She brought the teapot out and two tea cups, which she proceeded to dry with the loose corner of her shirt.
"It's nice to be reminded I'm making progress." Harry held out a cup for her to fill, then had to move his fingers to the lip when the thin china grew scalding hot.
Tonks said, "Minister Bones held a little meeting with a few people from the department to talk about how we can work on your image."
Harry growled.
"Don't make noises like that while I'm holding a hot cup of tea," she said. "I have a hard enough time with that, normally."
Harry smiled, but then heard himself say, "You're very cold at the Ministry." He may not have said it had he thought ahead.
She stared at her hands cradling her cup. "I have to be, Harry. You should be too, but you keep slipping up."
"I just . . . think it'd be nice to behave, well, normally."
"If we are in a bad spot—which happens not infrequently as Aurors—neither you nor I can take personal feelings into account. It's deadly if we do."
"The Longbottoms managed it. Since they were married before they were Aurors, they could behave normally." Harry was not certain why he continued to argue this, but he needed to get it out in the open more than he needed to be rational.
"Harry, look where they are now. Ask Shacklebolt what happened to them sometime."
"I know what happened to them; Bellatrix happened to them."
"Yeah, but how'd she catch them? They messed up, Harry." She topped up her cup and folded her feet under herself.
"Bellatrix thought Voldemort could be still alive. Turns out she was right. I wonder if she knew about the horcruxes."
"I don't want to talk about it. It was way before my time, so I may not have the story straight." But despite her assertion, she added, "'Course, Reggie messed up with Bellatrix too."
Harry pulled the knitted blanket from the back of the couch over the both of them and leaned closer to her. "What exactly happened with Rodgers?"
"He walked into a trap. But he was at his limit already. At some point after that many hours on duty you are on automatic and can't think suspiciously enough."
"What did Severus have to do with it?"
"He came to the rescue. You didn't hear that?"
"I don't think Rodgers wanted me to know that," Harry said, grinning. "No wonder they're no longer at each other's throat." He took her tea cup away and set it on the floor so she would not spill it when he aggressively moved to kiss the hollow above her collarbone.
- 888 -
Saturday arrived and with it Harry's birthday. Harry slept in till 9:00 a.m. because he had been out field shadowing until 1:00 a.m. the night before. He had shadowed Blackpool, who could now officially take him around, although that had not stopped them being assigned together before when the office was too busy to avoid it.
Most of the evening, Blackpool seemed to have other things on her mind, but at one point she asked Harry to help her reinforce a spell barrier around a wizard bulletin board in Blossom Square that had suffered during the riots. Harry at the best of times found large barriers difficult, but his borrowed wand made it impossible to sustain the right magic to complete the spell. He could only apologize for not being able to do this minor duty. Her pragmatic words of, "Just get a new wand, Potter," still echoed in his head this morning.
Harry snarfed breakfast while Snape and Candide read the newspaper, having long since eaten.
"Off somewhere?" Snape asked, when Harry stood not five minutes after sitting down.
"I have to go to Ollivanders," Harry explained. "The Ministry wand I've been using isn't working well enough for me."
"Do you have sufficient gold for a new one?"
"I think so. I can go to my vault if I don't."
Snape's distracted attention narrowed down at that. "Let me know if you do need anything."
Harry swung his cloak on and prepared to use the Floo. "I need a wand that doesn't have a history."
Snape stood at that and intercepted Harry as he was putting the canister of Floo powder back on the mantelpiece, crystals of powder dribbled out between the fingers of his over-full left hand. "Fighting fate is rarely successful."
"Thanks, Sybill," Harry breathed before tossing in the powder.
- 888 -
Harry took a deep breath and turned the latch of Ollivander's shop door. Bells jingled above his head. A lean shadow crawled across the back wall and the old wizard came into view.
"Ah, Mr. Potter, what can I do for you?"
Glancing around the tightly packed boxes surrounding them, Harry said, "I lost my wand and I need a new one."
Harry could not read Ollivander's piercing, pale-eyed gaze. The older wizard clasped his hands together and fell thoughtful while peering around his stock. "We tried quite a few wands last time, Mr. Potter. But . . . there are a few new ones you could try . . ." He trailed off accommodatingly.
"I've been using this one," Harry said, holding up the borrowed wand from his department.
Ollivander cursorily examined it, asking, "How does it work for you?"
"It works. Mostly. Doesn't do everything quite the way I'm used to."
Ollivander rewove his fingers together. "Lost the old, you say?"
"Fighting Merton, yes. It might have shown up . . . that's why I waited to get a new one. I wasn't certain if it was destroyed or not." This excuse sounded good, even to Harry, who knew he had put it off because he feared fate would repeat itself yet again with a replica of the old one.
They had reached an impasse; Ollivander broke it by turning to fetch his ladder and some wands from his stock.
"This is an unusual one," Ollivander said, shaking open a long narrow box much the same as the others. He held up a long white wand with a spiral pattern of grain. "Unicorn horn with fairy wing tendon."
Harry took hold of the wand. It felt different, all right. "The Unicorn is still alive?" he asked, knowing the answer, but asking nevertheless. He really was musing on how the wand would behave after the Unicorn had died.
"I would expect."
Harry tried a few spells. The hover came out strangely. The book floating before him visibly vibrated.
"That wand is looking for someone," Ollivander said, almost confessing. "I don't know whom. Does not like charms as well as hexes, in my practice with it at least."
Harry handed it back and another box was lifted off a healthy pile of two dozen still to go. "Coral tipped Palissandre," Ollivander announced as he held out a pastel pink wand streaked with brown. "The core is harpy feather."
This wand did nothing when Harry waved it. He handed it back.
"As expected," the shopkeeper said. "I made that one for the mer-boy the Hogwarts headmistress tells me is getting a letter just about now."
"One of the mer people is attending Hogwarts?" Harry asked in surprise. "How is he going to breathe?"
"A water charm of some kind, I'm sure. Or a diving bell full of water if all else fails."
He handed Harry another wand. "Sandlewood with Mngwa whisker."
Half an hour later, Ollivander informed Harry that he had exhausted his stock of new wand materials since Harry had last shopped there. "The rosewood and glass Cherufe hair performed the best, I believe," Ollivander helpfully said.
"Not good enough. Charms didn't work at all," Harry admitted. He dropped his head and let his eyes flow over the piles of open boxes on the counter. Ollivander began meticulously putting each wand away in its proper box and stacking them in a basket for restocking. Harry did not want to give in, but there seemed no choice. "If I bring you a feather from Fawkes, can you make me another like my old one?" Harry heard himself ask.
Ollivander nodded.
"I'll do that, then," Harry informed him, feeling dispirited. "I should fetch one now while I have the time."
Harry Disapparated to Tonks' flat, which he knew was empty, and dropped through the Dark Plane to arrive behind Hagrid's hut. Snape did not want Harry traveling though the Dark Plane, especially on so casual an errand, but Harry was feeling disgruntled and unwilling to obey even good advice as a result.
Hagrid was tending his vegetable plot, thinning the small pumpkins down by picking out those that were not of his preferred shape. "That one'll never do," he said, tossing a donut-shaped, beach ball sized pumpkin beyond the garden fence as though it were a trifle. "Oh, hello Harry. Didn't see ya there."
"Can I borrow Fawkes for a minute?" Harry asked. "I need a tail feather from him for a new wand."
Harry almost half-hoped Hagrid would forbid him to have one for some obscure exotic animal care reason. But Hagrid just stood straight, rubbing his great broad back, and said, "We'll, let's see what we can do fer yeh."
Fawkes flapped his wings when they entered. He was in full feather, Harry observed and could not avoid the eerie sense of coincidence. "He looks good," Harry said.
"Aye. He's about to start a month of molting then comes the flames and ashes, and then we start again." He turned to Harry conspiratorially. "That's when I have to move his perch outside or risk losing my thatch." He turned to the bird. "Harry here needs a tail feather. You're going to lose those two you have in a week or three anyhow and by then they'll be ragged as the weeds I dredged out o' the lake last week."
The bird tilted its head to look at Hagrid better and shuffled along its perch away from him. Harry approached and stroked the bird's head and wing. "Believe me, I don't really want to take your lovely feather but I don't have any choice."
Fawkes stepped up onto Harry's hand and pecked at his robes but it did not seem aggressive, more conversational. Hagrid said, "That's all right then." And gave a snapping tug on the longest of Fawkes' tail feathers. He startled Harry and the bird equally when Fawkes gave an ear-splitting squawk! and fluttered once around the cabin before flapping back to the perch and fussing with his remaining good feather.
"Thanks Fawkes," Harry said. The bird ignored him.
Hagrid wrapped the feather in a soft deer hide and handed it to Harry. "There you are."
"Thanks Hagrid. I don't know if I could have . . . yanked it out like that."
"Ach, nothing to it. He was going to burn it to ash shortly enough."
Harry returned to Ollivander's via the Floo in Hogsmeade, uncertain if passing through the Dark Plane may harm the feather's magic. He presented the whole bundle to the old wizard craftsman and put down an eight Galleon deposit.
"I'll push your wand to the top of the list, given your position, the poor match you have with your current wand, and your history of attractiveness to those with evil intent. It should be finished in a week. Call again next Saturday."
"Thank you, sir," Harry said, giving the old wizard a small bow because just saying goodbye seemed insufficient.
Harry was still melancholy when he returned home. The house had been decorated in his absence and now black, maroon and green streamers lined the center hall and a pile of presents had been started on a table in the corner. The house was quiet, and Harry stood still there in the center of the big room, captured by his own thoughts.
Snape stepped up beside him, quietly, but not so silent that Harry did not lack all awareness that he was there. Harry shook himself and returned to the here and now.
"How did it go?" Snape asked.
"I fetched Ollivander a feather from Fawkes to use to make another." Try as he might, Harry could not make his voice come out other than annoyed.
Sounding as though he wished to tread carefully, Snape asked, "What is wrong with having a wand that works properly for you?"
"Nothing's wrong with that," Harry said. "It's just that . . . that wand had a role to play and if that wand is always destined to be mine, then the role is also."
"I don't believe I ever expected to have to say this to you, but I believe you are over-analyzing the situation."
Harry plunked himself down on one of the couches and let himself sink backwards. "I don't want to fight Voldemort any longer."
Snape stepped around until he faced Harry, expression narrowed with disbelief. "I do not know what makes you fear that you will need to. He is safely, and helplessly I might add, ensconced within the French wizard prison. I cannot imagine he will be going anywhere anytime soon."
"True," Harry admitted.
"It is time to focus on your training-"
Harry interrupted with, "It is time to focus on my birthday."
"Yes, well, for today," Snape conceded.
Harry got to his feet and surveyed the tables that had been set up. An empty punch bowl and haphazard stacks of crystal cups sat around it. "Hermione's been busy already."
"I believe she won't be returning until 4:00 or so," Snape informed Harry, sounding cryptic.
"You know something I don't," Harry suggested.
Snape gave a haughty lift of his nose and stepped away.
"Ach," Harry said, resting his head back. "At least I don't feel followed around all the time anymore."
This re-attracted Snape's attention before he could reach the stairs. Harry went on: "Maybe Mad Eye's found something better to do."
"Maybe he decided on a holiday as well," Snape suggested.
"Maybe he's just getting more careful," Harry said, sitting forward. He ran the detection spell for the house, but it fizzled. Harry slapped his own forehead and groaned.
"Good thing you gave in on the wand," Snape said, snapping his wand out and running the spell himself. A thin trail of blue glitter flickered over the walls and then faded, indicated the house was secure. Snape turned and headed up the stairs saying, "Unless you are looking for an exercise in humility, I would recommend declining any invitations to duel at your party tomorrow."
Next Week: Chapter Three - Nineteen Years
Snape shook his head decisively and crouched to add drops of something blue to the glass just until it turned glittery inside as though the liquid had frozen over all of a sudden.
"What are you making?"
"Something of my own concocting."
"I've never seen it before."
"You have. I concocted it for you when you were in the Dark Lord's grips and dared not sleep."
Chapter 3 -- Nineteen Years
Partygoers began showing up just before 4:00 and the hall filled with voices and merriment. Old school chums, including Ginny, now released from her detention, Ministry fellows, and neighbors clustered about the room. Harry admonished each new arrival who brought a gift, but despite this, the gift table filled up. Suze released a training Snitch and set it to zipping around the chandelier. Aaron, unusually, arrived dateless and cornered the Slytherin Seeker, intent on learning his old house's upcoming prospects for the cup. The Weasley twins arrived, sporting matching silvery cloaks, and began handing out small sample bags to those willing to swear with a Promissory Spell not to sue them later.
"Ron, are you sure you want to eat that?" Harry asked of the thick transparent jelly-like biscuit his friend held up for inspection. It appeared to have a tiny toy top spinning inside of it. Harry did not hear the answer because Hermione arrived, bearing an unexpected guest.
"Penelope?" Harry uttered in surprise, jumping up to approach them.
Harry gave his old girlfriend a hug. She said in surprise, "You have grown more so!"
Hermione said brightly, "I thought we should have all of your old friends and allies together, Harry. You need all you can get."
"I'll give you that." To Penelope, he said, "It's good to see you," as he led her to an empty seat near people she would know from Hogwarts. "You came all this way for my birthday?"
She giggled. "I have a colloquium in Glasgow next week. I am making a long trip of it."
"Ah. It's nice of you to come."
She leaned close and said, "Even a few people I know say such things about you. Unbelievable. You have not changed except to grow more. I can tell."
They chatted a while, meandering slowly toward a corner. "You remember Neville, right? And Luna, and Lavender." Harry pulled a chair over to join them. "Where's Ron?" he asked Lavender.
"He's had too much punch already. He's on the floor over there."
Harry jumped up and, sure enough, Ron was flat out behind a couch. Harry bent down and shook him. Hermione was just suggesting they take him to St. Mungo's when Ron burst into giggles and spat out the biscuit Harry had seen him with earlier. It rolled away across the floor and stopped, but continued gently rotating on its edge.
One of the twins scooped it up. "He wasn't supposed to eat that." He rolled eyes and said, "Oy! Fred, give me a hand."
The two of them sat the giggling and clumsy Ron up by hoisting his long arms over their shoulders.
"What's that thing?" Harry asked.
"It's a Misplacement Gimcracker. You slip it inside something and then that thing is never where you left it." To Harry's confused look, he went on. "You do it to someone you don't like. You know, put it in their briefcase or handbag, or something."
"You all right, Ron?" Hermione asked him.
Ginny crouched down with them. "Did he choke on something?"
"In a manner of speaking," Hermione said, sounding less sympathetic now.
Ron's giggling slowed and he managed to get himself onto a chair with only light assistance. He shook his head repeatedly as though to clear it. He blinked and looked around. "Is this Harry's birthday party?"
"Yes," several people replied in unison.
"Oh good," Ron said.
Candide came in. Harry would not have noticed her in the crowded room, except she was sneaking over to the presents table. Harry leaned his head to the side to better watch her slip a gift onto it from behind her back.
Harry intercepted her on her way back to the dining room, truly surprising her with his admonishing expression. She said, "I can't believe you caught me at that. There must be a hundred people in here. I had trouble thinking of a good gift until this afternoon. That was the first chance I had to get it on the table."
"I'm quite certain the invitations stated, no gifts," he said, mostly teasing.
She pulled herself straight and said, "I didn't receive an invitation. So there." She tugged Harry toward the dining room. "Your cousin wants to say hello."
Harry joined the real adults around the far quieter dining room table. Snape sat back with his hand hooked around a small tumbler of something. Candide returned to sitting across from him and sipped her tea. Pamela sat holding the hand of Lupin, who appeared excessively withered.
"How are you, Remus?" Harry asked.
Pamela patted the hairy hand she held. "Only three days since the full moon, but I convinced him come to your party, I'm afraid."
"'s good to get out," Lupin said.
Harry was not given much time to talk before being dragged back into the hall to open his gifts. The punch had been spiked twice by then and the voices had grown louder and less sensical as it was consumed. Harry accepted each gift with some trepidation that he did not need so many things. But by the time he opened the fourth highly practical gift--in this case a set of orange curtains from Ron with cannon balls flying around on them--he turned to Hermione questioningly.
She leaned forward to pat Harry on the knee, saying tipsily, "Of course I told everyone exactly what to get you. After the fire, you needed some things."
"Thanks. And thanks, Ron."
"My mum sewed them for you, I expect." Ron sounded like he wished he remembered for certain. He pulled a corner of one close and said, "Hope you don't mind that it probably was a duvet cover of Charlie's before this."
"I don't mind at all." He held them up. "They look the right size too."
Hermione said, "I gave Ron exact measurements, but he doesn't remember my doing that."
"I do," Ron argued unconvincingly.
Many of the boxes contained silver gift coins. Harry made a careful stack of the ones to Cloak Couture, one of the new shops in the Diagon Alley expansion. He did need a new cloak.
When there were no more un-opened boxes, Harry said, "Thanks, everyone." He found Candide in the crowd with his eyes. "Especially for the collapsible pet cage."
Tonks arrived after the party returned to its former boisterous conversation. She gave Harry a chummy hug.
"How did shift go?" Harry asked, drawing her aside into the corner so he could be relatively alone with her.
"Swimmingly. It was quiet enough we went ex-prisoner hunting."
"Catch anyone?" Harry asked.
"Two ones," she replied between bites of cold, scattered tidbits from the table nearby. "They were silly enough to return to England after initially running off to Belgium to hide." She licked her fingers. "Happy Birthday, Harry. I didn't tell you that yet, did I?"
"No, but thanks. It almost isn't anymore."
"Just in time, then," she said with a wink. Harry would have accepted her good wishes two or three hours late with no difficulty.
The party wound down as they talked, which Harry was only vaguely aware of until Ginny came over, sheepish about interrupting. "We have to go soon."
"Oh," Harry said, glancing around the much thinned crowd. He spied Ron, playing with a wooden game Harry had received where you tilted it to get a metal ball through a maze. If you went down the wrong hole, it squirted ink in your face. Ron had streaks of grey around his ear and a stained hanky in his hand. Harry pulled Ginny closer. "Better tell your mum what happened to your brother."
Ginny's whole demeanor shifted. "She's going to lay into the twins if I do."
"Ron may need a Healer though. I offered to take him, but he doesn't remember what happened, so it's tough to convince him. Your mum could get him to go if he doesn't get better."
Ginny sighed. "Yeah. You're right. He's not really bad, but I don't think that thing did him any good." She glanced between the two of them, with a hint of jealousy, but it turned out to have a different origin than expected. "How's your training, now that you're back into it?"
Harry relaxed, not realizing he'd tensed. "It's good. Apply again next year, Ginny."
He expected the same noncommittal response as last time, but she said, "Of course. Your fellow apprentice, Aaron, said he'd send me his reading list and some of his books, which he's highlighted all to death with the critical things."
"That was nice of him."
Ginny's gaze slid over to where Aaron stood talking with Vineet, Hermione and a few others. "Yeah, he is nice," she said, sounding far away.
"Ginny," Harry snapped. "You can't get involved . . ." he started, but had to close his mouth. He was standing there next to Tonks after all. His face heated up.
Ginny broke out laughing. "I don't even know if I'll ever get into the program for it to matter," she argued when she had the chance. She had the grace to not state the obvious, but she kept giggling periodically and shaking her head in amusement. "I have to take Ron home, like you said, tell mum. See what she wants to do with him. See if she thinks he's not quite himself."
"Let me know if you need anything," Harry said to her departing back. She waved over her shoulder in acknowledgment.
"Ron looks the same as always to me," Tonks said. "Well, the same as always if he's been attacked by a squid."
"Once we're done here, we should go to your place," Harry said suggestively.
Tonks stood more alert. "I'll go on ahead and clean up. I was crawling around in shrubbery this evening."
Harry wanted to give her a kiss before she departed, but decided it would be a bad habit to break, once started.
The hall gradually emptied, leaving only Snape lounging on one of the couches, perusing a book Harry had received on disguise spells entitled Shrouded Aspect. Harry dropped onto the opposing couch and peered around the littered room. The clock showed ten past one. It had been a good birthday. Harry should stop worrying about his wand situation. As Snape said, Voldemort was unlikely to cause trouble from his current position.
Snape closed the book and set it on a pile of boxes. He nodded when Harry asked if Candide had gone to bed.
"I hope we weren't keeping her awake," Harry said, suddenly thinking of this.
"Silencing charms work wonders in such situations."
Harry stood, thinking he would head to Tonks' flat. He picked up a few boxes, sorting out the gifts, not wanting to leave all of this for Winky to do. When he finished with a quick reorganization he noticed that Snape had not moved. Concerned that it may generate another lecture he nonetheless said, "I'm going to go stay with Tonks."
Snape waved his hand dismissively and picked up his tumbler from the floor. He glanced around and waved the nearly empty bottle from the dining room to refill it.
This jarred Harry out of his immediate thoughts of Tonks waiting for him. "Aren't you going to bed?"
"Eventually. Go on." The tone had gone dismissive, hard even. He resembled Lupin that evening in his posture, as though overly tired.
Harry looked around the room, picking up and discarding possibilities. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Snape stated, adding annoyance into the mix.
"Something wrong with Candide?" Harry asked, plowing in because, not in spite of, the danger signs.
"Candide is fine," Snape stated, and indeed his tone softened as he said this, indicating it was the truth.
Harry sat back down across from Snape, pouring over recent memories. He had been spending little time at home now that they had returned. "You look like you could use a good night's sleep," Harry said, hoping worry over him was not the reason Snape looked less than well rested. "Why don't you take one of your own potions and go to bed?"
Harry hung there, waiting for a response. He was certain Snape teetered between snapping at him and giving in. "Do you want me skip going to Tonks' place tonight?" Harry asked. "I know you don't approve . . ."
"It is your birthday; you should go," Snape stated flatly. He stood and sighed. "I perhaps will follow your advice."
Harry followed him down to the toilet and leaned against the doorframe as Snape searched through the cabinets.
"I certainly do not need your assistance with mixing a potion."
"I know that," Harry said. He wanted to press more to get Snape to talk, but he also did not want to to have it confirmed that Harry himself was keeping him up at night.
Snape toweled out a tall glass he had found and heated it with his wand until the water droplets in the sink under it hissed into steam. "When will your new wand be finished?"
"Next Saturday," Harry replied, determined not to be distracted.
Snape poured a bit of clear, thick liquid into the glass. It immediately began boiling. His hair now obscured his face. "That is fast."
"He made it a rush order because I tend to attract evil."
"True enough." Snape bent to add a grey powder to the glass with precise taps on the container. He stirred the mixture with a glass rod and said after several minutes. "You are still here."
Harry could not deny that. "I want to know you're all right." A thought occurred to Harry then. "The Crutiatus curse isn't coming back is it?" Harry half hoped it was that, because that he could help with.
"No, it is not," Snape replied tiredly.
"Do you want me to check?"
Snape shook his head decisively and crouched to add drops of something blue to the glass just until it turned glittery inside as though the liquid had frozen over all of a sudden.
"What are you making?"
"Something of my own concocting."
"I've never seen it before."
"You have. I concocted it for you when you were in the Dark Lord's grips and dared not sleep."
Harry remembered that horrible day with great reluctance. But after a cursory review of compacted memories, considered that even if the Crucios were no longer bothering Snape physically that did not mean they were leaving his dreams alone. Snape lifted the glass and held it up where it could catch the light of the lamp. The crystalline frost inside slowly dissolved toward transparent.
"Are you going to be all right?" Harry asked.
With more typical grumbling spirit, Snape said, "I do not want you worrying about me."
"Why not?"
"I believe your ladyfriend is awaiting you," Snape said.
Harry laughed lightly. "She keeps me waiting all the time. You didn't answer the question."
Snape rotated the glass, tilting it as though to urge it along. "If you are worrying about me, I am failing at this role."
Silence descended until the glass was completely clear and Snape moved to pour it into an empty bottle for which he could actually locate its matching stopper. He slipped the bottle into his robe pocket and began putting away the ingredients. That, done, he used a rag to slowly wipe up the sink.
"You're very far from failing, Severus," Harry said. But he bit his lip as he remembered the pain of discovering that it had been Snape who had told Voldemort about the prophecy. But it should not be buried where it could fester, so he said, "You were very patient with me while I worked things out about the prophecy that killed my parents."
A shiver passed through Snape as he stood holding the edges of the sink and listening to Harry while staring at nothing in particular.
Harry insisted, "Say something."
"It is all very tenuous."
"What is?"
Snape huffed. "Life."
Harry scoffed and criticized, "Now you are getting philosophical as a distraction."
Snape moved with purpose to finish closing cabinets and then turned the lamps down to a tiny amber halo.
"Severus?" Harry prompted as he followed him out into the hall.
Snape turned slowly back to him but did not speak. His gaze was indiscernible in the low light.
"You don't want to talk about it?"
"No," Snape replied with finality and started to walk away again.
"I'm going to keep worrying about you, then," Harry threatened.
Snape paused but kept his back to Harry. "Fine."
Harry watched the black robed figure go up the stairs and into the first bedroom. Harry did not feel that things were tenuous. Thoughtful and distracted, he Apparated to Tonks' flat to find her soundly asleep. He shucked his clothes and slipped in beside her without waking her.
Harry returned for breakfast the next morning, leaving Tonks to sleep in.
"Harry! Didn't expect to see you here so early," Candide said brightly when he arrived.
"I could use a good breakfast," Harry explained, which was the truth. Breakfasts at Tonks' usually consisted of a stale scone or Danish at best.
"Came to collect your gifts, I see," Snape stated when he came in and found Harry at the table.
Harry smiled at his negative and accusatory tone. "Yep. You got me."
Candide glanced between the two of them in befuddlement. "You two have endless codes. Just when I think I've figured it out, it changes."
Candide merely picked at her small breakfast. "Feeling all right?" Harry asked.
"I am not so hungry this morning," she admitted, sounding queasy. "And I have brunch with my parents."
"You going?" Harry pointed asked Snape.
Snape shook his head, which shifted his hair forward to obscure his face. Candide was frowning as she sipped her coffee. She tapped her spoon methodically against the table a moment and then stood. "Well, I'd better go."
After she came back in, clearly dolled up more than before and disappeared in the Floo, Snape said accusingly, "Whatever you were going say, go ahead."
"I was going to say 'just as well'."
"I will second that," Snape stated as his plate disappeared. "If you had not been here, there may have been a row over that."
Harry poured more sugar into his coffee, feeling he needed the treat. "You're going to meet them at the wedding in a month in any event." He kept stirring, waiting for the gritty sound to decrease. "It isn't like you to play the victim." But as Harry said this, and he saw Snape's chin move slightly sideways as though he had been struck, a clearer picture was forming for him.
While he fished around for what to say next, Snape cut him off with, "I am all right, Harry. I've just had a few bad nights is all. Too much on my mind."
"I hope I'm not one of the things worrying you," Harry said.
"At the moment, no," Snape replied smoothly.
Harry, who knew better because of what he had overheard, said, "You lie too well."
Snape put down his coffee without sipping it. Tangible tension rose between them as though part of the table, but Harry was glad this was out; it bothered him and he wanted it dealt with.
Harry went on, stating each word with certainty so that Snape could not dodge it, "You're worried about me, about what I could become with this power."
"Yes," Snape agreed, calm now, keen alertness overwhelming any fatigue or annoyance he had shown moments before. "It is less a reflection on you than it may appear. As Alastor has pointed out to me, I have lengthy experience managing powerful wizards. I have instincts born of that time that I cannot relinquish." He carefully watched Harry's face for a reaction.
Harry for his part was feeling relieved. Relieved to be talked to as an adult and relieved that Snape trusted that he could handle his concerns.
Snape, after thinking lengthily, said, "I cannot ignore the fact that were you to turn dark, you would be unstoppable. Voldemort would be a distant happy memory for wizardom in comparison."
Harry held back his gut response to consider it, but in the end said it anyway, "I'm not going to go dark, Severus." It hurt to have Snape even believe it a possibility, but he did not want to show that because he wanted to have this conversation.
"I agree that on the face of it, it is unlikely. You are conscientious to a fault. You are not afraid of emotion. And you are, as I am well aware, capable of great forgiveness." He sipped his coffee before continuing, speaking carefully as though picking each word specifically. "All this does reassure me. But at the same time you toy with things that are monstrously larger than you, and I do not feel you give them proper apprehension."
"I assume you're talking about the Dark Plane," Harry said.
"Yes. It is an unknown that I cannot discount as a danger."
Harry thought that over, not wanting to speak any less carefully than Snape was. But he was slow responding and Snape went on, "You treat it too casually for my comfort."
"That's just it, though," Harry was compelled to say. "You don't understand; that's exactly what gives me power over it: believing I'm stronger than it. I had trouble with it only before I knew that."
It was Snape's turn to fall thoughtfully silent. When he next spoke, he said, "And you disposed of Voldemort's magic there. Does that not represent some added danger? Is he not there now in some form?"
"I hear this odd howling now that I didn't previously," Harry said with a shrug. "It might be him." Harry realized something important just then: that thinking something and saying it aloud could be two very different things. He had only idly considered his suspicion that Voldemort's magic was still intact as an entity or force in the Dark Plane, but saying it aloud to Snape and watching his brow furrow, was a very different thing. "I'm stronger than him, though," Harry persisted, knowing Snape would recognize his own quote.
Snape did not speak and left his coffee to go cold. Harry said, "I'm not reassuring you, am I?'
Snape rubbed his chin. "If I thought you were avoiding the Dark Plane, I would be somewhat reassured. When were you last there?"
Harry, given the truths being bared here, could not lie. "Yesterday."
Snape to his credit did not react. "I did not think I could influence you on this point, anymore than I could influence you on the point of Ms. Tonks."
"I don't mean to be trouble," Harry said, finding a younger version of himself speaking out, one who was accustomed to being classed as trouble by guardians who were not shy about letting him hear about it. He tried to squash it, but it refused to be. He sighed, trying to think more adult-like. "I don't want to keep you up at night."
"You aren't," Snape insisted.
Harry wanted to believe him. And normally he would not dream of prying so, but he needed to know. "You're having nightmares about being Voldemort's prisoner?"
Snape nodded faintly. "It will pass. It takes time. Quite a bit of it sometimes, in my experience."
Harry did not like feeling helpless. "If you think the Cruciatus is coming back again, let me know."
"If it has not by now, it will not do so. But I will inform you, be assured. I am not fond of pain, even if the occasional student insists otherwise."
Harry laughed lightly.
Snape returned to serious. "I do not want you to take my concerns as a loss of faith in you. You are doing very well, I can tell even without taking advantage of your letting your Occlusion slip. Your wand seems to be the only thing distressing you right now."
Harry said, "I don't know why I let it bother me so much. I think I'm over it now, but I expect when I get the new one I'll be so happy to have a wand that works again, I'll ignore that it is so tied to my fate."
"All good wands are tied to a wizard's fate."
"Yeah, I got a better sense of that at Ollivander's this time. He gets some strange inspirations about wand materials and then has to wait and wonder who is going to show up for it." Harry pulled out the short pale wand he was currently using. "Yeah, I'll be happy to get a good one again."
Snape pushed his empty cup away and it sparkled into the ether. "And perhaps this week sometime . . . dinner with the Breakstones."
"Do you want me to come along?"
"As tempting as that offer is, I should manage on my own."
Harry smiled. "Let me know, but I'd be happy to go along, Severus."
- 888 -
"Have you attempted an Animagus transformation since the treatments have stopped?" Shankwell asked when he released Harry's arm during his final appointment.
Harry shook his head.
"And you said before that your form is too big to fit in here . . ." Shankwell began but faded. At Harry's nod, he suggested, "Why don't you Apparate off somewhere more fitting to try a full transformation cycle and then come back. If that fails to produce any species distortion in the newly grown flesh, we'll declare you fully healed."
Harry leapt down off the examination table and Disapparated to the Puddlemere Quidditch grounds. It was early morning and no one was about. The few banners left up between matches snapped in the wind over the VIP box high above him. Harry walked to the main gate and peered between the decoratively curled bars at the grass oval of the pitch. No one was around inside either. Harry took a few steps back to get out from under the overhang of the stands looming above him, and transformed into a Scarlet Gryffylis. Once he did so, he could not resist flapping to feel the gravity lessen until his claws lost contact with the earth.
As much as he would relish circling the pitch in flight a few times to feel the freedom of it, he dropped until his claws dug into the turf and transformed back into himself.
Back in Shankwell's room, Harry pulled up his still unbuttoned sleeve to reveal that no harm had come from transforming.
"Looks healed, finally," the Healer said, addressing his notepad, rather than Harry. Harry pulled his robes back on and tossed them straight. Shankwell said, "Versa is still interested in learning Staunching from you. She is probably in the ward if you have the time right now."
"I'm due at training," Harry said, glancing at his pocket watch. "I can come back at 4:00, after training."
"I'll ensure Versa is here. Come to the staff room."
An owl was waiting for Harry when he reached the Ministry. Harry read the letter from Ron as he took his seat in the training room. Ron complained that his mum had taken him to the Healer twice and now blamed the twins for every small instruction Ron forgot while helping her around the house while on sick leave from work. Like I normally would remember which rows in the garden were potatoes and which mug Percy prefers for cocoa! Ron wrote, making Harry chuckle.
Upon his return that afternoon to the wizard hospital, Harry reported to the greetingwitch and was led away by a small old orderly. Harry followed the man's downy white hair and mole studded ears to the staff break room. The boisterous conversation stopped when Harry entered.
Versa rose gracefully, spirit-like, from the couch, trailing her long hair. "Mr. Potter."
"Call me Harry," he said, looking far down to meet her gaze.
As the other Healers and assistants looked on in curiosity, she faintly said, "Let's go to an empty office, shall we?"
The office was small but neatly ordered due to judicious use of shrinking charms. An entire wall-full of files had been reduced to a foot square set of dollhouse shelves. A giant magnifying glass bounced on an armature before it.
Versa gracefully held her hair to the side as she took one of the two chairs, reminiscent of Penelope. "Mulvie tells me-"
"Mulvie?"
"Healer Shankwell, that is, told me a few things but I'd prefer you explain from the beginning, if you would, how this skill works."
Harry clasped his fingers in his lap, feeling vaguely nervous. "The shaman I learned it from in Finland says that it cannot be taught; one either is a Stauncher or they're not. I think though, from my own, er, observations, that it is tied to having a sense of Radiance in general. You know about that right?"
"That's where you can feel an object's owner in something metal," she said. "I know about that."
"Can you do it?" Harry asked. At her nod, he felt relieved that this would be easy. "Blood to me feels like a stronger kind of the same thing. When it's flowing freely, it is taking life away with it. I'm maybe not explaining this well," he said, but then noticed his companion had drifted away, eyes distant. Harry, remembering Munz dying, thought that working here in the hospital, constantly sensing all that radiance leaching away, would be difficult and wearing.
"Do you have a knife?" Harry asked, trying to sound brighter.
Versa, still distant, searched around in the desk and pulled out a shiny metal rod with a triangular blade screwed into the end of it. When she held it out to him, Harry said, "If you don't mind nicking yourself, I can Staunch it and you can see what it feels like.
She held her lithe, pale hand out and turned it one way and then the other as though thinking where best to make a cut. Making a fist she pressed the blade to slice into her thumbprint.
Harry unfocused his thoughts until the leaching radiance was clear. Around him, the building itself felt dank, saturated with a stale, sickly echo of the same thing. Harry gently pressed on the radiance with imaginary snow and the bleeding stopped.
"It feels cold," Versa commented. "Did you just release it?" she asked, intensely interested.
"Yes. Want me to do it again?"
"I will try it." She reached for the blade to reopen the new wound. "It will work on myself, correct?"
Harry scratched his cheek. "I think so. But you can try on me."
She dismissively said, "You're a patient."
Blood trailed thinly into her palm as she stared at the new wound, having no effect on it.
"Don't try too hard," Harry said. "It's instinctive. I imagine packing snow around the wound and pressing on it, as tight as I can if its a big wound."
She sighed, closed her eyes, stretched her shoulders, and in the end the bleeding stopped on its own.
"I think it would be easier to try it on me," Harry said, trying to sound more authoritative than he felt. He took up the blade. Versa used her wand to heal her thumb and winced faintly when Harry cut into his. A few seconds later, Harry could feel an invisible pressure on the cut. "You're getting it."
Two re-cuts later, she had it down easily. "I had to imagine an ice sculpture over your hand to make it feel cold to you."
"Well, it worked," Harry said.
With a ghostly, yet irresistible, touch, she pulled his hand over to heal it with a tap of her wand. She released his hand slowly because she had again drifted far away. "We certainly cannot practice with a Crucio, so I will have to make do when the next patient of that sort comes in."
"I think you'll do all right. You seem very sensitive."
She smiled, amused, "It is usually an insult when I hear that."
"I didn't mean it to be," Harry quickly said, which she accepted with a broader smile.
Immediately growing serious again, she said, "May I ask you a question?" At Harry's shrug, she went on, "I was not certain I wanted to have you come and teach me this. Mulvihill set it up today without informing me."
"Oh," Harry said.
"I did not imagine that someone who had killed so many could have any sense of such things."
Harry did not know what to say in his defense. She went on, "I remembered you caring for your father, whom it seems you healed rather than Hedgepeth." She waited for Harry's nod before continuing. "I wonder how you function as an Auror given that the harm you do to others must be immediately clear via this other Radiant sense."
Harry countered, "I wondered how you functioned here in this hospital without knowing how to Staunch."
She fell far away again. She probably would have let her question go, but Harry wanted to hear his answer too. "Aside from Voldemort I've never really killed anyone outright. I've killed accidentally in the heat of a spell battle. I've set demons on my enemies at a distance. Perhaps it isn't really different, because the result is the same, but . . . I couldn't just kill someone, one-on-one, if there was any kind of choice." With bloody vividness, Harry remembered resisting doing so with Avery despite believing that the man had just torn his world apart. That devastating internal struggle was the last thing he remembered before his mind had shut off.
Versa stroked her hair nervously, distracting Harry from his memories. "Delegating to demons . . ." she said, trying to take it in. "I would expect them to just come after you."
"They can't if one believes they can't." Realizing he made her nervous, Harry stood. "I'm due at home," he said to back out gracefully. "If you have any questions, you can owl me. I'm willing to help too, if you have a bad Cruciatus patient."
She nodded and Harry departed. On the way down the corridor he considered that given how uncertain Versa felt about him, she must be either brave or foolhardy to have agreed to be in a room alone with him. He wished everyone trusted him the way they did when he was smaller. But given the copious articles about his powers, that was unlikely to ever happen again. At least Tonks treated him the same as she always did. That thought alone made his heart lighter and put it in anticipation of seeing her at the Ministry.
- 888 -
The week crawled by while Harry counted off the days until he would have his own wand back again. He already thought of the brand new wand as his own because he fully expected it to perform exactly as his old one did. Drills frustrated him all week, and when Rodgers paired him with Tridant, he could barely match their newest apprentice for spell power. Harry expected Tridant to point this out, but the man had fallen silently focussed rather than brash.
After drills, Harry sighed as he stuffed his wand away into his pocket. Vineet, whom Harry had not noticed step closer, said, "I understand this frustration."
Harry shook himself out of his own concerns. "Yeah. Saturday my new wand is ready. I can barely wait."
The room emptied for lunch and Harry noticed Tridant slowing rearranging his books as though to stall or just because his mind was far away and he was unaware of what he was doing. Harry hung back. It was not that he preferred his new associate's original demeanor, but the change concerned him.
"How's it going?" Harry casually asked, expecting to easily draw the other out.
Tridant shrugged his broad shoulders. His lip twitched.
Harry stepped to the side, to physically get in the way of getting to the doorway. "Something wrong?"
Tridant shrugged again and did not meet Harry's gaze. He seemed to decide that Harry was not going to get out of the way unless he answered. "This is hard, it turns out."
"Er . . ." Harry hesitated, trying to find his way. "But you're doing fine."
A third shrug.
Harry scratched his ear, thinking. "Rodgers is hard on people when they are first starting out."
Tridant's voice dropped. "It's like he wants me to quit. He isn't so hard on the rest of you."
Harry did not believe that to be true. Reassuringly, he offered, "He already beat us to a pulp over the last year and doesn't think he needs to do that so much anymore."
Tridant scoffed. "Yeah, it's like he wants me to quit," he repeated, gesturing toward the door. "Didn't you hear him harping on my Titan again today."
"He may seem like that, but it's because he doesn't want to send anyone out unprepared. See, if one of us dies because we were unequipped, then he'd have to blame himself," Harry heard himself saying without forethought. "He doesn't want you to give up getting better."
"I had thought that block was easy," Tridant said, sounding more argumentative. "Do you know how long I've known that one. I used to show it off as a Fourth-Year at Hogwarts."
"Maybe you're too used to things being easy," Harry said, still just speaking thoughts as they popped into his head.
Tridant said sulkily, "This DID all use to be easy. I'm going to get booted I'm doing so terribly. I'd rather quit first."
Harry held back a smile because things were now clear. It was apparently possible for incoming apprentices to be too cocky. "He can't boot you until your first review, which is months away. You have tons of time to work on things."
"And to think I used to look forward to examinations. I'm going to be the bottom score." He appeared horrified at the thought.
"You're alone in your year. You will also have the top score. Out of our year, Aaron or I will be on the bottom," Harry assured him.
"Yeah, but you can't get booted."
Harry's brows went up. "Oh, don't bet on that," he said vehemently, thinking of recent suspicion of him. He sighed and said, "Look. You're taking Rodgers' exacting teaching too personally. He just doesn't want anyone ever slacking. Everyone here is as good as you are. You're not going to be the best anymore without a ton of work."
"Nicely spoken," a voice said from the doorway. Tonks stood there, leaning jauntily on the doorframe, arms crossed, looking very cute.
Grumbling, head down, Tridant asked, "How long you been standing there?"
Tonks laughed. "Long enough. Harry was doing fine and I didn't want to interrupt."
Tridant headed for the door, head still low. Tonks moved her foot to let him pass. To Harry she said, "You free this evening?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
"I'll see you after second shift, then. Your place."
- 888 -
Harry sat alone in the hall, the house settling into night around him, books stacked on the floor at his feet. Snape and Candide, returning from dinner with her parents, were a welcome distraction. Snape's dismayed expression made Harry hold off on asking questions until Candide had claimed exhaustion and gone to their room.
"How'd it go?" Harry quietly asked, wary of the answer.
Snape tilted his head noncommittally and, after a hesitation, stepped to the couch to sit across from Harry.
"Did you survive, at least?" Harry asked.
"Their expectations were not clear from the outset, and they remain obscure."
Parroting, Harry said, "You should have sufficient skills to-"
Snape cut him off with a slash of his hand. "I do not wish to be quoted at."
"Sorry."
Harry held back, but finally had to ask, "Wedding still on?"
"Yes."
Harry waited for more, but was disappointed. "They were hoping for something different?" he prompted.
"That is an understatement."
Trying to help, Harry said, "They don't know the real you."
"They do not wish to know the real me," Snape pointed out darkly.
"True," Harry conceded. He still had the Manual of Uniform Ministry of Magic Report Scribing open in his lap. He closed it and set it aside. "Maybe I should have gone along."
Snape nodded, black eyes far away. "Things would have gone better, but it would have been a sham." He sat back farther and sank into the cushions, his formal robes flowing around him like a wrinkle on the flat, black suede. "As flattered as I have been in the past by your willingness to take up the role of my personal shield, I cannot tolerate it when it is not necessary to retain my liberty. I need to muddle through this myself, even if it means stooping to pretending to be something I am not to smooth the way."
Harry sighed. One of the candles sparked and sputtered as it leaked a river of wax down over the brass holder, which quickly turned opaque. Harry reached in and pinched out the flame before the wick burned up completely. He shook his burned fingers, then touched them to his tongue.
Snape shook his head, amused. "If I took you along, they would later swear you were not truly magical."
Harry ignored the dig. "I'm always willing to be your shield."
"I would rather follow your previous advice and cease to care. I abhor this position of being forced to give a damn."
"Did it really go that badly?" Harry asked.
"Oh, it was perfectly polite," Snape said sounding nauseated. He stretched an arm out forward to more easily sit up. He struggled with that as he said, "But I am fully aware of what they were thinking. They even had moments of doubting the story about you."
Harry laughed lightly. "Then I insist on coming along next time."
Snape stood. "Next time will be the wedding," he said with finality.
"Well, you got it over with, anyhow," Harry offered, wishing Snape felt better.
"And Candide believes it went swimmingly."
"Then you are set."
Snape made a dubious noise of assent and departed up the stairs.
Hours later, candles gutting, air chilled, Harry still sat reading his assigned books. He did not want to look at the clock yet again because it would force him to decide if perhaps Tonks' had forgotten or if she had been hurt or was even now under duress.
When Tonks did appear in the dark hall, Harry greeted her with, "You're very late." It was after 1:00. Just a single candle remained, wick nearly drowned. He had been napping lightly, books stacked out of the way on the floor.
"I'm sorry, Harry," she said. "Something came up." The couch tilted as she sat down beside him. She let out a long sigh and he relented on his annoyance and put his arm around her.
"Is it something you can tell me about?" Harry asked.
"It's Debjit Thanakar; something odd happened," she sounded far away as though still trying to puzzle something out. Harry could hear her breathing more clearly than he could see her.
"What happened?"
"He's been at St. Mungo's, growing a new foot and recovering from his other wounds. They finally gave us permission this week to move him back to the Ministry for interrogation. He seemed fine when Kingsley and I fetched him to the dungeon but when we went to move him to one of the interrogation rooms, he was completely out of it. Disoriented and confused like he'd been potioned. We spent the last three hours trying various antidotes to no effect."
"Do you want Severus' help?"
"We decided that it isn't a potion."
"Memory charm?"
"No evidence of one. Or a Confusion charm or anything related." She groaned and tossed her head back.
Harry wanted to help figure out what had happened, but the scent of her, even after a long stressful day, wasn't something he could ignore. "Why don't we go up to my room? Your silencing charm is pretty good."
She chuckled in a way that made the center of Harry go liquid like the core of the remaining candle.
Next Week: Chapter Four -- Battle in Darkness
A long, empty time passed. A car roared by on the crossing road, pulling the hum of the motorway closer. Harry was about to knock again when he heard movement inside, shifting back and forth behind the door as though the source of it rocked side to side, uncertain.
The door clicked and swung open, creaking of course. An alabaster face appeared in the opening, a young woman, expressionless except for her wide eyes.
"Hi," Harry said. "I, uh, I wonder if I could have a word with you?"
The person did not respond. The face glanced back behind itself, then again at Harry, long black hair swishing. Harry decided that he needed a bit of Legilimency here, and since the young woman was staring openly at him, he had lots of time. The resulting sense of terror nearly made him drop his wand. He gripped it tighter, eyes also wide now. Her face gave away none of the extreme battle going on inside her head. A battle of wills raged behind her grey eyes as though two personalities wanted to dominate fully and would not give ground for even the smallest action until utterly winning out. She continued to stare.
Author's Notes:
Writing is going well. Should have 4 posted next weekend again. Chapter 6 we get into the main plot arc.
If you have trouble getting the chapter notifications you can send me an email requesting to be added to my personal list by sending a message to darkirony at gmail dot com.
Chapter 4 — Battle in Darkness
Friday night, Harry reported for his field shadowing. Ever since Mr. Weasley had learned about him and Tonks, Harry rarely got paired with her, and this evening was no exception. In the Aurors' office he found Blackpool sitting at Tonks' desk, waiting for him. Rogan and Shacklebolt were hard at work at their own desks, Shacklebolt with two open files hovering beside him to avoid cluttering his desk.
"Should we pick out an assignment?" Blackpool asked Harry. She seemed in better spirits than previous shifts so Harry eagerly assented.
Her face twisted amusingly as she fingered each assignment slip beside the log book. "Mysterious lights not over swamp, nah . . . domestic dispute elevated out of Obliviatorobliviator squad . . . hm, that one should have been closed by now . . ."
"It has been," Shacklebolt said from where he sat at his desk, battered quill in hand. "That is the closed pile."
Blackpool glanced up from the slip she had just picked up. "Oh, how did Repeat odd report intercepted from Muggle police in Burnipsbie turn out?" Harry glanced at the slip, wondering why she thought it interesting.
"I closed it, don't worry about it," Shacklebolt snapped, startling Blackpool and bringing Rogan's head up out of his own quill-work.
When Blackpool simply stared at him in surprise, he waved the slip out of her grasp to his own, and bundled it up in his palm before turning back to his research. Blackpool shrugged after a second and pulled out a slip from the pile on the other side of the log book.
"Probable magical trickster loose in Loch Ness . . . Oh boy."
"That one keeps floating to the top," Rogan said, grin clear in his voice. "No one seems to want it."
"We'll take it," Harry said, taking away the slip. "We'll need the brooms," he said grabbing up the two nicest ones propped beside the door and grabbing Blackpool by the arm to Disapparate to an empty overgrown field far from any significant city.
"I didn't want that one, Potter," Blackpool grumbled.
"Nor do I," Harry said, handing her a broom. "I want to see what is up in Burnipsbie."
"Oh. Did you get the road and number?"
Harry nodded, considering where he could closest Apparate into. "Er, except you're in charge," he said, sounding suddenly uncertain.
"Well, yeah, but I'd like to check that out too." She pulled out a pair of flying gloves and began pulling them on. "Not like Mr. Shacklebolt to lose his stiff calm like that. Odd."
"That's what I thought."
She propped her broom on its twigs and adjusted her grip on it as though to stretch out her gloves. "So, I can get us about ten miles off from Burnipsbie."
"Do you think we should go to Loch Ness first, as cover?"
"Let's go after. I don't think Shacklebolt will check up on us right away."
Harry worried otherwise, but she was in charge.
Blackpool said, "I like your suspicious way of thinking."
"I can't help it at this point."
Blackpool laughed and took hold of Harry's arm.
After a pleasant evening flight accompanied by the orange glory of the setting sun, they circled over the village of Burnipsbie, a stain of lights on the darkened earth as though the snaking necklace of the motorway had leaked into the rolling sheep fields.
They landed at the edge of the houses and Blackpool left her broom with Harry and walked into a pizza takeaway to ask for directions to Pollen Gate. With a jangle of the bell on the door, she soon came back out and around to the dark side of the building where Harry waited.
"Said the road is five over and that he hoped dearly that I did not want number sixty-four because everyone living there is right insane. 'Creepy' he said. They play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets stuck delivering there, and they order frequently."
"Hm," Harry said, hoping for more clues. "Did he say anything else?"
"They always order quadruple meat and spinach on their pizza. Apparently the steak house doesn't deliver."
They stood, each in their own thoughts, until a car pulled up in the last space on the end, illuminating their dark corner. Blackpool smoothly slipped the brooms behind her back, out of view.
"Well, let's go," she said soberly.
As they walked, Harry said, "Shacklebolt didn't seem to be under an Imperio, did he?"
Blackpool shook her head as she strode with purpose. "He seemed the opposite of far away and slow to me. His pupils weren't dilated."
They soon reached the correct street and stood by silent agreement behind two large tree trunks in the empty lot opposite. Sixty-four was the last house on the road. It stood forlorn, darker than the sky behind it, with only dim lights showing in a few windows as though candles were in use. The remaining windows were endlessly black. The shutters hung crooked and the slate roof had jagged rows of missing shingles like open wounds. Harry shivered.
"Magical household?" he asked of the candlelight as a swarm of swifts dodged by, seeming to avoid the house opposite in their dance.
"Wasn't color coded as such on the slip."
Silence fell again. "How about we come back during the day?" Harry proposed. "Say, around about noontime."
Blackpool laughed. "Some Aurors we are." She laughed more. Growing serious again, she said, "Kingsley got away unscathed. Let's get a closer look."
"Shacklebolt had something going on," Harry pointed out as they stepped onto the cracked Tarmac, Harry felt a wave of aversion and he instinctively grabbed for Blackpool. His ungainly grab came up with the shoulder of her sleeve, which slipped free of his grasp.
"What is it?" she whispered.
Harry waved for her to slide sideways, but there was no cover on either side of the house, just flat dry ground interspersed with ragged patches of dead grass, as though the occupants desired to see who approached. She gestured for them to go back to the relative security of the trees where they had started.
"Potter?" Blackpool prompted. "You're spooked and that can't be good."
"I feel the, uh, I feel evil when I get too close to that house."
"This your curse-nose going off?" she asked, wand held at read, aimed at the doorway across from them.
"Worse. It's like the underworld leaking through." He breathed in and it did smell too earthy. "Can you smell it?"
"Smells like the country to me."
"Would you be willing to let me approach the house alone? I get an early warning and know when to back off."
She rubbed her chin, considering him and the house alternately. Twilight was passing into real night, and now the sky glowed only from the city lights, miles off. A large black bird or a bat flapped around the chimneys before fluttering off.
"If you stay in view, sure. I can cover you from here. If you leave my sight, I'm coming after you," she threatened.
Harry jogged across the road and up beside the steps where he could peek in the front window. He rolled his wand in his fingers, wishing it were his new one. The aversion had eased somewhat, so Harry canceled the Obsfucation charm, waited for the cold fingers of it to subside, and knocked on the door.
A long, empty time passed. A car roared by on the crossing road, pulling the hum of the motorway closer. Harry was about to knock again when he heard movement inside, shifting back and forth behind the door as though the source of it rocked side to side, uncertain.
The door clicked and swung open, creaking of course. An alabaster face appeared in the opening, a young woman, expressionless except for her wide eyes.
"Hi," Harry said. "I, uh, I wonder if I could have a word with you?"
The person did not respond. The face glanced back behind itself, then again at Harry, long black hair swishing. Harry decided that he needed a bit of Legilimency here, and since the young woman was staring openly at him, he had lots of time. The resulting sense of terror nearly made him drop his wand. He gripped it tighter, eyes also wide now. Her face gave away none of the extreme battle going on inside her head. A battle of wills raged behind her grey eyes as though two personalities wanted to dominate fully and would not give ground for even the smallest action until utterly winning out. She continued to stare.
Harry pushed the door gently inward. This tore her gaze to the door, and she released it, hand frozen in space as though she still held the edge of it. She stood stock still in a two-story hall in a grey nightie with torn frills, wholly Muggle. Harry gave an okay sign behind his back, hoping in the dim light that Blackpool could read it.
A shrill voice grated on Harry's suppressed memories of the Dursley's as an older woman stalked into the hall. "What is this, Margaret?" she asked, eyes also wide as she glared down her nose at Harry. She was taller than him and wore a ragged but ancient dress with a hoop skirt. She pushed the outside door closed, concentrating the musty odor. The dim light sucked all the color out of her dress so, combined with her pale skin, she seemed a ghost.
Harry, having nothing to lose, said, "I'm an old friend of Maggie's from school."
"Margaret is not allowed visitors. You should go." She pointed a boney finger at the door she had just closed.
Thin fingers tugged on Harry's arm from Margaret's side. Thinking quickly, Harry said, "I just haven't seen Maggie around in so long . . ." That seemed a pretty safe bet. The old woman grew calculating. Harry Legilimized her too, wondering at her strangely increasing calm. He had rather a major struggle not to react to visions of someone mentally auditioning various means of killing him. The vision cycled from kitchen knives and stabbing to hatchets and blood to ropes and blue faces.
"Of course," the woman said calmly as the vision wound back to thoughts of long knives. "Why don't you take him up to your room, Margaret, dear."
Harry held his expression utterly flat, which was the best he could do, and assumed he looked just like the daughter. The woman turned away, dragging the ragged edge of her gown as she glided off, probably to the kitchen. The thin fingers tugged plaintively on Harry's arm again and he let himself be led to the far end of the hall. At the end, the stairwell wrapped around, heading upward back toward the door. Harry turned and stepped up and just before it went out of view, saw the door silently opening again.
Knowing that Blackpool followed, Harry held fast to his small wand and plodded up each step, senses fully alert. At the top another ghostly figure darted out of a side room. "Is it pizza?" a small boy frantically asked. Harry lowered his wand, sputtering faintly with the blasting curse he had nearly used.
"No," the sister simply answered. The first she had spoken.
The boy swallowed, looked about to cry, and ran back into his room.
Harry pushed down the thoughts of why Shacklebolt thought this sufficient to let alone because he could not spare the attention. He and Margaret stepped along a thick runner and halfway along went into a girl's bedroom. A candle shed welcome warm light around the high-ceilinged room. The curtains, canopy and various frills still powerfully exuded their quaintness, but they drooped, leeched of color by dust and time. The girl sat on the bed and clasped her hands between her knees. The battle still went on, Harry assumed. Even in the orange light, her skin stretched translucent and colorless over her features.
Harry, wand still firmly in hand, knelt before her. "Margaret?" he prompted gently. "What is going on?"
The battle raged harder and she shook her head. The door moved silently and Harry had to squint to see even a prismatic outline of the Obsfucated Blackpool taking a position beside the door.
Relaxing just faintly, Harry took one icy hand and wondered with a start of his already active nerves if she could be an Inferae. No, he could feel a pulse. He bit his lip to try another deeper round of Legilimency but Margaret looked away, at the window. Harry turned that way as well, and stood instinctively with a jerk of surprise. Previously, darkness and a few lights had shown outside but now dense glowing fog pressed tight to the glass.
Harry stepped back and raised his wand. He felt sleepy and violently shook his head. A strange sound of delight came from beside the door, presumably from Blackpool. Harry found himself bending to drop his wand on the floor, and this frightened him enough that he fell to his knees to take it up again while forcefully Occluding his mind. His thoughts cleared and the room stabilized. Something fleshy collapsed to the floor behind him and Margaret now lay back on the bed, tugging her nightie away from her neck as though suffering from heat stroke. One of her hands stretched out as though to greet someone at the window.
Harry, holding his mind Occluded, stepped back farther as the fog leaked in through the cracks in the old window and began to coalesce. The aversion returned, making him hunch to fight running. The glowing mist gathered densely, darkened and became a tall man in a cloak. He did not turn to look at Harry, but approached the bed and its hypnotized occupant. Before reaching the bed, he spun away and stalked toward the door, eliciting a groan of dismay from the vicinity of the bed.
The figure rotated its head, mouth wide as though tasting the air. The vampire's long teeth were quite apparent as it did this. Harry held his breath, wanting to see enough evidence so that there would no argument later that this vampire was fully rogue and had therefore lost its rights.
The man-creature pawed around on the floor in search of Blackpool, frantic as though hungry for what must smell far healthier than the other victim in the room. The candle flickered as though in a breeze, white teeth flashed as the vampire moved to bite down on what he had found by feel and Harry blasted him against the dresser in the far corner.
Vampires were indestructible, and what would have knocked out anyone else did not phase this man. He rose up inside his cloak and swelled even taller as his gaze burned red with anger. Harry felt his Occlusion slipping due to his own anger and the vampire's head tilted as though interested in Harry's ability to resist him.
"It's over," Harry said.
The man laughed. "Oh, is it? How quaint."
"You're coming with me. You've gone rogue and that's against the rules."
"The Rules," the vampire mocked. "Whose rules are we onto now? Do you know how old I am?"
"Old enough that you should have been dead long ago; I'll give you that," Harry said.
The man laughed again, more mocking. "You have no idea how to catch a vampire, let alone the king of vampires. Look at you."
It was true that Harry did not have the kind of trap he had once seen a coven use. "You have no power over me," Harry pointed out.
"True. That is rare, I'll grant you that."
Harry shot a binding curse at the man, but he flapped out of it as a bat. Harry put a prison box around him but he slithered out of it as a mist, laughing.
"Oh, such games used to amuse me no end. But you are a puny mortal wizard. A mere insect, existing for just a flicker of time."
Harry thought fiercely. "I'm still stronger than you," Harry mocked, hoping to delay him. "There are rules, Ministry of Magic rules, that you are required to follow as a controlled magical creature."
The man snorted, his smooth, ordinary face wrinkling in disgust. "I was around when your Isles were one continent connected to rest of Europe; that is how long I have been alive. Do not insult me." He did sound angry, which suited Harry just fine, since he needed to buy time and hoped that meant he would keep arguing.
The vampire flicked his cloak tightly around him as though thinking of departing. "This place has been drained of the life that does more than sustain me. I have delayed finding a new home too long. If I want to truly live, I need flesh fresher than this." He glanced covetously at the heap on the floor where Blackpool was reappearing as hazy arcs of black robe.
"You're not going anywhere," Harry said.
"Bah!" The vampire mocked. "Goodbye pathetic wizard," he said and dropped through the floor.
Harry felt the interstice to the Dark Plane crack open and close again. He followed, heart racing. He had a hold of the vampire by the wrist before he could stride more than two steps away across the greyness of the Dark Plane. The Vampire gaped at Harry. Around them creatures scuttled closer, curious.
It was Harry's turn to laugh. "I told you you weren't going anywhere."
Harry's quarry recovered from his surprise and scooped his hand toward himself. The disgusting creatures closed in, obeying the command. Harry faced the nearest ones down and they hesitated but others climbing over the first, snarling, clapping their jaws together. Their oily breath reeked of rot and death.
Harry Disapparated to the area of the Dark Plane opposite the Ministry, taking the Vampire with him. Temporarily, they left the creatures behind. Vampires could not Disapparate, so Harry hoped this one was disoriented. He did glance around in consternation before glaring at Harry, who tightened the grip on his arm and pulled his wand.
The vampire's eyes pulsed red at the sight of the wand and he fell, dragging Harry with him. Harry felt flattened, curled up, and towed through a row of cracks by his arm, but they arrived exactly where he wanted to be: in the Ministry dungeon. Seeming frantic, the vampire tried to shake his arm loose from Harry's grasp. Harry twisted the arm behind his quarry's back and threw him up against the damp stone wall. He pressed his wand into the back of his ribs, wishing dearly that it was his own wand so he did not have to make any empty threats.
"I suspect that if I carve your heart out, it will at least slow you down," he hissed into the man's ear. "It takes you three seconds to get to mist form; it only takes me half a one to spell a cutting curse."
"Hey, whatcha got?" Horace, the squat wizard who managed the dungeon, sauntered up and asked. "I didn't see you come in," he then said in alarm, glancing back in the direction of the heavy door and scratching his head.
"He slipped us in," Harry said, hoping that covered it.
"Oh, yeah, they're like that." He pulled a narrow, battered log book out of a belt pouch. "Name?"
The vampire didn't reply, so Harry pressed the wand harder into his flesh. It had to hurt. "Fueago."
"Last name, first name?"
"That is my name. It is as old as time you imbecile-"
"I need to get him somewhere secure," Harry interrupted to say.
"Oh, yeah." Horace drew a necklace out of his pouch and draped it over Harry's head. "Isle Mayfay has a facility for him." He used his wand to tap the fleur de lis charm on the necklace and the dungeon twisted away. Harry barely kept hold of his prisoner as they flew and rotated a long time, landing hard on what turned out to be a pier.
Waves slapped against the sides of the neat straight stones. A dark fog hung over the water, obscuring anything farther than ten feet off. Flood lights illuminated the scene from behind and Harry torqued his head around to look up at the fortress that was L'île de Cachot Méfait, the French wizard prison. He dragged the vampire to his feet and, maintaining his wand point between his ribs, pushed him in the direction of the great doors.
Salt crystals blossoming in the dips of the stone crunched underfoot as they went. Harry did not see a knocker so he was glad when the right-hand door turned open on a central pivot as they approached.
A Frenchman about Harry's height, and carrying a crystal-tipped pike, approached as they entered the vast entry hall. Harry said, "I have a prisoner," but the guard simply stared at him.
Fueago rattled off a long string of haute French that raised the guard's eyebrow. The guard began to study Harry with suspicion.
"What are you saying?" Harry demanded angrily, which only bolstered the narrowing gaze of the guard.
The vampire said, "You are a typically stupid Englishman. I told him I am bringing you into the prison, but you overpowered me outside."
Harry tightened his hold on the vampire and the guard set down his pike and put up his hands placatingly, at which point Harry realized that his only negotiating power at the moment was that he appeared to be holding someone hostage.
"I'm from the Ministry of Magic. I'm bringing this rogue vampire in . . ." But he was drowned out by a longer exchange of incomprehensible French.
"Shut up," Harry said to the vampire, and began dragging him farther inside. The guard thought this an acceptable direction, so, leaving his pike behind, he followed over the smooth stone. They passed over a narrow causeway where the sea slapped at the bottom of long trenches on either side. Beyond, the floor changed to black slate. The Vampire struggled with him at the most vulnerable point, so Harry shoved him to the stone, wand in the center of his back.
"I'll do it," Harry threatened. "You've certainly lived long enough for one man." In that instant, his curse sense went off and he ducked as a spell from the guard sizzled overhead. "What are you doing?" Harry yelled at the man.
The vampire, far stronger than expected, tossed Harry aside as though he were a doll and got to his feet. He pointed at Harry, who was occupied for a desperate breath with pulling his leg out of the waves and climbing to safety. The vampire continued to give the guard instructions in French. The pike leveled at Harry, who did not want to strike back, but had a counter in mind once he got his wand at ready. Running feet delayed the guard's actions. Harry, sensing that the vampire did not want to cross to the slate floor, leapt to grab his wrist and tossed him there, using all of his strength. Both of them tumbled onto the damp, slippery stone.
The lead man of the new guards, identifiable by the ribbons on his silver tunic, stepped in front of Fueago before he could crawl back to the brown stone causeway. Fueago began demanding things in French. The guard almost lifted a hand down to help him up and then glanced at Harry. "Ah, Harry Potter, what a pleasant surprise." He reacted quickly, pointing at the vampire, saying, "Is 'e with you?"
"My prisoner," Harry said, relieved enough his knees went vaguely wobbly.
The leader withdrew his hand and signaled for the guards just as the vampire changed into mist. Harry raised his wand but a barrier kept the mist on the black slate side of the causeway.
"Eet is all right," the guard assured Harry, and the mist, after shifting frantically back and forth, became a man again.
The vampire began arguing in French again while trying to step back over the line. Harry approached, helping to box him in.
"Eh, so you say," the head guard said mockingly, gesturing for him to be lead deeper into the prison.
Harry took the vampire's elbow when he hesitated moving, saying with a smirk, "You may be ancient, but I'm famous."
At the lift, which was just a solid stone platform with no sides, the guards took over management of the prisoner. The head guard did not stop talking to Harry the whole way, but Harry did not mind at all.
"I 'ave always wanted to meet you, Mr. Potter. The warden will be thrilled too, I know because he has your picture on his wall, right between Meester Paul-Marie Verlaine and Meester Zherri Lew-es. Perhaps you could sign it for him . . . if it is not so much trouble?"
"Of course," Harry assured him.
Down, down they went into the bowels of the rock. It was hot down here and Harry hoped they had not gone so deep that the core of the earth was making things warmer. They stopped finally and had to duck exiting the lift into a narrow corridor cut into the rock. In a small office where the tables, shelves and even the chairs were carved directly in the rock, Harry was instructed to sit at a desk.
"Just some papers-work and we will take care of this animal for you."
Parchments Harry could not read were placed before him. "Can you summarize these?"
"Oh, yes. This is the Assignment of Overseeing, which means that you cannot have 'eem back without some other papers signing. This is the Statement of Ill Deed, which you can fill in English, no? Since only another Englishman will need to read eet."
Harry began filling things in, finding it hard to cast his mind back to the horrors of the house. It occurred to him now with a jolt that he had left Blackpool behind, unconscious with the murderous lady of the house. He swallowed hard and wrote faster.
The vampire was slouched on rock chair in the corner, looking desolate and harmless. "I just remembered something I should have done," Harry said, handing the parchments back and standing up.
"There are a few more papers and the photograph for the warden . . ." the guard said.
"I'll come back," Harry insisted. "I really have to check on my partner." He fingered the portkey on the necklace, close to panic so much adrenaline flowed in his veins.
"I will activate it for you, but it will not work here. Up above, only." He pointed, sounding like he wished to calm Harry.
"Thanks."
On the lift ride up, Harry thought about the procedures that he had not had the opportunity to work within. He should have told the guard in the Ministry dungeon to inform the Auror's office. That's what he should have done. Miserable, Harry rode upward as floors and side tunnels came and went, sliding below their smooth quiet platform.
Beyond the causeway, the head guard said, "We can finish the papers-work, but the warden will be sorrowful to not have met you."
"I'll come back as soon as I can," Harry insisted. "I would like a tour."
The man brightened considerably, eyes glittering with pride. "I would be honored to give you one."
The portkey returned Harry to the Ministry Dungeon. Running, he passed Horace, who was back at his tiny desk, hunched over something small. Harry dropped the key beside an elaborate origami of a ball and chain that was in progress, and made his way to the atrium, from which he could Apparate away.
Harry arrived, wand out, back in the candlelit bedroom, which was empty. He scrambled down to the dark lower floor, where voices could be heard. He found Blackpool filling out interview sheets with the family around the kitchen table. The scent of pizza filled the air.
"You're all right," Harry breathed out, choking on the words in his relief.
"Yeah, Potter. I figured you must have been green enough to give chase to a vampire."
Harry's foremost concern was the older woman's demeanor and whether it had improved above murderous. The woman sat, arms crossed, looking cold and aloof, tea untouched. She just seemed aggrieved now.
Blackpool said to the woman, "You really should see a surgeon. Get a transfusion."
"We will handle things our way," the woman said.
Margaret sat, nibbling on a pizza crust, saying nothing. Her brother was sleeping on his arm draped over the table. Harry stepped closer and bent down to ask the girl, "You all right?" After a very long pause, she nodded. To Blackpool, Harry said, "We need the Obliviator squad."
"After the interviews."
"Or, we need them for the trial, don't we?"
"We'll never catch him, Harry."
"Who, the vampire?" The room jerked as though Harry had said the name Voldemort three years ago. "I dropped him at the prison just now. In fact, I need to go back and finish the paperwork."
Blackpool set the quill down as well as the crust of pizza in her other hand. "You captured that bastard? Single handed?"
"Yeah, why not? I didn't want him to get away."
"Harry, Vampires can slip through a crack in the floor, barrier or not. If you can't find their sleeping place and get them warded all to hell with garlic without so much as making a sound or giving yourself away to one of the creepy companion creatures guarding them, you can forget it."
"I dropped him at the French prison just now."
"You put him in prison?" Margaret's faint voice asked from the end of the table.
"Yes," Harry assured her, wanting badly to reach through her terror. "He won't be coming back."
Blackpool picked the quill back up and flicked it around. "Well, in that case, yes, we need them for the trial. Or at least one of them. The others we can wipe." She glanced around the three of them, sitting still as though simply waiting to be victims again. "We'll keep the girl, I think." Blackpool stared additionally at Harry. "You really got him?"
"Yes," Harry insisted, not insulted because she sounded truly amazed.
"Well, go and fetch Reggie, Tonks or Mr. Weasley. With the vamp gone we can more easily deal with the issue of Kingsley."
"I forgot about Kings- . . . Shacklebolt," Harry said, struggling to keep up with events. "I'll get someone."
Back at the Ministry, Harry found Shacklebolt at his desk, reviewing files and looking stern, but mostly himself. Harry had no idea how complete the psychic control of a vampire was. It had not been covered in their training, perhaps because it occurred only rarely. He gave Shacklebolt a nod and started to back out of the room.
"Find anything in Loch Ness?" Shacklebolt asked, eyes intent when they turned upon Harry.
"No," Harry said, and slipped away before a followup question could get asked.
Mr. Weasley sat in his office, dictating a letter to someone in the Goblin Liaison Office. He held up his hand until he finished the sentence and grabbed hold of the dictation quill, which twitched as Harry said, "I need to talk to you and we need someone at the scene." Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Shacklebolt approaching, looking determined about his destination, which was clearly Harry. Harry slipped his wand into his hand in a way that the Auror could not see, but Mr. Weasley had full view of.
"Harry?" he questioned, sounding concerned.
Harry stepped back into the corridor and to the wall, needing the space to defend himself, if necessary.
"Harry, put that away," Mr. Weasley cautioned, sounding fatherly.
Harry faintly shook his head. Shacklebolt looked between them but Harry had his conveniently small wand completely inside his sleeve now. Harry was not certain what to do. There were code words for this situation, both Auror ones and Order ones, but Shacklebolt would know all of them. Pained, Harry quickly tried to think of something. In a battle of trust between him and Shacklebolt there was no question who would win and already, Mr. Weasley looked doubting of Harry's rightmindedness.
"Maybe I'll speak to you later, sir," Harry firmly said, hoping his boss would catch the hint.
Mr. Weasley stood and said, "If you need someone on-site, Rodgers will be returning shortly. That way Kingsley can cover the office."
"I thought you didn't find anything," Shacklebolt said, sounding gravely suspicious.
"Well, it's hard to explain," Harry hedged, wishing he were trusted more and having no good ideas for how to proceed. If he simply attacked Shacklebolt, he was going to end up fighting him and Mr. Weasley.
Footsteps approached and Rodgers came into view. Harry could not have been more pleased to see him. "Can I talk to you, sir?" Harry asked, not liking how pleading he sounded.
Rodgers pulled his head back in surprise, but he then gestured gamely back down the corridor.
In the training room, Harry frustratingly said, "I don't know the procedure for this. And I just found out how little Mr. Weasley trusts me still."
Annoyance overwhelmed Harry's temper before Rodgers dryly asked, "Is Arthur what you wish to discuss? I'm not certain there is a protocol for increased trust within a department of the Ministry."
Harry gave him a cock-eyed glance and said, "You sound like Severus, you know. No, that isn't what I wish to discuss. Shacklebolt is compromised and I don't know what the procedure is for that."
Rodgers grew serious and asked, "Compromised in what way?"
Harry explained about the vampire and Shacklebolt's behavior. "The vampire is in the French prison now, so he is no risk."
"You and Blackpool caught him by yourselves? Fueago is an old timer who comes in and out of the country but we've never been able to catch him."
Harry now realized that he had perhaps given too much away through his actions, but there had been no choice. "Yeah, we did. The family's in bad shape. Blackpool is still interviewing them, but after that we need an Obliviator squad."
Rodgers stepped toward the door. "Let's go take a look at the scene first to choose one to keep their memories for now."
"We did already."
Rodgers stopped and appeared more affectionate than Harry had ever seen. "You kids are coming along."
Rodgers' hand was on the door before Harry could remind him with: "Shacklebolt?" which he had to swallow because the Auror was behind the door when it opened. Harry raised his wand and the spells cancelled out between them, knocking Rodgers aside with the spell wash.
Shacklebolt's brown eyes were dark and unreadable as spells lashed out again and Harry had to resort to his best attenuated block, which did not quite hold with his badly matched wand. Pain sizzled over Harry's skin. Frantic that he could not defend himself, Harry squirmed when he felt a curse, nasty and rancid rising up as though from the floor, out of the earth itself. His mind flashed back two years to his torment by Crabbe and Goyle. He could smell the dark earth then too, along with the rot of leaves and twigs on the Forbidden Forest floor where he had writhed. Harry squashed this curse as he had done the one that day, by forcing it back down into the ground, where the only outlet it could find was the caster himself. Shacklebolt flickered and doubled over, but he recovered quickly, eyes blazing.
Rodgers pulled himself to his feet and shouted, "Kingsley, stop it!"
Footsteps approached in the corridor. The next curse, which had far less on it, Harry blocked normally, because it did not feel the same as the one he had squashed. His counter wavered worrisomely despite not having to withstand much. He tried to roll behind a desk for the next one; the desk was blasted aside, forcing Harry to cover his head with his arms. The room fell silent long enough for Harry to risk raising his eyes. Shacklebolt was in a binding curse on the floor with Rodgers bent over him, looking murderous which was normal hard anger for him.
"What the devil?" Mr. Weasley demanded. Other offices had emptied and come down to gawk.
Harry was working on sitting up when Rodgers asked, "Potter?"
"Yeah," Harry said, not sure whether to respond positively or negatively because he had not yet decided what exactly had hit him. Using a desk, Harry got to his feet while Rodgers explained the situation. Harry could only return a helpless look when Mr. Weasley turned an expression his way that implied Harry should have handled things differently.
Mr. Weasley instructed Rodgers, "Put him in interrogation until we can get an exorcist in here." He stalked off past a stunned Rogan, who slid inside to help.
Harry moved slowly until he could sit at the desk he was leaning on. He sat there, breathing, until he remembered that he had to get back to Burnipsbie. "Damn," he muttered, standing up and mustering the will to Apparate.
"What happened to you?" Blackpool asked when Harry stepped into the kitchen.
"Tangled with Shacklebolt."
"I'd have thought you could take him."
Harry gratefully took a seat at the table. "I will be able to tomorrow when I get my new wand. Stop me if I try."
"Excuses, excuses," she pleasantly said. "And the Obliviators?"
Harry stared at her, running recent conversations through his mind. "I'm not sure. I'll go check." It required great will to push himself to his feet, but he managed. "Things were a little crazy as you might imagine."
Later, at the debriefing when everything was straight and they all had returned to the Ministry, Harry felt sulky and used that as cover to give only scant details of his capturing the vampire. No one here knew he could slip into the Dark Plane and Snape had been adamant that he not let it be known.
When the comments came back around to marveling at Harry's feat, he said, "I need to return to the wizard prison. There's more paperwork. I told them I'd come back as soon as I could."
"Someone should go with you," Mr. Weasley said, glancing around. "I guess I will on my way home."
Harry held in his frown and stood slowly, still stiff from getting hit.
"Do you need a Healer, Harry?" Mr. Weasley asked solicitously, which set Harry off more.
He stubbornly replied, "No."
They fetched a prison portkey from the dungeon and arrived at the dark pier, surrounded by a now still ocean hugged by low, dense fog. Floodlights flicked on as they turned.
On the way to the doors, Harry wanted to say something along the lines of: "It's hard to function at the Ministry if no one trusts me." But he did not want to sound whiny, so he stewed instead. The guard escorted them inside without speaking and down into the core of the island. The warden's office erupted in a hearty welcome for Harry. It seemed the whole shift had awaited his return and perhaps others had come specially. The office was wall-to-wall with French prison guards all wearing smiles, some sheepish.
"Mr. Potter, please, please, 'ave a seat," the warden said. "Your papers are here, but you have been promised a tour, no?"
Harry, soothed by the fawning that Mr. Weasley had been forced to witness, said, "It's been a long day, I'm afraid. I think I will enjoy it more another time."
"Ah," the warden said in great dismay, hanging his head to the side. "Well, next time, then. I"m sure we will be seeing you often, no?" He rocked back in his own grand, leather swivel-chair and winked. He twirled his curled mustache while Harry finished the paperwork from earlier.
The warden spoke to Mr. Weasley instead while Harry wrote. "You are very lucky to 'ave this young man, eh?"
"Yes, yes, we are," Mr. Weasley said, dropping his hand on Harry's bent shoulder. "I'm not certain Harry is feeling so happy to have us, today."
Harry stared at the line where a translation had been added reading Place of Capture. He tried to hold his anger from draining away; he had been enjoying the just desserts of it, it turned out, and was not keen on losing it just yet. It leaked away nevertheless as Harry wrote out the village and address where he had first begun battling the vampire.
The warden was saying, "Brought thees monster in on 'ees own. Even we 'ave found records of this Fueago in our files going back eight-hundred years. We 'ave a medal in our Defense Division for such single-handed deeds. You 'ave one to give 'im, of course?"
"I don't need another medal," Harry said, turning the page over to fill in the Perpetrator Physiognomy section.
The guard let his mustache spring back to a spiral. "Ah, you are weighted down by too many already, I am sure."
Paperwork done, photo carefully lifted from a picture rail that ran along the ceiling and signed, they were led back to the lift by a guard who spoke no English. Harry sighed, his previous grudge building again as they rose up through the solid rock.
Mr. Weasley said, "I think it would be better if you said something, Harry."
"I wish you trusted me," Harry said, finding more sting in speaking than in stewing.
"We'll have to work on that," Mr. Weasley said amiably, forcing Harry to have to hold back on rolling his eyes.
It was three in the morning before Harry returned home. As he fell into bed, limbs stiff and painful, he wondered if he did indeed need a Healer. He stared into the darkness, thinking that he could wake Snape to take him to hospital. That sounded right awful, but lying there suffering was not terribly pleasant or rational either.
With a groan Harry rolled out of bed and, foregoing the dressing gown, padded down the corridor to knock on Snape's door.
"Sorry," Harry said when the door opened. "I hope you have a potion for . . . whatever it was I got hit with." He rubbed his forehead as he tried to remember.
"Are you hurt?" Snape asked.
"Well, not badly. I just want something so I can sleep."
Snape took Harry by the elbow and led him downstairs to the toilet where the potions were kept. The lamps in the small room stung Harry's eyes as he took a seat on the closed toilet.
"What did you get hit with?"
Harry was grateful that Snape was not angry at being woken. "Something Voltage class, I'm not exactly sure what."
"Not usually terribly harmful, just painful," Snape said. "Sure it was that?"
"Yeah. It had a lot on it. Came right through my counter. I cannot wait to get my wand tomorrow."
"That's a switch," Snape commented. "Who hit you?"
"Shacklebolt."
Snape peered at him over the top of a bottle. "What did you say to deserve that?"
"Long story. Suffice to say, no one trusts me."
Snape set the bottle down and pulled the step-stool over to sit upon it facing Harry. He considered his words before saying: "Trust is thin and fragile but requires great time and effort to construct, nevertheless."
"I know that. It's just hard to function without in the meantime."
"Drink this," Snape said, holding out a small glass of something rust colored.
Harry sipped the potion. "I'm sorry I had to wake you."
"Do not be," Snape stated firmly. "This is precisely the situation where I want you to do so. If I can TRUST that you will always do so I will quite frankly sleep better, which will far and away make up for any necessary interruptions."
Harry handed the glass back. "Thanks. I feel better already."
"You may have another half-dose in the morning if you need it."
"We don't have that potion at the Ministry. What is it?"
"Restricted," Snape said with a smirk.
"We have restricted potions, believe me," Harry pointed out with a grin.
"More restricted even than that," Snape insisted with a smug lift of his nose.
- 888 -
One benefit of Harry's difficult shift the night before was his resistance to having a wand identical to his old one had evaporated utterly. The chime of Ollivander's shop door rang a jolt of eager expectation through Harry; he wanted dearly to be properly armed again.
"I'll be with you directly!" a wavering elderly voice came from the far aisles of the shop's stock area.
Harry gazed around the work space in search of his wand and spied a long holly-wood wand on a rack above the workbench. The rack consisted of spaced pairs of brass lizard feet that gripped each wand. A fat poplar wand was held only by the points of the claws, making Harry wonder if the finish was drying on it.
"Ah, Mr. Potter," Ollivander intoned with clear affection. He had approached silently, startling Harry.
"Is that mine there?" Harry asked. "It looks long."
Ollivander gave each brass claw a flick of his finger and they opened with a spasm before stretching themselves as though to work out the kinks. Ollivander lifted the wand and held it out. "Fifteen and a half inches. That was the length of the feather you brought me to use."
Harry took hold of the wand and felt a rush of tingles through his arm. "It is long," he said, giving it a wave. The tip bent even more than the old one as it moved. "It's great, though," Harry breathed, giving it a try by making the window shade neatly retract. "It's just right." His vaguely aching joints made him regret not having it sooner.
Harry paid the balance and tried to find a pocket to fit the wand. "I need larger wand pockets," he said, dismayed.
Ollivander closed the till and placed his long hands on the counter between them to study Harry's problem. "Many wizards with wands of that size utilize a scabbard pocket, here, at the waist." He mimicked drawing a sword. "Or a pocket down the back." Here he lifted his age-stained hand over his head. "If you are adept at getting the wand to jump into your hand with a charm."
Harry practiced that motion and the other one. "One or the other will work, I'm sure." He stashed the wand in his sleeve, point caught in the hem like he often stored his old one. He could not bend is arm with it that way. "I'll have to do something." He flicked the wand back into his hand and caught it.
"Longer sleeves, perhaps," Ollivander suggested.
"Yeah," Harry said. "All of mine have grown a tad short, I think." But he liked the long wand. It exuded its own confidence as it swished through the air. Its weight made it feel stable and trustworthy, which overcame its inconvenience. "Thanks again," Harry said, slipping the wand back into his pocket and holding it in place with his hand.
Back at home, Harry showed off his wand. Held out over the worn, thickly revarnished dining room table, the wand gleamed with newness, unmarred by being dropped or bumped or other mishap.
"Very nice," Snape said, handing it back and returning to the brittle-paged tome open before him. It was all in hand-scrawled latin with no diagrams, so Harry could not make out the subject of it.
"It feels right," Harry said of his wand, but then tried to put it in his pocket, forgetting it would not fit. He set it out on the table as he sat down. "I'm not used to such a long wand." He picked the wand back up to fetch his books from the library. They zipped to him in record speed, slowing with exquisite control and resting flat without a sound.
"At least you are behaving like a wizard now," Snape observed dryly.
Harry feigned insult.
Snape said, "I'll be at Hogwarts tomorrow, now that you are properly armed. I have much to do there to prepare for the upcoming year." He turned a vellum page and leaned over the book, squinting at the small writing.
"What are you reading?" Harry asked, hoping Winky would bring a snack or tea or something if he sat there long enough.
"Something."
Harry frowned at him but did not press. His idle mind returned to what had happened the day before, with his blocking Shacklebolt's curse without using his wand. It felt like a tenuous way to block curses, but same as the last time it had happened, he was grateful it had worked.
Harry mused, "I wonder how Shacklebolt's exorcism went."
This raised Snape's nose out of his book. "What?"
"Oh, I didn't tell you . . ."
"NO . . . you did not," Snape said, laying a strip of linen in his book to mark his place and pushing it to the side.
Tea appeared. Harry took time pouring some out. He was reluctant to recount how he had nearly revealed his secret skills to the Ministry.
"What happened?" Snape asked, sounding determined not to be denied.
"There was a vampire preying on a Muggle family, and well, let me go back to the beginning." Harry explained how his evening went, trying to sound remorseful about needing the Dark Plane to catch the vampire. He tied his story up with: "But I avoided saying exactly how I caught him. Hopefully at the trial, Fueago won't mention it. He didn't know who I was, so maybe he won't think he can get back at me that way."
Snape said, "He will not be brought back for the trial. It will be judged too risky. Take that offered tour of the prison and you will see how he is being kept. I expect in addition to the special wards around his cell block, he will be potioned nonsensical. A rather miserable way to spend eternity."
Harry exhaled. "So I'm safe?"
"I expect. As long as you continue to tell your story judiciously."
"What will the Ministry do if they find out?"
"I honestly do not know. It would depend upon your standing at the time. Best not to establish exactly the hard way." Snape set his tea cup down and pulled his book back before him. After a minute, he put his hand down hard and sat straight to say sternly, "I understand that you needed to capture the vampire. But do try to be more careful." He again returned to his book only briefly, then asked, "Does this werewolf Alastor mentioned move in and out of the underworld at will?"
Harry shook his head. "No. I have to let him come into this world."
The Floo surged with verdant flame, heralding Candide's return. Snape said, "That is something anyway."
The topic was dropped after that.
Next Week: Chapter Five
"I know those," Hermione stated. "And the red boxes and the purple boxes get repeated in the Grand Grades book in Professor McGonagall's office?" She ran her fingers over the intervening black column lines. "How do I choose which are important enough? There will be a lot of assignments."
Snape said, "That is up to you. The purple, obviously are the cumulative examinations you are expected to hold periodically. Some, like Vector, place a weighted mean of the preceding grades in the red columns. Some, like myself, tweak the grades based on the student's house."
Hermione gaped at him. "Do you really?"
Author's Notes:
Life (mostly working on my house and an art project) may get in the way of five coming out next weekend, but I'll try. Otherwise, look on Wednesday.
Chapter 5 -- Personal Peril
Sunday, Harry headed to the Burrow for lunch. When he arrived on the lawn, Ginny and Ron were dodging about on broomstick, playing catch with a Quaffle. The sun sliced through the dense clouds in bursts of yellow beams as though teasing about coming out for real.
Upon seeing Harry, Ron gestured at the shed where Harry could find a broomstick. Mrs. Weasley shouted from the door that they should instead all come inside. On the way to the door, Ron nudged Harry in the ribs and said, "Ginny wanted to invite Aaron."
Ginny shot a deadly glance at her brother.
Harry asked, "You didn't, though?"
Ron replied for his sister, "She couldn't get the nerve up to owl him."
They stepped into the cozy and worn Weasley household. They plonked themselves down upon the ragged orange and green couches where the twins sat, unusually subdued.
Harry gazed around the rough, abused decor and wondered what Aaron would think of it. His thoughts were paralleled by Ginny asking, "So, would he have accepted an invitation?"
"I don't know. He grew up in decent wealth . . ." Harry trailed off, trying to take care.
"Oh," Ginny said. "He was dressed nice. Not many men dress nice . . . unless they're gay."
Harry said, "I shouldn't speak. I don't know if he'd care." The others were engaged in their own conversation, so he felt free to say, "It's possible that you'd care more than he would."
Ginny chewed her nail and glanced at her brothers' red heads all clustered together, talking low. She said, "You think he'd go out on a date with me?"
"I think Aaron would go on a date with anyone."
Ginny laughed. "Well, that's promising . . . and not so promising. I guess I should try. What kind of women does he like?"
"He likes to have fun, as far as I can tell."
"He sounds perfect." She stared off into the distance. "For a while . . ."
Other Weasleys arrived and the room grew louder. Harry glanced up each time, dreading to find Percy, but did not have the displeasure.
"Looking for someone?" Ginny asked.
Harry leaned forward and so did she. More privately, Harry said, "I'm kind of hoping Percy isn't coming."
"Mum didn't say he was and she usually makes a big fat deal out of it. Like we're all so much better off all together, even if that means tolerating him."
"Well," Harry thought better, "he IS family."
"Don't remind me."
She started to pull back. But Harry motioned her forward again. "Is he still dating Belinda? I thought maybe they'd broken it off."
"Thinking of hitching back up with her?" Ginny asked.
"No, just seemed like she was happier around the time I had heard that."
"I think they're still an item," she said consolingly.
Harry replayed the scene in the Minister's office. "Yeah. Seems likely." Harry reclined again, thinking back on the little coincidences with Percy at the Ministry, like his reviewing the Department of Magical Transportation's procedures just before the Floo network started always dropping him in the wrong place. Worst yet, around the time they stopped detecting illicit portkeys. Harry mulled over these old suspicions until Ginny handed him one of the two butterbeers she had gone and fetched.
He gestured for her to sit beside him. "What's Percy doing these days?"
She swallowed a mouthful of beverage. "The usual. Whatever Fudge tells him to. Sometimes I fantasize he might order him to drain the Thames or something impossible like that so we won't see him for a long time."
Even though she clearly disliked her brother, Harry found it hard to express his worst suspicions to her. "Maybe I'll stop in to see Belinda more often," Harry said. "Percy was there last time I did."
Ginny chuckled. "That would right irk him. He was so proud he had your former girlfriend. Paraded her around the Burrow here so bad the first time she didn't want to come back."
They sat down to a heaping meal at a long, crowded table. Harry passed along a plate of jacket potatoes brimming with butter to Ron and glanced at his boss, Mr. Weasley. He was the one Harry really should talk to about Percy. But Mr. Weasley, not two minutes later, raised his fork and said, "Well, unfortunate that we couldn't all be together this Sunday."
"Yeah, too bad," one of the twins muttered in a passable imitation of regret.
The Weasley parents bobbed their heads in sad agreement. Harry sighed and accepted a giant bowl of green peas.
A ruckus broke out at the end of the table, and Bill appeared dismayed by something. "You two just don't know when to give it up," he said.
"What?" Fred asked.
Bill held up his bread knife, which was welded to his spoon.
"Oh, right, that looks like something WE'D do," George offered. "Try your sister."
Ginny had held her face innocent, but now she grinned. Bill stood up and used his long arms to trade utensils with her. "You can have them."
Ginny pulled out her wand, but was interrupted by her mother scolding, "I do hope you haven't ruined that knife and spoon, dear."
"No, mum," Ginny insisted calmly. She waved a complicated spell at the utensil pair and a burning orange beam separated the two. She used her robe sleeve to hold onto the spoon without burning her fingers while she cleaned up the edge.
"Can you show me that spell?" Harry asked.
She demonstrated again to take the flash off the knife handle. Harry tried it a few times and managed to shorten his own butter knife by an inch. The cut off tip burned away to ash as it fell to the table.
"Okay, that I can't fix for you," Ginny said.
"That's all right, Harry dear," Mrs. Weasley said. "They're old anyway."
Harry shrugged at Ginny, who rolled her eyes. He awkwardly stretched his arms apart to work the spell until he at least cleaned up the foreshortened round end.
"That your new wand?" Ginny asked.
"Yup. It works great. I don't know if it's just the time without it, but it responds more naturally than I expect it to. Like it know what I'm thinking."
"It's a long one."
"It is. I'm still getting used to that. As you probably noticed." He spread his arms exaggeratedly to make the point, making Ginny and many others laugh.
"You, of all people, should have a good wand, Harry," Fred said.
"That's what Ollivander said when he put it on rush order."
"We love that guy," George said.
Fred followed with, "Yeah, we've never played any kind of prank on him . . . we must really love him."
- 888 -
When Harry came home from the Burrow, Harry faced the stack of his books still sitting out on the table where he had left them earlier in the hopes that he would get to them after breakfast. He settled in and propped the top one open before him. Again, Sunday early evening was upon him and his reading list had not shortened since Friday. It was as though a hex had been applied to it.
Dulcet voices filtered down from upstairs, distracting him. Halfway through the second chapter of a book entitled Paranormal Prankster Pop Psychology, footsteps trouped down the stairs and the voices grew clearer.
"Let's see the swatches in better light."
"You're right, the light isn't any better down here."
Harry's brow knotted up slightly. He stood and slipped silently to the doorway where he peeked around to observe the figures hunched around one of the small windows, discussing the merits of beads versus sequins. The couches were strewn with stretches of fabric in various shades of off white and what appeared to be tiaras. Harry rubbed his eyes but they still resembled tiaras.
Harry decided with a growing sense of bemusement that this was some kind of ritual wedding preparation so he ducked fully back into the dining room. Candide saying, "Harry will be home soon, so we should straighten things up a bit," slowed him returning to the table. As if he would care. He could not imagine she believed him orderly. He shook his head.
"Who's this?" a voice asked.
A third voice, sounding like Candide with a bad cold, said knowingly, "Candide is inheriting a son, didn't she tell you?"
"Ruthie, really, not exactly," Candide said, speaking to her sister, Harry now knew from the name.
The second voice was shrill as it said, "He's expecting you to take care of his brat?"
Harry ducked his head, face scrunched in amusement. He stayed put, near the doorway, wanting to hear how Candide handled that.
"Hardly. He's nineteen."
"Worse! Still at home at that age? Must be a regular dosser."
Fabric rustled as though being gathered together with care to keep it flat. "You should tell her who it is," Ruthie said with a grin in her voice.
"Your mum said his father couldn't seem to find the time to pay a call."
"Severus works very hard," Candide said with patience.
"I had a year of Potions with him at Hogwarts," the grating voice said. "I quickly decided I'd stick to using cauldrons strictly for cooking. You remember him, don't you, Ruthie? Used to slither around the dungeon during class. We thought he must hang himself up like a vampire bat in some dark corner to sleep at night."
Harry, who very well knew how evil a vampire was, bristled at this.
"Karol, if you don't want to be in the wedding, you don't-"
"NO, NO, I love weddings. It's men I can't stand."
Harry scratched the back of his head, thinking he may have missed his opportunity for an unembarrassing entrance, from Candide's perspective anyhow. If he were Dudley, he could pretend to have been wearing headphones of some kind all this time. Instead, Harry Disapparated to a spot two feet from where he stood, hoping it made only one noise, given the short distance. He sat at the table and pulled the teapot over, and made other noises with his books.
Footsteps shuffled over and Candide said, "Hello, Harry."
Harry lifted his head as though surprised. A second figure and then a third came into view. Ruthie was a heavyset, rougher skinned version of Candide. She wore glowing red lipstick and her eyelashes were unnaturally long. The other woman, in contrast, had a sunken-cheeked face and a sour mouth, and at the moment, it hung open.
"This is my sister, Ruthie," Candide said, indicating the wide-robed figure on her right.
Harry stood to shake hands. Ruthie had a glint in her eye as though thrilled to meet him.
"And this is Karolyn, a childhood friend, and also a third cousin."
Harry nodded at her because she did not have the sense to lift her hand. He did not bother Legilimizing her, because he would rather not know. He retook his seat where his books provided a wall to bunker behind. Ruthie placed her beefy hands on the table and leaned toward him. She moved like someone accustomed to using her size to seem immovable or unstoppable, depending.
"You didn't come to meet mum and dad at The Dinner."
Harry found he instinctively wanted to be careful what he said to her. "I didn't want to be in the way."
This answer struck her as odd and funny, or so her face indicated. "'In the way?' That wouldn't be a problem."
"You, uh . . ." Karolyn began. She turned to Candide. "You, uh, live with Harry Potter?"
Candide laughed and said, "Well, yes."
"Don't, uh . . ." She glanced painfully at Harry. "Don't, uh, bad things tend to happen . . ."
Ruthie broke in, laughing too. "Didn't you see all the new repairs to the house there?"
Candide fell serious. "Sometimes bad things happen. But they're handled well." She shifted her arms uncomfortably, indicating to Harry that recent events had not let her go yet, even if she hid it most of the time.
Ruthie put her hand upon her generous breast and said, "Oh, you have a knight in shining armor. How sweet."
Candide looked straight at Harry and said, "I have two, actually." She glanced around. "Let's leave Harry to his studies. Come on." As they re-entered the hall with last glances back, Candide said, "Taffeta, silk, velvet, lace, hell, felt even; it really doesn't matter."
Later, after her companions disappeared in the Floo, Candide sat down across from Harry, clutching her hands momentarily. "Sorry 'bout that."
"It's all right," he assured her.
"My cousin is a little . . . uptight. But she loves weddings, knows all the latest . . . styles. What's in. What's out." Candide sounded regretful. Harry remained silent. She went on, "So much to do to get ready. You don't know."
Harry flicked his quill around in his fingers. "No, fortunately I don't know."
Candide put her hands in her lap and sat vaguely hunched. "I always wanted to get married. It always looked like so much fun . . . get to be the center of attention for a day . . . everything just the way you want it." She slumped a little more. "Now I just want the day to come and be over with."
Harry's lips twitched impishly as he said, "You want to just wave a magic wand and make it so, you mean?"
She refused to be baited, sounding stressed as she said, "You have a spell that conjures a florist, a hairdresser, a jewelry, a candlemaker, a cupbearer, a dressmaker, a decorator, a makeup artist, a Supreme Mugwort . . . and a string quartet?"
"Nope. I would conjure them all for you if I could, though."
She relented. "I appreciate that."
Harry rubbed his stomach which complained faintly of being empty. "What time did Severus say he'd be back from Hogwarts?"
Candide jumped up. "Oh, I forgot. He told me to owl when we were through." She rushed to the other room for a pen and parchment.
Harry muttered to himself, "Smart man."
- 888 -
Monday first thing at training, Rodgers appeared and told Harry that he was wanted in the office. Harry mused about what he may be in trouble for until he found a contrite Shacklebolt speaking with Mr. Weasley, who appeared chipper, especially in comparison to the man beside him.
"Harry," Mr. Weasley said after the Auror remained quiet, "Kingsley wishes to apologize." He stepped closer to Harry and leaned down as though sharing something confidential. "You realize that the hold a vampire has over his victim is stronger than an Imperio in some ways because it does not require the master to stay in the vicinity of or remain aware of the person they are controlling?"
"Er, we haven't covered it yet, but I understand." Harry remembered tossing his wand down before Occluding his mind. It gave him shivers, even here where he was safe. "I can imagine it, sir. Fueago put a fog around the house and I lost Blackpool to him and almost lost myself."
Mr. Weasley patted him on the back. "It's fortunate for us that you didn't. Severus' lessons held you in good stead."
"That and lots of experience with Voldemort," Harry agreed. At this, Shacklebolt raised his head slightly. "It's all right, sir," he reassured the Auror.
"I really was trying to get at you, Potter." He rubbed his upper arm, ash still marked the back of his hands and his forehead, as though the exorcism had just ended that morning and he had not gathered the sense to wipe it off. "I remember doing that, but I couldn't stop myself." He sounded truly horrified.
Upbeat, Harry said, "Now that I have the right wand, it would be all right."
"It would not be all right," Shacklebolt insisted. "I tried to throw an Imperius Curse at you-"
"You what?" Mr. Weasley blurted.
Still clutching his arm, Shacklebolt gestured clumsily at Harry. "He blocked it somehow. I don't know how." Harry was not accustomed to seeing him so uncertain and just wished he would return to himself and stop worrying so.
"I just squashed it," Harry said. "Since I couldn't block it."
Shacklebolt stared at him, taking that in. He said. "But you're all right now?" he asked, oddly needing reassurance.
Harry still ached in various random places, but he said, "Yeah. 'S Fine."
"Well, Harry, back to your training," Mr. Weasley said. He steered Harry out with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm glad that's taken care of," he confessed. "Kingsley will be a few days returning to his old self. Feels rather guilty, I think."
They had arrived at the training room. "Sorry I delayed Harry," Mr. Weasley told Rodgers. Harry's fellows were already well into their drills. Rodgers gestured for Harry to take over opposite Tridant. Their newest member had a much shorter sequence, which Harry was happy to stick to while he grew accustomed to the nuanced responsiveness of his new wand. Tridant seemed less defeated today. Harry figured he was sick of constant advice, so he kept quiet as they exchanged spells and counters, back and forth.
At lunchtime, Harry headed up to the Minister's office. Belinda was sneaking bites of a sandwich out of the bottom drawer of her desk. She gave him a dull hello without meeting his eyes.
Harry glanced around, frowning to find Percy glaring at him from where the workmen were affixing the hand-carved flowery edges to the new shelves in the corner. The room smelled pervasively of shellac.
"I was going to see if you wanted to go out for lunch," Harry said sweetly to Belinda. "But I see you're already eating."
She jerked strangely as he spoke, making Harry turn to see if Percy had made some kind of move.
"I can't go to lunch," she said dully.
Harry noticed that her robes were not as neatly pressed as expected. Percy and his obnoxious ways may be making her depressed and that made Harry's skin prickle. He leaned closer, feeling that he really should talk to her alone. "Coffee later?" Someone, most likely Percy, stepped up beside him and Harry's skin prickled more, his robes felt dank against his flesh as though in dire need of being washed.
Harry stood straight and spun on Percy. The feeling faded slightly; Harry now was merely nauseated by the sourest Weasley's presence.
"You have no business up here, Potter," Percy said, spitting faintly on Harry's name.
Harry wiped his cheek. "I have business wherever I want to have it." He tried to Legilimize Percy, who was glaring at him as though inviting him to do so, but Harry received no impressions. "What business do you have here?" he asked, hoping to jar some impression loose. His temper was getting the better of him, so Harry asked mockingly, "Messing up another department, are you? Why is that every time you are assigned somewhere, strange things start happening? You know, like the Portkey detection going all haywire around the time the Ministry is getting attacked by devices coming in as illicit Portkeys."
Percy's hard gaze did not waver. "The Portkey detection has always been hit and miss. I didn't have anything to do with that." More mocking, he went on, "They can't seem to ever fix it properly; it just didn't matter so much before. I was assigned there for a review BECAUSE they were incompetent." He turned to check on the workmen behind him. When he turned back he stood on his toes, leaning over Harry. Nasally, he said, "Get lost, Potter, what do you want, anyway?"
Harry, who beat Percy for physical bulk, but not height, stood his ground. "I want to talk to Belinda, what's it to you?"
Percy's face grew ugly. "You're an idiot; it's everything to me. Get lost or I'll call security."
Harry propped his hands on his hips. "Oh, I'd like to see that."
Smugly, Percy said, "Have you forgotten how many times this year we've needed to call security because you were in here?"
Percy found the mark with that one. Harry backed off and with a sweet goodbye to Belinda, departed, feeling ill tempered.
Tonks did not return before Harry's stomach growled for dinner, so Harry remained out of sorts as he headed home. In the dining room Candide sat alone, reading the papers.
Harry took a seat, stomach rumbling. Plates appeared, but just two of them.
"Where's Severus?"
"He's started working on something today."
"He's at Hogwarts?"
"No, upstairs. But he insisted he not be bothered."
Harry ignored this and headed up.
The door to the spare room used for storage was closed but a whiff of something metallic and hot emanated from under it. Harry knocked and waited, not wanting to barge in and disturb anything fragile.
The door opened just six inches. "I am working on something," Snape said dismissively. "And you are interrupting."
"Oh. I was just . . . wondering why you weren't at dinner."
"I'm at a critical juncture, then I can let it steep. I will eat later."
The door closed with a click.
Downstairs, Candide asked, "Does he throw himself this completely into his work often?"
"Occasionally." Harry tried not to display his befuddlement and Candide returned to reading that oddly peach-colored Muggle newspaper.
Harry sighed and tried to answer his post. He found himself not in the mood for correspondence and tossed it aside, half-unopened. His books did not hold his attention well either. When the door-knocker sounded, Harry's heart leapt at the distraction.
Outside, Elizabeth stood in the gathering gloom of the garden. "Hope you don't mind if I call. I owled from my instructor's house, but didn't get a reply before my lesson ended."
"Oh, sorry. I didn't open my post yet. I don't mind at all, come in."
"We didn't get a chance to talk at your party. There were so many people and I couldn't stay long." She removed her cloak and fastidiously straightened it before handing it to Harry to hang up.
"How are your studies?" Harry asked.
She laughed. "I have a long break, so I've been learning new pieces on the piano mostly." In the hall she said, "The repairs are marvelous, by the way. I didn't get a chance to tell you that."
She seemed a tad nervous as he sat her down across from Candide and poured her some tea. Elizabeth sniffed the tea cup dubiously, sleeves pulled down, halfway covering her hands.
Harry supplied, "Oh, that smell is not the tea. Severus is brewing something."
"Oh, my mum used to do that. Now my dad says it's ridiculous to stink a nice house up when the chemists is just around the corner." This statement led to a fade out of her expression.
Harry was just thinking that this was the second time today he needed to be alone to talk to someone. Candide folded her newspapers and set them aside. Harry thought she was going to leave, but she topped up her teacup.
"Your dad isn't magical?" Candide asked in a highly conversational tone.
"No," Elizabeth shook her head. She wiggled her hands so they stayed inside her sleeves which were stretched taught where they emerged from her pullover.
Harry remembered her father quite clearly as he nearly threw him out of the house after a small tiff sparked solely by Harry's presence. Harry had been interested in Elizabeth before then and after had put her off in deference to not causing trouble.
Candide went on, "Did your dad know your mum was a witch before they married?"
"Yes, of course," Elizabeth laughed lightly, but it faded quickly. "You know, I should probably go. I was on my way home from my lesson. It ended early, and-"
"You don't need to go just yet," Candide said. "Have some more tea."
Elizabeth accepted the cup and drank from it as though the task require a great deal of concentration. "I'm glad I came to your party the other night," she stated out of the blue, almost like a pledge.
Harry's brow furrowed. "I should have another smaller one so I can actually talk to people."
Candide teased, "You would have had more time had you not stood in the corner all night with Ms. Tonks."
Harry blushed. Elizabeth ducked her head. "I really should go." She sounded breathless now and would not be convinced to stay longer. Harry helped her on with her cloak and said goodbye. She glanced back and waved before fading into the wet night.
"Huh," Harry uttered as he sat back down across from Candide.
"You have that skill Severus does to see into people's heads. Didn't you use it?"
Harry shook his head. "Think I should have? I don't like to unless I'm in danger."
Candide unfolded the next unread newspaper and said, "People have odd ways of asking for help."
"Are you referring to Elizabeth?" Harry asked sharply
"Yes." Candide turned the large page and flattened the section with a snap before folding it backwards to read the bottom portion. "Just a sense I had . . ."
"You thought she was asking for help?" Harry asked, mystified.
She tilted her head. "Maybe she's not getting on with her father, or maybe she just had a bad piano lesson. I don't know her well enough to know."
"She was a little off."
"Then it probably isn't the lesson."
Harry pushed his teaspoon around. "Think I should go over to her house?"
"Have you met her family?"
"Yeah, her father hates me."
"That probably would not make things better in that case. Really, truly hates you?" she prompted doubtfully.
"Well, said I wasn't fit for his daughter. Threw me out."
"Really?" Candide tried to swallow a grin. "A whole wizarding world full of fathers who would dream of having you dating their daughter and you find the single one who wouldn't."
"You know; they think that until I actually show up for the date," Harry said, thinking of Tara's parents. "Then they start to have second and third thoughts. And verify that we aren't planning on marriage."
"No wonder you're dating an Auror. Have you met Tonks' parents?"
Harry puzzled that. "No, I haven't. I assume that means we're not planning on marriage."
"Not soon, in any event," Candide commented. "Tonks and you get along well?"
Harry considered that question. "I can be myself around her. I don't have to worry about anything. She can take care of herself." Harry's insides twinged happily thinking of her.
Candide said, "Unlike the rest of us, who are all damsels in distress waiting to happen?"
"I didn't say that," Harry insisted. "It just lets me relax. She tells me what she thinks. Everyone else I've dated is always holding something back." He then added, "And she's cute."
"Well, that's all that matters," Candide stated, still teasing. "And she can look like most anyone, right?"
Harry shrugged. "I like her as herself."
Candide, sly grin in place, said, "Do you even know what that is?"
"Yes, of course," Harry insisted. "I think."
"You've never asked her to look a certain way? Or implied that you prefer one hair color over another?"
Candide seemed to be leading somewhere, but Harry could not see where. "No."
"That may be why she likes you too. I expect she gets a lot of that."
"She's a metamorphmagus, why would she care? It's so easy for her to change."
Candide paused before she said, "But that doesn't mean she wants to."
Harry frowned, not considering that likely. "She used to joke around with us all the time. Making her nose big, making herself old."
"I think that supports my point," Candide said.
"How?"
"She was removing it as an issue by making fun of it." She waved her hand dismissively as desserts arrived in a sparkle. "But it's no matter. More a matter seems to be that you aren't supposed to be dating her."
Harry rubbed his head, mussing his hair more. "No. We're breaking Ministry rules."
"And getting away with it because you're Harry Potter."
Harry stared off into the dim main hall. "Something I swore I wouldn't ever let them do."
"Your own moral code is always the first to go," Candide quipped. Harry stared at her, prompting her to add, "I didn't mean that so seriously. Besides, if anyone deserves to break the rules, it's you."
"That doesn't help." He flipped through one of his books, not reading it. "What do you think I should do about Elizabeth?"
"Take her out somewhere and get her to talk. Use that creepy skill you learned from Severus on her."
"That's cold."
She buried her nose in the paper again. "Depends on what's going on."
Snape finally came downstairs, trailing an aura of metallic acridity.
"What are you working on?" Harry asked as a full plate materialized before his guardian.
"Something," Snape replied rudely.
Harry and Candide shrugged at each other.
- 888 -
Harry did not have a good idea what to do about Elizabeth until Thursday. When he came home from training he found his friend Hermione at the table across from Snape, who sat far back in his chair, cross-armed, hair half concealing his face.
"Hi, Harry," his friend greeted him brightly. She turned the page of a large grid-lined book in front of her. "So, names along here, in order. Marks here . . ." Harry leaned over her shoulder to peer at the blank grade book.
Snape said, "And you need a Fixitive charm. And an Fouralarm if you truly wish it to be permanent."
"I know those," Hermione stated. "And the red boxes and the purple boxes get repeated in the Grand Grades book in Professor McGonagall's office?" She ran her fingers over the intervening black column lines. "How do I choose which are important enough? There will be a lot of assignments."
Snape said, "That is up to you. The purple, obviously are the cumulative examinations you are expected to hold periodically. Some, like Vector, place a weighted mean of the preceding grades in the red columns. Some, like myself, tweak the grades based on the student's house."
Hermione gaped at him. "Do you really?"
Snape gave her a challenging look in return.
From her position bent over the grade book, Hermione said, "Harry, yell at him for me."
Harry laughed instead. "I've heard him say that he works hard to reduce his advanced class to just Slytherins and Ravenclaws. That must be how he does it."
Hermione shook her head disbelievingly. Harry took the seat beside her and opened his post. The one he had sent to Elizabeth was in the pile as though Hedwig had brought it back undelivered.
Hermione said, "I'll be out of the way shortly. McGonagall sent me a box-load of stuff and suggested I get Professor Snape to answer any questions."
Airily, Snape said, "And here I thought she and I were getting along better."
Hermione leaned closer to Harry, "I'm not taking him seriously. Is that the best course?"
"Yes. Especially since it'll make him nuts." Harry gave his guardian a smile to buffer that. To Hermione, Harry said, "Can you do me a favor before you go?"
"Sure, Harry."
"When you're done. Don't rush."
"I don't have much time to get ready for first term." She sounded panicky. "I put in my notice at work so I can have the next few weeks, full time." She pulled out a battered booklet entitled Rulers & Rules and flipped to the first note she had taped inside. "Now, about this policy on reasonable detention . . . I happen to remember you violated it on at least ten occasions that I know of."
They both waited for Snape's reaction, which was not forthcoming. "And your point is?" he finally prompted easily.
Hermione went on, "So, does that mean I can violate it? Or is it only Heads of House or only YOU?"
Later, Harry led his friend out the door. The evening was warm and comfortable and he wondered why he did not find more time for walks. He stopped suddenly, thinking that Kali would like to come out as well. He could feel her claustrophobia and her desire for fresh air and open space. "Just a second," Harry said, going to fetch her.
They resumed their walk down to the train station, Kali flapping along beside and around them while Harry explained. "You remember Elizabeth, right? Something is . . . I don't know how to say it . . . well, suffice to say, I'd like to talk to her, but her father wouldn't let me if he sees me, I expect. I'm wondering if you can lure her out to a coffee shop or to a pub so I can chat with her."
Hermione puzzled this. "Sure, Harry."
Kali flitted by. Harry urged her to fly to the approaching white house, thinking to make her look in the windows.
"Where's she going?" Hermione asked in concern. Kali had been sticking close until then.
"I'm sending her ahead to scout. I'm trying to use her as a mobile extendible eye." Harry stopped and closed his eyes but he could only get disconnected, fleeting impressions from his pet. Last time she had been in pain when he saw through her eyes. Without that strong sensation, she was difficult to locate in his mind. He shook his head, giving up.
"Not working?"
"It has before, but it's hard. I should practice that; it'd be useful." He urged Kali back to him and stopped on the pavement behind the large shrubs bordering the Peterson house. "I'll wait here."
"If I'm talking loudly when I return, the father's with me."
"Got it. Thanks."
Harry listened to her shoes clunk up the drive. The porch projected her voice faintly to the street as she spoke with someone at the door. Harry held Kali facing that way and tried to hear through her more sensitive ears. Sometimes he could manage, but it faded in and out.
" . . . yes, Hermione. I'm a friend from Oxford . . . I'm studying law there . . . yes. Just happen to have taken the train into town. I'm staying with a friend and remembered that Elizabeth lives here. "
Things went on in this vein, like an interrogation.
"We're in Magdalen together."
Harry grinned in affection for his old friend. She could bluff anything because she knew enough about any topic to do so and remembered everything anyone ever told her.
"Well, when she comes in tonight, please tell her I stopped by."
Hermione came back down the walk.
"He's a tough customer," she muttered.
"You got Mr. Peterson?"
"I assume."
They reached Harry's house a short, silent walk later.
"Something about Mr. Peterson I don't like. Oh, hello, Candide," Hermione said, when they were greeted at the door.
Harry explained, "We were just trying to wade through the Mr. Peterson moat to see Elizabeth."
"Did you?"
"He said she wasn't home."
"Was he lying?" Candide asked, something Harry had not considered.
Hermione thought that over. "I'm not sure. Sometimes I can tell, but not with that guy. He's the same no matter what he is talking about."
- 888 -
Saturday afternoon, Harry had field shadowing again. He stashed his new wand in his newly extended pocket, glad to have it. In the office he found Rogan waiting for him.
"Well, Potter, ready to go?"
"Yes."
Rogan's step was lighter than usual as they strolled the East End on patrol. Harry wondered at his change in mood.
"Nice day, isn't it?" Harry asked, wondering if the weather explained it.
"What? Oh, yes."
Harry decided that he needed to understand things better, so he dived in with, "This is the first time in a long while that they've let you do routine patrol, isn't it?"
Rogan frowned, which his rounded face did not allow to be to grim. "Yup. They'll let me out with a full Auror or you."
"Or me?" Harry asked. "They have a lot of faith in me, don't they? In some ways."
"Things were better this week," Rogan said. "Kingsley's lost his superior attitude." With mock dreaminess, he added, "Wonder why?" Minutes later he said, "At least I didn't attack a trainee while compromised."
Harry now understood why Rogan felt better. "He did seem less smug this week."
"I'm lucky we're shorthanded. I'd still be on full probation, writing endless memos, otherwise."
They returned in the wee hours after a long and uneventful shift. The lamps in the Auror's offices were at half wick, bathing everything in misleading warm light. Harry sat down on the bench to remove each of his shoes and rubbed his feet.
Rogan gave him a grin as Harry sat there with his socks exposed. "Need new shoes?"
"They are new; that's the problem." Fortunately there was a salve at home for just this situation, so Harry reluctantly slipped his lace-ups back on and skipped tying them when his feet protested the very thought.
Buried in distracted thoughts of future relief, Harry grabbed up his cloak and turned to go. Instinct made him drop the cloak, mid-swing to put it on, when a wave of aversion struck. If his wand had been shorter and had not been sticking inches out of his pocket, he would not have drawn it in time.
Harry managed half a rubber block before something dark exploded, filling his vision with four-foot hairy razor points. Rogan dived off the side of the bench, having drawn his wand immediately after Harry did. He threw a blasting curse that tossed the dissipating rubber block and the giant spiked object into the corner where it began to deflate with a musical squeaking sound. Fresh gouges in the wall haloed it.
Harry stared at his cloak, draped over something the size of a beach ball with a hundred spikes stuck through it. The spines tipped slowly flat to the floor as the ball lost volume.
"What is that?" Harry asked after taking a breath.
Rogan stood up and stepped over beside him to watch the thing in the corner, wand aimed at it. "I've never seen anything like it." He jerked to look Harry up and down. "Did you get cut?"
"I don't think so," Harry dully said.
"I don't want to hear "think" Potter. It could be poison tipped."
Harry gestured at it. "Something that big and nasty would not need to be poisoned as well, would it?"
"Go fetch Tonks or whoever is on duty." Rogan kept his gaze and his wand on the thing as Harry obeyed.
Half a minute later, Tonks was saying, "Something jumped out of your cloak? A regulated creature?"
Harry led the way into the changing room and gestured.
"Merlin the White, what the heck is that? She leaned her long neck out to better examine it without stepping closer. "Better get Mysteries up here." She dashed off, saying behind her. "Cover the office, Rogan. Harry can guard that thing."
Rogan dashed out the door in the other direction from the one Tonks had taken. Harry held his wand out but doubted he would need it again; the thing sat sunken, unmoving. Harry's right shin stung and when he shook it, his trouser leg stuck to his skin. Harry backed up to the wall, so he could put enough distance between himself and the spiked thing to lift his robe and check his leg. His black trousers made it hard to see how bloody it really was, but there was a rent in the fabric. Harry awkwardly covered the wound with his left hand, then remembered he could Staunch it. He stood straight and imagined his leg packed to the knee with snow. The pain faded to a dull throb. He waited.
The door opened and Harry gestured with his blood-smeared hand that Mr. Weasley should keep to the left. The department head's red brow furrowed as he came over to Harry, while keeping his gaze fixed in the corner.
"Tristan sent me an owl by Floo saying something had attacked the changing room. What is that?"
"Don't know."
"Where'd it come from?"
"It was in my cloak."
This made Mr. Weasley turn his head to Harry. "You hurt?" He grabbed up Harry's wrist to better see his bloodied hand.
"I got cut on the shin. I dropped the cloak but didn't quite get out of the way of it." Harry played that half a second over in his mind. "Rogan blasted it into the corner before my block failed."
"Is it poisonous?" Mr. Weasley sharply asked.
"I don't know," Harry admitted.
Led by Tonks, a crew came in from Mysteries, wearing padded robes and masks, so Harry could not recognize them. They hovered the thing into a massive solid titanium trunk and hovered that off.
Harry said to Mr. Weasley and Tonks, "All I know is I'm glad I have my new wand." Without it, the spikes would have been through him instead of his cloak. "Drat," Harry breathed. "That was my new cloak."
Mr. Weasley patted Harry on the arm and went to the wall where several of the spikes had broken off in the panelling. He used a hankie to pry the longest one free. "Tonks, take this to the potions room and check it for poison." He turned to Harry. "Come along, Harry. We have to keep a watch on you until we know you're clear."
Harry sat on a stool in the corner of what was actually a glorified cupboard. It was as though someone had put a shrinking charm on Snape's old office, leaving only six feet of floor space to stand in. The shelves were deeper than the open floor was wide.
Harry moved to heal the wound on his leg, but Tonks said, "We need a photo of it." She called out into the corridor for Rogan.
Harry rolled his eyes, but sat quietly through what he knew was a required evidence procedure. Rogan worked quickly, then departed, noisily winding the evidence camera film up.
Propping his heel on a shelf and stretching his back and neck, Harry could just get a good look at the wound. It was dark with rapidly clotting blood but it otherwise appeared normal. He pulled out his wand.
Tonks, both hands holding bottles of irritating liquids, scrubbed at her nose on her sleeve. "Why don't you let me do that. You're liable to leave a scar if you don't aim the spell properly."
"Because you're busy. Another scar isn't going to matter," Harry said, bristling at being babied.
"I don't want your lovely leg scarred," she insisted, voice taking on a sexy tone.
Mr. Weasley choose that moment to step into the doorway. "Am I interrupting?"
"No, of course not. No sign of poison so far," Tonks said, putting drops of something milky onto a glass dish and touching it with the end of the spike. "You're a wiz at healing spells, Arthur. Take care of Harry will you?"
Mr. Weasley crouched beside Harry and peeled his soaked trouser leg up farther. He frowned. "Good thing it didn't get more of you, Harry. Dangerous thing."
"Yeah," Harry had to agree. He held tight to his next thought by biting his lip. That thing seemed like something the twins might have invented. Harry decided he could check into that himself.
Mr. Weasley cast several spells at his leg, then he spit into his hankie and rubbed Harry's leg briskly to remove the dried blood. "Looks good. It would have been deeper, but it hit bone."
"Spoken like a man with six sons," Tonks teased.
Even Harry smiled at that.
Some time later, with Mr. Weasley assisting because Tonks spilled the second to last bottle of Prismatic Revelation, Tonks declared, "I don't see any sign of poison."
Harry figured it must be around 3:00 in the morning because his eyelids felt made of lead. "Can I go?"
"Why don't you escort him, Tonks?"
"I don't need an escort," Harry sharply insisted, before thinking better that it would be Tonks and that would actually be quite to his advantage. "Sorry," he said to her. "I'm all right though. It was just a scratch."
Tonks put a stopper in the last open bottle and said, sounding fully professional, "It was just someone trying to kill you, Harry."
Harry frowned and huffed since it was difficult to argue otherwise.
At Harry's house in Shrewsthorpe, Harry pleaded with Tonks not to wake Snape.
"Really, it's all right," Harry whispered. "I woke him up last weekend too after shift."
"Why?"
"I got hit kind of hard by Shacklebolt and couldn't sleep," Harry admitted, kicking himself for that slip-up. He went on, "I don't need anything. It's a scratch and it's healed."
"It's a higher alert level . . . for your protection," Tonks argued, also whispering.
"This house is already warded to the maximum it could be," Harry countered.
The sound of a throat clearing floated in through the door to the dining room. Snape stepped in, holding Kali. "She was making a bit of a racket an hour ago."
"Sorry," Harry said. "Didn't mean to wake you."
As he passed them, Snape inspected each of them before letting Kali crawl onto Harry's shoulder. Harry petted her head which she rested it on his collar, tired. "I need to get to sleep," Harry said.
"Bad shift?" Snape asked.
"No exactly," Tonks replied for him. "Someone slipped something deadly into Harry's cupboard."
"I lost another cloak," Harry said. "This must be a record."
"The cloak is no matter," Snape chided him, crossing his arms and confronting Tonks. "What was this thing?"
"We don't know. We sent it down to the Department of Mysteries."
"Where you will be lucky to hear anything of it again," Snape finished for her.
Harry said, "It was cursed. I felt it in time before putting the cloak on."
"So it must have been slipped into the cupboard. You're certain it wasn't in the cloak when you bought it?" Tonks asked.
"I didn't feel it before."
"It could have been masked, though," Tonks suggested.
"That does not fool Harry," Snape provided.
"Okay . . ." Tonks mused, hair shifting to brown. "Our traitor is still skulking around, apparently."
Harry held his tongue on his suspicions for the moment. If it was Percy, Harry felt a bit like handling it himself.
Tonks departed after breaking her work mode long enough to give Harry a hug.
"I'm tired," Harry said, to cut off whatever Snape opened his mouth to say.
"I was going to suggest that you rest. But more importantly, I wished to know if that is your blood on your hand . . ."
"Yeah, I need to clean up." He headed for the toilet, forcing Kali to hang on tightly as he broke into stride, calling over his shoulder, "It's all healed, don't worry about it."
The door to the toilet closed in the distance and Snape said to the empty hall, "No, of course I shan't worry."
Next Week: Chapter Six
Tonks strode into the changing room as Harry's fellows departed. As though speaking for his hollow stomach, she said, "I have half an hour before my shift if you want to find an early bite."
"Sounds great," Harry said, weighing the sack in his hand before slipping it into his pocket. "I need to go Diagon Alley anyway. I told Elizabeth I'd buy her a new wand."
By unstated agreement, they Apparated into the Leaky Cauldron. On the way through the wall in back, Tonks asked, "Why doesn't Elizabeth get her own wand?"
Author's Notes
Sorry didn't get this up at a decent hour. 10 hour drive took up most of my productive day.
Chapter 6 — Rabbit Hole
Sunday, Harry woke and while still in bed, penned a quick letter, careful not to get any droplets of ink on the bedding as he brought the quill from the inkwell to the parchment and back again. Still in his pyjamas, he sat on the trunk under his bedroom window and released Hedwig after giving her very specific instructions to deliver his missive directly to Elizabeth's room. The letter invited her out to the pub that afternoon and suggested that she not tell her father whom she was to meet.
When Hedwig returned while Harry buttoned his shirt, bearing the same unopened letter, he frowned at his owl. "What happened, you couldn't find her?" he asked. It wasn't terribly early, so she should be awake.
Harry tugged on his right sock while Hedwig flapped up to sit on his wardrobe. He padded over, pulled Kali from her cage and stared at her tiny fox-like face haloed by her purple body fur. She sniffed the air, then chewed on his finger. The prickly pain gave him a fleeting impression of a salty, poultry taste that must be from her. He let her out the window and urged her to fly to the Peterson house. She flew to the roof of the train station instead, where the pigeons made slow, chubby prey.
Harry willed her back through his window, which was not easy, mid-stalk like she was with her wings arched high and back. He held her up before his face again. "You aren't cooperating," he criticized her. He pulled on his slippers and took the rejected letter downstairs where he found Candide in the drawing room, glossy magazines spread out before her, pages filled with all manner of brides, posed against a ubiquitous brown background as though standing inside a giant, well-lit paper sack. Clearly the back of the dress was considered more critical than the front, given the prevalence of that angle.
"Would you do me a favor?" Harry asked her. "I mean, if you're not busy."
"Sure, if you do me one." She turned a ten pound, three-inch thick magazine across the desk in his direction. "Do you like this dress?"
Harry stared at the picture. The dress was form-fitting, except for the oversized sleeves, and it had scroll-like beadwork sewn into the waist and down the back in a point. The overall shape was reminiscent of an upside-down tulip, down to the texture. But, to a first approximation, it was a dress.
"It's nice," Harry said, trying to sound like he meant it.
"You don't think it's too princess gown?"
"Too what?"
"You know, like Cinderella, or Snow White. Don't you know Snow White?"
"Wasn't she poisoned by a witch?" Harry asked, wondering how they had wandered into this topic out of dresses.
"She married Prince Charming; that's the key point," Candide supplied. "Oh, that's right, I took you to your first film when you were young. 'Course you haven't seen Snow White." She pulled the magazine back. "How could I forget?"
Harry stood, holding Kali, who sniffed with interest at the perfumes that permeated the magazine pile. He really had lost track of the conversation. "Oh," he said, remembering suddenly that he had indeed briefly rendered himself half his normal age. "What'd we see?"
"Tarzan."
Harry felt a bit left out by this revelation. "Did I like it?"
"Um." She tapped her finger on a page bearing an adorable furry mutt carrying a flower basket and sporting a pink ribbon on the top of its head. "You seemed disturbed by it, honestly."
Harry mulled that, while Candide flipped through twenty pages. She stopped at a dress worn by a woman clearly well along in her pregnancy. It lacked the sparkly effects most the others had and the fabric hue was reminiscent of old parchment rather than a fancy tablecloth like the others. "Good thing we're getting married soon enough not to need THAT dress," she commented. She flipped back to the dress marked with a folded over strip of spellotape.
Harry said, "I was wondering if you could go talk to Elizabeth."
"Not that I'd mind doing so, but she walks by here everyday, doesn't she?"
"That's right," Harry said. "She has lessons. I forgot. Maybe that's why Hedwig didn't find her." Harry leaned over Candide's shoulder to examine the page again, saying, "Maybe the puffy sleeves make it look like Snow White."
Greatly alarmed, Candide asked, "You don't like the puffy sleeves?"
With immense care, as though he had disturbed a nest of asps or perhaps a sleeping horntail, Harry levelly and calmly said, "I didn't say that. I just suggested . . . that's perhaps where the . . . look of it gets its . . . well, Snow White . . . thing." Harry decided that he should not express an opinion if he could help it. "I like them all, really."
He did not expect this to pass muster, but Candide turned a pained eye back to the magazine and flipped idly through the pages she had just gone through a moment before. "They're all very nice. Well, there are few I don't like at all, but, yeah, they are mostly quite nice."
Harry closed his eyes in a moment's relief before excusing himself, saying he needed to do his readings right then so they were finished before Lupin and Harry's cousin arrived for dinner, even though it was only morning. Snape was not in the library or the dining room, and Harry caught a caustic scent in the air, which implied he was bunkered inside the spare room, brewing. Harry hoped he did not come out until the gown shopping was put away for the day.
Harry took his books outside into the front garden to read, the better to see his friend walk by. The burst of summer growth had pushed the ivy over the bench, so Harry had to urge it behind and sweep the dead leaves away with his hand before settling in. The sun was just reaching the ragged top edge of the wall beside him, so soon he would be out of the shade and the morning chill clinging to the surrounding stone would pass. Harry blew on his fingers and found the place where he had left off on the manual of evidence collection.
Two chapters in, reading grew tedious and Harry's mind drifted to the back garden of the house where Sirius' bike had sat idle for months. Once he had this vision in his head, he could not leave it be, even after he told himself he would read one more section before even going to take a look at the motorbike.
Giving in, Harry closed the books, and tossed them onto a table in the library on his way through to the back garden. Repeated trimming spells were required to remove the tangled dead and green ivy, but after that, the cover pulled away easily. The bike underneath gleamed as brightly as it did when Hagrid had delivered it; more so, because of the sunlight.
Harry, more easily than the last time he had maneuvered it, rolled it away from the wall into the small open space. The bike felt closer to the right size as he mounted it, his arms less splayed ungainly wide while holding the handlebars. Harry kicked the bike to life and it roared appreciatively.
Harry heard a shout and looked around and up to find Snape at the window of the spare room. Harry spun the Roar knob down till it fell silent.
"A bit of warning next time before you start up that infernal thing," Snape demanded.
Harry waved. "Forgot how loud it was," he admitted.
"That is not possible to forget," Snape said. "And if you are going far, do be careful."
"How's the brewing going?" Harry asked to end the conversation.
And indeed, Snape hmfed and pulled his head back inside. Grinning, Harry flew the bike as low as possible over the back wall and rode it along the rutted field path bordering the gardens and out to the road. In the daylight, he decided to just keep it on the ground. He adjusted the Roar knob up again to make a reasonable noise and cruised off to the right to search the streets in that direction for Elizabeth's piano teacher.
Harry cruised slowly along rows of well-kept old houses. He was about to turn back onto the main road, when he heard a shout. With effort, he turned the bike around on the narrow tarmac and stopped before a grey house dominated by a large bay window. Elizabeth stood on the porch chatting with an attractive brown-haired woman in smart clothes. She waved, said goodbye to her teacher and came jogging, despite her heels, over to greet Harry.
"I wasn't sure where your teacher's house was," Harry admitted.
Elizabeth was looking over the bike, but she jerked her head to look at him as she said, "You were looking for me?"
"Yeah, let's get an ice cream. Hop on."
She laughed. "You have a helmet for me? You aren't even wearing one."
"Oh," Harry said. "There's a pair in the pannier; hang on." Harry put on the brake, flipped down the stand and swung off, finding his legs already complaining about being stretched by the wide seat. From the closer pannier, he produced a pair of sparkly white helmets. Harry suspected they were magical, given their leather interiors and handmade look. He gave the smaller one to her.
"Do you even have a license?" she asked as she used her colored fingernails and teeth to tighten the stiff strap. "Or a number plate?"
"No," Harry said. "I mostly fly on it anyhow, and the Muggles don't have a license for that."
She got on behind Harry and scooted close, still adjusting her chin strap. "Well, they do, but not for motorbikes, that's for certain."
When she put her arms around him, Harry released the brake and gently accelerated to the main road and waited for an unusual string of traffic to clear.
"Do you know where you're going?" she asked as he turned left.
"No," Harry shouted because he did not want to turn his head far. "I only know my way around from in the air."
They rode for a while on the main road as it wound through field and forest. Sunlight played on the rutted roadway, filtering through the trees. Two villages over, they stopped before a small shop with a cracked giant plastic ice cream cone out front.
As usual, the great bike attracted everyone's attention. Harry, not wanting to embarrassingly deflect questions he could not answer, urged Elizabeth quickly to a bright pink table and went to the window to order.
Seated at the table, Harry took two bites of his treat and said, "So, how are you?"
Her mood shifted instantly, face darkening.
Using clues from Candide, Harry said, "Everything all right at home?"
She swallowed the large bite she had in her mouth and licked her lips before replying. "My dad has always been . . . has always sort of disliked magic. Well, maybe he didn't always dislike it, but when I was young he started dissuading my mum from using it. Except at Christmas and sometimes at the lake camp when the place really needed a good cleaning, or we wanted a fire, but otherwise, I always had the impression he didn't like it." She faded out, expression pinned on the cars driving by. "He's become a lot stricter about it. He gets angry immediately when the topic comes up, and ever since what happened at your place, my mum doesn't argue with him any longer. Takes his side."
She frowned and spooned up the liquid pooling around the mound in her bowl. "I've been difficult too; doing more magic, even when I'm not good at it, just to irk him more."
"I understand," Harry said. "The aunt and uncle I lived with for seventeen years despised magic. I think because they feared it."
"I don't think my dad fears it. I just think he hates losing . . ." She faded out.
"Losing what?"
Harry at first thought she would not answer. "Losing control. He likes to be in charge. Really likes to be in charge. Since I've been away at school, I can't take it anymore. When I was his little girl, I didn't mind so much, for some reason."
Harry thought he understood that too. Snape could be terribly strict as well, but Harry took it to mean that he cared, and Harry surprisingly found he preferred to please him as not, although he had been slipping on that. He pondered that during the subsequent silence. Snape's admission that he had not even attempted to enforce any rules about his dating or the Dark Plane meant that something fundamental had changed between them.
Elizabeth had faded out, and did not notice that Harry had as well. Harry returned to the present and said, "You have to put up with your dad for a while longer."
Her face fell sadder. "Yep. We had a real row the other night. I just couldn't take his silly rules anymore." Her voice dropped, "He took my wand when I threatened to use it. I think he burned it."
Falling into Auror interview mode, Harry asked factually, "What happened to instigate that?"
The tone worked; she said, "He threatened to slap me for something I said. I probably deserved it. But I pulled my wand on him." She laughed dully. "Like I could do anything to him. Like I know any dangerous spells."
"No one deserves to be slapped for mere words," Harry stated, disliking immensely that she had said that. "Do you have friends you can stay with?"
"I could go visit some friends from school."
"Why don't you do that? Getting some space would help a lot."
"Space is what made me realize what a domineering control freak he is. It would give me an opportunity to get a new wand. But my mum . . . well, she'd be unhappy if I did."
They chatted for a while longer, until Harry's uncompleted studies began to nag at him. He said, "I have to get home. We have friends coming for dinner and I have readings to finish." They stood and Harry cleaned up their spots. "I can get you another wand. What kind did you have before?"
"Would you do that? I had birch and unicorn before."
"I'll take you to Ollivanders if you want. Or I can pick you up a wand since that combination sounds easy. Whichever you prefer."
She glanced at her watch. "I need to get home too. Maybe you can fetch one for me." She reached into her clutch and handed him several twenty-pound notes while sheepishly explaining: "Wands are expensive. I don't have any Galleons . . ."
Harry pocketed the money, pulled out the helmets and slipped his on. "I'll fetch you one tomorrow when Ollivanders is open."
She laughed. "Thanks, Harry."
He swung his leg over the bike. "No problem. Hop on."
- 888 -
When visitors' voices sounded from the dining room, Harry put down his books and eagerly went to greet them. The sconces had been extinguished and tall candles lit the table. Candide urged Lupin and Pamela to choose seats. Lupin appeared far healthier than last time he had visited; in fact he seemed to be bordering on chubby, which softened the canine edge to his visage.
They greeted Harry, who, despite not finishing his readings, decided to join them that instant.
"Severus still locked away?" Candide asked Harry.
"I think so."
"What's this?" Lupin asked.
"Severus is working on something," Harry explained. "He won't say what it is, but he spends hours brewing upstairs."
Lupin shook his head. "He's always had an odd, anti-social side." When Pamela swatted him lightly on the arm, he added, "I take that back. As long as he brews Wolfsbane for me, he can be as odd as he likes."
Butterbeers appeared and they fell into warm conversation.
Pamela immediately brought up the one topic Harry hoped they would avoid, at least until later. "How is the wedding coming?"
Candide groaned. "It's coming along. I was hoping for help from my cousin, but her tastes and mine are completely different. And she seems to think it's insulting to allow there to be a budget for such a thing. But I did pick out a dress."
"Did you?" Pamela asked with relish.
"Do you want to see the advert for it?"
The two of them leapt up and departed. Harry sipped his butterbeer and enjoyed the silence.
"How are things with you, Harry?" Lupin asked. He sounded solicitous, which made Harry think he was doing fairly well himself.
"Pretty good," Harry said. "Skeeter has been mostly ignoring me. Training is going well."
He smiled and asked, "No dark wizards haunting you?"
Harry frowned, thinking of the strange thing in his cloak. "Something odd happened the other day, but it might have just been a prank that went poorly. I'm going to investigate tomorrow with the twins. See if they know anything."
Despite Harry's assurances, Lupin's heavy brow lowered and remained there. "Don't make any assumptions Harry. Don't hesitate to let us know if you need the Order revitalized again."
Harry laughed lightly. "I don't need the Order," he said dismissively, feeling Lupin still thought him a child.
"I don't like to see that overconfidence, Harry."
"You sound like Mad-Eye," Harry criticized between sips of butterbeer. "He always says that right before he bowls me over with a spell I don't know."
"You talk like he's still alive," Lupin said quietly.
Harry headed for safety. "No one ever found his body," he pointed out. "Maybe I'll go prod Severus. Do you mind if I leave you alone?"
A fresh butterbeer sparkled in to replace Lupin's empty one. "Not at all. The service here is wonderful."
Harry dashed upstairs and in passing glanced into Snape's bedroom where piles of thick, square magazines had been hastily spread out.
"Your mum said what?" Pamela was saying. Candide glanced up at Harry in apparent consternation at being overheard and he accidentally saw in her eyes a vision of her mum arguing that she should call off the wedding.
"I was just seeing if I can drag Severus from his brewing," Harry said.
"Good idea," Candide said, sounding as pat as he did.
Harry walked around and slipped inside the storage room without knocking. The setup inside was unlike any he had ever seen. Intricate glass tubes connected glass bottles and cauldrons in a three-dimensional rack that filled the center of the room. Portable fires hovered under the suspended bottles propelling swirling liquids through the tubes. Crystal bowls full of colorful grains were lined up on the old door, again propped up as a worktable.
"What are you making?" Harry asked.
Snape sat bent over a stone board, using an obsidian knife to split a pile of course grains. He did not reply.
Harry said, "I take it you're going to be a little while longer?"
Snape nodded.
Harry took a deep breath. "I don't mean to be difficult, but it is probably not the best time to dive into an obsessive brewing session, especially so secretively."
Snape continued to split miniscule grains and push them aside into an indentation in the granite board. His hair hid his face except for his intent brow. Moldy books, heavily bookmarked, sat open nearby in a tall stack, their pages so yellowed they had gone all the way to rust colored.
Harry said, "I didn't realize Candide's mother was trying to stop the wedding."
This brought the glassy black blade to a halt. Snape stretched his neck back and said, "Did Candide tell you that?"
"Not directly." At Snape's sharp look, Harry added, "I didn't mean to pry. It was an accident. Emotion makes it much easier to read people, doesn't it?"
"Very much so. Emotion is a weakness for nearly everyone," Snape said, returning to his chopping. "I will be ten minutes more."
"Invite her parents over," Harry said. "I can work on them a bit."
Harry expected him to decline, but from out the veil of hair came: "Suggest it to Candide."
Harry joined the women as they returned downstairs. Candide was saying, "Headmistress has insisted that Severus delay starting at Hogwarts for a week. Most kind of her."
Pamela resumed her seat and took up Lupin's hand. "Remus doesn't mind at all covering for a while."
Lupin said, "Minerva has gone far out of her way to defend my being at Hogwarts. It's the least I can do."
Harry waited until the conversation about the wedding wore down before he suggested to Candide, "Why don't you have your parents over for dinner here."
"If they'll come," Lupin joked a little tipsily, making Harry wonder if butterbeer had the same effect on a werewolf that it did on an elf.
Candide said, "I expect they'll come. I'll see if Severus minds."
Snape stepped in just then and brusquely asked, "Minds what?"
Candide reached out a hand in his direction and said, "Minds if I invite my parents over for another pre-wedding getting-to-know-each-other?"
Snape sat stiffly and said, "I believe I could survive that." He glanced at Harry and let the topic drop.
Harry stared into his glass and asked, "What about your mum?"
"She'll get an invitation," Snape dryly pointed out.
Lupin broke into laughter. Snape explained, "We are NOT going through this taxing and fraught process with yet another meddlesome party."
Candide had a faint smile as she gamely assured those present: "She's on the invite list."
Lupin continued to chuckle. Snape said, "It was her choice to take herself away from the world. We simply are catering to that."
- 888 -
During lunchtime at the Ministry, Harry rushed about trying to get his errands all finished. At Gringotts, the queue for the exchange—headed by a gaggle of foreign witches, straw-like hair standing in all directions as they hunched over a sack from which they counted out individual triangular copper coins—was too long to make it through in several lunch hours, let alone one, so Harry instead asked the floor Goblin to fetch Ron to take him to his vault.
Ron gamely did so, chatting all the while about the Cannons as the mine car rolled and surged over the sparsely braced, randomly coursing, splitting, and recombining rails. Ron controlled their transport with flicks of his foot on the levers as though it required almost no attention despite the breakneck pace.
With his pocket weighted down with enough gold for yet another wand, Harry stepped back out into the bustling Diagon Alley. Ron followed, also blinking rapidly to ward off the brightness of daylight. Harry weaved through the shoppers and paused outside the window of Weasley Wizard Wheezes. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, stacks of brightly colored boxes, some with thick brass straps holding them closed, sat beneath mobiles replicating various Quidditch teams. The tiny figures at the farthest orbit of each set swerved and strained at their wires in an attempt to get at the opposing-colored players.
"I need to ask your brothers something," Harry said.
A set of bells chimed out the Lyke Wake Dirge when Harry pushed the door open. Ron elbowed him, saying, "You have a pocket full of gold. You just can't resist."
Harry did not bother to correct him on this mistaken point. In the back of the cluttered shop Harry found one of the twins stocking things behind the counter. When Harry leaned over the stained and burned surface and gestured, George crawled closer, forcing Harry to crouch too in order to speak with him in confidence. George peered at Harry around Verity's pink robes. She gave George a playful kick as she gave change to a customer.
Before Harry could formulate his question, the George whispered, "How's Ron doing?"
"Oh, er, seems fine."
"Good. Mum's been giving us hell, I'll tell you. You'd think we'd never done anything to him before or something." He sighed. "What'dya need?"
"I wanted to know if you ever sold or . . . made anything like a giant black inflatable spiked ball."
George placed the brown-paper wrapped boxes onto the counter and stood. Harry gratefully followed suit. "You're looking for one?"
Harry waited for the young customer, who was giving him a silly grin, to slowly wander off before continuing with, "No, I saw one and guessed it was your handiwork."
George pondered that, finally asking, "We in trouble?" He sounded surprisingly serious for a Weasley twin.
"No, I'm trying to track something down is all. This is just me asking." Harry was glad he could be honest about that; it reinforced his asking around on his own.
George relaxed. "We had something . . ." He moved to the dimmest corner of the shop, shaded by tall full racks from the light of the windows, and began searching through the lowest shelves. "Hey, Verity?" he shouted, then thought better and went over to her to whisper to her privately.
He returned and continued to pull the lowest front items off and stack them on the floor, revealing different, older boxes packed behind, thoroughly haphazard. He pulled out a box and handed it up to Harry and returned to searching. "That's the Giant Birds of Prey Pack. We had a Giant Ocean-Bottom Pack too, but I don't see it now." Harry stared at the crudely painted pictures of raptors, vultures, and even a pterodactyl on the box lid. George went on, "They were right popular for theme parties for a while there. Then like all great ideas, they became passé like that." He snapped his fingers.
Harry turned the box over. A warning had been inked in red along the margin as an afterthought: Stand far back from minibirds before using expansion spell. And on the other margin: For best results expand only in very very large room with high ceiling. The "verys" were triple underlined.
"There was a sea urchin in the Ocean Pack?" When George nodded, Harry asked, "How big did it get?"
George held his arms out wide. "Originally, it would roll around the party following the fish as they "swam" but too many people complained of torn robes and rugs and drapery, so we left them stupid and static instead." He started putting the newer boxes back in front of the older faded ones. "Which is no fun, really. I spent a lot of time getting the rolling just right. It was tough, it actually had to walk on its spikes. Which sounds simple, but really isn't." He shook his head sadly. "We now have to only come up with things that seem dangerous, but really aren't. That's tough." He craned his neck like a periscope to check that Ron was nowhere near. "Even then people do dumb stuff with things we think are completely safe."
Harry tried to hand the box back, but he was waved off. "Give it to Ginny if you don't want it. She begged me for a set, but at the time, we couldn't make them fast enough."
Harry tucked the box under his arm. As George squeezed by Harry in the narrow aisle, he said, "Oh, and realize that they are only aloft for about an hour, in case you decide to make your house-elf ride one. Had trouble with that once." He scooped the boxes back off the counter and ducked out of sight.
Harry searched the narrow aisles and found Ron selecting colorful sweets from a wall-full of bins. He held a struggling licorice tarantula between his fingers and he gazed at it suspiciously. "Ah," Ron said accusingly, gesturing with the spider at the box under Harry's arm. "Knew you couldn't resist." He dropped the spider back in the bin and wiped his fingers on his trousers. Peering into the paper sack he held, he said, "Guess that will make lunch."
Harry panicked, having forgotten the time. He pulled out his watch and found it was only three minutes until his training resumed. "I've got to run. See you later," he said, patting his friend on the arm to be certain he heard before he Disapparated.
Running, Harry just had time to stash the box of Giant Birds and his spare gold in his locker, seal it with the best spell he knew, and skid into the training room, out of breath. Rodgers gave him a depreciating look, but withheld comment.
Harry's stomach growled through the afternoon and by the time they were finished, he was keenly focused on getting home for a snack. But he needed to go back to Diagon Alley for a wand. He left the Giant Birds Pack balanced awkwardly beside his spare jacket and pulled out the sack of gold.
Tonks strode into the changing room as Harry's fellows departed. As though speaking for his hollow stomach, she said, "I have half an hour before my shift if you want to find an early bite."
"Sounds great," Harry said, weighing the sack in his hand before slipping it into his pocket. "I need to go Diagon Alley anyway. I told Elizabeth I'd buy her a new wand."
By unstated agreement, they Apparated into the Leaky Cauldron. On the way through the wall in back, Tonks asked, "Why doesn't Elizabeth get her own wand?"
"It's a long story," Harry said, thinking stressfully of his friend stuck at home with an overbearing Muggle father. "Her father burned her old one. He's getting difficult about magic." The alley was sparser with shoppers than lunchtime so Harry's sigh was quite audible. Elizabeth's situation disproportionately irritated him, so he was not paying attention to what he said. "It'd be good if she moved out, from what I could get out of her. I took her for a ride on my bike; other than her lessons, I wonder if she's been allowed out."
"You what?" Tonks asked. Harry heard the warning tone this time and realized belatedly that he should have heard it in her previous question too. They were stopped before Ollivanders, but Harry did not reach for the door handle.
His hesitation did not help. Tonks said, "You've never taken me for a ride on Sirius' old motorbike."
It was odd. Tonks, when angry, normally put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. She did not do that now; her arms hung slack, head craning forward. Harry sensed a crumbling cliff edge before him and had no idea how to avoid skidding over it. "We can go anytime you like," he stated. He held off on adding anything about her never having the time, certain it would compound the looming confrontation.
Now, she more familiarly propped her hands on her hips, and let her body kink into a zig-zag topped in spikes of pink. "So, what else did you do?"
Harry could not help it. He knew better, but did not have time to analyze his own quick anger. "Tonks, this is stupid," he said of her getting upset.
"Oh, right . . . silly me."
"It is silly. You sound like it matters if I take a friend out for ice creams."
Tonks colored slightly. Harry was not sure, but her hair appeared to edge more to the red too. "When she's . . . a cute . . . thing in distress, of course it matters."
Harry felt dropped in the middle of a maze and had to stop and try to take stock of his position. Passing shoppers slowed at Tonks' tone and Harry tried not to care what they heard, nor fear that Skeeter may appear any second, quill already blazing.
"Look," Harry said, thinking he'd feel more certain about how to handle a vampire than a jealous girlfriend, "I need to get a wand real quick and then we can get some dinner."
"I don't think I really have time for both of those," she snipped and Disapparated.
Harry swore, garnering disapproving looks from a pair of approaching witches burdened with packages. He took a deep breath and stubbornly continued his errand rather than chase Tonks immediately.
Inside the store, the quiet clashed with his disturbed emotions and klaxon-loud thoughts. Ollivander wandered to the front, hands clasped before him as though to exude calm.
Harry said, "Good day again. I need a birch wand with a unicorn hair core . . . for a friend."
Ollivander turned away with a small bow, pausing to ask, "Do you know what length, perchance?"
Thinking it should be easy to hide, Harry said, "Shortest you have, please."
Ollivander waved his sliding ladder over and climbed it to fetch a small grey box which he returned to Harry. Inside it was an eight-inch wand, looking petite and innocuous. Harry began counting out the same thirty Galleons his own wand had cost. Ollivander waved off the last ten.
"Tell your friend if the wand does not fit, it can be exchanged."
Harry's thoughts were already flying ahead. He reined them back in and said, "Thanks, I will."
Ollivander froze him in place by asking, "And you are how, Mr. Potter?" He sounded more than conversational. He sounded as though he felt it a duty to keep track of Harry.
Harry pulled his attention completely back to the dusty old shop where he stood. "In a hurry I'm afraid, otherwise, quite well."
This even-headed, though rushed, answer, drew a reassured smile from Ollivander, who nodded him out.
Pocketing the small, bright blond wand, Harry stepped out of the shop and Disapparated for the Ministry before he could be overrun by an teetering cart stacked with noisy animal cages.
At the Ministry, Harry slipped into the office and not finding Tonks, proceeded to check the rest of the Department. He located her in the break room, nibbling on a stale Danish and looking dangerously peeved. Her lips pursed when her gaze came up to Harry's.
Harry realized that he should have prepared what to say because he found he only wanted to repeat himself. "I don't know what's wrong," Harry said.
This apparently deserved a dubious raised pink eyebrow. Harry worked very hard to not get angry again. Rogan's voice interrupted, calling down the corridor: "Call's come in!"
Tonks dropped the pastry heel on the table and slipped by Harry without touching him, which wasn't easy given that he was blocking the doorway. Harry followed her down to the offices where she picked her teeth with a long pinky nail while reading a slip. "Yeah, I'll take it. Call Kingsley in too." She Disapparated.
Harry picked up the slip because it was only Rogan manning the office and Harry expected he would not criticize him for doing so. Harry knew where Upminster was and knew the most likely Apparition area Tonks would use. He carefully set the slip back on the pile. He should not go. He would be in the way. It would be best to wait till later to talk. Harry knew all of these things, but he Disapparated anyhow.
Harry arrived in the shadow of a windmill. Tonks was there but it took Harry a moment to recognize her in the disguise of a pensioner wearing a long grey cardigan. She clearly expected Harry to be someone else.
"What are you doing here?" she whispered.
Harry ducked slightly like she was and glanced around for danger. "I wanted to talk to you."
"Not now," she hissed, clearly disturbed.
Harry plowed on because he had just then put his finger on the problem, "I don't understand why you don't trust me."
Tonks had her wand out already; she angled it at Harry. "I'm seconds from hitting you with a Mummy Curse and sending you back to the Ministry. Get out of here."
She truly sounded like she meant it. A low bang! sounded nearby. Tonks ducked under a strut to glance around the side of the windmill. "Kingsley's coming," she whispered, but Harry was gone. Tonks glance around. She'd only heard one Apparition noise and wondered if Harry had pulled an invisibility cloak over his head. Shacklebolt's approach, in the khaki guise of a parks worker, aborted Tonks' wondering about Harry's quiet exit.
Harry sighed into the grey gloom of the Dark Plane. Something scuffled over the ground in the distance and then silence permeated the dank, earthy air. Harry felt intermittently empty and annoyed. He wished to not care at all because there was no chance for an argument to hash things out, so he might as well ignore it. But the will to do so was not sufficient to make it happen.
Delaying returning to the world of sunshine, Harry strolled in a random direction. He walked hunched, hands in pockets, thoughts far away. He wondered what time Tonks would return from the assignment, then told himself not to care. Did she really trust him so little to display such jealousy? It was true that she had also behaved badly when she learned about him dating Belinda. Perhaps he should have seen this coming.
Harry's thoughts circled on in this vein as he trod on the fine grey dust. He perhaps should have been more attentive to where he was going, but he felt more secure here than most anywhere else. So, he was quite startled when a loop of rusted wire caught his ankle and he tripped. Clumsily, he tried to tug his hands free of his robe pockets to stop himself from crashing down into the mass of abrasive metal looming before him. He could not catch himself in time and he would painfully, if not fatally, be entangled. Instinctively, he fell through the ground short of striking it.
In that instant, Harry's body was flattened and pressed as though to squeeze it through the crack between the great unyielding doors of Hogwarts castle. A blast of absolute zero grazed him at the narrowest point of his passage, but he was helpless to reverse course. The excruciating crushing and drawing out as though he were mere clay made him certain this was the end. But the deadly pressure released just as the cold began to numb him and he was ejected out of the ground on the other side, only dimly aware of tumbling into tall, saw-edged grass before he lost consciousness.
Harry rose to consciousness slowly, chilled to the core, but with the sunlight blessedly warming his flesh because of his dark robe. A cord in his neck screamed when he moved his face away from the sun. Ants were crawling up his nose and thick grass stems stabbed him behind the ear.
When he could, Harry rose up and stood on cold-creaky limbs and looked about. Half fallen trees lined a dip where a creek ran. He stumbled over hidden ruts in the grass, too weak to catch himself without severe straining that only increased his misery. Half decayed, bleached, and sagging wood houses came into view through the ragged forest, matching the half-dead and bleached trees surrounding them. A whiff of curse attracted his gaze to one house in particular. It was the only house with smoke coming out of the chimney. A spell masked the smoke, making it visible only if one looked beyond it at just the right angle.
Harry stretched his neck side to side, pulled his shoulders back and took out his wand. He felt vaguely confident he could reverse his accidental arrival but did not want to face the Dark Plane again until he was strong and clearheaded. While he recuperated and finished warming his bones, he moved to satisfy his curiosity about where he had ended up.
The occupied house was spelled in layered and subtle ways. Harry stepped in an ungainly manner over and around the cursed zones on the ground—laid out in an invisible maze—until he finally reached the door. Like at the house where the Vampire had taken over, Harry simply knocked, wand at his side, obscured by his robe sleeve. The man who jerked open the door startled Harry severely, but he hid it quickly. Snape gazed with equal alarm back at Harry. Harry blinked and felt a chill permeating him again, but this time from the ice in Snape's eyes. Snape's hair was astoundingly disheveled and his eyes showed wrinkles at the corners that Harry had not noticed before.
Snape gazed intensely at Harry and harshly whispered, Potter . . . But his eyes then took in Harrys own with close scrutiny, then narrowed in further confusion as though they were unexpected.
Harry, for lack of anything else to say, said, Hello, Severus, and stood on tip-toe to peer inquisitively beyond at the small room. It was full of books, which gave Harry some reassurance.
What the devil are you doing here? Snape demanded in a low voice.
Good question, Harry answered amiably despite his racing brain. Im not sure. Snape had stepped back as though to verify something in the room. Harry used the opening to stride inside. He felt and heard, rather than saw, Snapes jerk of surprise as he passed. The small room was clearly well lived in but in need of a good cleaning. Maybe the cold had addled his brains, but they refused to piece things together.
Harry finished his short circuit and looked about himself. It felt Snape-like in every way except wholly unfamiliar. Where was he? Harry wondered. What was Snape doing here, and what had transpired to change him so?
What happened to your eyes? Snape asked warily, voice demanding an answer.
Harry laughed lightly in a kind of weird relief that this could not be the man he knew. Gamely, he answered honestly, Playing with too-powerful magicks. Or . . . I am told that's what caused it." He again considered Snape, who was holding his wand just shy of ready. Harry continued to expect that at any moment this was going to make some sense.
Snape said slowly, Must have been . . . rather powerful. Your Occlumency certainly has improved. He sounded disappointed and annoyed.
Harry grinned to himself, finding light amusement in that compliment. Cant get by without it. You dont need your wand, he said, holding his hands up, empty, wand caught on his sleeve hem, easy to retrieve.
Snape lowered his wand only an inch. You will forgive me given that the last three times we have met, you have tried to kill me.
Oh, Harry said, glomming fully onto the notion that if there were an unfamiliar Snape that there was an unfamiliar Harry Potter as well. He scratched behind his ear and pondered that, but felt only additional unease. He gave the room closer scrutiny in hopes of a clue.
You should not be here, Snape hissed.
Harry was examining a trinket on a crude shelf without touching it, it was a locket that looked vaguely familiar. That I know, believe me. I should have just left, but I was curious. He moved on to study a shelf packed so tight with books that they were stuffed in on top and curled to fit in every available gap. Harry asked, So satisfy my curiosity: why are you here rather than Shrewsthorpe?
There was a palpably uncomfortable gap before Snape retorted, What?
Harry shrugged. I mean, this isnt really much of a holiday cottage. Whats wrong with your house?
Snape sounded oddly disturbed as he cautiously answered, It is much easier to layer barriers here than in the middle of an occupied village. How did you get through them by the way?
Harry ignored the question. A creaking bookshelf swinging inward drew his attention that way and Harry flicked his wand into his hand as Peter Pettigrew came into view, ducking low to see into the ground floor from a hidden staircase. Poisonous anger filled Harry. Get out of my sight, Harry snarled, aiming his wand and gripping it as though to crush the wood of it. Go! he insisted when Pettigrew merely froze in shock. Or Ill finish the job I stupidly stopped Sirius from doing and it will be long and excruciating as befitting a bloody traitor like you! Harrys anger surprised himself and Pettigrew, apparently sensing his unbalancing of Harry, retreated back up the stairs with a squeak of fear.
The hidden door swung closed with a thud. Harry lowered his wand and paced, thinking fiercely. Where is this where Pettigrew is still alive? Reluctantly, he closed his eyes on the current sight of the ghostly etched glass of the potion bottles crammed tight on the shelf before him and let himself drift. The dark stain of evil that reached its fingers under his lowered guard made him jerk. Voldemort. Great effing Merlin, Harry thought. Its him. Not a pale shadow of him, but full force, followers free, will-not-die him. Harry opened his eyes and turned to his unexpected host, who was giving him a penetrating stare in return. Well, Harry breathed, sounding stunned.
Problem? Snape sneered.
Pretend I know nothing and catch me up with whats been happening.
Snape managed to appear even more annoyed, which was no small trick. Were you Obliviated, Potter? Or knocked silly?
In a sense, Harry said, recovering his earlier amiable manner mostly because it alarmed this Snape so thoroughly and he was willing to grasp for any shield under the circumstances.
You truly wish me to fill you in? Snape asked, disgust lining his words.
Yeah, what is happening with Voldemort? Harry asked and heard Snape flinch since it rustled his robes.
DO NOT use his name in my presence. If you are foolish enough to use it around your little friends, that is your own stupidity. But. Not. Here. He looked as though he wanted to raise his wand but instead it vibrated at his side.
Harry shrugged and asked calmly, All right, what is happening with the Dark Lord?
Suffice to say he is gaining in power, nearly unchecked at this point. It is unclear how he will be brought down given how much he has survived to date.
Harry considered that. Havent all the Horcruxes been found? he asked, thinking that might explain things. Perhaps they were more powerful here.
Snapes head drifted downwards as though he might collapse before he turned and paced the very short distance to the grimy window. That explains enormous amounts, he whispered. Bloody hell.
Harry considered that his Snape hadnt known that either. Why arent you at Hogwarts? he asked.
Snape turned such a disbelieving glare on him before raising his wand; although he didnt appear to have a spell prepared. What the devil are you on about, Potter? You are at least aware Dumbledore is dead, correct? he mocked. You were certainly there when he died.
Yeah, Harry retorted, losing his calm. He went when he wanted to go. Whats that got to do with it?
Snape nearly dropped his wand his hand fell so fast. Youve finally figured that out? he snidely asked.
Harry was thinking that perhaps he did not have it figured out at all. He held in a response. Instead he asked another question, Why is Wormtail here with you? This really bothered him, more than mysterious differences about Dumbledore and almost more than Voldemort himself.
I was assigned to look after him, an assignment that has lasted far too long. Lasts any longer and Ill kill him myself.
Harry laughed, which brought Snapes wand up to his point at his throat. Who are you? he demanded, voice low, head tilted predatorily.
Calmly, lifting his chin to keep the wand from hurting the soft flesh of his throat when he talked, Harry replied, Harry Potter isnt the answer youre looking for, I assume.
Harrys scar throbbed and then seared. He closed his eyes to avoid giving this away and found seven more shadows hovering very, very close. Were you expecting company? Harry asked.
Not you, certainly, Snape replied smoothly, greasily.
No, I mean other Death Eaters. Seven of them, besides the two of you, just arrived in the village.
Snapes alarm was clear, even as it bounced between Harry's strange knowledge and the prospect that he was correct. Snape paced the floor, tossing a barrier status spell in each direction. A knock sounded on the door. Harry backed into the corner beside the door, wand at ready.
Who is it? Snape asked.
Bella, Severus dear.
Harry gagged at the honey-covered tone. The door was opened with the queer fake gallantry Snape employed when he truly disliked the visitor. And to what do I owe this visit? he asked with impressive casualness as he moved to the far side of the room. Tea?
No, I think not. She held her wand up, aimed at him.
Snape turned from the tea set and considered her. And this is for? he asked with an innocent lilt.
Being a traitor, Severus, she said with disturbed pleasure. Our Lord has gifted me with the honor of making you pay dearly.
Dont be ridiculous. The Dark Lord would never- But his words were cut off as he grabbed his arm as though his mark burned. He recovered his composure with effort, clearly suffering. He did not release his arm but clung to it as though it were deadwood and he a drowning man.
Bellatrix spoke before him. I just finished with Mungdungus, Severus. He was a weak soul, so not equal to my skills." She purred, "You are.
Snape was suddenly on his knees and Harry at first believed Bellatrix had hit him with something but she said, We altered your barriers, Severus. You arent going anywhere except your own personal hell.
Harry, scar searing as he had never remembered it doing, leapt across the room just as the door, rickety as it was, dissolved in a sparkling spell and a whoosh. Harry jumped a low table and landed in a crouch at Snapes side. Snape was just putting his foot flat to stand again. Harry took him by the wrist, looked over his shoulder into the red, fiery eyes of Voldemort—who in that instant stood fixed by surprise in the doorway—and dropped both of them through the floor. If the vampire had not dragged Harry along through the interstice, Harry would not have been prepared for how much force it took to pull another along. He may have tragically let go, assuming he would have killed his companion on the way.
Harry did not have a destination in mind so when they landed in the grey dirt of the underworld, he paused to regroup. Instantly, creatures scrambled over the rough ground in their direction. Harry still had Snapes wrist in hand and Snape, who looked about himself in consternation, did not seem to notice.
Where is this? he asked quietly, forced to shirk away from the snapping maw of a half giant ant, half weasel.
You wouldnt believe me if I told you, Harry said. I just have to figure out where we are go-
He was interrupted by the old werewolf charging at them from around a large hillock. Harry leaned toward the monster and stared him down, making him bay and grovel between snarls. Snape tried to retreat the other way, tugging on Harrys grip. Harry turned and snarled in his direction, Dont fight me! Theyll eat you alive.
Snape froze and glared at Harry before glancing around them at the myriad distorted creatures clambering over one another, salivating at him. He stopped resisting with a fatalistic drop of his shoulders. Harry thought of where he could take them and Apparated them both to another spot inside the Dark Plane before dropping them both through the ground and, after a long struggle for Harry to get his companion through, into the green-meadowed sunlight. Harry released his hold on Snape and immediately closed his eyes. He was relieved this time to find Voldemort and many, many shadows hovering in the middle distance of his mind. That meant he had not mistakenly transported this Snape back to where Harry himself belonged.
Snape was shaking his robes out. This is an improvement. Where are we now? he asked in a tone that conveyed an almost subservient attitude.
The reserve about twenty miles north of Shrewsthorpe, Harry explained. He had settled on arriving in the area the witches used because it was open and he didnt want to arrive into a trap, and given the witches regular use of devices here, he expected it connected well to the Dark Plane. He looked the worn Snape up and down. His hair was indescribably filthy, and his face were sunken as though from long term stress and poor eating.
We should get you some dinner, Harry suggested, eliciting a look of disbelief. It didnt fade right away, so Harry added, And I can try to explain.
While Snape stared into the distance as though plotting, Harry considered that unlike a time turner, he could not damage things here; he had not moved through time, only through possibility. Somewhere in the past there had been a forking of events and this place was the alternative outcome. He hoped to Merlin that he COULD get home again.
I know an Inn in Wolverbury. It is just a little north, Snape said. And when Harry willingly offered an arm, Snape shook his head and grasped it. They arrived between a tall old car grill and a brick wall. A rusty abandoned car faced them down, tilted on its broken suspension. They walked around it and inside where only one customer sat hunched at the bar. The barman gave them a narrow-eyed look, especially Snape.
Which oya is payin? he asked doubtfully.
Harry reached into his robe pocket and held up the twenty pound notes, which spurred the man to gesture at a table. He and Snape sat to face each other beside a cracked and taped stained glass window.
Beers? the barman shouted. Harry shook his head, but Snape gestured that he would have one.
What do you want to eat? Harry asked. Im buying.
Snape shook his head lightly and appeared to consider Disapparating. When the drink was plunked onto the bar, Harry picked it up and ordered a plowmans platter. With another distasteful glance at the two of them, the barman stalked into the back without a word.
Snape sucked down the top quarter of his beer as though it were the elixir of life. Harry began, Im not in the right place.
I was beginning to suspect that, Snape said. You are too gently confident, for one thing, rather than obnoxiously heedless, and you have rather unexpected powers. He turned his mug around once, leaving wet rings on the rough wood of the table. So, where do you belong?
Somewhere else, Harry stated vaguely.
Somewhere where you do not try to kill me on sight, Snape said with forced pleasantness.
Correct, Harry said. Banging from the kitchen gave him a chance to think. Im not sure what to do. Just go home . . . Ive interfered already. But I dont think it matters. At Snapes odd expression, Harry quickly amended with: Well, it matters that I saved your life, but you may have managed to get away on your own if I hadnt been distracting you.
Snape rubbed his forearm and flinched as though suffering a strong stab of pain on top of unending agony. Harry felt badly for him but did not express this, knowing it would not be accepted.
It wasnt until the platter was empty that Snape spoke again. That place you took us to get us out of Weavers End . . . I have read about such a place. Perrodrick, an insane wizard in the six hundreds, claimed there was a magical pathway to the underworld.
The Dark Plane, Harry clarified. Ive never taken anyone through it before. Got dragged through it myself recently. But I didnt see any choice but to try. It was risky. I'm glad you came through all right.
Snidely, Snape asked, Do you go there often?
"It gets me under barriers, as you saw."
Snape's brows rose at the possibilities of that. He sipped at the last inch of his beer as though to drag it out. "Dark Lord gone where you come from?"
"Not exactly. But neutralized."
"Are you the one who did the neutralizing?"
Harry nodded.
Snape fell thoughtful and brushed his hair back, which was hopeless given its condition. "And you are one of the Horcruxes?"
"Yes. That's why the Dark Lord is still around. I can't bring myself to really finish the job."
Snape snorted lightly and tilted his beer to better examine it. "Understandable."
He looked utterly worn down and on the verge of self-destruction. Harry pulled out and pushed the folded stack of pounds over to him. "Take it."
Snape left it in the middle of the table. "It only delays the inevitable. Everything is doom."
"No," Harry snapped sharply. "You of all people cannot give up. Not after all this time."
Snape rubbed his eyes and held his fingers pressed over his face. "I believe I am hallucinating you."
Harry jerked one of Snape's hands down when they remained for more than a minute. "I can tell you what needs to happen. Believe me, I know."
Snape put his hands down flat on the table and stared at Harry. "Go ahead. Hallucination or not, this may be helpful."
"You have to get your Harry Potter to forgive you. Volde- The Dark Lord owns him until you do."
Snape's face twisted downward into a kind of mad tragic humor. "Impossible."
"No, it's not," Harry insisted. "You're the key to all of this and all you've been doing is hiding out."
Snape grew angry, which gave Harry hope. "That is not 'all I have been doing'. I have been passing messages in secret to the Order through the one person who still trusted me."
"Mundungus?"
Snape nodded grimly.
Harry pushed the money closer to him. "Take it. I'd give you more if I had it."
Snape raised a slim, almost skeletal hand and did so. "And as for you . . . you are just going to pop on home?" he sarcastically asked.
Harry grew uncertain. "I'm going to give it a good try. It was an accident coming here, one I'll have to reverse." Harry stood, prepared to depart if only to relieve his own chest-clenching fear about whether he was trapped here. He said firmly, "He's capable of forgiving you. You just have to be patient."
"That is the one thing I possess zero of with him."
"Try, Severus," Harry heard himself pleading, caring even though he did not wish to. "It's the only way."
When Harry moved to leave, Snape restrained him with a claw-like grip on his arm. "Prove you are not a hallucination by telling me what magic changed your eyes so."
Harry relaxed his arm against the bones crushing it. "I turned the Dark Lord into a Muggle. I carved his magic out of him so he'd be harmless."
Snape's grip did not ease. "I don't think the Potter I know can do that."
"He'll think of something else," Harry assured him. "He's clever under pressure." Snape's grip released suddenly and he turned back to his empty mug as though expecting Harry to depart. Harry added in a low voice, "If he feels hatred when he faces the Dark Lord, he is doomed."
Snape's gaze did not come back to him, so Harry departed.
Back in the Dark Plane, Harry walked a bit, paying far more attention than before to what was around him. When he was back to the familiar area opposing his house, he stopped, certain if he inverted he would not find home. He did so anyway and indeed he arrived in a dusty grim house where the smashed windows were boarded up and the burned balcony had not been repaired but had been left to rot and dangle halfway to the ground floor. The hall floor rug underfoot had been chewed by mice down to a ragged triangle. Harry's eyes adjusted to the darkness and he let them follow up the stairs and around to where his room was, or would be if he were in another place.
Harry had to get to that other place or die trying.
Returning to the even mustier Dark Plane, Harry rehearsed what had happened last time. He had a gut feeling that it was not the interaction with the metal, but the falling sideways that had done it.
Harry dropped his shoulders and bolstered himself. The house was below him, above him. His house. It was there, waiting. The thought of never returning brought his heart rate up and keened his senses nearly to overload.
Harry chewed his lip and remembered long ago when Snape had tested him by standing him in an active pentagram device. It was dark magic because it thinned the barrier between the living world and the underworld. Harry had envisioned a hundred successive floors and ground in that spot. Snape had suggested that Harry was seeing temporally, but Harry now realized it was dimensionally. If he could see it that easily, he should be able to find his way. This thought calmed him considerably.
Harry stepped back and looked around himself. Dragging his foot in the grey dust, he drew a pentagram as tall as himself and then stood staring at it. The grass on a nearby hillock rustled as something crawled by. There was no howling in the distance. A deathly silence ruled after the furtive creature moved on.
Harry had to get home but he had no knowledge of pentagrams and the magic surrounding them. If he could activate this one, maybe it would be easier, he thought, but he knew nothing about how to do that. It made him recognize the gaping hole in his knowledge, one he had preferred until this moment.
"Some dark wizard hunter I am," Harry wryly muttered. "I don't even know how the most basic dark wizardry works."
He stepped into the center of the dry pentagram but felt no vibration of power. He imagined what he had felt that day in the storage room and tried to impose it on this one. He closed his eyes and imagined home. He imagined the opposite of the house he had just visited: one bright with light, freshly redecorated, with voices, movement, and grave concern for him should he never return. Home.
With that place, that plane, firmly fixed in his mind, Harry toppled sideways and at the last second fell through ground.
The excruciating slip between planes was the same as last time. Harry was flattened between icy walls that crushed absolute cold into his body. He was folded and mangled until he was certain the life had been wrung from heart and his bones reduced to rubble.
Harry landed hard on a freshly polished wood floor, shaking violently with cold. Adrenalin propelled his unwilling limbs to seek heat. It was a grey rainy day here and the crackle of a fire drew him like a moth to the drawing room. Scrambling clumsily on senseless hands and knees, Harry approached the salvation of the fire, and fell, striking his head on the andiron inside the hearth.
NEXT: Chapter 7
Harry raised his head and found Snape's concerned gaze. "What happened?" Harry asked him.
"That's what I was going to ask you," Snape said, sounding angry with a hint of distraught.
"Oh," Harry said, again restrained from rubbing the bump on his head and this time the Healer added an admonishing slap on the hand. Harry insisted upon sitting up and no one stopped him from doing so. The drawing room was not the location he thought he should be in, but that did not mean he knew where he expected to be.
Author's Notes Most likely ten days again before chapter 7. Life is crazy.
Chapter 7 -- Edge of a Dream
Candide came running when called and found Snape unceremoniously tugging an unconscious Harry to the center of the drawing room floor.
"Get a Healer, quickly," he said, spritzing Harry's head with a water charm. The noxious scent of burned hair tainted the room.
Candide closed her mouth on the question she was about to ask and ran out. When she returned, Snape was gripping each of Harry's hands in turn.
"He is frozen nearly stiff, what the devil was he doing?" Snape aimed a heating charm at Harry's chest, but the yellow-orange spell wavered with a buzzing sound and burst before it could reach him.
"What was that?" Candide asked breathlessly.
Snape rubbed his hair back, long fingers clenching. "I do not know. Get a blanket. A heavy one. We'll charm that instead to warm or he will likely freeze to death."
Harry roused to wakefulness from deep within a cocoon of heavenly warm, but scratchy, blanket. The first sight he had was of an out-of-context familiar face in pale blue robes.
"Didn't you used to play Beater?" Harry asked the Healerwitch.
"Yup. That's why I know that someone thought your head was a Bludger."
Harry tried to rub his aching head but was stopped from doing so. "That why it hurts so bad?"
"He'll be fine. His core temp is normal now," the witch said to someone else in the room.
Harry raised his head and found Snape's concerned gaze. "What happened?" Harry asked him.
"That's what I was going to ask you," Snape said, sounding angry with a hint of distraught.
"Oh," Harry said, again restrained from rubbing the bump on his head and this time the Healer added an admonishing slap on the hand. Harry insisted upon sitting up and no one stopped him from doing so, but his head tried. The drawing room was not the location he thought he should be in, but that did not mean he did know where he expected to be.
The Healer departed after final instructions were given and Harry finally got to feel how bad the bump was. It felt like his skull was trying to grow a spike out of it, or a horn. "Ow."
Snape leaned close and looked him hard in the eyes. "You do not remember what happened? You were nearly frozen when you crawled in here. What spell were you attempting?"
Harry rubbed the rest of his head as he thought about that, glad to find it unharmed otherwise. "I wasn't doing any spells. I don't know what happened."
Snape rolled his eyes and huffed in disgust.
"Sorry," Harry said, wincing as his head pounded momentarily, in rhythm with his heartbeat.
- 888 -
Harry was kept home from training the next day, and he wandered the house like a caged animal. He still had not talked to Tonks, but today he felt embarrassed about having followed her while she was on duty and very grateful that she had not told anyone. Well, he expected that he would have received a visit and a good talking to by Rodgers or an owl from Mr. Weasley had they been informed. Harry wandered into the drawing room, badly in need of a distraction and wishing he were at the Ministry.
Candide, before rushing to the office, had delivered Elizabeth's wand, the now-vaguely-dreaded object that had started his argument with Tonks, so Harry had nothing to do.
"I thought you had things to take care of at Hogwarts?" Harry asked his guardian.
Snape looked up from the musty old book he had open and said, "Remus offered to do them."
"You're staying home to babysit me," Harry accused grumpily.
"If you wish to drop the façade, then yes," Snape stated.
Harry rolled his eyes and tapped his toe against the doorframe in frustration. "Want to practice some spells with me?"
"No."
"I'm not hurt really. Why not?"
"My ego cannot take the hit at this time," Snape stated, returning to his reading.
"Hmf," Harry muttered, inclined to belief because of the unlikelihood that Snape would offer that as a diversionary excuse. Harry dropped into one of the other chairs in the room and propped his chin on his palms. His bored mind flittered from one thing to another restlessly, but it kept coming back around to an incongruous vision of Snape answering the door to let Bellatrix Lestrange in. No meaning could be attached to this memory.
"I had the strangest dream last night," Harry said, excusing the vision the only way he could. Snape was not one to prompt and he did not do so now. Harry went on, "I was trying to protect you from Bellatrix . . . and Voldemort too." Harry rubbed his eyes and tightened his shoulders at the memory of Voldemort's poisonous and unyielding power snaking into his inner vision. He wished his dreams would not chose to torment him so; he had had more than enough of the evil wizard and dearly wished to be left alone by memories or imaginings of him.
"I assume they are both still incarcerated," Snape said levelly as though to reassure Harry.
"It wasn't Lockhart. It was the real thing."
Snape sat straight and steepled his hands over the book. "You think this dream means something more than that you still have stressful events involving him that you need to recover from."
"I don't know," Harry said. "I certainly don't feel Voldemort now. I could in the dream."
"Was there anything in your dream not reminiscent of recent events?"
Harry sat back and said, "You were in this strange house and . . . you didn't know who I was. Well, that's not quite true. You kept expecting me to try and attack you. And you said something about Dumbledore and how long it took me to understand that he had died when he wanted to." Harry shook his head and let those thoughts repeat themselves. "I've accepted that," he added, slightly defensive.
Snape paused before suggesting, "Maybe you have not truly."
Harry sighed. "I still miss him. Maybe I haven't completely accepted it."
Snape moved as though to return to his reading. "Dreams are just the subconscious working things out when the conscious is out of the way and cannot prevent it from doing so."
Harry smiled lightly. "So what does it mean that I found you living in a hovel in a half-abandoned town. Interpret that for me," he challenged, teasing. "You called it 'Weaver's End'."
Snape froze. "What?"
"What does it mean-"
"I heard you the first time," he snapped.
Harry shut up while Snape stood and paced once, disturbing the rug as he passed the corner of it. Impatient, Harry finally asked, "There is such a place?"
"Yes. I have an old hideout there."
Harry's stomach clenched faintly. "You do?"
Snape considered Harry. "I have not been there in rather a long time." After thinking longer, he gestured for Harry to stand, Accioed their cloaks, and said, "Come, let's pay a visit and see if it is the place you dreamed. We can then add clairvoyant to your already long list of skills."
Harry hooked on his cloak but held back on raising his arm to be Apparated. "I don't want to be clairvoyant."
"Wise young man. Take out your wand, just in case. And give me your arm."
Before Harry could protest further, they arrived at the edge of a ramshackle village. An old mill works leaned above the trees, ready to fall into a heap of bleached wood and rotting mortar. Snape led the way, tossing detection spells to each side every now and then.
Harry swished to a stop in the long grass when the familiar little house came into view.
Snape turned when he realized Harry no longer followed. "This is the place?" he asked.
Harry nodded. "It was in slightly better shape," he observed of the tenuously leaning walls and nearly hammock-like, sagging roof. "Not tough for that to be true."
Snape circled the house once before pushing open the door. Harry, gut heavy, followed. The bookshelves were empty and the furniture had been consumed by rodents, but it was the same.
Harry pointed and said, "The bookshelf there is a secret passage up," making Snape spin on his heel to stare at him again.
Snape strode that way and had to forcibly pry the hidden doorway open. Harry said, "Peter Pettigrew came down that way."
"Pettigrew?" Snape confirmed. "Hm, I was sometimes put in charge of him since he feared me enough to behave for a few hours at a time."
Harry's teeth tightened together as thought about his dad's old 'friend'. He stepped around the small house, finding no evidence of a major fight. "Maybe it wasn't a dream," Harry said, wanting to understand. "Voldemort vaporized the door, but it's intact. One of the few things that is."
"I am at a loss to explain," Snape said. "I am certain I have never mentioned this place to you or anyone in the Order. Anything else from the dream that you remember?"
Harry shook his head, but then said, "I think I took you to a pub for something to eat. You were in really poor shape." After looking Snape over, Harry said, "In contrast, you are getting a tad plump, there, Severus; I now notice."
Snape feigned insult. Harry shook his head again and winced when he forgot about the bump before rubbing it. "So, if I am clairvoyant then I would be seeing the future, but that doesn't make any sense. You would know me better than you did in the dream." Harry steered his thoughts away from an incident just recently when he threatened to attack Snape over the revelation about the prophecy that killed his parents. He could not bear to imagine the level of betrayal necessary for him to reach that state permanently.
"I don't know what to say, Harry. Perhaps you unknowingly captured memories of this place from me using Legilimency."
Harry grabbed hold of that, feeling great relief at a rational explanation. His voice came out slightly desperate. "That could be it. I hope that's it."
Snape approached and said, "You seem to be in need of a chocolate ice cream."
Harry was not finished, though and said, "I don't want to be clairvoyant. I don't want any more prophecies. I certainly don't want to be making them, let alone living them."
"Like I said," Snape said, taking Harry's upper arm with authority. "Chocolate ice cream is definitely in order."
Minutes later they were sitting in a small shop with Harry facing an opposing bowl containing three oversized and gloopy scoops, armed only with a spoon. His eating slowed periodically as his thoughts wandered.
"You are dwelling. Stop it," Snape admonished.
Harry laughed lightly. "I was thinking that the dream was my subconscious reminding me how far we've come."
"Hm," was Snape's only reply.
"I certainly wouldn't want that version of you around the house, jumpy, wand out all the time." Harry ended up grinning.
"Finish your ice cream."
- 888 -
The next day, Harry was relieved to return to training, until the third time he had to explain what had happened to necessitate a day off. Lamely, Harry replied, this time to Rogan, "I'm not certain. I hit my head and I don't remember exactly."
Even Rogan, the lowest-ranking Auror and on probation to boot, gave him a doubtful noise in reply to this. Harry wondered what the response would be if he failed to edit his explanation to include the hallucinatory Scrying. The only upbeat part of his day came at lunchtime when Tonks pulled him aside. She appeared chastised, which made Harry hopeful.
"What'd you do to yourself?" she asked, concerned.
Harry tugged off his glasses to rub his eyes. "I wish I could answer that. I don't know. I was angry at . . . angry that I couldn't argue with you properly."
Her next question knocked him back a bit. "You carry an invisibility cloak with you all the time?"
Harry hesitated answering, not understanding why she asked that. She went on. "I mean, I know you own one, but I never saw you using it around the Ministry before now. I'm sure Rodgers told you it's preferred that you not use one as a trainee. Makes you sloppy. You need to practice and re-practice your other stealth techniques."
For lack of a better response, Harry said, "I don't use it for field work."
"That's fine then," she said, patting him on the arm. "You disappeared on me, and it wasn't clear how."
Harry understood then. He had unwisely slipped away from her without a sound and she had come up with the best possible explanation for that. Harry felt worn down by his necessary deceptions with her. But there were more important things to work out. "Do you have time to talk this evening?"
Equally stilted and nervous as he, she said, "Yeah. I'll come over to your place when I'm through here."
Harry felt formal around her all of a sudden. "I have to scare up lunch," he said, gesturing in the direction of the break room.
"Go on," she said, sounding friendly but also formally stiff.
- 888 -
That evening when Tonks appeared with a bang! Harry stood from the table where they had been lingering after the meal and excused himself. He expected a piercing glance from Snape, but Snape remained fixated on the drink he held in his fingers as Harry passed him.
"Let's go out for a walk," Harry said, collecting his cloak with the expectation that Tonks would follow, and she did.
They stepped out into the late evening light that barely reached over the wall of the garden. Tonks asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry said.
"I heard that Severus brought in a Healer for you."
"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry repeated, bristling at her concern, even as another part of his mind told him it was a good sign.
On the road, Harry immediately said the thing he most dearly wanted to get off his chest. "I'm sorry I followed you. Thanks for not reporting it."
Voice normal and chummy all of a sudden, Tonks said, "I figure you won't do it again, so there's no reason to get Arthur or Reggie involved."
"I wasn't . . . I shouldn't have done it," Harry said, face flushing. The low light hid this, he assumed with relief. He sighed, feeling pained all over again. "I just couldn't believe you didn't trust me."
Tonks hesitated responding. Their fast pace brought them to the edge of the village where they stopped. Harry sat on the top rail of a stout gate that led to a fenced field, which had been left to grow waist-high, ungrazed. The last of the orange sunlight just brushed the tops of the dark green plants. Tonks sat on the other half of the gate and swung it back and forth.
"It's not that I don't trust you, it just hurts to think other women get to do things with you that I don't. Really, it's other women I don't trust. You're famous and everyone wants to be with you."
Harry puzzled that. "But that still means you must not trust me."
"Well . . . maybe, but I wasn't thinking of it that way."
Harry swung his side of the gate, making the hinge rumble. "I didn't mean to make you jealous. You're on duty all of the time. I'd take you out on the motorbike whenever you wanted . . ."
"Yeah," Tonks dully acknowledged. She sighed into the evening air. A breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and made the tall grass bow around their feet. "That's the way it goes every time," she said quietly. "I don't have enough time and they find someone else who does."
Harry frowned, feeling for her. "I'd like to think I wouldn't do that to you."
Still dull sounding, she said, "I'd like to think that too, but it always happens."
"I don't plan to have it happen. I understand why you're always busy." Harry wished he could confess his other powers to her, just to square things with his own conscience, but he held back. "Want to go for a ride right now?"
She smiled and laughed lightly. "I have a broomstick if I feel like flying around. It wasn't really the ride, per se." She sighed again. "Just that you weren't giving rides to someone cute and in need of rescue."
Harry stood as a car roared by, much too fast for the small road. He stepped over to Tonks, gave her a hand standing up, and immediately pulled her close. Lights came on in the house adjacent to the field. A door banged and young voices could be heard calling out playfully.
Tonks felt lithe within his arms against his front, but he knew her seemingly delicate body held magic sufficient for an Auror and skills a chameleon could only dream of. Harry said, "What I like about you is that you don't need rescue. The one time I tried to come rescue you, I needed to be rescued. I've learned my lesson about that."
Sounding professionally concerned, she said, "You don't remember what you did two days ago, between leaving me and going home?"
Harry shook his head and tightened his hold on her. "I had an odd dream." He laughed lightly at admitting that was possibly what had done him in.
"It didn't involve Voldemort, did it?"
"Well, yes," Harry reluctantly replied. "I think I was just reliving recent events. In the dream I was trying to save Severus from him. I don't think it means anything."
She huffed worrisomely. "I hope you're right that it's nothing. I don't like worrying something bad happened to you that you don't remember." Harry felt her paw around in her pocket suddenly and knew what that meant. He let her go. She used a Lumos to read the slate board. "I haveta run."
"Any chance you need me?" Harry had to ask.
It was her turn to laugh lightly. "I'll be certain to let you know if we do." Then she was gone.
Harry waited for a string of cars to roll by. They accelerated one by one out of the nearby turn. The village fell placidly quiet with their passing. Harry took a step towards home and stopped. That old familiar tingle of being watched had returned.
Harry bit his lip and glanced to each side, but saw nothing. "You again?" he asked aloud and with grave confidence that he was correct.
After a moment, a figure emerged from under a cloak and Alastor Moody was eyeing Harry with grudging appreciation. In the dim light, his scarred face had an unusual swarthiness and he moved with unusual speed as he approached.
"Where have you been?" Harry asked. "The Canaries?"
Moody snorted. "Somewhere no one would know me, so farther away than that." He hobbled faintly over to Harry. "Getting along all right without me, I see."
"Why wouldn't I be?" Harry asked, trying not to sound rude just yet.
Moody strode in a circle around Harry, footsteps crunching in the gravel. "You don't think you owe me?"
Harry crossed his arms, trying for haughty. "For what, pray tell?"
"You still think you managed a block with a borrowed wand good enough for an explosion that took out half a click of earth?"
Harry froze, remembering the panicked moments when Vineet struck the spelling vessels to destroy Merton's cohort, Svaha. "You were there?" Harry asked.
Moody snorted again.
"Well . . . thanks," Harry said, not ungrateful.
"I'd give you a two out of five for how you handled that situation with the Indian husband and wife team," Moody grumbled.
Harry rolled his eyes and noticed for the first time that Moody's footsteps sounded oddly even. He no longer wore a peg leg. "Whose leg did you steal?" Harry asked.
The footsteps stopped. "I did a few favors for a Vodou priest in Haiti and he arranged the leg in return." Moody stared down at his foot while lifting it for examination in the gathering twilight. "Don't know whose leg it was before . . ."
Harry stared at him and decided to change the subject. "So, are you going to be following me around again?" he demanded.
"Miss me, Potter?"
"Hardly."
"I'll be around," Moody ambiguously replied. "I have other things to keep an eye on," he replied grimly. "Seems you've been behaving yourself. Keep it up and you'll see less of me."
Suspicious, Harry asked, "Know anything about a giant sea urchin?"
"Why, didya lose one?"
He did not sound to Harry as though he were deflecting the question dishonestly. "No. I was given one unexpectedly."
Moody strode away, saying over his shoulder before flipping his invisibility cloak back on, which made less difference in the gloom, "I never went in the water at the beach; I don't know anything about sea life."
Harry mostly believed him, although his trust in the man was limited. Harry found a parting insult on his tongue, but taunting the old Auror was not wise if he wanted to be left alone.
When he reached the house, Harry found the energy he had stoppered up to keep his calm around Moody now demanded release and doing his readings would not suffice to burn it up. Snape still sat at the dining room table across from Candide. Harry pleaded, "Would you do some drills with me?"
Snape asked, "You do not get enough practice at the Ministry?" But he stood directly after speaking. "Drills I can handle," he said to Harry's questioning face.
"Oh, good."
Candide strolled in while the furniture hovered a foot off the floor during its journey to the wall. Harry lowered his wand from moving the lamps to the corner, remembering the sagging balcony in his dream with a spasm of distress.
"What is the matter?" Snape asked.
Harry did not want to explain in front of Candide, so he shook his head and raised his wand for drilling.
They did several sequences of Hogwarts-level spells and Candide, losing interest in the repetition, wandered back to the dining room before Harry said, "I want to try something. Can you use a nastier curse like a . . . er, something that won't hurt too bad . . . "
"Something that won't hurt you too badly?" Snape asked, lowering his wand.
"No, you. How about a Sponge Knees?"
Harry held his wand at his side and waited. Despite appearing doubtful, Snape raised his wand. Harry felt the prickles from the curse as it generated, but he could not squash it like he had with Shacklebolt, and his knees went soft and he toppled to the floor.
"Drat!" Harry said, trying to push himself up, despite it being impossible to put his legs under himself.
Snape strode over and neutralized the curse. Harry got to his feet and untwisted his robes. "Huh, it didn't work."
"What did not work?"
"You remember that I . . . that when Goyle tried to use a Killing Curse on me, I was able to block it from forming and it exploded inside of him instead of casting. Well, that worked the other day again when Shacklebolt cursed me and I only had the Ministry wand and I could feel this awful curse coming. I crushed it back into the earth and it hit him instead."
Snape tapped his wand against his robes. "What was the curse?"
"An Imperious."
"You can feel any curse, correct? But you cannot block them all."
"Shacklebolt's felt worse than ordinary."
"Of course it did, it was an Unforgiveable."
Harry raised his chin to stare at him in surprise. "It only works with Unforgiveables you think? Can you try tossing one at me?"
Snape stared back at him. The wand in his hand had fallen still. "There is only one I can use on you." He turned and took a few steps away but it did not raise his wand. "Are you ready?" he asked.
Something intangible passed between them, an unspoken acknowledgment of trust. Harry relaxed, but said, "Cast it slowly so I have a chance to feel it."
Snape nodded and raised his wand. Harry felt the spell, odious and tainted, as it ballooned from the floor. He had lots of time to notice that black, sickly tendrils hovered at the periphery.
"Stop," Harry commanded. He could squash the magic, he was certain and did not want it to strike Snape, nor did he want him to attracting those things. The spell faded and the room returned to its normal vaguely cheery self. Thoughtfully, Harry said, "Those spells really are different. I thought they were Unforgivable because of the effect they had, but the source of energy they draw on is inherently evil."
Snape stepped closer, studying Harry as he considered this revelation. When Harry remained silent, Snape offered, "One can make most any ordinary spell into an evil one through creative use. Just as one can use a knife for chopping stewing vegetables or stabbing someone in the heart. Unforgivable Curses have always been considered distinct and perhaps you are able to sense precisely why."
Harry said, "You're opening a conduit to the Dark Plane when you use one of those spells. That would make you very vulnerable if you didn't know how to protect yourself."
"It makes you vulnerable even if you do believe you know how to protect yourself," Snape stated sternly.
Harry heard a parental correction in that. "I don't plan on making it a habit to use them, if that is what you mean."
"That is what I mean."
"They feel terrible," Harry said. "Sickly, rancid . . . I don't know how to describe it."
"Like death?" Snape suggested, with lightness used perhaps as a shield.
Harry shook his head and stashed his wand away. "No. Death is neutral." Harry remembered feeling Munz slip away as he asserted this. "This is something else. Something worse than death."
Snape dropped his voice. "One of the reasons I would much prefer if you left the Dark Plane alone."
Harry said, "Once you're there, it isn't so bad." To Snape's dubious brow, Harry explained, "It's as though the mixing of our world and the Plane is the actual trouble. Although the creatures there are not so pleasant; it's true. But they behave."
Snape shook his head but gave up the immediate debate.
- 888 -
The next day Harry came home from training and found Candide alone in the dining room. For once she did not have some kind of fabric, parchment, flower, or scent samples piled around her. Instead, a scrolled list of names bordered by Xs and naughts occupied her placesetting accompanied by a stack of open letters. Harry settled into answering his own post, only taking stock of Snape's absence when this was completed.
"Severus working on his brewing again?" Harry asked.
Candide nodded. Harry could not detect if she was growing dismayed or intolerant of this behavior. If she wasn't, then Snape had chosen remarkably wisely. His own troubles with Tonks solved, Harry felt quite good about things in general, even looking forward to meeting Candide's parents.
Owl claws grated on the glass before slipping inside the open window and over to Harry's hand. Harry recognized the Peterson owl and eagerly took the letter it held. He told the owl to wait, but it took off again without so much as hoot and Harry assumed that Elizabeth told it to return quickly so its absence could go unnoticed.
Harry read the letter, relieved that Elizabeth sounded upbeat about keeping out of her father's path and avoiding provoking him. She expressed gratitude for the wand and hoped that she had given Harry enough money for it. Harry's blood went from pleasantly warm flowing to painfully icy upon reading that femininely cursived sentence. He had not seen the money she had given him in several days.
Shaking slightly, Harry went through his robe pockets, once, twice and then more carefully a third time.
"What did you lose?" Candide asked after watching him do this.
"A bit of money," Harry said, distressed.
"Do you need more spending money?" she asked pointedly. "You don't have to go without anything. Severus told me you were used to doing that . . ."
Harry stood, thinking to check his other robes upstairs, even though he was quite certain he currently wore the robes he had on in Gringotts the other day. He mentally walked through rushing back to the Ministry after going to his vault, but he was certain he had left the money in his pocket. The only other memory he had of it was sliding it across a sticky pub table to the rather shabby Snape in his dream. Maybe a pickpocket had taken it, Harry thought, with queer hope, although he thought it unlikely given how much cheek that would require of someone.
Candide's concern ratcheted up as she asked, "Harry, what's the matter? Was it a great deal of money?"
"No," Harry said, trying to dismiss her worry, but failing. "It's more complicated." He considered interrupting Snape's brewing to tell him about this, but sat down instead, not wanting to run to him until his thoughts calmed. Sighing, he finished reading Elizabeth's letter without really taking it in.
Candide prompted him again, and Harry distracted her by asking about the invitation list she was working at. She huffed a laugh as though not wanting to let go so easily. She said, "It's going well. Looks like around seventy people." She considered Harry before asking, "Severus asked if you would be Superlatus Wizard, right?"
"No. What's that?"
"Hasn't got around to it yet, apparently." She shook her head as she rolled up the invitation list. "Muggles refer to it as 'best man'."
"I'd like to be that," Harry said.
"I'm positive he wants you to. Just doesn't want to ask." She absentmindedly straightened the sliced envelopes stacked beside her. "He's a tough nut to crack."
"You managed though," Harry said with no little compliment. Fixed in his minds eye was the image of the dreary and desperate Snape from his vision. The missing pounds made the disturbing vision clearer. The contrast alarmed him.
"It was more me who needed to change than him, I think," Candide said, pulling Harry back with her voice.
"I know what you mean," Harry said after a space. Brightening slightly, he went back to the previous topic, "I've never been to a wizard wedding before. What happens at them?"
She waved his question off, "All the same things as a Muggle one, I'm sure."
Harry thought about that. "I've never been to one of those, either."
"Really?"
Harry felt vaguely annoyed at her surprise. Without meaning to, his hand felt around in his pocket again, seeking the missing pounds. His empty pocket echoed in his worried gut. He stood and said, "I'm going to see how Severus is doing."
Harry rapped softly on the spare room door, responded that it was just him when asked, and entered when told he could. Inside, the room had been rearranged. Fewer tubes bubbled and on the upturned door rested a row of black rocks with holes drilled in the top. Snape worked over one of these, dripping what appeared to be mercury into one of them as a spell hovered it in a tilted spinning orbit as though to coat the inside evenly. Harry took a seat on a stool well out of the way of the hiss of noxious steam and the scent of baking rock.
Hands clenched between his knees to hold tight the ungraspable, Harry watched Snape work, alarmed by the notion that somehow his dream had left behind yet more material proof of its reality. A yawning gap separated him from the will to speak his suspicions, since like a spell, speaking threatened to make them real.
Snape glanced at Harry, then away, and then sharply back again. "What is the trouble?" he asked.
Harry realized that he had been sitting there waiting to be prompted, childishly perhaps. "Er, the money I had in my pocket the other day . . . it's gone." Snape waited for more, so Harry added, "I remember giving it away in my dream . . . to you . . . and now it's gone. It was the pounds Elizabeth gave me for her wand. I had them in my pocket," he repeated, avoiding feeling around said with his hands for a fifth time.
Snape's gaze grew vaguely disturbed. Harry said, "I'd rather be prophetic than have my nightmares become reality. What if everything becomes a dream? How would I know what's real?"
Snape spoke lowly, "Tell me not in mournful numbers life is but an empty dream. For the soul is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem . . ."
"What's that?" Harry asked in alarm.
"A nineteenth century American wizard named Longfellow said that." Snape carefully placed the vial of mercury he held back in one of several crowded racks and crossed his arms. "You are not the first to worry about such things."
Harry's brow furrowed, unappeased. Snape plucked up a pointed chunk of uneven silvery metal between metal pinchers and held it over a flame. White snow flaked off as it burned and he collected it with a tin plate as it fluttered downward.
"What are you working on?" Harry asked, vaguely aggrieved.
"It is almost finished. You will see soon enough." Snape smiled faintly then. "I have succeeded though." He stated this with unusual lightness, which shook Harry out of his own worries.
"Succeeded at what?" Harry asked, peering at the mysterious porous rocks, some broken open, some wrapped tightly with metal wire, as if reinforced to keep them from exploding.
"You will see," Snape said, sounding distant.
Harry frowned. Now that he had unburdened himself he wanted more concern but by some infinitesimally small chance, had caught Snape in a buoyant mood. Snape placed the tin saucer on the stained door and waved the flame away with his wand before facing Harry again. "Suffice to say, you are not living a dream at this moment. Or we are all suffering one together if you are, but I cannot believe that true."
As unnaturally philosophical as that was coming from Snape, Harry resisted it and stated, "I'd rather be prophetic. I like things the way they are. I don't want them to change."
Snape's smiled faintly, but purely, again. "Satisfying to hear you say that." Stepping closer with a challenging swish of his robes, he asked, "Truly nothing you would change?"
Harry thought over the imminent wedding, for which Candide's broad concern well-covered any needed from him or Snape. He thought of his unclear notion of an infant in the house. Even the dreaded dinner with the new in-laws felt dutifully acceptable. The past, however, still held stabs of regret. "I can't change the past," Harry admitted. "Everything else is good."
Snape made the unusual gesture of resting a hand on Harry's shoulder. It had the opposite effect from what was probably intended. It made it hard for Harry to take a breath. "What if I destroy all this. Without trying?"
Thoughtfully, Snape replied evenly, "Give us some credit, Harry. You are not the only one with power in this household." He fixed Harry with a level, unflinching gaze before releasing him and returning to his zinc and mercury.
- 888 -
The sky above Diagon Alley glared down with an unusually jewel-like blue as Harry walked toward Madam Malkin's. In his hand swung a sack containing his dress robes, still un-repaired after their last altercation with a public event. Even if they were serviceable, Harry thought them too formal for dinner at home and he had nothing besides his ordinary robes, which always seemed more worn than he remembered once he took a close look at them.
The shop was stifling in the heat, oppressive with new fabric scents. Even the bell chime on the door jangled mutedly in the robe-packed shop. Harry searched through a likely rack while the shopkeeper assisted someone else. Solid, bold colors dominated the robes in his size. Harry would have insisted before stepping in the store that he did not care what color robes he wore, but faced with saturated maroon and orange-brown, he realized differently.
The young shopkeeper bound over upon spotting him, pigtails bobbing along with her. "Can I help you find something?" she brightly asked.
Harry scratched his head. "Do you have anything in black?"
"What kind of event?"
Something about the way the scritching of hangers on metal across the shop stopped suddenly upon Harry's speaking, made him hold back on particulars. "Just a family dinner," he said, shrugging. He held out the sack with his damaged robes. "These need repair. And I need the robes for tonight."
She took the sack without peering into it and hovered it over her shoulder to the counter behind her. "Well, we have some greys . . ."
Harry tried to focus on the myriad robes held out for his inspection, but he could not keep his awareness away from the way the other customer happened to always remain out of sight when they moved about the shop.
The shopkeeper's voice was losing its perkiness without yet growing impatient as she held up a grey robe with light green decorative stitching. "The stitching would highlight your eyes . . ." she said in a practiced tone.
"I like that one," Harry said, dropping his shoulderbag to try them on.
Even before he had them pulled all the way over his head so he could see, she was leading him to the mirror. Harry tripped on the raised dais where he was supposed to stand for the fitting before stepping up onto it. He tugged the robes straight, while the shopclerk adjusted a curved, wall-mounted mirror to reflect the outside brightness on him. Harry had to agree that the light-colored stitching brought out his eyes. As he stared at his reflection, he wondered with a skip of his heart if his eyes had not become lighter still.
The shopkeeper prodded for a verdict, so he gave the robes a look. The spare and tasteful stitching evoked the right level of formality, he thought, without being stodgy. "They're good."
"Arms up, then," she ordered. "I need to pin them now for taking in if you want them tonight."
Harry held his arms out to the sides and waited while a tick tick sound emanated from taps of her wand along the side seams. The needles stiffened the fabric and pricked menacingly.
"So, important event?" the shopkeeper asked chattily.
"Just a family dinner," Harry said, squashing the urge to complain a bit about his new in-laws.
"That's all, really?" a new voice suggestively asked. Rita Skeeter, the source of the voice, slipped into view behind a tower of pastel pointed hats festooned with flowered ribbons.
Harry stiffened but sharp needlepoints bristled at him through his clothes, so he held still, arms tiring so that they drooped. "Almost finished?" Harry asked.
The shopkeeper was crouched, undoing the hem. "No, needs to be lengthened," she mumbled around the needles held between her lips. Harry sighed and held his arms up again. This at least removed the threat from the metal points in his armpits.
Skeeter slipped her notebook out of her handbag and after stopping to examine her red nails flipped it open. "Come on, Harry, if you give me something of value, I'll go away and leave you alone. If you make me dig, you don't know what I might uncover."
Harry had no desire to help her. "Go ahead and dig, then."
She pondered him and scratched something down with a quill made of a feather the same blood red as her nails. The scratching aggravated Harry who wanted to know what she was writing. As though filling him in, she said, "Grey is such an appropriate color for you, isn't it?" With a glance up at Harry's fixed form, she returned to writing, commenting, "Those eyes of yours are heading for diamond, aren't they? Green must be out this year."
Harry weakly bit at his top lip wondering what magic he had done now to further that. Other related worries about his powers tumbled out behind that thought as though loosed from a gate. The shopkeeper was halfway around the hem with her pinning.
Skeeter pondered aloud, "There is a major family event coming up for you, I hear. I sadly did not receive an invitation. I do so love weddings. So what could be this evening that would make the most famous of wizards have to rush out for a new robe?"
Harry's stomach flipped at the notion of seeing his extended family issues spread out for all to see in the newspaper, right before the big event, which promised to be sufficiently complicated on its own. Bolstering himself with a dark look, that at least put a halt to her incessant scratching, Harry asked, "Why do you want me as an enemy?"
The question appeared to catch her off guard. Her nails were due again already for further inspection. She did this while saying, "Leaving aside that you are more profitable as an enemy, I personally don't buy the innocent routine. You spread it especially thick."
Harry's leaden arms had tilted lower again, garnering a rebuke from the shopkeeper. He sighed and raised his arms straight again, finding strength in the notion that she was almost finished. Pins glittered in a circle around his feet, brighter than the light green thread of the pattern along the hem.
"So your plan is to annoy me until I prove myself dark enough that it is safe only to leave me alone?" Harry asked Skeeter.
She closed her notebook and said soberly, "Oh, you've probably already done that." She turned while stashing her notebook away, and stepped out of the shop. The door squeaked closed with a jangle of the bell and the shopkeeper announced, "Done."
Harry dropped his arms in relief and got poked in the side for it. He had to raise his arms all the way up to have the robes safely hovered off him. She hung them on a rusty pipe behind the counter suspended from the ceiling by an even rustier chain. "I'll have them in an hour." She handed him a slip.
"That's fast."
She leaned forward and with a hand beside her mouth said, "My brother bought an elf so our mum could have nights off. He's really fast, the elf is, even if he doesn't speak much English, and not a stitch out of place." She waved at the otherwise empty pipe. "See, nothing waiting. We're going to go custom next month: bespoke robes while you wait and everything. That's why Rita was in here, to write an article." She accepted Harry's Galleons and gave him change, still chattering. "You should have told her all about your plans. She'd lap it up and then all your friends would get to read all about it. We were thrilled when she agreed to come do a piece on us."
"Yeah, I'm sure," Harry muttered.
Outside on the alley, the conversation with Skeeter still circled in Harry's mind as his eyes checked to make sure she was not around, in obvious human form. He was just considering heading home and coming back to fetch the robes rather than dragging Ron out of work early to keep him company when another voice stopped him short.
"Hello, Harry," Belinda said, appearing chipper in the fine weather, which startled him into uttering something unintelligible in response. "Would you do me a favor?" she asked.
He was so pleased to see her happier that he instantly said he would. She led the way down the Alley, explaining how the Minister needed a special, certain liquor for a visiting dignitary and the only shop that carried it was on Knockturn Alley and she hoped he would keep her company because it was more crowded that day than usual. Harry thought crowded better than empty from a safety perspective, but he agreed, knowing it would give him a chance to talk to her.
Her light footsteps floated her along Diagon Alley, Harry beside, until they reached the turn. Harry asked her how the Minister's office was treating her; the best small talk he could come up with in a hurry. She shrugged and gave a version of her standard answer about working too late every evening, but it being worth it.
They ducked together under the crooked bay window that blocked part of the narrow entrance to the less-than-savory side alley to Diagon. The sun here fell on dusty wide-brimmed hats pulled low and hoods pulled far forward, leaving features in inky shadow. The scent of old smoke and bromide leached from the age-darkened walls. A group of witches slid aside grudgingly to let Harry and Belinda pass. The witches hum of conversation fell still, eyes tracking even though heads barely moved.
Harry fell silent too, needing to concentrate on watching the denizens of Knockturn observing them in return. Belinda continued to talk, until Harry said, "I'm glad to see you so upbeat."
Oddly, this set her lips into a purse and Harry regretted speaking. They neared the end of the alley. Cracked and aged signs hung lower here outside the shop doors, varnish darkened, obscuring the print. Belinda stopped before a newly painted sign depicting a curly eye surrounded by the words Cellar ObscurI.
Belinda pulled open the door, revealing not a shop but a long wooden staircase curving downward. A small lamp hinted at a landing somewhere in the depth. Harry stared down at the tiny light until his eyes adjusted and then around at the hunched and gritty old wizards and witches loitering near this end of the alley, slitted eyes slipping over to fix on him. A sharp glare at the closest renewed their walking.
The stairway appeared far more like a trap than a place of business, even if Harry's curse sense gave him only the usual distress of Knockturn Alley in general.
"How long will it take to buy the bottle?" Harry asked, torn between stepping into a trap and letting her step into one alone.
But her concerns had evaporated now that they had reached the shop. "Oh, just two minutes or so."
"If you aren't out in five, I'll come in after you," Harry stated, hand checking for his wand, obediently in his pocket where it was supposed to be.
Belinda laughed, believing he was joking, apparently. She slipped quickly down the steps while Harry held the door open to give her more light. After she had made the turn out of sight, Harry scanned around him and backed up to the far wall where he could keep watch on the whole alley and the shop. He noted the time on his watch and stood, waiting.
Hunched shoppers shuffled by, tattered robes dragging. Shop doors here did not have chimes but low foghorns, or even screams. Harry waited, thinking time must have run out, but a check of his watch repeatedly told otherwise.
When Belinda slipped out the shop door, sack-wrapped package tucked under her arm, Harry felt a bit silly about his worry.
"Thanks for waiting. Minister gives me these errands and its nice to have company."
"Where's Percy?" Harry asked. Forethought told him not to, but curiosity overruled.
"He wasn't around today. So I couldn't ask him to come with me," she added. "Normally, he would," she then added in a tone of defense.
Harry did not like Percy, but he did not want Belinda back. Sandwiched between those two zones, he could not find anything to say.
Belinda glanced at her own pocketwatch. "I'll Apparate back from here, if you don't mind. I hate to break the incoming rule, since our office wrote it, but we have no plans to regulate outgoing."
Harry barely nodded before she had gone with a last, "Thanks again." He stared momentarily at the shop door and the brand new sign. He turned to go and was run into by someone walking quickly and not watching where they were going.
Harry disentangled himself and said, "Candide?" in surprise at recognizing the person he helped right.
Flustered, she blurted, "Harry!" Then covered her mouth and said, "Oops, was I not supposed to give you away? Or, you're not in disguise are you?"
This all came flowing out so quickly, Harry needed a second to catch up. By the time, he did, she was tugging on his sleeve and moving down the alley.
"No, it's all right. What are you doing here?" Harry asked. Even with her head bowed, he could see her flush. On the return trip out, the alley's occupants moved aside more deliberately, eyeing Harry's companion and him alternately. Harry sent sharp Auror-eyed looks back. A particularly pointy-bearded, tall wizard standing in front of Best's Beastiary Provision seemed amused by this.
"I shouldn't have, I know, The boss was gone, so I slipped out," Candide said, sounding guilty. She took his arm in a tighter grip and whispered excitedly, "But I know what I'm having now."
Not understanding, Harry said, "What?"
"I went and asked Grisley--you know the old augerer--what I was having; you know a girl or a boy."
"Oh," Harry said. They were passing through the narrows leading to Diagon. Harry ducked so Candide would not have to. "So, what did she say?" he asked, suddenly intensely curious and jarringly on hold until he heard the answer.
"It's a boy, she said," Candide recounted.
They stopped in the intersection of the two alleys, shoppers veered around them, packages rustling.
"That's excellent," Harry said, not sure what difference it really made, except that just knowing made a kind of major difference. He stared beyond her hair down Knockturn Alley and the robed figures skulking about there. "I'd not mind seeing Severus' reaction if you could hold off on telling him till I was there."
She smiled. "I'd like you to be there when I tell him, of course. But I have to get back to work for a bit, just in case the boss comes back." She moved off in a hurry after patting Harry on the arm.
Harry watched her negotiate the crowds to reach the door leading up to the accounting office. It swung closed and Harry felt strangely disconnected and unsure why that would be the case. The evening held the promise of even more interesting encounters and he now felt vague dread about it, even as he felt more determined to make things work with Snape and his new in-laws.
Shaking himself as a group of children passed, one of them turning back to wave excitedly at him, face aglow with recognition, Harry Disapparated for home.
Next: Chapter 8
Snape harmlessly crushed the bundle together and slipped it under his arm. "Yes. Minerva kindly reassigning my teaching and even Head of House duties, but failed, suspiciously enough, to find another deputy. His words came out clipped, having wrapped himself in disdain already in preparation for the dinner, Harry figured. Candide minced over while this conversation went on and Snape took wary stock of the two of them. "What is it?" Snape asked, put on alert by what must have been the pensiveness they exuded over Candide's news.
"I, uh, went to see Grisley Teaberg today . . ." Candide opened.
"Why? No, don't tell me," he added quickly holding up his hand. "You fetched a beauty potion for your cousin . . . an excellent plan," he asserted, turning to stride away.
Author's Notes
The delay was due to my travelling around too much to write. If you follow my author link to my lj blog you can track what the heck is distracting me. It takes a lot to distract me from writing, but lately life has managed.
Also, the misnaming of the village is intentional. Spinning is what one does to generate one story, but with this story I'm making a metaphor for fanfiction, and the multitude of stories that make it up, hence a weaving. Plus timelines are now seriously off from canon, so I can only peg it as close as I can to the books and the renaming is also an acknowledgment of that.
Chapter 8 — Trials
Grey robes just brushed the stone floor as they should, perfectly tailored. Harry gave himself one last check in the mirror inside the wardrobe door and shut it, consciously neatening the room despite not expecting the visiting in-laws to look into it.
Downstairs, Candide moved frantically about, straightening fresh candles in the tallest ornate holders on the dining room table, adjusting the silver and the napkins. She turned to Harry with the attitude that he was next in line for inspection.
She stopped. "You look good. New robes?"
"Yep."
Sounding doubtful it could be true, she asked, "Did you pick those out yourself?"
Harry grinned in the face of the implied insult. "Yes, I did manage to pick them out myself."
She pushed her styled and extra wavy hair around. Harry figured the comment had its genesis in stress, so he said: "It's all right. Really, the shop clerk suggested them."
Candide glanced at the simple little clock up on the shelf that had been moved from her flat. It was merely a varnished block of wood with four brass ticks in the cardinal positions. "Why did Severus have to go to Hogwarts today of all days?" she asked, peeved.
Harry assumed Snape was continuing to stay out of the way. "I'm certain he'll return soon." Candide crossed her arms, eyes fixed on the clock, frown still apparent. Harry went on, "I think it will go all right tonight."
She patted Harry's arm and burst back into preparatory motion, this time re-attacking the main hall.
Snape arrived shortly after, pre-occupied as he wandered into the hall, reading from a bundle of pale, animal-hide scrolls with bright red and purple tassels. By standing on tip toe to get a glance, Harry decided they must be school board decrees. "That time again," Harry said.
Snape harmlessly crushed the bundle together and slipped it under his arm. "Yes. Minerva for the moment kindly reassigned my preparatory teaching and even Head of House duties, but failed, suspiciously enough, to find another deputy. His words came out clipped, having wrapped himself in disdain already for dinner, Harry figured. Candide minced over while this conversation went on and Snape took wary stock of the two of them. "What is it?" Snape asked, put on alert by what must have been the pensiveness they exuded over Candide's news.
"I, uh, went to see Grisley Teaberg today . . ." Candide opened.
"Why? No, don't tell me," he added quickly holding up his hand. "You fetched a beauty potion for your cousin . . . an excellent plan," he asserted, turning to stride away.
Harry swallowed a grin, but Candide propped her fists on her hips, eyes narrowing. "That's hardly what I did." Snape made a bored turn back to them, leading with his toes. Candide said, "I had her divine whether we're having a boy or girl."
Snape's carefully built dismissive wall appeared to hollow out, even though he did not actually move. "And?" he finally asked.
Candide made as if to speak, but then crossed her arms and, perhaps in retaliation for his crack about her cousin, tauntingly said, "Which do you think she said, boy or girl?"
Snape considered for just a second before replying, "As long as she didn't say 'neither' it doesn't much matter."
"Or one of each," Harry contributed, enjoying this game.
This drew Snape's increasingly undone gaze to him. "She did not say 'one of each,' did she?"
Harry laughed, unable to leave him hanging vulnerable like that for long. "No."
The movement of Snape's shoulders gave away real relief. "Well, which is it then?"
Candide relented. "A boy."
Unmoving, Snape took that in. "Ah." Harry watched him fail to react, outwardly anyhow. He turned slowly to look at the tall clock. "I best get ready," he said. He stepped away and this time Candide moved as though to catch up and grab hold. Harry, without thinking, took hold of her as she passed. A dispute felt imminent and it could not be a worse time for it.
When the door clicked closed upstairs, Harry released her. Eyes watery and fiery, she demanded quietly, "What's the matter with him?"
Harry felt around inside his head for something to say, certain he lacked the skill to sooth her but having no choice but to try. He hesitated simply telling her to leave it for later, because even if that did not backfire, it would poison the evening. "Severus didn't have a very happy childhood," Harry said, sort of to stall but understanding opened before him as he said it. "Maybe he's afraid it isn't going to be any different this time around."
Candide lost her battle-ready posture and asked, "Do you think he'd have preferred a girl?"
Seeing as it was a done thing, Harry preferred not to conjecture on that but he had to answer the question. "That might not have reminded him so much, possibly. But it'll be all right," Harry insisted. "Give him some time to get used to the idea."
She sighed loudly, which under any other circumstances would have concerned him. In this case it was the sound of giving in, at least for the moment.
"I thought he'd be happy," she said.
Harry thought that a strong word for Snape under any circumstance. Trying to lighten things, he said, "Not that he'd let anyone know if he was . . ."
She ducked her head for a grin that was half grimace. With another sigh, she patted his arm and said, "I don't think this would work without you."
Harry would rather like to think it would, but he could see her viewpoint. "Your parents will be here soon. Is everything ready?"
This properly distracted her utterly. She strode in a circle around the carefully arranged hall, even leaning back to scrutinize the chandelier, composed entirely of fresh candles, all glowing merrily. "I think we're ready," she said, sounding fatalistic.
Harry pondered the notion of bringing someone home for the two of them to scrutinize with thoughts of marriage. His initial instinct that they would be more forgiving and open than Candide's parents gave way to a more pessimistic vision of them asking awkward and pointed questions. These considerations made Harry more nervous for that evening.
Snape returned, taciturn and faintly glowering. They all sat down on the couches—Snape with a tumbler of something amber—and waited. When the knock came on the door and Harry stood, Snape arrested him with a sharply raised hand. "I instructed the elf to take care of the butlering."
A small pop indicated Winky had indeed gone to the door. The three of them stood as cloaks were shed in the narrow, dim entry hall. Three figures shuffled into the main hall and Harry was grateful to see Ruthie leading the way, knowing smile firmly in place on her substantial face. Candide's parents followed, trailing farther behind as the room widened out. Her father was a man going toward portly, but did not move like one as far along as he actually was. Her mother's greying hair was swept back in a style similar to Candide's but the grey streaks left one with the impression of a badger. This was reinforced by her distasteful expression as she took in the old house and its patchwork of recent repairs.
Harry fought a defensive acid rising in his chest and stepped forward with a friendly smile to follow behind the others' greetings.
"And Harry," Candide said, making introductions. "My mum and dad, Adalais Martyn and Farnsworth Breakstone, and of course you've met my sister."
Attitudes shifted instantly and Harry's hand was pumped excessively by Candide's father. "A pleasure, Mr. Potter, absolutely smashing to get to meet you . . ." He went on in this vein until realizing abruptly that he should stop. This was followed by a peck on the cheek by Adalais. Thus reassured that he could influence their opinions, Harry relaxed and took the liberty of suggesting they sit down and that Winky should fetch them drinks.
Harry taking charge eased the atmosphere until they were settled in and no good topics of conversation caught hold. Ruthie rescued them, by leaning her broadly round shoulders forward and asking Harry, "So, what is it like to be an Auror? Exciting I bet."
"Yes and no. We spend a lot of boring hours on patrol or stake-out between bouts of excitement."
No one joined in, certainly not the poker-stiff Adalais or slumping Farnsworth, so Ruthie said, "The papers have been covering the upcoming vampire trial. What do you think about the expensive solicitor Fueago hired?"
Harry knew nothing beyond that he would be pulled out of training for his testimony. Before he could explain this, Snape intervened with, "Harry prefers to remain ignorant of what gets printed about him."
Ruthie jerked in surprise. "Really. I'd love reading about myself . . . even bad things. Those would be the best fun." She laughed heartily and peered at Harry with amusement.
Harry could not judge if she was joking. The attempts at conversation were mercifully cut short by Winky, gold edged tea-towel glittering in the excessive candlelight of the chandelier, summoning them to dinner. As they made their way to the dining room, he overheard Adalais muttered something grudging about how nice it must be to have a house-elf to take care of everything.
Dinner slid by at a snail's pace with nearly all comments directed at Harry, who did not mind at first, but by the time the roast was cut into for second helpings he began to think more progress towards their accepting Snape would be more valuable. When a ripe opportunity presented itself in the form of Candide insisting to her mother that she had survived any bouts of morning sickness with a good potion, Harry jumped in. He said, "Severus is an expert brewer."
Candide's father wiped his mouth, folded his napkin and said, "You used to teach that, Candy tells us. I'd expect you to get good at it if you were teaching it." He sniffed, heavy cheeks shifting in layers as he considered the row of them across the table. "You teach Defense Against the Darker Arts now, correct?" His tone implied less small talk and more ground-work-laying. Harry began to see this not leading anywhere good and indeed, his instincts were correct. The man said, "You teach that from experience too, I suppose?"
"Of course," Snape answered easily, uncaringly, which unclenched Harry's chest. "I wouldn't be very good at it if I did not teach from experience. It is a serious and necessary subject, sadly neglected in the past as Harry can attest."
Harry took up this opening with the first thing he could think of. "That's true. It's so important now that Hogwarts has two professors on the subject, sharing the load."
Farnsworth straightened his silverware and said, "There was some controversy about that too in the papers this week, something about keeping a werewolf on around all those children. Or am I mis-remembering?"
Snape calmly refilled his own glass of wine. "No, that's correct, but he's rendered relatively harmless by regular potioning before and during the full moon."
"Well that's something anyhow," Farnsworth conceded without changing his challenging tone.
To Harry it seemed the strained discussion about Lupin and Hogwarts was actually a substitute for something else, a different topic or perhaps a duel.
Farnsworth went on while Adalais ate heartily, content with her husband's handling of things. Ruthie, the more likely candidate to eat while food was plentiful, had had the same potato poised on her fork for the last minute.
"Just doesn't seem worth the risk, does it? If I had a son or daughter there still, I couldn't possible approve it," Candide's father said and his wife nodded broadly in agreement. "I can't imagine allowing a dangerous creature like that around children. He could spread that evil easily, couldn't he?"
Harry cut Snape's reply off with, "He isn't a creature; he's a very kind man." He managed to pull his voice back from angry into the realm of calmly informative by the end, but his heart rate rose in response.
Snape did something unexpected; he reached beside him and gently laid a hand over Harry's arm, where it rested beside his knife, as if to silence him. Snape went on, the very model of control. "You have to forgive my adopted son, he is passionate at defending those he cares about."
Harry watched Farnsworth's eyes cautiously move back and forth between the two of them and realized that Snape's gentle assertion was actually a threat, and Harry had to slow his breathing to avoid giving away that he had grasped that. Ruthie's brows were at her hairline. She puckered her lips and ate her potato, which was the cue for the conversation to move to something else.
Things remained superficially congenial until the sherry was poured by Winky after the pudding plates glittered away. Winky bowed herself out with a quick backward shuffle clearly desiring to leave. Farnsworth, while peering through the dark red liquid in his glass at the nearest candle, said, "If we had a say in this, we'd put a stop to it."
Oddly, Harry felt relief upon hearing this, despite its bluntness. Snape swirled his own carefully observed sherry and did not reply. Candide colored but also held back. Harry suspected she had heard that at least once before.
Ruthie, finishing off her tumbler, said, "Good thing you can't then."
Farnsworth ignored her and accused Snape: "Figures someone with a background like yours would use the most despicable, old-fashioned form of coercion. Doesn't it?"
The tightening of the cords on the back of Snape's hand was the only outward sign of his self-control. He brushed the fingertips of his left hand over each other as he answered, "On that point you are grossly mistaken."
Adalais snorted faintly, prompting Candide to say with a blush clear even in the candlelight, "I'm certain I explained this, Mother."
Farnsworth did not remove his eyes from Snape. "Like I'd believe the likes of you," he said in a low voice perhaps propelled and bolstered by alcohol.
Harry would have spoken, but Snape's fingers brushed his forearm again before he could compose something. It was torture to sit quietly.
"Mother," Candide chastised, perhaps expecting an ally in this.
"Well, Dear," Adalais said in a voice pitched higher than normal, "We always expected you to do better than this—you of all people." Adalais glanced at Snape dismissively and straightened her crushed napkin back over her lap. "I mean, really, Dear," she added, flustered.
Candide dabbed quickly at one eye and bit her lip. Harry was ready to burst. Snape had tapped him yet again as though sensing this. Harry, taking his anger out on his guardian because it was the only direction allowed, asked, "Why don't you want me to say anything?"
"I simply don't," Snape said calmly. "You have already lost your temper."
"Oh, no I haven't," Harry countered, just barely in check. "I wouldn't be sitting here like this if I had, would I? I don't like sitting here quietly while the only family I've even known is roundly insulted."
Candide's parents stared at him. Harry tried to find another ounce of calm to apply to his nerves and he must have managed because he backed down, but assumed it was clear to others that he was struggling.
Ruthie piped up, "Well, like you said, 'nothing you can do about it'."
Farnsworth's face twisted as though the sherry beneath his nose had grown foul. "She's old enough to do as she pleases, but that still doesn't make it easy to turn her over to a supporter, former or not, of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. We read all the papers; have for years; years and years; we know what you are, even if she downplays it." He nodded in Candide's direction.
"Voldemort," Snape said just as Harry had opened his mouth to do so. "His name is Voldemort."
Candide's parents cringed and Ruthie had to hide a grin behind pretending to drink from her empty tumbler.
Adalais resumed addressing the daughter across from her. "People don't ever cease to be dark wizards, Candy-dear," she stated as fact. "Imagine if you told us you wanted to marry a . . . a vampire. Wouldn't you expect us to dissuade you?"
Candide, eyes bright, did not reply. She looked away, at the empty grate, char-coated and cold.
Silence reigned until Snape set down his empty tumbler and said, "Perhaps if we have run out of things people wish to get out in the open, we should declare this an evening."
Farnsworth tossed his napkin onto the table. "There's no legal recourse for us; I already checked. Even asked a solicitor for help requesting a dispensation directly from the Wizengamot."
Snape followed this immediately with, "But in the hearing you would be up against Harry Potter and I suspect that put an end to the idea." He smiled for the first time, but it did not reach his eyes.
"Daddy, you didn't," Candide complained and then huffed in annoyance.
Harry wondered if her father had considered going to the papers. Skeeter would certainly provide a willing ear. Harry did not ask about this, just in case.
Farnsworth said, "I can't in good conscience give you away."
Snape said, "Someone else will be happy to do so," at the exact same time Candide asked, "But you'll still come, right?"
"I insisted we go," Adalais said. "Wouldn't be proper to not go at all."
This finally was the last comment of any substance that evening. When the door finally closed and the three of them were standing alone in the hall, Harry said, "That could have gone worse, I suppose." Snape turned on his heel to face him. He was still calm, which Harry had to comment on. "You did well," Harry told him.
Dryly, he said, "With due respect to Candide, I decided they truly do not matter." Candide's gaze was fixed to the floor and it remained there until Snape said to her, "I do hope that's the end of it."
Candide nodded. Harry gave her a weak smile when she looked his way. "Thanks for trying Harry," she said.
To her he shrugged. To Snape Harry said, "Sorry I talked out of turn."
"Oh, do not apologize. I wished you to."
Harry lowered his brow and stared at him. "You were manipulating me?"
"I wished you to express your thoughts in a context that made it absolutely clear you spoke of your own will, which you did. It was useful that you are so predictable, but I must point out that you should work to eliminate such a bad habit that makes it easy for your enemies to entrap you."
"I can try," Harry said doubtfully. He huffed and said, "I have readings to do," before he strode up the stairs, intending to take Kali out of her cage, settle in with his books, and willfully ignore the realization that even when he tried to use his influence, he could not succeed at it properly.
An owl from Hermione distracted Harry from sorting through his books. The bird carried an invitation to a small luncheon she was having at the Leaky Cauldron before leaving for Hogwarts. Harry pulled out his small diary and made a note of it. At the bottom of the printed invitation she had added:
Harry, I should probably warn you that I invited Vishnu as well. We've owled on occasion, but I haven't seen him since your birthday and found I really have to or I might lose my mind. It should be safe enough since I'm leaving for ten months.
Harry tossed the invitation into the cold hearth to burn later, thinking Hermione may not want anyone seeing that note. He frowned, feeling for his friend and wondering how things were with his fellow. Harry should have found or created an opportunity to speak with him, but feeling partly responsible for his marriage difficulties made it even more awkward. Maybe he'd have a chance during the luncheon, or maybe that would be completely the wrong time to bring anything up.
- 888 -
Saturday, Harry took his bike out again, this time to meet Tonks, whom he had arranged to meet for dinner in Hogsmeade. Harry flew to the wizarding village, which gave him a rare chance to mull over things. The helmet, when he had to wear it until clear of Muggle habitation, rubbed painfully against the bump on his head, reminding him of the mystery of how he had ended up with it. He had flashes of crawling toward the warmth of the fire, but not exactly how he had become so cold in the first place. Also a mystery that dragged on his mind was why Belinda had been back, mostly, to her outgoing self when he had seen her on Diagon Alley.
This second mystery still gnawed at Harry's consciousness as he landed with a musical clang! of metal on the narrow road before the Three Broomsticks. Shoppers turned to stare at him before giggling and going on their way. The great chrome machinery of Sirius' motorbike did stand out in the age-tainted, wooden surroundings of the wizarding village.
Tonks stepped out of the pub and propped a hand on her skirted hip. "That explains why you wanted to meet here," she said, giving him a peck. Her hair stood tall and lemon yellow today.
Harry rolled the bike out of the way into the alley and tugged her farther between the buildings using the bike as a barrier to hug her properly. "Glad you could get away today," Harry said. He felt eyes upon them and pulled away with a glance at the empty light behind the buildings. He fought a temptation to send a curse that direction.
Inside, the two of them settled over mugs of butterbeer. Harry, wanting help working things out said, "Oddest thing. Belinda was nice to me the other day."
Tonks' dismay was most likely exaggerated, making Harry grin. "Sorry," he said. "It's just that something has been up with her."
"Harry, is there a witch in England you aren't trying to come to the aid of."
"Don't be silly," Harry said, trying not to laugh. "Not all of them. Just the ones exposed to the hazard that is Harry."
Tonks tipped her mug at him, slopping some onto the table where it smoked a bit as it mixed with the other stains on the wood. "I'll grant you that one."
"You don't have to be jealous. I prefer my dates to not need rescuing. Really."
She smiled with her eyes and Harry accepted that she believed him. Her eyes rolled though, when he said, "But about Belinda . . ."
"How about some other topic . . . how are the wedding plans going?"
"Oh, please," Harry groaned. "Some other topic."
A group of hags shuffled in, the mustiness of their robes making some customers sneeze. Madam Rosmerta stalked over. "The Hog's Head serves fare more to your liking I expect," she said to them. The five of them ignored her and with much loud adjusting of chairs, made themselves at home.
Tonks took everyone in with a practiced eye before turning back to Harry. "I hope things aren't going badly."
"Well, the in-laws could be happier . . ."
"They always could be happier."
"But I'm just tired of all the discussion about dress colors and flower selection and music and . . . ugh."
She laughed. "Blokes don't go in for that; it's true."
"And Severus is up to something. Won't say what it is."
Tonks finished her butterbeer in record time and stood to get another. "That sounds like him." She returned seconds later with a fresh drink, this time sitting back more relaxed. "You have to get to know him by guessing correctly," she asserted. "But you would know that. How's he coping with having one on the way?"
"I haven't asked him," Harry said. A group of youngsters flew by out on the street dressed all in the same color robes as though on their way to use the school Quidditch pitch.
"I'd be dying to ask him," Tonks said. "Just see his reaction. Imagine a junior Severus. Or juniorette."
"Junior," Harry said.
"It is now?" she asked, grinning. "Seeing himself grow up again. That will be a change for him. Most blokes love that part of it, but I don't know about him."
Something about the hunched hags in the window made Harry remember the other Snape, the ragged, beaten down Snape. To distract himself, he said, "I've never met your parents."
"Eh," she said, waving her hands weakly. After a pause she said, "If you really want to, we could all go out for dinner some night."
"I think I'd like that. Is there some reason you wouldn't want to?" Harry had to ask.
Tonks shrugged and glanced into her mug.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
Tonks shrugged again. "No, we can go out. Pick a date."
"Maybe after the wedding," Harry said. "You're coming to the wedding, right?"
"I received an invitation, in fact."
"Oh good, I just realized I'd assumed you'd go with me."
She laughed. "If I don't get called on duty in an emergency, of course."
Harry tried to keep his mind off concerns for Belinda and Elizabeth, but found it difficult. He kept clear of the topic in conversation as they sat, but he was distracted. Finally, he said, "Want to go for a ride?" to which Tonks after teasing him, agreed.
- 888 -
Sunday for Hermione's party six of them settled into a corner table that afforded some privacy due to the irrational architecture of the Leaky Cauldron. Harry pushed the present he had brought across the table, gathering a sharp look from his old friend.
"Harry, what's this?"
"If you can't figure that one out," Ginny said of the beribboned package resting before them all, "I think you should disqualify yourself from teaching."
Ron gave his sister a slap on the arm.
Beside Ron, Vineet appeared slightly less than completely serene. Harry observed him in profile and hoped that angle accentuated his unhappiness. Hermione would glance at him and then glance away. Lavender caught onto this and shot Ron a knowing look, which Ron gallantly ignored or simply did not notice.
Hermione opened her tall gift and found it contained a stack of one of each kind of stationary currently sold at Flourish and Blotts.
"You'll be doing a lot of owling, I think," Harry said.
Hermione dabbed at her right eye. "I think you're right. It's going to be long months without seeing you all."
Ron said, "What's to stop us from coming up to Hogsmeade for a pint?"
"Well, I'm going to be terribly busy and I know it isn't so far away, but I suspect everyone will have other things to do."
"Yeah, I hear they lock all new teachers in the keep for the first year," Harry said. "Only the bats for company."
Hermione laughed, but her eyes were still too bright. "I feel like I'm going very far away. I'm not sure why."
Lavender said, "We'll come up to see you. Don't get all dewy-eyed about it. It's not like you're going to Durmstrang, then you would be on your own."
Harry had a feeling he understood this, that the opportunities to see Vineet were going to be cut down to nil. Vineet had not spoken at all, so Harry had no clue about his thoughts, which were apparently a matter of deep attention for him.
"It's going to be so strange, but I'm dying to get started," Hermione said. "I realized the last month how dreadfully bored I've been. I think this will put a stop to that." She went on, words flowing freely. "Headmistress said that after a few years I could be Head of House, even, Sinistra only took on the duty because there was no one else. Wouldn't that be just grand?"
"You sound like a kid again," Ron said, slight disgust clear in his voice.
"Don't you remember our first year at Hogwarts?" she asked him.
"I remember Voldemort tried to kill Harry. And then the second year he tried again . . ."
"Ron, that's not going to happen this time. Harry took care of him once and for all. Didn't you Harry?"
Her need for reassurance surprised him. "Yes. He's nothing now," he insisted.
Hermione smiled and announced, "I think we need another round."
- 888 -
As expected, Arthur came to the training room door to fetch Harry. They were mid-practice of neutralizing curse spells frequently used for traps, like the Supergummy Curse, the Infinite Fall Hex, and the Brain Spin Hex. Harry immediately abandoned Aaron to Tridant and Kerry Ann, who were competing vigorously on trapping each other.
"You're next up in the dungeon. Courtroom Ten," Mr. Weasley said before turning to go back to his office.
The torches in the dungeon always seem to burn fainter and colder than in the rest of the Ministry, suppressed perhaps by the damp, thin air. The breeze of Harry's striding by made the tall flames spasm once before standing still again. The masked guard outside the door could have been related to a troll. He moved his ax aside and let Harry stand before the door and wait for it to be opened from the inside. All of these preparations made Harry wonder if the Ministry actually had brought the vampire from the French prison for the trial, even if Snape did not believe they would. Harry swallowed hard; he had put aside thoughts of any risk to his secrets from the trial and now those worries woke and came piling on again.
"Ah, Mr. Potter," the presiding elder of the Wizengamot said when Harry entered. The door boomed closed behind Harry as he strode across the floor. He was relieved to find the chair in the center empty, chains slack, but not as pleased to see that Tiberius Ogden was presiding. The old wizard squinted at his papers and said, "We have questions, for you. And when we are through, the solicitor for the accused will have an opportunity to ask you anything relevant as well." Here he gestured over to the side at the lowest seats which held a row of witches and wizards in fine black robes trimmed in velvet. The tallest one, a stately, greying dark-haired man, gave Harry a searching look with his transparent blue eyes.
Ogden went on, "Poyser DeBenedictus and his associates are here in the accused's stead, due to security considerations. We have already dispensed with the protests over this decision. Your fellow Auror apprentice, one Barbarella Blackpool, will be called to testify as well but based on the report, she is not as reliable a witness as you have been judged to be, Mr. Potter."
Harry nodded in agreement and squinted into the high torches in an effort to see the faces in the tiers above him. Only twelve seats were occupied and McGonagall's seat was not one of them. On the far side a handful of reporters sat on stools added along the floor. Skeeter had her head of shining ringlets down, bracelets flashing as she wrote. Someone loudly cleared their throat during the lull while Ogden flipped through his parchments.
"Yes, Cornelius, we will be moving along presently. Now, Mr. Potter, we have read the report you signed off on, so we need not re-cover all of the events, but some points must be established to the satisfaction of this committee if we are to determine whether we should incarcerate the accused and for how long."
He went on to ask for more details about the vampire's hold over the Muggle family, asking specifics that surprised Harry, such as did the girl ever open her eyes or did she speak to the vampire. Harry had to admit she only moaned, which he was uncomfortable describing, and this must have come through because he could see amusement on at least two faces as he struggled.
"All right then," Ogden went on. "After that, Fueago was reported to attack Ms. Blackpool. You described him as 'hungry' in your report."
"Objection," DeBenedictus said, standing up, which showed him to be even taller than Harry imagined. "The witness cannot know this to be true and it is conjecture only."
Harry waited for his opportunity to speak and drawing on Snape's fine example of calm from the dinner on Friday, he said, "Fueago had his mouth open wide and he sniffed the air like a dog might when trying to find a scent. He moved jerkily, frantically," Harry also added, feeling that safe from the solicitor's reach to cancel out what he said.
Ogden finished up with his questions, which Harry strained his memory to reply to accurately. DeBenedictus stood again more deliberately, unfolding like a lamppost might he moved so rigidly. He eyed Harry as though not happy to see him there. "Why don't you take a seat, Mr. Potter," he said flatly.
"That's all right, I'll stand."
The man's voice did not modulate at all as he spoke, pitched to be heard clearly by the full assemblage while still sounding conversational. "Too familiar with that chair, are you? Well, your choice then."
Harry forced more calm on himself, having learned that this was not just defensive, but also could be used offensively and would suffice for the moment. He waited for a question as though bored.
DeBenedictus circled once, considering the tiers above them, picking out and attending to each individual peering down. Without warning, he asked, "Have you ever dealt with a vampire before, Mr. Potter, in the course of your Ministry work?"
"No, sir," Harry responded politely.
"No," the solicitor agreed like a whip-crack. "And indeed the report indicates that you did not even know the proper procedures that should be followed, such as taking a mouth swab within fifteen minutes of a vampire's purported attack. Did you know that was in the manual your very department keeps on file?" He turned and gestured at one of the wizards seated with his colleagues. "I have with me as a supporting witness none other than Eldred Worple, foremost expert on vampires and he can attest to your manual being veracious on this point."
He fell into a lecture mode then, as though pretending to help Harry for the next time. "You see, there can be no admissible determination of whether the vampire intended to create another vampire during the bite, if no swab is, within a short period of time, obtained and sealed in a silver box for later testing."
Harry wanted to shrug. He nodded weakly instead.
The solicitor went on still sounding kindly informative. "If you are, as Elder Ogden indicated, the best witness the Ministry Department of Magical Law Enforcement intends to produce for this trial, I would not be sanguine about your success in these proceedings."
Despite his heart rate rising, Harry believed he managed to hide his agitation. He imagined his department's dismay if, because of his testimony, Fueago went free. Harry said, "He kept that Muggle family terrorized for over a year. He told me when I confronted him that he was older than the British Isles itself and therefore above or outside our laws."
"Is that an exact quote or are you interpreting?" the solicitor asked.
Harry cast his mind back to the darkened bedroom in Burnipsbie. "He laughed when I told him he was breaking the rules and he said 'what rules?'"
"And that means what?" The solicitor paced away. "Only that he found something funny and wanted more information."
"He was mocking the whole notion," Harry insisted.
The solicitor tossed his hand as though this was ridiculous. Harry longed to say, like you're doing now, but he held it in. More calmly, Harry said, "When I told him there were Ministry of Magic rules he had to follow he said, and quote, 'Do not insult me'."
"He just simply meant that it was insulting to imply that he did not know such basic rules."
Harry ground his teeth and took a deep breath. The solicitor beat him to speaking. "Really, Mr. Potter, your reputation notwithstanding, you are a mere trainee. You failed to follow the required procedures, understandable of course," he said with small solicitous bow, "given that you haven't learned them yet."
Harry found the man's ultra-friendly patronizing tone the most aggravating of all. As he lost control of the situation, Harry found control of himself slipping away as well. "He lied to the guards at the French prison." This was lame, but it was the one thing Harry could convey with certainty.
"How do you know? You do not speak French."
"He told me he did. When I asked him what he'd said."
The solicitor addressed the tiers now. "How do you know he did not lie then? And besides, lying to a foreign national, especially a Frenchman, isn't a crime in Britain."
Harry tried not to fall prey to the frantic thoughts circling in head. He was going to fail at this and that had been unthinkable when he had walked in. He grasped at something, "You spoke to the girl. She should have been a witness too."
An unexpectedly welcome voice came from above. "And she will be, when we settle which expert Healer to believe about her mental state."
The solicitor, perhaps sensing an increasing advantage, moved in for the kill. "Mr. Fueago complains in fact about your assault on his person and your repeated threats to cut out his heart."
Harry found the heat rising in his throat a comfort all of a sudden. It felt good to get truly, unabashedly angry about something worth getting offended about. "How can one possibly assault a vampire?" Harry asked. "Ask Worple there. He'll tell you they can disappear out of our world at will or turn into a mist and slip away. How does one assault something like that?" Harry felt hemmed in by his own need to hide the truth, so he stopped there. He needed a better tactic and quick.
Harry's turning and putting up a fight set DeBenedictus back a step. The sound of papers rustling more loudly in the tiers bolstered Harry, who did not give the solicitor a chance to reply. He laid the bait out and expected it would not be resisted. "What I saw in a Muggle house in Burnipsbie was a rogue vampire, a hungry dark creature . . ."
DeBenedictus raised his finger. "I objected to that already, Mr. Potter." He turned to the tiers, "I wish it to be stricken ag . . ."
"Why?" Harry asked sharply, too sharply. He needed more control.
DeBenedictus turned to him and Harry found his eyes and latched on. "Why?" Harry asked again, less excitedly.
"Perhaps you are more daft than expected, Mr. Potter, but you cannot know someone's motives if they are unspoken and sometimes not even if they are spoken . . ."
Harry cut him off. "I'm a Legilimens, Mr. DeBenedictus, I can indeed know a person's motives without he or she speaking them." He left off that this was not true of the Vampire.
DeBenedictus stopped, elevated finger slowly falling. It was Harry's turn and the man was stunned enough not to look away. "For example, I know you regret having to interview me of all people but are also thrilled at the possibility of besting me before this group." The man made the mistake of glancing for help at the reporters behind Harry before glancing back. Harry said, "You think Rita Skeeter should perhaps not wear such a short skirt and bright red tights to a serious official proceedings, but you think she does have nice legs."
Now DeBenedictus retreated two full steps. To the chair, he demanded, "Is he on the record as having this skill?"
Surprisingly bored sounding, Ogden waved at Fudge, who flipped through a stack of files in the trunk before him and handed one up to him. Ogden perused what must be Harry's file. While they waited, Harry, finding a patronizingly helpful tone himself, said to the solicitor, "It's the same skill your client would be using against you were the French not potioning him into oblivion. You do realize that, I assume?"
Ogden spoke. "Yes, it is listed on Mr. Potter's internal biographical form and on his application to the Aurors program." A pause ensued before Ogden said, "Are you finished with the questioning of this witness, Mr. DeBenedictus?"
The solicitor licked his lips and had trouble speaking. "Yes." and then again with a normal voice: "Yes. I'm through." He hurried back to his files. His assistants rose up to assist even though they did not appear to be needed.
Harry thought that for a man whose primary weapon was hairsplitting to support the subtle ruse of his logic, discovering he was utterly exposed could be rightfully upsetting. As the solicitor kept his back to him, Harry's initial burst of elation simmered down into plain relief that he had survived.
Ogden spoke to Harry. "Perhaps in the interest of the defense's mental state, you should retire from the room. If we have any more questions, you will be called back. Next witness."
Harry tried not to grin. He turned to go, catching Skeeter's eye. She lifted one red calf slightly as though teasing, then shot him a look of grudging respect. Harry strode by her, not giving any ground to her either.
Back in the training room when Rodgers asked how it went, Harry asked in return, "Are we getting instruction in how to handle testimony before the Wizengamot?"
Rodgers chuckled lightly. "You will indeed, but third year."
Harry dropped into a chair. "We need it."
Still smiling Rodgers asked, "Went that badly?"
Harry felt a bit hung out on his own. "I could have used some preparation, some coaching." His voice sounded a bit blameful, so he added, "Sir."
Rodgers held his notes to his chest and said, "First off, I thought you had enough experience to handle yourself well enough, and second, the case doesn't hinge on you, but on the girl's testimony and the lab examination of the family."
Harry was relieved to hear that. "Oh."
After a short stare at Harry, Rodgers asked, "DeBenedictus take you apart?"
"He tried," Harry conceded, still aggravated by his early performance and the fierce fighting back that losing so much ground necessitated.
Rodgers found this amusing and he continued smiling as he returned to an introduction of heat-seeking hexes.
- 888 -
Friday, Harry arrived home after the pubs closed and his fellows had begged off searching for other amusement. Hermione's party had inspired Harry to get the five of them to spend more time together outside the Ministry even at the risk of their fieldwork sharpness. He was glad he had because Tridant by the time they left the last place, he behaved less reserved and brightly said he would see them all on Monday.
The house hung in stillness. Harry almost simply walked up the stairs to his bedroom, but the dark hall made the candlelight from the dining room clearly apparent. He stepped down backwards and glanced inside, surprised to find Snape resting his head on the table, pillowed with his arm.
"Severus?" Harry prompted.
Snape raised his head and reached out as though to grab something, presumably the tipped-over decorative bottle, its surface of green beaded swirls plucking at the gutted candlelight.
"Did you drink all that?" Harry asked in concern.
Snape righted the bottle with noisy effort and glared at it accusingly.
"Severus?" Harry prompted again. He slipped the delicate bottle out of Snape's grasp and set it on the mantel out of harm's way. "Where's Candide?"
Snape waved in a way that indicated elsewhere. Aloud, Harry remembered, "Oh, that's right. It's her hens' night tonight, isn't it?"
Gesturing at his own chest, Snape said, "Flashing robes."
"They wore flashing robes?" Harry confirmed.
Snape nodded and gestured at his head. "Matching . . . flashing hats."
"That was enough to drive you to drink?" Harry asked doubtfully.
Snape's hair tossed as he shook his head. He laid his forehead on the back of his hands, flat on the table. "Didn't help," he muttered.
Harry pulled the head chair out and sat down at it with a sigh, hands clasped between his knees. A pile of post lay unattended on the sideboard beneath the window and towering over that were the parchments and white leather planning books Candide had been using for the wedding.
"What else is the matter?" he asked.
A long pause ensued. Harry tried to be patient.
"I'm not fit for this," came the reply that filtered up from the table.
"You've said that before," Harry said. "It's not any more convincing this time 'round."
Snape rotated his scraggly head. Harry patted him on the shoulder. "Come on. If it were me doing this, you'd give me hell for it."
"'S different."
"Oh, how so?"
Snape did not reply and in the silence a voice in the back of Harry's own head reminded him how very much damage a few unleashed demons could do. Snape for all his bluster and snide insults could not touch that.
Harry patted him harder, forcing himself out of his self-rumination with effort. "Come on now . . . what is it?" he asked more strictly.
Snape lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face elongated as though melting. "How did I let it get to this?"
"Severus, you can't back out now," Harry insisted with firmness.
"No," Snape agreed. "The flowers are on their way to some Merlinforsaken glen somewhere or other."
Harry blinked at that. "How much sherry was left in that bottle?" When Snape held up his fingers, Harry said, "Two bottles? No wonder." Harry gripped Snape's wrist. "Everything's going to work out," Harry heard himself say. Those words worked to sound hollow, but Harry truly believed them.
Snape murmured "Hero of Wizardry says I should go through with it . . . it's not a farce." He passed a hand through his hair and sounded the headline reader as he said, "Former Death Eater, now upright citizen." He deflated after this pronouncement. "It's not going to work."
"What's not going to work?" Harry asked sternly.
Snape again did not reply.
Harry cajoled, "Come on. You're going to love being a dad. You'll have a little Slytherin around the house." A pause. "Well, I'm assuming he'll be a Slytherin," Harry said thoughtfully.
Snape's poorly focussed eyes slipped farther away. "What if he is not?" he asked with dread.
"No chance of that. Well, maybe Ravenclaw, like Candide, that'd be all right." Harry wanted to sooth him, but found honesty getting in the way.
"Ravenclaw . . . that would be all right. Smart enough to stay out of trouble. As long as he isn't a . . . Gryffindor."
"Well, thanks," Harry complained, stung.
The tired, black gaze slipped Harry's way, but it lacked the usual razor keenness. "You think you're still a Gryffindor?" Snape asked with slurred curiosity.
"Yeah."
"Hm," came the ambiguous reply that indicated only that this topic was of continuing interest. Snape gave up on it and scrubbed his eyes. "You don't have anything to drink, do you? Stashed somewhere perhaps? Winky refused to fetch more."
Harry laughed. "I'd have pulled it out for myself already if I did. You need your pink stuff, not more drink."
"I want to be drunk," Snape insisted. "Why does Candide get all the . . . fun?"
"I'll take you out if you want," Harry said. "I could get a crew together. McGonagall, for example, would pay to see you like this. She'd buy a few more rounds, surely."
Snape broke out laughing, a harsh, odd sound. He then returned his head to resting on his arm.
"Do you want to be found like this or do you want me to brew you up some pink stuff?"
"I don't care. I don't care about her bloody parents. I don't care about this."
"I don't believe you," Harry criticized. "Severus Snape and his all important dignity would care whether he were found snookered by his wife to be." Harry stood and propped his hands on his hips. "Are you playing for pity?"
Snape's head came up, eyes blaring. Harry had pushed too far.
"Sorry," Harry quickly said and reached for Snape's shoulder, but it was jerked out of reach. In making this sudden move, which tipped the chair onto two legs, Snape unbalanced himself and tumbled sideways onto the floor.
Harry came around to help him up, apologizing again.
"Leave it be, Potter," Snape said while pressing himself up with his hands, splayed wide and pale on the dark wooden floor.
It took the combination of his last name and the tone to make Harry back off and let Snape right himself rather than give him reason to escalate into real viciousness.
Snape sat back in the chair, even more hunched. "Leave me be," he said.
Harry leaned closer. "Please don't do this," he pleaded, getting no variance in Snape staring straight ahead. There was nothing for it. Harry said, "You're afraid it's going to be as bad for your son as it was for you? It isn't you know. But that's it, isn't it?"
"Merlin," Snape replied as though stunned.
Harry said to reassure him: "No, you're not really that transparent. That was a lucky guess."
This drew quite a glare from Snape.
"That very last wasn't a guess," Harry quickly explained. "I just know you that well at least."
He re-grabbed Snape's wrist, which he was allowed to do, and said, "It's going to be better this time. You'd do fine on your own, I know you would, but you don't even have to. We're both here to help you. You act like this is still just you. That's the biggest thing this adoption's taught me is that I don't have to go through anything alone. We're in this together and after Sunday it'll be all three of us. You think we'd let you mess up that badly?"
Snape tugged his arm free and rested his cheek on his arm again.
Harry gave up, assuming the alcohol was hopelessly in the way of reasoning. "We both love you, you know. If you haven't figured out yet how to deal with that, you better do so right quick." At the door, Harry added, "If you want something to sober up, give a shout; I'll be in the library."
Harry perused the crammed bookshelves, pulling out books based on their color, not really in the mood to read anything for long. He wanted to sleep but felt he should keep watch and he could do so from here.
When Candide returned, Harry could see her robes flickering all the way to the walls of the hall out of the corner of his eye.
"You waited up?" he heard her ask Snape.
Harry hurried that way and from the dining room door said, "No, he's drunk off his arse."
She gaped at Harry. "Severus is?"
Harry nodded. Snape had not moved. "Maybe he's passed out now," Harry said.
Candide prodded a shoulder with no response. "Maybe we should move him to the couch."
Harry pulled out his wand, but she stopped him with. "He hates being hovered."
So the two of them, with the addition of a Feather-light Charm, carried his dead weight to the hall where it fit in better on one of the long couches than at the table. Harry sat down with a sigh on the other couch and Candide sat directly beside. Stale pipe-smoke drifted off her, but no scent of alcohol.
"What happened?" Candide asked.
"I wasn't here," Harry said. "Hey, Severus!" Harry shouted and when there was only a twitch in response, he decided it was safe to talk. "He's doubting himself and once he got started I expect drink only made it worse."
"Severus doubting himself," she uttered as though trying out a string of foreign words.
"Oh, don't let him fool you," Harry said, figuring that Snape had given up any rights to retain the illusion of his posturing about the same time he lost consciousness. "He doubts himself all the time. That's the usual reason he gets angry, when he does. Well, people just annoy him to, but if he's really worked up, it's probably something in his own head."
She stared at Harry as she took that in and then looked back at Snape.
Harry asked, "How was your party?"
She smiled. "Oh, excellent . . . brill. We had a great time, Dublin has a very nice Magical Corridor along the river. Have you been there?"
Harry shook his head, trying to hide his amusement at her almost bubbly shift in demeanor.
She sighed again and clasped her hands together out straight. "Well, it's nice to know even he has a breaking point."
"He has lots," Harry said, standing up "Why do you think he works so hard to hide them? I'll be right back." Determined to right Snape so he they could all go to sleep, Harry collected the ingredients for his favorite potion, a foamy pink liquid that rendered one free of immediate and past effects due to over-consumption of alcohol.
Harry set up a burner on the floor to mix up one of the two key ingredients which they had run out of. He poured in a splash of ground cardamom, blue poppy seeds and horntail horn steeped in vodka. When this evaporated and left a sticky residue, he added bright blue powdered robin's egg and mountain goat milk. He stirred for a while, becalmed by having something concrete to do.
"Did Severus teach you how to brew?" Candide asked from where she reclined on the couch, one hand resting on her belly.
"Yeah," Harry admitted.
Minutes later it was finished and when poured into the Enchanted Mineral Water, it foamed a promising pink. Without preamble, Harry, bottle in hand, tugged Snape to a sitting position. His head lolled before it straightened up.
"Drink this," Harry commanded.
Snape at first seemed to want to resist, but he took the bottle and took a swig.
"It's hot," Snape observed. He rubbed his face. "Did you just brew that?"
"Yes."
He swung his legs to the side. "As long as you didn't poison me."
"Such confidence he has in me," Harry said, hovering the brewing setup back to the toilet.
In Harry's absence, Snape forced his tired eyes to focus on Candide, who had sat straight as well.
"Have a good evening?" he asked.
"Had a wonderful one. Looks like you did to."
Snape tried once to speak but then said, "Your sarcasm is not welcome right now."
She stood up and sat down beside him, arms enfolding him. "All right now?"
"Better," he admitted.
Harry stepped back in, saw them there, appeared to think he should sneak off but sat down opposite them instead. "You make a cute couple," Harry said.
"You did find more booze," Snape accused him. "Otherwise there would be absolutely no excuse for saying such preposterous thing."
Harry laughed. "Oh, come on. Relax a little." With his eyes he apologized for provoking him. He assumed the message was received because Snape suddenly looked away.
"Well," Candide announced. "I'm tuckered out. It was a long evening. Ready to sleep for real rather than just passing out?"
"If I must," Snape said, standing with her. He halted their departure long enough to turn and say. "Fine job on the brewing."
"Anytime," Harry replied.
Next chapter: 9
Harry was deeply involved in this book—actually a collection of notes compiled during a meeting of ISMS or International Society of Mage Studies—when Snape stepped in and jerked his head as though Harry should leave.
Harry closed the book and stood, taking it along.
Snape said, "Don't you have friends you should be out with?"
Harry scratched his jaw. "I suppose."
Brusquely, Snape said, "Candide will be home shortly and I have something I wish to discuss with her, alone."
Author notes chapter 9 is in rough shape so give me at least 10 days. I will soon add a progress bar to my website at darkirony dot com so you can check how things are progressing.
Chapter 9 — Fortune Favors
Harry stretched his arms as he strode through the house; they were stiff from a real workout instead of field shadowing. Rodgers had decided suddenly that they were all softening up too much and had set aside Saturday afternoon for weights and some Eastern Arts, demonstrated by Vineet. Harry's elbow twinged, reminding him that he had discovered the hard way that morning that Tridant also had a bit of background in this. He and Vineet, for the rest of the session, had circled each other as though sizing one another up in a new way. Harry grinned at the memory of it as he opened his post.
Under a large brochure declaring Ragnarth's Roustabout — Dangerous pet training is easier than you think! and more affordable than you might imagine! he found a package from Hermione. It contained a stack of books she had found on the new book carousel at Flourish and Blotts during one last round of book buying before school started. The note spellotaped to the stack indicated she feared he may not be able to do without them. Chuckling at his friend's ongoing proclivity for educating him, Harry picked up the top one, a thin book with a title of constantly fading and regenerating ink. It read Spell Dissipation: Current Thinking.
Harry was deeply involved in this book—actually a collection of notes compiled during a meeting of ISMS or International Society of Mage Studies—when Snape stepped in and jerked his head as though Harry should leave.
Harry closed the book and stood, taking it along.
Snape said, "Don't you have friends you should be out with?"
Harry scratched his jaw. "I suppose."
Brusquely, Snape said, "Candide will be home shortly and I have something I wish to discuss with her, alone."
"I can go out," Harry said amiably. His thoughts immediately leapt to doing more remote vision practice with Kali. He slipped by Snape, saying, "I'll be back later. I can go to the Burrow for dinner; Ron always tells me his mum expects him to invite me."
Snape gestured dismissively that that was acceptable. Harry kept his curiosity in check as he put his things together and collected his pet from her cage. She bit him because he woke her up and he threatened her with sending her to Ragnarth. Either she understood him or simply caught his disapproval, because she rubbed the injured spot with the side of her head. Harry stuffed her into his pocket, where she curled up and most likely went back to sleep.
Before he departed, Harry stepped to the doorway of his room to catch a glimpse of the hall. He spent a breath studying Snape's self-absorbed pose as he stood before the couches, then Disapparated before Snape could chance to look up at him.
Ron was not home yet from Gringotts but Ginny sat at the long table with Weasley Wizard Weezes boxes stacked before her. Her hunched and involved scribbling on a large sheet of parchment, hair veiling her task, drew Harry that way, unable to stomach even more curiosity.
Ginny looked up at his approach. "Hi, Harry." She went back to carefully darkening the lines around a giant label reading Galloping Galoshes. The Gs sprouted little running feet sticking out the bottom.
"How are things at the Twins' shop?"
Vexed, she said, "They won't let me help with anything dangerous, so I've been redoing the packaging. There's a lot of neat stuff that gets overlooked and the peak Hogwarts shopping season is upon us. You wouldn't believe how disorganized those two are. Verity used to straighten up, but she gave up doing that like a year ago."
Making conversation, Harry asked, "How do the new students look? Have you seen any of them come into the shop?"
"They look small," she said, making Harry laugh. "And their squeaky voices get on my nerves. And I think I could sort them as well as the hat, if not better."
"I'll let McGonagall know, in case the hat finally gives up."
Ginny raised her head again, eyes shining. "THAT'D be fun. I could sit in a big gold chair at the front and point at each tiny student. YOU, you're a Hufflepuff. Your shoes aren't tied, they're knotted, and you're holding your wand backwards. YOU, come on, those glasses could ignite a forest fire, RAVENCLAW!" She laughed. "Ah, a girl can dream."
Mrs. Weasley came in, and fussed over Harry before fetching him milk and a snack even though dinner was imminent.
Quietly, Ginny said, "Gosh, Mum is out of control where you're concerned."
Harry nibbled on a broken bit of shortbread and said, "You get special treatment too."
"That's because I'm the only girl," she stated as fact.
"It's a good thing," Harry said, thinking aloud.
Ginny erased some stray lines from inside her letters and reached for a bottle of brown ink. "Why?"
Not quite there, because he was seeing a vision of some other place, like this one but in critical ways, different, Harry said, "Because you'd be the seventh son."
"I always thought that be fun," Ginny said.
Harry's skin chilled as though an arctic breeze had slipped through his robes. "Maybe it doesn't matter," he said. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, it was more a sense, an alternative alignment of things that composed a reasonable whole of their own.
Ginny set the pen down. "Maybe what doesn't matter? Harry you are getting all Trelawney on me here. I don't like it."
Harry dropped his gaze from the arched window over the door, but the sense persisted. "Maybe it doesn't matter that you aren't a boy, I mean," Harry felt he should responsibly explain, just in case it might matter some day.
"You think I'm a sorcerer then?" she half-teased, clearly wanting to lighten the subject.
Harry who had heard that word from Snape in reference to himself, just shrugged.
She waved a hand around, "Whoosh, look, a palace in place of the Burrow. Up, nope. Guess I'm not." She picked up her quill again and returned to carefully outlining the letters.
"Do you want the running feet to move?" Harry asked as she inked over the pencil lines, complete with little jagged treads on the boots.
She sat back. "I'd love the running feet to move. You know how to do that?"
Harry smiled and slid the drawing over to himself, careful not to upset the row of ink bottles. "I spent a summer trying to remake the Marauders' Map. 'Course I can make the feet move."
- 888 -
Back in Shrewsthorpe, Snape approached Candide as she sorted through the pile of parchments on the sideboard, unrolling each in search of something.
"Oh, hi," she said, vaguely startled by his silent approach. She picked up and waved a pink envelope. "My old chum from accounting school finally replied. She's been living in Paris, or so I thought, but the reply came from Cape Town." She laughed. "No wonder it took so . . . "
Snape took the fluttering letter from her and placed it near a pile of similarly sliced open envelopes, then took the current parchment away as well. "I have something I wish to show you," he stated.
This grabbed her full attention. "What is it?"
His reply was to lead the way to the hall where he gestured that she should sit. He removed something from his pocket and handed it to her.
"It's a rock wrapped with wire?" She queried, holding up a jet-black rock bundled twice around the middle with metal cord.
Snape tapped the rock and the cord fell away. Candide caught half the rock as it split and a ring that fell out of the middle.
"Hey!" she said, surprised. She scooped up the other half of the rock as it tried to roll loudly away under the couch. "Look at that, a golden ring!"
Snape sat beside and took the rock halves away and then the ring as well, so he could hold it up by the prongs of the empty setting. "This is no ordinary ring formed as the earth was. I made it." His eyes positively gleamed as he placed the ring back in her palm.
"You made the ring?" she confirmed.
"I made the gold," Snape corrected, voice low.
Candide stared at the ring while pushing it around her palm with a fingertip. "How does one make gold?"
"Out of lead. It is a base-metal transformation," Snape replied, clearly enjoying the explanation.
She stared at him. "You've been doing alchemy."
Snape reached into his pocket again and pulled forth a small deep red stone, a bit large for a ring, but with a spell, the prongs of the fitting were convinced to take hold of it. As though explaining to a student, he said, "There was only sufficient ingredients left by my old mentor for a small stone. Easily enough to make the ring and . . ." He held the ring to the light. "Thirty years of elixir. Perhaps forty if one is stingy."
Her face shifted, eyes widening. "You made a Philosopher's Stone?" She accepted the ring as he held it out and also held it up to the lamp. "How . . . I didn't know there really was such a thing!"
Dryly, he said, "How else could I make gold?" He sat back casually and breathed out as though boring of the topic. "I imagined such a stone to be far more symbolic than a mere diamond, which is nearly worthless in comparison, and I have observed over the last month that burning time and money on pointless symbolic things was the purpose of the marriage ceremony. If not, it has no purpose."
She shot him a playfully dismayed look and slipped the ring on. "Stone's a . . . bit big, isn't it?"
"Once you decide to use it for elixir it won't be." He sat forward and lifted her hand to hold the ring out before them both. "But I recommend waiting until you are no longer pregnant. I have no idea what the effects might be. At best you would simply remain so longer. The consequences could be unpredictable, though."
She pulled the ring close and closed her hand over it. "No, I'd definitely wait." She held her hand out again. The stone was uneven but deep, so it caught the light and magnified it. "It's lovely though."
He held out his hand. "I'll keep it for now if you wish. Bad luck, isn't it, wearing the ring ahead of time?"
"That's the dress," she corrected, grinning. But with a vigorous tug and twist she pulled the ring off. "Fits perfectly."
"I measured. Of course," Snape intoned.
"You're a devil, you know that," she accused with affection.
"Slytherin, but why mince words?" he asked while fingering the ring thoughtfully.
She rocked sideways to bump shoulders. "Are you ready for this? I mean, you've been working day and night on the ring."
"I will never be ready, so it is no matter."
"As long as you're sober when they make you sign the certificate, so it's legal."
Snape slipped the ring away in a pocket and tapped it with a Nonobscondus Charm. "You said you did not want a binding spell. Is that still true?" his tone was too even as he asked this.
"I don't want one. I didn't think you would."
"I don't. It is a terrible ongoing coercion."
She grabbed her knee and rocked back beside him. "Some find it romantic, that total commitment."
"They deserve each other, then," Snape uttered. "And the hell the spell will put them through before one of them goes mad or they find a wizard powerful enough to cancel it, if that is possible."
Candide smiled into her sleeve. "If you even wondered why I didn't ask your opinion on flowers, now you know."
"I don't mind flowers," Snape corrected.
This caught her. "You don't?"
"Not at all," he replied. "They are composed of wonderfully useful potion ingredients."
This brought on a real laugh. "You should let that sense of humor out more. Usually you only use it for sarcasm."
He put an arm around her and she fit well nestled there. "It would ruin my reputation if I did that."
- 888 -
Harry did not need to move from his spot at the Weasley kitchen table; dinner and the Weasley family gathered around, except the twins and Charlie, who could not make it. Ron sat beside Harry and immediately began critiquing his sister's drawing, which Ginny put a stop to by pointing out that Harry had helped with it. When Harry looked over from Ron it was to find Molly insisting that Percy sit across from him. Percy had a distant, hard expression that lacked the normal pinching or smugness, making Harry wonder if he wasn't Moody again. Percy tore his eyes from Harry and watched Mr. Weasley enter and sit down after giving Molly a hug.
When he looked back at Harry, Harry boldly said to him, "Not yourself today again, are you?"
After a moment's consideration of the meaning of this, Percy's eyes flickered to a more normal alarm before shifting away, back to Mr. Weasley, making Harry believe it really was Percy and that he understood that Harry knew Moody had impersonated him for his Darkness Test. At least, Harry hoped he understood that.
"He comes to dinner a lot," Ginny whispered in Harry's ear with more than a hint of annoyance.
Harry wished he knew who had taught Percy to Occlude his mind. Harry, feigning a friendly tone, asked him, "How are things in the Department of Mysteries?"
Slightly mocking, Percy replied, "Mysterious. What else would they be?"
Beside Harry, Ron laughed as though this were a real joke. "Mysterious," he echoed and laughed more.
"Get any special training for that?" Harry asked.
"Quite a bit," came the flat reply. They were staring each other down now, both holding their thoughts obscured. Harry decided the game was stupid and turned to Ron to ask about his day. When the dishes were being passed and Molly asked Arthur how his day was, Harry noticed Percy set down the gravy without serving himself any and turn his attention that way. Harry realized with a jolt that he and Percy could both pry into the minds of anyone at the table, but that perhaps of the two of them, only Harry was scrupulous enough not to do it.
When Percy tore his gaze from the head of the table and picked the gravy back up and passed it without taking any, despite being about do so before, Harry asked innocently, "Learn anything?"
Percy spent an inordinate time finding a reply, which attracted the attention of most of those seated at their area of the table. "Research . . . is what we do," he said, quoting from something, most likely. "And the Mysteries, like Enforcement, offers considerable training."
Harry took his uneasy response to mean that he did not like getting caught out. For his part, Harry wondered how he was going to warn Mr. Weasley without getting pinched between his boss' strong loyalty to his family and his less strong loyalty to Harry.
Harry had not worked out how to handle this by the time he begged off that he had to go home because the next day was full of helping set up for the wedding on Monday.
It was Ginny who asked, "Why Monday?"
Harry, about to depart, felt the need to defend Candide on this point. "It's auspicious, according to the constellations, both their horoscopes," he explained. In his mind's eye he saw all the astronomical charts and plots that Candide had worked out in one of those white leather books.
"She had a joint chart made up? Those are pricey."
"She did it herself," Harry said. "Said it was just like accounting, only with parabolas, or something. Took her ages to work it all out. And the glen of her choice was free that day. For a weekend, they'd have had to wait until the kid was in Hogwarts, or so she said."
Ginny laughed. "Maybe I should rent a place now and find a boyfriend later then."
From the kitchen, Molly loudly encouraged, "Good idea, dear."
Ginny put her hand over her face.
"Well, you better get going," Ron said suddenly from where he hunched over the chess board across from Bill. When Harry waited, curious, he explained in a whisper, "Mum's got you pegged for Ginny, you know."
Ginny stuffed her hands violently into crossed mode and glared at her brother, a blush topping off the effect. "Ron . . ." she threatened.
Rescuing her, Harry said, "That's all right, Severus does too," to which Ginny gaped, "Really?"
"I really have to go now," Harry said.
Ginny pulled her artwork closer and said, "I have to finish this so I can get back to working on that sorcerer bit."
"What?" Ron and Bill both asked in unison.
"Harry said I could be a sorcerer."
The two Weasley sons turned to Harry with dismay. "What?" Bill asked Harry.
Harry shrugged. "Got to go. Really."
At home, Harry found Candide and Snape playing cards on a the stained spare door from upstairs, hovered expertly between the couches.
"Not too early, am I?" Harry asked, feeling vaguely left out even though his evening had been full of company.
"Not at all," Candide said brightly. "Show him what you made, Severus, or has he already seen it?"
Snape's hair fell forward as he fished in his pocket after touching it with his wand. "He has not." Snape held out a ring with a rather gaudily large stone.
Harry accepted it and stared at it, recognizing the color and the unusually curved faces of the asymmetrical facets. "It's a Philosopher's Stone," Harry breathed, stunned.
"Severus made it," Candide declared proudly.
Harry lifted his eyes to peer at Snape over the ring. "You did? I didn't know you knew how."
Snape held his hand out for the ring and Harry relinquished it. "It isn't so much the knowledge, which can be pieced together by anyone diligent enough, as well as practiced with deciphering the coded writing of the arcane, paranoid mind, the real sticking point is the extraordinary ingredients required. I was left just enough by Albus, it turns out." He studied the ring. "Much cheaper to make gold than to buy it. Back in the times when Galleons were more than dipped in gold it would have been easy to obtain sufficient metal.
Harry nodded vaguely. The stone made him uneasy and he was not hiding it well.
"Does it bother you?" Snape asked bluntly.
Harry tipped one shoulder. "Just bad memories," he replied, not wanting to dampen their enthusiasm, or Snape's pride. "Voldemort can't make use of it anymore."
Snape said, "It isn't a large enough stone to raise the dead. I think that is why Albus felt secure in keeping the ingredients."
Harry said, "Maybe he worried he would need to stay alive a little longer, so he kept them just in case."
Candide folded her cards together and set them down. "Is that how he lived so long?"
Snape nodded. "With judicious use of it and a little luck, you too could live to be a hundred and sixty."
Candide pulled her head back in surprise, but took the ring and examined it. "If I got rid of all the mirrors in the house, maybe. Otherwise no. Men look much better at that age than women. Women turn into white prunes . . . men turn into sages." She held the ring out to Snape. "You should use it; you're older than me. That way I can catch up." As he accepted it, she changed her mind. "Or Harry should use it. Wizardom needs him around longer than you or I."
Snape held the ring up for Harry again, but Harry did not take it. "No, keep it. It's probably the most valuable ring in the world."
Candide held out her hand, fingers splayed. "You'll have to charm it on for me . . . so it can't come off."
Snape shook his head. "In that case a thief would have to kill you for it and that would hardly be worth it."
"There are lots of theft-repelling charms," Harry offered.
Snape nodded. "We will manage something," he promised Candide.
- 888 -
Swaying decorations and the clashing scents of flowers spiraled in Harry's head Sunday night as he slipped fitfully into sleep. The continuously rotating streamers and the bright columns of the three-foot, white candles shifted into the dark, smoke marred walls and torches of Courtroom Ten. He was trying to explain something to the Wizengamot, trying to convince them of something, but he was doing a very poor job of it. The members' shadowed faces peered down at him from tier upon tier rising up until they tilted so the parchments before them must slide forward onto the center floor, but somehow did not.
Harry scanned for a familiar face, but found when he peered closely, each face was that of Umbridge, frog-like smile stretched unnaturally long and sinister. Grey dirt covered the floor and discolored the bottom edge of Harry's new robes. Shaking them raised clouds of choking dust. In the center of the floor, half buried in a saw-grass hillock, rose the chair and chained into it was Snape, glaring defiantly straight ahead. Beside the chair, Candide, in her tulip-like wedding dress, tugged uselessly at the chains, glancing about frequently to check if anyone noticed her doing this.
Harry struggled to find something convincing to say. Vernon Dursley approached, as tall as DeBenedictus but not any thinner, so he seemed akin to Hagrid. Dust clouds stirred around his menacing footsteps as he approached. Harry's feet tried to back off, but he forced them to remain in place by reminding himself that he'd been willing to sacrifice himself to Voldemort previously, so he should be willing to do the same to Mr. Dursley.
Dursley ranted about freaks and evil magic. From the chair, Snape hissed at him, snake-like, revealing long, sharp teeth.
Harry woke at this. Kali was hissing from her cage. Disoriented, Harry sat up and pushed the chaos of the dream down. The musty draft in the room drifted off and Kali settled back into her rag pile.
Harry dropped back onto his pillow, thinking he should not have eaten quite so many of the fire-biscuits while hanging decorations. He stared at the grey ceiling. In the dimness the patching was not apparent; the room appeared unmarred.
Harry's eyelids refused to stay open and he was sucked unwillingly back into the dream, where the troll-cousin guard approached, sparks scattering off the ax he dragged behind him. He released the chains on the chair and with a heave of his great arm, shoved Snape in Harry's direction.
Harry helped right his guardian, but found as he did so, not his Snape, but the one from the other dream, the bedraggled and defeated Snape with eyes of hazardous black ice. Harry glanced around the courtroom for help but everyone was departing. Only McGonagall turned to him and when she spoke it revealed pointed ivory teeth. Harry grabbed hold of Snape's robes and tugged him to the door, wanting only to escape, but as soon as he stepped into the corridor they Disapparated away.
Harry stared down at the trodden trash lining the road where they had arrived, and with dread glanced up to find he stood before the house in Weaver's End. Snape had hold of his wrist and Candide's and now pulled them toward the house.
"You're home now too, I suppose," he said with vague disgust.
Harry tried to resist, to pull back against the force applied to his arm. The door to the house opened and Pettigrew, wearing an oversized tea towel, stood there. He reached out a hand and the pound notes he clutched caught the breeze and fluttered away to mix with the rubbish.
Harry woke to scrambling in his pyjama pockets for a wand. Even after it was clear he lay in his own room, he took up his wand from under the pillow and held it, just to feel the warm hum of it against his fingertips. He sighed into the darkness, a noise accompanied by Kali climbing inside her cage.
Fully awake, Harry slipped out of his warm, welcome bed and over to his pets. As quietly as possible, he released them for company. The metallic sounds of turning Kali's cage latch rang starkly in the dark bedroom, making him pause to listen for footsteps before moving to the next cage.
Cuddled between his hand and his breast, he carried Kali to the window and sat on the trunk beneath it to stare out at the streetlamp, which barely illuminated even the full width of the small road outside. A handful of bright stars glittered beyond the black branches of the stout trees across the road. Kali circled twice, brushing her soft body fur on his hand, before settling in so her only movement was the nearly imperceptible expansion and contraction of her breathing.
Her contentedness drew him in, but he felt compelled to remain alert. In his sleepy mind he needed to remain on guard to prevent that other place from encroaching upon this one, tonight of all nights. Harry rested his sweat-slippery wand on the windowsill so he would not drop it if he fell asleep; it barely fit there lengthwise. He gripped his pet with both hands, and stared out at the paltry pool of light on the tarmac beyond the crumbling garden wall.
Snape, unable to sleep for his own reasons, peered some time later through the doorway of Harry's room. A form huddled at the window, snowy owl perched on its shoulder. Orange-glowing fug haloed Harry's nose where it rested against the window pane. He looked small again, communing with his pets in this inexplicable vigil before the cold and breath-clouded window. Wanting time to understand, Snape did not immediately wake him. Careful not to disturb Harry, he leaned close to the window. Other than the empty circle of lit road and the two wan lights on the station platform, nothing was visible outside. The scene gave a sense that the world ended beyond that, no path in or out except via the starlit sky.
Snape straightened and held out three fingers for the owl, who tilted her head curiously but stepped onto them and accepted a ride back to the top of her cage. He waved one of the bedside lamps up and examined Harry from this new vantage point, wondering again why he sat in such an uncomfortable position when his bed was a mere seven feet away. Propped there, neck bent too far to the side and down, mouth parted, he did not appear even remotely powerful. As he stepped forward to lay a hand on Harry's shoulder, he fixed that much-needed notion firmly: this was first and foremost just a young man.
"Harry," Snape prompted.
Harry's head lifted and he blinked at the window in confusion. Snape had a hold of his thoughts and saw many similar vigils: summer nights away from Hogwarts waiting for owls, waiting for his friends, waiting for any hoped-for improvement in his situation. This past receded in a blink, and Harry shivered.
"Why are you out of bed?" Snape asked, not unkindly.
Harry's thoughts were Occluded then, so the only hint to an unobscured answer was in his brow curling worriedly.
"I had a bad dream." Harry stood then with the easy unfolding only the young can exhibit. He stopped after a second thought to grab up his wand, taking care to hold Kali against his chest.
"Do you wish to talk about it?" Snape asked.
Harry passed him on the way to the bed, where he slipped his wand inside the bottom of the pillowcase before settling in with his back against the headboard. "I don't want to bother you with it, tonight of all nights."
Snape stood beside the bed, considering before saying: "You are no less important than you were."
"I know that. But you have a big day tomorrow." Harry shivered and shrugged the duvet up to his shoulders.
Snape laid a hand on his face. "You are a little cold, but I expect that is from the window."
"It was an ordinary dream," Harry insisted.
"Not a nightmare?" Snape suggested.
"Well, maybe. But it's no matter."
Snape said, "I wish you would tell me," but it lacked command.
Harry lifted Kali out of the covers and placed her on the duvet to pet her. She stretched her membranous wings and shook the fur of her body out straight before sniffing the air in Snape's direction with her tiny black nose.
Harry said dismissively, "It's just stuff that's been happening."
"No Weaver's End in that case?"
Harry did not reply.
More firmly, Snape said, "I will allow you such an exception this evening, but not the morrow and not after."
"Fair enough," Harry said. "Good luck tomorrow," he added at Snape's retreat.
"Luck cannot favor me," Snape said.
"I don't believe that," Harry said.
A small, knowing smile transformed Snape's lips. "Remind me sometime to tell you about the Felix Felicis potion and a foolhardy brewer who made the mistake of misusing it."
- 888 -
Harry attended his training in the morning and was given the afternoon off, which he did not think he needed due to a full previous day of helping setup for the wedding, but his afternoon was full of last minute changes to the decorations, like swapping the gold bows for silvery green, and rearranging the placesettings in the dinner tent.
"Thanks, Harry," Candide said with real feeling when he announced things completed. Ruthie gave him a wink, which she did frequently. Candide pulled a watch from her pocket and stared at it the way one may the photo of a sworn enemy. She seemed to remember something and from another pocket, pulled out a charm on a thin chain and held it out to Harry. "Make sure Severus puts that in his pocket."
Harry held the tiny figure up to the bright ceiling. It was a terrier worked in pewter. "What's this?"
"It symbolizes loyalty," Candide said, already absorbed in a long, long list written on narrow parchment.
Pattering on the broad, white tent indicated that the intermittent light rain had chosen to return again.
"That's supposed to be good luck, right?" Candide asked Harry.
"Of course," Harry assured her, knowing no such thing.
"I told her that it was already," Carolyn complained. "She didn't believe me."
"She knows Harry wouldn't lie," Ruthie said, throwing in another wink, which made Harry wish he had simply said he did not know. This made him wonder what is was about weddings that led one to make up nice answers that were not necessarily true as often as he found himself doing.
Candide pulled a rolled parchment from the cluster in her hand and held it out. "Harry, can you mix this together . . . put some in bowls on each table?"
Harry peered at the list, seeing oak moss, larkspur, and carnation oil in a glance. "This is a potion?"
She tapped his arm with the parchment bundle. "You're as bad as Severus. It's a potpourri. The supplies are in the boxes under the table. Bad luck to mix them ahead of time, evil spirits can get into it. Or just pixies, which would be worse. And here are your boutonnieres, make sure Severus gets the rose."
The pattering on the tent grew louder as Harry cleared a table to work at. Rather than risk misplacing the boutonnieres in the midst of all the other boxes of flowers, he pinned both on himself.
"Speaking of luck," Ruthie teased. "Only an accountant would chose a Monday to get married. The guests can better get blotto on a Friday or Saturday, you know."
Sounding like she held her nose, Carolyn countered, "Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health . . . Friday for crosses, Saturday for no luck at all."
Ruthie opined, "You operate on a very short week."
"Wednesday is the best," Carolyn said, "but Candy hates my pointing that out. She'll need the wealth Those who in July to wed, must labor for their daily bread."
Harry resisted shaking his head as he poured white angel wings into little spherical bowls, spilling some because the opening in the top was too small. He pulled his wand to spell them where they belonged, but Candide said, "Dusting the table with petals is fine. Do it to all of them."
The wind played with the clear plastic tent walls, snapping them inward and outward successively. Inside, however, barely a breeze passed through. Shrugging, Harry better spread the spill out to make it look intentional.
Candide disappeared, maids in tow, and Harry turned to find Lupin, in fine robes with a strangely Muggle cut to them, Pamela beside him. They peered about at the decorations. "I expected green," Lupin said, rocking back with his hands in his pockets to stare up at the streamers running to the tent peak. "But I expected more snakes."
Harry placed the last bowl on the last table and adjusted the spilled petals with a practiced flick of his fingers. "Snakes were right out," Harry said, laughing. "Talk about bad luck."
Lupin sniffed the bowl on the nearest table. "Never thought I'd see this day."
Harry preferred not to address such notions after the previous night's dreams. "It's good you could come," he said instead.
"Oh, I wouldn't miss this for . . . all the flower petals in Holland," he finished fancifully.
Others wandered in, shaking raindrops from their dress robes. Harry wandered over to Elizabeth and her mother. Elizabeth said quietly, "I convinced mum that since you're neighbors, we really should come. Not sure we can stay for the party."
"That's all right," Harry assured her, glad to see her.
Elizabeth examined the table-crowded tent and said, "Guess the other tent is for the ceremony."
"Yeah, come on. I should see that everything is set there."
Guests were slowly filling the white beribboned folding chairs. Harry returned McGonagall's dignified wave from a cluster of Hogwart's teachers. Hagrid sat off to the side on one of the trunks the tents had been packed in.
"Hullo, Harry!" he shouted, voice shaking the raindrops in a noisy rush from the tent roof.
"Hi, Hagrid," Harry returned.
When he turned, Harry found himself faced with Shazor and Gretta. Shazor appeared to be sizing up Candide's side of guests. Harry withstood what was certain to be too many firm handshakes that evening and found them seats before the teachers.
When the guests were all seated, including Hermione, who a bit shyly joined the teachers, Harry stood at the back, just outside the main part of the tent, under an overhand with a large flap that allowed in the mist of the rain. Lupin saw him there and slipped out of his row to join him, Pamela ducking to follow.
"Bride is always late," Pamela opined.
"How about the groom?" Harry countered.
Lupin glanced around. "Where's Severus?"
Harry shrugged. "I think he'll show," he offered, finding certainty in that based almost entirely on the ring. He had not seen Snape all afternoon, partly this was necessity so the bride and groom could avoid an unfortuitous meeting, but Harry would feel better if he had glimpsed Snape at least once.
The assembled inside were chatting quietly, showing no restlessness. Harry felt he floated above the trampled grass, or perhaps it was just the way the light came through the tent equally from all sides as though the world itself were aglow. Outside, the quaint glen surrounded them, unobserved.
An Apparition pop! made them both turn to the tent flap but it was not Snape, it was a charcoal smeared little wizard in a smashed top hat, carrying a telescoping bottle-brush broomstick.
"I'm not late, am I?" the man asked, sounding very concerned.
Harry was about to ask who he was, in that instant wondering if the man thought somehow that he was the groom.
Lupin said, "No, just in time. Go on in."
The man half danced his way inside with a little skip and jump and stood at the back. Harry could see his shadow on the rear of the tent, broom standing up beside him like a furry umbrella.
"What was that?" Harry sidled over to Lupin to ask.
He rocked up on his toes. "The chimney sweep, of course. Now we can start."
"Right. Just need a groom."
"You're the best man, you know. If Severus doesn't show you have to take his place."
"I don't believe you," Harry said, despite believing pretty much all the other silly things he had heard the last two days, including the part about the shoe shaped cake that Candide was supposed to get symbolically hit over the head with.
Lupin just grinned.
"Tonks wouldn't like that," Harry said, which caused the Auror to appear from inside.
"Wouldn't like what?" she asked, hooking her arm through Harry's. She wore knee-length pink robes that were longer in the back than front.
Harry raised his eyes from her exposed legs with some effort. "If I had to marry the bride in Severus' stead."
"Oh, that's not true. You're really here to help fight off the bride's family."
"That I'm well aware of," Harry stated tiredly.
"Besides, there is no bride," Tonks pointed out.
"She's around somewhere, getting ready. Severus we're less certain about."
A voice said, "pssst!" from the tent flap. It was Ruthie. "Harry, got a Sickle on you?"
Harry fished in his pocket, but shook his head because he only had a very precise number of Galleons. Lupin held out one. Ruthie pointed and said, "Give it to Harry, then Harry put it in your pocket and take it out again."
Having no good reason to argue the wisdom of that, Harry did so, then walked over and held it out.
"Got anything blue?"
"No," Harry replied. He could see that she stood under a very large pearlescent umbrella, one that would work well for Hagrid. Rain poured off the back edge of it in a waterfall.
"She'll have to use my shoelace then. Don't know why she doesn't want to." She shuffled off in her iridescent blue-green gown to the smaller tent beside the enchanted spring that made the glen such an attractive spot for weddings. At the moment the rain was causing the rock pool to overflow. Harry wondered as she disappeared into the seemingly wardrobe-sized tent whether he should have mentioned that they lacked a groom.
Harry walked back to the inner tent flap and watched Tonks retake her seat beside Shacklebolt. He stared across the heads of the assembled, some leaning together to whisper, others staring at the decorations. The Supreme Mugwump—a worrisomely aged wizard with a silver beard and silver-flecked red hair—sat serenely at the front acting accustomed to this sort of delay. As long as he didn't fall asleep, Harry thought.
When he turned back, the tent flapped opened and Snape appeared, brow surly and dripping water off his hair and the end of his nose.
Lupin strode over and tugged him off to the side, out of view of the guests who were peering back over their shoulders. With quick motions he dried Snape, straightened his robes, and pinned his cloak diagonally across his back, revealing the shiny blue lining. "That's more like it," he admonished.
Snape simply stared at his old enemy and Harry thought that even without Legilimency, Harry could read his thoughts and they were somewhere along the lines of how did it come to this? Snape peered over at Harry and his expression did not change.
"Ready?" Harry asked, as though everything were right on schedule and perfectly expected.
Snape nodded, just once, as if afraid his head might disobey and start swinging side to side instead. Harry unpinned the dill and yellow rose boutonniere from his own robes and pinned it on Snape. He straightened his own white chrysanthemum and lily and took Snape's arm the way he might McGonagall's. Snape arrested his leading him inside and gestured sharply to Lupin, who came closer. "Make certain the shoe-cake melts in the rain, won't you?"
Lupin said, "Consider it mush."
"Thank you," Snape said, seeming like that notion bolstered him.
Harry attempted again to lead him in, and this time he allowed it. The crowd quieted as they made their way. Harry sat him in the front row, alone. He bent to his ear and whispered, "Do make it look less like you're facing the guillotine." To which, Snape relaxed marginally. Harry left him sitting there, and thought things better move ahead without delay from this point.
On the other side, Candide's uncle and father had both stood. Harry thought they were having an nonvocal argument about whether her uncle should give her away as planned, but in the end Farnsworth, Candide's father, gestured for Harry to lead the way back down the aisle. Harry glanced at him following in curiosity.
At the rear, he said, "Changed my mind," quite gruffly.
"All right," Harry said, still in the mode of taking things as they came. The world, through a veil of too little sleep, felt tenuously balanced and he feared tipping it either direction by trying. Fortunately, letting it run along on its own was working out.
The massive umbrella stuck itself halfway through the back flap and Candide appeared, holding her dress up out of the fat droplets clinging to the battered grass.
"We set?" she asked.
Harry nodded and she bit her lip nervously. He was glad he had not worried her about Snape's late appearance. They could all now pretend he had been here all along. Candide bent awkwardly to reach under her broad dress, female hands of support instinctively coming in on each side. She pulled off her shoe and shook it to get the sickle to slide to the heel before putting it back on. To her sister she asked, "How do I look?"
Ruthie pinched her cheek in reply.
"Wish I could see myself," Candide muttered. "After all this effort for luck, this better be the luckiest wedding in history." She sighed and smoothed her dress and shook out the row of lace handkerchiefs sown at the hem. "Go on, Harry. Wave at the musicians to start."
Lupin waggled his eyebrows at Harry and they slipped in together. Harry went all the way to the front and gestured at the quintet and they gamely started sawing at their instruments, transforming the air of the tent into sound.
Harry remembered the trinket as he took up a position beside Snape. He slipped it out and handed it to him. Snape did not put it in his pocket, but held it in his hand and stared down at it, which meant Harry could no longer see his expression through his hair.
Harry glanced over the crowd and found Anita near the back on the end of a row, eyes disconcertingly distant even though they focused on the two of them standing there.
The music changed pace and Harry walked back to meet Ruthie and Carolyn and lead them in to the left as he had been told. The necessity of this and their bright dresses had been explained as a way of confusing evil spirits about whom the bride may be. Harry's suggestion about simply charming the bride against any hexes was not welcomed quite the way he expected.
These preparatory thoughts continued running through his mind as he resumed his place beside Snape. They represented the necessary momentum that would continue to drive events on the proper course, which seemed the only hope.
Everyone stood, including the Mugwump, to greet the bride, who kissed her father on the cheek, further reddening his over-stressed face. The Mugwump smiled serenely at the couple when they arranged themselves and faced him. He pulled out a gold-tipped wand and charmed them both with a tap on the head. Harry could not hear the spell, but he hoped it was something akin to a Mutushorum that would prevent either of them from bolting.
The Mugwump's face was as wizened as tree bark and his hands as quaky as leaves, but his voice carried authority as he addressed the guests and the couple and went on at some length about the point of it all. Harry found his shoulders unclenching with relief. No one spoke up when asked if they knew of any binding spells that should prevent this marriage, even though the Mugwump keenly demanded: "Anyone, anyone?" He then muttered something about preventing exploding grooms before moving on to the vows.
Candide had no trouble with this part, beyond a sniffle or two. Snape on the other hand seemed to require an application of great willpower to repeat what he was told to say. The Mugwump slowed down even, to make sure Snape was following, which only prolonged the agony. Harry closed his eyes. It's not a spell, he thought at Snape. It's just words, promises. They're only as important as you make them. But then it occurred to Harry that maybe Snape was making them very important, hence the pain. Dumbledore's past words floated through his thoughts, saying that Snape took nothing for granted. This certainly would all be easier if you did take it all for granted, he considered of the vows. Have, hold, faithfulness, partnership, friendship, forever . . . there were quite a number of words in there, most all of them a kind of binding.
Harry rubbed his hands together; his fingers were cold. He raised his head when the couple turned to face each other as indicated by the shuffling of a large dress. Snape appeared to have recovered himself partly as he took the ring from the Mugwump, who had charmed it with a few spells to prevent loss, especially through a drain, and to deter theft. As Snape slipped it on Candide's finger, the Mugwump seemed then to recognize the stone because his face left its serene state and entered one of surprise and perhaps covetousness.
That particular ring meant more than forever, Harry considered, and it meant more than the words in any event, and this let him relax completely as the Mugwump pronounced them married.
A pause ensued after the guests shuffled in place in preparation for departing.
"Go on then," the Mugwump prodded. He was bent over more now, perhaps having tired of holding himself up straight against old age. "Why some of you young people have to be told to kiss flummoxes me."
Snape stared at Candide, thinking of the waiting crowd, Harry suspected. He shucked his pinned cloak free and raised it betwixt them and the rest of the room, hiding their heads as he bent in. Harry ducked to fight an urge to burst out laughing.
After they straightened, it was clear that Candide was also laughing. The Mugwump gestured over his head with a swishing motion. "Off with you now."
Yellow flower petals and sweetmeats rained down from tent ceiling in a line to cover the white runner leading out. After a brief adjustment on how their arms should be linked, the two of them strode out, Candide ducking, hand shielding her head.
Harry caught up with them at the rear, where Ruthie's massive umbrella was put to use getting them all to the next tent, which from the outside was only as large as a beach hut.
Ruthie let Lupin take the umbrella to ferry others through the rain. Snape still had Candide's arm linked through his as he stared at the tent full of empty tables. Harry pulled out his wand and one-by-one ignited the rows of tall candles lining the walls and the smaller ones on the tables. The space took on an honestly romantic glow.
Harry joined his guardian and Candide where they stood waiting by the tent flap to greet the guests. "How're you doing, Severus?" he asked.
"The worst is over," Snape stated.
There was not time to address Candide's bemused expression before Shazor and Gretta appeared. Shazor was perfunctory, but Gretta gave hugs down the line. The bride's father, despite changing his mind about giving her away, bowed rather than shake hands with Snape, although he did so with Harry. The teachers came through next. McGonagall greeted them all with grace, but her crooked smile hinted at words too pointed for the moment. It was Trelawney who first requested one of the handkerchiefs off the dress hem to "carry off some good fortune." A few others, mostly children, did this as well, as did the Mugwump himself, who stashed it neatly in his breast pocket and fluffed the points where they stuck out. Harry needed nudging to be reminded he had to pay. He fished the brand new white leather drawstring purse containing fifteen Galleons out of his pocket and caught up with the curve-backed Mugwump where he stood off to the side, hat in his hand, deciding where to sit.
"Ah, young man," he said wistfully, weighing the purse before putting it away with a spell that did not involve going to his pocket. Harry believed that closed the conversation and started to turn, to make his way back to the greeting line when the old wizard said, "I remember you from Albus' funeral, but we did not get a chance to be introduced."
Harry said some words about that as he remembered that day without really wanting to.
The Mugwump looked him over and said, "Ah, like all young people, you have things to be doing. Go on then."
Most of the guests were inside or had made their goodbyes—like Elizabeth and her mother—when Anita slipped in with the last group. She and Snape greeted each other perfunctorily before she introduced herself to Candide. Candide insisted that she stay for the party, which she agreed to do and then headed for a seat without another word. Harry hoped all this self-control continued even after the many cases of prosecco stacked in the corners began to flow.
Harry took his seat between Snape and Shazor at the long narrow head table after everyone else had situated themselves at the round tables. The caterer's elves then did their magic and bowls of sugared almonds appeared as well as bread. One might have thought the wedding was fifteen hours rather than fifteen minutes the way the guests tore into these tokens.
Candide leaned over and asked in concern, "What happened to the shoe cake? I just remembered we skipped breaking that over my head."
"It got wet," Harry said.
"Oh. All right. Shame. It's good luck."
Harry leaned over farther. "Do you really believe that much in luck?" he asked in concern. The obsessive preparations had maxxed out his tolerance for irrational behavior.
"Do you really believe in prophecies?" she returned.
Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. Snape said, "She's got you there."
Prosecco was poured for all but the wedding couple, who instead jointly poured mead into a beaten up old chalice that sported the selective gleam indicative of a recent desperate polishing. Candide took a small sip from this while the guests all started in on their own drinks. Snape followed by more than making up for her dainty helping.
Harry had his crystal goblet, which he was certain he had not emptied so far, topped up by a passing elf and then resisted drinking more of it immediately. When the crowd settled down, he stood, which finished quieting everyone except for some chairs squeaking when rotated for a better view.
"Thank you all for coming," Harry said.
"Wouldn't have missed it," Mr. Weasley's voice floated over the assembled crowd.
The crowd chuckled faintly in agreement. Harry said, "I was warned I had to say something and I've made a lot of speeches before, some I've even written ahead of time, but this one feels more important than the others and I did not figure out quite what I wanted to say until now." More eyes in the room turned and fixed on him as he spoke and the interest level rose. "This is really big day," he said, unwillingly remembering that he himself had been the first major roadblock to the two of them being together.
"Some people just have families . . . and some of us have to put them together." He glanced at Candide and worried that he was overwhelming her already given the shine on her eyes. The pattering rain above faded, allowing him to speak closer to normal.
"We're stronger as a unit than as individuals. But we have to give up something to be a unit and that's what today's about, pledging that the unit will be more important in the future."
He glanced at Snape, who was fixated on the chalice set halfway between him and Candide.
"Most of you who know Severus from before are probably pretty surprised to be here right now."
While the crowd laughed lightly, Snape made a motion, but it was just to smooth his eyebrow.
"But I'm not actually surprised. Well, I probably was at first, but not after I thought it over." In his mind, Harry considered that if Snape could keep Voldemort happy, that he ought to be able to keep anyone happy, should he chose to. "He's very good at this father thing, so I'm certain he can manage the husband one too, if he has a mind to succeed at it." To Candide, he added, "Don't worry, he wouldn't get into this unless he intended to take it seriously. I don't see anything but a successful future for both of you together and it is wonderful that you're brave enough to give it a go."
Harry had let his glass fall almost back to the table. He raised it again. "So, a toast to the triumph of hope over . . . better sense."
"Hear, hear," various guests uttered and silence fell as everyone drank.
A knife clanged on a plate as McGonagall stood up two tables away. "If I may add a few words?"
Harry waved that she certainly could and resumed his seat. Under his breath and behind his hand, Snape uttered, "Why did you tell her 'yes'?"
Harry chuckled. "It'll all be over soon."
Snape drank another sip of mead as McGonagall began. "It was a lovely ceremony. I am quite happy for Severus as well as pleasantly surprised that he has found someone compatible."
Harry leaned closer to better hear Snape say, "I must be slipping. Usually I know what she's getting even for."
Harry said, "You are slipping, but we like you better that way."
This generated a sharp glance. McGonagall went on, cutting off the follow-on glare.
"I've known Severus for, oh, upwards of twenty-six years, first as a student and then as a sometimes adversarial colleague. We've been through some very difficult times and I'll second Harry's contention that we are stronger as a unit because it was the unit of many of you here, bound to Albus Dumbledore, that is the only reason so many can be here today to enjoy this lovely party."
She turned her dark green robed self to better address the room rather than the head table. "Severus doesn't always think the best of people, which can make him a little difficult to get along with, but there is no one you would rather have guarding your back." She turned again and raised her glass, which glittered in the now dominating candlelight. "I wish the three of you prosperity. I wish you peace, for what it's worth, but knowing two of you as I do, I'm not sure my wishes are going to have any effect. I believe Ms. Breakstone had a proper preview of what she has got herself into before coming today. She is presumably ready for a life of adventure and she is in good hands. So I wish her, especially, but all three of you, the best of luck."
"I can top that," Ruthie said while glasses were being refilled. She stood on Candide's other side, sizing them all up while the guests adjusted. Candide dropped her head and shook it faintly. Snape handed her the mead cup from which she took another very small sip.
Ruthie took in the room next with her skilled eye, gauging the audience. "My sister, Candy. Always did everything just right. Perfectly. Perfect grades. Perfectly neat room. Mum and dad's favorite. Used to drive me bonko when we were kids. Years and years of this never living up to my sister." She indicated Snape with a movement of her glass. "I don't know where you found this one, but you've more than made up for everything." Ruthie leaned down and asked, "Where did you find him, anyway?"
Candide had to clear her throat to be heard. "Hogsmeade."
"Hog's Head?" Ruthie echoed loudly, to a few chuckles.
"HogsMEADE," Candide repeated.
Ruthie shrugged as if there was little difference or she did not believe her. "Well, I like this bloke, but others are needing more time to get to know him. We'll get there, I'm sure," she said amiably. "He's trouble, I can tell, but Candy needs balancing out for the rest of our sake. Between the two of them we've got one tolerable person here."
Ruthie leaned on the table with one broad hand, straining it, judging by the creaks. "You know how you are supposed to tell embarrassing anecdotes about one or the other of the couple when you do these toasts?" she asked the assembled. "Well, trouble is, Candy doesn't have any to tell. I would know, I've been her sister her whole life. Marrying this bloke is the only mortifying thing she's ever done and you all already know about it . . . because you're here. Takes the fun out of telling it to you."
Harry and Candide turned at the same time to check that Snape was still all right. Ruthie, with a crooked grin turned too.
Snape said, "Clearly, you don't know me very well."
Harry grinned at the implied threat.
Ruthie returned, "We have loads of time now to get to know each other. You have a house-elf . . . we, or I will at least, be over every Sunday." This generated more laughs.
"I look forward to it," Snape said easily, eyes keen.
Ruthie laughed the most of all. "If anyone had told me I'd inherit a brother-in-law who teaches dark magic . . . 'scuse me, Defense against dark magic and that I'd inherit Harry Potter as a nephew . . . pshew, I think I'd have suggested they seriously consider having themselves measured up for the proverbial tight white robes that buckle in the back." She raised her glass which triggered Harry to release the breath he held. "But welcome to our family. It's a very boring family where nothing much happens, and I'm very grateful for your livening it up."
With that, conversations broke out at every table and the food appeared. Everyone tucked into their plates and the conversation noise rose and fell pleasantly. Harry kept tabs on the bride and groom but they behaved as though this was just another ordinary dinner, as did most of the guests.
Long after the tables had been pushed aside and the makeshift wooden floor thinned out of eager dancers. Candide returned to the head table.
"All right, I've danced with every other male; it's your turn now."
Snape, who was sitting back from the table, hand on a goblet, said, "You danced with Hagrid?"
Candide propped her hands on her hips, an action accentuated by her dress rustling. "Yes. How could you have missed that? He is easy to dance with, I'll admit . . . you put both feet on one of his and he does the dancing."
"You have not danced with Harry, here."
Candide stared at Harry. "Oh, you're right. Come on, Harry."
Harry, who had just sat back down after dancing with Anita a second time, pushed himself back to his feet.
Over beside the quintet, Harry asked her, "Glad now that it's almost over?"
"No, now I'm not."
Harry kept one eye on the head table where Shazor and Farnsworth were smoking cigars and chatting with the groom. "Everyone behaved themselves," Harry commented as they circled.
"Yes, they did. Hey, you're not a bad dancer."
"Hm?" Harry asked, watching as Farnsworth grew animated discussing something.
"I said, your girlfriend is lucky you are such a good dancer."
Harry glanced over at Tonks who had only danced with him once on the theory that flaunting themselves in front of both Shacklebolt and Mr. Weasley was not a good idea.
"You're very distracted," she said, more concerned than criticizing.
"I feel like I should keep an eye on things," he explained, finally turning to her. Her eye makeup had spread, heavily accenting her eyes. Her spell-fixed hair was still exactly the same.
She said, "Your little speech was nice. I think that was the right way to explain it to Severus."
"Was it that obvious I was talking to him?" Harry asked as they passed Hermione and Hagrid with a shuffle of steps to avoid serious injury.
"I don't think so. It was fine."
The song ended and Harry took her be-ringed hand and led her back to the head table. "All yours," he announced.
Snape, after a brief hesitation, stood and wove his way through the blue smoke of his neighbors to come around the table. A tango started up. When the two of them reached the raised interlocked platform, Snape waved the musicians to a halt and asked for something slow. The bride and groom proceeded to, not so much dance as, turn slowly in one corner of the dance floor.
A green robe cut into Harry's vision and McGonagall and Hagrid took up seats nearby, Hagrid on the trunk which he dragged over for that purpose. From where Harry sat above him, he could see two broken ivory combs stuck in his wiry hair. The three of them stared across the room at Snape and Candide dancing.
Hagrid said, "Aye, Dumbledore'd've like ter seen this."
McGonagall nodded sagely.
Hermione came over, empty goblet in hand, which she set down on the table beside some others abandoned there. "I should go," she said, slightly slurred. "Lots of arranging things for the term . . . Oh, hello Headmistress."
"Hermione," McGonagall greeted her, wearing that sly smile again.
Harry stood and saw his friend out. Hermione gave him a long hug before she Apparated away. Tonks was behind him when he turned back to the tent, Shacklebolt at her side. "We have to go too. Call."
Harry shook her hand with a professional air, feeling a little neglected by her rule for the evening and wanting to make a point. She frowned and they disappeared as well. Harry remained standing in the crystal starlight. The tent fabric glowed richly with candlelight as though with the size charming, the light concentrated as it escaped to the outside.
Footsteps made Harry turn and he was surprised to find Moody standing there, wearing dress robes, his hair slicked back. Harry wondered how long he had been around and how else he had been disguised if he had been around. A mustache would not have sufficed given his distinctive posture.
"Enjoying the party?" Harry asked with no friendliness.
"The whole rest of the Order was invited," Moody pointed out. "It was a good chance to listen in on what everyone is doing."
Harry decided to simply ignore him and moved to re-enter the tent. Moody halted him with: "I want to know what you think you're up to."
Harry rotated back slowly. "I'm at a wedding . . . a very important one that I don't feel like wasting time talking to you during."
Moody's magical eye examined Harry. "Someone's been tracking me, I've figured out," he said. "And I don't like it. Reminds me of the old days a bit too much."
Inside, the music changed tunes, picking up the pace slightly which made it merge better with the bubbling water of the spring. "If you think it's me . . . believe me, I've had enough of you. I would hardly seek out more of you." Harry started to walk away and stopped long enough to say. "Only a handful of people know you're alive. How hard could it be to figure out who it is?"
Moody grunted. "My figuring exactly, so that's why I'm here, asking you. I thought you the most likely to manage it without my catching you at it, seeing as how you have certain, shall we say, skills in this area."
"Well, it's not me," Harry said with feeling and slipped back inside the tent.
Harry's annoyed mood eased the moment he stepped inside the flickering, candlelit space. He slid back along the head table to the chair beside Candide's. Snape wasn't at the table; he appeared to be dancing with McGonagall. Harry squinted across the tent at this, stunned.
"She insisted on getting a turn," Candide said, sounding amused.
"Amazing," Harry uttered. He pushed aside a few stray goblets and a scattering of colorful dried fruit from the cake and put his chin down on his hand to watch the dance floor without having to hold up his head.
Candide scooted her chair closer and put an arm around him. "Thanks for letting me in, Harry."
Acute embarrassment made him wince. He had to lift his head to talk. "Sorry about that."
"What? Oh, that's not what I meant." She laughed lightly. "I meant the way you two had such a language of your own. I needed some translation and eventually got it."
"Oh," Harry uttered, partly relieved by her explanation. His eyes were getting as heavy as his head. The caterer's elves had not been around for the last hour, which was a shame as Harry could use that coffee now that he had turned down earlier with the cake. Candide's parents were dancing as well as Ruthie and Hagrid and Trelawney with an elderly member of the Order. Anita sat in the corner talking to Professor Sinistra, who nodded frequently as Anita gestured. Shazor and Gretta occupied a table about as far away as possible, near the door flaps. Harry considered that if this evening could work out, then pretty much anything could.
Candide's arm still rested reassuringly over Harry's back. She did not seem so much a mother, he mused, as an extension of his adoptive father. Or, if Ruthie's contention that the two of them formed a different whole was correct, she completed Snape, which was a comfortable thought.
The warm honeycomb atmosphere exuded by the candles overlaid the wet fresh leafiness of the glen. The air and the rhythmic music lulled Harry's eyes closed. He tugged off his glasses, intending just to rest his eyes a minute by pressing them against his arm.
He must have dozed because he woke with a small jerk when hands came down on his shoulders. A voice, Snape's, somewhere behind his left ear said, "It IS late."
Harry sat straight and rubbed his eyes. The music still played but there were just two couples on the dance floor and the tables had cleared further. Snape pressed Harry's hair back, giving it a tug as though to be sure he had his attention.
"You did not have so much to drink, did you?" he asked.
"No," Harry said, wiping his glasses before replacing him. "And look who's talking."
Snape's hand came down again on his shoulder, but he did not have a response. Across the room, Harry became aware of a stereo vision of Anita on one side and Shazor on the other, both watching them with expressions that were difficult to decode. Harry pretended not to notice. Unexpectedly, Snape brushed his hair back again, making Harry wonder if he was making some kind of point. If so, Harry was glad for it.
Anita approached as did McGonagall with Richard and the remaining teachers in tow. McGonagall said, "I believe it is time for us all to do as Harry is trying to, as lovely as the evening has been."
Anita, hands clasped before her almost placatingly, said, "Perhaps time to take your wife and son home, Severus. It IS nearly 2:00."
Harry did not want to come down in support of the critical side of her twisted, half-acknowledging statement, nevertheless silently agreed due to his training the next day. "Who's cleaning up?" Harry asked.
"The caterer's elves will return at dawn," Candide supplied.
The musicians ended the song and began to pack up their music stands and instruments. After the teachers moved on, Shazor and Gretta approached as well as Candide's parents, Anita stepped aside but did not retreat. Ruthie rocked on her toes behind them all. The tension level rose. Harry would have stood, but Snape's hand was still firmly on his shoulder.
Gretta broke the silence with, "Lovely wedding, my dear," she said to Candide. Other similar murmurs were offered and the group, with last good wishes, moved on out of the tent, leaving the three of them there with just the musicians who were stacking their large instrument boxes in a considerably small trunk, which had been hovered beside their platform.
"They all behaved well," Harry said. A thought then occurred to his tired brain. He asked Snape, "You didn't potion the prosecco or something?"
Vaguely insulted sounding, Snape said, "No."
Harry stood finally. "Not that I care . . ." And at that late moment he certainly did not. "I just wondered if we could expect them to behave next time."
Snape said, "Unlikely" at the same instant Candide said, "I doubt it."
Eyes heavy, Harry peered back and forth between them. He felt dizzily pleased with the day. Eyes smiling at Snape he said, "Shall we go home?"
Snape bowed in place of a nod and Candide jumped over beside him, saying, "I have to side-along. It's bad luck for the bride to Apparate herself to her new house." With much movement of the ever resilient dress, she tugged off her left shoe, dumped the sickle onto the table and tossed the shoe aside. "Okay, all good."
They both stared at here. Harry said, "Well, we wouldn't want to break the streak we have going today."
Snape took her arm with accentuated formality and the three of them Disapparated.
A/N: Sorry, got to get to sleep to get on a plane for home tomorrow. No time even for a preview. I'll add one when I get home.
Chapter 10 — A Darker Place
Quiet settled over the house in Shrewsthorpe as Snape, divested of his shimmering blue-lined dress cloak, sat on the bed to unwind the long laces of the dress boots he wore. A shush-shush followed Candide as she strode to her wardrobe and considered herself in the narrow mirror inside the door.
"Dress worked out well," she said in a fatigue-tinged voice. "Pearl was a good choice."
"An overly sedulous decision for something to be worn once."
She shrugged, smiling faintly. "I need help getting out of it. Bad luck to use a spell."
"Ah," Snape uttered. "So, a well-designed garment you are saying." He stood with deliberate movements and stopped behind her, studying the fifty or so hooks and eyelets lining her spine. "This would constitute cruelty under the right circumstances."
She laughed lightly. "You would object to that?" she asked doubtfully.
He peered at her in the mirror. "You have a bit more of your sister in you than you let on. Don't know where you hid her . . . Certainly no room in this dress." He started in on the eyelets, from the top.
"So," she began. "While I have your attention . . ."
"Less of it than you might imagine . . ." he came back, frowning at getting his fingers behind the fabric to gain enough slack to continue unhooking beyond the looser high neck.
She lifted her ring hand and stared at it before dropping it back to her side. "You said, I do, but there are other things you've never said."
This garnered a glare in reflection. "And?"
"Hm," she said, pushing her unruly hair back. The spell holding it in place finally had worn off. "I'm curious," she said as he made it beyond the tough section where the fabric was pulled taut by her shoulder blades and sped up somewhat. She moved a quarter-turn to see him at least a little in the mirror. "Have you ever told Harry that you love him?"
His voice was much closer to stern as he replied, "You aren't in a competition with Harry."
"I know that. I wouldn't have even tried if I was," she admitted.
The gained only a disturbed shake of Snape's head. More eyelets were set free. Snape said, "To answer your question, however, the answer is 'yes'."
"Oh, good," she said. "He deserves to hear it, and there is hope."
More shaking of Snape's veiling hair ensued. More than half the eyelets were undone now, revealing the fine lace of an undergarment that almost no one would see.
"What did he say in response?" Candide asked. "Or am I prying?"
Snape huffed inaudibly. "Clearly the topic requires resolution as much the dress does, so I suppose not. But in answer to that question, he said nothing and when I myself pried, he said it was obvious. Harry does not care about words nearly as much . . ." He paused for a tough eyelet that kept re-hooking as though cursed to do so. It gave in only when it was uprooted. "He cares about actions. He cares solely that someone has faith and trust in him, and at least makes an attempt at understanding."
"He likes to be taken care of, doesn't he?"
"Not really." Less than ten eyelets remained at the edges of a decorative flap at the bottom edge of the bodice, which an oversized fake button appeared to hold closed.
"He doesn't complain that you check on him at night."
"That is a glaring exception. It is the singular thing he needed most as a child that he did not have." These last few eyelets made for quick work. "There." He stared at her in the mirror. "Why are we discussing Harry?"
Despite the topic being unimportant for the following hour, after the previous nights' experience of finding Harry sleeping in the window, Snape snuck away just at dawn to check on him.
Harry was sleeping only lightly and turned when the door opened. In support of Snape's earlier assertion, Harry sat up, eyes grateful for the company.
"Did you sleep at all?" Snape asked.
"Did you?" Harry returned coyly.
"I'm not answering that," he asserted firmly. "I only ask because I wondered if you had the same dream again?"
"What dream?"
"The one last night that sent you keep vigil at the window in a fit of uncomfortable nocturnal arrangement."
"Oh, no. It was a dream, anyhow. Nothing more."
"Still doubting the strength of the fabric of reality?" Snape asked, slightly mocking.
Harry frowned and crossed his legs under the covers. "Maybe."
Lecturing, Snape said, "To damage reality without possessing a time-turner would require sorcery of unimagined power. You are the veritable ant in the realm of what would be necessary to even so much as tweak the thread of existence. To break and reweave it is inconceivable. You grossly flatter yourself by even worrying about it."
"What happened to me, then?" Harry demanded.
Snape's expression grew less fierce. "I'll concede that I do not know."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"Immensely. But let me worry about your disturbed visions of my life, all right?"
Harry sighed and rubbed his aching eyes. "All right."
- 888 -
That evening, after a sleepy-eyed day where training felt more like drudgery than it should, Harry settled in with his books across from Snape, who worked at filling in fancy parchment forms bearing the Hogwart's seal on the top of each.
"Hogwarts stuff?" Harry asked. "Lupin can't do that?"
Snape pulled his sleeve out of the way and considered what he had just written while it dried. "Unless I wish to conceded my position fully to Remus, I feel I should do the official paperwork. I also should make my presence felt at the Welcoming Feast as well as several staff meetings over the next week."
Harry considered how each year the students took early key impressions away from examining the teachers at the feast. "Good idea."
Candide arrived home just as Harry's stomach complained about wanting dinner. "Sorry I'm late," she said, setting a teetering stack of files on the sideboard. Dinner appeared shortly after she sat down. She jumped up again and fetched down the chalice used at the wedding and poured mead into it. She took a sip from it and set it before Snape's plate.
"It's the honeymoon," she explained to Harry's questioning look.
"I thought that was supposed to be a holiday of sorts," he said.
"That kind will have to wait," she said. "The Canaries or something would be nice. It's really getting into the busy season at work now and Severus won't have another break until Christmas."
When the dinner dishes disappeared, they all settled into their respective work.
This routine continued the rest of the week. In the late afternoon after training, Harry only joined his friends at a pub briefly if he did at all. Ron teased him about this one evening, but Harry just shrugged, knowing that Ron, with his constant overdose of family, could not appreciate Harry's wanting to capture this last two solid weeks of it.
- 888 -
Hogwarts' stone walls exuded a warm mustiness from summer's disuse. In an office on the fourth floor, overlooking the courtyard and the keep, Hermione blew her hair out of her eyes and pondered how best to arrange the next trunk of books. Unlike the two bookshelves full that occupied the office when she arrived, hers spanned a diverse collection of topics and it seemed a shame to disturb the lived-in organization of the dog-earred, old books with her own disparate and sometimes un-read ones.
She was just considering where to obtain another set of shelves to keep things completely separate when she realized the time, only by the accident of having a post owl arrive with the afternoon edition of the Prophet.
Hermione stared at the clock, brain unable to comprehend that she was supposed to be elsewhere just at that twitchy movement of the minute hand that landed it straight up. She scrambled for her new gold-edged notebook, pens, ran back for an ink bottle, exchanged that for a Never-out quill, grabbed all of it up instead along with the attaché her mother had bought her upon getting her job at the solicitors', and ran out of her office.
The stairways down never contained so many steps as they did this trip, but she slowed on the last set to catch her breath, deciding that being later yet for her first staff meeting would be worse than showing up breathless and clearly at the tail end of an arduous run.
With one last deep breath and a quick finger brush of her hair, she stepped out of the Entrance Hall and into the staff room. The teachers, in all their varied colors and sizes, were standing around the long table, chatting, catching up on personal events from the summer. Hermione breathed out, heart still running fast.
McGonagall turned casually from speaking with Professor Sprout as Hermione placed her things out on the table, trying to ignore what she was certain was a borderline sneering amusement from Professor Snape, who stood off the corner of the table, facing Professor Vector as though mid-conversation.
"Are you getting settled in, Hermione?" McGonagall gallantly asked.
Hermione relaxed, being on time was not a test, it turned out. "Working on it, Professor. Lots of books to unpack still. Oh, where do I get some additional shelves?" she asked before McGonagall could turn away again. She thought this an excellent question, given the implication of it.
"Just ask Mr. Filch. He will come install them."
Hermione had heard about the new Filch. "Right," she managed to answer anyway. This one may actually be a test, she decided.
Hermione took a seat as the others, on some unseen cue, did so. Across the table Trelawney blinked her amplified eyes at her as though wondering why she was there. Hermione opened her lovely new gold-leaf notebook with an audible crack of the leather spine and listened as changes in marking and house points policies were considered.
At the end of the congenial meeting, McGonagall waved Hermione over to her side. "Take a seat, Hermione," she said as Snape glided over to stand on the headmistress' other side. He preferred to stand and glare down, it seemed, because he remained standing as McGonagall continued and the room cleared out.
"This institution has a program for new teachers who . . . may require it. You are a sharp young woman, Hermione dear, but brains alone does not a teacher make. I am therefore assigning you a mentor to assist you. Severus has agreed to take the first round of mentoring.
Hermione glanced up at him, and then quickly down again before considering in private that for most of her school years, he had been her least-favorite teacher, although, she reconsidered, that had been based on a personal dislike, rather than a professional one. She composed her thoughts toward the future before looking up again. His eyes narrowed with a twitch before appearing grudging.
McGonagall went on, "You will report to Severus weekly to discuss how your classes are going as well as grading criteria, problem students, detention policy, etc." She stacked her notes together as she spoke and finished by taking off her glasses. "Any questions?"
"No, Minerva," Hermione managed to say with great effort, finding her first name far too casual for taste. "I'm excited to get started."
- 888 -
It was near the end of his rare normal family time when Harry left early for training in an attempt to catch Mr. Weasley before he got too busy. He found their department head in his office, reading the Weekly Snitch, the Ministry's gossip and sport's score newsletter.
"Can I talk to you, sir?" Harry asked.
Mr. Weasley put his feet down and sat straight, prompting a brush painted to resemble a colorful toy soldier to sweep off the edge of the desk where his shoes had been. Harry glanced back down the corridor to check that no one approached before taking a seat.
"It's like this, Mr. Weasley," Harry began. "I . . . have a bad feeling about Percy-"
"What's he done?" Mr. Weasley asked, perhaps sharply.
"Well," Harry hesitated. There wasn't all that much he had any proof of, really. Mostly just that he found him unsavory and with a bad habit of acting suspicious. "I think he's using Legilimency . . . around the Ministry when perhaps it isn't appropriate."
Mr. Weasley had picked up a ball point pen and was clicking the button on the end repeatedly. "As a Legilimens yourself, you would notice that, I suppose."
"Yes, sir."
The pen clicking stopped while he asked, "You aren't guilty of that yourself?"
Harry spoke slowly as he said, "I'm very careful to avoid it sir."
Mr. Weasley leaned over to reach into the farther file drawer so his voice was strained as he said, "Not always, it turns out." He pulled out a sheet and held it out so Harry could read it. "That's a complaint filed with us from a Mr. DeBenedictus." He pulled it back and scanned it. "I think it may be the first time ever someone has managed to fill this form out correctly. That alone would make him a bad enemy."
Harry bit his top lip. "I caught Percy using the skill on you, sir. And when I called him on it, he blushed and backed down, so I'm quite certain he was doing so."
Mr. Weasley reddened slightly and straightened the files on his desk. "I don't know why he would bother. He could ask me whatever he wishes."
Harry regrouped. At least his boss was now warned. "There just have been so many suspicious coincidences with him."
The pen clicking resumed. "That's also cauldron-calling, Harry."
"It's what?"
Speaking more slowly, Mr. Weasley explained, "The pot calling the cauldron black."
"Oh," Harry said.
Mr. Weasley held up the little plastic pen. "Lovely little thing, isn't it. Sucks itself inside so it doesn't write on things when you don't want it to." He put the pen down. "It's clear, Harry, that you don't like Percy, and certainly he's given you reason not to, but I'm not certain what you want me to do." When Harry hesitated answering he suggested, "Do you want to file one of these complaints against him? It will probably be dealt with in the same manner as this one, which was that all the senior staff signed off on it and it went in a drawer. But you may do so, if you have some kind of direct harm to report and I'm afraid personal lives do not count for much."
"I don't have any . . . direct harm," Harry said, frustrated by these circles. "I just feel justifiably suspicious and I thought I should say something. I've been told to work though the system and I'm trying to do that."
This scored, Harry determined, when Mr. Weasley's posture loosened. "All right, Harry. Good. If there's anything to be done, it will be handled. You're going to be late for training."
Harry thanked him and stood, feeling utterly unsatisfied, but having nothing left to say.
After training, Tonks found him in the dressing room and Harry waved his slow fellows out so he could talk to her.
"Feel like going out?" she asked. "I'm off."
"It's Severus' second to last night home, but sure, a quick drink maybe."
Rather than discuss anything interesting, Harry found himself complaining about Percy as they shared a pint.
"I agree he shouldn't be using Legilimency on Arthur," Tonks said after Harry related his conversation.
"You believe me that he is?" Harry asked.
"Of course. I trust you can judge that," she insisted, sensing that Harry needed reassurance. Her violet hair stood out from her head in all directions today. "I can only do the barest Occlusion. But it's not suspicious that he can do that; all Department of Mysteries staff can Occlude their thoughts completely or they wouldn't be allowed to work there. Many people learn Legilimency at the same time they learn that."
Harry, for whom that was true, was forced to concede that. "Something about him still bothers me. I wonder what he's up to?"
Tonks shrugged. "Can you get away tonight?"
Harry could not imagine himself more torn by a question from her.
"Come on," she said, "you said yourself Severus is going to be home more weekends as long as Remus is fit . . . moon-permitting."
"After dinner, then," Harry said, and the core of him thanked him for that decision by changing from knotted up to happily anticipating.
- 888 -
Two days later as Snape stood beside the mantel with a small trunk at his feet, he glanced between the two of them with a hint of dismay as they hovered nearby to see him off. "I will be returning in less than two weekends. And will be home most weekends after. You look like the bon voyage committee for the Lusitania."
Harry ducked his head to hide his laugh. Snape stepped in his direction and came almost nose to nose with him.
"Be careful. Stay out of trouble." He started to turn away and stopped to say, with a point of a long finger. "Keep me informed."
"Yes, sir," Harry said, finding odd comfort in being pre-scolded, but also somewhat lacking in decent warmth.
Snape relented just a bit and patted the side of his arm. He stopped before Candide and when she stood up on her toes and parted her lips, he gave her a kiss that went on long enough Harry felt the need to glance away, and even, eventually, clear his throat.
After the flare of the Floo network died down, Candide smacked her lips and said, "I'll have to tell the Weasley twins the lipstick really works and thank them as well. They said I could offer the "ultimate" test."
"What?" Harry uttered, bordering on bending over on laughter.
She pulled a little gold lipstick from her pocket and held it up. Lip-Locker Luscious Red ~ Guaranteed longer kisses.
"Do not let Severus see that," Harry said, grinning.
"Oh, don't I know it."
- 888 -
Training got a bit easier with Tridant in the mix since they were splitting their time between first-year spells for him and second-year spells for the rest of them. This new routine gave him time to catch up and feel he could stay caught up. And the quiet evenings with just him and Candide at home left him little distraction from even doing some old reviewing.
Harry began carrying some of his older books to follow along in while Tridant received his lessons. Harry found them surprisingly easy to understand now that he had far surpassed them. This made his center glow warm with a sense of accomplishment. It unfortunately made his book bag rather heavy and he was adjusting the straps of it, slow to leave the changing room, when he heard an unusually large group of footsteps pass by in the corridor. Harry left his bag and went to the door and just pushed it open a crack using his toe.
Fudge's voice could be heard echoing back down the corridor and, through the gap, the former minister could be seen standing outside the tea room with a large group. He was saying, "Well, inter-departmental cooperation was of course one of my initiatives as well, and it's good to see Madam Bones continuing it. We should hold these meetings regularly, not just when there is a crisis afoot."
Harry shifted his head side to side and recognized Percy followed by Ogden entering the tea room along with a few others he did not recognize. Mr. Weasley was the last inside and he closed the door. Harry stood thinking a minute before scooping up his book bag and making a dash for the stairs.
More overly pompous voices halted Harry in the corridor outside the Minister of Magic's outer office. Harry waited around the corner out of sight while a Portuguese dignitary and his entourage made some extraordinarily drawn out goodbyes before finally departing. When the noise of the lift made it clear they has slid out of view at the far end, Harry slipped around to Bone's office.
Belinda was straightening up stacks of brochures on topics of wizard tourism and economic development. Other staff members were holding a debriefing of sorts. They glanced up at Harry and away again, ignoring him. Harry slipped over to Belinda.
"Hi."
"Oh! Hi, Harry," she sounded at least vaguely pleased to see him.
Harry could not help but suspect she knew something and simply was not saying. "Can I talk to you . . . er, this evening?" When her shoulders twitched, he said, "Your flat at say 7:00 o'clock."
She nodded, shoulder-length hair falling into her face so he could not read her expression. Harry thanked her sincerely, generating a faint blush in her ears and more interested glances from the others in the office, so he left.
Harry would have liked to have bided his time at Hermione's flat, but since she was even farther away than going home, he tried Vineet's flat instead. When the Indian came to the door, he registered no surprise at seeing Harry there in the corridor.
"Hope you don't mind if I call unannounced," Harry said.
Vineet gestured that he should enter without changing his distant demeanor. Harry stepped inside the now sparsely furnished flat and realized that in the process of worrying about Tridant adjusting, he had lost track of his usually resilient colleague.
"How are you doing, Vishnu?" Harry came out and asked for lack of any better tactic. It seemed clear from the empty rooms that Nandi had made a permanent move back to the home country.
Vineet tilted his head to the side, a gesture Harry was familiar with from another source.
Vineet's Adam's apple bounced once. "Would you like something?" he asked.
"Whatever you have," Harry said, and followed his fellow into the kitchen.
A stack of letters and other more official looking papers dominated the table, weighted down with half-globes of glass. Harry could not read any of these since they were covered in a script that resembled rows of dangling banners.
Harry waited until they were both settled into tea and biscuits before he asked, "Are you getting a divorce?" He held his breath while he waited for the answer, afraid he had stepped over some line.
"It is difficult," Vineet replied, expression unwavering. Harry wished he would show some disturbance; it unnerved him that he did not.
"I don't mean to pry . . . but I'm a bit worried about you," Harry admitted, trying to pry under that unmoving façade.
The façade shifted all right. It grew even more remote. "You have far more important things to concern yourself, I am certain."
"Not at the moment," Harry said. He sipped his tea since he had ignored it so far. "There hasn't been another prophecy that I don't know about, is there?" he had to ask.
"No. I would prefer that there were."
"Oh," Harry said. "We should hook you up with Trelawney more often then. Get a prophecy arranged for you."
Vineet stared at him, which was an improvement over him staring past him. "You are mocking me." He sounded on the verge of peeved.
"Only to get through to you," Harry pointed out, taking another sip of tea to seem more relaxed than he really was. "And it worked."
Peeved turned to annoyed, and Vineet dropped his gaze to stare down at the biscuit on his saucer. Harry considered that Vineet had been left to himself what with Hermione starting at Hogwarts on top of his wife leaving. Harry certainly knew too well what that felt like.
"I'm not very good at this," Harry admitted. "But rather than bounce back, you've just withdrawn. I don't mean to be a busy-body, but I can't sit by and let you sulk any longer."
This drew his fellow's gaze back up again and this time he seemed present and accounted for, bolstering Harry. "Fill me in, okay . . . it's hard for you to divorce?"
"Very."
It hurt to pry so much, but it was the next logical question. "But you want to?"
Vineet started to reply, opened his mouth, even, but he hesitated, caught in thought. "I don't want the necessity of it. It brings ignominy upon my family, as well being a personal failure." Making this statement returned him to withdrawn.
"So, what does your mother say?"
"She has begun to side with Nandi, perhaps because of proximity to her arguments."
"Do you want to go home?" Harry asked. "You aren't here because you think I expect it or something? I mean, I certainly like having you as a colleague, I owe you my life, but I just want to make sure you don't feel you are still under some obligation related to me." Harry frowned, that had not come out right. "I remember you saying you came because of me, but if you need to be elsewhere, don't let me stand in the way of that."
Vineet's gaze had returned to the present. "There is nothing for me there."
"Good. I mean, I like having you around."
Harry had the sense that if he wasn't already so grim, Vineet may have smiled at least faintly.
Vineet finally sipped his tea, expressed surprise that it was cold, tapped it to reheat it, and drank it down. "Would you be disappointed in me . . ." he faded out. "Hogwarts school is not so distant."
Harry threw his head back and stared at the cream-color ceiling. "How did I end up as the moral arbiter of you two?" he demanded. He relented his annoyance and peered at his friend and despite having scenes of Snape's recent wedding still fresh in his mind and life, he said, "Vishnu, I think you should do whatever makes you happy. It seems like the system isn't working very well for you."
"The system has been changed. Some wizards in my country still practice the old system."
"What old system?" Harry asked, now uncertain about the answer he just gave.
"The one where one can have more than one wife."
Oh, Hermione will go for that, Harry thought, but kept it in because she could answer for herself. At least, he hoped she could. At the moment, she was living as good as a monk to get away from this situation, so perhaps he should not prejudge. Carefully, he said, "You think that's a good idea?"
"It is a bad idea," Vineet said, to Harry's relief. But then less clearly added, "It is even more illusion that chains one to this life and prevents the soul from moving on."
After a pause, Harry said, "Right." He glanced at the time and finished his tea. "I have to go. I have an appointment and I have to walk a ways from where I can Apparate. Take it easy, all right? I'll see you tomorrow."
Harry still had the previous conversation in his head when he arrived at Belinda's flat. Belinda was waiting, wearing a long, red high-necked pullover over her nice skirt from the Ministry. The flat did not feel cold to Harry, but Belinda must feel differently.
"How are you doing?" Harry asked, buying time to adjust his frame of mind.
Belinda answered something meaningless and tried to lead him inside to sit, but Harry took her shoulders and said, "Look, something's been going on with you and I figured before that if you wanted to say something, you would, but . . ." Her eyes taking on a haunted look stalled him momentarily. "But, now I think you should talk to someone. Have you talked to Minister Bones?"
The absurdity of this was reflected in her reaction. "Talked to the Minister?"
Harry did not know what the topic was, only felt confirmed that was a topic so he rolled along with: "Have you talked to anyone?"
"Yeah, I talked to someone," she replied, annoyed and tried to turn away, but Harry held her fast, not finished yet. Her reaction to this was unexpected, she twisted instinctively, elbowing him on the soft part of his arm. "Let go of me!"
Harry did, immediately contrite. "I'm sorry." Harry envisioned knocking Percy around a little to bring himself back under control. Gently, he asked, "Can I ask whom you talked to?"
She turned away, arms half crossed-half wrapped around her middle as though despite the overgrown jumper she might still be cold. "No. I promised I wouldn't."
"Are you scared of someone?" Harry asked, struggling hard to sound softly understanding when his mind was full of making a careful arrangement of spells that caused some kind of pain.
"No," she replied, confusingly more certain of this answer than the last.
"Will you tell me anything?" Harry asked.
"No."
Harry closed his eyes and then asked, "You broke up with Percy, right?"
"Yes," she replied, then finally turned to face him while asking, "Happy about that?"
"Yes. 'Cause I don't like him. It was your choice though. Why won't you tell me what's going on?" He was pleading now. He felt so close to something.
"Because I'll lose my job." She waved her arms around, thin fingers white. "Or at least get demoted down to . . . I don't know, opening owls for the Department of Complaints."
Harry had nothing but momentum now, "Why would you lose you job?"
Now anger came through. Harry found it welcome. "Because you'd tell someone at the Ministry, that's why."
"No. I. wouldn't." Harry retorted. "Why would I do that?"
Her voice dropped, perhaps to avoid shouting. "Because you're an Auror. Don't you think I've seen the reports you blokes file with every last detail of some poor sap's life laid out?"
Harry pointed at his chest and bent forward slightly. "I'm not an Auror yet. Don't you know how many times they tell me that . . . every week it seems like."
She wavered, almost convinced. Harry said, "I promise not to tell anyone. I'll, however, reserve the right to try to talk you into telling someone. But I won't say."
Her eyes dodged between the door and the room across from it. "It'd be nice if someone else knew." She rubbed her eye impatiently. Voice thicker, she added, "But I'm too ashamed to say."
"Hey, there," Harry said, not by any means, wanting to make her cry. He took her arms again, remembering only after his hands sunk into the thick weave of her jumper that she had reacted badly to that before. She did not pull away this time; she bowed her head and rubbed her other eye.
"Can you at least tell me if this has something to do with Percy?" he asked.
She nodded, back of her hand covering her right eye. She appeared so terribly miserable that Harry stepped forward and gave her a hug. Without the high-heels she used to wear when they dated, she fit much better in his arms.
"Come on, then. I'll kick his arse for you if you want."
Her limbs stiffened under his arms. Muffled, she said, "Don't do anything . . . really bad. Like you . . . you did at Malfoy Manor."
Harry bit his lip. Careful not to sound caught off-guard, he said, "No, of course not." But in the wake of her comment, he felt a little sour in the stomach.
He pushed her to arm's length and asked, "Better?"
She nodded, keeping her eyes down. Harry felt it only fair to leave the questions for later.
- 888 -
The next morning, early, Harry was awoken in an unusual way, by Candide's voice at the crack of his door saying, "Harry, you should get up."
Harry lifted his head and blinked in the direction of the door with half-opened eyes. She wasn't really waking him up early, Petunia-style, was she? He wondered this more in surprise than annoyance, but the first toyed with becoming the second.
He dressed and made his way downstairs to the dining room where breakfast appeared immediately, accompanied by a brimming cup of coffee.
"Ready for this?" Candide asked.
Harry stared at her. Gears not meshing quite yet. "Er . . ."
"Nope, have some coffee, then," she said, knowingly. Her hand rested on the newspaper beside her plate. The headline was something to do with a post-Quidditch match pub brawl.
Harry sipped the scalding hot coffee and taking a deep breath, said, "All right. What is it?"
Candide, mouth downward and regretful, lifted the paper, folded it so the back page was upward and turned it around. Filling the back page, as red as any blood, was a photograph of Harry hugging Belinda.
Harry stared at it. "I'm not being very careful," he said. He meant that differently than it sounded. He was really just filling in what Snape would say, were he here. Harry had not run any spells to check if he had been followed, or checked if the blinds on the windows were closed or not. His eyes finally unlatched from the red wool filling the photograph to the headline: New Squeeze for "Boy" Hero?
"I have to go," Harry said, moving to stand.
"Eat your breakfast first," Candide said. "If you're going to have a bad day . . . you're going to need it."
Harry stared at her, and she added, "Sorry, don't mean to sound as if I'm mothering you. I'd say the same to Severus."
"Yeah, well . . ." Harry said, thinking this was getting deep quickly. He stood. "Really have to go."
She reached across the table and flipped his fried egg onto a slice of toast and folded it, squashing it flat. She bundled that in his cloth napkin and held it out.
"Thanks," Harry said as he accepted it.
"Good luck," her voice followed as he Apparated away.
Harry snarfed his breakfast as he strode across the atrium and stuffed the napkin in his pocket. One enormous benefit of his early arrival . . . he was almost alone in the atrium and the few glances he received moved on without real notice of him.
Harry could not locate Tonks in the department. Rogan was manning the office along with Blackpool. Harry snuck a peak at the log book and saw that Tonks was out on a call with Shacklebolt and had been for half an hour. It pained him, but he wished Candide had woken him earlier.
Harry sat down in the training room after giving up on waiting for Tonks. Kerry Ann shot him a most disappointed look.
"It's not what you think," Harry grumbled.
Her attitude immediately brightened. "Well, that's good to hear. You're one of the few men I still have faith in. If I lost faith in you . . ." She turned back to her reading.
Harry stared at the side of her head and her ear. Her comments reminded him of Vineet, of being given too much moral or philosophical credit.
Rodgers must not know anything about the Prophet because he did not mention or even hint at it, to Harry's relief. As their lessons wound through the morning, and Kerry Ann was called up for a third time, clunking her way to the front in her awkward shoes, Harry thought about high heels. He thought about how hard it must be to walk in them. And then a very bad notion occurred to him.
At lunchtime Harry, as much as he would have preferred to have broken into the Department of Mysteries and confronted Percy, went instead to Mr. Weasley's office. Mr. Weasley was speaking with Shacklebolt about some ongoing trouble communicating with the Obliviator Squad. Harry waited impatiently in the corridor, making sure he was in Mr. Weasley's line of sight. But when Shacklebolt moved off, Mr. Weasley stood and donned his cloak.
"I have a lunch meeting with Minister, Harry." He stopped before Harry as though to make it clear he had given him some attention. "I sense this is a topic we've covered already."
Harry required a moment to recover from his surprise at the astuteness of this observation. "Yes sir," he admitted.
"It's been duly noted already, Harry," he stated flatly and, swinging his cloak onto his other shoulder, he hurried away.
Harry watched him turn the corner, thinking that they were not leaving him many options outside of taking action on his own. Harry returned to the tea room and found Tonks, who found him at the same instant. Neither of them said a word, but the room cleared out with everyone else spouting various absurd excuses.
They stared at each other. Tonks' hair was mousey brown, not a good sign. Harry tried to imagine the situation reversed so he did not completely muck this up. It did not make him feel better to do this.
"You know there's nothing to that stupid photo, right?" Harry said.
Tonks finished her tea in one long gulp. "I have to go, I'm on duty," she said.
At the door Harry halted her with, "You aren't even going to hear me out?"
She stopped, hand still clutching the door handle mercilessly. "Harry, if we are going to have a row, it has to be off the clock. Meet me after shift."
"There's nothing to have a row about," Harry said as the door swung closed.
After a day of distracted training where he only felt he made good use of the weight training portion, Harry waited around the uneventful office for an hour, doing some random filing and then thinking she may have meant the tea room specifically, he checked there, went back to the Auror's office and then went back to the tea room to wait there. Dinner hour had come and gone and Harry checked the sandwich cart for leftovers from lunch. Only one pumpkin juice remained, tucked in the back on its side. Harry cracked the lid of this open, mind elsewhere. He took a long gulp of juice and set it down hard as the room began to swerve around him. He grabbed hold of the table edge, expecting the floor and walls to re-right themselves, but they did not. Harrys legs grew wobbly and he dropped to his knees. He called out, but heard no footsteps and when he managed to jerk his unwilling neck to stare at the door, he found it closed, even though he had not closed it.
Severus, Harry thought at the same time he decided firmly with his spastic mind that the juice had been poisoned . . . he had to get to his guardian. Harry immediately fell through the floor of the tea room into the Dark Plane. Unlike the quite corridors of the Ministry, things were busy here. Piecemeal, glittery creatures crept close, curious. Harry pushed himself up with one weak hand and stared down the nearest beady eyes. Saliva dripped from Harrys mouth as he did so and he knocked himself off-balance wiping it away. The creatures approached, rheumy eyes glowing more than they should in the scant light; Harry did not have the strength to will this second wave of tenacious beasts away. The closest one cocked its head and clapped its tiny jaws together, flashing row upon row of hypodermic teeth.
Harry had to get away, to Snape, right now. He would know what to do. He would take care of him. With that overriding thought, he pushed himself to Apparate.
A new section of grey desolation greeted Harry. Disoriented and weak and fearing for his life, he imagined the Hogwarts Potions Master in whom he had absolute faith, and dropped himself awkward and teetering through the gritty ground digging into his knees.
Harry arrived with a tinny clatter of ice shards in a lamplit room that smelled warmly familiar of stale potion brewing and wood smoke. His head was careening toward the floor that was already close due to his kneeling when he folded himself into the real world. As he collapsed, Harry cried out, Severus, help me. His last thought before darkness sucked him in was to wonder why the stone floor pressed into his cheek smelled dank, like a dungeon.
Harry awoke to the same scents that had followed him into unconsciousness. He shifted his arm and found it to be under a warm duvet. A pillow cradled his head. Harry heard movement nearby and cracked his right eye open. Snape sat beside the bed, arms crossed, edged by the orange glow from the hearth far across the room.
Harry reached up a weak arm and rubbed his forehead. His scar itched. He lifted his head as a prelude to sitting up but decided to preserve his pride and not make the attempt.
Er . . . Harry said, trying to sort things out. He certainly felt greatly improved from when he had arrived, although he wished he felt more firmly himself.
Snape shifted minutely, seeming content to observe him. Harry squinted at him and leaned forward to look for his glasses on the bedside table. With minimal, almost economical, movement Snape reached into the breast pocket of his robe and handed them over.
Thanks, Harry said, hooking them over his ears. The first thing that occurred to him was that this was Snapes chambers all right, but not his current ones. The center of Harrys gut grew heavy and ominous. He turned to his host and observed him in return. Snape raised a challenging brow as Harry did this, but it confirmed that this Snape was not the right one; his face was too gaunt, for one thing, and his gaze far too consistently hard as granite.
Harry sighed and regrouped. Thanks for taking care of the poison, he tossed out as a test, hoping for some conversation.
It was a sophisticated one, Snape stated with no feeling and left it at that.
Was it? Harry prompted.
A long pause ensued before: It was a Personatus Potion. One that manifests as one thing to the casual observer, but in actuality, the expected antidote completes the original fatal poison.
Harry pondered that, wishing his faculties were a little more game for action. Whats the point in that?
The point of it is, Snape stated, sounding the aggravated tutor, is that the recipient will appear to have been killed by their would-be rescuer.
Ah, Harry muttered. Someone is trying kill me and get away with it.
A stunning conclusion, Snape observed.
Harry rubbed his forehead again and this time had the courage to assume the worst. He closed his eyes and with some effort found that niche in his mind where the world bled green and shadows lurked. Many, many lurked very close by as though inside the castle. Damn, Harry muttered.
Problem? Snape prompted sarcastically.
This made Harry laugh. He could not have held it in had he wanted to. When he stopped he laid back on the thick pillow and said, You even gave me your bed.
Snape stood suddenly. No place else to put you. Could not allow you to be seen.
The room swayed for Harry, and he wished it would not do that; he needed to be sharp. You could have turned me in.
Snape spun and studied him. After a long silence, he asked, Where have you been, Potter?
Um, studying, Harry ventured.
And, how, pray-tell did you cheat death?
Harry hesitated. If I tell you that, you wont be curious anymore and then who knows what you might do. He sounded drunken to his own ears and wondered if the antidote was still doing its work.
Snape appeared to respect this answer. He departed through the door and moments later a glow indicated it was magically sealed.
Harry forced himself to sit up again, but dizziness overtook him and he fell back to the pillow.
Harry awoke later, quickly confirming that he had not just been having a bad dream. This time he applied more will-power and levered himself to his feet. He circled the room, which contained many familiar objects. He did not find his wand, even using an Accio repeatedly while holding out his empty hand.
Giving up, Harry stared down at a chess set near an overstuffed chair and considered simply departing. Except he wanted his new wand back and he was not fit for the Dark Plane in this state. Traveling via it in a drugged state was how he ended up here in the first place. On top of that Harry was as curious as he accused his host of being. He set the chess board for a game, waking the pieces as he lifted each out of the nearby bin. White was set up on his end, so he moved the pawn from in front of the right-hand bishop.
The door snapped open without warning. Snape stared at him long seconds before stepping inside and closing it again. He strode over to Harry, seeming to be trying to Legilimize him. Harry kept his mind properly closed, finally glancing down at the chess board. Snape followed his gaze and after consideration moved the opposing pawn for black.
Harry move the pawn before the knight ahead one and waited. Snape shifted to place some rolled parchments on the chair and placed his kings knight out.
Harry did not make a move. Can you stop potioning me into submission? Harry asked. Until he asked this, he had not fully formed the notion that this was why he felt so helpless.
Hm, Snape grunted. If it results in a decent chess game, I suppose.
Thank you, Harry honestly returned.
I am curious, however, Snape said as he strode to a long narrow table upon which sat a row of decorative bottles. He poured out a tumbler-full of a milky orange one and brought it back for Harry. He tauntingly withdrew the offered serving with the words, Why did you dare come here?
I knew you were the only one who could help me, Harry replied truthfully, mind open enough to let the truth be revealed.
The tumbler was held out. You are a foolish young man.
Harry swallowed the faintly herbal liquid. Im still alive, arent I?
I would like to know how, Snape challenged, tossing his sleeve as he turned.
I dont know, Harry replied.
Snapes narrowed eyes slid around to Harry while he paced, muttering, Albus must have arranged something . . . spirited you away . . .
Harry drained the tumbler of the last few drops. Maybe. Harry wished he knew how broadly he needed to lie. He wished his head would clear faster. Chilled and with his scar itching, Harry took the chair before the fire.
Snape said, I must return for dinner. I will be missed if I am not there.
Harrys stomach rumbled at those words. Any chance for . . . ? Harry began.
Snape sneered at him. A heel of stale bread, perhaps? he suggested maliciously.
Anything, Harry said, not insulted.
Snape rolled his eyes and stopped at the door. The house-elves are forbidden to come into my chambers or my office because of the potions. They must not see you as they would report to the headmaster immediately.
Harry blinked at that. All right.
I removed everything from your person that could possibly be charmed as a portkey. Im assuming that is how you got in here, apparently from the North Pole since you were covered in ice.
Harry didnt reply.
The sound of the fire ruled for several breaths. Snape went on in a lower voice, How you came into possession of a portkey keyed to my chambers I cannot imagine.
It seemed Snape would not depart without some kind of response. Harry said, Something I was keeping around just in case.
Snapes expression did not change, but what could he say? He dropped the issue. The ghosts also have loose lips, but they rarely come into my chambers. The Bloody Baron does on occasion, but him I can control. He is not particularly fond of the Dark Lord in any event, having nearly got himself banished on several occasions. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and hurried out, not noticing Harrys frozen expression.
Harry let his head fall back against the chair. He didnt just imply Voldemort was headmaster, did he? he asked the empty room. Suddenly, Harry felt much more reluctant to leave for his own Plane. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to track the shadows that moved in the forest of his mind. By concentrating very hard, while simultaneously not concentrating at all, he counted thirteen very close. One of those would be Snape. Harry went to stand before the small corroded mirror over the washbasin and wished he had his wand.
Snape returned an hour and a half later. Harry sat before the chess board, playing against the pieces themselves, which was challenging because they cheated.
Definitely a Slytherin set, Harry commented when Snape came over to observe.
A gift from a friend.
Let me guess, name of Malfoy?
After a pause, Astute guess.
Harry scoffed lightly. Was that a compliment?
This Snape, after a glare, sat at a small desk and proceeded to do what his Snape did, mark assignments. So, Harry finally ventured. Still stuck teaching Potions? Never assigned anything better?
Snape shot him a priceless look of disbelief. Defense Against the Dark Arts is hardly in the curriculum at this time.
Oh, yeah, Harry said, trying to sound knowing. His insides knotted a bit farther. He opened his mouth but couldnt find a good way to ask if his worst assumption was correct. No Advanced Arts of the Dark Arts class to replace it, eh? he asked lightly.
This drew a unexpectedly thoughtful look from Snape, who said, I expect the competition would not be welcome.
The fire slowly died down and the clock read half past midnight. Harry stood with purpose and said, I want to go look around. It was either decide that, or depart entirely.
Really? came the sarcastic reply. You do realize that the Dementors patrol the grounds and school from midnight to seven?
Harry came to a halt, mid stride to the sealed door. Oh. He considered the chair he had just vacated with reluctance. He could just leave, but instead he made himself retake the chair, pulling the footstool close enough to curl up and use it as a bed.
He fell asleep minutes later, woken only briefly by something tangy smoldering under his nose and then after a whiff, he was out cold.
A headache stabbed, making Harry wince, when he next opened his eyes. He was alone but a small breakfast was stacked in paper wrappers on the empty chess board. After eagerly eating, Harry patrolled the room, finally settling on a book from the shelf on mutation spells and potions.
When Snape returned, Harry immediately asked, Can I have my wand?
First, I want to know why you are here.
To destroy Voldemort, why else-
Snape reacted with outright violence to the dark wizards name, sending the book Harry was reading flying up into his face. Harry blocked it with his arm and it flew beyond to smack the rack of fireplace tools.
Sorry, Harry said, rubbing his bruised arm. I should have known better.
Snape was pointing his wand at Harry like he meant it. You damn well should have, he snarled.
Harry ignored the wand aimed at him and reached over the side of the chair to fetch the book. His name has no power you dont give it, he stated calmly. Im certain that Im not the only person to point that out to you.
Snape lowered the wand.
On that note, Harry said amiably, itd help to have my wand back.
Hands propped on his hips, Snape asked, How do you think you are going to accomplish any damage to the Dark Lord? There are powers he controls that even I do not understand.
Harry closed the book, treating it carefully after the violence to it, and stood with purpose. First, I want to take a look around. I need you to get Filch distracted so I can impersonate him. He can go anywhere in this castle without question. But first I need my wand.
Snape used a spell on one of his inside robe pockets and retrieved Harrys wand from it. Same as the antidote, he held the wand just out of reach and said, I want to know how you survived.
Harry shrugged.
Impatient, Snape demanded, What do you remember of that night you followed Quirrell?
Behind his carefully impassive features, Harrys mind lit up. Er, I thought it must be you, actually.
Figures, Snape said, pacing away, holding Harrys wand almost as though it were his own.
Hey, Im being honest with you. It was a long time ago.
And where have you been in the meantime?
Studying . . . with anyone who will teach me. With a shaman in Finland. Given whom he needed to lie to, Harry felt the best artificial story would be one wrapped tightly in the truth.
Explains the ice. What were you learning there? Snape asked doubtfully.
Old Magic, Harry replied. When Snape shook his head doubtfully, Harry insisted, Thats what let me survive the first time Vo- the Dark Lord came after me.
Snape looked him up and down. They even had your body, Potter. Of course it was Albus . . . who fetched it. He paced up and down the room again, agitated as though personally offended. You and your little friends had broken through all of the protective puzzles.
Harry thought rapidly though the events of that night. If he were to have messed up that confrontation where would it have been? He had to admit, the promise of his parents returning had tugged at him. Quirrell may have been smart enough to not touch him a second time, used a wand instead. Voldemort may have simply taken Harry over and he had not mustered the will to resist.
I messed up, Harry tossed out. And I needed to get away to prepare better to face him. It was my task, Dumbledore said.
You should have come back after Dumbledores defeat; the battle weakened the Dark Lord immensely.
Harry did not reply to this directly, not wanting to dwell on what sounded like a tragically desperate bid on his old mentors part. My wand?
Snape handed it over with clear reluctance. He is stronger than he has ever been, even as distracted with running a school as he has been. Many times stronger. If he found out . . . Snape actually bit his lip for just an instant before snarling and spinning away to pace again.
Why are you helping me then? Harry asked, needing to know.
I promised Dumbledore, many many years ago, that I would act to protect you.
Harry smiled lightly and stroked his wand, glad to have it. No matter what happens I wont implicate you, Professor.
Harry went to the mirror and began working on his disguise. Snape watched for a while before departing. He returned as Harry was finishing and said, I sent him to the lower dungeon to clean up the water that floods there, a task he will be a long time completing.
Harry grinned at that and headed out, careful to shuffle as he walked and to keep a hunch to his back. In the second cupboard he found a mop and wooden bucket, which he proceeded to carry up the stairs to the Entrance Hall. From there he had a view of the Great Hall. The walls had not been scrubbed in years so the black of the fires and candles had coated the stone streaky grey. But most disturbing was the banners. The Slytherin banners hung long and proud but the other three tables were marked by only small ones at the very front, looking more like badges of shame.
Standing in that spot gave Harry a feeling not unlike curse aversion, so he moved on up the broad staircase. Students sat on the steps talking quietly and bending over books as though everything were normal.
Harry wandered the corridors, ignoring the occasional look of alarm from a student lingering between classes. Most outrightly ignored him as though he wore an invisibility cloak. In the trophy room, Harry felt that awful aversion again, bad enough to make his eyes water. He stopped to pretend to mop until the room was empty and then moved down the case until he pinpointed where he felt worst. His eyes moved over the polished wood, and the gold and silver figures and plates until they landed on the golden cup that topped the tall House Cup trophy. That was it, definitely.
Harry looked around until he found a nearly identical cup atop another trophy in the next case on the bottom shelf in the back. Working quickly, Harry unwelded that cup and swapped it atop the big trophy, where it would pass ordinary scrutiny. He even used an anti-dusting charm to make it look untouched, which helped hide the switch rather a lot. Pocketing the cup, despite a strong will against closer contact with it, Harry shuffled along the room. He had one last stop to make before heading back down to the dungeons.
Author's Note: Well, this was the last chapter before Deathly Hallows. I'll see what I can incorporate or I may just stick with what I've got written. We'll see.
Next chapter: 11
"The living is fine," Snape said, sounding vaguely spoiled.
"You're lying," Harry accused. He put the emerald down, intact, in the center of the empty chess board and asked, "Why was V- the Dark Lord allowed to continue as headmaster?"
"Why was he allowed?" Snape echoed derisively. "No one had any choice, Potter! What a ridiculous suggestion. Fudge believed it would keep him busy, and he was correct about that. Turns out he never lived down Albus refusing him a job."
"Blimey," Harry muttered. "It's a wonder any students come."
Chapter 11 — Crux of Evil
Kali flapped as best she could inside her cage and stuck her nose through the wires to the point where the thin bars pressed her ears back. Her tongue almost reached the fringe of Snape's hair when she flicked it to full length out over the dining room table where Snape sat with his head bent, resting on hands tangled in his hair. Kali's cage had been kept in reach for the last day and a half so he could keep a close eye on the creature. The sunlight streaming in the window mocked the household's distress with its glorious happiness.
A burst of ash ejected from the hearth as the Floo network flared and Tonks stepped out of it. Snape raised his head slowly, fearing hope, keeping it at bay until he could read her eyes. Her frown justified his caution.
She sat across from him with a sigh and without invitation. "I checked Transportation's records like you asked. They have no record of him Apparating out or using a Portkey and the atrium desk has no record of him leaving through the gateway. BUT, they aren't always a hundred percent there when it gets busy. AND, Transportation has been sloppy of late as well. But it is odd." She gathered her weathered, dim-haired self together and peered at Snape with curiosity. "Why did you ask me to check? What are you thinking happened?"
Snape had already made up an excuse. "I was wondering if for some reason he used his invisibility cloak."
"Yeah, but why would he do that?" At his shrug, she more stridently said, "He wanted to talk to me, was waiting, hanging around the office and doing filing for Kingsley." She glanced up as Candide slipped into the room in the attitude of one at a wake. She laid a hand on Snape's shoulder and trailed it around to the other as she took the seat beside him, keeping her chair facing his rather than tucking it in as though eating. Kali, head still through the bars, twisted to peer at her, but quickly returned her tiny gaze to Snape.
Snape studied the Chimrian in return. "She is calm, but far too attached to me."
Everyone stared at the bat-like animal, but Kali did not take note of this and continued to try to press herself through the bars in Snape's direction.
Tonks, eyes on the pet, said, "Candide, I know we've been over this already, but have you thought of anything new from Wednesday morning that might give us any clue?"
Snape stood and reached for the Floo powder. "I'll fetch my pensieve."
In his absence Candide replied, "No, I haven't. You spoke with Belinda, right?"
Tonks nodded, glancing away as if to imply that topic line was not a welcome one. Snape returned to a silent room and set the pensieve down. To Candide he said, "You do not mind . . . I assume?"
"Severus, I'll do anything I can to help."
"Think of that morning," He commanded her, and touched his wand to her temple, drawing out a glowing blue-silver cord that he fed into the otherwise empty stone bowl.
Tonks stood to bend over the bowl as well and watched the events of that morning as Harry was shown the newspaper. When Harry said, "I'm not being very careful," Tonks grunted, and when they all stood straight after the memory ended, her eyes remained dark.
"Any help?" Candide asked, and Snape shook his head, face grim. He turned to face the hearth, away from the women.
Tonks said, "Maybe I should pay another visit to Belinda."
Candide said, "If you think Harry was cheating on you, you are sadly mistaken."
Tonk's hair remained brown, but it bobbed out straight before settling down again. "You never want to think that about someone, do you?" She huffed and said, "We have everyone out looking and the Ministry's offered a reward. That probably won't decrease the number of reporters outside your gate, so owl if you need help handling them."
Snape, in a tone that indicated he would be pleased to have something to take his frustration out on, stated with certainty, "I won't need assistance with that."
"Well, then, stay out of trouble if you would; we can't spare anyone." Her voice cracked as she closed that statement. "If you think of anything at all, let us know." With that, she turned to the Floo and disappeared.
Candide said, "I assume you didn't bother to tell her about the spell you and Headmistress McGonagall tried last night because it failed."
Snape strolled over to stand before the framed photographs of Harry and his friends propped on the sideboard, pushed to one end by the piles of Candide's folders. "I actually believe now that it did work."
"But it didn't flare red like you said it would. It didn't find him."
"He is out of reach of the spell. Out of reach of . . ." Snape, who had been standing with his head bowed low, raised it with a snap and grabbed up quill and paper from Candide's work pile on the sideboard. He scratched out a note quickly and folded it. "I'll return shortly," he said to Candide.
"Where are you going?"
"Owl Office. I need to send something as fast as possible."
She opened her mouth to protest his thinking of something and not taking the information to the Aurors but he had already disappeared in the Floo.
He returned shortly as promised and began to pace. Candide looked up from her work and said, "Severus, please sit down."
He stopped pacing at least, but stood staring through her, thinking. She said with no little strain, "I'm sorry I can't be more help."
He faltered over the words, but managed to say, "You are more help than you know."
She bent back to the large grid sheet before her and said, "I figured I wouldn't get sent away this time." When he did not respond to this, she looked up with a softer expression and added, "You were feeling guilty last time Harry went missing . . . I think."
An empty gap stretched wide before Snape responded. "He is still my responsibility."
"He's nineteen."
"That does not change anything. He will need an eye kept on him as long as I have strength to do so."
She held up her hand, ring first. The scarlet stone echoed the square sunlight from the window in its core.
"Perhaps it will come to that," Snape said to the offer. He settled at the table across from her and sat with fingers perched before him, deep in thought.
"You don't want to join the search?" she asked after a while.
"I do not know what happened and must assume that this household is in danger."
She blinked at him. "Oh. One never knows around here, I suppose."
- 888 -
When Snape answered the knock upon his dungeon office door, Harry could see he had a student with him. Harry grunted, You said you had a spill?
In the classroom, Snape said, snapping the door closed again.
Harry shuffled down there and took a seat at one of the familiar tables. He took the cup out of his pocket and dropped it into the bucket under a rag. This gave him a bit of relief from it. A noise at the door latch made Harry leap for the mop to pretend to be cleaning, but it was only Snape.
You were quicker than I thought, Snape said.
I-
Snape held up a hand and gestured with a sideways nod towards his office. Harry picked up the bucket and followed him out. Safely back in Snapes chambers Harry pulled the cup out and placed it on the chess board.
And what would that be? Snape asked with no confidence that it may be important.
A Crux Horridus, Harry replied.
Snape straightened and put his clasped hands to his chin, eyes glued to the object. He fetched the valet chair from beside the wardrobe and joined Harry in staring at the cup more closely. Eventually, Snape said, That explains quite a bit. I dont know why I did not think of it.
Have a Caeruleus fire handy? Harry asked.
Even in the Potions classroom, such a thing would not go un-noticed.
Do you know how to destroy it, then? Harry asked.
Albus did not instruct you in that?
Harry shook his head. Got any good books on the topic?
Not in the library, certainly. He stood suddenly. But I have a few that may have something . . . He went to the shelf tucked behind the bed and with a tap of his wand the apparently built-in stone shelves slid aside to reveal another bookcase behind the first. Snape perused these and ten minutes later returned with four heavy old books, the kind that squirmed or nipped at you when you tried to thumb through them too fast.
The two of them set to reading until Snape had to teach. By the time he returned after lunch, Harry had learned a lot about spells involving human and animal lifeforces, far more than he ever wished to know.
Snape, after five minutes browsing Veil Avoidance, one of the books Harry had given up on, he said, Here it is. He turned the book toward Harry, who read where indicated:
The soule risepticol is best maed from metele or jewel, or the soule with-in culd prove fraggile. An eccepxionale wizzard can crush the soule within wile forsing it to esscape too small an opening. The heete of esscape will bern up the soule, but bewaer if it doez not bern up, the soule will force a new home in whome'r is closest.
Harry took a deep breath and then another while considering the cup, shining there in the firelight. Tiny scratches marred its polished surface. He could do this, he was certain. Mind clear, he picked it up and pressed the bowl between his palms while imagining trapping what it contained. He knew what Voldemort's power and soul felt like, having once gathered part of it up to toss it away. The thin metal bent but what was inside resisted. Harry concentrated for a minute, but could not quite work out how to follow the instructions.
Harry straightened the cup to an approximation of round and set it back down to stare at it. I can do this, he insisted when Snape shifted to cross his arms and peer down his nose. "Give me some time. And step back," he added, thinking he did not want to battle a possessed Snape.
It required an hour and uncountable tries but Harry finally got a feel for what was trapped inside and pressing hard enough to almost collapse the bowl, he imagined a tiny crack in his mental crushing and with an explosion, the cup jumped from his hands and clattered on the floor along with an unearthly cry of despair and a gurgle.
Harry shook his burned hand and examined the soot that coated it. He scooped up the cup from where it had rolled to a stop before the fire and used a spell to straighten it again. It looked and felt perfectly ordinary now. That worked, Harry said, accepting a relievingly cold, wet cloth from Snape. There must be more of them. I wonder how many. He thought back to the evidence lists from Mertons hideout, trying to remember how many Horcruxes were supposedly found. Lets say there are six, Harry mused, assuming the number would be the same. Nagini is one, the cup, another . . . I better go out hunting around again. Nagini I can kill when the time comes.
I may know where one is, Snape said softly.
Can you fetch it? Harry asked eagerly.
- 888 -
In the dining room in Shrewsthorpe nothing much moved until a glittering pigeon came to the window. Snape leapt up and opened the sash and then growled as he removed from the bird's leg the very letter he had written. The bird took off again, flying at a blur.
"You rented a Silver Pigeon?" Candide asked in surprise.
"The cost was no issue."
"I'm just surprised they had one. It's always rented when we need it."
"But it did not find the recipient. I may no longer have the correct address and the man has a habit, Harry said, of keeping an anti-post charm around himself." He tossed the message aside into the Floo and burned it up with a wave of his wand.
"Whom were you trying to reach?" Candide asked, watching the last of the flames flutter out as the paper curled completely black.
"The Shaman in Finland," Snape stood, thinking, and then without warning reached for the Floo powder again. "Come with me this time. You need to visit your office, correct?"
Snape left Candide at the accountancy and strolled to the Apothecary. Inside before a tall stand of glittering empty bottles, he waited for the current customer to leave and the proprietor, clearly aware of Snape's presence, hurried the customer along.
"Jigger," Snape said when they were alone. "I understand that you have a certain standard of secrecy toward your customers . . . indeed, I have much appreciated that over the years, but I am dearly in need of information."
The old man behind the counter frowned. "You are certainly one of my better customers, Professor, but like you said . . ."
Snape spoke quickly, "I wish only to hire this person that I need to locate, nothing more."
Jigger's face relaxed and he put aside some stray bottles on the counter while asking, "And exactly whom are you looking for?"
"I'm not entirely certain; that is why I have come to you. I need to locate a vampire, and given their usual dietary requirements as well as your expertise in procuring almost anything, regulated or not, I am guessing that they not infrequent customers."
Jigger stopped filing bottles and said stiffly, "There's a registry at the Ministry. Why not start there?"
"I want an unregistered vampire, if possible, one I can trust to keep a secret. We go back a long way, Jigger. I promise you the vampire will not know where I learned of his or her existence."
"Only for you, Sev," Jigger said, picking up a rag and wiping down the counter. The rag began to smoke, so he shook it out and hung it up. "There's an unregistered one of 'em moved in just a week ago on Knockturn. Number Twenty-Six. He's one of several who have moved in recently, I'm not sure why that's happenin', but the rest are registered. I know, because they bring in their blood ration coupons from the Ministry. This bloke's appetite runs beyond bovine and porcine blood, so do be careful."
"What's his name?"
Jiggers shook his head that he did not know. "I wish I knew why the neighborhood is suddenly so attractive ta them."
Snape stood thinking and said, "I believe it is because the most dominant of their number was recently removed to prison, leaving a vacuum. But that is only a guess."
"Ah," Jiggers muttered. "Good to know it isna something more worrisome than that."
Snape thanked him and stepped along a few doors and upstairs to the accountancy. Someone was letting an owl gripping a large package out of the window. More owls waited in a cage mounted directly in the largest window. When the woman turned, Snape recognized Roberta, who gave a small start at seeing him there. He knew Candide had invited her to the wedding and that she had refused to attend. He cared not at all beyond any impact on Candide's happiness with her work.
They stared at each other and for the first time Snape remembered her from Hogwarts, one of many students, nameless to him, who kept their head down inside a book most of the time except when an opportunity arose to glare with disapproval at a Slytherin. Roberta looked away first to return to her desk. Snape heard Candide's voice then, emanating from the smaller office off to the right. It pulled him out of memories not worth revisiting, for which he was grateful given that he had no thoughts to spare for anything beyond suppositioning on what may have happened to Harry.
As she stepped out of the side office, Snape noticed for the first time that her belly had begun to swell. A strange numbness suffused him as he considered a second son in his life. He had months to prepare, so he pushed it aside out of a mind too crowded with worry to take on even a remote conception of caring for an infant.
"Severus," she said, smiling in pleasure at his standing there. "Let me get some papers and we can go . . ."
Later that night, Snape's watching the clock caught Candide's attention.
"Expecting something?" she asked. There had been no communication from the Ministry, but several owls from Hogwarts asking for information and offering help. "Is Tonks supposed to call again?"
"No, I have to see someone, and it would be best to show up immediately at sunset."
"Whom do you need to see?"
Snape stood, thinking to get ready to depart. "You should go to the Burrow whilst I am gone. It will give you a chance to catch up on news of the search."
She put down her quill and followed him to the entry hall to collect her cloak. She did not ask anything more as Snape saw her off in the Floo. He immediately took himself to the Leaky Cauldron and out into the dewy air of Diagon Alley. He strode with focused purpose to Twenty-Six Knockturn Alley and inside a dusty staircase, knocked on the door. After many minutes, a metal plate slide aside with a clack and red-flecked eyes peered out. "What is it?"
"I have a proposition for you," Snape said.
The man on the other side of the door laughed harshly. "Why would I talk to you? I don't even know who you are." He started to slide the plate closed, but Snape hexed it back open again.
Vampires were a dark bunch, untrusting, but Snape had a significant past connection he could use. "I am Voldemort's last free servant; that is why you should hear me out."
The eyes in the slot attempted to Legilimize him, but failed. The door clicked open.
"No garlic," the man said as he stepped back from the door. Snape stepped inside, taking in the copiously candlelit room with strategic eyes. The vampire asked, "You aren't one of us, are you?"
"Hardly," Snape snapped back, insulted.
"Hmf," the vampire snorted. He was tall and blonde with aquamarine eyes that glittered red at certain angles of the many flickering candles. "You don't wish to live forever?"
"No, one life is quite sufficient."
He posed faintly. "I get to be beautiful and thirty forever, what more could one want?"
"To be eighteen forever?" Snape offered, immediately disliking the man.
"Eighteen is a foolish age," the vampire said.
Snape could not disagree with that given that he was hunting an errant nineteen-year old.
The vampire pulled the sole chair—an antique with lion-claw feet and a ghoulish face on the backrest—to the center of the room and left it there to lean casually against the closed coffin that sat on a stone pedestal off to one side. "Have a seat," he said. "If we were at my castle I could offer you an entire wing of it for your comfort, but this is what I have at the moment. "So, what is this proposition? Realize before you waste your limited breath that an immortal has little interest in most things mortals value."
Snape took the chair only because he needed to stay on the man's good side. "I need you to look for someone."
"Really? A hunt?" The vampire tossed his wavy hair, displaying that it was brown underneath, which implied the improbable notion of sun-bleaching. "Few would hire a vampire for such a task, although we are quite good at it."
"I seek someone who has gone where only your kind and other beasts of darkness can venture."
He had caught the vampire by surprise with that. If Harry had not told him, Snape would not have known vampires were able to use the Dark Plane.
The vampire stood silent, calculating, before saying, "Say I were interested in this task. Whom am I seeking?"
"My son. I expect he will be easy to spot, being the only human there."
"He is not human if he is there," the vampire said with a hint of disgust.
"He is human," Snape insisted. "This is an easy task for you, surely you must need something. I can pay handsomely in gold or whatever currency is most convenient for you."
The vampire pushed away from the coffin and began a slow circling of Snape. "I don't need gold or rupees or florins or whatever is circulating these days." He came around the chair back where he had started, velvet robes dragging on the floor. Snape wished he were not sitting, but given his lesser height he would still be at a disadvantage if he were not.
The vampire turned his pale face Snape's way and it had lost the teenage blasé it had displayed before. "The task you request is indeed easy, and fortunately the payment will be equally easy for you." He stepped closer as he spoke and reached out his index finger and slowly dragged it along below Snape's jaw. "Trivially easy."
Snape froze, torn between revulsion and dear need for this creature's help.
The vampire went on, "You see, it is possible to purchase human blood, from the Muggles if you can imagine that. But it has been processed, filtered, treated, and chilled. You cannot imagine what an utter waste that is." He circled around the back of the chair, pulling Snape's hair back so that it no longer hid his neck. He dragged a finger the other direction, stopping and pressing at the jugular with a light touch. His voice was disconcertingly close to Snape's ear as it hypnotically said, "Biting an unwilling mortal is grounds for banishment and I am intending to repossess my castle here in your less than sunny country so I do not wish that to happen. But I am also acutely hungry for fresh blood." His breath brushed Snape's ear as he added, "It has been a very long time . . . my teeth ache for the pressure of hot flesh."
Snape twitched. It was a jump held back with iron will.
The silky voice at his ear laughed. "A barely willing victim would be even better."
Snape swallowed. "Nothing else you might want?" The presence at his neck lifted and Snape nearly closed his eyes in relief.
The vampire came around to stand before him again. "At some point, yes, an interior decorator capable of rescuing a castle that has been hideously converted into a museum, but frankly you don't look qualified for that position." He licked his lips which shone with saliva. "No, there is just one thing I would take in payment or you have no deal."
"You will not make me one of your kind?" Snape asked, gut urging him to make a run for it, but his rational mind seeing no alternatives.
"Traditionally, we dislike competition, to put it mildly."
Snape imagined Harry learning of this. He would not be pleased to say the least, but Snape had no options and he could not sit by and do nothing. "All right," Snape agreed. The vampire's eyes flared red and he bared his long incisors. Snape cut him off with: "But after you have succeeded. Bring me back my son or at least proof that you have found him."
"And how would I prove that. Shall I bring you his head?"
Snape sat unbaited by that. "Get me the answer to the question: what present did his father first give him?"
The vampire considered that. "Agreed. I will look for him tonight. Where shall I find you when I have found him?"
Snape did not want this creature anywhere near his house. "I will return here . . . a half hour before sunrise."
"Clever man. Make it an hour." He stepped forward again with a catlike grace and hunting manner. Whispering while leaning in close, he said, "I want sufficient time to enjoy my payment." He licked his lips faintly, drawing in the saliva pooling there.
Snape stood. "Yes, I'm sure you do," he stated brusquely, barely masking his violent disgust.
At the Burrow the worn, brightly mismatched couches and tablecloth calmed Snape given how far removed they were from black velvet drapes and wrought iron candelabras. Candide stood from the table where several Weasley's had gathered, drooping slightly. "Any luck?" Candide asked.
Snape shook his head, not wishing to discuss what he had been doing. Ron and Bill frowned and returned to clutching the large mugs of tea before them.
"I appreciate your assistance," Snape said to them.
"Anything for Harry," Ron said into his mug.
"Indeed," Snape agreed with vehemence.
The next morning, under cover of darkness, Snape escorted a sleepy and somewhat irritable Candide to the twin's laboratory where a light burned in the window unlike the darkened offices on the first floors up and down the alley, including the accountancy.
"I don't understand why you don't want company?" Candide asked for the second time.
Fred, the twin who was not sleeping on the rug using a giant marshmellow as a pillow, came to the rescue of Snape's thin patience. "Don't ask something like that of Professor Snape," he told her in mock horror. "The mind boggles at the answer might be. Come on in. I'll make you some tea."
At Twenty-Six Knockturn Alley, Snape found the vampire pacing.
"Well?" Snape asked.
After a pause, the creature said snippily, "I didn't find him. I found evidence of him, in the form of a pentagram I'm quite certain none of the creatures would have left behind. Plus a lot of trainer footprints, already covered by other tracks. But no sign of the boy human himself."
"What would it cost me to have you look again? Or bring me there."
The vampire considered his nails before replying. "Nothing extra. Believe me, I thought I had my first real meal in a year coming to me. Waltzing in like a proverbial lamb, even." He threw down his hand, making the nearby candles flicker. "I know he is not there. I set my pets off to hunt for him as well as looking myself. He is not in the Dark Plane as the few mortals who know it refer to it."
Snape exhaled. He had not expected this answer and found himself lacking a plan for what to do next. He was slow gathering himself to leave. When he reached the door, the vampire joked in clear disappointment, "Stop in for a bite anytime."
Snape merely raised a brow at him as he tugged the door closed behind him.
- 888 -
The next day during Hogwarts breakfast hour when Voldemort would be out of the tower, Snape returned with four items in a small box and paced nervously while Harry examined them as they sat on the chessboard, which had become Harrys worktable.
Snape uttered, Hurry with that, I must return them before they are missed.
He must be overconfident, Harry observed as he lifted out each item from the box: a locket, a watch, and a pair of cufflinks. Each felt all right but afterward he still had a sense of advanced decomposition. Harry stared at the chessboard before him in puzzlement.
What it is? Snape asked impatiently.
Harry lifted the box to look for a hidden compartment and said, Its the little box itself, even though it's wooden.
The box did not want to deform while closed. Harry opened the lid and pressed hard on the frame of the box. After many tense minutes and a few droplets of sweat, the brass-strapped wood creaked and a ball of fire consumed the velvet lining, emitting a scream. Harry made himself hold onto it so he could quickly quench the flames. The lining and part of the wood inside were ruined.
That will not be easily repaired, Snape observed grimly.
Same dark green velvet as the curtains around your bed, Harry pointed out, half-teasing.
Do you know how to sew? Snape asked.
Harry, who as a child had tried to lengthen the life span of any clothing, nodded. Well enough for this.
But not fast enough, I suspect. Breakfast ends in ten minutes.
Cut me a piece and lets see.
You are not the one who must work their way past all of the barriers to return the box, Snape harshly pointed out.
Return it as it is, then, Harry said. Or dont return it at all; let it go missing.
Snape tossed the trinkets into the box where they clinked harshly, saying, You have no idea how badly that would go over. He departed hurriedly. Harry dearly hoped he returned quickly and did not run into trouble. He reminded himself that he could leave anytime. He was certainly being desperately missed back home. Leaving and returning would be complicated; explanations would be required and Harry did not believe he could argue successfully that he should come back to complete the prophecy here. As he stood there, before the fire, it felt like his prophecy now and he could not resist it.
Snape returned presently, seeming distracted.
Go all right? Harry asked.
Snape took this as an invitation to get directly in his face. Finish this quickly or we are all doomed.
I plan to, Harry said. Ill go out right now looking for the remaining ones.
Minutes later he re-emerged from the toilet, passable as Argus Filch. Snape stood in the center of the room, arms crossed, looking smug. You dont require a distraction?
No, Harry said.
No? Snape echoed doubtfully.
No, Harry insisted, I have this. He pulled out the Marauders Map and snapped it open with one hand.
What is that?
Something I picked up from Filchs office last trip out.
Ive seen that before, Snape breathed, sounding suspicious.
Yes, Harry said, activating it and waiting for the decorative and infamous printing listing the designers to die away and the Hogwarts corridors to appear. It was my fathers.
Snapes eyes narrowed dangerously. I should just turn you in now, shouldnt I?
Right, Harry said tiredly. After all youve already done, for one thing. Snape did not reply, just continued to glower. Harry lowered the map and said, Look, Im sorry my dad was cruel to you, but theres nothing I can do about it now. He wanted to say more, about Snape keeping his priorities straight, but did not wish to risk arguing about that. Snape continued to glare as though thinking things through. Come on, Harry said. Hasnt your dad done things you didnt agree with? Harry returned to studying the map. I bet he has.
Harry folded the map away. Filch was on the far end of the fourth floor and Harry wanted to take a look around on the lawn anyway. I really am sorry, Harry insisted, although he was understanding a little better right then his fathers animosity towards this man. What more do you want from me?
That you dont get me killed, I suppose.
Harry departed with, Ill try.
The Entrance Hall was full of students, so Harry did not pause to investigate the aversion he felt there. It was one more of the Crux Horridii, most likely, which meant there was still another to find. Harry wandered out into the cloudy day. Shouts drew him toward the Quidditch pitch where one of the Houses was practicing. Harry stood and watched, wondering that things could go on so normally with someone like Voldemort in charge. Perhaps most momentum was too strong even for a powerful evil wizard to stop. Harry wandered past the gameskeepers cabin where a small woman with a shiny bald head and wispy hair over her ears was tending to the pumpkin patch. Harry wondered where Hagrid was with a feeling of deep worry. Farther around the castle, just beside the rose garden he encountered a row of fancy cages set up like a miniature zoo or a menagerie. A pair of unicorns sat forlornly in the first cage, eyeing Harry anxiously, moving their tiny hooves spasmodically in lieu of running away. The next cage held a giant spider that snatched at Harry through the bars as he past, using a leg that clearly had taken a beating already. Harry looked down the row and hurried on to the largest one which had a kind of dirt hovel near the back of it.
Hagrid, Harry breathed.
The large man inside stirred. The half giant resembled a towering pile of untanned skins thrown together. Harry backed up a step. Hagrid could not be trusted to keep news to himself. Before Hagrid could rise, Harry quickly moved on, slowing only when he passed a cage with a brass sign reading Werewolf. This cage also had a hovel in the center, this one made of wood. The figure curled inside the hut did not stir when Harry called out, Hey there!
Harry could do nothing at all for them if he was caught here. Severely pained, he walked on, entering the bailey through the rear gate. Harry paced once around the fountain, forced to fish leaves out of it when a group of Slytherins came meandering through. His mind was moving too fast to be of use. Tossing a handful of rotted, slippery leaves aside, Harry strode to the door and into the castle.
The Entrance Hall was quieter now. Harry stood beneath the great hourglasses that recorded the house points and craned his neck to study them. He was feeling desperate and even knowing that would make him insufficiently careful, he waited for the hall to empty, lifted his wand, and said, Accio Crux Horridus. The jewels shifted and the glass of the Slytherin hourglass cracked in a spider-web pattern.
Now youve done it, Harry muttered to himself. He glanced around the hall. A few students were coming down the stairs but they ignored him in favor of their gossip and entered the Great Hall. Harry decided that fixing this would be Filchs job, so he fetched a ladder from the nearest cupboard and climbed up to decorative wooden rack holding the row of glasses.
Harry assumed the emerald lodged at the center of the web of cracks was the one he wanted. It was near the bottom of the top conical section. Fortunately the Slytherins were far ahead and not many emeralds remained in the top portion. Just that moment ten blue sapphires flew upward in the next hourglass, putting Slytherin even farther ahead.
Harry adjusted the ladder to better reach the top and with some unlock spell attempts, finally got the glass cylinder to open. He had to wait for students to pass between attempts with his wand, and soon chilly sweat was dripping down his ribs under his robes. The ladder wasnt high enough for him to reach inside or even aim his wand inside and he did not want to risk climbing up on the rack itself to do so, picturing in his mind the whole thing crashing to the floor. He also had to keep an eye on the Marauders Map to be certain the real Filch kept dallying in the attics.
Harry used a Hoover Hex to remove the emeralds above the one he wanted. The sucked up ones weighted down his robe pockets until they overflowed. He then used a whip charm to snag individual gems, feeling like his cousin Dudley must have when he tried to win a prize in one of those Muggle machines with a claw on the end of a crane.
Finally Harry snagged the correct one, feeling only relief, not joy at doing so. He slipped it into his jeans pocket and quickly hovered the remaining emeralds back inside. He then used a repair spell on the crack and retreated down the ladder on legs almost too shaky to stand, let alone climb. Keeping his head down, he properly snarled at some students while putting the ladder away.
He was back safely in the dungeon just a minute later, trying to get his breathing slowed to normal. He had taken the risk in the middle of the day because he had been angry about the menagerie, but he knew it had been foolhardy and that kept his heart pumping long afterward.
Snape strolled in as Harry was studying the gem in the firelight, pondering how he was going to deform a crystal to crush the soul inside of it.
Another one? Snape asked. Ah, he said. A student complained that the total house points may be wrong, now I know why.
As if Slytherin could ever lose, Harry mocked.
Snape grinned with no cheer. I had a thought as to where another might be, he said, raising Harrys spirits. Snape went on to explain, The Dark Lord was not always so sanguine regarding his position. He spent a month of the first year working in the lower dungeons on some project and did not let anyone down there for several years after.
Filch survived going down there, so it should be safe to take a look, Harry said. That would be the last one.
Snape derisively corrected, I thought you said six. You have the cup, the box, the emerald, and Nagini. Add to that the one in the lower dungeons and that still leaves one.
That would be me, Harry said softly. Im the last one.
Snape straightened and stared at him. And do you plan to dispense with yourself using the same method you intend for Nagini?
I dont know what Im going to do, Harry admitted in all honesty. This was a topic he had been ignoring for lack of any hope for a solution. I dont plan to stay around here. Ill take myself far enough away that it wont matter.
Snape dropped into the overstuffed chair, saying, I think I am going to regret helping you at all.
Why? Harry asked. You like living like this?
The living is fine, Snape said, sounding vaguely spoiled.
Youre lying, Harry accused. He put the emerald down, intact, in the center of the empty chess board and asked, Why was V- the Dark Lord allowed to continue as headmaster?
Why was he allowed? Snape echoed derisively. No one had any choice, Potter! What a ridiculous suggestion. Fudge believed it would keep him busy, and he was correct about that. Turns out he never lived down Albus refusing him a job.
Blimey, Harry muttered. Its a wonder any students come.
Most Slytherins still send their children, even more families from the continent than before, and some still dont sort into Slytherin, so we still have four houses. The castle spells have been reinforced and he has the Dementors and the Giants patrolling the forest. There is no chance to overcome him by force. Even a large force, should they wish to risk the children.
Hm.
Snape scoffed at Harrys doubtful noise. You will be dead before this is finished.
Neither can live while the other survives, Harry quoted. Or hadnt you ever heard the ending of it? he added mockingly. It was clear from Snapes expression that he had not. I can take care of myself; keep an eye on yourself.
The hearth flared green and Harry barely had time to leap aside to press his back to the wall beside the mantelpiece before the dreaded slit-eyed, noseless, face moved into view in the flames.
My Lord, Snape greeted calmly. So calmly that Harry thought he deserved some kind of medal for it.
Come to my tower, Snape, I would speak with you.
Snape bowed and the awful face pulled back and the green flames flickered back to yellow. Snape glanced at Harry on his way to the door.
What does he want? Harry asked, whispering unnecessarily.
I dont know.
Still pressed against the wall, chair-rail under his hands, Harry asked, Does he summon you up like that often?
No.
Harry sucked in a deep, worried breath. Despite or because he still felt shaky, Harry said, Im going to look in the lower dungeon. But I may need your help.
Snapes brow lifted. He departed without replying.
Motivated heartily by fear of his safe haven being at risk, Harry checked the corridor in the wake of Snapes departing and dashed around to the door to the lower dungeon and slipped through after hitting the rust-red hinges with a quick oiling charm. The smell of crypt and the sound of lapping water wafted up as he descended the long curved staircase carved directly out of the foundation stone. With a wave, Harry lit the torches at the bottom so he could see more than the faintly lit arched opening that led to the quay.
Meanwhile, Severus Snape strode up and around to the gargoyles with his normal purposeful speed. He had grown immune to fear, which was fortunate, since he had no room to spare for it right then if he was to survive the next ten minutes.
On the second floor staircase he encountered Minerva McGonagall, one of the few remaining professors from Dumbledores era. Originally, she had remained because MacNair, the Care of Magical Creatures instructor had her under an Imperio, but later after it weakened, she seemed to believe she could do more good remaining. A naïve notion, but one that events never seemed to shake, especially given how lost many of the students felt when they failed to sort into Slytherin.
McGonagall, held up two fingers as though to slow him down and he shook his head and pointed upward. She pulled her fingers back into her sleeve and appeared to shrink into herself as she let him pass.
The headmasters tower no longer had a turning staircase, but instead had a slide, and visitors were required to utilize a magic carpet to rise to the office. Snape stepped off the carpet at the top and it snapped its fringe at him before rolling up and storing itself against the wall to wait. An unwelcome guest would be unceremoniously rolled down beyond the second floor and into the bowels of the castle where it was rumored a basilisk awaited. Snape was not certain he believed that such a creature lived beneath the castle, but he certainly had seen his displeased master dispose of people utilizing the slide and its victims were never heard of again.
The snake-headed door knocker hissed and clacked on its own upon Snapes arrival and the door creaked open. Sunlight stabbed in slashes around the thick curtains valiantly blocking it out. Voldemort sat at the broad desk, pondering a long scroll. A basket of scrolls sat on the desk edge, awaiting review. Snape saw the scene with fresh eyes borrowed from Harrys ignorant questions and he almost laughed. But he held it in, not wishing to die so early in the conversation.
Voldemort said, Two of your Houses students were caught off school grounds. In the Forest no less.
Idiots, Snape thought to himself. Aloud, he said, Do you wish me to punish them?
That failed to change them last time, so I have turned them over to Filch.
Snape withheld a shudder. Until what time, may I inquire? I may wish to add onto their tasks. In reality, he wished to warn the Mediwizard so that he would be certain to be sober at that time.
Voldemort carefully re-rolled the parchment before him with his oddly knobbly hands. It was a if they were the hands of a elderly person with severe arthritis, but with smooth young skin. I did not give him a limit, so it will be ten, when he must clear the corridors preceding the Dementors patrol. His factual tone was most likely designed to lull Snape into letting his guard down.
Time passed as Voldemort continued reading the long scroll. He finished, rolled it up, tied it closed and turned to toss it into the hearth, burning heartily despite the September warmth of the tower. Snape waited without moving or speaking.
Finally, Voldemort said, You sent Filch down to the lower dungeons. Why? The question was flatter even than normal, setting Snapes nerves on alert.
Using a tone carefully crafted to contain a hint of boredom and an underlying current of annoyance, Snape replied, He crossed me too many times last week. Broke several rare potions open while cleaning up. I thought a pointless task would make a point, so to speak. The floor has undoubtedly re-flooded already.
Voldemort did not look up from the wand he rolled between his fingertips. Snape had not seen him take it out, but he showed no reaction. His explanation may have been too long-winded, but there was no withdrawing it.
The lower dungeons continue to be off-limits, Snape.
Snape bowed as though mere acknowledgment was all that the situation required. My mistake, my Lord. I certainly recall that used to be true, but . . . much time had passed since a reminder. Snape feared that he was losing his touch at this game, having not practiced it in years for anything more than protecting the occasional student. That meant he was relying rather heavily on hopes that Potter, by some inconceivable chance, could actually complete the prophecy. The fact that the boy was alive at all made the odds something greater than zero, but not high enough to survive sloppiness.
Voldemort lifted one brow the way he did when annoyed with the likes of Crabbe or someone equally incompetent.
The dungeon is your domain, Snape; I expect you to enforce the rules there that no one enter the lower dungeons or the cave leading to the lake. He waved his hand dismissively as though wanting Snape out of his sight.
As the flying carpet unrolled and hovered and the office door slammed closed and the bolts thundered into place, Snape pondered that his shaky performance may have in fact lowered the Dark Lords guard and saved him from suspicion.
Shaking his head and trying to see hope while fearing its poison, he stepped onto the carpet and let it carry him downward.
In the lowest dungeon of the castle, Harry stood with the toes of his trainers hanging over the water of the small quay which was clearly now unused. No boats rested here but if he leaned far over, he could see two battered ones resting belly-up on the larger docking area used in the past by the First-Years. A bulky, rusty gate was closed across the entrance to the cave and the only other boats were sunken and sprouting plantlife.
Harry waited for his eyes to readjust to the darkness after staring outside at the lake, glaringly bright in comparison to the cave, even on a cloudy day. He examined the cave walls and then squinted, glasses pushed hard to his face to see across to the far side. A niche, perhaps just a natural indentation in the rock, kept catching his eye. Wand raised, Harry considered his options. He spelled a Lumos and shielded his own eyes from it. Something lay in the niche, weakly reflecting the blue light. Harry wasnt watching thoroughly enough or he may have noticed eyes opening beneath his toes, peering up through the cold depths.
Grumbling to himself, Harry shook the Lumos out of his wand and paced. He could take a boat over and look. So, leaning dangerously around the corner of the wall, he hovered one of the rickety old boats around from the other entrance and gently down on the quayside at his feet. He manually rolled the badly peeled white hull over and hovered it into the water. A chill went through him as he held the boat against the rock edge, and considered that he should get help before going further. The oars were narrowed with rot, but serviceable. Harry set these into the boat; the thunk of them hitting the bottom echoed around the cave and he held his breath and waited to see if anyone heard. A minute passed before he breathed normally again.
Harry crouched at the quay edge, one hand holding the bow steady, while he considered whether to get help or just get moving. Snape may not even return, Harry considered. This may be the only chance.
Harry awkwardly stepped into the rocky boat and shoved off. He struggled to mount the oars into the rusty locks and began rowing across. His sense of cursedness increased as he approached the other side, giving him a joyous lift even as it made him cringe.
It was difficult to hold the boat against the rock wall while standing up to see into the niche, but Harry managed long enough to see that there was a metal ring on a chiseled hatch in the bottom face of the niche. Harry tugged upward on the ring, nearly sending the boat out from under himself. He had to shove with his hands against the rock and jump for the boat to catch it and prevent himself from tumbling into the water. The boat sailed back out to the middle of the cave before coasting to a stop with him in the murky, smelly bottom of it.
Harrys sense of alarm increased and he looked around the cave repeatedly for danger, but failed to look down into the water. He gazed instead at his trouser knees, which were soaked with green, slippery water. At the bottom of the lake more things were rousing, dead eyes snapping open to stare distantly upward.
Using the oars, Harry paddled back to the cave wall below the niche. He cast his mind back to Ravenclaws book and used a demolition spell around the metal ring. Loose stone spattered into the water and into the boat, thundering, until Harry pushed with his feet to keep the boat away from the rock wall and apply some Silencing Charms.
The door at the top of the steps opened and footsteps sounded, just as Harry, perched to look into the demolished niche, finally looked down into the dark water. Harrys grip on the rock became tenacious with panic as he stared down into an army of dead white faces rising dreamlike toward the surface.
Potter, you could perhaps make enough noise to be heard in the Entrance Hall if you worked at it— Snapes voice criticized in a hiss.
Get a broomstick! Harry insisted, fingertips clinging to the rock as the boat inextricably drifted again away from the cave wall, taking his feet with it. Hurry!
Snape raised his wand and used a weak blasting curse to shove the boat back under Harry's legs, knocking the head of the dead man just clearing the water. Harry leapt for the disintegrating niche and grabbed up the only thing that did not feel like rock, liberating a small golden box from the debris. More figures were rising. Harry tossed the box into the boat and heaved on the oars, but they had arms and hands clinging to them, so he moved no where. A hand came over the gunwale, tipping the boat dangerously toward the water. Harry lifted the oar to beat the hand off and then shoved against the cave wall with the oar, moving the boat a little. The other oar was tugged overboard and thrashing ensued as it disappeared beneath the choppy surface.
Harry glanced back at the quay, needing help. Snape stood, wand extended, gaping in chilled alarm at the figures rising out of the water. Harry took another swing with the oar at someone he tried not to recognize despite how familiar they looked. He was not certain what spell to use that would not risk upsetting the boat and he did not want to lose the last oar if he let go to use his wand.
The boat suddenly surged toward the quay, sending Harry into the wet belly of it beside the golden box. The surge also shed the worst of the clawing hands. The boat ran hard into the stone edge and a fiercely gripping hand hauled Harry up onto the quay.
You did not exaggerate when you said you required help, Snape muttered before issuing a stunning curse from his wand that slowed the figures from clambering up onto the ledge after them; their bleached and torn clothing dragging on their limbs, dripping. Inferi, Snape breathed. Of all the horrific things.
Harry joined him in casting spells to keep them at bay as they backed up to the staircase. So, you did not know about this? Harry asked, knocking a white-haired heavy figure back, which took down his companions as well.
At the top of the stairs Snape held Harry back from the door and opened it to check that the corridor was clear. He gestured abruptly for Harry to follow, and Harry gratefully did so.
Keep your head down, Snape hissed.
Harry leaned on the door to press it closed, keeping his face ducked and averted. Something thumped into the door from the other side and water sloshed under it.
Snape sneered to someone, apparently a student, Mr. Callow, fetch a mop, will you? The rest of you clear out or you will all be assisting. Harry was extremely relieved right then that Snape could wield that dreadful tone that even now, made him grateful it was not aimed his way. The door thumped again. Snape hit it with an Impervious Charm, a Silencing Charm and several more things since Harry was using one hand to hold the door and the other to hold the golden box. The door fell silent and still. Harry released his hand from the damp wood slowly.
The student returned at a run and Snape set him to mopping with strict orders not to open or touch the door itself. Harry snuck off while the hapless Slytherin had his head down, mopping inexpertly at the fluid slipping in under the door. After Harry turned the corner, Snape snapped his fingers at the boy and ordered, Enough. Leave it.
Army of the flippin dead, Harry muttered as he tried to shake off chills by settling before the fire. The golden box joined the emerald on the chess board. Harry rubbed his hair back and calmed himself. Lets hope they cant get out of there, Harry said as Snape approached.
The cave is barred to the lake and the path to the Entrance Hall bricked in long ago.
Still, lets finish this quickly, just in case. Harry held the emerald to the firelight as he spoke.
Snape crossed his arms and said, Just like that? Just finish it? You think it so easy?
Harry did not want the questions that would follow his pointing out that he had done it before, more than once. Ill manage. Watch yourself, cause I cant do both," Harry said garnering a disbelieving glare. Harry turned to contemplate the box. It had the seal of a cross on it. Ah, a traditionalist, Harry observed.
What do you mean by that?
Harry opened the box. Inside was a carefully preserved digit. Its an old reliquary. Fitting. Harry dusted off the plaque inside. Hey, its St. Mungos finger. Feeling punchy from too much stress, Harry said, Should be grateful it isn't some other part of him . . .
He carefully lifted the leathery thing from its setting, forced to overcome both curse discomfort and general dislike of the task. He squeezed the finger in his hand with great concentration, then jerked as it burst into flame and let out a wail. He tossed it on the fire and brushed his hand on his robe. Sorry Mungo.
Harry set the box aside and turned back to the emerald, saying, I assume you dont want to return this box . . . ?
Snape shook his stringy veil of hair, eyes fixed on the jewel.
Harry pressed the emerald between his fingers to no effect. He returned to staring at it, unsure how to proceed. In the end he knelt on the hearthstone, gem against the slate, held between his index finger and thumb, the fireplace poker point aimed at the flattest side of the jewel. He crushed with his mind before bringing the poker down hard. If he were to hit his fingers, his concentration would be broken and he was not certain what would happen then. To be possessed by Voldemort did not appeal, but the path home led through this task. His aim was true. The flare burst from the emerald as it was crushed and a thousand tinny cries of despair drifted around the room before dying out. Harry barely pulled his fingers away from the flame in time and had to suck on his fingers to relieve the sting of the burn. When the hearth cooled, he collected the green salt-like gem fragments into his robe pocket and sat back in the overstuffed chair to think.
One left, Snape reminded him helpfully, needling Harry with an accuracy only he could manage.
Dont I know it, Harry returned, fingers rubbing his chin as he contemplated what he was going to do next. His thoughts came around nicely with a glance at the clock showing half past four. Ill finish it tonight, at dinner.
Will you then? Snape asked sarcastically.
Just dont give it away.
YOU just dont give me away, Snape countered. You are going to fail and I dont wish by any means to go down with you.
With a small smile, Harry said, Such confidence. He stood then and with a quick check of the Marauder's Map, said, I have to something to do before the Dark Lord Death Day Ball this evening. He smiled more broadly. He wanted to go home and he could taste the freedom to do so, it was so close. Ill come in after the plates are cleared but before pudding is served. It will be over soon.
Snape glared at him as though questioning Harrys sanity.
This is my destiny, Severus, Harry said, stepping to the toilet to don his disguise.
Did I give you permission to use my first name? Snape snarled lowly.
Harry turned and gave a small bow, still smiling. Professor.
Dinner in the Great Hall progressed much the same as all the others the last five years. The castle felt colder than it should. The sky reflected in the magic ceiling slid by more brooding than the one outside as though the accumulated soot stained the magic. The students kept their heads down as a few owls swept in and down in a spiral.
Snape had by far the toughest job of any Head of House. His House table was full and even overflowed into the half-empty Ravenclaw one beside it. Only the Slytherins would dare make trouble during a meal. Snape wanted none this evening.
With a foreboding that made his stomach rebel against eating, Snape watched the main course appear. He had to eat, had to behave normally. He was more grateful than most nights to be on the very end of the staff table, overlooking his own table. MacNair and Umbridge sat on either side of the headmaster, pandering to him nonstop.
Snape served himself beans and potatoes with casual uncaring to hide what otherwise would be an utterly unacceptable shaking in his hands. He gave two students, Yuba and Oppeum, sharp looks when they furtively glanced his way. They looked to be plotting something out of a black velvet sack and clearly were checking if he had noticed. After seeing they were observed they placed whatever it was on the floor and bent their heads together.
Snape lifted his fork and tried to eat. He very nearly could not swallow even the thinnest runny edge of the lumpy mashed potatoes. What was bothering him so? He certainly should hold no concern for that miserably annoying son of his worst enemy. And at one level he did not. It was not concern for Potter that closed his throat and made his heart race beneath his carefully crafted calm exterior; it was hope. Hope had slipped in despite no conscious room for it in his soul. His fingers trembled in fear at losing that hope again.
Damn you Potter.
Snape made a show of eating. No one paid the least attention to him; certainly the headmaster did not appear to, but often that meant he would later recount your every move back to you, expecting an explanation for each small thing. Snape thought he could handle that, if necessary. Certainly he could insist that he hated Potter to his very core. Yes, he could honestly state, even under Veritaserum, that he hated the boy . . . after Voldemort defeated him in just ten minutes time; hopefully the Dark Lord did not inquire if Snape also hated what the boy stood for.
Author's Note: I see you are all rubbing your eyes and waking back up after Deathly Hallows. Welcome back everyone!
Yeah a cliff-hanger. I so love them.
Next Chapter: 12
Harry reached the point halfway down the hall and he tapped his hand on his wand and pointed at the banners, snapping consecutively the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor out to the same size as the Slytherin ones. "All houses are equal here," Harry boomed as best he could. He wished he had a deeper voice. Fervent whispers rustled through the hall as though blown through by a breeze.
As Harry approached the end of the long House tables, Voldemort derisively asked, "Who dares challenge me?"
Chapter 12 — Adopted Destiny
Harry, without disguise, strolled through empty corridors to the statues that guarded the headmaster's tower. The hall leading there had been redecorated and now black curtains covered the walls, rendering the path tunnel-like with just a torch flickering at the end. The gargoyles sat unmoving and the doorway was open but there were no stairs. He put his head inside and called upward in parseltongue, then listened. Deep beneath him he felt a rumble and glanced down, noticing that the curving slide that had replaced the stairs spiraled away into the floor and darkness. The Basilisk would still be down there, he realized, since he had not been around as a Second Year to kill it. Voldemort apparently fed it often, since it called out with its deeper-than-Nagini's voice that it would appreciate a meal.
Harry feared using a spell so close to the headmaster's tower, so getting an idea he raced back to the main staircase and Accioed a barrel of cooking oil from the direction of the kitchens. He brought this back and after pouring it over the slide as high up as he could reach, he called to Nagini again and moments later, a slithering sound could be heard, but he could not be certain if it arose from above or below, so he backed off and, wand held at ready, waited for something to appear in the doorway. After half a minute of thumping and sliding, one of Nagini's coils slid into view from above. Harry, fearing being seen by her, ducked against the wall beside the still gargoyle and pressed himself there. Flailing sounded and more thumping and then a rapid sliding receded down into the bowels of the castle.
Harry stuck his head in the doorway and listened to the hissing that ensued and then the screeching and then the silence that followed. He called down in parseltongue and heard only the deep voice of the Basilisk. With a sharp exhale and glance at his watch, Harry hurried off.
Harry next strode into the kitchens with the attitude of head elf. Attention, all of you! he shouted. He scanned the array of bumpy heads framed by tall pointed ears, hoping to find Dobby, but did not. He spotted Grimpy, whom he recognized. He was by far the stoutest of the schools house-elves and always eager to give Ron food when his friend asked.
Grimpy, Harry said. The elf blinked in surprise. Get everyone out of here, now.
You is being Harry Potter? Grimpy asked. A few of the elves gasped. When Harry nodded, more a bow, really, Grimpy turned his long-nosed profile one way and then the other as though considering his instructions.
Come back in ten minutes, Harry said to the kitchen elves, lowering his bargaining position. They shifted from foot to foot, nervous. Harry gave up on being nice. Im going to present you all with old socks of Dumbledores if you dont leave now! He pulled out a pink and green pair he had found stuffed in the Mrs. Pinces desk drawer when he was looking for the key to the Restricted Section. He brandished them at the elves. You have ten seconds or I start distributing socks!
The elves disappeared with a chorus of pops! Harry sighed and with several great heaves, shoved the long marble-topped tables aside to make room for two tall spell columns that, when they were finished, radiated prickly blue light even to the most remote nook of the vast kitchens.
The puddings sat on the longest table, on small overlapping plates, waiting to be magically served. Harry dipped a finger in one as he passed and then frowned. Hopefully the food improves with Voldemort gone.
Harry initiated the spell he wanted, but stopped before the last line of it. He left the blue towers burning merrily to themselves, the air between them electrified and sizzling, and stepped out into the corridor leading to the Hufflepuff dungeon, but instead of walking up the stairs, he Dark-Plane Apparated silently to the Entrance Hall, just before the center doors. He stared at the marred old wood, took a deep breath, and adjusted his grip on his wand. His heart fluttered, inducing lightheadedness like it had before his first Quidditch match. Harry charmed his robes to bright blue, feeling he needed to represent some team, even an absent one. Beyond the doors, at the end of the staff table, Snape rubbed his thumb over his chin, experiencing similar cardiac symptoms, but no feelings of team spirit.
Harry pulled his hood far forward over his head, raised his wand, and blasted the doors open, following quickly through them before they could bounce closed.
Lord Voldemort! Harry addressed the surprised room and especially the slit-eyed man facing him in the center of the distant table. As he crossed the threshold of the tables, two forbidden curses formed behind him, aimed his way. Sharp watering came to Harrys eyes as he squelched the spells, which made the magic explode inside the casters' bodies. A few students gasped; the appearance of taking out ones opponents, without lifting a wand let alone turning to look at them was impressive all right, but Harrys feet had lost their marching cadence, and for that he berated himself.
Harry reached exactly halfway down the hall and he tapped his hand on his wand and pointed at the banners, snapping consecutively the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor out to the same size as the Slytherin ones. All houses are equal here, Harry boomed as best he could. He wished he had a deeper voice. Fervent whispers rustled through the hall as though blown through by a breeze.
As Harry approached the end of the long House tables, Voldemort derisively asked, Who dares challenge me?
Harry stopped and tugged off his hood, wand aimed steadily. Harry Potter.
The frantic whispering reached a quick crescendo then fell to stillness, the audience fearful of attracting attention or of just missing any detail. The closest Hufflepuffs leaned or scrambled away from where Harry stood defiant. Voldemorts eyes flickered with utter disbelief, which gave Harry a painful stab at the realization that his counterpart truly was dead in this Plane. Just as well he himself had stayed, then. No one else could do this.
Voldemorts wand flashed and Harry met the Disemboweling Scissors Hex with a block because that was ingrained habit and their wands and their paired cores locked together. Harry felt the first shudder of doubt; if the wands had not responded to their common origin, he was not sure he could have countered that spell well enough. To say the spell was loaded, did not cover it; it carried power equivalent to every wizard in the Ministry added together.
The ball of hex energy hovered between them, but Harry, familiar with this, forced it toward Voldemort, while mocking him to hide his sudden nerves, Ha! Albus Dumbledore tricked you and assured that you would have a wand to match mine!
Harrys words had the effect he had hoped and the hex exploded just in front of Voldemort, forcing the tall, boney wizard to duck awkwardly. MacNair was caught in the backwash and flew backward in his chair to smack the wall. Umbridge tumbled from her chair with a squeak. Harry laughed. It echoed around the halls tall buttresses, reflecting back maniacally, sounding nothing like him. The room held a collective breath. Some of the teachers made a run for it, including McGonagall, who took up a defensive position at the top of the Gryffindor table.
Voldemort said, You are surrounded, Potter.
Another spell came Harrys way and again they locked and Harry pressed his advantage of experience. Voldemort was standing now, his cloak and robes billowing in an unseen wind. He dodged this curse too as it erupted. This time, Harry used the gap, and very fast speaking, to complete Salazars spell while looping his wand over his head.
The hall erupted in blue electricity that crawled madly over the walls before sinking into a cold glow in the stones. Half the Death-Eater laden staff table flopped to the floor in fits of hallucinatory horror along with several students. The others began to flee in earnest, lining the walls and pounding out the doors at the far end. Voldemort stood firm, shouting in fury, My forbearer invented that spell. You thought to take me down with it? He tossed a curse at Harry, which Harry dodged, letting it bounce along the floor between the tables. More students scattered to get out of the way. Some remained pinned where they were, forks in hand, bound in trances of amazement.
Good! Harry shouted as he rolled to his feet. I prefer to take you out personally. He shot a curse at Voldemort that was blocked far too easily, but it let him dodge back to where fewer students were in harms way behind him. Harry tried to pry open the Dark Plane, but it resisted his call; the castle resisted him too. He bit his lip.
Covering for his failure, he met Voldemorts Crucio with his own and this time they were spell locked for much longer, the curse energy hovering in the middle ground, neither holding an advantage for long. Voldemort was a fast learner, but he broke the spell off himself, possibly because of impatience. Harry dug desperately inside himself for enough pain and hatred to crack open the Dark Plane; it was surprisingly hard to find a sufficient amount. As a distraction while he worked at that, he said, Im your destiny, Tom.
Voldemorts eyes glowed even brighter red and he tossed an angry and less powerful spell at Harry, who matched it and held fast to the bound spells. You are dead, Voldemort stated. It was unclear if this was a prediction of the future or an established statement of fact.
The spells were still locked, Harry propped up his tiring wand arm with his other hand. Funny, I dont feel dead! he mocked. Perhaps youre not the only one who cant be killed.
Voldemort broke off the spell, startled by that statement. He tried to Legilimize Harry, making his scar burn.
Breathing heavier, Harry lowered his wand and found the pain he needed. He found a lonely boy, beaten down by his aunt and uncle with no hope for a life of his own.
This ones for Lily and James, Harry announced in a snarl as he overcame the castles weakened spells and glistening black creatures poured out of the seam between the right-hand wall and the floor. Most of the remaining students ran or leapt up on the tables. Those floudering on the floor of the hall, incapacitated by Salazars spell, were ravaged. Blood began to flow into the cracks between the halls worn stones. Harry could spare no attention for Snape or McGonagall. He held his wand on Voldemort, who gaped at this freakish invasion.
Don't know that spell, do you, Tom? Harry shouted. Voldemort was forced to defend himself from the hordes, but he glanced up at Harry, letting a few crawl his robes before he cursed them and they fell with queer squeals. Harry went on, voice returning to maniacal, Heres a Riddle for you . . . Harry Potter is darker than you are!
Just as Voldemort swung his wand to again blast the creatures trying to devour him, Harry snagged the dark wizard, bodily, with a whip charm and jerked him over the staff table and into a skidding stop on the floor. Harry dealt with Voldemort trying to aim his wand by stomping on his forearm. Voldemort dropped his wand but it zipped back to his hand. Harry stomped on his hand instead, sending a curse wide that smashed the upper windows, raining down a spray of glass.
Voldemorts eyes betrayed him. Harry spoke, wand at Voldemorts throat, Yes, you fear death, dont you? But you know, by doing so you never actually live.
Black-bodied, disgusting creatures, part crustacean, reptile, and rodent, encircled the two of them. They smacked their jaws and scratched the stone floor musically with their absurdly long claws.
Harry, calmer, said, And now you are going to die, consumed by evil greater than yourself.
Voldemort, by attempting to not betray himself, did so with his flat and almost confident expression. Harry chuckled and reached into his robe pocket. He scattered the smashed emerald powder onto the chest of Voldemorts robe. I destroyed them all, he said, trying not to smile too broadly.
Voldemort rolled his bare head to peer around himself in horror. The stench was distressing, let alone the vision of so many bared, needle-like teeth.
Harry said with queer pleasantness. Its like they havent eaten in an eternity . . . which I happen to know is not true.
Voldemort thrashed then, lifting Harrys foot with his arm, Harry hit him with a blasting curse that stunned him back flat again. This is the end for you, Harry promised. You are released from this un-life of yours. Considering what my options are . . . He thought of his Voldemort, trapped in a mere Muggle existence. . . . think of it as a gift.
Shifting all his weight atop Voldemorts wand hand, Harry used a Sectumsempra Curse to slash open Voldemorts chest and then leapt aside to let the creatures pile on. The thrashing figure was dragged toward the wall, trailing bright red, and Harry Sent them all away, just as the upraised hand visible over the slithering black bodies drooped and released the wand it held.
The hall fell quiet after the creatures sank away into the stone and Voldemorts wand rolled to a quiet stop in a deep swath of blood. Several more smeared rivelets led to the right-hand wall along the staff table and in longer streaks from the Slytherin house table. The scent was like a butchers might have, healthful still, but unnerving. Someone was sobbing nearby. A Ravenclaw boy clung to a bench, holding his broken leg. Blood drizzled from bites on his hand. Harry moved toward him to help, but the boy panicked and tried to escape him, falling under the table.
Its all right, Harry insisted, not wishing to scare the boy just to fix his leg. McGonagall swept over and Quiesced the boy and hovered him onto the tabletop. She turned then and said, Harry, with overwhelming emotion.
Harry gave a little bow and said, Headmistress, without much thought. The comment made McGonagall stand straight in surprise.
Snape slowly came up behind McGonagall. She turned and started, saying, You survived, Severus.
Sharp and annoyed, as always, Yes, of course.
Harry looked beyond him, barely giving him a glance, insistent still on not implicating him. Harry moved to repair the boys leg while he was still quieted and while McGonagall went to attend to others. Finished with that, he looked around. Other students had taken refuge on the tabletops, one still brandished the stone goblet she had used as a weapon. A few stalwart friends were slinking back in to help the stragglers. Harry remembered the menagerie, turned, and strode out the door, ignoring McGonagall trying to call him back.
Outside, a light drizzle floated in the still air, soaking Harrys robes. His robes' bright sky color darkened as they grew damp and as the Morphmagus spell wore off.
At the largest cage, Harry called out to Hagrid, who roused slowly. Once the giant heaved to his feet, bent low because of the cage, he stomped up to the bars and lowered his bruised brow. He took a long sniff and said, Harry? with empty belief.
Yeah, Hagrid, its me. Stand back, Ill open the cage. Harry, after much urging to get Hagrid to move, blasted the lock. The door opened, but Hagrid remained standing where he was, perhaps finding freedom not entirely comprehensible.
Harry left him to recover and went down the line on the left, opening every cage except the giant spiders. At the unicorns, one ran off, but the other was lame and it did not get beyond the cage door. It floundered on the ground, eyes wide and alarmed by Harrys presence.
Hagrid, Harry yelled to the half-giant. Come help the unicorn!
This got Hagrid moving. Cooing, Hagrid stooped to lift the creature in his broad hands and then stumbled off to the forest carrying it, glancing backward repeatedly, still disbelieving. Harry moved down the line of facing cages, releasing a beaked gibbus, a vampire duck, a hippogriff that was mostly likely Buckbeak, except it lunged at Harry before scampering off and taking flight on wings that lacked several major feathers. Harry reached the werewolf cage with great trepidation. He destroyed the lock and called out, Hallo!
Slitted eyes snapped open and a shaggy form put its head out of the wooden hovel.
Remus, Harry said, surprised to find this Lupin appeared partially werewolf outside the full moon as well.
Lupin limped slowly out of the cage, gazing quizzically at Harry. Cant be, he whispered. Cant be.
Harry felt a twinge at his ruse, but it could not be helped. Its Harry Potter, he said in a reassuring manner .
You look just like James, he whispered hoarsely. He then jerked and looked about in fear as though an attack may be imminent.
Harry turned to look as well and found a familiar pink Mohawk approaching. Tonks, Harry greeted the witch, with too much familiarity it turned out. She peered at him suspiciously. Harry Potter, he said with a little bow, by way of introduction. Youre one of the Aurors, right? he went on, masking the pain he felt seeing her prematurely aged and careworn face.
Yes, she said flatly and turned to Lupin, who had taken to clinging to the bars of his cage, looking away from both of them as though ashamed. Tonks pained gaze fixed on Lupin's tattered back.
Can you take care of him? Harry asked, nearly pleading. He wished to leave, but these new burdens were threatening that.
Tonks did not reply, only moved to put a hand on Lupins arm to draw him away from the metal bars. Lupin resisted but finally leaned on her. Harry felt a twinge of jealousy and turned away.
What did you do in there? Tonks asked Harry over Lupin's shoulder. She sounded mistrustful.
Harry suppressed more disappointment. He did not want to feel the need to make her understand. Something I should have done a long time ago, he replied, voice harder than he intended. He was not going to argue over, or justify anything he had done. Her eyes gave away that she saw only the blood on top of too much other blood.
Not really Harry, is it? Lupin asked faintly, scratching his pointed ear with one clawed finger. "Can't be."
Harry walked away, back to the Great Hall.
A Ministry retinue was mincing here and there in the Hall, oohing and ahing over what they were hearing described and seeing in damage. Harry strode up to the familiar, brown-coated figure and stopped in his face, just as he turned at the sound of advancing footsteps.
Oh! Fudge said in surprise. Potter? he prompted, befuddled.
Dont blow this, Fudge. Harry jerked his head in the direction of Lucius Malfoy standing amongst Crouch, Jorkins, Percy, and Bones. Clean up the likes of him. All of them.
Malfoys mouth twitched and he drew himself up taller and set his cane before himself, one hand over the other.
Hes one of them, Harry said. And there are most likely others. Get them out of the Ministry, into prison. If you dont, Ill be back.
Harry turned, waylaid, by Fudges bruised pride. Now, see here, Mr. Potter, if thats who you really are!
Harry spun back around, unnaturally pale eyes blazing. You let this go on, Harry snarled. Fudges mouth snapped closed. Harrys gaze took in the group. All of you, catering to evil. Fury was taking Harry to another level of his mind, and uncertain what he may find there, he made himself step down away from it, tearing parts of his ego it felt like, in the process. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Snape standing with the surviving teachers, hawk-like gaze taking in Harrys every move.
Harry gestured at the smashed window, the darkening bloody streaks on the floor, the empty robes and hats, the littered bones, cleaned bright white. This is nothing, Harry said, stepping closer into Fudges simpering face. You should see me when I get really upset. Clean up the Ministry or I will be back to do it for you.
With that, Harry stalked out the door to the hall, out the door to the castle—propped open with a bench from the hall—and away across the lawn. The lake stretched out before him, sparkling in the evening light in the spots where the clouds were breaking up. He could leave now, but he felt less than himself, and he wanted to shake that before facing what was certain to be a crisis at home, sparked by his absence. Buckbeak sailed into view, angling away from the hills to stay over the water, a grey reflection skipping over the waves. Harry heard voices approaching, arguing as only political figures could. He dropped into the Dark Plane to avoid them.
Chilled, he returned to Snapes office where he imagined it would be warm. He pulled a chair over to the fire, snagging the sherry bottle from a shelf on the way past. He sat, feet propped upon a trunk, using the hypnotic sound of the fire and the stomach warming effects of the liquor to let go of the last few hours, working his way up to letting go of the last few days in total. His robes dried and finished deepening back to black. When he left for good this place would cease to exist. Given that, being haunted by it would be tantamount to a psychosis.
The door to the office swung open and Snape, appearing distracted, stepped in and did not notice Harry until he was halfway across the room. He scuffed to a halt, exhibiting rare uneasiness. You are still here, he stated.
I hadnt tried your sherry, Harry explained, voice gentle because his meditation had helped set his mind and emotions straight.
Snape crossed to the desk and stared down at it before stalking to the door to his chambers. His mouth worked before he said, I was perhaps remiss in not offering it.
Harry felt saddened and adrift at being feared by this man, by any version of him. Have I ever, ever threatened you? Harry asked.
Snape turned to him, studying him.
Harry said, I owe you my life.
Snapes shoulders rounded and his movements were less jerky when he came over to borrow the sherry bottle. He poured himself a full tumbler and handed the bottle back graciously, making Harry laugh lightly. You think I buy that from you? he asked and then regretted the teasing, since Snapes black gaze flickered with fear again.
You really think Id do something untoward to you? Harry asked, badly needing to settle this.
Snape did not reply, but his eyes did. They answered in the affirmative. At Harrys prompting of Severus? Snape spoke: I saw what you did to get even . . . He trailed off.
Ah, Harry said, understanding. You mean for my parents. Harry swallowed the half tumbler of sherry he held. He tilted his head back to stare at the cobwebs on the ceiling of Snapes office. Ive forgiven you for that.
Really? Snape laughed uneasily. Why?
Harry rubbed his head and said. You saw what happened in the Great Hall. If I didnt find the power to forgive you, I would have lost myself long ago. I wouldnt have power over myself and I'd self-destruct.
Snape considered that and added uneasily, And you apologized for your father, no less.
"Of course," Harry said, and stood, finally approaching the mood to depart for home.
Where are you going now? Snape asked, sounding casual and for all the world like he was dying to know the answer.
Far away. Very far. Keep an eye on Fudge will you? Hold his feet to the Caeruleus fire.
I dont have much power, Potter, Snape pointed out. Especially now. Before, I had rather a lot.
You're good at surviving no matter what. Its better this way and you know it, Harry said. "If I stay, things will only be fixed for appearances, for my sake. Not really fixed." He set his tumbler on the desk and said, Im going and I dont intend to ever return. Do take care of yourself.
Snape bowed faintly, doubt tinting his eyes even darker. Harry disappeared without a sound.
Clearheaded and determined, Harry found his way opposite his own house and tumbled sideways, focused on a painful affection for his real home.
- 888 -
"Severus!" Candide shouted frantically from the balcony where she peered over the rail down at Harry, strewn half across the rug below.
Snape came out of the library and, after spotting Harry, dashed over to him. He placed his hand on his shoulder to roll him on his side and icy sparkles haloed Snape's hand against the dark fabric. "He is half frozen again." Raising his head, he called out, "Get a blanket and heat it, quickly." He pushed Harry onto his back, setting off swirls of crackling in the ice clinging to Harry's robes. "And there is some odd residual magic still upon him."
At a run Candide brought a heated blanket and helped Snape lift and wrap Harry bodily in it. The frost coating the tips of Harry's locks melted where his limp head rested on Snape's robes. Once lifted off the floor, Snape had not put his charge down again. He pressed his hand to Harry's scarred forehead.
"Is he warming up?" Candide asked.
Snape nodded. "Get some hot water."
Harry woke groggily. He could not move his arms for the heavy blanket bundled around them and his face was pressed into robes scented with Hogwarts and potions.
He was home.
And he was being clutched with surprising fierceness. Perhaps he did not fully appreciate how much he was cherished, he considered. He might be able to stir, but he did not, enjoying the warmth too much.
A hand ran through Harry's hair and with a spell he was forced to swallow warm water. The hungry heat of it seeped through the very center of him and he opened his eyes to Snape's dark concerned ones.
Candide was speaking. "And I contacted the Auror's office."
Snape started at that, looking away from Harry. "I wish you had not."
"No?"
"We need to protect Harry from everyone." Figures Apparated into the Hall. Snape finished with, "Even the Ministry."
The Auror's descended upon them, led by Tonks, who crouched close. "Harry, what happened?"
Harry opened his mouth and tried to concoct a reasonable story that was not the truth. He lifted his head but could not yet hold it up without severe strain.
"More water," Harry requested, to stall.
He was propped up better in the crook of Snape's shoulder and given several more sips which warmed him enough to let him sit up, but Snape's grip seemed uninterested in even allowing him to try.
Harry cleared his throat and said, "I was poisoned," which made Snape's grip tighten even more. Harry closed his eyes. "I tried to Apparate to Severus but . . . I missed."
Tonks, from close by said, "Well, of course, you can't Apparate to Hogwarts. You shouldn't have even been able to depart."
Harry shook his head, formulating a modified story with effort. "I tried really, really hard. I ended up in a different potioneer's dungeon."
Silence fell over the listeners. "Where?" Tonks asked.
"I'm not sure," Harry said. "Somewhere . . . somewhere in Eastern Europe. Latvia maybe. He was good at potions though . . . he cured the poison. Which was in the pumpkin juice in the tea room."
Mr. Weasley gestured to Shacklebolt to take note of that.
Snape asked, in a manner that Harry could not read as helping a ruse or honest curiosity, "Was the castle small with two tall towers close together?"
"Er, yeah," Harry said, willing to accept any help to explain himself.
To the others, Snape said, "I know a wizard there by the name of Aldaris." To Harry he asked, "Do you remember the name Jazeps?"
"Uh . . ." Harry stalled and Snape caught on quickly.
Snape turned back to the crouching assembled and said quickly, "He is a hermit, corresponds only with those far enough away to be deemed not direct competition."
Harry broke in with a partial truth. "He was very good about the poison, but then he didn't want me to leave. Slipped me potions to keep me disoriented."
Tonks motioned as though this were horrendous. "No," Harry corrected. "He was nice, enough, sort of, and he saved my life. I think he was just . . . lonely or something."
Shacklebolt leaned in closer. "So, you don't want us to track him down, then, you are saying."
"No," Harry said in relief. "He saved my life; it's all right."
"How did you get back?" Mr. Weasley asked.
"I Apparated."
"From Latvia!" several people exclaimed at once.
"I concentrated really hard," Harry insisted.
"Wonder you didn't get Splinched worse than you did. You all right? No missing parts?" Shacklebolt asked.
Harry sat up and was allowed to. "Yeah, I'm fine. I didn't feel very good when I first arrived, but I'm better now."
"Don't make a habit out of Apparating so far," Mr. Weasley ordered him.
"I won't, believe me," Harry said.
Snape helped Harry to his feet, but steered him to the nearest couch. Of Mr. Weasley he asked, "Do you need to debrief him or can we keep him here?"
"No, I think we're set. I'll call a press conference and get everything straight."
After welcomes and wishes that he feel better and congratulations on making it home from so far away, the three Ministry people departed.
Snape turned to Harry and said, "What actually happened?" gathering a startled look from Candide.
Harry had a bad sense that they were not alone and he said, "Clear the house of bugs and we can talk."
Snape drew his wand and held it out toward the center of the room while turning in a circle around it. Harry had thought that the Snape he had shared quarters with the last three days was a slightly different man than this one, but what happened next disproved that assumption. Snape, with a slashing motion, cast a spell that forced any Animagus on the area to reveal themselves and falling with the floor lamp in a great crash was Rita Skeeter. Snape aimed his wand at her while she stood and brushed off her skirt and primped her curls. His gaze was hard and unyielding, looking for all the world capable of anything.
"Don't you dare point that at me," she commanded, trying to swap her quill for her wand in her beaded handbag.
"Get out of this house," Snape ordered. "You are not welcome here; you are trespassing."
"The wizarding public has a right to know," she stated, wagging her wand at him like one might a finger.
"The public has no such right as far as I am concerned. And that is just an excuse for what only concerns your ego. Get out or I will bind you with a mummy hex and hang you from the ceiling of the Ministry of Magic."
"You wouldn't dare," Skeeter countered, voice nasty.
"I'll have the Weasley twins provide passersby with paint-filled balloons suitable for throwing at you; I expect they will have no shortage of takers."
With a snarl, Skeeter Disapparated. Candide exhaled and said, "Oh she's really going to love us now."
Snape shot her a disappointed glance but moved to Harry and crouched before him, hands on his arms. "Are you all right?" he asked, sound like he had a long list of questions to follow. When Harry nodded, Snape asked, "What happened? Where did you go?"
"It was a terrible place," Harry said, thinking first of the menagerie. "I . . . with the poison, in the panic, I forgot you were no longer in the dungeon. I got confused and tried to reach you there. So, as a result, I ended up there."
"I thought . . . Latvia?" Candide interrupted, while taking a seat beside Harry.
"Harry needed a plausible story," Snape explained.
"Thanks for that," Harry said.
Candide clasped her hands together. "I'm sorry I called the Ministry in."
Snape held up his hand. "You thought it was the right thing to do. Now you know better." Returning his attention to Harry, he said, "Go on."
When Harry said, "Voldemort was headmaster," Snape's head fell forward. Harry went on, hopeful that he would not be in trouble. "I felt I should stay and take care of things. That Plane's Harry died in his first year trying to reach the Philosopher's Stone."
"And did you take care of things?" Snape asked.
Harry, mind full of the duel and the blood, replied, "Yes." After a pause to push the fresh memories down in the hopes of making them older faster, he added, "I'm glad to be home. It's Saturday, right?"
"Yes, you have been missing for days. We were most concerned about you." Snape touched the side of his head lightly and stood. "I expect your friends to come swarming in shortly. Are you up for it?"
Harry smiled. "Yes, very much so. Tell me more about this Aldaris and his castle, will you, before they arrive."
Snape smiled back, settled on the couch, and began speaking very quickly, holding up a hand when Candide tried to ask a question. "I'll explain it all later," he assured her.
She crossed her arms. "That ought to be good," she whispered.
Harry's friends began arriving within minutes as expected. Harry did not realize how badly he needed their companionship until he repeated his modified story and was roundly sympathized with by all. He wished he could tell Hermione the truth. Perhaps he would later. She was one of the few who knew already that he could Apparate inside of Hogwarts and she would keep any secret. Strange to imagine, but he found himself more willing to tell her than Tonks, who had just returned.
She gave Harry a hug. "Next time send an owl, a bat, anything!" she said while patting his back.
"I couldn't," Harry said. "Believe me . . . I wanted to."
Elizabeth arrived carrying a cake that said Welcome Home Harry in pink icing. Ron reached for the first piece, saying, "That was fast."
"I found a recipe in my mum's old magical cookbook."
Ron, mouth full, asked, "So it isn't real food?"
Elizabeth laughed while Harry worried about her doing magic at home where her father might spot it. "I just used a Foaming Heat Charm to cook it up in two minutes after the batter was mixed."
Hermione held her hand over her full mouth and asked, "Can you show me that spell?"
Elizabeth smiled painfully. "I'd love to show you a spell. You're the kind of witch who knows every spell. I'd be thrilled."
Hermione glanced at the clock and shoveled the next bite into her mouth faster. "It may have to be another time. I have to get back. And I'm sure Harry could use a rest more than a huge, late-night party."
She made her goodbyes and this triggered most everyone to leave. Eventually, only Tonks remained. Harry sat across from her in the dwindling candlelight, expecting Snape to check in any moment as he had throughout the evening.
Things clearly needed to be said, but her gaze skittered away whenever it met his. She said, "I was really worried about you. I couldn't understand why you left."
"I didn't leave-"
"I know that."
"Did you find anything out . . . about the poison?" Harry asked.
Tonks shook her head. "Everything in the tea room had long since been cleaned up."
Harry sighed and tweaked his fingers to turn the empty butterbeer bottle sitting before him. "Someone wants to kill me."
"Someone inside the Ministry," Tonks added. After a spell, Tonks whispered, "Can you come to my place tonight?"
"I shouldn't go missing, and . . ." Harry glanced into the hall, which was quiet. "I could ask, I suppose. Tomorrow would be better."
"I'll come here."
Harry imagined Snape checking on him. "Maybe not a good idea," he said, chaffing a bit at feeling over-protected because of this cramp on his sex life, but it quickly was overwhelmed by the basic notion of home.
Tonks tossed her tall pink hair. "I should go too. The office wanted a report on how you were doing and I've been here forever."
"Thanks for staying as long as you did," Harry said on automatic, standing with her.
She gave him a deep kiss that said more than any conversation could manage.
Harry strolled through the hall and the dim but warm light of the chandelier. The peace of the house both soothed him as well as put him on alert to defend it. Here's a Riddle for you, Tom . . . echoed through his skull. At the time he had only been trying for mockery of his enemy, but now the assertion mocked him back.
Snape and Candide were sitting in the drawing room. Candide's gaze held wonderment, presumably as a result of Snape's explanation of what had happened. Harry hoped it went away soon.
"Friends all departed?" Snape asked. "I'm curious about exactly what transpired at this other Hogwarts. If you would indulge me?" For a polite question it came out rather commanding.
Harry glanced at Candide. She put her things together quickly and said, "I'll leave you two alone."
"Thanks," Harry said. She hurried out with one quick smile back at Snape. The door clicked closed. Harry took the chair she had been in. The seat was still warm.
Snape pushed his own parchments aside, grasped the edge of the desk, and sat back, but it felt a false show of letting his guard down. "Did you kill Voldemort outright?"
Harry nodded and then equivocated by tilting it side to side. "I fed him to the demons."
"Ah."
"They always seem to be hungry."
"Or there are many, many of them and only the hungry ones bother to show up." Snape stated this dryly, factually.
A pause stretched out too long with Harry trying to stay out of memory, especially the memory of the menagerie, which had the tightest hold on him for some reason.
Snape finally said, "I worry that you are paying an unseen cost for utilizing these dark creatures to do your bidding."
"I didn't have any choice. I had already used Salazar's spell. It didn't take Voldemort down, just all his followers. Well, except your counterpart, who wasn't a threat to the castle." Harry pushed his fringe back out of his eyes. "He was stronger than me, Voldemort was. I couldn't take him down by myself. The wands saved me again. Kept him distracted until I could call in reinforcements. The Raksashas certainly took him by surprise."
Snape had him under intense scrutiny as he said, "I imagine it took everyone by surprise."
Harry nodded, thinking of the other Snape's fear of him. Harry examined his new wand, wondering that it didn't show any damage from battling. It looked exactly the same as before. He replayed the spells in his mind, wondering what he could have done differently. "I need to get stronger. I should have been able to beat him."
Snape merely stared at him, apparently unable to generate a response. An owl arrived, distracting them both. Snape opened the letter, which prominently displayed the Ministry seal on the flap. A minute later, he closed it, stuffed it back away and said, "It is from Arthur Weasley."
"Addressed to you?" Harry blurted, finding that odd.
"The Ministry is putting you under twenty-four-hour guard."
Harry laughed in a short burst, still deep in reliving the battle with Voldemort. "They think I need guarding? And besides, it's someone inside the Ministry; how do they know they won't just assign my attacker as my guard?"
Snape waved the letter. "They are certifying select individuals, by means of Veritaserum, and only they will be your guards."
"They can't spare anyone," Harry asserted. "And I don't need protection. I look forward to this person trying again, so I can catch them at it."
Sternly, Snape said, "I am not objecting to Mr. Weasley's plan, quite the opposite."
"Well, of course, it'll make it right impossible for me to spend any time alone with Tonks. I'm sure you'd appreciate that." Harry immediately wished he had not said that, but his frustration over being unable to arrange to stay with her that night boiled over without his control.
Snape's features sharpened with a predatorial edge. "I do not expect coercion to repair that proclivity of yours, so I would not attempt it. I would much prefer you get wise on your own." He stepped around the desk with a swift movement, trailing his robes. His voice lowered as he said, "For your edification, she is at the top of the list of guards to be certified, which if I am not mistaken will mean you will frequently spend nights with her for the foreseeable future."
"Oh," Harry uttered quietly.
Snape snapped the envelope with a flick of his wrist and tossed it on the desk, clearly disgusted. "For the weekend it will be myself guarding you. You are not to leave this house alone, do you understand?"
Harry felt about four years younger at that moment. But given how fiercely Snape had hung onto him when he had reappeared, Harry did not complain or argue. This stern admonishment was just another expression of the same thing, he knew in his gut. "Yes, sir," he said.
Snape crossed his arms and leaned back against the front of his desk. Still business-like he asked, "Do you have control over what happened? Or can we expect further disappearances?"
"I have control," Harry insisted. "I know exactly what happened, this time. I better understand last time too, now that I know it was real."
"Good," Snape said.
After a space, Harry added, "Sorry." But he wasn't any clearer on what he was apologizing for than Snape, given his guardian's raised brow. Maybe, as usually, he felt he should make up for the trouble he caused.
Snape relented; it was clear by the way he said, "Do not apologize."
After an awkward pause, Harry said, "I should get to sleep. I had a long day of killing Voldemort and I'm kind of tired." Harry stood when there was no objection to this. "Thanks for kicking Skeeter out. It was fun to watch."
"My pleasure."
- 888 -
Hermione sorted through the parchments spread out before her as she stood at the front table facing the First-Year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. She had expected that by three weeks into the term she would be less nervous, but she had not yet completely shaken a base unease. The students who did well, she felt were not really her doing; the students who were already falling behind, seemed unreachable; and the two who she sometimes suspected may be Squibs, or close to it, she was not certain what to do with. This included the Mer-boy, Namortuk, who sat even now, eagerly in the front row, his slowly shifting magical collar of lake water reflecting the room around him.
It was not that Hermione did not think the boy had any magic, more that his magic was too different to get anything out of her class and perhaps out of the school. She did not hold this against him; it would be as if Hermione herself had been sent to a school only for Divination. She could read the textbooks but never really produce any meaningful output, except by random chance. But the boy continued to be intrepidly pleased with his surroundings and the assignments, so despite her gut instinct that something drastically needed to be fixed, academically, she forced herself to just let the situation be, but it still needled her.
She asked the reluctant children arrayed before her questions about the assigned reading—a short and easy chapter that despite being so, had gone unread by a handful. Finally, names were coming to her easily. Last names, though. She found herself losing track of students' first names and sometimes when speaking to a student about another student, was not always certain as a result who was being discussed. As with most days, by the time she set them to trying out new spells and had circled the room offering advice and encouragement, the class period was nearly over. She considered doubling the reading, in the hopes of making the slackers take it seriously, but instead threatened them with a short quiz. Groans emanated from the room, a counterpoint to the vibrating squeaks of the desks shifting as the children rose to their feet.
It was lunchtime, but as usual Hermione had too much to finish to contemplate the luxury of the Great Hall's food and instead hunched over the Third-Year textbook entitled Witchy & Warlocky Wand Waving and jotted down a few notes for questions and as a sort of desperation outline for that day's topic.
A knock on the door interrupted this and for a moment, Hermione feared she was late for class even though only forty-five minutes had passed. Relieved by what the face of the clock showed, she called out that the person could enter.
In stepped McGonagall, smiling graciously. She took a position beside the guest chairs and clasped her hands before her. "I could not help but notice that you were missing from the mid-day meal once again. This is a first for a Monday."
Hermione replied, "I was helping look for Harry part of the weekend, so I didn't catch up like I usually do."
"Ah, of course," McGonagall said gently. "The students wish to start a Harry Hunt Club, in fact. When I informed them that only those of age could join, given the requirement to leave school grounds, they were most crestfallen."
Hermione smiled since she was supposed to find this story amusing, but it was difficult to do so given how much trouble Harry still managed to get into.
McGonagall said kindly, "The teaching will get easier. It is hardest for those who care the most about getting every last thing perfect, but for the first year it is impossible to do that, and you risk burning out while trying."
Hermione gazed unseeing at her notes. "I wouldn't know where to . . . cut corners to manage better. There are such a terribly large number of sections. For the First through Fifth Years there are two each twice a week, sometimes doubled in length, and then two more Advanced Charms for Sixth and Seventh. I don't know how to fit it all in without a Time-Turner."
"When you are practiced at it and are not doing prep each time, it is far easier."
Another knock sounded. Hermione exhaled, blowing her hair around her eyes. "That must be my weekly review meeting," she said, working very hard not to sound completely overstressed. She put away her notes in a folder neatly labelled for the next class while McGonagall opened the door to let Professor Snape in.
"Ah, Severus, I wanted to speak with you. Sprout again caught Orfius and Sirco again attempting to sneak into the off-limits greenhouse. They have fallen afoul of a skin-eating slime mold and have been sent to St. Mungo's. If you would be so good as to pay a visit to their parents with a longer explanation than I could manage by Floo owl, I would appreciate it."
Snape nodded and said he would do so immediately after his next class. Hermione was glad she was not yet at a level to be assigned such tasks. She wondered at McGonagall handing it off to her deputy, but Snape did not show any sign of complaint, in fact he behaved surprisingly obedient, something she had noticed before, that is, when he did not disagree forcefully with an expressed idea. She puzzled that while the two of them discussed the troublesome students using their own administrative shorthand. And she wondered if Snape had a need to be loyal to someone and so had transfered his old loyalty to Dumbledore wholesale onto McGonagall.
McGonagall parted and Snape took one of the visitor's chairs, efficiently moving on to her weekly review without any small talk.
"How is Harry?" Hermione asked before he could start.
From his pocket, Snape removed his rolled parchment of notes from previous meetings and replied, "You saw him on Saturday, did you not?"
"Yes, but . . ." She hesitated, but with renewed confidence, said, "I had the distinct sense that a cover story had been fabricated so I wanted to know that Harry really was all right."
Snape read over the unrolled the parchment before him, stalling it seemed. "Harry is fine," Snape stated.
Hermione did not like being kept away from the truth. "What are you hiding?" When no answer was forthcoming, she said, "I can ask Harry. I know he can Apparate inside the school, which means he should've been able to reach you. That part was a lie; I know for certain."
Snape rubbed his fingertips together. "Then you understand the need to protect him."
"Yes. I do." She stopped, having trouble with seriously contemplating something so terrible. "That's why they were going to give Sirius Black a Dementor's kiss, wasn't it? Because they couldn't keep him in prison. Azkaban, when it's completed, wouldn't hold Harry either. If he ever got into enough trouble with the Ministry . . ." She had to stop.
"They could hold Harry, but, like the few vampires they have incarcerated, quite a few precautions are necessary and the risk of escape is high if any of the extra security fails. So yes, under an exceptionally bad alignment of circumstances I fear the worst."
Hermione held off on pointing out that he was one of those arguing forcefully for giving Sirius exactly that treatment. Perhaps that was precisely why he was being so very paranoid this time.
Snape said, "Suffice to say, the story told to the Ministry and the press was essentially true. Beyond Harry returning safely and avoiding future such mishaps, I have less care for what actually transpired." He referred to his parchment, and moved to their meeting topic. "How did this last week go?"
Hermione pulled her thoughts from Harry to Charms in all its seven levels of learning. "I thought it would go better than it did," she confessed. "I don't know what to do with the very slow students and the slackers."
"You cannot force every last one of them to learn. If you have not accepted that yet, I suggest you work harder on doing so."
"Yes, but if they aren't doing well in Charms then they must be struggling mightily in Transfiguration."
"That is not your problem."
"It is, because Charms is the easy one. It's the one everyone can do first because it is all impermanent."
"Hexs are what everyone gets first," Snape countered. "How you failed to notice that the very first day in the corridors . . ."
Hermione lightly rolled her eyes. "I'm also reluctant to assign points except as deductions."
"That is solely your prerogative."
"It just feels so . . . like such uneven treatment to reward someone for doing what they were supposed to do anyhow or just rewarding the ones who are trying to cozy up to me."
Bordering on derisive, Snape asked, "Did you not like receiving points as a student?"
"Well . . ." Hermione said. "Well, yes, of course." She stared out at the round stone tower outside the window. "It just all feels so different from this side."
"You are worrying over it too much." He let that lie for a moment and then said, "I need to sit in on one of your classes in the next week, but there are not a terribly large number of open times in my schedule that are actual class times for you. I may just have Remus take over and come some afternoon when it is convenient. Is there anything else we need to discuss?"
"Harry is really all right?"
Snape stood. "Harry is fine," he repeated, but he sounded far away as he said it.
Author's Note:
Yes, quick turnaround. Please, don't get used to it: I'll need two weeks for the next.
I haven't done this is a long, long time, but I feel compelled--due to the sheer volume of comments that all say the same thing--to make a comment/clarification/offer some thoughts. First off, let me say that I love that you are all taking the story seriously and you are all sharp enough that I can't keep up with you, which means I don't have to worry about getting too far ahead. Very cool. Thanks for staying along for the ride and caring how it turns out. But to the meat of it: Harry's response to Snape that he is the last horcrux. Yes, that dimension's Harry is dead, which means that horcrux is gone too. (I didn't adjust these chapters for DH, so the total is off, but no one's mentioned that, and it doesn't really matter.) Harry is an endearingly straightforward guy. When asked where the seventh horcrux is, Harry doesn't think about this in a complicated way. He answers honestly, and also as a kind of confession, that he is the last one. Harry confesses because being the last horcrux (in his Plane, at least) still gnaws at him and he wants this Snape to understand what's going on. And, it's kind of a power move as well to tell Snape that. At the moment Snape asked the question, Harry's answer was essentially true. Now, were Harry to stay in this Plane, would he really qualify as an undestroyed horcrux? Interesting question. I lean toward a "probably" because Harry, since his arrival in this other place has been using that connection to detect this Voldemort's presence, so he clearly has a connection to this Voldemort (and for the record to the book 6 "canon" Voldemort too from the last fall into another Plane). At any rate. Those are my thoughts on this. Fascinating that so many of you had identical reactions to the scene.
Next: Chapter 13
"Shall we give it a try?" he asked her in a whisper, holding Kali up to stare closely into her beady eyes. He carried her to the open window and said, "No pigeons."
With her wings pumping in the evening light, his pet resembled a violet puffball sailing over the garden wall. Sitting on his trunk, Harry closed his eyes and tried to see out of his pet's instead.
Chapter 13 — Guard Duty
Harry had Aaron trailing him as guard to an above-ground shop to get a pasty for lunch. The day was warm and breezy and the Muggle streets loud with cars and buses.
"Who's your guard tonight?" Aaron asked.
"Tonks is supposed to be, but they don't always say. They just gave me a list of passcodes to verify from whoever shows up next." He handed over a few Muggle coins and accepted the wrapped food, which immediately soaked grease and heat through the crinkly paper.
"Well, Tonks wouldn't be a bad deal."
Harry smiled crookedly. "No, she wouldn't."
They returned to the atrium and walked to a bench overlooking the fountain to eat. Hungrier than normal, Harry had already taken a few bites and Aaron, when he noticed, asked, "Not going to use the poison-revealing drops first?"
Harry carefully waved his lunch and said, "I just bought this from a Muggle shop where no one knows who I am. That's why I went there. The drops taste funny."
"Your choice, I suppose." Aaron groaned as he sat down and stretched his feet out before him. "We had a devil of a time looking for you."
"Sorry about that. If I disappear like that again, don't bother trying to find me. If I can't get back, I'm too far away to be found."
"Yeah, Latvia. It was not high on the list of places to search." With false thoughtfulness, he added, "I don't think it was on the list at all. So, what's it feel like to Apparate that far?"
"It hurts," Harry said. "Don't try it."
"What are you doing about this wizard, Aldaris?"
Harry tilted his pasty so the filling wouldn't ooze out. "Adding him to my Christmas list. I owe him one."
Aaron laughed.
During afternoon drills while facing his trainer for a demonstration, Harry asked how he could increase his spell power.
Rodgers scoffed. The others in the room turned their attention to them. "You aren't feeling lacking are you, Potter?" Rodgers teased.
"Well, sometimes," Harry said.
"Raw power is slow to increase. You're born with a certain amount and if you vigorously make use of it, some people anyhow, are lucky enough to get a little more of it."
Harry tapped his wand on his hand, impatient with that answer. "So, you're saying that there's nothing I can do."
"I didn't say that," Rodgers came back. "Step back and get ready with a Titan block." Rodgers also stepped back. "Part of what you think of as power is just focussed energy. The difference between this . . ." Here he sent Harry a Cutting Curse, but its beam wavered in the air, wide and ineffective. ". . . and this. Be ready for it." He repeated the spell, but the spell trail was almost invisibly thin. Harry's block sizzled and he was forced to jump out of the way and let the spell burn itself out on the wall behind him.
Harry stared at his trainer from where he kneeled in the corner. "Good thing you're on our side, sir," he said as he got to his feet. He tried not to feel frustrated with the thought that this was the second person in mere days who could take him down on raw power.
"Can you show us how to focus spells better?" Harry asked.
"We've already done exercises to improve that. But it doesn't help with all spells. I used the best example to demonstrate. Frankly, finesse is often more valuable and that you gain through repetition." With an amused tilt of the head he considered Harry before saying, "You don't look happy with my answer."
Harry, feeling unusually desperate about this, explained, "Well, what if we do meet a . . . bad wizard who can overpower us?"
"Outsmart them," Rodgers answered a tad mockingly. "Or bring a partner and corner them if you can't manage that. All kinds of options. Got someone in mind that we don't know about, Potter?"
"No," Harry answered honestly.
Rodgers dropped his suspicion and said, "We'll work on fine-tuning some powerful spells during drills. Everyone pick a partner."
Blackpool followed Harry home that evening and read Witch Weekly while Harry studied. She traded with Tonks at 11:00.
"Puffball Mushrooms," Tonks proclaimed when she arrived in the Floo.
"That right?" Blackpool asked Harry, wand unwavering.
Harry resisted laughing at her care. "Yes."
"I'll leave you to it then."
"Thanks," Harry said before she departed.
Candide, with a broad yawn, declared it time to go to sleep and Harry had to agree. Upstairs on the balcony, she bade them goodnight with a knowing smile, making Harry grateful Snape was away at school.
Harry slept with Tonks half overlapping him and was glad for the reassuringly pleasant feel of her when he awoke with a start from a dream involving hoards of demons rampaging out of control.
"Harry?"
"Yeah, just a dream," he mumbled, because the room was quiet and it was clearly not happening here and may not be happening anywhere.
In a fit of what felt like rare good fortune, Tonks was assigned most all night guard duty for the rest of the week, except for when she had the regular night shift at the Ministry. During those times, Harry had a different guard in the form of a small, stout wrinkly-faced woman from Control of Magical Creatures. Mr. Weasley had pulled Harry aside and informed him that the woman, Hornisham, was overdue for retirement and due to her fearless handling of calls, her department worried she may not survive to retirement, so they were happy to give her something else to do. Harry believed they might feel differently if they knew what kind of creatures Harry could conjure while he slept.
The first night with her sitting beside the cold hearth, knitting metal dragon-proof cord into a tunic, Harry did not sleep so well. But the second time, other than wishing for Tonks instead, he slept immediately, lulled off by the faint grinding and clicking sounds and the thought that, if necessary, the witch could don the tunic which might actually hold up to demon teeth. Harry's dreams remained murky, muddy and algae colored, like the lake water under Hogwarts castle. He always awoke feeling slightly less than well rested.
Friday, before Harry departed for field shadowing, Candide shooed Hornisham off, insisting she needed to talk to Harry alone. Candide had a letter in her hand, but she rolled it tightly into a tube and held it at her side when she noticed Harry eying it.
"How are you doing, Harry?" she asked bluntly.
"Fine."
"Training went all right this week?"
Harry stared at her, wondering at the redundancy; they had engaged in similar small talk all week.
"Fine. Still easier because of our newest apprentice, but Rodgers promises that the repetition won't last. Why the interview?" he returned bluntly.
"Severus wants to know if he should come home this weekend."
"He doesn't need to for me. If you want him home . . ."
She frowned. "Work is only getting busier. I'll be at the office at least some Saturday and Sunday, so he shouldn't bother on my account, I won't be here . . ."
"He shouldn't bother on mine, either," Harry said.
Candide moved her letter-laden hand, but did not need to reference it directly. "How are you sleeping?"
Harry did not want to reply, but he had to answer and he could not find the will to lie. "A few odd dreams but I'm sleeping all right."
Again, point-blank: "Voldemort? Is Voldemort in your dreams?"
"No."
This time she did raise the letter. While reading it, she said, "You need to go or you're going to be late."
Harry collected his guard from the hall where she was making faces at herself in the wood-framed mirror. Harry had to suppress a much-needed smile at the scene of this stout, middle-aged women arranging her face into various scary expressions.
"Ready to go?" the witch queried, unfazed at being interrupted.
"Yeah. Thanks for giving us a few minutes."
"No worries. Bugger for you losin' your privacy like this."
Harry was surprised by her understanding. "Well, you lose your nights," he said.
She waved one pudgy hand that was missing the ends of two fingers. "'Tis nothin'. It's jus' me cats at home anyhow."
Thinking of Mrs. Figg, Harry tried to make conversation, "How many cats do you have?"
The answer came after they arrived in the Atrium. "Twenty four . . . no . . . twenty . . ." She made a different kind of face and stared at the ceiling while pondering an answer.
"That's all right; I get the idea," Harry said quickly.
Up in the office, Harry waited for Shacklebolt to finish his report from his last assignment. He was speaking unusually fast to his quill, making it skip words and have to jump around filling in. Eventually, the nib broke and it fluttered to the floor.
"Ack," Shacklebolt uttered and pulled out a regular quill to finish by hand. Even writing fast, his handwriting was neater than the Autoquill's, which said a lot. To Harry, he said, "We have a call we should hit within the hour; that's why I'm hurrying."
Harry Side-Alonged to Mumbles-under-Tyne and followed Shacklebolt's lead in stashing his wand away in his sleeve before stepping out onto the pavement from the abandoned newspaper printers where they had arrived. Harry thought it a less-than-wise place to arrive given the looming old equipment filling the place and the hiding places it provided, but he assumed Shacklebolt was well aware of that, so he remained silent. Harry marked the doorway into the building in his memory. A sign with faded scroll letters outlined in still-bright gold paint read Mumbles Echo.
Harry remained mum as they walked with purpose, finally stepping down a narrow crooked alley that was much darker than it should have been in the noon-time sun. The entrance was between Mandragon's Haberdashery with unpromisingly faded wares in the window and a nail salon with so much neon tubing framing it one could not see inside. The salon might have had a name, but if it did, it was part of the Chinese lettering sharing space with the English.
Shacklebolt tapped with his wand on the keystone block of an archway spanning the alley twenty feet in. Beyond it a row of five shops sparkled into view. They entered the first shop. Inside, stacks of hats, large atop small, lined shelves and racks ranging from staid, closest to the door, to flashing Quidditch-themed ones lighting the far corner.
"Oy, what can I do you for?" a portly man with short mussed hair asked, making it seem the business of hats was a serious one with him. His eyes came around to Harry, standing off Shacklebolt's shoulder, and his attitude grew wary.
"We're from the Auror's office," Shacklebolt explained. "We had a report of some trouble . . . ?"
The man laughed lightly, his lips glistening with saliva. "My sister, she over-reacted. It's nothing. Ministry didna have ta send Aurors of all things," he complained, glancing at Harry and away again. "No one's been doing any dark magic around here abouts."
Shacklebolt stated helpfully, "You aren't the only ones having problems."
The shopkeeper laughed nervously. "So we are in good company for this thing we are not involved with?"
"Yes," Shacklebolt replied after a beat.
Harry watched the various signs the man gave off, the wet lips, the nervous movements of his feet that he was probably unaware of. "We don't need you here. Go take care of something important."
"This IS important," Shacklebolt said. "If it gets out of control, everyone suffers."
Harry Legilimized the man the next time his eyes grazed Harry's. All he caught was a flash of an argument with a woman.
"Is your sister here?" Shacklebolt asked eerily narrating the vision.
"She is. She's in back listening to her favorite on the wireless. I'm sure she'd rather not talk to you."
Harry considered piping in, but waited to see what Shacklebolt would do. The Auror said, "I'd rather hear that from her."
The man grumbled but fetched his sister, who gave off more signs of nerves than the brother, including laughing more. She gave Harry more chances to see her thoughts because she seemed fascinated with him standing there and kept staring. Harry had visions of nighttime visitors full of threats. No faces, just odd grey cloth masks over wrinkled black veils so even the eye holes gave nothing away. Shacklebolt eventually gave up getting her to admit there was a problem. Perhaps he even felt bad for making her so agitated.
As they departed, Shacklebolt insisted to the shopkeepers that he, or someone else, would return if called.
They then went to each of the other shops on the alley, interviewing clerks and owners alike; Shacklebolt was adamant about talking to everyone who was available. No one was any more helpful. Only the young woman working in the beauty salon, whom Harry knew from Hogwarts, seemed to have no idea at all why they were there. The rest were all wary and dodgy with their answers.
Back in the printers, Harry waited while Shacklebolt paced.
"Is it safe to talk here, sir?" Harry asked. When Shacklebolt nodded, Harry went on, "Can I ask what this is about?"
"It would seem a shakedown is in progress on Mandragon Alley and I was hoping for a little more cooperation . . . from anyone. Question I have now is, are we dealing with just one gang or do we have a copy-cat already."
Harry said, "The ones that came here wore odd masks, with cat-eye slits over the eyes and . . ." He gestured on his own face. ". . . over the nose and mouth. With a netting underneath so you couldn't see any part of their features."
Shacklebolt stared at Harry. After a long pause, he said, "I guess given that Severus taught you, I should expect you'd be that good at Legilimency. I saw you giving a few of them a good eyeing. I wasn't sure if that was just intimidation . . . which didn't seem like your style."
"I didn't mean to intimidate anyone," Harry said. "That probably wouldn't help."
Shacklebolt waved his hand, raising his pale palm to face Harry. "In fact, one tactic is to come across far tougher than the people they fear. Not the nicest thing to do, but it can work."
Shacklebolt straightened his cloak. Harry thought his chance for answers grew short. "Who are these people?"
"Don't know. Fudge believes they are foreigners, from Italy or Portugal where the government is either not effective at shutting them down or are worse yet, part of the problem."
"What do you think?" Harry asked.
"In an insular place like this, where the shopkeepers are English." He shook his head. "I think they'd cooperate with us if the perpetrators were foreign. Must be locals involved. The ideas and methods may be imported, but I bet the manpower isn't. Reggie took the last call of this nature and I thought maybe his glowing personality was part of the reason we didn't get any help."
Harry grinned.
Shacklebolt said, "Trouble is, if they're smart, their threats are far greater than the fee they are asking for in return for protection. But that will change, and then we might get some help, but someone will get hurt first, I'm afraid. Let's get back; there's probably ten other things we could be doing for someone willing to have help."
They spent the remainder of the shift trying to track down someone dealing in illicit cursed devices. This meant they snuck around sometimes very secure warehouses and interviewed people, mostly Muggles, which was time-consuming and involved making up lots of unlikely stories.
Harry's feet complained when he finally had a chance to get off them back in the office at 7:00 in the evening. Rodgers sauntered in and said, "So, how'd it go?" with an annoyingly knowing lilt.
"Same as you," Shacklebolt conceded. "Harry gets two gold stars for today. He's a better partner than you . . . and on top of that he complains less."
Rodgers crossed his arms. "Well, if you prefer a partner with a contract out on him . . ." He looked Harry over. "Waiting for your guard?"
Harry nodded. "I don't really need one," he said, not terribly hopeful that he would get free of the requirement, but feeling better to say that.
Tonks came in. "Ready?" she asked. "I'll take you home and wait for your other guard, unless Severus is there."
"No."
"Or unless you want to go to dinner at my parents."
Harry wondered at her saying that in front of not only Shacklebolt, but Harry's even stricter trainer. "I don't mind that."
"You're certain?" she asked doubtfully, straightening her robes which were not quite dress robes, but they glittered along the collar, matching her metallic silver hair. "No house elf at their place."
Harry could not imagine anyone not wanting to show off their parents. He nodded.
"And Candide's not expecting you?"
"She's working late."
Tonks tossed her head. "Well, come on, then."
The other two watched them leave. Harry kept his head down until he was well out the door. In the lift, Harry asked, "Why would you think I wouldn't want to go to your parents for dinner?"
Tonks puzzled the question, looked on the verge of explaining, but then shrugged.
They arrived in the Floo at the Tonks' house. Harry conked his head getting out when he caught sight of Andromeda. Rubbing the crown of his head, Harry peered at her with eyes squinted in pain. Tonks gave her mother a quick hug.
"I brought Harry along, I hope that's all right."
"Of course, dear," Andromeda said playfully. She held out her hand to Harry. "Nice to finally meet you, Harry. It's all right to call you 'Harry', right?"
Harry nodded and flinched at the stab this sent behind his right eye. At Andromeda's doubtful watching of him nursing his head, Harry said, "I thought you were your sister for just a moment."
Andromeda propped her hands on her hips accusingly. "Would you like some ice for that?"
"Yes, thank you."
To Tonks, as an aside, she asked, "Not as clumsy as you, I hope." The two of them went off. Harry looked around the ordinary room, at the fancy oil-lamps on wrought iron stands and the forest-colored furniture.
A sandy-haired man with a rotund gut came in the door, dragging muddy robe edges across the pale green carpet. Harry's presence distracted him from considering what to do about that. "Er, hello there. I don't think we've met," the man said.
Harry stepped up to him, hand out. "You must be Tonks' father . . . I mean, uh, Ted Tonks right?"
"'Dora's father, yes," Mr. Tonks said energetically, recognition brightening his eyes. "Very nice to meet you." His hands were dusty with earth as well, it turned out.
"Dora? Oh, yeah," Harry said.
"What can we do for you . . ." Mr. Tonks started to ask.
"Ted, the floor, honestly," Andromeda interrupted, returning. She handed Harry a hot water bottle full of ice and pulled out her wand to clean the carpet. "Perhaps you should change for dinner." She crossed her arms, wand bouncing. "Unless you want to stand there for the full treatment."
"No, I'll just go and change," he said. The trail he left as he departed was quickly Scourgified away.
Andromeda gave a long suffering sigh. "I'll just see to dinner."
Tonks sidled over to Harry, who was finding relief in the ice after the initial discomfort of it. "My dad doesn't know we're dating," she said in a low voice.
Harry lifted the ice out of his view. "You waited till now to the tell me?" He considered that as the ice crackled, heated by his head. "Same complaint as Severus?"
"No," she said, turning away.
"Er . . ." Harry decided that could lie for now. "What about your mum?"
"She likes you a lot," Tonks said, brushing her hand over the back of the nearby linen-draped couch.
Harry, voice low as well, said, "I didn't get the sense your dad disliked me."
Tonks started. "Oh, no, it's not that . . ." But Mr. Tonks returned, robes changed, hair slicked back.
"So, Harry, very nice to meet you close up. Certainly have seen you at a distance a few times and in the papers far more times than that. Come over and sit down." He gestured at the couch which he himself settled onto with a sigh of relief, belly covering part of his lap. He gave Harry a smile and reached for a box on the small table beside him. "Honeydukes?" he offered.
Harry accepted a chocolate covered wafer in the shape of a cauldron with a little loop of licorice for a handle.
Mr. Tonks went on, "Play any Quidditch these days? You're finished at Hogwarts right . . . or not?"
Harry had trouble swallowing.
"Oh, yes, of course you are," Mr. Tonks went on, slapping his leg. "'Dora's told us you're apprenticing in her department." Whimsically, he said, "They start you kids so young these days. It's a wonder . . . Did you finish school, or well no, you must have left early, right?"
Dinner broke the flow of conversation but it resumed on the same course when everyone settled in behind their plates of ravioli.
Right after Mr. Tonks chastised his wife for offering Harry mead "at his age," Harry finally said, "I've turned nineteen now . . . as of July."
Tonks was shading her eyes with her hand while eating. Across from her Andromeda was enjoying the confusion and did not look likely to help.
Harry went on, "I finished school years ago, well, over a year ago. Completed a pile of N.E.W.T.s and everything." Feeling defensive and hearing it in his voice, Harry took a deep breath and stopped talking.
"Really?" Mr. Tonks asked in confusion. "Hard to imagine you as anything but little Harry Potter." He held his hand out at seated shoulder height. Maybe taller than a house-elf, but not by much.
Harry shut his mouth, which was hanging open. "I've finished a whole year of the Auror Apprenticeship," he said after regrouping, working hard on a factual voice. Maintaining the conversation had resulted in his not eating much. He thought he had managed to get his point across, but Mr. Tonks said, "If you don't like that, you can skip ahead to dessert. We have chocolate ice cream."
Harry almost said yes, but his pride would not let him. "This is fine," he said, completely at a loss.
Back in Shrewsthorpe where Tonks waited for Harry's guard to report, Tonks said, "Sorry about that."
"Not your fault," Harry said. But then shook his head and held his hand out. "Little Harry Potter? Hello?"
Tonks laughed but it was mostly embarrassment.
Harry said, "No wonder you didn't want to go to dinner with your parents."
"See, I tried to explain to him when I told my mum, but he completely misunderstood when I said I wanted to spend more time with you off-duty. He thought . . . I don't know . . . that I was doing what the Order always did, you know, keeping a close eye on you now that Dumbledore was gone. Heck, then he so misunderstood, I feared he would start to understand. Do you understand?"
Harry laughed. "Yes, actually."
She shrugged, blush visible in the dim main hall light where only a few candles in the chandelier were lit. "You know, for a long time you were Little Harry Potter, this . . . child . . . with far too big of things to do. He can't get beyond that."
Harry admitted, "I sometimes have trouble looking at the old photographs from first and second year at Hogwarts. I worry about the lightning-scarred kid in the picture. I can't help it. So I sort of understand what your dad is thinking. It's getting harder to imagine those days, in fact. I know so much magic now . . . I wonder how the heck that kid is possibly going to survive without having a clue."
Tonks said, "You didn't get any mead at dinner . . . do you have any in the house? I could use another too."
Harry turned to go to the kitchen, but Tonks caught up to him. "I haven't cleared the house," Tonks said, arresting his progress. "Not to treat you like my dad was . . . but I have to treat you like my dad was for just two minutes while I check things out."
Harry stood in the center of the hall and watched her disappear down the stairs leading to the kitchen. She reappeared shortly after, saying, "Winky says it's all right." But she checked all the ground floor rooms anyhow. Harry continued to wait while she checked the first floor, finding strong comfort in basic duty, as he had since his return to his own world. Her attentive progress around the house represented something so utterly lacking in that other place that he found no will to be annoyed with it, even post-dinner with Mr. Tonks.
"Candide working late again?" Tonks asked after sticking her head in the bedroom.
"November is the end of the accounting year for most wizard businesses, so she's quite busy starting in September."
"I'm surprised Severus doesn't suggest she quit," Tonks said upon returning to stand beside Harry. Winky appeared with a tray and two tall ceramic cups of mead.
"I don't think she'd want to."
Cupping their drinks in both hands, they sat down and the house settled around them. "When's the baby expected?" Tonks asked between sips.
"Early March sometime. I forget the date."
"Severus ready to be a dad?" Like most people, she could not help grinning while asking this.
"He already is one," Harry pointed out.
"That's not the same." Tonks waved Harry off dismissively.
Harry felt a stab of annoyance and drank his mead with more purpose.
- 888 -
"Come on up here, Potter," Rodgers said the next Monday during training. While Harry obeyed, Rodgers announced, "Harry's comments about working on power made me realize I've grown too easy on you all."
Tridant made a noise halfway between a squeak and an erp.
Pretending not to hear, even though he grinned more, Rodgers went on, "So we are going to push you all a bit more every day and see if we can't squeeze a little more magic out of each of you over time."
When Harry took up a position across from him, wand out, Rodgers said to him, "All I heard about all weekend from Kingsley is how much he prefers partnering with you. Get ready with a Chrysanthemum . . ." He fired off a curse, which Harry blocked. "Got a little old, I'll admit." Then the same curse repeated with more behind it. Then again. Harry's wand began to vibrate when the curses hit his block.
"Shall I go back to making trouble during my shadowing?" Harry asked, trying to be cute.
Rodgers gave him a mocking grin and changed curses. Harry hit the wall.
"You all right?" Rodgers asked with an amused laugh as Harry righted himself.
Harry's head still hurt from striking it on the mantelpiece at the Tonks house, otherwise, he would not have any complaints. "Fine, sir."
"You need to put more focus in the front AND back of that block for a Gorgon Curse. Try again."
Harry did not complain as he sat down, even though his body did. He wanted to get better at handling someone with stronger magic than himself, and if getting beaten up a little every day like he used to was what it took, then so be it. Harry nursed his elbow, wishing for a little ice. Up at the front of the room Aaron managed four blocks in a row and then completely blew the same one on the next spell.
Rodgers said, "You have to concentrate, Wickem. You have it in you, you just don't always pull it out and use it."
Kerry Ann snickered. Rodgers directed his wand at her. "Don't laugh; you're next."
Tridant did well; he fared almost as well as Aaron, albeit on a limited set of attacks since he had not yet learned nearly as many attack-counter combinations as the rest of them.
"Getting better," Rodgers said when he finally released him. Tridant nearly lost his footing at the praise and had to put a hand on Vineet's desk.
Vineet was last and Rodgers went much easier on him for a few rounds. "Everyone else gives you a Counter workout every day, I think. Why don't you give me one. Everyone is having fun but me." He gestured with a come-hither of his hand that he was ready. "Hard as you want . . . you're like me, holding back all the time."
Vineet cast a Blasting Curse at him and Rodgers used a rubber shield that deflected it under him as he jumped over it awkwardly. He stood straight. "Holy Merlin. I guess I should worry less that your blocks aren't what they should be." He stretched his shoulders back. "Okay, something else this time. Mix it up a little."
Harry's week continued on in this rough vein, including getting called onto duty with Tonks late on Thursday night. They, and every on-duty Auror and available personnel from Reversal were called to the scene of what Harry at first thought was a building fire: Blue and yellow flames licked out of smashed windows. Powerful lights cast circular beams on the scene.
Harry slopped through the puddles surrounding the fire trucks, following behind Tonks. In their black robes, disguise spells were barely needed, but by the time they passed the second truck, Tonks appeared to be in a rubber coat, baggy trousers and bulky boots. Harry made similar but not nearly as convincing or easy changes to his clothes.
The fire personnel were sitting on the curb, comically interspersed with civilians, including a woman in a nightgown and nightcap, her little white dog asleep in her arms. Reversal had just finished going down the line, issuing Memory Charms to the lot of them.
Harry had at least ten questions begging to get answered. He kept silent and waited for instructions while Shacklebolt, Mr. Weasley, and other Ministry personnel talked. Shacklebolt said to Tonks, "Keep an eye on him," in reference to Harry. "Lot of confusion, anything could happen."
Tonks turned. "Come on, Harry."
Harry still felt a new seriousness to his duty, an impersonal seriousness that made it easy to say: "Should I go wait elsewhere? I don't want to be in the way."
She peered at him in the flashing, reflecting light, almost like that on a dance floor. "No, just stay close to me. Kingsley's just reminding me that guarding you is my priority right now."
They circled the building around to the far side and Tonks began laying down Muggle repelling barriers. Harry did not ask if he could help; if she wanted help, she would ask. He did keep an eye out through the dark trees and the dancing shadows beyond them on the surrounding buildings. Around the front, Reversal was canceling the spells that were causing the place to burn, brick and all. Clearly it was a magical fire, rather than the normal kind.
Beside him, Tonks said, "Get ready, as soon as the fire is just heat-based, they'll release the Befuddlement on the Muggle fire brigade and we'll have to get out of the way."
Harry again forced the questions down. He kept his wand up, eyes never resting anywhere for long. At Tonks' signal, they returned to the Ministry, their Apparition noise lost in the crack and pop of the fire.
Harry stood against the wall in the Auror's office. Reports were assembled, casual debriefings ensued. He took a seat at Rogan's empty desk and picked through the stack of Daily Prophets stashed on the overhead shelf. There wasn't much of interest to read about and after flipping through three issues, one after the other, it occurred to Harry that the sports pages had by far the best photographs. Harry watched Krum sailing around at an International Invitational match and read that article with more interest than the one about training gnomes to care for begonias that occupied the page before it. The next section on the stack had been folded in strange ways. Harry turned it over and found Fudge giving a press conference. Fudge's statements read like a bizarre litany of reverse Memory charms. Fudge claimed that the current Ministry was "acting too slowly to combat new trouble" and "falling back on old thinking despite it not working" and "not calling for help from our international partners in a time of need." Harry scoured the rest of that issue, but it was not made clear what exactly the "trouble" was purported to be. Harry had an idea what it could be, but oddly it was never really stated literally for the record.
At the end of the article, the author stated that when asked for comment on Fudge's comments, the Minister for Magic had nothing of substance to say on the topic. Other witches and wizards were interviewed and all agreed that something should be done, about whatever it was. Harry rapidly shook his head to clear it. The byline on the article was Mediastinus Delatio, whom Harry had not met, that he could remember.
Harry folded the paper back the way it had been and put it back with its fellows. He had field shadowing again the next day and considered that he better get used to this routine since, after his training was completed, every day of every week would be like this.
- 888 -
Friday after his field shadowing, Harry wanted to go out, but Tonks did not think it a good idea. She was tired from the double shift and lay down at Harry's insistence for an afternoon nap. Harry sat with Kali in his hands, trying to get a better sense for what his pet felt. He pulled one of her leathery wings out straight and let it go again, repeating this until he could catch the feel of that through his link with her. Her wings were marred by long, vivid scars from battling the demons at Malfoy Manor, but the old wounds did not bother her; he knew this because when he traced the bubbly lines he felt no distress from her.
"Shall we give it a try?" Harry asked her in a whisper, holding her up to stare closely at into her beady eyes. He carried her to the open window and commanded: "No pigeons."
With her wings pumping rapidly in the evening light, his pet resembled a violet puffball sailing over the garden wall. Sitting on his trunk, Harry closed his eyes and tried to see out of his pet's instead. She dived and swooped disconcertingly, lights and the twilight sky streaking diagonally one way and then the other. Harry had to grab hold of the solid window sill to keep his mind and dinner from rebelling. The distress grew and Harry lost contact with his pet. He used an Occlumency technique to clear his own emotions and imagined flying. This was relaxing but it did not bring his pet's direct experience back. Harry huffed and cupped his hands to the glass of the window to try to spot her, but she had flown out of sight.
The Chimrian would not fly far, Harry knew. She would hunt moths and night birds and return when she was satiated. On a whim Harry imagined being hungry and Kali came into his head and went away again like a passing cloud. Closing his eyes, he repeated this and found her more clearly this time and tried hard to hold onto her. When his vision of the streetlamps and passing car lights stabilized, he tried to steer her. She resisted, tugged side to side by scents drifting on the wind. Harry heard something unexpected: a woman's emotionally distressed voice raised high. He opened his eyes. Tonks lay soundly asleep on the bed and nothing stirred in the room. Harry held his breath and listened, but the occasional car out on the road was all he heard.
Realizing that Kali must have been the one who heard the voice, Harry closed his eyes again and searched for her. This took a few minutes, since she had been successful at hunting moths around a street light and was no longer as famished. Her vision swam in and out of Harry's mind's eye. When he heard the voice again, his instinct was strong enough to make Kali turn her head to tune into it better with her keen ears. She swerved in the direction of it on her own, picking up on Harry's curiosity.
Through her distorted, careening, fish-eye view Harry discerned the Peterson house with its tall glowing peaked windows. Harry thought he recognized the voices alternately yelling and he snapped back to his bedroom.
"Tonks!" Harry said, shaking her leg to wake her.
She sat halfway up with a jerk and grabbed up her wand while rubbing her eyes. "Yeah? What is it?"
"I think something is happening at the Peterson house. A fight or something with Mr. Peterson. We need to go over there." Harry was on his feet, straightening his robes and finding his shoes.
Tonks fell back onto the bed. "If it's a domestic, call the Muggle police."
Harry stared at her reposed form. "I don't want to leave this to the Muggles; Elizabeth and her mum are witches."
Tonks, groggy with fatigue, said, "You said the dad forbid magic over there, that makes it a Class Six household."
"Well . . ." Harry said, trying to find an argument because he had not expected this reaction.
"Call the Muggles in, Harry," she said, shifting her feet, making her boney knees more apparent.
"No," Harry said, now annoyed. "Elizabeth is my friend." Harry had found his shoes and he tugged them on hurriedly.
Tonks sat up. "You have to wait for me," she scolded.
"Hurry up, then," Harry scolded back.
Tonks, well practiced at jumping into duty, was up quickly. Harry Disapparated for the front steps of the Peterson house and listened, wishing for Kali's sensitive hearing, but his pet was off hunting again. He knocked on the door just as Tonks arrived behind him, wand out.
"You can hear the fight?" Tonks asked.
Harry shook his head. Tonks stashed her wand away. "Better pretend its a social call, then," she advised.
Harry put his wand away as the lights showing through the windows framing the door shifted to indicate closer ones had been switched on. The door clicked and Mrs. Peterson, more mousey than Harry imagined she could behave, cracked open the door and peered out at them.
"Hi," Harry said and, unable to concoct a neighborly reason for standing there, asked, "Everything all right?"
Somewhere inside the house a door slammed. Mrs. Peterson flinched backward. Mr. Peterson's voice filtered down the broad, white-carpeted stairs: "I know you've got one of those sinister things!" Pounding sounded and Mrs. Peterson partly closed the door, except her face was still blocking her from completely sealing it. The voice said, "And I told you I'd take it away if I caught you with another one!"
Harry reached out to push the door open farther, despite Rodger's voice in his memory telling him that barring clear danger to someone's life or limb, he should wait for an invitation. "Can we come in?" Harry asked. More banging sounded.
The door closed a little more. Harry, with a full Auror standing behind him, knew he was going to violate his training in Ministry rules and go in anyhow. He felt both light and heavy at the same time. Light with the knowledge of his imminent transgression against carefully drilled procedure and heavy with the notion that ongoing training would limit him from future transgression when he wished it would not.
He stopped the door with his foot. Mrs. Peterson hesitated. Tonks remained silent behind him.
"Open this door, young lady!" Filtered down with more pounding. "Ouch! What did you do to this door, you little witch! This is my house and I'll have none of that!"
Harry wished Elizabeth knew how to Apparate. A standstill fell briefly upon the house. Harry hoped that Mr. Peterson had given up, and perhaps he had, but just as Harry opened his mouth to ask again to be allowed inside, the sound came down of a door opening and banging against plaster.
"This what you want?" Elizabeth's nearly hysterical voice bounced down the stairwell.
"Don't you point that thing at me, young lady!"
Harry Disapparated for the upstairs corridor. Mr. Peterson had a tight hold on the wrist of his daughter's wand hand and was forcing her aim away, making the cords in Elizabeth's wrist stand out.
"Let me go!" Elizabeth shouted, voice strained. She pounded her father's arm with her free hand. A blast of hot sparks erupted from the wand and Mr. Peterson shoved Elizabeth away from him, hard enough to knock her down and make her cry out in surprise.
Harry jumped in between them as Tonks and Mrs. Peterson arrived. Harry left his wand in his pocket since he was dealing with a Muggle, but itched to have it in his hand.
"What are you doing in my house!" Mr. Peterson snarled, spittle flying from his angry mouth. He grabbed Harry by the front of his robes and jerked him forward, using his height and surprise to pull Harry onto his toes. Harry used a move he had learned from Vineet, and he swept his arm in an upward arc to break the man's grasp.
"Stop it," Harry ordered, catching his feet and settling into a low stance. Behind him he could hear Elizabeth rising with a single sob and her mother moved to help her. Harry did not trust the man in front of him enough to glance around. "What is your problem?" Harry asked him, furious.
"Get out of my house," Mr. Peterson ordered, low and nasty, head cocked forward, comb over flipped outward. "You have no right to be here."
"We'll leave as soon as we're certain everything will remain calm," Tonks informed the man with annoying calm.
"What are you supposed to be?" Mr. Peterson said to the pink-Mohawked Tonks. "You a double freak?"
"Leave her out of this," Harry said, stepping between the two of them now.
"This is all your doing." Mr. Peterson said, grabbing Harry again. Before Harry could react Mr. Peterson pushed him into the wall. Harry had been tossed against walls by spells all week, but this physical move triggered something new. He straightened himself slowly, keeping his back pressed flat. Across from him, Elizabeth nursed a bruise darkening her cheek. Her tragically unhappy, red-rimmed eyes peered at her father.
The white corridor darkened despite the copious, powerful electric lighting. Mrs. Peterson glanced up at the ceiling lamps in consternation. Harry remained pressed to the wall, breathing fast. He could feel things clambering at the interstice. It made his skin itch as they clawed at the barrier just beyond the walls, eager, hungry. They could smell Harry's fury and anger and they believed it meant a feeding was imminent. Harry imagined Mr. Peterson's horror should he unleash them and with effort, squashed the imagining. Blinking, Harry watched Tonks move in, hand held up to calm Mr. Peterson, other hand on her wand pocket.
Harry pushed himself away from the wall to stand straight, trying to bottle up all the anger. Too much had escaped already and Mr. Peterson, arguing insultingly with Tonks, deserved something. The creatures prowled and circled, impatient with a frantic hunger that made Harry breathe faster in fear.
Elizabeth disappeared into her room and reappeared with a trunk which, after a hissing argument with her mother, she hovered while biting her lip defiantly and rubbing her wrist. Harry went over to her, needing something concrete to distract himself.
"Can I take you to your friend's place?" Harry asked.
"You've never been there," Elizabeth said.
Impatient and a little rough, he grabbed her chin and pulled her gaze to his. "Just think of it."
Startled, she complied. To Tonks, Harry said, "I'll be right back."
Moments later, they stood in the entry hall of a quiet flat. They both breathed heavily in the stale air.
"She must be out," Elizabeth said shakily.
Jarred out of thoughts of hungry demons by her voice and the change of venue, Harry took over her trunk and set it inside. "Sit down, I'll wait with you," he said, despite what he had just said to Tonks.
She put her hands on his robe front. "You have to go right back," she insisted with surprising presence. Having her close was doing strange things to him, sending a flutter over his abdomen. She added firmly, "I don't want to get you into trouble. Go on." She let go and crouched beside her trunk and started plucking things out of it and setting them on the floor in neat piles. "Thanks," she said without looking back at him.
"You're going to be all right here?"
"Yeah, Diane will be fine with it. She kept insisting . . ." She trailed off and shook her head.
"I'll come back when I can; make sure everything is set," Harry said, thinking she was right, that he was going to be in trouble for leaving. "Owl . . . well, it's a little far . . . and you don't have an owl, anymore. Er, I'll come back first chance I get. I might have to bring my guard."
She looked up with a faint smile. "Thanks, Harry," she said wistfully.
Back in Shrewsthorpe, Harry arrived back in the upstairs hallway and found it empty. He found Tonks interviewing the Petersons downstairs by the front door. Mr. Peterson sent visual daggers Harry's way as he took up a spot beside the Auror. Tonks half-turned to Harry and he could hear her sigh between questions.
"That's all for now," Tonks said tiredly, flipping her notebook closed. "You'll be hearing from us with some follow-up paperwork, I'm sure."
On the way down the pavement, Tonks said, "They cooperated all right. They were grateful we hadn't called in the Muggle police." When Harry remained silent, striding rapidly beside her, Tonks added, "Not an Auror-level call. Usually Reversal handles these and refers it to the Wizard Family Council for followup."
Harry still kept silent. He was uncertain how angry he might get if he started talking. The creatures had retreated, but in addition to not wanting a fight with Tonks, he did not want to feel them prowling around again.
Tonks gave up on conversation and they were both silently grateful when she changed shifts with Hornisham. Harry thought they could work it out later, especially if they had not actually let a real argument get started.
After Tonks had gone, Harry quickly wrote out a note for Candide and told Hornisham that he needed to run an errand. Hornisham repacked the knitting she had pulled out and stood by the hearth to join him.
On the hill above Hogsmeade, in the waning evening light, Harry argued with his guard. "I really need to go speak to someone, alone."
Hornisham glared back, stubborn in the face of Harry's misplaced anger. "I don't care what you want. I'm on duty to see you come to no harm and that's what I aim to do."
"Look," Harry said. He stepped back and transformed into his animagus form, flapped twice and transformed back. "I'll fly up to the school like that. Will that be okay?"
She stared at him like a Third-Year on her first trip to Honeydukes. "A Mountain Gryffylis. Can I see that again?" she asked in dazed wonderment.
Harry dropped his anger and obliged. He tilted his cat-like head at her and shook himself before changing back.
"Yer one dangerous creature, aren't you?" she asked. "Well, I doubt anyone would bother you if'n yer like that. I'll wait over in the Hog's Head for you."
Once Harry took flight from Hogsmeade, he could not resist circling the lake and a taking a short, weaving flight over the Forbidden Forest. His Animagus form did not care that it was delaying, it just liked to feel the autumn breeze buffeting its fur.
The Defense office window was dark as was Hermione's window, so Harry flapped hard to reach the roof and landed on the slate, taking care not to knock any tiles loose with his claws. A steady breeze poured through the gap in the hills behind him. He pulled his wings tight to avoid catching it, but found he needed them for balance, and so he spread them again, but kept them angled and loose to not catch air and send him flying again.
With his animal eyes he watched the people walking on the street in Hogsmeade, alternating between orange and shadow as they moved from storefront to storefront. A mist moved in over the lake, radiant in the twilight.
Harry decided he should not wait any longer. He launched himself on newly fresh wings and dropped down to Lupin's lit window and transformed into himself with his toes just clinging to the outside sill.
Lupin answered his knock immediately. "Well, Harry," he said, putting his wand away. "Didn't expect to find you there. Wasn't certain whom to expect, really. Come on in."
A young student in Slytherin colors sat at the visitor's desk, eyes wide, mouth open. Harry said hello to the girl, but she did not respond.
"Do you know where Severus is?" Harry asked Lupin.
"He's in a meeting with Minerva. Rough board meeting yesterday, I hear. They're plotting something."
"The board, or Severus and Minerva?" Harry asked, honestly uncertain.
Lupin laughed. "Both, I expect. They've been at it almost two hours. I expect you could go on up. But, aren't you supposed to have a guard?"
"She's waiting in Hogsmeade for me. She agreed that in my Animagus form, in transit to the castle, I wasn't in any danger." Harry started to step away, but stopped to ask. "How are things with you?"
Lupin smiled, doubling the crinkling around his eyes. "Quite good, surprisingly."
Harry put his own concerns aside and enjoyed that answer. He almost asked how his cousin was, but held off in the presence of the student. "I'll stop by on my way out," Harry promised.
With a slightly lighter heart, Harry made his way to the Headmistress' Tower. Guessing the password required three minutes of racking his brains for types of tea and coffee. "Macchiato" finally worked and the gargoyles leapt aside. Harry stared at the turning staircase, lost in overlapping memory for several breaths. As bad as suspicion of him sometimes became, as bloodyminded and annoying as the Ministry could be, this place, with everything in order as it should be, acted like a balm on his nerves. Harry stepped onto the stairs and rode it to the top, looking forward to seeing McGonagall, even as reluctant as he was to explain to his guardian what had transpired that evening.
"Harry, what a pleasant surprise," McGonagall greeted him when the door swung open. Snape's eyes came up from the scroll before him, keen, as expected.
"Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to talk to Severus for a few minutes."
"Of course, my boy, this meeting has gone on far too long already."
"Is there a problem with the board?" Harry asked Snape as his guardian rolled the scroll before him and tossed the tassels around it.
McGonagall answered. "Some pressure to make changes that we are not certain are in the best interests of the school. This sort of tug of war goes on all the time, but I feel this time, we are the rope rather than the mud puddle as we usually are." To Snape, she said, "You can go on. I'll finish composing this letter to Cornelius and run it by you in the morning before sending it off."
On the way to Snape's office, Harry asked, "What's Fudge want?"
"Power, so he does not feel as insignificant as he actually is," Snape replied.
"More specifically, I meant," Harry said. "He's been talking to the press like he's in charge of everything. I don't get it."
Snape waited until the clusters of students had finished greeting Harry and moved on. "What exactly is it that is unclear?"
"He's just head of the Department of Mysteries. I guess I don't understand why Minister Bones doesn't slap him down."
Snape unsealed his office door. "I expect because she is busy with real work. But I agree, she has probably missed her chance to do so without creating a stir while doing it."
"Did I say that?" Harry asked, confused.
"You implied it. I assumed intentionally," Snape said with a slight sneer as he waved the lamps up. "Sit down. I assume Fudge is not what is on your mind." He himself leaned back against his desk where he could tower over the visitor's chair.
Harry took a seat and rested his eyes on a crowded shelf behind the desk. "You wanted me to tell you what was going on with me."
"Yes, I did. What is going on?" When Harry hesitated, Snape asked, "Is this a complimentary status report or did something happen this evening?"
"Something happened."
Into the empty air that ensued while Harry formulated, Snape prompted, "But you are reluctant to say exactly what?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed.
Snape rubbed his hands together before propping them back on the desk edge behind him. "Does anything require fixing at this time?"
"What? No. Everything's all right right now." True, Harry reminded himself, things could be much worse.
"What happened?" Snape asked.
Harry tossed his head to the side, uneasily dipping into memory. "Elizabeth got into a row with her father . . . over magic, of course. I don't know how bad it would have got if we hadn't intervened, Tonks and I, that is. Mr. Peterson was as angry as I've ever seen my uncle Vernon. He wasn't rational. And . . . Tonks wasn't happy. Thought we should leave it to the Muggle police. I think she's jealous, partly." Harry sighed and rubbed his neck, more pained about everything. "Anyhow, the bad part was when I was trying to separate Mr. Peterson and Elizabeth. I mean, they were fighting. And I got angry. I mean, how could someone do that to their daughter. Well, not like Elizabeth wasn't part of it, but still."
Harry faded out, remembering the scene, Elizabeth's mussed hair and red, distressed face. The way she nursed her wrist.
"And?" Snape prompted.
"You know, I told you how I fed Voldemort, the other Voldemort, to the Raksashas." No response came to this. "Well, they seem to, er, expect that now. If I'm really angry at someone, that is."
Snape stood in stillness, arms crossed but relaxed. "Did you let them into this world?"
"No," Harry said. "No, nothing happened. I just didn't like the . . . feel of it. I had more control over them before, I thought. This time I was angry enough that I could feel the Dark Plane. It was too close, and the creatures . . . they expected to be fed. It felt awful, their hunger did." Harry rubbed his nose. "I don't know how to explain it. It's not like I had to do anything for them, but they were right there, not visible but really close by and they just expected."
Harry sighed again and slowed his breathing. "Maybe I'm over-reacting."
"No." Snape stepped casually around Harry to stand by the window. The one Harry had once repaired with glass beyond which demons swam. "You are not over-reacting." He sounded far away as he spoke and perhaps a little tired, which gave Harry a twinge because he had rendered Tonks into the same state. "I can only implore you to leave the Dark Plane alone, but I know you will not do so. The temptation of it is too strong, if only for the power it gives you to move at will, barrier or not, in utter silence."
He spun on his heel and faced Harry down. "Did you get the sense that the creatures were angry with you as a result of your resisting them?"
"No," Harry replied. "They don't get anything if I don't give it to them."
Sharply, critically, Snape said, "You treat them too lightly."
"I have to," Harry argued, to growing annoyance on Snape's side. "You don't seem able to understand that." Harry pointed at his own chest. "Either I have confidence that I control them or I lose myself to them, completely. That's how this works."
Silence fell. Harry broke it by more quietly pointing out, "I've tried to explain this before."
"You have. I remember. I just cannot accept that there is no middle ground where you can respect that these creatures are not tools to be toyed with by you, without consequence."
"I didn't have any choice but to use them against Voldemort," Harry said.
"You had a choice about whether to fight Voldemort," Snape pointed out.
"Did I?" Harry asked. "It didn't feel like it."
Next: Chapter 14
At the sound of claws on the window, Snape raised his head and waved the lamps in the room up. The noise turned out to be his owl, Franklin. Snape removed the small, unaddressed missive from the owl's leg. It contained just three short lines.
Harry is having nightmares.
He will not discuss them with me.
He knows I am sending you this owl.
Author's Notes
Yes, very long gap. Life has been too much lately. It isn't getting much saner soon either, but trust that the next chapter will appear eventually.
Chapter 14 -- Chafing
Ron arrived at breakfast time on Saturday and took Hornisham's place as Harry's guard. Harry was quite pleased to see him. "Let's get out, all right?" Harry said to him before managing even "hello".
Ron shrugged and took the seat beside Harry. "Mrs. Snape," he said, greeting Candide.
Candide gestured with a rasher-laden fork. "Didn't actually change my name," she pointed out.
"Ah," Ron said, "Good plan that." He paused to let his mind drift. "How shall I call you? Harry's New Mum?"
Harry coughed on his juice.
"'Mrs. Snape' is fine," Candide stated slowly. "'Candide' is fine."
"'Mrs. Professor'," Ron suggested in a tone of trying out the sound of it.
"You gave the right passcode, didn't you?" Harry asked his friend in dismay.
"You tell me," Ron replied. A full plate of breakfast appeared before him. "All right!" he cheered lightly.
"Didn't you eat yet?"
"I did," Ron said, eagerly picking up his fork while carefully surveying the diverse field before him.
"Guess you are Ron," Harry commented quietly.
Ron, still chewing a sausage, asked Candide, "So, what names are you thinking of?"
Harry pricked his head up. Candide replied, "Apuleius maybe. Argentio is nice too."
"Ah, so you haven't got to the Bs in the book yet," Ron said, nodding knowingly. "I have an aunt named Argentinia," he went on between bites. "But that's because they were running out of girls names on that side. That's how my mum got the name 'Molly'. They say granddad really meant to say 'golly!' but his mouth was full at the time, or so the story goes."
Harry and Candide shared a silent laugh.
"Such big families," Harry said, shaking his head. "I can't imagine."
"Ready for a brother, right?" Candide asked with amused force.
Harry did not want her to worry about him, of all things. "Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. It's just a baby. How hard could that be?"
Candide seemed to freeze, but then she said, "I hope you're right, but I somehow don't think you are."
"Oh," Harry said. "What are babies like?" he asked Ron.
Ron raised and lowered his boney shoulders. "Loud, smelly. They get into things. Sometimes magic comes flying off of them and then their nappies won't stay on . . . you'll find them dangling from the chandelier in there..."
"The baby or the nappies?" Harry asked, not sure he wanted to hear which.
Ron did not reply, just went on with: "The windows will all shatter from this hyper-magic crying . . ." He waved his hand dismissively. "You wouldn't believe what happened when my cousin took her baby daughter to a croquet match once. They never did find all the hoops."
Given Candide's quizzically alarmed expression, Harry thought it best to interrupt. "Well, we should go, maybe."
Harry, as a quick way of coming up with a plan, mentioned that it was certainly looking like a great day to stroll up and down Diagon Alley, and he dragged his friend off to do just that.
Half the wizarding world was out that morning, it seemed, and as well as recognizing many old school chums, they encountered Aaron, window shopping before Madam Malkin's.
"Don't you have field work?" Harry asked.
Aaron gave the hand sign for "taking care of it", which may, as strange as it seemed, mean he was doing his field work right then. Aaron turned and greeted Ron a bit loudly, and chummily suggested they enter the store. The shopkeeper glanced up and gave the fleeting impression that she had expected someone else.
Aaron perused the racks in the manner of a connoisseur who expects to be disappointed with absolutely everything. He made a big scene of looking for robes for a nice dinner out with his mum.
Madam Malkin shuffled over to him, sliding the racks of robes around to better reach him. "Well, what will your father be wearing, dear?" she asked him.
"If he has the misfortune of being there, it would presumably be in the same tailcoat we buried him in three years ago."
Madam Malkin held her hands up then placed one on Aaron's arm. "So, sorry, young man, I should have remembered that. You are certainly in here often enough. Well, how about this one." She held up a green set of robes with maroon lace trim. "I found it in the warehouse. Vintage, from Italy."
Harry thought there was absolutely no chance his dapper friend would even consider those quaint and studiously old-fashioned robes, but Aaron held them up in the light of the window for inspection, and took a long time about it.
Ron nudged Harry, who also thought it may be time to move on. But Harry also suspected something more was going on, so he brushed Ron off. Indeed, not five minutes later--while Aaron stood before the triptych mirror in the back of the store, alternately studying the decorative back hem and checking the sleeve length on a set of robes for which it was frankly surprising that neither he nor they burst spontaneously into flames upon his donning them--the door chime mutely clanged and three skulky figures entered.
There was something odd about the tri-some that was not immediately quantifiable. They resembled two brothers and a sister in their mid-twenties, but Harry did not recognize them from Hogwarts as he would expect to. Aaron went on, deliberating about the robes, sounding spoiled about what he disliked, but Madam Malkin dutifully agreed with everything he said.
One of the wizards circled around, desultorily shopping, and came up short upon encountering Harry beside the mirror. He recovered and moved on with a quick gesture to the other two that would have been easy to miss if one were not looking for it. They gathered in the far corner and the woman shifted robes on a rack while they bent their heads together. Aaron's gaze flickered over to them and then to Harry before he resumed his unsatisfiable shopper routine.
Harry bit his lip. He was in the way, perhaps. Aaron was on duty; Harry was certain now. He was staking out the shop and Harry was disrupting that. But Aaron could have suggested Harry leave before now and had not done so. Harry casually made a comment to Aaron about the green color not being flattering to him because it would imply he was proud of being a Slytherin. Aaron sent a surprised and insulted look his way, but Harry missed it; he was glancing at the group in the corner, determined to memorize their faces, which wasn't easy; they were very ordinary looking beyond their dark, shiny hair. No particular features of their faces stood out to make note of.
The group broke out of their whispered conversation and departed the store with a last challenging glance at Harry. Ron had started to search the business attire rack out of sheer boredom and noticed none of this. Aaron sighed at his image in the mirror and slipped off the robes like one removing a sweaty uniform after a long match.
"Oh, you don't want those?" Ron said brightly. "Can I try them?"
Aaron peered down at the robes, bundled like rubbish in his hands, and then back up at Ron. For a second he seemed to contemplate intervening and refusing, but he handed the robes over and relinquished the spot before the mirrors.
"They do look better on Ron," Harry whispered to Aaron a few minutes later while Ron studied himself in the mirror. Indeed the lace matched his hair and that made a world of difference.
"I have a spare Slytherin pin you can borrow," Aaron suggested when Ron pinched the neck closed with his fingers and lifted his chin with a staid air.
"Was I in the way?" Harry asked Aaron in a whisper.
"No," Aaron said, shaking his head while critically eyeing Ron.
"Was that part of the gang that came in here?" Harry asked.
"Probably," Aaron replied, far more interested in Ron's attire than Harry's conversation.
"Well . . . we should go back to the Ministry then," Harry insisted. "I remember what they look like."
"No, you don't," Aaron calmly countered.
Harry stared at him. "I don't?"
"Shacklebolt said they'd probably be Rho-Potioned and you couldn't know what they really looked like."
"Row-Potioned?" Harry repeated. He'd never heard of that.
"Did you see them with all black hair too?" Aaron asked.
"Yeah."
"Hm. Kingsley said the potion had a regression to the mean effect. So maybe they are from somewhere south."
Harry shook his head, not following at all.
Aaron leaned closer to explain. "The potion makes you appear as an average of everyone you've ever met. So, you can't tell what they look like, but you know they aren't from, say, Sweden."
"Right," Harry said, following that part, at least.
"I better go report in." Aaron said. "Shacklebolt said to come right back if anything happens, and on top of that, I can't stand to watch real Galleons get put down for those robes . . . no matter how good they look on someone. Or maybe because they are starting to look good on someone."
- 888 -
Rodgers teased Harry on Monday during training. "We must not be giving Potter enough field time . . . he's repeatedly went out hunting for his own over the weekend." Harry's fellows grinned, while Harry stared at his fingernails. Rodgers went on, "If you want more assignments, I have one for you. Fudge wants a few Aurors assigned to him half-time. I'm half-tempted to half-send you, if you are so bored."
Harry balked. "Fudge and I don't get along very well."
"Really? I hadn't noticed," Rodgers stated airily. "Fudge wants to form a permanent committee to focus on combatting organized crime."
"Er," Harry asked even though it pained him to support Fudge, "Don't we need that?"
Rodgers raised a pale brown brow and glared at Harry. "We don't have time for committees. Fudge used to do this to us all the time. Six months of pulling us one way and then tugging us to something completely different for the next six months. All the time, meetings and reports. We never accomplished anything and as soon as we turn our backs on all the other problems to jump on one alone, all heck in a handbasket breaks loose and we have to scramble to just get things under control. Minister Bones has been a god-send. If she sticks her nose in, it's just to ask if we need anything; she otherwise leaves us alone to get things done."
Tridant piped up when Rodgers ran out of diatribe. "The Prophet seems to think she's asleep and lacks leadership." It was not clear from his tone if he were baiting their trainer or just wanted to get a response.
Rodgers said, "I prefer to think she just trusts us to do our jobs and knows we can't do them from a meeting room or stuck behind a dictation quill. Let them use their own personnel; we have enough of our own troubles."
During lunch, upon which Harry was forced to use the slightly stinky, poison-revealing drops, Harry fell thoughtful, perhaps due to having to eat slowly while half holding his nose. It was occurring to him that he had not felt Moody following him for quite a while. Harry dumped the remaining half of his sandwich and went to find Mr. Weasley.
Harry found the department head in the file room, leaning over a teetering stack of files on a cabinet, taking notes from the top one while pressing a finger on it to keep it from spilling onto the floor. "Hello Harry, need this drawer?" he asked, when Harry stepped over.
"I just wanted to ask you something."
Mr. Weasley closed the top file to give Harry his full attention and said, "Go on."
"Is Mad-Eye still working for the Department of Mysteries?"
"I think so," Mr. Weasley replied after glancing around the empty room for anyone possibly listening in. "Fudge has been repeatedly requesting manpower from us at the same time as he's been bragging that he has someone mysterious working for him who he claims is better than anyone we have to offer."
"Clearly, he thinks flattery will get him somewhere," Harry commented.
"What? Oh, yes," Mr. Weasley chuckled. "Clearly." He sorted through his files seemingly at random and said, "You should come for dinner this Wednesday, the whole clan will be there."
"I'd like that, thanks," Harry said.
Harry had started to turn back to the heavy door, but stopped when Mr. Weasley asked, "May I inquire what made you ask about Moody?"
"Oh," Harry said, not meaning to be opaque. "I was just thinking that I hadn't noticed him following me lately. Not that I'm complaining."
"If Cornelius is giving him the kind of pointless assignments I know he's expecting of us, I expect Moody is rather busy. More so now because the Department of Mysteries had one of their technicians injured in that fire Thursday night."
"They did?" Harry asked.
"Yes. It was just announced this morning to the Ministry at large. Probably will be in the press this afternoon."
"What started the fire?" Harry asked. "Was it an accident or a fight?"
Mr. Weasley sighed, gave Harry a firm look, and then appeared to give in, "Looks like an accident right now. Felton had taken some work home and it got out of hand. He's expected to recover eventually."
"What was he working on?"
Mr. Weasley smiled faintly as he said, "Too many questions, Harry." He scratched his head, tapped the files before him and admitted, "Department of Mysteries refused to give us a straight answer to that anyhow. I expect Alastor will get to the bottom of it for them, since they haven't told us enough to help, really. Moody is sharp enough to handle it, I expect."
Harry was less certain. "I wonder who was following him," he muttered aloud.
Mr. Weasley returned his full attention to Harry. "Following whom, Moody?"
Harry recovered from having spoken his internal musings. "Yeah. He accused me of doing it."
"He accused you? I'd expect he'd realize you've seen enough of him."
Harry shrugged, which was a kind of lie, since he knew very well why Moody suspected Harry of being skilled enough to slip within Moody's copious warning barriers undetected, should he care to.
"Maybe Alastor really should retire for good," Mr. Weasley said, shaking his head. "So! I can tell Molly to expect you on Wednesday?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said.
Mr. Weasley winked. "Kingsley's been praising your field shadowing. Good to see you're settling down a bit, Harry." He sounded inordinately pleased. "Still more curious than you're really allowed to be at this stage. . ."
Harry rubbed his hands together. "I've been finding it a bit easier to follow the rules lately. For some reason . . ." he added despite knowing that the rules felt better now after seeing how miserable the world would be without them.
"Probably just growing up, Harry," Mr. Weasley said patronizingly, in a way that set Harry off slightly.
"Maybe," Harry said, not conceding at all to his own mind.
During the afternoon, Rodgers had to leave them for several hours to drill on their own. When this happened again the next day, Harry and Aaron just happened to slip down to the tearoom for an unscheduled break and just happened to loiter outside the main offices, listening for any clue as to what was happening.
Harry wished for a set of Extendable Ears as he sipped a cup of tea he did not really want, just for an excuse. His fallback plan was to weasel some information out of Tonks if she turned out to be his guard that night. There in the corridor with the steaming, thin tea under his nose, Harry felt a wave of general frustration that they were not allowed to help more.
Aaron cocking his ear toward the doorway pulled Harry back to their spying. Rogan was saying: "Ragnok insists that the wizards in question are just trying to cheat them. They are threatening to close the vaults except during an hour a day and force everyone through some rather unsavory screening."
Tonks voice then: "Last time they did that Diagon Alley had to resort to barter and a few merchants started accepting pounds. It was chaos. I couldn't pay my rent and had to befuddle my landlord to avoid being thrown out of my place."
Harry and Aaron stared at each other while they listened to more descriptions of dismayed Goblins. Harry wondered again what Moody was doing for Fudge. He thought about who else he might ask. It occurred to him with a chill of realization that he could slip into the Department of Mysteries to see for himself what was happening there. He stopped listening to the Auror conversation and fixated on what he knew first-hand of the Department of Mysteries. The memories were fraught with stress and bad outcomes but within that thorny thicket, the visions of it were as clear as the paneled wall he stood before now.
"What do you think?" Aaron asked, jarring Harry away from hatching plans.
"I have to think about it more," Harry said, answering only to his own thoughts.
"Hm, sounds to me like the shakedown is taking in Gringotts," Aaron said with confidence.
"What?" Harry said, wishing he had paid more attention.
"Well, you know. Extortion and fraud, that's usually where this type make their money."
"Er, yeah," Harry agreed. His mind jumped to another mystery topic that he wished he could resolve. It occurred to him that Aaron would be an optimum guard to take on a mission to check in on Belinda. Harry had found it inconvenient to try and convince Tonks to make a social call to the Minister's office, but Aaron would not mind, nor would he ask too many questions. "Hey, if you think the other three wouldn't miss us, let's go up and see someone I want to talk to."
Aaron rubbed his elbow. "I could stand to skive off for a while longer. These power-building drills are really taking a toll on my quest for a bruise-free lifestyle."
As they headed for the stairs, Harry said with a laugh, "A bruise-free what?"
"Bruises aren't as sexy as they used to be. Healers can't do a thing for them, so I'd prefer to abstain, thank you."
Up in the Minister's office, Aaron showed just how valuable he could be . . . he sauntered over to the other assistant, hunched over a pile of reports taking notes, and began to chat her up. Harry did not think they knew each other, but within seconds Aaron had her smiling and completely distracted from everything else.
"Hello, Harry," Belinda said, looking up from a typewriter she had opened up before her, the letter-tipped metal arms splayed at random up and backwards.
"Hello," Harry returned. "Er, what are you doing?"
"Muggle correspondence." She shook her head and moved in with a tiny pick to clean out the circular letter parts. "We used to have an old witch down in records that could charm a quill to mimic a typewriter, but she retired and now we have to keep this thing running for Muggle organization-bound letters."
Harry blinked at that and considered that a typewritten letter probably looked as out of date as a quilled one these days. He watched her work for a minute, cleaning the black gunk out of the silver letter shapes and folding each one back down, repeatedly having to unfold some because they refused to go back in if pushed in the wrong order. Harry was thinking about criminal gangs and Belinda confessing that she did not want to tell anyone at the Ministry what was troubling her because she would lose her job. Belinda sighed and rubbed her blackened fingers on a white rag.
"Muggle machines aside, how are you doing?" Harry asked.
Belinda shrugged. She cleaned her hands more thoroughly with a spell before reaching under the wheeled typewriter table for a sheet of crisp real paper. The paper was fed into the rollers of the machine and adjusted with much clacking and rolling back and forth.
"Sorry, I don't mean to ignore you, but I'm behind on getting these done." She stopped and glanced at the other office assistant. Harry glanced that way too and found the woman completely involved in her conversation with Aaron.
In a low voice, Belinda said, "I've wanted to have coffee with you, but I notice that you are always under guard now. Makes it kind of hard to talk to you." She said this in a way that maybe implied Harry was at fault for the situation.
Harry imagined that she had vacillated on whether to tell him what was wrong and he wished he had not missed finding out. "I know."
The door to the Minister's office opened and Harry stood straight, not prepared to deal with Bones right then, but it was just one of the other assistants, a skinny man with rimless glasses and a shiny bald top to his head. He closed the door behind him and moved to the shelves without once glancing at the strangers in the room.
Quiet still, Harry said, "You know, if you need anything, just owl. I'll shake my guard if I have to."
"You shouldn't do that," she said, firmly correcting him. She bit her lip. "Don't shake your guard even if I ever do owl you saying you should."
The male assistant took something back into the inner office and Harry had a glimpse of Bones at her desk, reading something by holding it far from her eyes.
Harry was still trying to grasp her last statement when she said, "There's a meeting soon . . . so, you should probably go."
Harry tried to Legilimize her in the last glance before she bent back to typing by poking at one key at a time, but did not catch anything beyond an image of two Goblins carrying gold-plated briefcases.
Aaron did not need to be prompted. He caught sight of Harry stepping back from the desk and immediately closed the conversation he was having. The woman said, "Hey, we should have drinks sometime."
Aaron turned on a deadly smile and replied, "That would be lovely," without promising anything firm.
In the corridor, Harry said out of the corner of his mouth, "I'd hate to be your girlfriend."
"I'd hate for you to be my girlfriend too," Aaron agreed, deadly serious, but he laughed hardily after.
On the stairs, Aaron said wistfully, "Why is it the one you've got never seems as nice as the ones you don't?"
Harry needed the whole trip down to come up with a response. With his hand on the door latch to their floor he said, "That attitude sounds guaranteed to lead to unhappiness."
"If I had your fame, I could have anyone," Aaron said dreamily.
Harry still held the door closed. "You have money; isn't that enough?"
"It does help," Aaron agreed. "My mum still doles it out. Insists I'm not ready to have it all in a lump sum yet. I think she just wants to drag me home for luncheons at will. Potential girlfriends do not like to learn that this is the case."
Harry opened the door. "If they can't handle that, you're better off without them."
That evening, Harry unusually chaffed under having Tonks as a guard. He wanted to try slipping into the Department of Mysteries and could not work out a scheme to get enough time alone to do it. Candide came home for dinner, hair mussed, eyes sore looking. When the settings arrived with a sparkle, she carefully straightened the silverware and waited for the food while tapping her finger on the wood.
Concerned, Harry asked, "Are you going to make it through November?"
Candide brightened. "Oh yes. This has been an easy year so far."
"Really?" Harry asked.
When the plates of food arrived, Candide's was not only larger but piled with fruit on one half. Candide stared at it before popping a grape into her mouth. "Winky's started doing this to me," she commented, not sounding annoyed, but not sounding pleased either
"Maybe Severus should be here looking after you," Harry said.
"No," Candide denied, holding up a peach for examination. "I'm fine. Winky has her own ideas, is all."
"Hm," Harry muttered, unconvinced.
Candide nibbled a second grape thoughtfully and said, "He'd come home if you needed him."
"I don't. I just think you do," Harry returned.
"I don't, but if you are insisting, it makes me think you think you need him."
"What?" Harry asked with a sharp head shake.
Tonks chimed in, "This is the strangest argument I've ever witnessed."
"It's not an argument," Harry snapped lightly, then sighed sheepishly.
That night as Hornisham took over because Tonks was on duty, Harry sat partly reading and mostly thinking about how he might get away long enough to do some investigating. This restriction on him was making him ill tempered, which made it difficult to concentrate. There was nothing for it; he had to convince Mr. Weasley to cancel his guard. Of course he could hardly tell him why he needed the guard removed. And he doubted he could convince Mr. Weasley to agree. But he had to try.
Harry frowned into a small book on the history of weather hexes, specifically on a chapter covering combined spells to create storm clouds. Hornisham was knitting again, but this time the hooks and perls built up something wide and square that was unlikely to be a scarf given the heavy grinding sound of it rubbing on the hearthstone. The creak and grind of metal needle on metal cord had grown into a background noise for Harry's home life, a background noise for his lack of freedom.
Harry stared at the inexpertly typeset and crookedly printed page before him. The book would be even thinner if the margins were not so wide. He considered that he could trick Hornisham easily enough with a Doppelgänger or a Memory Charm, but that felt like too cruel a trick.
That night Harry slept poorly. He dreamed that Rodgers was unrelenting in striking him with spells. Harry refused to beg for him to stop, even when he discovered his hand empty of wand and could not find it on the floor near his knees. Battered with spells intended to improve him, Harry crouched with his hands over his head in a futile effort to protect himself.
Harry squinted around his dimly lit bedroom after Hornisham prodded him awake with a knitting needle. His trunks, against the wall where they belonged, sat in blurry stillness, as did his wardrobe. All was normal.
"Potter, Potter," Hornisham repeated in a little voice when Harry did not respond.
Harry rolled away from her to collect himself. Across the room, Kali crawled violently inside her cage for a burst, then quieted.
"Ack," Hornisham muttered and returned to her knitting.
- 888 -
Harry used dinner at the Burrow to begin the long impossible work of convincing Mr. Weasley to remove his guard. Several other early-arriving Weasleys were more than happy to throw their support behind Harry. Both Weasley parents insisted that Harry's arguing that nothing had happened to him was all the more reason to keep him under guard, not remove it. Ron refused to take sides, as did Bill. Harry let the topic drop when Percy arrived, new girlfriend in tow.
The Weasley family all stopped what they were doing, heads cranked around, bodies frozen in place, when the pair entered from the Floo. Percy led the woman in by the hand, except her hand remained a fist. Her brow and lip edge glittered with silver rings and her shoulder-length hair was of a black hue that reflected absolutely no light, so that it appeared a blurry hole following behind her face. Her clothing, with long silver chains adorning it at random, reflected slightly more light than her hair.
Percy sulkily glanced at his family members in turn and stopped before Mrs. Weasley. "Mum, this is Vespera. Vespera Eyre."
"How do you do, dear?" Mrs. Weasley managed faintly.
Vespera may have smiled, may have sneered. The others were recovering enough to send funny-faced glances at each other.
Harry did not intentionally sit beside Vespera during dinner, but at the last moment he rescued Ginny from having to do so. Percy's date was wearing something mildly cursed and it seemed to vibrate in concert with the bizarre scent of her perfume, so Harry ate little and began to contemplate going home early. Dinner was a mute affair punctuated by one or the other of the parents attempting to learn anything from Percy's date. She was entirely monosyllabic, so this was a slow, tortuous process for all present. Percy exuded an air of smugness and attempted to dote on his date whenever possible, to no reaction from her.
When Harry made to leave, to loudly expressed disappointment, Mr. Weasley started to say, "About that issue we were discussing-"
Harry cut him off. "I'll see you tomorrow about it, sir." He thought he had dodged Mr. Weasley's revelation, but Percy narrowed his eyes at his father at the far other end of the table. Harry frowned, but then considered that perhaps this was perfect. If Percy was after Harry, then him believing Harry may lose his guard could draw him out where Harry could catch him. "I'll come to your office in the morning, if that's all right, sir."
Mr. Weasley gestured that Harry could do as he pleased. Ron and Ginny and then the twins even, all jumped up to escort Harry home. Ginny was beside Harry, looking the most in need of a breather, so he chose her.
Back in Shrewsthorpe, Harry said, "I don't like the way Percy Legilimizes your dad."
Ginny replied simply, "I don't like Percy."
The house was quiet. Harry stepped into the hall and glanced around, ran the barrier detection spells, and then turned to Ginny. "I need a guard that will give me some leeway. I have some things I need to do."
"Won't Tonks give you some room?" Ginny asked, mystified.
Harry huffed. "Yeah. Good question." It pained him to wonder about it. "It involves the Ministry, so I think not."
"Harry," Ginny began but then hesitated for quite a while. "Harry, if you don't trust Tonks, you know, to tell her pretty much anything, I don't think it's going to work out, long-term."
Harry stared at her pale, freckled face in the candlelight. He did not want to say aloud that she was probably right, but part of him had already turned traitor and had started pounding on him with that notion. He should just trust Tonks and if she did not trust him in return, well, then it was not meant to be. Standing there in the dining room, with the light reflecting brightest on the glass of the framed photographs on the sideboard, it seemed far too obvious that this issue was the problem between them.
"Harry?" Ginny finally prodded.
"Yeah," Harry breathed. Not admitting to anything, just acknowledging that she was still there.
Ginny flipped her hair around, perhaps out of impatience. "Is your next guard here?"
Harry rose out of his lowly spiraling thoughts. "No."
Ginny pulled out a chair and took a seat. "I'll wait." She drummed her fingers. "If I wish for a Butterbeer, will--" A Butterbeer bottle sparkled into place before her. "That's lovely," she said happily.
Harry sat across from her. He should fetch his readings, but did not move to do so. "I'm sick to death of being guarded. I can't even remember what it was like to be alone."
"That doesn't sound that bad."
Harry gazed around the room. "I wonder where Hornisham is, or Tonks, or whomever it is supposed to be."
"You don't know?"
"No." Harry too drummed his fingers. "I could sneak away right now," he said, sitting up.
Ginny's mouth made a popping sound on the bottle top when she tugged it away suddenly. "No you aren't."
"What?"
"You're staying here. We don't know what happened to your guard and I'm not going to get reamed for losing track of you. Sit."
Harry settled back into the chair, surprised by her.
"Where is it you want to go anyhow?" she asked.
"I'm not telling you."
"Fine."
Harry crossed his arms and rotated a quarter turn away from her. A second butterbeer appeared to replace Ginny's just emptied first one. Harry pulled his wand, summoned his books and slouched far back to read.
"Maybe you should go tell your dad that my guard is late," Harry said after a while.
Ginny considered this suggestion. "Why don't we just send an owl through the Floo?"
"No owls around at the moment," Harry stated a bit stiffly.
"Boy, you are just a cheery bundle of gnome dancing this evening, aren't you? I didn't notice that earlier while you were sitting in the shadow of She-Who-Must-Not-Speak-In-Complete-Sentences." When Harry expressed some chagrin at his behavior, Ginny said, "We can both go back and tell him." She stood. "Come on."
"You know, I may just be too early returning," Harry said, reluctant to further discuss the issue of his guards in front of Percy, who may still be there.
Ginny settled back and took up her full Butterbeer. "I can wait."
Harry yearned to point out that he could defeat Voldemort, single-handed, should he choose to return that evening, so he certainly did not need a guard, but he kept silent.
Hornisham arrived shortly after Candide did. She and Ginny were involved immediately in a detailed discussion of Candide's pregnancy so far. Harry listened in, wondering at this instant connection between the two of them that seemed to spawn from nothing more than that they were both female. Hornisham was a welcome distraction. She gave the correct code word and Ginny departed with a warmer goodbye to Candide than to Harry.
That night, Harry dreamt he was attending Percy and Vespera's wedding. The tent and the guests were similar to Snape's wedding and everyone waited anxiously for the bride. She finally arrived, in the form of a black rat, who scampered down the aisle before transforming into a women in a broad-skirted black dress heaped with layers of torn black lace. Everyone quieted for the ceremony and Harry longed to leap from his flimsy folding chair to shout that something was wrong, that it all had to stop. But he stayed put, stressed dearly by feeling it best he do so.
When Harry turned to his companion to whisper his concerns, he found Snape glaring flinty-eyed at him, in a manner that suggested they shared no history. Harry rose from his chair, collapsing it loudly. The surrounding guests turned in their seats to stare. At the front, the ceremony halted and Percy lifted his nose in the air and turned away.
Harry backed off, finding concerned faces where he least expected it: like upon the Malfoy family. Harry encountered the plastic window on the tent wall with his hand. The breeze snapped the side of the tent against his back, nearly knocking him forward into the nearest chairs.
He was in the wrong place, he realized with a prickly jolt. Heart racing, Harry felt along the wall of the tent until he found an opening and slipped through out to the damp darkness. Overhead, leaves clattered ominously, casting water droplets at him. Low clouds blocked the stars. He had to get home, even if he could not remember how he had arrived in this place.
Harry's room snapped into view when a knitting needle prodded him on the leg. Kali made a fuss in her cage and Hornisham shuffled over there and opened it. Harry sat up, groggily worried about his pet's reaction to a stranger, but Hornisham had no difficulty. She gripped the often vicious chimrian confidently in her broad palm, head pressed out between her index and middle finger, wings bundled, tiny legs flailing helplessly.
Harry relaxed and accepted his pet, who immediately crept under the coverlet and disappeared. He rubbed his tender and tired eyes and fell sideways on his pillow, determined to ignore his embarrassment. His guard resumed her usual spot by the hearth, but the clicks of her knitting needles did not return before Harry fell back into swirling sleep.
When Harry awoke the next morning, he found his room empty. He put on his dressing gown and headed downstairs where he found Candide and his guard standing in a silent tableau, clearly interrupted from speaking. With a frown he turned away to get ready for the day.
Harry's determination to ignore his embarrassment mutated into raw determination to get his way as he landed in the Ministry Atrium. He left his guard with a polite "thank you" and a quick bow, and marched upstairs to find Mr. Weasley. This was easy; the department head was in the corridor, talking to Percy and Fudge.
"You're here bright and early, Harry," Mr. Weasley said approvingly.
Harry Occluded his mind before studying anyone closely. "Lots to learn," Harry said sweetly. "Thought I'd get to it."
Mr. Weasley missed the tone and gestured at the training room opposite. "Well, don't let us get in your way."
Harry plopped down at the desk beside Vineet, who was reading to himself alone in the room.
"You're early too," Harry said to start a conversation, which failed. Harry sat straighter. "Hey, I want to check on a friend. Can you come along as a guard?" Harry asked this partly to avoid trouble, but also because he wanted the company. Instinctively, Harry thought Elizabeth would hold together better in Vineet's presence. She had still been quite upset the night of the fight when Harry had gone back to check that her friend was indeed allowing her to stay.
Elizabeth's roommate was just preparing to depart for work when Harry knocked on the door. The door opened before he could even lower his hand to his side. Diane smiled upon recognizing him and moved her substantial, skirted self out of the way for the two of them to enter. She scooped up her slim attaché from a chair and said, "I'll be back sixish, Lizzie."
Elizabeth stood from the breakfast-strewn table where she was reading official-looking papers. Harry made sure she remembered his fellow apprentice and asked how she was.
"Well enough," Elizabeth said, accentuating her strained words with a toss of her unstyled hair. "I have to figure out how to pay for term, which starts next week. I'm a little late applying for a loan for Michelmas."
"You're going to manage, right?" Harry asked.
Elizabeth threw her arms to the sides. "It's a problem I wanted to have--figuring out how to do this myself. It's part of getting away from dad." Her head bowed, highlighting her more than usually unkempt state.
"Do you want to come to dinner at my house?" Harry asked. "You're welcome to, you know."
She smiled wryly. "I appreciate that, Harry. It's maybe a tad too close to home. Maybe some other time. Don't worry about me."
"You're certain?" Harry asked, not liking the deep shade under her eyes that implied she had not slept well.
Vineet, cutting a serious figure in his dark robes with his arms crossed, stated, "Your friend appears to keep food well at hand."
Elizabeth smiled for real. "She does that. There's a small shop's worth of crisps and sweets stuffed in the cabinets and in the coat cupboard even."
It made Harry feel better to know she at least could not go hungry, but he wished he could help her more. She glanced at her watch and interrupted his wishing with: "Don't you have training?"
Harry reluctantly departed, remembering too well a long blur of feeling badly treated by his relatives. He did not manage to corner Mr. Weasley that day, despite numerous attempts. At least that night Tonks came home as a guard, so he was happy enough to put off his determination for another day.
While Harry caught up on assigned readings, Tonks tried out various nail colors and lengths, as well as finger lengths, between perusing the archive of newspapers that Candide allowed to pile up during Snape's absence. Harry thought that they should talk, but his uncertainty about what he should say, along with nervousness about how strained the conversation may turn, made his readings far more interesting than normal. His re-reading of a chapter on the psychology of obsessive magical animal collecting was interrupted by a three-foot long index finger tweaking him on the nose from across the table.
"Am I too boring?" Harry asked.
"Well, now that you ask . . ." Tonks grinned. "Actually wondering when Winky would bring dinner."
Harry glanced at the clock, surprised to find it so late. "If she's waiting on it, she thinks Candide will be back in time." He closed his books and sat back, thinking he might ask for a snack if it went much longer. The section of paper facing him had a photograph of Diagon Alley and a special sale to celebrate the five-hundred year anniversary of Eeylops Emporium.
Little has changed at Eeylops in the last five centuries, the article went. Witches and Wizards has been outfitting their owls, large and small, domestic and exotic, with the best Britain has to offer in feathered pet paraphernalia.
The article sounded far removed from the dark shadow of extortion and organized crime. Harry did not want to see his beloved Diagon Alley damaged in any way. He asked, "That gang is starting to operate on Diagon, aren't they?"
With a crinkling of paper, Tonks turned the news around to glance at what Harry was referring to. "Durumulna? We think they are trying," Tonks said, flipping the paper back.
"Durumulna?"
Tonks shifted again behind the paper so that just her spiked hair appeared over the top. "Yeah, that's what they're calling themselves."
"So, someone's talked to them," Harry said.
"Someone's talked to someone who's talked to them," Tonks replied.
Tonks stayed for the night and when Harry woke from a dream of crawling over the musty Hogwarts dungeon floor, trying to escape something dreadful, he could never have imagined being so simultaneously glad she was there while also wishing to be alone.
Breathing heavily, Harry clutched his middle and sat hunched over his legs. The cool air from the covers falling away helped wake him up to the reality of his room.
"Harry," Tonks said, arm slipping around him. "Are you having dreams like this all the time?"
"Not always like this. They've all been different."
"Well, but, you've been having a lot of nightmares, haven't you? What's going on?"
Harry did not know what was going on. He refused to consider it too closely, especially right now when he should be asleep. Instead he focussed on her hand stroking his back.
"Harry?" she prompted after a while.
"Hm?" he grunted, not wanting to talk.
"What's brought on these nightmares?"
Harry shook his head and Tonks let it drop.
"All right. Can't force you to talk." She flopped back down on the bed.
Harry remained sitting up, thinking. He wished that he did not need to sleep. And despite wanting not to again that night, could not resist it. He fell asleep over his knees twice before relenting and taking up his pillow again properly.
Harry was facing down Snape, a chiseled, scarred and ruthless looking apparition in coal black, high-collared robes. Harry backed up. The cryptic scent of the dungeon was overlaid by the scent of dried blood and raw fear. Harry did not know what he was doing there; he only knew that he was already tired of running away and of fighting.
Harry's back met the shelves of colorful potion bottles and bloated creatures floating contorted in green-hued cloudy liquid. In contrast to Harry, who had no idea what he should do, Snape had a confident determination to his predatory approach. Harry's instincts flailed at the situation; if he could get away, why was he still here?
A long finger, nail stained and chipped, reached out brushed Harry's cheek. Harry forced himself through the floor . . . and awoke in the dust of the Dark Plane. His startled fear attracted a crowd of creatures.
Harry raised himself to all fours and slipped back into his bedroom.
"Harry!" Tonks shouted.
"Right here," Harry said from beside the bed.
"Oh, Merlin! What . . ." Her head came over the edge, highlighted by the bedside lamp. "You must have fallen out of bed and rolled under it. I couldn't find you."
Harry stood and sat on the edge of the bed with his hands on his head. He needed a minute to feel safe again.
"Harry, what are you dreaming about?" Tonks asked.
"It's too hard to explain," Harry returned. A knock on the door saved him from trying to.
"Everything all right?" Candide's uncertain voice came into the room.
Harry insisted it was. Candide hesitated in the doorway adjusting her dressing gown. "Well, it is almost six," she said. "I'm going to ask Winky for breakfast if you want to join me. Maybe if I get an early start, I can get home early."
Downstairs, at a bleary-eyed breakfast, Candide had turned business-like. She said to Harry, "I'm owling Severus today, to tell him you're having nightmares. What are you having nightmares about?"
"He won't say," Tonks filled in while Harry pondered an answer.
Defensive and annoyed now, Harry said, "They're just bad dreams. There's nothing to say."
After Candide departed, Harry said to Tonks, "I need some time to myself for once. Can I meet back up with you at your place in an hour or so?"
Tonks made a face but said, "Yeah. I could stand to clean my flat anyway."
Harry dressed quickly and while still standing in front of his wardrobe, he focussed on a good mental image of the Department of Mysteries. This time the Dark Plane sat in silence. No creatures approached this time because he had no emotion beyond determination.
The Department of Mysteries slid quietly into view. Harry looked around what his adult eyes identified as a workroom. Shelves and work areas alternated along one wall. Harry had a sense of being followed as he took a few steps. He spun, wand ready in the low light, to discover the tank full of tentacled brains. A tentacle rose, dripping, out of the glassy surface. Harry stepped back instinctively and had to turn fast again when he encountered a wheeled chair that creaked when he touched it.
With a huff at himself, Harry lowered his wand. Clearly, he was too jumpy. His personal history with this place aside, it was just another Ministry department. With calmer purpose, Harry walked around and studied the room, stopping when he spotted something familiar among the densely-packed storage shelves. Just sticking out of its felt casing was the half silver cane Harry had picked up at Merton's house. The familiarity of it among the mysterious and sometimes cursed clutter made him smile faintly.
On the far side of the room, Harry turned his head quickly, thinking he heard voices, even early on a Saturday. Cocking his head this way and that, he followed the sound beyond the higher shelves to a rear corridor. Harry hovered in the doorway to the work room and listened. Footsteps approached, making Harry duck fully back inside. Teacups rattled.
"Thank you," Cornelius Fudge's voice said. Then after a pause where footsteps retreated: "As I was saying, and I feel like I have to repeat myself too much of late because no one is listening, the enemy is among us and no one cares one whit about that.
Someone grunted. "I've been keeping an eye on things," Moody's voice said. "But I agree with you in general. There are wizards worth monitoring."
Harry's jaw clenched. At the sound of shuffling footsteps he ducked farther out of the doorway, prepared to slip away completely if need be.
Moody growled, "That room's setting my eye all atwitter, as usual. Perhaps we can meet over in my office?"
"No one can get in or out of this place," Fudge insisted.
"You have a lot of trust in the people who work for you," Moody commented lowly, criticizing.
Fudge retorted, "I am an excellent judge of character, Alastor. I don't keep people around me who are not absolutely loyal to me."
"No wonder he doesn't like me," Harry muttered under his breath.
"There are problems inside the Ministry," Moody said. "I have my suspicions about that fire that injured Felton, but I can't put my hands on sufficient evidence. I need a little more time. He is going to make a mistake one of these days that I can't overlook for the sake of his family history, and when he does I'll be right there to haul him into prison."
"If you are on about Potter, I have more pressing things to worry about. You said yourself, you talked him in to behaving himself."
Harry scrunched his face up to hear better.
" . . . I don't have time for these new investigations. Get someone else," Moody said.
"I've asked for more help. But for now you'll have to manage. I offered to assign you an assistant and not only did you flatly refuse you were inexcusably insulting about it." Objects were slid around inside the office. "This is what we're up against. A completely devilish infiltration. Look at this history text Hogwarts is using," Fudge said. "Published in Slovakia. What are we going to do next? Take Potions advice from the Spanish?"
Another grunt from Moody. "I think you and I have a different idea about what the enemy might be doing," he said tiredly.
"But it is all the same," Fudge said. The sound of chairs and books shifting around echoed in the still corridor. "All this foreign influence. Next thing you know magic carpets will be legal again. Then after that foreigners will be moving into England ON them. And try to tell that to the Wizengamot, not to mention Amelia. They just refuse to see it, or Merlin forbid, welcome it. Thank Merlin you are here to help, Alastor, that you understand."
"I'll be keeping an eye on the things that really matter; let's just leave it at that."
Harry set his teeth again and slipped out of the room and back to his own bedroom so that he could Apparate from there, without suspicion, directly to Tonk's flat.
Tonks was drinking tea at the small table, hair wet and scented from a shower. She looked up at him. "How are you doing, Harry?" she asked as if they had not just been together most of the night.
Harry shrugged but since she sounded worried, he sat down beside her and said, "Everything's fine aside from a few bad dreams."
"If you want a distraction, you can shadow me on duty today."
Harry would not be bothered by that at all. "I'd like that."
Tonks sipped her tea. "You may be useful today. I have stake-out and it is usually boring as heck."
- 888 -
Hogwarts lay in a cloud-bank that roiled by between the hills, filling the gaps and pooling in the valleys. A persistent drizzle stained the walls and towers a gloomy slate grey. Students gathered on the soaked pitch for Ravenclaw Quidditch team selection trials. The stands surrounding the pitch faded in and out of view as they cut into the clouds. A few students hunkered in the stands to cheer on their friends, shaded under waterproof cloaks.
At the sound of claws on the tall, mullioned window, Snape raised his head and waved the lamps in the room up. The noise turned out to be his owl, Franklin. Snape removed the small, un-addressed missive from the owl's leg. It contained just three short lines.
Harry is having nightmares.
He will not discuss them with me.
He knows I am sending you this owl.
Snape gave no indication of surprise as he folded the letter into his pocket, only resignation.
- 888 -
McGonagall's meeting with Hermione had turned into a social call of sorts, the way most of them seemed to. McGonagall was just thinking that they would be more likely to stick to the agenda if she had Professor Snape present at these meetings when Snape himself appeared at the door. He stepped into the office, neck angled forward, hands loosely clasped before him in the shadows of his wide sleeves.
"I need to be absent this evening, possibly until tomorrow."
Treating the announcement as routine, McGonagall said, "Of course, Severus."
Hermione treated it otherwise. "What's the matter with Harry?" she sat straight to ask.
Snape ignored the outburst beyond a small flick of his eyelids. "I have already informed Remus."
McGonagall nodded. Hermione rose to her feet. "Is Harry all right?" she demanded.
Snape glared at her rather than reply, not in the mood to cater to her nosy penchant. "What makes you think this has anything to do with Harry?" he asked with a touch of sarcasm.
"Oh," Hermione uttered and backed up. "Oh, well, I hope Candide is well, then." She twisted her face and said, "But it's Harry, isn't it?"
Snape rolled his eyes. "You may owl him and ask him about his nightmares yourself, Ms. Granger," he said impatiently.
Hermione rolled her eyes as well. "Nightmares?" She dropped back into her chair. "Harry has always had nightmares," she said dismissively. "But I'll owl him." She made just such a note on the top of the parchment before her, then raised her head as though a meeting would continue as before. With a glance at the two of them standing silent, she collected her papers together and departed with one glance back and her papers barely gathered together in her arms.
"Everything all right, Severus?" McGonagall asked, dropping the professional tone.
For a moment he teetered on the verge of simply departing with a grumble. Instead, he found the need to talk. "This is extraordinarily difficult, this finding the right balance between giving someone space to make mistakes and guiding them too closely."
"You are usually quite good at it. I would not want that role as Head of Slytherin House. It was hard enough with Gryffindor."
"This is different," he said. He tossed his head and paced once. "Or perhaps I am different. I do not know."
"I suspect the latter," she said soberly, but then gave a small smile.
Snape shook his stringy hair forward. "I fear if I try to rein him in, I will lose all influence over him, and I cannot risk that."
"I think you underestimate his feelings for you, Severus. Your low regard for the softer emotions makes you underestimate your position."
Snape considered that. He made a laughing scoff. "This is hardest thing I have ever done, this letting him make his own way with his growing powers when the stakes are so high. My influence is already slipping precariously."
McGonagall steepled her fingers, pressed them to her lips and them propped them before her on the broad desk. "Severus, if I may be so bold . . . I believe you are too accustomed to managing from a servile position. Harry is not Voldemort. Your roles are the reverse of how you are wont to view them."
"Ah, Minerva, you have come so far," the portrait of Dumbledore said proudly.
"You stay out of this," Snape said.
The portrait chuckled. Snape sighed. "I do not know when I will return," he admitted to the current headmistress.
McGonagall shifted things around on her desk, implying she wished to move onto other things. "Your presence here is appreciated, Severus, but not required." She stopped to stare him down fully. "Take as long as you need."
- 888 -
As Tonks had warned, the day was rather boring. She and Harry sat in the Leaky Cauldron for half the day, in a position where Tonks could watch the door, and patrolled various wizard business areas around the country for the rest of the day. By evening, Harry's feet hurt, but he hoped the walking and brisk air would help him sleep soundly.
Tonks followed Harry home to wait for his next assigned guard. They had not even settled at the table before Snape swept into the dining room from elsewhere in the house.
"I will take care of the guard duties for the night, Ms. Tonks," he said dismissively with a tiny hand gesture towards the hearth.
Tonks put her hands on her hips. "Do you have the next codeword?"
"No," Snape returned.
"Call Winky in here, so she can vouch for you, then I'll get out of your way."
When that was settled and Tonks had left, Snape re-emerged from the shadows beside the hearth and half-circled Harry. "What is in your dreams?" he asked while staring at a spot on the far wall rather than at Harry. He had a whiff of Hogwarts floating around him, which normally Harry would have found reassuring, but given his dreams, he did not.
"They are just some odd nightmares," Harry said, not wanting to discuss it. "They don't mean anything."
Snape gave his fingertips some attention before saying. "You have studies, do you not?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you go do them." It was not a question; it was an order.
Harry slipped by him into the main hall. With his hand on the bannister, he turned, feeling vaguely resentful. "You know, you should be keeping a better eye on Candide," he criticized. "She's working far too hard."
Snape snapped his finger in the direction of the balcony. "Your studies," he repeated, trailing out the "s" at the end.
Harry ducked his head and went upstairs to fetch his books. But when he arrived there he sat on the edge of his bed and sorted them instead, reviewing things he already knew. Flipping through one of the regulations pamphlets made him appreciate how much better he remembered things now than he used to. He was probably as sharp as Hermione was when he first met her and felt such awe in her ability to pack information into her brain.
Harry tried to come up with the will to start the next chapter in a book on dark wizard psychology, normally a welcome topic, but this author rendered it down into long latin words and boring tables of numbers. A soft knuckle-rap sounded on the doorframe.
"I'm studying," Harry insisted.
"I can see that," Snape said gently. "Is there anything you wish to talk about?"
Harry stared at the column of numbers before him showing the percent of magical British folk involved in various kinds of dark wizardry and the frequency with which they engaged in it. Most only tried it once, or so it appeared. He thought about Belinda, hoping whatever she had been involved in, she was out of now. He thought about Elizabeth and wished his vault still seemed limitless so he could help her more. He thought about Tonks, who was more than willing to give him a little space . . . he just needed to ask for it.
Harry shook his head.
A voice came from farther down the balcony. "Severus, if I'd known you were home, I'd have left earlier. The client insisted on ordering dinner in for us all." She stepped into view and gave Snape a hug.
Harry turned the page where the next chapter, Dark Magic Recidivism, began.
"Long day. I'm turning in," Candide said through a yawn and made her good nights.
When they were alone, Harry asked, "Do you have any potion I could use? The ingredients have thinned out here I noticed the other night."
"If your dreams are so minor, then you do not require any potion," Snape stated slowly. He sounded calculating.
Harry stared at him now, rather than dividing his attention with his book. He tried to gauge him and failed at it. His dreams and his vaguely tired mind were in the way of deciding how to take that last statement, so he gave up on doing so. "I'm studying," he insisted, and bent back to his book until the doorway emptied of its visitor.
Author Note: I am, of course, continuing to write. Tomorrow I'm leaving for the south of India for a month. I'm not sure what kind of impact that is going to have on my output. Could go either way... I'll keep updating the progress bars on my homepage, accessible from the author info link on this site. Next chapter the fun stuff begins again!
Next: Chapter 15
Snape looked normal enough. Harry recognized the robes he was wearing with their minimalist decorative stitching on the sleeve and down the back. Snape folded the letter and took the seat across from Harry, the one Candide had just vacated. Harry felt cold and empty and unable to cope with the notion that was taking hold of him.
He stared at Snape while his guardian tucked the letter away in his pocket and, finally noting Harry's attention, stared back. Harry consciously breathed in, glanced around the room, then back at Snape, who now had the slightest rise to one brow.
"What if I'm not in the right place?" Harry asked because it was ready to burst out of him, not because it was the wisest thing to say at that moment.
Chapter 15 — What May Dreams
"You weren't a little brusque with Harry, were you?" Candide asked when Snape arrived in the room and had closed the door.
"If he indicates he wants help, I will provide it. I fear he will shut me out if I force it upon him."
"I don't know about that," Candide countered, but she declined to back it up with more argument. "You know; I make more than you anyhow. You could just stay home and keep an eye on him all the time."
"I . . ." He stopped and regrouped. "You are going to want to stay home with the child for the first year at least, aren't you?"
"A year?" she sounded shocked by the notion. "Well, a while, yes. I haven't thought about how long." They both fell silently into their own thoughts. "But you could be home to be his guard all the time, then."
"I did not imagine they would not have found the culprit by now. Which reminds me that I wished to owl Arthur to ask about the progress on the investigation." He pulled a small sheet of parchment and a quill from the night stand and jotted down his question, bluntly, feeling no need for pleasantries. Franklin responded to a faint whistle from down in the drawing room, where his perch had been moved, and the message was soon off.
Snape returned to sitting on the edge of the bed and made no move to prepare for sleep.
"Severus?" Candide prompted upon noticing Snape still in his lecture robes.
"You have no sense of what his nightmares entail?" he asked.
"No. And his usual guard, Hornisham, said they woke him several times a night. I wouldn't expect him to talk to me or her about it. But he wouldn't open up to Tonks either."
"She would be the last person he would tell. He has a touch of hero worship for her."
Candide sat up, keeping the covers wrapped around her in the cooling air. "Harry has what?" she asked with a laugh.
"It has faded somewhat, but I think it is still there."
Candide said, "Well, that would explain a few things. They aren't quite right for each other, but Harry is persistent, even in the face of problems he cannot solve."
"That particular trait comes from a life of fighting evil far greater than himself."
When Snape still failed to move after many more minutes, Candide asked, "What are you thinking about?"
At her question Snape leaned over to look for something in the bedside table drawer. "Something Minerva said." He found what he was looking for, the baby monitor, and stood while tossing it once lightly in the air and catching it. "Perhaps I will put her wisdom to the test."
Harry sat propped up with his pillows, reading from his lap when Snape knocked and entered. He strode over and placed the glass half dome down on the night stand and held his hand on it for longer than necessary. Harry watched this, but turned back to his book without objecting. Snape even hesitated longer beside the bed to hear any complaints, noticing during that time that Harry had not only outgrown his pyjamas but that they had been expanded at least twice with a spell to make them fit. He could tell this because the neat stripes were strangely akilter at the shoulders and around the neck. They were just one of many things Harry had outgrown. He could easily be on his own, Snape considered, not for the first time. The thought chilled Snape; it would be impossible to keep a proper eye on him then.
"Well, good night," Snape intoned. "If you do need to talk, do not hesitate to wake me." This was a command.
Harry raised his head slightly. "I wouldn't want to disturb Candide."
"She'll understand."
Harry shrugged. "All right," he conceded stiffly.
Harry turned down the lamp wick soon after he was left alone, and he was glad to be alone for once. He flipped to his other side, trying not to worry about the dreams that may or may not come. The glass dome glowed and flickered faintly, watching and waiting.
Harry rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. The headlamps of a passing car wavered overhead. He did not want to sleep; he wanted to talk. He wanted to know where these odd dreams were coming from. Harry exhaled loudly; maybe the dreams would leave him alone tonight.
Harry was back in the dungeon, some dungeon; it wasn't one he recognized. His body was shutting down from pain through his midsection that kept him from breathing properly. Someone moved on the far side of the room. Harry did not want to look up and find out who it was. Footsteps approached and a hand grabbed hold of his hair. Forced to see his tormentor, Harry met the cold, bright gaze of Lucius Malfoy.
"I put you away," Harry said, confused.
The man laughed. "I don't feel very put away, Mr. Potter. It is, in fact, you who are incarcerated at this moment."
Harry glanced around. The very stones of the place held the stagnant aroma of desperation. "Where is this?"
"Must we go over that again?" Malfoy huffed. "You are in my personal dungeon. Awaiting my master, who will be most pleased to see you, I'm sure." He began to pace and missed Harry rubbing at his scar, which was silent. "I wish to move up in the organization," Malfoy went on, happy to talk about himself. "And I can do it by handing over you. It would be a pleasure to do so even absent reward."
"You're not handing me over to anyone," Harry said.
"You are very tiresome, Mr. Potter," Malfoy complained and raised his wand.
Harry slipped away and after struggling to stand and fend off the creatures attracted to the blood on his clothing, found the strength to slip home again.
Harry came to awareness on a gritty, warped and split floor. He raised his head and took in the half-destroyed main hall of the house. He had missed; he was not home. With substantial effort against unknown injury to his gut, Harry pushed himself to his knees and sat panting in the gloom to think desperately of what to do next. A sound interrupted Harry's panicked thoughts. He turned and found a small glowing thing approaching along the floor. Harry tried to stand, but could not manage it; he was too spent. The approaching figure hesitated and looked up at him with broad, transparent eyes. It was the ghost of small child, perhaps one year old, and it gurgled at him and put up a hand before putting it back down and crawling faster toward him an inch above the floor, leaving the dust undisturbed.
A hand contacted Harry's shoulder, making him jerk and roll to face whatever it was. He snapped awake and, after finding his bedside lamp glaring in his eyes, attempted to roll back on his front and pull his pillow thoroughly over his head. But the light duvet was too tangled around him to even get both arms free. A figure rose up and bent over him and, with strong hands, tugged on the covers binding him. Harry, vexed at treatment better suited to someone much younger, nevertheless lay still until he was freed, because struggling was only drawing the process out longer. He rolled away while the duvet was carefully straightened over him and punched his pillow a few times for good measure.
The now cocooning bedcovers eased Harry's energized nerves. He breathed in and out through the familiar scent of his pillow.
"Harry," the expected voice finally came.
Harry grunted a reply but did not move. The bed shifted, indicating that Snape had stood. Harry did not imagine he would give up that easily and, indeed, Snape had not. Kali's cage twanged open and Harry felt her escaping those confines, only to be wrapped up more thoroughly in Snape's hands.
Snape returned to sitting on the edge of the bed with Harry's pet pressed into the crook of his shoulder. The animal had not been sleeping any better than her master, so she happily burrowed into the warmth. Snape ran his knuckles over her furred back and her wings went slack. Harry fell slack too, more deeply into his pillow, pressed there by the connection with his pet.
"What are you dreaming?" came after many quiet minutes.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Snape continued stroking the Chimrian's fur. "I insist," he said. When Harry did not reply, he said, "What was in the dream that you were having just now?"
Harry sighed and rolled over to sit up. He really did not wish to discuss that one. If the child were in this house, then it would have been Snape's child, killed about the age Harry himself had been attacked by Voldemort the first time.
"I was dreaming that I was in the wrong place. And I couldn't escape. Well, I could escape, but only to a place worse than the last. I couldn't find my way home." Harry hoped that answer satisfied his guardian.
Snape stated, "You need not worry about getting lost if you do not leave."
Harry thought over his dreams of the last few nights. "Do you think it's possible I'm seeing other Planes for real in my nightmares?"
"I doubt it."
Harry frowned and rubbed his hands over his scalp. His eyes were sore and it was late, too late to be awake let alone debating such things. "Where are these bad nightmares coming from, then?" he asked.
"Your subconscious, presumably." Snape adjusted Kali down into the crook of his elbow, and folded her wings back. The creature chirped in minor protest but stayed put. "Since you refuse to tell me the contents of them I can not help you with explaining their meaning."
"They seem like other places. Real places," Harry said.
"And they may very well be," Snape said. At Harry's confused expression, Snape explained, "Since every possibility you could imagine could indeed have a Plane of its own, there is no distinction between your imagining something and its existence."
Harry stared at him as he took that in. The lamp flame cast a chiseling light on Snape's features. Snape gave him a little time, then added, "I do not think the other Planes are the germination of your dreams."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know. It is simply more power than I can imagine you having."
Harry snorted faintly. "I don't have that much power. One of my dreams is of Rodgers relentlessly putting me on the floor like he does during training every day, nearly, in the furtherance of building up our spell capacity."
Kali tried to climb out of Snape's grasp so he handed her over to Harry, who let her make her way to his shoulder where she stretched and groomed her scarred wings.
"There is more than one kind of power," Snape pointed out. "How well one does recreating the preponderance of prescribed spells that untold witches and wizards have invented over these last hundreds of years is only one kind, and it is the least interesting kind. Spells for object repair, Muggle befuddlement, and even self-stirring cauldrons aside, the vast majority of Ministry-approved spells are pointless as well as outdated. And any magical person with a wand can do them provided they are coached long enough. That is precisely what Hogwarts was set up to accomplish—rigid standardization of magic. We make a lot of noise about promoting and nurturing magic, but in reality it is enforced mediocrity."
"But it makes magical people safe-" Harry began.
"Yes. It does that, by providing a structured outlet for magical power that may, if given time left to its own devices, create a more interesting one of its own. How many people do you know who travel in and out of the underworld?" He answered his own question, as if to drive the point home. "Yourself, one shaman that we know of . . ."
"Vampires can," Harry said.
"Yes. Because they wield old magic . . . raw, pre-historic magic. Raw energy transformed and molded at will. The fabric of reality itself parted and twisted to your wishes. That is what has changed your eyes. I suspect most handed that power would be destroyed by it. You channeled powerful raw magic as an infant and it was that occasion I believe which has made you an able vessel for it." He had been leaning forward to urge his point across, but now clasped his hands and rocked back. "This formulaic magic the rest of us do is dwarfed by what you are capable of if you work out how to put it to functional use." His gaze shifted to the unlit lamp on the near side of the bed. "You slip between possibilities of fate the way others enter a vault at Gringotts. I watched you carve the very magic out of someone. What greater powers do you want?"
"Lockhart was already damaged. His magic was loose," Harry said, trying to excuse what he had done.
"But you could do it again," Snape stated as an invitation that forced a denial or confirmation.
Harry thought that over. Kali circled his neck, pricking him. He plucked her down to the bedcovers without a glance and held her there. "Probably," he said because he couldn't imagine what might stop him from succeeding.
"There is no greater power in the realm of magic, in my opinion. Death is easy to bring about and requires no magic. But rendering someone unmagical is something else entirely."
"Rodgers can put me on the floor at will," Harry complained.
"For now, that is. And you can negate his curses later in a manner only the most accomplished Healer can."
"I suppose," Harry said, still doubtful.
Snape watched him for a minute as he wrangled his pet, who was keen on taking flight back to her cage now. As if pre-judging Harry's ongoing thoughts, he said, "Voldemort was very good at maximizing the spells he found, at pushing the edge of what a spell could do—generally the dark edge of it. But he needed the spell to start with and was constantly hunting for forgotten ones. You, on the other hand, do not even need an existing spell as germination. You have an instinct for detecting and shaping the raw energies of magic that is extremely rare, and it classifies you with sorcerers. Your trainer, in a fight with no rules, would stand no chance against you."
"I wouldn't do that to him, though, like I did to Voldemort."
"It does not matter."
"Yes, it does," Harry argued. "I'm an Auror; I'm supposed to fight fair."
"Then work out a way to use your instinctive power to do that. Can your trainer block a Forbidden Curse?"
"No, of course not."
Snape tilted his head with an expression of see?
"You're saying I can work out more ways of using . . . non-formulaic magic against formulaic magic."
"I don't see any reason why you cannot. Working without a guide, it may take some careful experimentation to figure out how. I emphasize careful."
"Why are you telling me this?" Harry asked. "Usually you want me to limit what I'm attempting."
More resigned, Snape said, "I do not know the source of your nightmares and the only one you would relate involved what I can only interpret as a fear of being bested. Are the others like that?"
Harry thought about his answer before shaking his head. "A bit, but not exactly."
"What do they involve, would you say?"
"Er, getting myself into trouble with these raw powers."
Snape stood and shook his dressing gown straight. "I am not troubled by your fearing that," he said adamantly. He slipped his hands into his pockets. "Something more you wish to discuss?"
Harry's eyes felt like lead. "No. Thanks though."
Snape departed and Harry released his pet to fly back to her cage, but as soon as she was free, she clambered back up his chest. He clutched her close so she would not claw him when he moved suddenly, and fell back onto his pillow.
Harry slept eventually and more dreams flowed by, murky and anxious, and in the morning, his body resisted waking up and he only went down to breakfast because he was ordered to.
"You can retire early, or nap later even, but come down now," Snape said from the doorway.
Harry suppressed a flush of embarrassment at Candide's sympathetic smile when he arrived at the table. He quickly picked up the Sunday Prophet and flipped it open as a barricade.
An article caught his eye about the Goblins threatening exactly what he had overheard Tonks mention: that increased security may be necessary and everyone should be prepared to be subjected to it next time they wish to visit their vault. The bank security staff may institute a gauntlet of anti-illusory spells and forced potion antidote consumption should a customer be deemed to be behaving suspiciously or has set off the nose of the bank's newly trained bloodhound rats. The new procedures are expected to result in an additional two hour delay in servicing vault access requests.
The interviewed Goblin stated that these procedures were necessary to sort out those being cheated by others from those seeking to cheat the bank directly. The article went on to say that lines at the bank were expected to be extremely long Monday morning as witches and wizards attempted to set themselves up ahead of any increased inconveniences.
The next article, buried under a column of adverts showing the latest mufflers and muffs for winter, also peaked Harry's interest. It read simply: Ministry Totem and Potion Technician G. Felton is still recovering in hospital from injuries sustained in an unspecified magical accident at his home. The Minister for Magic today stated that the Crack Magical Reversal Squad dispatched was successful in keeping the suspicious nature of the fire secret from the Muggle authorities despite the large amount of damage caused.
Harry's mind harkened back to the wet ground and flashing lights of the scene that night, feeling a small rush at knowing he was finally getting to be part of what transpired in the official magical world. He put the paper down and Snape asked, "How was your sleep the remainder of the night?"
Harry shrugged. In his peripheral vision he could see the two of them sharing a meaningful look and found himself chafing under its implication. He ate breakfast quickly and excused himself to do his readings.
The morning dragged by slowly. Harry continually thought of places he would rather be, like visiting his friends, but he would need to arrange a guard to follow him and at the moment, he could pretend he did not have a guard at all.
He sent Hedwig off to Elizabeth with a letter and told her that she could use his owl for the day if she needed to send some post. Harry wished he could do more; his friend's situation irked him whenever his mind wandered over to thoughts of it. If he only had more gold.
Harry's thoughts wandered off from the magical weather book open before him and back in time to when Lord Freelander offered to cover any expenses Harry may incur in his apprenticeship. If Harry had taken Freelander up as a patron, he would perhaps have enough money now to help out Elizabeth, at least until she could arrange for loans. He supposed that he could still go to Freelander now and ask, as hard as that would be on his pride.
Harry put his book down and dug into his trunk for some of his good stationery. But as he leaned over to write out a letter in the neatest hand possible, he decided to ask simply for a chance to speak to him about some unspecified assistance, with the notion that once he was standing before the wealthy wizard, the man would have a more difficult time saying no.
Harry had to make an envelope out of another sheet of stationery because there were none nice enough that matched. He then borrowed Candide's company owl, with the stipulation that it follow her to the office because she was to spend the afternoon there and would need him.
Harry took the weather book downstairs and out to the back garden. He had never really thought about different shapes and altitudes of clouds before and what that might mean regarding what the cloud would do. Outside, the sky was a ubiquitous grey and clouds did not so much have shape as represent a layer looming over the world. Harry paged through the illustrations, but did not see any resemblance to what he saw above him now. The breeze fluttered the page corners as he flipped them. The first diagram was the most interesting, it showed an great anvil shape with angled columns of lightning and hail ejecting from it. The sky did not contain anything this threatening, or if it did, it was hidden.
Sirius' bike leaned forlornly against the garden wall under a tarpaulin. Harry tucked the book away under his arm and went over to clear the newly grown ivy off it, thinking that he did not get out nearly often enough on it. Pale green vines had grown through the spokes of the wheels. Harry tugged them free, noticing for the first time an emblem on the wheel hub. It was inlaid glass in the shape of a goldfinch in flight and even on such a cloudy day it caught the light and glittered. Harry tugged the tarpaulin back over, secured it, and went back inside.
Harry opened his book again at the dining room table in hopes of lunch, which arrived when Snape and Candide did. Despite his continuing low-level embarrassment, Harry savored the feel of all three of them together.
Candide repeatedly checked the clock before topping her plate up from the heaping plates provided. She and Snape debated minor household issues in a casual manner, very unlike the Dursleys. Harry picked his book back out of his pocket and flipped it open, partly to demonstrate that he really did spend all his time reading.
The book fell open to the page with the sky-anvil. According to the text, the Goblin wars were the primary impetus for the development of weather curses involving hail and tornados. Trouble was, directing the storm at the enemy was not a certainty and surrounding areas or even one's own side were often the victim. Harry rubbed his eyes and yawned, wishing he had slept better. He wondered about the goldfinch emblem and whether it was the symbol of the bike's maker. Harry also wondered that he had never noticed it before.
Candide stood hurriedly before lunch was finished, Accioed her cloak from the entryway, and gathered her things from beside the hearth.
"I'll remain another night," Snape said in reply to a question from her, making Harry glance up again.
Candide smiled at this news and insisted she would only be absent a few hours, at most.
Harry put the book aside and stared at his lunch, at the chunks of bread soaking into the dark gravy. It was the oddest thing, Winky had never served yesterday's joint up quite like this before. It was such a small thing, but it loomed large in his sleepy brain.
Snape moved to the window to collect post from an owl, blocking the grey light for a moment before he reclosed the sash and moved away again. With a slash of a short knife from the mantel, he opened the envelope, then paced slowly to read it. Harry watched him do this with a dull, but building sense of unease. Snape stopped before the mantel and rested his letter-laden hand upon it and continued to read with his other hand propped on his hip.
Snape looked normal enough. Harry recognized the robes he was wearing with their minimalist decorative stitching on the sleeve and down the back. Snape folded the letter and took the seat across from Harry, the one Candide had just vacated. Harry felt cold and empty and unable to cope with the notion that was taking hold of him.
He stared at Snape while his guardian tucked the letter away in his pocket and, finally noting Harry's attention, stared back. Harry consciously breathed in, glanced around the room, then back at Snape, who now had the slightest rise to one brow.
"What if I'm not in the right place?" Harry asked because it was ready to burst out of him, not because it was the wisest thing to say at that moment.
"You are in the right place," Snape said with a quiet confidence that indicated he was ready and waiting to say it.
Harry opened his mouth but required a second attempt to form his thoughts before saying, "You've already thought of this."
Snape dropped his gaze and sat back, eyes hooded. "Yes."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Harry demanded, quickly getting upset. He propped his hands on the table, as though ready to launch himself somewhere.
"And distress you in this manner? Whatever for?"
Harry pulled his hands back. "I . . ." He swallowed hard.
Snape said, "I do truly believe you are in the right place."
"Of course you would think that," Harry said without really thinking it through.
"Why would I think that?" Snape challenged.
"Well . . ." But Harry did not have a good reason; it was just gut instinct made him say that. Many little things in the last week now looked off in retrospect. His heart rate sped up as his mind latched onto each in turn.
Snape sat back more comfortably, in contrast to Harry's elevating anxiety, and said, "Do you want to know why I think you are in the right place?"
"Yes, please," Harry said, desperately wanting to be certain when he was so much the opposite that he felt almost paralyzed.
"For starters, I don't believe there can be too many of you with this skill. Yes, there are other Harry Potters, an infinite number of them in fact, but how many of them can do as you do, that is, jump between Planes?"
Harry had not considered that. "I . . . I don't know," he said, soothed simply by Snape's attentive effort at explaining.
"I expect not many," Snape answered his own question. "A handful perhaps at most. As well, how many would just happened to have left and returned home at exactly the same time as you did?"
"Oh," Harry said, starting to understand. "You're saying . . . that if I am in the wrong place that another Harry had to have left this place and gone to the wrong place, my place and not returned, so that I've taken his place?" Even to Harry that sounded quite the string of long odds.
"That is precisely what I am saying," Snape intoned, sounding pleased. He waited patiently while Harry thought that over. A minute later he said, "I have another . . . point to make in this regard."
Harry met his gaze and found nothing strange in it, just Snape, as he understood and expected him to be. "What's that?" Harry asked.
"Before being poisoned and accidentally meeting with Headmaster Voldemort, you were not worried that you were in the wrong place, correct? You felt that you were at home?"
"Well, yes, of course," Harry said, uncertain where this was leading.
"But you had left and returned from another Plane once previous to that escapade."
Harry's flesh solidified on his arms in a wave of nervous energy and he held his breath. "That's right. I did," he agreed, remembering his visit to Weaver's End.
Snape hesitated, but finally said, "I did not intend to alarm you with that revelation. I just wished you to recognize that you returned home safely on that occasion as well."
Harry gave that due consideration. He thought about all the things he had done after that in complete ignorance of the possibility that he could be in the wrong world.
"Do you think you returned to the wrong place that time, as well as this most recent time?" Snape asked, with just the faintest, barest whiff of snide.
"No," Harry managed, still thinking things over. "I hadn't thought of it at all. Nothing strange happened to make me wonder. There's been some strange stuff since . . ."
"If you look for anomalies you are guaranteed to find them. But what caused you to think of it this time?"
Harry gestured at his plate. "The joint was reheated."
"Winky is doing that for Candide. Warm food is more healthful," Snape stated.
Harry stared at the meat juice pooling on his plate, solidifying at the edges into white fat. "Oh." A smile flickered over Snape's lips, prompting Harry to demand, "You think that's funny?"
"I am not by any means amused by your distress. I find it amusing that such a grand philosophical uncertainty about one's very existence could be triggered by a warm plate of food." He uncrossed his arms and sat forward slightly. "I will happily sit here as long as necessary to convince you of my certainty."
Harry bit his lip and stared out at the main hall. "You realized I may be the wrong Harry and you didn't do anything?" he demanded.
"I realized the possibility and quickly dismissed it. I was certain that I had the right one back. That is all."
"And you didn't say anything," Harry repeated more forcefully.
"No," Snape agreed.
Harry frowned at the room in general. "Anything else you aren't telling me?" Harry asked sharply.
Snape matched Harry's challenging glare. "Several things. In good time I will, perhaps, tell you what they are."
"What?" Harry asked a little smartly. "When I am old enough to hear them?"
"Age has little to do with it."
"You're reminding me of Dumbledore," Harry criticized, crossing his arms and sitting back. But he could not hold onto his annoyance; the realization that Snape had left him here, alone with his pregnant wife, kept seeping in and melting his peevishness. Snape absolutely would not have done that if he harbored any doubts.
"What if I am not in the right place, though?" Harry quietly asked again. "What if?"
"If you cannot tell the difference, does it matter?"
"Of course it matters," Harry retorted. "I want to be home."
"If you cannot tell the difference, it IS home."
Harry rocked forward and gestured with his arms. "But, what if something is different that I just don't happen to know about?"
Snape smirked lightly. "You and Schrödinger," he quipped.
Harry huffed and dropped his head. He pushed his now cold plate an inch forward and it sparkled away.
"I wish you to feel secure with where you are," Snape said. "And I reiterate: if you do not wish to wonder if you have returned home, do not leave again."
"I hadn't planned on leaving again. I didn't plan on leaving in the first place."
Harry stubbornly argued further, but eventually grudgingly accepted that he could do nothing that evening about his situation, even if he did decide that things were askew. If he took off in search of a more rightful place, he could easily end up in far less desirable quarters; that he was certain of.
Harry sat in the library, looking through one of the heavier law books for past rulings on weather manipulation. Partly he was curious if he went out and tried some of those spells, would he get into trouble for it. He thought it better to research it himself rather than ask their trainer directly. When Snape came to the door, Harry had lost himself in this task and found it wearisome to return to his earlier anxious state. It was far easier to accept that this was home unless he encountered something truly, hopelessly amiss.
"How are you doing?" Snape gently asked.
"Fine. I wish you hadn't asked."
"Not like me to do so?" Snape airily returned.
"Something like that."
Lips slightly curled, but with a far more Slytherin smile in his eyes, Snape sat on the leather divan. "I was going to ask if there was anything I could do, but I see now that it would be best to be miserable to you so that you feel better."
Funny thing was, every time Snape spoke so calmly about the possibility that he may be in the wrong place, it did make Harry feel better. Harry said, "So, you think most of the other Planes are worse ones? Why?"
"Law of averages. You believe things worked out well for you, do you not?"
"I'm not dead, true," Harry agreed, thinking of his last trip to another Plane where he had not even survived his first full year at Hogwarts.
Snape considered him in depth before saying, "That is your primary criteria for whether your life is working out for you?"
Harry shrugged faintly, then laughed lightly. "This is my life, what could I have changed about it?" He frowned and amended, "I mean, there were some mistakes I could have avoided . . ."
"It is not just your actions that would invoke change," Snape said, intent on interrupting. "It is everyone else's coupled with random chance falling a different way. Cascading differences. Interacting cascades of differences, even."
"So, are you saying that because this place is so close to what I expect, that is has to be the right place?"
Snape shook his head. "I am tempted to lie and say "yes," but I won't. There are as likely to be Planes with just a single incidental difference from what you are expecting as there are to be Planes where nothing is the same, where you and I and even Hogwarts do not even exist."
Harry scratched his head and thought aloud: "I wouldn't be able to get to those places, because I wouldn't have anything to focus on."
Snape clapped his hands down on the divan and stood up. "I do not want to urge you to explore, so I am going to leave that point un-addressed." He stood with his hair hanging forward, looking at Harry. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
Harry put aside the book he had out. "Maybe we can work on a few spells. I want to try what you said."
Snape's hair fell farther forward as he nodded.
Harry quickly hovered the main hall furniture to the side and took up a position before the front wall, as far from the windows as possible. He held his wand out, but then lowered it. "Can you cast a spell with very little force on it?" he asked his guardian as he took up an opposing position as though to duel.
Snape raised his wand and Harry held his down. "If you are going to leave yourself undefended, then that is all I can do," Snape said. He cast a heat charm at Harry.
Harry felt the spell brush him like a passing sunbeam, then fade. The counter would be so easy through the wand, but how else could he possibly negate it? "How should I do this?" he asked.
"I do not know," Snape said, "How do you block Forbidden Curses?"
"That's easy," Harry said, not noticing Snape's amused reaction to his flippancy. "Those come from the Dark Plane. They open a crack into the underworld. That I can control. I can shut it, even from a distance like this. But a charm, where does that come from?"
"Where does any magic come from?" Snape rhetorically asked.
"Charms don't feel like anything," Harry went on. "Curses I can feel but I can't do anything about the ones that aren't truly dark magic. At least I don't know how."
Snape aimed his wand again. "We'll work with curses then for the moment." He cast a very weak Blasting Curse at Harry, so weak it merely ruffled his robes.
Harry felt the curse being generated but it came from nowhere in particular, just ballooned into being. He felt it ripple around him, both as a force of movement and as a force of magic but the two were hard to separate. "Can you cast something that doesn't flow like that one, so I can sort out what is the magic and what is the result of it?"
Snape angled his head in a kind of nod. "A Ice Spear Curse, perhaps?"
Harry could feel this one two ways more clearly, but that did not help him sort out what to do about it. He signaled for Snape to recast it several times then held up his hand because he was nearly shivering. "This is like learning Legilimency again," he complained. He rubbed his arms vigorously. "You don't know any heating curses, do you?"
Dryly, Snape replied, "There is a sunburn curse, but it will damage your eyes if used repeatedly."
"How about some other one then."
Alternating various weak spells, they worked at it for an hour or so, until Harry was bored with trying. "My readings are starting to sound good again," he said. "I'll try to work out something during drills, while also countering the normal way."
Ginny and Ron came for dinner that evening. They did not expect Snape to still be at home, and Harry had not owled to tell them otherwise. Conversation at the table was a little subdued as a result. Snape himself broke one of the lulls with: "So, Ms. Weasley, still intending to become an Auror?"
"Yes," Ginny replied primly. "I will apply again next year." The way she stated this implied she expected an argument.
"Perhaps you should regularly get together for drills with Harry, in that case," Snape said. "He roped me into it this afternoon." He spoke with an coldly factual edge that led Harry to conclude he was up to something.
Ginny's face brightened. "I'd love to get more practice. My brothers either pull their spells to avoid hurting me, or use some difficult and painful spell I don't know to get me to want to quit."
"Drills are just supposed to be easy, repeated practice," Harry said, "so that you can react on instinct for the basic attacks and counters."
"I'd love to get a chance to work on spells with you."
"Get assigned as my guard in the evenings when Tonks is on duty," Harry said. "Someone has to be here anyway. Point out to your dad that if he ends up with Vespera as a daughter-in-law, he will need an Auror in the family."
"Yeah, good idea. I'll ask dad to do that. I've been trying to work my way through the books your fellow apprentice, Aaron, recommended, but Ron usually insists we do something fun instead." She sounded criticizing, prompting Ron to say, "It's not like you make a fuss when I do that."
"I need someone around the house who is also swotting," Ginny complained moodily.
"I need a guard who is more fun than Hornisham from Control of Magical Creatures," Harry said, thinking having his friends as guards regularly may make this rule more livable since there was no sign of it being lifted in the near future.
After his friends had departed, Harry turned on his guardian. "What was that about?"
Snape, raised an innocent brow. "What?"
"Contriving to have Ginny over for regular spell practice."
Snape sipped his sherry and stated, "I thought you wished to work additionally on your alternative curse counter. A great deal of trial and error will be required to work out a method, assuming you can manage it at all."
Harry set his jaw, but did not accuse him further. He suspected Snape of preferring he be in a relationship with Ginny rather than Tonks. But Snape was playing ignorant and he would not budge from that position once he was in it.
That night, Harry slept without waking from any bad dreams. Snape, doubting the monitor, went to check on him directly, just before dawn, and found him soundly slumbering with the covers undisturbed. A few hours later, Snape prodded Harry awake.
"Huh?" Harry grunted, raising his head out of the delicious depths of his pillow.
"Since you are doing all right, I was thinking of returning to Hogwarts this morning. Breakfast in the Great Hall is in just a quarter hour."
Harry cleared his throat and pushed himself to a sitting position. "Yeah," he muttered, still waking up. "If you need to go back. I'm fine." Indeed, he had slept through the night for the first time in a week. He studied Snape, studying him back. "I mean, it's not like we don't prefer having you around."
"Hm," Snape muttered.
"Look at Candide's reaction when she found you home," Harry pointed out.
Snape straightened. "I've been meaning to talk to her about that."
Harry punched him on the leg. "Severus," he chastised him, despite suspecting him of making a joke. "You should be taking better care of her."
"She insists all is well," Snape said, clearly closing the topic.
"She works far too hard. And it's only getting worse. You need to tell her to cut back."
"I have done so," Snape informed him. "She is rather conscientious about doing her job well, for which I commend her, even as tedious as I would personally find her activities to be."
"As opposed to brewing, which is just about the same level of excitement."
"Accounting forms rarely blow up in your face and burn your house down," Snape drolly pointed out. "And you will note, I am rarely called to brew any longer."
"Maybe that explains your newly sunny disposition."
"You are being sarcastic, I assume," Snape stated. "Are you meaning to imply that I have been exceptionally unsunny?"
"No . . ." Harry rubbed his chin. "I don't know."
Snape huffed. "How many times in your life have you found things to be different than you believed them to be . . . found that you were mistaken about some major object or fact?"
"Loads of times," Harry admitted.
"You will drive yourself mad if you continually assume the worst about ones you encounter from here on out."
Harry decided to let the topic drop. "Are you going to be home next weekend again?"
"If you wish me to be," Snape said.
Harry was torn badly between an instinct for independence and strong liking of the times when they were all home together. It felt childish to insist Snape return so soon. Instead, he said, "Halloween is coming up soon. You'll have to be at school for that because it's always chaos." He then added: "I need to plan a party."
"A small party. Too difficult to guard you at a large one."
Harry clasped his hands together. "That's one nice thing about you being home: I can pretend my life is normal. On that note, who's replacing you?"
"Ms. Tonks is downstairs, waiting."
Parts of Harry, hitherto asleep, woke up with a wash of tingles. Harry, thoughts well Occluded, said merely, "Okay, " with what he was proud to believe was not the slightest hint of what use he intended to put the short time to before heading into the Ministry.
Snape started to leave, but paused to say: "Half of what your trainer has over you is psychological. Cease to let him have that easy advantage and I suspect you will do better against him."
"I don't think it's that. He really is . . ." Harry began.
Snape lifted a finger toward Harry's nose and said, "See. That precisely."
"I'll try."
Harry did try, but not with much visible success. That week during demonstrations and drills opposite his trainer, he felt he was battling himself as well as the spells. Trying to battle the assumption that he would get beat was a distraction from actually trying to beat him. But his trainer became less grudging with his scant praise, so perhaps Harry was progressing, he thought, as he nursed his always sore wand elbow and returned to his seat.
It was mid-week and Harry had another distraction that day; he had an appointment with Lord Freelander and he still had not figured out exactly how to approach the man, what arguments to use, or even what to say. At the end of the day, Aaron was assigned as his guard, which Harry was pleased by because given his bearing he would make a better-than-average impression on Harry's hoped-for patron.
"I need to run an errand this afternoon; if you don't mind," Harry said to his fellow as they were packing up their things.
"Somewhere we can Apparate to, or will this be shanks mare?" Aaron asked in the attitude of a polite butler with a funny accent.
"We can Apparate," Harry assured him, smiling at his fellow's antics.
With Harry handling the traveling, they arrived a moment later at the base of the drive leading to the Freelander estate.
"Ah," Aaron said. "I've been here. Been a long while, though."
"I was here just once, at night for a dinner party; wasn't sure I could find it in the daytime," Harry said, making conversation as they walked between the stone posts and up the gently curving, white gravel path.
"Lawn bowling party, I think it was last," Aaron said in a bored tone that came out haughty. "Must have been, well, ten years ago; I was still in Hogwarts. That was back when my mother attended more than she hosted." He turned a circle as he walked, taking in the grounds. "Amazing to think, no one to inherit all this."
Harry decided to keep to himself the fact that he himself could have.
The butler promptly escorted them in and Aaron agreed to wait in the entry hall for Harry to return. Harry followed the slightly stooped and squinting butler through several shuttered rooms into one flooded with light.
"Ah, Mr. Potter, do come in," Freelander said. He used his cane to rise from a small, white baroque desk and came around to where a pair of long blue couches dominated the floor, surrounded by an army of chairs. He gestured for Harry to take a tall chair whose cushion turned out to be softer than it appeared.
Freelander sat on a couch and set his cane aside. "Well, I expected this visit to have come a year ago, if it was going to occur at all. But, my offer of assistance was open ended and still stands, of course." He gazed at Harry frankly as he asked, "So, what can I do for you?"
"It isn't actually for me, the assistance isn't," Harry awkwardly began. "What I'm trying to say is, a friend and neighbor of mine, a witch in a Muggle household, has begun to find it difficult to remain at home. She's attending Oxford now," Harry rushed in to say, since he felt he was losing his audience. "And she wants to continue that, but it is difficult what with being cut off from her family's assistance. Well, I would help her myself if I could. I know what it's like to be stuck in a house that forbids magic, but I don't have any funds of my own. I thought first of coming to you for money for myself and getting help for her from my adoptive father . . . but that seemed a bit silly, so I thought I'd come with a direct appeal for her."
"What is this young lady's name?"
"Elizabeth Peterson. Her mum's a witch, but doesn't practice magic much at the insistence of her husband. They live just down the road in Shrewsthorpe."
"I assume the daughter did not attend Hogwarts if she gained a place at Oxford."
"No, she didn't. But there are loads of magical tutors around. And she does want to learn more than her mother taught her growing up, before her father decided he didn't like it."
Freelander stared out the window where leaf-filtered sunlight sparkled. Harry waited patiently while he pondered. Freelander finally said, "Did you come alone, Mr. Potter? I read somewhere that you were always to be under guard."
"No, I came with a guard. He is waiting in the entry hall."
Freelander plucked a small wand from his pocket and used it to jerk the thick bell cord in the corner of the room. Far off in the vast house a muted ringing sounded. A servant in white came to the doorway.
"Bring tea, Benjamin, and bring our other guest to join us." He placed his hands on his lap and sitting a little straighter said, "We might as well enjoy a spot while we consider the problem you have brought to us, Mr. Potter." He sat thoughtfully, until there was a noise near the door. "I have to admit I find your appeal for another to be a tribute to your character, and reinforces that I did not make a mistake in my earlier judgement of you."
"Mr. Wickem, sir," the servant announced from the doorway.
Freelander's head came up faster than expected. "Mr. Wickem," he repeated, not quite a greeting. "You are here with Mr. Potter?"
Aaron slid over to them, navigating the excessive furniture with practiced ease and gave a bow. "Yes sir. I'm the guard of the moment." He gestured gallantly back at the doorway. "Though, I'm a little reluctant to interrupt this meeting of the Harry Potter Appreciation Society."
Freelander colored slightly. "Have a seat, Mr. Wickem." The statement was not so much welcoming as resigned to being polite.
Crooked grin still in place, Aaron accepted the indicated chair and said lightly, "Not that I doubt I could pass the initiation into such an able society . . ." He sat back, crossed his arms, but held them formally high on his chest, and winked at Harry. He looked very much in his natural environment. "Knowing Harry, it would involve demonstrable skill at Quidditch and dueling someone evil. I'm certain I could manage, given some time to prepare." After a beat, he added: "I'm confident of a win as long as it's a Malfoy I get to duel."
Tea arrived, just in time, by Harry's judgement. It came on two large silver trays, one stacked with little sandwiches, the other with biscuits.
"Please." Freelander indicated they could start with a gesture. With a slight scowl marring his middle-aged brow, Freelander said to Aaron, "I'm a little curious how you came to be assigned as a guard to Mr. Potter."
"I was drafted. It's a bit like being assigned to the trenches in France, except it involves more photographers and better beer."
Harry had learned a bit about his fellow over the last year. One of the things he had learned was that Aaron pulled out his flippant silliness when he was trying to remain aloof. Harry was not as familiar with Lord Freelander, but his growing sense of vague dismay was confirmed when he said, "Strange choice," with clear disappointment.
Harry took a deep breath and held it. Aaron, did not take this comment too personally, or if he did, he kept it hidden in his move to sit more casually in a chair that resisted it by design.
Harry needed something from Freelander and found himself limited in defensive comments as a result. Very factually and conversationally, he said, "Aaron is in the Auror's program with me. We are second-years together."
Freelander froze with his small teacup poised before him. "The Auror's program?" Moving slowly, he took a sip and returned his cup and saucer to the low table between them. "It was my understanding that academic qualifications for that are quite high. You did not even sit for any N.E.W.T.s did you, Mr. Wickem?"
"Not while at school, I didn't," Aaron said, while Harry glanced between them and considered that Freelander had a pretty good memory and kept surprisingly abreast of his bowling party guests. "I didn't feel doing so at the time," Aaron explained. "But I decided it was what I wanted to do. So I hired tutors and kept retaking the admissions examinations until I did well enough to get in."
Freelander seemed be reassessing. "Fine determination on your part."
Airily, Aaron said, "I was bored. I needed something to do besides party every night."
Freelander hefted his teacup again after the servant refilled it. His finger tapped the handle as he composed what to say. "And have you settled down in other ways as well?"
"Ah, no," Aaron admitted, slightly wistful. "I haven't managed to excel at that examination yet."
Freelander considered Aaron for half a minute, before turning back to Harry. "Well, Mr. Potter," he began, sounding less himself. "I think we can make some kind of arrangement. If you don't mind, perhaps we will put your name on it. Structure it as an open fellowship and see what happens long-term."
"Thank you, sir."
Aaron glanced curiously between them, but remained silent between sips of tea and bites of biscuit and prim bites of biscuit with pinkies extended.
On the walk back down the drive, with the sparkling white gravel shifting underfoot, Harry's thoughts moved from pleasure at solving Elizabeth's financial problems to a niggling curiosity about Freelander.
Harry asked, "So, was it a bit odd to you that Lord Freelander remembered that you hadn't tried for your N.E.W.T.s?"
It was a dozen or so steps before Aaron answered. He sunk his hands in his pockets and slumped slightly before replying. "My mum used to be more in his circle when I was in school." The crunching gravel took over again until they reached the gate posts where they stopped. The breeze emerging from the trees felt chilled despite the warm day. "The expectations were so high. Honestly, it's one of the reasons I didn't take my N.E.W.T.s. Everyone expected the world out of me and my friends, and heck, my parents had enough money; it didn't matter what I did."
"Well, but, I'd think you'd want to make your own way. Wouldn't you want to?"
Aaron lost his grim attitude. "In the end I decided that. It helped that I was attempting something no one, but no one, thought I could do. For the first few years, they thought it was funny, then they thought I was unhealthfully obsessed. Then they decided I wasn't as much fun at parties anymore. I may have given up on my fourth try except what my father said to me a few weeks before he died. He said, he finally believed that I really could do it—could get an Auror apprenticeship."
"You've never mentioned your dad," Harry said.
"He was gone a lot when I was growing up. He was on the Continent all the time on business. I thought mum would have more trouble getting along without him, but she's done fine."
"Speaking of doing fine, want to try to catch up on readings this afternoon at my place?" Harry asked.
"You mean, actually do the readings for once?" Aaron asked, sounding ambivalent.
Harry grinned. "That's what I meant."
"You're not trying to take advantage of this momentary weakness I'm having because of that little exchange in there, are you?"
"No," Harry insisted.
Aaron stared off along the high stone wall surrounding the Freelander estate. "Yeah, why not? Let's do some revising."
Harry arrived home to find Ginny on the couch in the main hall, chatting with Winky, who stood shyly before the witch, clutching her tea-towel.
"I'm sorry, I lost track of the time, I think," Harry said.
Ginny stood, eying Aaron as she sidled over to them. "No worries. I'm not assigned for another hour, just thought you'd be home early." And, Harry could see in her gaze, she was hoping to see Aaron.
"Shall we run some drills? I'll show you a new counter and you can help me work on something I'm trying to figure out."
"And I shall . . . ?" Aaron asked airily.
"You can read aloud to both of us," Harry said. "This will be just like Hogwarts again, us all studying together."
Aaron took up a spot on the couch, opened one of the books from his bag and began flipping through it while the two of them rearranged the remaining furniture off to the side. "Except we were stuck in the dungeon, you got a tower."
"Are Slytherins always so whingy?" Ginny asked.
"I Am. Not. Whinging," Aaron stated primly. "I never whinge." He flipped a few pages more, seeming nervous maybe, which Harry took as a good sign for Ginny. "I go straight to all out fit if you must know. Shall we begin? Chapter Eight: Counters and Counteractions," he announced to the room. Then mumbled, "I'm going to need a pub after this."
"Sounds good to me," Ginny said, eyes asparkle as she raised her wand to match Harry's.
Author's Notes: Something about my workday having no overlap with anyone else's has freed up some time, surprisingly... Ah, and scenes got shifted around, thought we'd have some action this round but I was wrong. And sorry for the change in format, mid-story; I'm trying to replace the scene breaks with real transitions.
Next: Chapter 16
Inside the pub a burly, bald man stood wiping down the bar, deep-set eyes nearly hidden under his long eyebrows. He stared at Harry along with everyone else. All conversation had stopped when the door opened. Harry limped up to the bar, not needing much fakery to manage this and ordered a butterbeer with a raspy, weak voice.
The bartender laughed mockingly but he fetched a dusty old bottle and opened it with his teeth before plonking it down. Harry tossed two Sickles on the bar, saying, "Use the change to buy a few rags that are only decade old."
Harry picked up his drink and wandered to an empty table, on the way scooping up off the end of the bar what he had come for: a ragged pile of old Daily Prophets.
Chapter 16 — Halloween Friends
Aaron returned from the light-haloed bar through the darkness with more drinks, sloshing some because a mug caught the edge of the high table.
"Thank you for buying another round," Ginny said.
Harry brushed droplets of beer off his trousers and said, "We should have waited for Thursday to go out, maybe."
Ginny shot him a look meant to dissuade such talk and Harry subtly held up his hands in surrender. Aaron regained his stool and slid the drinks to each of them over the suddenly less sticky tabletop.
"You should do fine next year," Aaron said to Ginny, continuing their conversation after clearing his throat. "You understood more of those two chapters I read than I did."
Ginny shrugged and dropped her gaze.
Aaron again cleared his raspy throat. "Someone else will have to read next time. Though, I'll admit, I paid attention to every word by reading aloud. That's why a second beer was essential." He held his mug up for a casual clacking of glasses. "If we can turn revising and practice into a party, count me in every time."
After a thirst-quenching lull, Harry asked, "How are things at Weasley Wheezes?"
Ginny replied, "Swimming. They still won't let me do any mixing. I think now they won't because they're afraid later when I'm an Auror I'll know all the illegal ingredients they're using, as opposed to the few I catch an eyeful of when accidents happen, which is too often. I think at least one of the upstairs walls is just an illusion put up after one especially bad one." She sipped her beer and waited for a group of Muggles to make their way past their table to the bar, bumping into them in the dimness of the pub. "If Diagon Alley ever burns down, you'll know where to start the investigation."
"Such a loyal sister. Makes me glad I have no siblings," Aaron said.
"You can have a few of my brothers. I have extra. How many do you want?"
"Hm," Aaron said thoughtfully. "You can keep the twins, and Percy . . ."
Ginny slumped over her mug. "Figures you'd say that. Ron and Bill work at Gringotts. You're probably familiar with that place," she said with a hint of sarcasm. "You probably have two vaults there, or a dedicated wing."
"Ah, therein lies a tale . . ." Aaron said accompanied by a large swig of his drink. He sighed and traced his finger through the liquid on the table, which reflected ripples from the fake gas lamp light mounted on the wall beside them. "It will probably hopelessly decrease me in your eyes, but . . . my mum keeps me on an allowance."
Ginny laughed. "At least you get an allowance. You'll eventually inherit something, right?"
Aaron tossed his hand. "Presumably."
"Your mum must trust you not to off her."
Aaron stared at her, but said after a sip: "She knows I'm too lazy to do that."
"Well . . . how old is she now, your mum?"
"The question is: how old is great-grandmum."
"Oh dear," Ginny said with a giggle.
"These are the sort of old ladies that stash gold in old hats, charm them invisible, and hang them from trees in a remote forest somewhere by broomstick. Usually after tippling the cooking sherry. Who knows if they even remember where the money is."
Harry said, "No wonder you're working to be gainfully employed."
"Harry, my dear man, an Auror's salary is not 'gainfully employed'. But as a wage-based position is makes everyone my mother luncheons with distinctly uncomfortable. On that point it IS gainful."
On the way home, Aaron insisted that he would escort Harry home. They both escorted Ginny home first, after much arguing on her part that it was unnecessary. The two of them remained standing, framing the Burrow's hearth while they waited for Ginny, who arrived presently. Mr. Weasley sat hunched over the dining table on a stool that had been repaired with what could be a bent car axle. "Well, I guess there was no reason to worry about the late night with you two on duty."
"Good night, dad," Ginny said disgustedly, as she marched to the stairs. "Thanks for thoroughly embarrassing me."
"Good night, sir," Harry said to the accompaniment of Ginny's pounding footsteps on the staircase.
"Hm," Aaron said moments later while pacing around the main hall in Shrewsthorpe. "It's not even that late."
"Mr. Weasley gets an early start," Harry said.
"I didn't mean that." Aaron crossed his arms and looked at Harry. "So, you haven't told me 'hands off', I'm wondering if or when I should expect it."
Harry stopped sorting out which books were Aaron's from the neat piles Winky had made on the end table. "Why would you expect it?" Harry asked.
"Not keeping her in the wings? She seemed previously to be keeping herself in the wings. I thought for a while tonight that she was trying to make you jealous. I don't expect I could reliably out-compete you in this arena. I'm grateful I don't usually have to."
"I am not keeping her in the wings," Harry said. "She's like a younger sister."
"Oh. That's worse," Aaron exclaimed in surprise.
"How so?" Harry said, handing his books to him.
The bedroom door upstairs opened. "Oh, Harry, you're home," Candide said.
"Yeah, turned into a late night," Harry said. "Sorry, are we disturbing you?"
"No, I was waiting up for your guard. Due in a few minutes, isn't she?"
Harry glanced at the clock. "Yes. How was work?"
"Alright, I should get to sleep, though."
"Good idea," Harry gently agreed.
When the door had clicked closed again, Aaron said, "So, as far as you're concerned I can take Little Miss Weasley out."
Harry felt a twinge of something, but determined it was just some residual protective instinct. "Don't hurt her," he blurted.
"Oh, please. You are so old fashioned. What does that mean?"
"It means," Harry said, stepping closer, not quite in a manner of facing the other man down. "Don't promise things you don't intend to deliver on."
"I'm very careful not to do that," Aaron smugly replied.
They stared at each other until Harry said, "That's all you're going to hear from me."
"That just leaves Mr. Weasley." He paced once. "I forgot about Mr. Weasley."
"How could you forget him?" Harry asked. "You work for him."
"He's just that kind of guy," Aaron insisted. "You know . . . forgettable."
- 888 -
Harry did not make it all the way though the week without another nightmare. After a particularly tough day of working on their power during training, Harry again dreamed he was fighting with Rodgers but had no wand to fight back with.
This time Candide woke him. Harry lifted his head from the mound of his pillow and saw Hornisham shuffling out the door to leave them alone. He grudgingly propped his head up on his hand and waited for Candide to say more than his name. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, which made him uncomfortable in the same way Mrs. Weasley did whenever she tried to treat him the same as Ron.
"Do you want me to owl Severus?"
"No," Harry stated with clipped certainty. "It's fine."
She did not move right away, so Harry said, "I'm just dreaming about training. It really isn't something to worry about."
"Training gives you nightmares?" she returned, surprised.
Harry paused and considered that perfectly valid question in the private darkness of the room. The floor creaked outside the door where Hornisham waited. "Er . . . " Harry began, but then wondered if it was something else again that was really bothering him. The other dreams had been his subconscious fear that he was not really home. What could this one mean? It had not gone away like the others.
"Harry?" she prompted, insisting on an answer. "Why would Auror training bother you so. Don't you do well at it?"
"Ummm," Harry sat up, propping his back against the headboard. He tiredly scratched his head and said, "In my dream I never seem to have a wand. Or I can't find my wand. No, I just don't have it," he corrected after thinking it over more. Meaning teased at the edge of his sleep-heavy brain, but he could not grasp it.
Candide stood up. "Well, other than bothering you, that doesn't sound serious. Or should I owl Severus?"
"No, no," Harry insisted. "I just have to figure it out," he said, mind far away.
"Well, if you think talking it out will help, let me know."
"Um, thanks. I'm fine right now." He added, "Good night," as she moved to the door and changed with the guard.
- 888 -
Harry decided to wait for Freelander's paperwork to be finalized before attempting to explain the funding situation to Elizabeth. Without the proper details at his disposal, Harry worried that he would be unable to work around any pride issues that may crop up. He did not see her again until Halloween when she made an appearance at his party, dressed as a disturbingly accurate hag.
Squinting at the dried-fruit-skinned, hairy-chinned figure that Ginny led into the relatively quiet party, Harry asked, "Who are you?"
"Elizabeth . . ." she replied, partly a question.
"Oh," Harry said. "I didn't . . . you look great. Um, well, not great. Well, you know what I mean."
Tonks had sidled over while Harry struggled. "Nice disguise."
Elizabeth, wart hairs bobbing, said, "Thanks. Ginny helped a bit."
"Did she?" Harry said, wondering about that.
At this cue, Ginny, bearing white horse ears and a spiral horn on her forehead, strolled casually away to the drink table. Tonks followed her off with a dubious glance at Harry.
Elizabeth leaned closer, on the side away from where Kali perched on Harry's shoulder, and said, "I didn't feel comfortable coming recognizable. It's too close to home."
"Yeah," Harry said. "It's a disguise worthy of an Auror, really." He tried to hold an enthusiastic tone, but had trouble. "Want a drink? I could use a refill."
"What are you supposed to be?" she asked on the way. "A phoenix?"
"A Griffin. I had to give up on the paws in order to open the door and serve drinks. I still have a lion's tail." He rotated to show off his Weasley Wizard Wheezes Trusty Twitching Tail.
"Ah," she sounded unimpressed.
Harry, figuring if she could feel critical of him, that she must be feeling better, led the way to the snacks. "How are you doing?" he asked on the way.
"Well enough. I miss my piano, but it will be a long time before I can get one of my own or a suitable keyboard, even."
From beside the table, Ginny scanned the room. "Where's your guard?" she asked knowingly.
Harry replied, "Fetching his date."
"Oh," Ginny replied, her chipperness slipping.
Tonks said with a laugh, "Knowing him, it's someone he met on the underground yesterday morning."
This did not ease Ginny's dismay. Harry tried to rub his forehead, forgetting that he wore a beak mask. He straightened his headgear and sought out Hermione, expecting her to be a safe conversation partner.
He found Hermione on the couch, leaning far forward towards Vineet on the opposing couch, hands emerging from her formal robes to be clasped vice-like before her. Harry decided it was past time to check in with her. He sat down beside Vineet when Ron shoved over.
"What are you dressed as?" Harry asked. "No, let me guess: a Hogwarts professor."
Hermione pulled out her wand. "The charm keeps wearing off," she said, dismayed. She tapped her chest and her robes turned purple, making the homemade felt W more obvious. "Supposed to be Wizengamot."
"Ah," Harry said, wondering if he sounded like Elizabeth just a minute ago. While he was sitting, Kali took the opportunity to crawl off his shoulder and around the couch to investigate things.
"You would be a exemplary member of the Wizengamot," Vineet stated with grave seriousness.
Hermione blushed and tried to keep her lips straight. "Maybe someday."
Lavender, wearing ragged men's clothes, came over and sat in Ron's lap. Mrs. Norris blinked at them all from her arms.
"And who are you dressed as?" Harry asked.
"Don't ask," Ron insisted at the same instant Lavender chirped, "Filch."
"Well, you do have his cat," Hermione said, straining to sound neutral.
"Mostly I wanted to drive Ron bongo," she happily explained while petting the ratty cat.
This did not stop Mrs. Norris from hissing at Kali, who raised her wings and backed away, also hissing. Kali backed off Harry onto Vineet's shoulder. Harry voiced a warning when Vineet reached a hand to her and she hissed at the Indian instead.
Vineet said, "She is an bloodheart leech, correct?"
"I'm not certain what that is," Harry said at the same time Hermione replied, "Yes."
Extending his hand within the danger zone, Vineet softly said, "Sometimes you must get hurt to prove something, especially to one with such a name." He didn't even flinch when Kali struck out at his hand. Her nose went to work immediately after, scenting out the blood slipping from two slits across the back of his hand.
Hermione cringed and looked away as the Chimrian began licking the blood away.
Wounds healed, Vineet moved his hand closer and Kali climbed on, nose sniffing fiercely. She made the rounds of his robes before returning to sleep on Harry's shoulder with a satiated flop of her limbs.
Hermione glanced up at someone behind Harry, "Let me guess, Oliver, right?"
Harry turned and found Aaron, also wearing threadbare clothes, face smeared with coal.
"You got it. My favorite costume. Lets me practice my pickpocketing without trouble."
"You, a pickpocket?" Hermione asked, laughing.
Aaron held up a familiar, colorful woven purse. "Isn't this yours?" he asked innocently.
Hermione's face transformed into insulted. "Yes! Give that back."
Aaron gallantly bowed to hand it over. Hermione flipped it open and closed, saying, "I had it charmed too!"
"Not very well, Madame Charms Professor. I would suggest working out something combinatorial rather than simply strongly fixed"
Hermione slipped her purse away in her handbag. "I will; believe me."
Ginny slid quietly over to their group. Harry, thinking to help her out, asked his fellow trainee, "Where's your date?"
"Over there," Aaron said, angling his head to the corner of the room.
All eyes turned that way, where a tall woman with towering blond hair stood talking with Kerry Ann. She wore a glittering, chained bodice under her velvet cloak. Ginny took on a posture of defeat and scratched one tall white ear as though it itched her greatly.
Hermione spoke first. "Who's she dressed as, Bellatrix Lestrange?"
Harry choked down a laugh. "Maybe," Aaron said. "I expect her teeth are not normally so pointy."
Bill propped himself up to see better and said in alarm, "Vespera has a sister?"
This led the surrounding Weasleys to laugh uproariously.
Ginny sent one last glance at the pair of women and headed back to the drink table, downing most of a full mug on the way. Harry extricated himself, handed Kali off to Vineet, and followed her over.
She started when she found him behind her. "Hey," she muttered, refilling her cider.
"Your aren't allowed to get drunk," Harry pointed out, "You're one of my guards."
"You don't need a guard." She put her head down and muttered, "Anymore than Prince Wickem there needs another girlfriend."
Elizabeth slipped closer. "You have your eye on someone?" she asked Ginny.
Ginny glanced at her, but ignored the question. "I should have dressed like you. I see the appeal of not caring to even try." She stroked her short horn and then her pink-hued silver hair. "Kind of a stupid costume, isn't it?" she asked.
"I think it's cute," Harry said. "You did a very nice job on the ears." He pried the refilled cider from her fingers, feeling emboldened by the extra time they had been together that week. "Why don't I drink this one?"
"Yeah," she said and sighed.
Harry glanced behind him to make sure Aaron was out of range. "It's him, really, I've rarely seen the same girl twice."
"That's a bad sign," Elizabeth agreed.
"I could have brought a date, too, but didn't," Ginny grumpily said. The music increased in volume and couples started to dance, including Aaron and his date.
Elizabeth took Ginny by the elbow. "Come on, let's dance. Who cares about having a date?"
They moved off to the open area and Harry returned to the couch. He dropped down beside Hermione, whose robes had faded halfway to black again already.
A few minutes later Tonks leaned over Harry's back, and said, "I've got a call. I'm taking Kerry Ann, so make sure Aaron stays as second guard."
Harry tried hard not to rebel at the notion of needing a minimum of two guards in a crowd.
Hermione answered for him. "We will."
"Speaking of security. Someone should have frisked Blonde Vespera when she came in," Bill said, eyeing the full head of hair bobbing over the other dancers.
Ron shuddered. "You go tell her that. I didn't bring any dragon skin gloves to the party."
Bill said, "If this were the bank, she'd have been directed through the triple-long identification process."
"Do you recognize her?" Hermione asked.
Bill and Ron both shook their heads.
After midnight, guests began to leave in earnest. Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Vineet and Ron occupied the couches, tucking into a second round of snacks. Aaron, leading his starry-eyed date by the hand, said, "Well, we're off."
"You can't be. You have to stay," Harry enjoyed informing him, due to Ginny's deepening frown at their approach.
Stunned, Aaron echoed, "I have to stay?"
Everyone nodded while Vineet explained, "Tonks informed us of this before departing."
"Oh." Aaron extricated his hand. To his date, he said, "Duty calls, I'm afraid."
In a faint accent, his date said, "You are not coming to the . . . next party?"
"No, I can't. I know I agreed we'd split the evening, but I have Ministry duties."
Her cold grey eyes took in the remaining guests. Her eyes contrasted with her strange beauty which radiated a pushy warmth. "I am supposed to bring . . . a guest."
"Yeah, I know, you said, but I can't," Aaron insisted. He took her by the arm. "Here, I'll show you to the Floo." The others watched them navigate across the floor to the dining room.
"Kind of a strange bird," Ron said. "Full security scan."
Bill said, "She didn't pay any attention to Harry. I was keeping an eye on that." He stood and said, "Well, my girl will be home from the evening shift and is going to wonder where I am, but I wanted to stay until the strangers all left."
Harry took a breath, prepared to yell at him, at all of them, for their care. He clenched his teeth instead, reminding himself that someone had tried twice to kill him, and they only wanted to help, just like he would want to help if the situation were reversed. It only helped a little to remind himself of this. The party was emptying out. Harry wished that Belinda had accepted his invitation. He needed to corner and talk to her again, but resisted because of the emotional strain on her last time. He expected that if she wished to talk, she could easily find him, and short of that, pursuing the issue would be cruel.
Hermione stood as well and gave Harry a hug. "I have to get back too. I only got away because Minerva expected that I could report back on how you are doing, Harry. And I have the night shift ahead, patrolling the grounds after the feast."
"Thanks for coming, especially since it made you miss out on your first Halloween Feast at Hogwarts."
"Oh, as a teacher, skipping the feasts is not a sacrifice, believe me." She gave a surreptitious glance back in the direction Vineet sat, reserved as ever even with Kali draped on his knee, tiny eyes peering up at the room.
"Have a good rest of the evening. And be careful," she commanded Harry before heading to the hearth.
"No one gives me any choice but to be," Harry complained.
She stopped to peck him on the cheek. "Poor Harry. Confined to a boring life, caged like one of Hagrid's creatures."
"Um, yeah," Harry replied. "You're sober enough to get home, right?"
- 888 -
"We are going to try something new today: Double-reverse counters," Rodgers said the next Monday. "This is for defending from behind, hopefully needed because you are in thick of things rather than because you are running away." He gave them each an eyeing to reinforce this opinion, ending with Harry. "Potter, come up here."
Their trainer continued, "Most counters will work in double-reverse, but for the strongest ones you are often relying on the appearance of the spell to control it, even if you don't realize it. So, to cast it blind requires some practice. Let's start with a Titan since that one is just cast with the wand pointing backward. Turn around."
Harry faced the wall, feeling vaguely uneasy about having his back to Rodgers.
"Point your wand back at me."
Harry hooked his wand in his fingers and hung his hand over his right shoulder.
"Now I'm going to show you why that's not right. Flibbergibbit!"
Harry felt the curse, cast a block, but the tendrils of the spell took out his feet, and he hit the floor.
As Harry picked himself up on shock-stunned knees, Rodgers commented, "For someone who lives under the same roof as a Death Eater, I'd have expected you to have more experience with getting hit from behind."
Harry did not immediately have a response to that implied insult to his guardian. Tridant tittered from the back of the room. Harry remained facing his trainer, unable to let the comment slide. "I'll thank you to not get too personal, sir," he said.
Rodgers slapped his wand against his leg in annoyance. "Oh, come now, Potter. I'm trying to make you angry so you put a little bit more into those counters of yours. You treated it as routine. Turn around again."
Biting down on more he wished to say, Harry turned around, wand over his shoulder, despite his face growing hot.
Rodgers said, "His former colleagues were put away long ago. If he couldn't handle the hit to his reputation, he shouldn't have kept such poor company."
Harry hit the floor again but was jarred less this time. It reminded him too much of endless curses from Ginny in the afternoons that he also could not block because he was insisting it could be done without a wand.
"Potter, were you listening to the explanation at all? Sit down and watch for a few rounds, eh?"
Harry, stretching his back, slumped in his chair and watched Kerry Ann tackle a reversed Titan and begin the shifted phase spelling needed on a reversed chrysanthemum, this time with her wand forward. While this went on, a thought vibrated in Harry's head, trying to to coalesce into something substantial. As Aaron changed places with Kerry Ann, Harry began to feel worry, the kind that made his heart feel like clay. Snape's voice echoed in his memory with a taint of dread, I don't have much power, Potter. Especially now.
Harry breathed in and out, trying not to let panicked concern overtake his thoughts when he could be called up in a moment to practice something he was having trouble learning. But he could not shake his realization that he had left the other-dimension Snape to manage by himself with no patron to defend him. At the time, that had been expedient and Harry had not thought twice about it until now. He gathered his wits and repeatedly squashed his worry while Aaron got extra help.
Harry got a break from this new concern the next day when something positive distracted him. Freelander owled at the Ministry, requesting that Harry visit the next afternoon to sign some paperwork with the solicitors present. Harry, to spare both his patron and his fellow from another visit, thought it best to ask Ginny to accompany him. Vineet followed Harry home to wait for her to arrive for their usual Wednesday practice.
Winky appeared instantly with tea and little chocolate cakes. Vineet silently plucked two from the tray and sat on the couch with them balanced on the palm of his right hand. He stared blankly beyond the wall and the flickering hearth.
"Maybe you should be my guard more often," Harry said, thinking they did not talk nearly enough and that it was clearly not for the best that Vineet continued to spend his evenings alone.
"I would be honored," Vineet said.
"Well, don't go that far . . ."
Ginny arrived and Harry saw his fellow trainee off with the promise to see to it that he be assigned as Harry's guard that weekend.
"I'm worried about him," Harry said to Ginny as they walked up the gravel drive between the ostentatious gates of the Freelander estate. "He's too quiet and I can't tell what he's thinking." Harry walked with his hands in his pockets, head down and thoughtful. Ginny craned her neck forward and back to better see through the gaps in the high fence.
"Sorry, I'm listening . . . Merlin's molars this is one hell of a place."
"What? Oh, yeah."
Ginny's exclamations of astonishment only increased as they were led through room after room laden with elegantly curved, painted wood framing furniture and paintings. She spoke variations on: "This is someone's house? Jeepers. This place is unreal." all the way through the house.
The butler was a smart man, before the last door, he took hold of the twin handles and announced, "This is the meeting room."
Ginny fell quiet and followed Harry inside where a group gathered around a broad but dainty-legged white desk sporting excessive baroque flourishes.
"Mister Potter, please come in." Freelander gestured at the others encircling the desk and said, "This is Gottfried, Polstar, and Contango. I have retained them to oversee the fund's formation. Ah, and you have a new guard today, one much easier on the eyes."
Harry introduced Ginny, who kept herself back from the desk, hands clasped formally behind her back. The solicitors, two men and a woman in identical Muggle suits, bowed or held a hand out. The men eyed Harry with curiosity. The man introduced as Gottfried said, "A pleasure to finally meet you. My grandmum was a witch but that was the end of the line for our family. She talked endlessly about Dumbledore and Grindelwald when we were young." He sounded wistful, which matched his child-like, but balding appearance.
"It's not necessarily the end of the line," Harry said. "Some families skip three or four generations."
"I've tried to tell him that," Freelander said.
Gottfried appeared ambivalent to thoughts of magical offspring. "We'll see, I guess."
Freelander moved along with business, leading Harry on a tour through a stack of thick parchments that spelled out minute details of how funds would be allocated and how often and under what circumstances they could be withheld.
"For the time being, I think you can decide yourself who best to assign the fellowship to." Freelander held up a parchment. "But this lays out the procedure for the formation of a committee to advise on appropriate recipients."
Harry signed that one first since he understood it and it did not take effect right away. The next one required more time. While he decoded the mile-long strings of clauses, Freelander engaged Ginny in conversation.
"So, Weasley, I recall that name from somewhere."
"There are quite a few of us," Ginny admitted. "My brothers run a shop on Diagon Alley. So you may have seen the name there."
"I'm afraid I don't get down there nearly as often as I used to. I have to admit, you look a bit delicate for a magical guard, young lady, to my old eyes, that is."
With a bright cuteness that made a startled Harry lower the densely arcane legal document he held, Ginny replied, "I'm frequently underestimated. It's one of my best advantages. But if you'd like a résumé, I'll gladly provide one."
Harry feared that Freelander may find this out of line and was surprised when the man smiled, crossed his arms and indulged her by saying, "Go ahead; I am curious."
Harry tried to return to the dry text wallpapering the long sheet before him while Ginny rocked up on her toes and said, "I finished seven O.W.L.s and five N.E.W.T.s. I've fought Death Eaters and Voldemort alongside Harry." She stopped at the exclamations of disbelief and one condescending chuckle from the oldest solicitor.
"No, that's true," Harry said while signing the parchment before him without finishing it beyond a quick glance because the long words were all running together and seemed to repeat just to make the document look longer.
Ginny went on, "I rescued Harry from Merton. I won the first Demise of Voldemort Day Dueling competition."
When she wound down, Harry added, "She passed half the Auror's testing with flying colors."
Ginny fidgeted by rocking up higher on her toes. "That too. Just have to pass the other half now."
"Well, good to know you are on the case," Freelander said, sounding the chummiest Harry had ever heard him.
Harry continued through the documents, asking a few questions, mostly to keep up the appearance that he understood everything he was signing. Ginny filled the time by asking about the plentiful wizard paintings surrounding them, which Freelander, shuffled over to discuss. They made their way around the room, Freelander growing more animated as they went.
While the solicitors packed their things into aromatic leather cases and shook hands all around before departing, Freelander insisted Harry and Ginny remain for dinner. Harry may have resisted the invitation if Ginny had not lit up like a candle at it.
Ginny's eyes glowed as she gazed around the grand dining room where the long, long table barely made an impact on the floor space. The three of them crowded one end of the table and the servants ferried one silver-covered dish after another from far away in the middle of it.
"Beatrice is at her father's this evening," Freelander explained of his wife when Harry asked. "When I married her five years ago, she was not occupied at all. That's why I married her, but she runs three foundations of her own now as well as caring for her father." Sounding wry, he said, "I seem to be last in line on her schedule."
"Maybe you should try polygamy," Harry said without much forethought. Ginny coughed on her soup and started laughing until she managed to stifle it with a napkin.
"Sorry," she said shyly. "Where'd that come from?" she demanded quietly.
"Oh, Vineet. He said there are different laws in India for different groups, and some wizards there still practice it."
Ginny stared at him and Harry wondered if she wished she knew some Legilimency. "Do I want to know what this is in reference to?"
"Probably not," Harry replied. With a glance at their thoughtful host, he said, "Maybe we should find a better topic." He leaned back as his bowl was exchanged for yet another plate.
"No, young man, that's all right. Ten years ago, I'd have been appalled, but I've grown old enough now to find myself uncaring what anyone else wishes to do with themselves."
"As long as witches get polyandry too," Ginny said slyly. "I'd be all for it."
One course later, she asked, "So, your children have moved on?"
Harry gave a warning shake of his head, but Freelander raised his glass to Harry in a kind of toast, saying, "We'll see if they've all moved on."
Harry hurriedly clinked his glass to his host's, confused. He should not have done it, but he was concerned his asking for help may have raised the man's expectations for something Harry did not intend to provide. What he read in Freelander's eyes confused him more. He fell silent and a little panicked through the rest of the meal, which had only two more courses, and passed quickly once conversation lagged.
On the way down the drive late that evening, Ginny sleepily hooked her arm through Harry's and said, "I love being your guard. That was a wonderful dinner." When Harry did not find a comment, she said, "You have an elf and eat like that all the time, I guess."
"Not quite like that. We never have oyster caviar au gratin."
"Pureed on toast points," Ginny added brightly.
Harry laughed.
Ginny added with a grand sigh, "Man, what a way to live."
The lamps on the gate flickered on as they approached it. In the still air, their voices sounded loud. "It could have been mine," Harry said.
"You're joking," Ginny said, the grip on his arm growing almost painful.
"He wanted to adopt me."
"OH. Well, that explains his odd comment."
"It sort of explains his odd comment," Harry said, voice far away.
"What's that mean?"
"I have to think on it," Harry said, not wanting to speak ill of his patron.
Harry put aside his thoughts of Freelander that evening to worry again about the other dimension Snape. It was a dreading, semi-helpless worry, like the kind he had been a constant companion as a child and he did not like it rearing up again.
To distract himself, he went to see Elizabeth, to whom he had paperwork and good news to deliver. Ginny agreed easily to follow him on this task while Hornisham waited at home, since the nearly retired witch could not even remotely approach passing for Muggle.
Elizabeth came to the door, looking tired. Her roommate was installed on the couch, crisps in hand, watching some Muggle program.
"Ah, the boyfriend," Diane said coyly. Elizabeth cringed. And when Ginny stepped in, Diane said, "Oh, never mind."
"Sorry to call so late," Harry said, ignoring the comments. "But I wanted to bring you these things." With a happy anticipation at her reaction, he handed over the scrolls outlining the fellowship. Ginny stepped back to lean on the wall, tactfully out of the way.
Harry went on, "I have a patron, whom I've never asked anything of. He formed a fund for a fellowship for, uh, people like you to study at university." Very quietly, he added, "Witches and wizards, you know." Then back in a normal voice: "I get to dole it out to whomever I want."
She looked up from the densely printed parchments with round-eyed surprise. "Are you saying it's for me?"
Harry, feeling unusually nervous, jerked one hand out of his back pocket to gesture at what she held. "It's a fellowship for your studies."
She needed a moment to recover and her eyes went wet as she did. "Harry, that's so sweet of you."
Diane approached from the couch and took the parchments. "What odd paper."
Biting her lip, Elizabeth took them back. "I get to read them first," she said. But she did not open them. Instead, she gave Harry a firm hug. "Thanks. I don't know what to say."
"It's all right. I feel kind of responsible."
She pushed him away to arm's length. "You what?" she asked critically.
Harry held back his smile at her return to normal. "Well, I thought that if I hadn't, I don't know, inspired you to do more, er, things your dad disapproved of . . ."
"Harry," she said in a lecturing tone. "I was so overdue to get away from home. My only regret is none of it happened sooner." She unrolled the parchments. "Thanks. God, I don't know what to say."
"It's not his money," Diane pointed out.
"She's right," Harry said.
"And Freelander has plenty," Ginny tossed in.
"Yeah, but it was your doing," Elizabeth clarified. She drooped slightly. "I was in such a state yesterday, and now this . . ."
She sounded teary-eyed, and Harry wanted to hug her again, perhaps more than he really should, so he said, "I have training in the morning; I should go."
"Stop by anytime," Diane said with a knowing wink as she showed them out.
Candide was sitting at the table with Hornisham when they returned. Ginny headed off and Harry took a seat.
"Late evening," Candide observed, which Harry interpreted as her politely asking where he had been. She had been doing that more lately, which Harry suspected was on Snape's orders.
"I had some errands. To Freelander's, where he insisted on dinner, and then to Elizabeth's flat. I wanted to give her the fellowship papers right away."
"I bet she was happy," Candide said.
"Yeah," Harry said, remembering wanting to hold her. He felt vaguely floaty thinking about it.
"What's wrong?" Candide asked.
Harry glanced at his guard, knitting rhythmically as always. He maybe could use some advice. "Can we talk alone?" he asked, and Hornisham, with a formal wave, shuffled out.
Harry hesitated, fearing voicing something that might make it harder to ignore. "Nothing's wrong exactly."
"You looked like something was wrong."
"I do have a lot on my mind." He fell silent and listened to the fire licking at the wood in the hearth. "Well, maybe you can answer this. How bad is it if you feel something for someone you're not supposed to be feeling anything for?"
"Depends on if you let it get out of hand," Candide said. She sounded about how Harry expected Snape would answering that question.
"Well, but, I'm not letting it do anything. It's just happening." He kept the anger he felt out of his voice since it had nothing to do with her.
"Haven't you ever been in love?"
"Er, I don't know," Harry said, sounding difficult. "Maybe."
"Are you in love with Tonks?" She waved one of the bottles from the wall and poured Harry a sip of sherry.
"I like Tonks a lot," Harry countered, flipping the glass in his fingers with out drinking from it.
"I didn't imply that you didn't. There are two different things at work here."
"You sound like Severus. All analysis. No feelings."
She held back a smile. "You don't sound like you are ready to discuss this. Why don't we do it a month from now when you are."
"What do you think is going to happen between now and then?" Harry asked.
She had returned to the newspaper, but put it down again to say, "Do you feel closer to Tonks now than you did a month ago?"
"No," Harry admitted, feeling adrift.
"Well, then-"
Harry cut her off, defensive. "But I'm not allowed to tell her anything. No wonder she's so suspicious." Harry stopped and stood up. He swallowed the sip of sherry and sighed. "Not a surprise then, is it. Any of it."
"You mean that she doesn't trust you and you are no closer?" At Harry's nod, she said, "Doesn't sound like a surprise to me."
"I should tell her," Harry said.
"You should talk to Severus before you do."
Harry scratched his neck. "He doesn't understand."
"Oh, he does. But he wants to protect you more than he wants to make your love life work out."
Harry stalked off to bed, feeling grumpy.
Training the next day only reinforced Harry's worries about the Snape he left behind with no protection. Worse yet, he remembered clearly that he himself had demanded that Fudge arrest all the Death Eaters. Maybe he should not have done that. When he next woke in the middle of a dream of trying to fight without a wand, it felt like a hammer pounding the idea that something must be done firmly into his skull.
Harry rolled over in bed, determined to figure out a way to return and check on Snape, and the dream did not wake him again.
During field work with Rodgers on Friday afternoon, they were called to Diagon Alley for a fire at Eeylops Emporium. The Ministry swarmed in mass numbers onto the scene and put out the fire quickly, rescued the soot-dusted owls, as well as masked the smoke as it rose up into Muggle London.
"Send someone to liaison with the Muggles," Mr. Weasley said to Rodgers. "Just in case. In broad daylight like this, it won't go missed." And indeed, Muggle sirens could be heard, echoing over the buildings.
"Find the owner," Mr. Weasley ordered. "I want to talk to him, at the Ministry. Get an Auror posted at his house and bring him in."
Things were still chaotic when Harry was sent home, to his dismay, right before the shop owner was questioned. Harry had been plotting while he trailed his trainer through the confusion, commands and patrol, and felt calm sitting at home on the couch, now that he had a plan of action for the other Snape. He slept well that night for the first time in a long while.
Saturday, while Vineet was there for guard duty and after Candide had departed for work, Harry said, "I have a proposition for you."
Harry stared at Vineet's grim countenance and plowed on, "I have something I need to do that I don't want anyone to know about and you should go see Hermione. So, this is my idea: I'll do my thing and you do yours and we'll meet back here in four hours."
Vineet replied, "That would not be very dutiful of me, leaving you."
"I'm going to be far out of range of whomever is trying to kill me, believe me."
Vineet stared at him. He wavered visibly.
"Vishnu, at least go and talk to Hermione. She's as unhappy as you are. Half her last letter was spent asking about you." Harry could remember being stunned by Hermione's admission of being in love with a married man, but that was when his marriage was working out. It mattered less now than he would have previously imagined it could. In a more just reality they would be free to be with each other. And Hermione's charms would hold for days instead of minutes. "At least talk to her."
"And when I return and you do not, what shall I tell your adoptive father, whom I have no interest in offending?"
He had him; Harry could tell. He was a beaten man and Harry was pained to witness it. Something had to change, and he trusted Hermione to handle his fellow with her considerate care, whatever the result of his visiting. "Tell him I've gone to Latvia. He'll know what that means. But don't say anything if I'm back here on schedule."
Vineet thought for a minute but then stood and bowed. "I wish to trust that you know what you are doing. And if I am going to break with rules and traditions I feel less obligation to stick with others. But do, please, be back here when you say. I will be unforgiving with myself later, I am certain, even though I am uncaring right now."
"I'll be back here," Harry assured him. "Go and get yourself straightened out." He called out to Vineet before he could make it to the Floo in the dining room. "Oh, don't tell Hermione you left your guard duty. She'd be more dangerous than Severus upon learning that."
Vineet bowed, and stepped through the door. A moment later the rush of the Floo network sounded and Harry went into motion. Up in his room he used the strongest warming charm he could on his hearth stone, he repeated it until the floor creaked as it expanded. He was confident that it would remain warm for the necessary time. He then put out the fire, so he had more space, knowing that if he put it out Winky would not re-kindle it until he or Snape re-lit it.
Harry took a deep breath. He could not resist what he was planning to do. Once he had fixed his mind on this path, he would go mad with ongoing worry if he tried to drop it again. He would end up like Vineet, hopeless at being unable to take action. He closed his eyes and dropped through the floor.
- 888 -
Harry arrived in the Hogwart's dungeon and awoke before a fire burning low in the empty Potions classroom. By the time he could move, he ached everywhere from the cold. Initially, the best he could manage was to roll over to warm his other side, and he only really got moving when he smelled what must be his robes smoldering.
With a creak of his spine and a groan Harry rolled to sit up and slapped at his robes where smoke twined off them. Part of him imagined that at least if he caught fire, he would be warm again, but his better sense prevailed . . . just barely. With ungainly movements, he rose to his feet and swayed before stumbling to the door. He checked the corridor and slipped down to Snape's office, but the door was barred with Ministry Department of Law Enforcement Tape. Harry blinked at this with dread blossoming in his chest strongly enough to paralyze him while he adjusted to the notion. He did not move until voices approached. He slipped into the Dark Plane and stood thinking. He could seek out McGonagall for information, but he wanted to avoid the watchful paintings in her tower. He slipped into Hogsmeade instead.
In the alley beside the Hogs Head, Harry applied a disguise, the best he could do quickly with no mirror and given that he could not quite straighten his cold-stiff spine. He applied a long white beard and hair and aged his face, essentially putting on the Dumbledore disguise he had used the previous Halloween. He stroked his face and, deciding it felt all right, headed around to the door of the seedy wizard pub to see what he could learn about recent events here.
Inside the pub a burly, bald man stood wiping down the bar, deep-set eyes nearly hidden under his long eyebrows. He stared at Harry along with everyone else. All conversation had stopped when the door opened. Harry limped up to the bar, not needing much fakery to manage this and ordered a butterbeer with a raspy, weak voice.
The bartender laughed mockingly but he fetched a dusty old bottle and opened it with his teeth before plonking it down. Harry tossed two Sickles on the bar, saying, "Use the change to buy a few rags that are only decade old."
Harry picked up his drink and wandered to an empty table, on the way scooping up off the end of the bar what he had come for: a ragged pile of old Daily Prophets.
As he pulled out a chair, nearly unbalancing himself, a smattering of conversation resumed, but before he could sit, Harry had to reach for his wand as his skin prickled with a curse warning. Harry put up a Modulated Block to avoid sending the reflected curse around the room. It had only been a Tripping Curse, but it raised Harry's ire. He disarmed the oversized, hooded man, which brought the man to his drunken feet.
The room's conversations stopped again with a special sound-absorbing kind of silence. Harry tauntingly held out the man's gummy wand with his fingertips as one might a dead rodent. "That was foolish," Harry said, still trying to sound old. The man tossed off his hood, revealing Goyle, Harry's old schoolmate. He had grown a bit in all dimensions, but mostly around the middle. His robes had split at the sides to make room. Harry threw his wand at him and Goyle had to struggle to bend far enough to pick it up.
"Do that again, I'll use it for kindling rather than returning it," Harry snapped.
The conversations resumed immediately this time, attention pointedly redirecting off him. Harry sat down and sorted through the papers, requiring little time to find what he needed because the papers had been left refolded and flattened to the articles most of interest to the locals. A sequence of grim headlines and pictures showed Snape being investigated, then dragged out of the castle. Harry squinted at the photograph of his actual arrest but in the poor pub light could not see if anyone had come to his defense.
During more flipping through the stack for the most recent issues, Harry learned that Snape's trial was in five days and he was being held in the Ministry dungeon. A sidebar to this article described overdue Ministry plans to finally rebuild Azkaban after so many years of simply cursing those found guilty of minor infractions so they lost the use of a limb for a year, or simply executing those found guilty of anything serious. The sharp reduction in the wizarding population brought about by this policy was growing worrisome, according to the author of the article.
Harry stacked the papers back together, partly to hide what he had been looking at, partly to stall while plotting. He tossed back the remainder of his flat butterbeer and Disapparated away.
Author's Notes: Yes, cruel cut-point, but on the upside, most of 17 is written as a result.
Next: Chapter 17
Wary, glancing at the door repeatedly from his ungainly position, Rodgers said, "You think that's the only way to initiate an alarm?"
"It'll buy time." Harry said easily, unperturbed. "Funny, regulations 721 through 724 of the Code for Handling Prisoners states that Magical Suppression Barriers shall not be removed from the Ministry Holding Area except in cases of repair or difficult prisoner movement." Harry waved his wand at Rodgers as though taking him to task. "It's your own damn fault I can do that."
Rodgers blinked at him, caught completely off-guard by having rules quoted at him. He recovered his bluster. "You don't stand a chance, Potter. . . or whoever you are."
Chapter 17 — Reserve Rescue
With wand drawn Harry slipped silently into the Ministry of Magic dungeon. He peered in both directions down the low-ceilinged, dank-aired corridor, at the rows of doors, each with a small barred window set near the top. Harry had to stand on tip-toe, grazing his head on the damp ceiling, to see the whole of the cell inside. He popped up on his toes to look into the nearest two but saw only a white-haired witch and an empty cell. His striding forward to check the next cells was halted by an unearthly chill penetrating his already cold-weary bones. The light dimmed on the crossing corridor ahead of him. Harry closed his eyes and tried to find the Dementor in his mind, but he had long lost the connection to them. Still, he thought he felt some strange presence. Go elsewhere, Harry commanded, hoping that might work.
The approaching darkness held steady. The ice ceased to fork and spread over the wall ahead. Harry quickly checked the next few cells, but retreated when he felt the dismal presence approaching again. Harry ducked around the closest corner where new cells had been installed, resulting in a dungeon far larger than the one he knew in his Plane. The Dementor continued to drift closer. Harry hesitated using a Patronus for fear it would set off an alarm. He tried again with his mind to distract the creature but only encouraged its curiosity, apparently, because it sped up.
Bouncing on his toes as he ran, Harry checked the cells along this wing, putting needed space between himself and clawing unhappiness. He skidded to a halt after peeking in the second-to-last cell on the right, and looked in again. The figure hunched over its knees was painfully familiar. Harry slipped inside via the Dark Plane and stood with his back pressed to the wall beside the door. The occupant of the room did not stir. Harry raised his wand, preparing a Patronus Charm as the air grew depressing and sucked at the already sparse light.
The Dementor's skeletal hand drifted between the bars of the little window on the door and grabbed hold of one bar. Harry shivered and had to cover his mouth to keep his teeth from clattering. Hopelessness threatened him. Another skeletal hand wrapped around another bar, but the Dementor itself could not enter the cell, apparently, because it approached no more than that. Closing his eyes, Harry found warmth inside his memories. The warmth of being wrapped up in a blissful blanket and kept safe.
Harry opened his eyes. The Dementor still grasped the bars, but the terrible unhappiness had loosed its hold on him. He relaxed a little and studied Snape, his attention caught by one hand twitching where it hung off the stone bench. It was unlikely that he slept deeply because he sat slouched awkwardly, head resting partly on his own propped up knees and partly on the wall. The position did not look at all comfortable. His hair stuck up in strange directions, accentuating his odd pose.
Snape's hand twitched again and he made a small noise of distress. The Dementor rattled the bars and Snape's head jerked. Harry readied a Patronus but tried just a moment more to avoid using it. He closed his eyes and sought out the green world where he had once found the Dementors. Go away, Harry commanded. Feed elsewhere, he insisted, imaging his own hope as a shield in that world where it would go undetected.
One-by-one, the Dementor's long digits released the bars and it retreated, leaving a puff of frozen air drifting in the cell. Relief and warmth flowed into Harry's body.
Harry stepped forward and crouched beside the bench, intending to rest a hand on Snape's shoulder to rouse him, but his hand froze in space halfway there. From this angle Harry could see bruises mottling the side of Snape's face and neck and he could also see that the reason his hair was so matted was it was pressed into shape by dried blood.
Harry swallowed against the sick rising to his throat.
"Severus?" Harry whispered.
Snape jumped, not really asleep, his reaction instantaneous. He squinted at Harry, breath held, but then looked away again, resting his head on his knee. Harry blinked in confusion at being ignored. After a glance behind him and careful listening for any approach, Harry asked, "Who did this to you?"
Still no response.
"Severus?"
Harry shifted his feet where he crouched, thought of only one possibility for being ignored, and said, "I'm not a hallucination."
Snape raised his marred and bloodied head but did not look over, just stared straight at something to the right of the cell door.
Mood fuelled by relief that he had come to this place, Harry continued more amiably, "I'm quite certain hallucinations don't ever bring up the topic of whether or not they are, in fact, hallucinations."
Snape's head turned a quarter of the way in Harry's direction. This showed off the laceration to his scalp that had bled so copiously.
Harry again: "The Ministry must be a corrupt wreck to let this happen. Why did they do this to you?"
Snape swallowed hard in preparation for talking. "I told them. They wanted to know where the Dark Lord was. I told them," he repeated in a litany. His shoulder spasmed. "If this is a trick . . . it does not matter. I've told them."
Harry placed his hand on Snape's shoulder and felt a tinge of aversion through his arm. "Someone used a Cruciatus on you. Did someone from the Ministry do that?"
Snape did not respond. Harry reached a hand to his neck and felt for the tangled heat of the curse. It was not as bad as he feared, but the curse's tiny tendrils seethed, menacing with the threat of never fully letting go, of growing slowly worse forever. Harry pushed the curse down and cooled the heat of it fighting him, pressed it down and cooled it, repeating this back and forth until he gained ground. Snape's breathing grew shallow and rapid, worrisome, but it could just be a reaction to utter release from agony.
The curse ceased heating and reweaving and Harry dropped his hand. Eyes much clearer, Snape stared at him with the same stunned scrutiny he had the last time Harry had seen him. With slow care, Snape straightened and leaned back against the wall to stare at Harry more easily. His left sleeve had been torn free at the shoulder and hung like a crooked cape at his side. Harry noticed that his left forearm had a red X slashed in it.
Harry took hold of Snape's wrist and touched his wand to each of the wounds to heal them. He did not let go immediately after lowering his wand. Something was vibrating inside of him, something he did not like the feel of. Snape's arm was cursed, but worse than that, it called to something at his core, somewhere just inside his spine. His thumb tingled where it pressed on the cords of Snape's wrist. Harry moved his thumb and the resonance intensified. Harry pushed at it the way he had with the Crucio remnants and Snape's mark flared faint pink before fading to white and disappearing again.
Snape tried to tug his arm away, but Harry held fast.
"Do you regret joining him?" Harry asked.
"Regret?" Snape uttered. "I regret, at this moment, literally everything."
"You wanted him gone though, didn't you?" Harry persisted, feeling for the outlines of the cursed Mark under Snape's skin. Coming here may have been a mistake, if loyalty to Dumbledore was all that had driven Snape's actions. Harry needed to know. "It's better with him gone," Harry prompted.
"Better for everyone but myself," Snape grumbled. "But yes, better. I make a poor martyr, though."
"You told me not to give you away. Maybe I should have. Maybe I could have protected you. I could vouch for you now; it's not too late." Harry was not certain at all that he could arrange to return for the trial, but something had to be done.
"That would not have worked. Not being associated with you has saved me no small amount of interrogation. They tried to question me about you, but they did not know I had assisted you and I could truthfully tell them that I do not particularly like your family."
"Or me," Harry finished for him. Snape's gaze grew wary. "You don't have to like me," Harry assured him. "But you do have to wish you never joined him."
"How could I not wish that?" Snape snapped hoarsely at him. "There have been a few amenities, certainly, but . . ." He diverted his eyes. "Such a mistake I made," he whispered, sounding drained and beaten.
"Don't make any loud noises," Harry said and pressed down with his thumb. Snape hissed and his leg flailed in pain but an instant later the skull and snake image on his arm rose up through his skin and, smoking, faded to ash, which immediately smeared. Harry let go.
Snape held his arm up to better peer at it. "They would hardly notice my screaming here," he murmured. He brushed off the ash and stared some more. Without lowering his arm, Snape asked, "What are you?"
Harry stood and his knees thanked him for it. "I'm part Voldemort, remember?"
Snape flinched at the name and Harry said, "Come now. He's dead. The real question is what do you want to do?"
Snape sneered at him. "And my options would be?"
"I can vouch for you or I take you away from here. Somewhere far away."
Snape swayed as much as one sitting propped against a wall could. "You really are a hallucination. I am finally losing my mind." He swallowed. "If you can take me away from here or, barring my questionable sanity, drive me well enough insane that I do not care that I am still here . . . I would do nearly anything in my measly, miserable power . . . for you. But I have nothing."
"You don't have to do anything except tell me where you want to go."
"Damn you, again," Snape muttered, building to a snarl that transformed his marred face. "Stop giving me hope."
A clang echoed in from far away, interrupting Snape's tormented reply. Footsteps approached. Snape reflexively pressed his back fully against the wall, bracing his hands on the stone bench.
"Recognize the footsteps?" Harry asked, thinking belatedly that he recognized them as well.
"One of the Aurors is coming. Right bastard. His miserable, domineering wife torments him all night and he comes in here most days to take it out on me."
Harry pressed himself against the wall beside the door and tapped himself with an Obsfucation Charm. "Let's do this right," Harry said, thinking ahead to freeing Snape as completely as possible. "Convince him to test for your mark."
Keys sounded in the lock and the cords in Snape's thin neck stood out through his pale skin. He only flinched faintly when the lock sparkled and slammed clear, making Harry marvel at his indomitable will.
Rodgers strode in with a cloying swagger to his step. Snape glared at him, unblinking.
"You're looking better today," Rodgers said with mixed feeling.
Snape said, "I'm finally enjoying the many amenities of your fine establishment."
Rodgers laughed cruelly. "We can change that." His wand twitched at his side, and Harry raised his but waited for a real move.
Snape sneered, restricted from fully showing it by the swollen bruises on his face, "Don't you get tired of this?"
"Tired of getting even with your kind. Never. You're a contamination on the wizarding world and need to be dealt with properly, which means without mercy."
"'My kind'? And what kind would that be?" Snape asked, pulling forth his annoyed professor voice.
"You are an idiot or think me one."
Snape crossed his arms and raised his chin. "No, really, I'd like to hear you say it."
"The Death Eater kind of evil," Rodgers said, leaning forward and speaking low and slow.
"Oh really. And you are certain I am one, are you?"
This gave Rodgers pause. "Everyone knows it. You-Know-Who made no secret of it."
"You were privy to his memos, then?" Snape asked sarcastically, and Harry had to suppress a snigger.
Angry now, Rodgers said, "It is easy enough to check." He used a shackling spell to jerk Snape's arms forward and hold them there, fixed in mid-air. With no gentleness he rolled Snape's left arm over and stabbed his wand against flesh with a Revelatio. Nothing happened so he repeated it, tugging hard enough on Snape's arm to pull him forward off the wall. "It's a trick," Rodgers snarled, stepping back, which canceled the untethered shackling spell.
"Is it?" Snape asked. "I do believe that it is impossible to remove a Mark, is it not?"
Rodgers' shoulders fell and then he whipped his wand up aggressively. "Wait a minute, what happened to the wounds on that arm?" He started to spell something nasty, Harry could feel the cursedness of it. Harry beat him at it, using a whip charm to snag his wand, which sent the half-formed curse sizzling over the walls and ceiling like a firework.
Rodgers spun and leapt bodily at Harry, but Harry had his fist ready and being mostly invisible gave him a huge advantage. He leveled Rodgers with a punch to the jaw.
"Ouch," Harry said, shaking his hand. "Damn that smarts."
Rodgers was rolling to get to his feet. Left handed, Harry put him in a body bind and then tapped himself on the head to remove the Obsfucation.
Rodgers gaped up at Harry as he stepped over to stand above him. "Potter?!" He opened his mouth wide to shout something more, and Harry hit the door with a Silencing charm, then a series of Impenetrable Charms.
Wary, glancing at the door repeatedly from his ungainly position, Rodgers said, "You think that's the only way to initiate an alarm?"
"It'll buy time." Harry said easily, unperturbed. "Funny, regulations 721 through 724 of the Code for Handling Prisoners states that Magical Suppression Barriers shall not be removed from the Ministry Holding Area except in cases of repair or difficult prisoner movement." Harry waved his wand at Rodgers as though taking him to task. "It's your own damn fault I can do that."
Rodgers blinked at him, caught completely off-guard by having rules read at him. He recovered his bluster. "You don't stand a chance, Potter. . . or whoever you are."
"Oh, I'm Harry Potter," Harry said, bending over him. "See the scar?"
The door rattled.
"He managed an alarm," Snape whispered.
"You're surrounded," Rodgers stated smugly.
Harry went on, "Oh, but what you fail to realize is I'm at my best when things seem bleakest. And I have something to say to you before I go. You talk big about fighting evil, but I have bad news for you." Harry lowered his wand till it touched Rodgers' neck. He definitely had the man's full attention. "You are the evil. You're not an Auror; you're a bully. And if the Ministry is this corrupt there is no hope for it. This man isn't the enemy . . . you are."
The door began to glow and sparkle. "Potter . . ." Snape warned.
Harry raised his hand to him. "Give me your arm." Snape did and Harry grabbed hold firmly. "Brace yourself." The door began to fall inward. Harry hit it with a blasting curse and grunts of pain could be heard on the other side of it when it slammed home into place. Harry re-aimed his wand at Rodgers. "You could be more than this. But all you are is part of the problem. At least get a divorce . . . you'd be happier."
With that, he pulled the two of them into the Dark Plane.
Snape collapsed when they arrived and Harry thought him dead, the way he went so totally, floppily limp. Heart pounding, and berating himself for not thinking about the strain that would cause, Harry Apparated away from the creatures piling in their direction. He arrived in another area, trying to think quickly. He dropped his burden to the grey, dusty ground and knelt beside him. Snape was breathing, but shallowly, and he was nearly as gray as the dust behind him. Harry did not want to pull Snape through the other side again, worried it would finish him off. He raised his wand and tried a barrier, but it sizzled and cracked. He put his wand away and waited for the creatures to scuttle over, prepared to defend both of them until Snape recovered sufficiently.
Harry did not wait long. The creatures were soon bucking and snarling in a circle about ten feet in diameter. One giant rat-like thing with glistening scales grabbed at Snape's shoe, and Harry had to snarl at it to get it to let loose.
A stand-off ensued. Harry glared at all of the creatures and they glared, circled and crawled over their fellows in an effort to get as close as possible, yet not too close. Harry relaxed marginally and the creatures slowed. Harry froze, breath held. He relaxed more. The creatures, bent their heads and tried to sulk in closer. Harry turned his head side to side and narrowed his eyes at all of them. "Don't you dare," he said. They stepped back slowly and waited, watchful.
Harry sighed. He did not want to take his eyes off the creatures, so he used his hand to shake Snape's shoulder and failing to get a response to that, to check his breathing. Thinking about how vulnerable he was made the creatures move in closer. Harry glared at them again and they backed off again. He sighed into the stale air and held tight to that feeling of superiority.
Harry did not imagine that he could survive sitting there for ten minutes like that, but he did; he managed a draw with the creatures, which counted as a win. Snape muttered something and Harry commanded, "Keep your eyes closed. Feeling all right?"
"I've felt better," came the faint reply.
Harry decided that would have to be good enough and he Apparated them and pulled them through the dust into the only spot he could think of where Snape could have time to recover undisturbed.
A dusting of snow covered cold-stiff grass. Snape blinked in the grey-orange sunlight as he was lifted to kneel on the unyielding grass. "Where the devil are we?" He wrapped his arms around himself as he was released to sway slowly.
Harry moved along the line of huts until he was sure which was which. The snow bore no tracks and no smoke issued from anywhere; the village had been deserted for the season, as he'd hoped. "In here," he said, tossing open the door of Per's hut where Harry had stayed before on his visit to get instruction from the Shaman.
While Snape crawled gingerly inside, Harry fetched wood and quickly cleared the smoke-hole, adjusting the skin over it for the prevailing wind with practiced ease. Inside he ignited a roaring fire with a twitch of his wand. Snape sat with his arms hitched around his knees, looking only slightly better than when Harry had found him. With surprising force bordering on anger, Snape said, "You didn't answer my question."
"We're in Finland, or Norway, er, north of the Arctic Circle anyway."
"That explains the snow and the exceptionally grim sun," he stated, sounding dubious and fatefully bleak.
"I can take you back to the Ministry," Harry threateningly teased.
"Dying here would be preferable."
Harry was running out of time. "Here, take Rodgers' wand. You can hole up here until you've recovered and then go somewhere and start over again."
That notion appeared to be foreign to Snape because he did not react to it. He stared at the wand in great detail before pocketing it.
"You'll have plenty of time to think about it," Harry assured him, his mind coming up with ideas which might work quickly enough for him to get back before his hearthstone cooled and Vineet arrived. "Let me fetch you supplies. Oh, and if you see a wolf, it might be a shaman. In any event, watch out because they go for the hands first."
Harry stood, remaining hunched because of the roof branches, and Snape watched him with a stupefied expression. "I'll be back," Harry assured him.
Harry arrived a quarter-mile from the Burrow, but what he found astonished him. The same basic house was there, but it had been built onto in all directions, including precariously sideways on the first and second floors, and several outbuildings had been added around it. It was nearly a village. A fifteen-foot wrought-iron fence enclosed the place and it sparkled, heavily charmed. Harry walked around to the front gate and looked for a bell pull. He found a Griffin-head knocker instead and used that. From within the ivy growing thickly on the gate an eyeball popped open and peered around. A pair of lips appeared next, strangely off to the side rather than below the eyeball. "Who is it?" a voice that could be Mrs. Weasley's asked.
Harry stepped sideways within view of the eyeball. "It's Harry Potter, I—" He did not get to finish his request as the lips let out a cry of surprise. The lips muttered rapidly then fell silent. Harry waited, the breeze blowing his hair around. The eyeball moved again and jerked in surprise and the gate clicked open. Four people approached across the yard as the gate swung wide. Two others came running from elsewhere.
Harry stepped inside a few strides, but given the ivy that slithered to block his path and the way the gnomes crept around with miniature pitchforks, he decided to wait.
He was soon surrounded. "Harry Potter?" Bill asked him in disbelief. The twins slapped him on the back, stiff-armed as though their elbows were unable to bend. Ginny stepped through the pack when it eased. She too whispered his name in a way that tore at Harry for his deception.
Harry quickly said, "I'm sorry I can't stay long. But I need some help."
Mrs. Weasley had arrived, wand out, tied-back hair completely grey. "Out of the way. Out of the way." She gave Harry a quick hug. "Come inside, dear."
Harry wanted to ask where Ron was, but then wondered if he really wanted to know. His question was answered when he came in and found Ron in a floating chair, legs locked straight.
"Cursed, you know," he said, to Harry's staring. Adding: "That incident in the Atrium with the elves . . . maybe you heard about it?"
Rather than answer, Harry asked, "How are you doing?"
Ron shrugged. "I try not to drive Mum crazy. She's got enough on her hands with Fred and George being in and out of curse-punishment." He was about to ask something else. Harry could see in his friend's eyes and knew that he'd have to make up a lie to answer it. The question ballooned in Ron, painful and laden with the past.
Mrs. Weasley turned Harry around before Ron could say anything. "Bill said you need help and are in a hurry, dear; what is it you need?"
Harry shook himself from the notion of a coldly efficient Molly Weasley. "I need supplies. Food and a warm cloak. Very warm gloves, for flying in the cold. And a broomstick if you can spare it. Doesn't have to be fast so much as reliable."
The room went into motion, clearly accustomed to working in a panic as a group. Harry watched, moving forward when a charmed sack was produced, by joint magic of the stiff-armed twins, for holding everything. Cans and jars went into it until Harry lost count. The evening pot roast went in as well as plates and napkins and even the tablecloth.
Harry's deception on top of their generosity was nearly killing him. "I don't know how to repay you for this," he said, pain clear in his voice.
"No need," someone snapped fiercely, and others shook their heads in support.
Harry realized how to do it. He reached over to where Ron floated, holding jars of pickled beets that waited to be packed up. He grabbed Ron's shin and felt the curse coarse up sickeningly up his arm. Eyes watering, he pushed the curse away and Ron's leg bent, limp, and he gave a cry of surprise that brought everyone to a halt. Harry un-cursed Ron's other leg, and shook out his prickling hand. Ron jumped down from the chair and grabbed Harry's arm in gratitude.
"Can't be seen like that," Bill pointed out to his brother.
"I don't care. I'll hide in the house."
"Us next?" one of the twins sheepishly asked.
Household uncursed, Harry bundled the lip of the small sack with the twine handed to him and tossed it easily over his shoulder.
"You can't even stay a little while more?" Ginny asked. "We want to hear what happened. We all thought you were dead. What did Dumbledore do? Where have you been?"
Harry peered around their pale, red-framed faces. "I'm sorry. I can't explain, as much as I'd like to. I miss you all terribly but it . . . it just isn't possible."
"Thanks for getting rid of Ole-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned," one of the twins said.
"That was the easy part. All of you have the hard part of cleaning up the Ministry."
"That's for certain," Mrs. Weasley coldly agreed, again surprising Harry.
Harry looked them all over again as he looped the cloak over his arm and took up the battered broomstick. "Thanks. I won't forget you."
A chorus of well-wishing followed Harry to the door. "Take it easy, Potter." "Stop in any time." "Don't let the Trolls eat you."
Harry waved several times as he departed, and waited until he was out of view to disappear.
Back in the Arctic, he quietly set the sack down in the stone-floored kitchen area so as not to awaken Snape, who was curled up, sleeping, looking distressingly half dead. Harry rested the broom in the ceiling of the hut and draped the cloak over Snape, which woke him. He sat up quickly, but then winced severely.
"At the risk of sounding ungrateful . . . I hope you have food," Snape said through clenched teeth.
Harry reached into the sack and pulled out the tablecloth, placesetting and the roast. "Here. Compliments of the Weasleys."
Snape had taken up the fork and knife but at this last pronouncement, he stared, eyes glazed, at the food, seeming undone. Something compelled him to move, perhaps primeval hunger and, shakily, he made a jagged slice in the roast. He cleared his throat and said, "I do not think I have ever been brought so low, so humbled, as this moment."
"It's good for you," Harry said. "Builds character."
Snape snorted, but his mouth relaxed as though, minus the bruises, he might have smiled, or at least smirked.
Harry said, "Get better, and move on, somewhere far from England. Forget everything and start over again. Without the Mark no one can prove who you are."
Snape swallowed and cut another generous, juice leeching bite. "Why are you doing this?"
Harry replied, "I have my reasons. You don't need to know them if you are benefiting from them."
Snape took another bite and said, "Benefactors are far more dangerous than enemies. They expect something in return. Enemies just expect you to be yourself."
"I don't want anything from you but that you stay out of trouble so I can focus on what I need to do."
"And what might that be . . . mastering the Universe?" Snape asked.
"I'm just doing what everyone does. Trying to get by, stay out of trouble, learn some magic. Nothing unusual."
Eating had given Snape his old attitude back. "Why do I find that highly doubtful?"
Harry warned, "This time I'm really not coming back."
"I believed you the last time," Snape said, falling quiet and strained again. "Thank you for lying."
"You're welcome. Just make something out of this second chance, all right? Then we're even."
"Third chance."
"Who's counting?"
- 888 -
Vineet stopped at the base of the steps to Hogwarts castle. The path was familiar from his round of attenuation lessons the previous school year and habit had carried him well until the grass became step.
He was behaving like someone other than himself and rather than finding that alarming, he found it a relief. A gust of wind blew the great front doors against the latch, and that felt like a signal. He stepped up and slipped inside, tugging the door closed hard behind him against the weather. In contrast it was sultry inside. A fire burned vigorously in the Entrance Hall hearth. Students sat on the Grand Staircase, one group sharing notes, another play-fighting over something of value.
"Vishnu, is it not?" a familiar voice said, drawing Vineet from ascending the stairs upward.
Vineet turned to McGonagall and bowed formally, hands pressed together.
"Your lessons with Sinistra have not resumed, have they?"
"No, this is a visit," Vineet said, wondering now if he were breaking school protocol that he had not needed to learn last time. Surely there were rules about visitors, even if no one had mentioned them to him before. Vineet felt dizzy with a remote part of him wishing to be sent away from this place.
She winked at him, dashing the hopes of that last sparkle of righteousness. "It's not a problem, young man. I do keep things a little more secure here than perhaps the school has historically been. I find as soon as I relax the habit for great care, something transpires to necessitate a return to previous security. But Ministry employees and certainly Auror apprentices are always welcome." She held back her sleeve to gesture to the stairs. "Please," she said, sounding eager for him to continue on.
Vineet bowed just with his head this time and mounted the staircase.
McGonagall followed along with him as he travelled through the castle. Beyond the Entrance Hall the corridors held chilly air and he was glad he had not shucked his cloak. McGonagall made slow elegant small talk as they went.
Just before the door to Hermione's office, when Vineet wished for her to be absent when he knocked, she held out a hand to the door latch and held fast. Quietly, she said, "I'm very glad you're here." With that she pushed the latch and slipped away.
The door creaked open an inch and Vineet, reeling from the way the world was conspiring to channel him along this path, knocked on the dense wood of the ajar door.
Hermione's voice sounded higher pitched than normal as she called that whoever it was could enter. She was working at something with a long quill. She looked up and held still in surprise before putting the quill on the stand beside the inkwell and pushing the sheet away by the edges.
"Hi," she said.
"I wished to speak with you; if that is possible," Vineet said, finding refuge in that limited intent.
"Close the door. Come on in," she said, restraining pleasure behind standard words. She fidgeted but then stood and came around the desk.
They met in the middle of the room between the two student desks facing her larger one.
"It's good to see you again so soon," she said, pained but with eyes glowing. She glanced around, perhaps for a normal chair to offer, considered the chairs lined up against the wall, then turned away from them. Instead, she simply pulled him down into a kiss.
His wet cloak hung forward over his shoulders, feeling cold and leaden trapped between them. He pulled away long enough to drop it to the floor and wrap her up so he could feel every square inch of warmth where they touched.
- 888 -
Harry sat up when the latent heat of his hearthstone seeped fully into his bones. He rubbed his eyes and glanced around his blessedly quiet and familiar room. His heart ached a bit from seeing Snape in that tortured state, but he had succeeded, and that let him breathe freely. He sat with his back to the dark hearth, forcing himself to pledge to not return there again. This time he truly had done all he could. Everything else would have to take care of itself. He wanted to believe in his own pledge but felt doubt nonetheless.
When Vineet returned in the Floo, Harry, who had arrived with a comfortable fifteen minutes to spare, was lounging on the couch with tea spread on a nearby tray.
"Hungry?" Harry asked his friend.
Vineet shook his head and took the couch opposite. He appeared a little shell shocked but far more relaxed and present than before.
"How did it go?" Harry asked.
"I think we reached an understanding."
"That's good. What was that?"
Vineet hesitated, struggled to explain, then said, "I don't have words for it."
Harry rubbed away his instant grin.
"And your errand?" Vineet asked, drawing outside himself in a sign of improved disposition.
"Good. I'm glad I took care of it. It was almost too late. But it's done now."
Vineet clasped his hands together. "May I ask if it involved anything illegal?"
"No," Harry immediately replied, thinking there were no rules about inter-dimensional travel. But then he thought again about springing a prisoner from the Ministry dungeon. "Well . . . it depends on whose rules apply."
Vineet said, "I only ask because I wonder how seriously I need to take making up a story in the future."
"You won't need to make up a story," Harry assured him. "I didn't break any of this Ministry's rules."
"Just those of a different Ministry?"
"Something along those lines," Harry said.
"The Latvian Ministry's rules, perhaps?"
"I helped out a friend who was in dire straits. That's all. You're one to suddenly care about the rules," Harry finally stopped resisting pointing out.
"I am trying to return to the habit as quickly as possible. I should not have let you convince me to leave you untended. I was weaker than I wished to be when you suggested it. But that is no excuse."
"Sorry about that. I think I took advantage of you, even if everything worked out."
Vineet bowed acceptance of Harry's apology and they fell into other topics. They were still sitting there discussing minor things when Snape arrived home early for dinner.
"Candide hasn't returned from work," Harry explained. "We're just having an easy Saturday here."
"Are you? Nice to have friends available as guards." Snape stated this flatly enough to make Harry's brow furrow. "Any other friends around this afternoon?" Snape asked.
Harry only saw the trap after it had sprung. He considered lying, contriving something with Ginny who would back him up in a pinch but could not withstand any Legilimency. Harry exhaled broadly and said, "No."
"Mr. Abhayananda, I will take over for the evening; if you would leave us alone."
Vineet stood and gave a low bow. "It will not happen again."
"I am most assured of that already," Snape stated. "On that note, Headmistress McGonagall wanted you to know that you can visit the school anytime and in fact wishes to know if you would like to teach a session on Asian magic."
Vineet stopped and bowed again before exiting with a clear line of relief to his posture.
Snape stood stock still until he and Harry were alone. "You are not to shake your guard. You are grounded for the week."
Harry frowned. "What does that entail?"
"It means you will be here in this house unless you have official duties to attend to. No pubs, friends who aren't assigned guards, or nights at Ms. Tonks' flat." Snape flicked his cloak and sat across from Harry. "I fear asking what you were doing."
"Don't ask, then," Harry quipped.
Snape's brow arched. "At the risk of sounding the bad parent, you were sloppy about covering yourself as well. I was certain to hear that your fellow was at Hogwarts this afternoon. He made no secret of his presence." He sat back, satisfied with this critique. "Have you shaken your guard previously?"
Harry wanted to be truthful where he could. "Once. To sneak into the Department of Mysteries. Tonks let me off for a few hours when I asked. I wanted to see what was going on there."
"Ms. Tonks as well. Goodness, is there no one to rely on at that place?"
Snape stood with a huff and slipped over to the drawing room doorway. "I hope you had plans this evening . . ."
"You hope I did?" Harry asked, confused.
"Yes," Snape retorted dryly, "So that you must cancel them." He disappeared into the next room.
Harry sighed, feeling bemused by getting into trouble with Snape after saving Snape. But he was loath to admit what he had been doing. Harry called down his owl to send a message to Ron telling him he would miss Sunday dinner at the Burrow. While he sat with quill poised, trying to decide whether to admit he was in trouble, Snape wandered back through.
He stopped and said, "What were you doing that required you to shake your guard?"
"Will it change my punishment if I had a good reason?"
"No."
"Then I'm not telling you." Harry dipped his quill and started to write out that he was in trouble because it was just easier to admit it instead of making something up. He finally looked back up at Snape when the other moved to lean on the back of the other couch, hands gripping tightly. They stared at each other until Harry looked down again at the letter before him. The quill had splotched ink where it rested, so he crossed out the word "trouble" and wrote it out again. Snape did not move, he stood there thinking for over a minute.
"I have a life to live," Harry said, even though this felt like a lie, given that he had used his free time to live someone else's life.
"Only if you survive to live it."
"Oh, come on," Harry complained. "You're acting like I've never been in danger before. Everyone is. I got less protection when I was eleven."
"That is not technically true; you just were unaware of the protection around you. Is that what this is about?"
"No," Harry insisted, shaking his head and abandoning his letter for the moment because he'd splotched it again. "I just have things I need to do sometimes. Why can't you just accept that?"
Snape formulated an answer before replying, "Because the possibilities engendered by your power are alarming in their scope."
Harry took a deep breath. "It's still my life," he said softly.
Snape kneaded his fingertips into his forehead in a gesture mimicking the one his alternative self used repeatedly while injured. Harry bit his lip.
"I don't mean to make things hard for you," Harry said, which was the truth, even though it did not change his will any to acknowledge it.
- 888 -
Ginny and Ron came on Sunday in response to his letter, forcing Harry to explain in a low voice that he was grounded.
"How old are you now?" Ron asked.
"It has nothing to do with that. I think I'd get grounded for shaking my guard if I were thirty. I'm afraid you can't stay," he said, when Ginny changed the topic to try to tell him something about the twins' shop.
"That's all right, Ginny's got a date tonight with his highness," Ron teased.
A blush tainted Ginny's cheeks. "It's just to the cinema."
"Aaron finally asked you out?" Harry asked, but was interrupted by Snape clearing his throat from the doorway. Harry's guardian glared at them all, arms crossed. "You have to go," Harry said, shooing his friends off.
When they were gone, he and Snape stared at each other for a few breaths before Snape returned to the main hall, leaving Harry wondering idly if he still needed him, really. In his gut he believed he did, but another voice in his head needled him mockingly that he should not stand for being treated like a child.
That evening, Harry sat in the main hall, taking notes from his books with slow, bored, grudging purpose, stalling by doodling in the margins. He doodled his pets and then the Dark Mark, remembering the ashy image of it as it emerged from the alternative Snape's arm, remembering how it had called to something inside of him. If he could shed this piece of Voldemort, he would need Snape less, it occurred to him. Harry casually slipped that parchment under the next as Snape approached. He turned the page in his book and pretended to resume reading.
"I am returning to Hogwarts now," Snape stated coldly.
"All right."
Snape appeared to relent a little. "Harry . . ." he began, with more emotion, but faded out and shifted to frustrated. He sat down, hands clasped as though cold.
"Are you more worried about me than you would be if I didn't still have part of Voldemort in me?" Harry asked, since it was flitting around in his immediate thoughts.
"That has almost nothing to do with it. I assume by now you are accustomed to living as you have most all your life, with him included. No, what I fear is trouble you do not foresee, and in fact create for yourself out of earnest heroism or simple naïveté."
Harry thought about his previous day's foray and said with a touch of sheepishness, "I'm getting better at recovering from those."
"Practice does help," Snape stated wryly.
Harry wanted to tell him that he was going to inform Tonks of his powers. That he ached to tell her so she would trust him more. But before he could work himself up to it given the tension they already had, Snape returned to a more pleading attitude and said, "I have to do what I can, Harry, even at the risk of alienating you, which I see I am doing." Snape rose to his feet and stepped over to rest a hand on Harry's shoulder for a second before departing with a last goodbye to Candide.
In his absence, Harry sat staring at the doorway to the dining room, wondering again with a prickling chill across his skin if he had again landed somewhere similar but new. This time it was definitely his fault if that had happened. Perhaps every time he left he returned somewhere new. If that was the case, he was lost utterly now. But he could not ask for further reassurance without admitting he had departed once again. Harry shook his head and headed up to his room to take Kali out of her cage.
- 888 -
Ginny sat, happily eating a meal in a white-clad restaurant she could never imagine affording to read the menu of, much less order anything in. Across the neat table and crystal candlesticks, Aaron exhibited his disarming goofy gallantness as they tucked into one course after another.
Aaron gestured at their personal waiter to top up the wine glasses. "I asked Harry for permission to take you out, you know," he said.
"You what?" Ginny blurted, attracting glances from neighboring tables. The waiter, a true professional, reacted not at all. Ginny ducked her head and said, "Why did you do that?"
"He said you were like a sister," Aaron teased.
"I don't need another brother," Ginny insisted firmly. "Especially not a meddling one."
"Does Harry meddle?" Aaron asked.
Ginny drank a gulp of wine. "I don't know. Depends on what he said."
"He said he was fine with it."
Between sips she muttered, "Yeah, figures."
Aaron's eyes glittered in the candlelight. "Oh, I suspected your torch for him was still flickering a little."
"Ignore it. I try to."
Aaron, who was drinking far more than his share of the wine, held up his glass. "That's the spirit."
They lingered over the second bottle of wine and missed the last film of the evening.
Standing before the cinema, Aaron retook Ginny's arm and said, "We'll just go to my place."
Aaron's flat was a multi-level, high-ceilinged modern home with tall windows garnished by ivy shaped bars. Despite the copious windows and the November weather, the room was pleasantly warm as Aaron hung their cloaks up.
"Have a seat," he said.
"Nice place," she said.
"It's a trap," Aaron sighed.
"It is?"
He sat down beside her. "It keeps me in my mother's clutches."
"I was thinking the windows reminded me of a bird cage, actually," she said, hiding her grin.
He peered at the windows in turn. "You think so? You know the decorator my mum hired would be just the type of bloke to make a statement like that." He sighed and slipped an arm around her. "Well, it's nice to have company when stuck in a cage." He bent and kissed her fervently. And when she made a noise of surprise, he leaned back and noticed she was pressed ungainly back onto the piled throw pillows. He said, "We can move to the bedroom where it's more comfortable."
"Uh . . ." she began, putting a hand up while grasping for words.
Aaron straightened, and said, "Oh. Too soon for that, I see."
She let out a breath and sat up. "Yeah," she breathed like a huff.
This generated a raised brow. Aaron stood suddenly and said, "Let's have ice cream instead."
She managed to say, "You can eat again already?"
Aaron was digging around in the stainless steel kitchen, through the drawers and the freezer. He took out a tub of ice cream and began scooping like a man possessed.
"Here," he pushed a bowl over and straightened it neatly before her. "Chocolate sauce?"
"Uh, sure."
He fetched out a full jar and poured out a dollop.
"More than that," she said, pushing her bowl closer.
He made the white scoops swim and she said, "Stop. Thanks." She settled onto one of the tall bar stools and accepted the spoon and ate despite not being hungry.
He put things away and settled on the next stool over, behind his own bowl.
Ginny, mouth half frozen, said, "So, uh, we're having ice cream instead of . . . something else."
Bent over his bowl, he said, "Oh yeah."
"What's the problem?" she asked. "You're just too fast, is all," she added, blushing against her will.
He cleaned his spoon with his mouth and used it to accentuate his speech by waving it. "There is no such thing as slow enough with a virgin," he asserted.
"Yeah, there is," she lightly snapped.
"Not with me. I don't know what to do," he said, now sounding almost helpless.
"If you don't know what to do . . . how in the world is a virgin supposed to know what to do?"
He fell thoughtful, which he wore well because it was such an unusual expression for him. "You have a point there. But nevertheless."
She dropped her spoon into her bowl where it rattled around. "Sorry to waste your time."
Mouth full of white ice cream, he mumblingly said, "I didn't say that. What makes you say that?"
She dropped her shoulders. "I just assumed."
He swallowed and cleaned his spoon again by sucking generously on it, then relocated everything to the distant sink with a wave of his wand. "Not at all," he insisted.
"So," she said, partly to trip him up, "we can go out again?"
"Yeah. Why not. I had a good time." He propped his chin on his hand and critically peered at her. "How did you get through school . . ."
"Don't ask," she snapped, but then decided to kvetch. "It's not like there is a really big pool of possible wizard dates or anything."
"Hm." He pondered that. "I'll admit I find myself extending the acceptable age range as the years pass. So, I guess I'd have to agree. I don't remember that being a problem at Hogwarts . . . lack of opportunity, that is." He sounded debonair as well as teasing.
He then said, "If you are set, I'll take you home."
She started to go, but paused to say, "Hey, does this have anything to do with my dad?"
"What part?"
"Any of it."
"No."
"Well, that's something."
He presented her with an arm to escort her across the flat. "How about Wednesday we do something? If we knock off afternoon studies early enough we can make the kid's matinée . . ."
She cocked her arm as though to hit him with her free hand. "You are so in trouble," she threatened.
He chuckled. "Oh, come on," he said. "Lighten up. You'll be happier."
"I'm perfectly light, thank you."
At the hearth, he held out a crystal goblet to take Floo powder from. "Well, this way I can face your father easily. So perhaps it has a tiny bit to do with him."
She dropped her head, dejected. "Hm."
"Didn't you have a nice time?"
She didn't raise her head. "I had a great time." Then still staring at her shoes. "I like being around you."
"But not looking at me . . ." he teased.
"I'm horribly embarrassed here already . . . can we go?"
- 888 -
At training on Monday, Harry watched Aaron saunter in and gamely greet everyone. Vineet came in behind him, appearing more his old self, which is to say, unanimated but lacking the sad edge he had been exuding.
"How are you doing?" Harry asked him.
Vineet responded with a simple nod to the side. Rodgers hurried in and set a disorganized pile of books and notes on the front table. His presence sent a chill through Harry.
When he was called up to the front of the room, Harry tried not to show his dislike, but his seriousness generated an immediate comment.
"You don't look happy to be here, Potter," Rodgers said.
"I have a lot on my mind, sir," Harry explained.
"Not in here, you don't. One thing only." He raised his wand and hovered a mirror into place behind Harry. "We're going to try this a little differently today since some of you were a little slow last week in picking this up. I'm going to spell you in the mirror and I want you to block the reflection, not the initial casting."
"Only a few spells will work that way," Kerry Ann pointed out.
Rodgers slid his eyes to her. "I am well aware of that. Thank you," he stated tiresomely.
Harry now found their trainer's slightly obnoxious attitude impossible to ignore, rather than just annoying. And between his turns at practice, Harry pondered how different sets of circumstances could bring out different parts of someone's personality. He could easily imagine this Rodgers torturing Snape under the right circumstances, and that made him feel he already had.
"Still grim?" Rodgers teased when Harry came up again.
Harry felt like hitting him with a blasting curse but he did not so much as let his wand twitch in that direction. "Yes sir. This is serious business, isn't it? That's what you always say."
Mollified, Rodgers said, "I do say that. Well, give it another go. Wand up."
At lunchtime, Rodgers pulled Harry back into the room with the words. "Just a second, Potter."
Harry let Tridant slide by him in the doorway and the door swung closed.
Rodgers said, "You act like I offended you somehow. When I say leave it outside, I mean it."
"Yes, sir," Harry said. He avoided the man's gaze, but when the silence dragged on, he glanced up and found eyes more human than he expected.
"Something going on?" Rodgers asked.
Leave it outside. Leave it behind. Harry chanted to himself. It wasn't this man; even if this man seems perfectly capable. "Some stuff. But you're right; I should leave it outside the Ministry."
"Okay, then," Rodgers said. "Just the way you were looking at me back there, like you wanted a real fight."
Harry silently agreed that was true and rubbed his hair around. "Sorry about that."
"I don't mind you getting into the spirit of things, but there is a limit and I've seen that look enough times, but not, I confess, on the face of someone I may have to rely on."
Harry had no interest in explaining. "I'll keep it outside, sir," he insisted. And to himself, he pledged to keep an eye on Rodgers, but for now would stop assuming the worst about him.
"That's fine," Rodgers said. "But as well, if you have something you really need to say, just say it."
Harry hesitated, but said, "I'd prefer you not get personal."
"Hm." Rodgers tapped his wand on the nearby table, letting it bounce. "If it bothers you so when I harangue you about your adoptive father . . . I think that's something you need to work on. Not me." He sounded hard as he said this.
Harry did not really want to argue. This was not the real issue, even if it was something that irked him. "I just don't like it when you're cruel," Harry said, aiming closer to the real issue.
"You think the world is always nice? Oh, I forget. To you it may be."
"You must be joking," Harry said, finding new annoyance with the man before him. "Look, we don't come in here and make fun of you and your ex do we?"
This found the mark. Rodgers eyes flared with something volatile. "You aren't in charge. It's not the same."
Harry saw no alternative to continuing. "It IS all the same. Why don't you have more respect for others around you?" Harry dropped his gaze, wanting to drop the whole conversation. This tactic was not going to help anything. "I'm sorry if I'm out of line, sir. I just . . . think your not being especially considerate is a sign of . . . something else that may need attention."
"If you aren't hard enough, this world will eat you alive," Rodgers insisted, sounding as hard as anyone Harry had ever heard.
"That's not really true, sir," Harry said, quietly, calmly and insistently. "And I think I have more than enough experience to know if it weren't."
They stared at each other. Rodgers said, "Maybe you're just better than I am, Potter."
Harry replied, "I don't think so, sir. Everything we do is the result of a choice we make."
"Hmf," Rodgers breathed through his nose. With a glance up and down Harry, he said, "Well, it's lunchtime."
Author's Notes: We may just be getting back to a regular 1-2 week schedule. Hopefully.
Next: Chapter 18
Harry laughed. "Want me to read aloud?"
Aaron sat straight to peer over the rim of Harry's book. "No. I'm too far behind you." He jerked his head to stare out the darkening window, appeared to consider standing again, but sat back with his book instead.
"What is it?" Harry asked,
"I don't want to sound paranoid, but lately I feel like I'm being watched."
Chapter 18 — Secrets Small and Large
Harry was glad when Candide arrived home at a more normal hour and Hornisham decided to leave them alone and knit in the main hall. Harry wanted Candide's advice. She put her things away and joined him at the table, prompting dinner to sparkle in.
"You're home earlier," Harry said to open the conversation.
"Severus insisted I be."
"Hm," Harry said, forking himself pasta. "Because of me or because of you?"
She smiled faintly. "Probably both, but the excuse was you."
"I didn't get you into trouble did I?" Harry asked, prepared to fire off a sharp owl if she said 'yes'.
"No, more a frustrated exchange about none of us having any time to pay attention to any of the rest of us."
"Hm," Harry murmured, concentrating on eating because he was hungry. The fire, burning higher in the evenings due to the cooling weather, shifted, sending cinders onto the hearthstone.
Once he was no longer famished, Harry quietly said, "I could use some advice, if you can keep a secret."
"I can keep a secret, Harry." She wiped her hand and raised a finger. "Unless it conflicts with one of the house rules."
"Our house has official rules?"
"It has a rule at the moment that you are grounded." She peered at her plate. "It probably has others. But I trust you will not shake your guard again."
"I don't know about that," Harry said.
She glared at him in surprise, then laughed lightly. "At least you're honest."
"Honesty is my trouble at the moment. I have a problem with a friend and I don't know what to tell him."
"Well, run it by me. I can keep secrets; it's part of my job to."
"Well, I suspect something about this friend that he really should know and . . ."
"You suspect or you know? There's a world of difference if the issue is a sticky one."
Harry thought about that as they ate. Filling up fast, Candide pushed her plate away, saying, "I'll get a snack later. Can't eat so much at a time this week," she said, patting her rounding belly.
Dinner faded away and herbal tea arrived in Candide's place setting. "Want some?" she asked. Harry shook his head as he laid another log on the fire and brushed his hands off before resuming his seat. He said. "I guess I only strongly suspect this thing about this friend." He shook his head and gave up on trying to be secretive. "Well, let me run it by you. My friend Aaron . . . see, he's from this wealthy family, and . . . well, his father's dead, but . . . erm, I suspect his father is actually someone else."
Candide shook her head. "Back up a bit. What makes you suspect this?"
"I did Legilimency on Lord Freelander when he said something that made me think I'd led him on about something. But I was wrong. See, I thought he may be referring to me because he wanted to adopt me, but I'm pretty sure I saw in his mind that he was referring to Aaron."
Candide shook her head rapidly again. "Okay, from dealing with Severus, I've come to the conclusion that not knowing what others really think is a critical factor in keeping society functioning smoothly. But that aside for the moment . . ." She faded out and propped her chin on her hand to think. "So, Freelander thinks he's Aaron's father, you are saying? He may be wrong."
Harry tapped his fingers beside his fork. "I hadn't thought of that."
She lined her tea bag, sugar jar, and spoon up neatly beside her cup as she talked, as though adding them up. "But, if he even suspects it, then the odds are, well, let's say better than even, probably. Do they look alike?"
Harry shrugged. "I suppose. They don't not look alike. Freelander's a little grey and getting up in years, so it's harder to tell than if he were younger. But there are other things. He knew much too much about Aaron's past. See, Aaron was my guard the other day when I went to visit and Freelander was really hard on him, and then really surprised when he found out he was an Auror apprentice." Harry fell thoughtful. "It's like he was trying to get over his own disappointment or something."
"Hm," she muttered meaningfully. "That does support your suspicion. So the question is: what to tell your friend."
Harry turned pained eyes on her. "Yeah. I'm really having a real tough time with this. I know he thinks a lot of his father. Well, the person he was raised by. Even if I was certain, I don't know what I'd say."
"You could stay out of it."
"That doesn't seem right either." Harry sighed. "Freelander will eventually decide something, I suppose, but Aaron's my friend and I feel like I should be open with what I suspect."
"That's a tough one, Harry. I'm not sure I have a clear suggestion for you. Why don't you try feeling Aaron out on the topic, just to get a sense of how he's going to react to the news."
Harry nodded. "That's a good idea. I'll do that. Maybe I can get him assigned as guard tomorrow."
- 888 -
The next day, Aaron followed Harry home at Harry's request.
"Is Ginny coming today?" Aaron asked.
"No, just Wednesday this week, since I am claiming her as an assigned guard and that's a stretch. Why?"
Aaron shrugged. "No reason."
"How'd your date go with her on Sunday?" Harry asked, now wondering, when before he felt he should stay out of it.
"It was fine. It was nice."
"Is that a bad thing?" Harry asked, trying to read his tone and vaguely stiff body language.
"No, of course that's not a bad thing," he said, mood shifting. "She's perhaps too serious for me, but we have another date. Come on, let's get into the books shall we? I somehow haven't managed to since the last time we studied together."
They settled into the library over tea and biscuits, Harry happy to have a guard who did not feel like one. Aaron frequently stood to stretch, stopping by the window as he did so. Harry heard his pet rattling her cage upstairs and waved an Alohomora in that direction to let her come down, which she did.
"Your purple flying rat," Aaron said, retaking his seat
"Hey," Harry said, feigning insult while stroking Kali's head. "She's been good to me. She helped rescue Severus among other things."
Aaron sighed, and changed books. "I can't read more than three pages of one at a time," he explained.
Harry laughed. "Want me to read aloud?"
Aaron sat straight to peer over the rim of Harry's book. "No. I'm too far behind you." He jerked his head to stare out the darkening window, appeared to consider standing again, but sat back with his book instead.
"What is it?" Harry asked,
"I don't want to sound paranoid, but lately I feel like I'm being watched."
Harry pulled his wand out and ran the spell to check the perimeter of the house. It flared blue with a sputter of red at the end.
"Huh," Harry uttered. "No, don't move," he said to Aaron when his friend put his hands on the chair arms as if to rise. Harry prodded his pet and stared into her eyes. "Out the chimney with you; I don't want to open a window and give anything away."
Kali flew off when released. Harry closed his eyes and tracked her flight up the blackened, gritty flue. Near the top, she pulled her wings in and crawled easily over the rough tile inside. Aaron did not speak while Harry concentrated.
From her perch upon the spindly chimney, Kali peered down around herself over the slate roof and the dark fields behind. A low light beside the garden wall caught her attention. She flapped down and around it. It turned out to be a dark cloaked figure, hunched over a faint fairy light. Kali circled again, diving low, attracting no attention from the target.
For a moment, Harry was back in the library with his hands over his eyes. He felt for the breeze in his wings and was back circling the garden as though a giant rubber band had snapped him back. The figure behind the wall was bent over a notebook and holding an extendable eyeball. Harry wondered at that, since he did not believe the twins sold them.
Kali flapped by too close, indicated by the figure crouching lower and covering the notebook with its cape. The figure did not glance up, to Harry's dismay. Instead, it Apparated away.
"What is it?" Aaron asked, because Harry had made a noise of defeat.
"He or she got away. Someone was spying on us though."
Aaron went to the window and stood there with his arms crossed.
Harry said, "Let's add some traps outside and then move to the main hall where the windows face the road."
"Sounds good," Aaron said.
The two of them, cloaked and gloved, slogged through the dead brush around the property and a corner of the neighbor's property, leaving behind trapping spells that grew more elaborately clever as they went. Harry wanted to say something to Aaron, but had not worked out exactly what. His suspicion that this watcher had something to do with Freelander kept him from calling in others from the Auror's office.
Back inside, Harry threw a few choice logs on the hall fire and they settled in there on the couches. Harry arranged his thoughts and asked his friend, "So, your dad wasn't around much when you were young, you said."
Aaron answered without pulling his nose out of his book. "No. He was off, frequently. He ran a wizard architectural firm for a while, then a consultancy. Most of his clients were on the continent where the laws about expanding wizard property are more liberal." Before Harry could compose a followup question, Aaron volunteered, "You know, he didn't even have to work and for a while, he lost money, but in the end, ended up making quite a bit. But what was the point? He was never home." A whiff of bitterness floated out at the end of this.
"Your mum didn't mind him going off?"
"She said he wouldn't be happy if he didn't get to be his own person, make his own way. So, I decided I should get to be my own person too."
"Do you miss him?" Harry asked, and felt a twinge as he did so, like he had crawled too far out on a flimsy tree limb.
"Yeah. Don't you miss your dad?"
"I don't remember him," Harry said, voice drifting away.
"That's a shame," Aaron said, sounding pained. "I don't think I'd know who I was if I hadn't known my dad at all."
Harry dropped the topic.
Aaron begged off from dinner when Harry's evening guard arrived. After a quiet meal across from Candide, who spent it perusing files, Harry penned a letter to Snape asking permission to come speak with him. Hedwig returned promptly and Harry opened the small missive to find a sharply worded reply saying that he mostly certainly could come to speak with him and that asking was an unnecessary delay if he needed help with something. The pen strokes of the letter spoke of frustration even more than the words. Harry folded the message away in his pocket and collected Hornisham to take the Floo into Hogsmeade, feeling like he couldn't do things right all of a sudden.
Harry insisted that Candide follow along, even after she gave him a disbelieving, tired glare at the suggestion. She stood awkwardly while patting her abdomen, and accepted her cloak.
"Sorry," Harry said. "But I can't leave you here alone tonight. Someone was watching the house earlier."
Hornisham perked up at this. "Next time I can bring one of my pets to patrol."
"Er, we added some spells. I doubt they'll be back. But certainly, as long as it's something small and doesn't breathe fire."
Hornisham's lips curled as she nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I know just the pet. Mathilda could use some getting out. She gets cranky and the Ministry said she had to stay in a cage 'cept for official business."
"And what sort of creature is Mathilda?" Candide asked factually.
"Monstrous Centipede," Hornisham proudly announced. "The only registered one in the Isles."
"She doesn't mind the cold?" Harry asked, sort of thinking they should avoid Mathilda.
"Ach. I knitted her a woolly sweater," she replied, patting the sack of knitting hitched over her shoulder. "Took me over a year to do it. Had to knit all the hundred sleeves out of single hairs of wool."
"We'll see if we need her," Harry said. "I think for now we're all right. By the way, have you met Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper?"
"I remember him from school and his name come up in the files often enough, but I haven't been formally introduced, I don't believe."
"Well," Harry brightly said, while reaching for the Floo powder, "why don't I leave you two with him while I talk to Severus. I have this strange feeling you two are going to hit it off." He and Candide shared faint smiles.
- 888 -
Snape, with a sharp wave, sent off the student doing detention and gestured at the visitor's chair. The student, a tall, slope-shouldered Slytherin, lumbered off, head down, appearing to attempt to slink off without Harry's notice.
The door closed and Harry skipped sitting. "So, someone was watching the house tonight," he said. Bringing Snape's hooded eyes to alert. "I left Candide at Hagrid's hut with my guard, don't worry."
"You left Candide with Hagrid and I'm not to worry?" Snape stated dryly as he came around the desk to lean his hip on the front of it.
"Oh, come on. Hagrid is harmless."
"Hagrid tries to be harmless. He rarely succeeds. But you were saying . . . ?"
"So, I think Freelander is spying on Aaron . . ."
Snape sounded hard still. "Whatever for?"
"Because he thinks he's Aaron's biological father; I'm fairly certain."
Snape pondered that. "That's interesting. So, why are you here, then? Ask him yourself."
"Next week, I can do that," Harry pointed out. "It didn't feel like a topic one should send by owl."
Snape straightened the inkwells at his side. "So, you are asking for permission to go speak with him?"
"I was hoping I could do that," Harry said.
"It would defeat the purpose of grounding you to grant exceptions." They stared at each other as the lamp on the desk fluttered, sending oil smoke into the air. "What were you doing when you shook your guard? If you tell me I may reduce the time of your punishment."
"If I tell you; you'll make it a month," Harry said.
Snape turned away and returned to the chair behind the desk. "That illuminates the topic nicely, actually," he said with a hiss.
"Does it?" Harry said.
"You may speak with Freelander on Friday evening. I will escort you there myself," Snape stated. "Was that it?"
He sounded so unyielding that Harry felt a disorienting wave of doubt about where he was. Swallowing, he said, "There is something else." He tried to feel hurt instead of uncertain, but it was a hard battle. "I want to tell Tonks the truth about what I can do."
"I cannot stop you from doing so; I can only strongly advise against it."
"She doesn't trust me," Harry complained.
Snape crossed his arms and said, "And when telling her does not solve that . . . what then?"
Harry honestly considered that despite wanting to rebel. It was possible that Tonks wasn't good at trusting and he was just grasping. But he had to try. "I don't know what then," he admitted.
Silence fell, ruled by the wind rattling at a loose windowpane. Harry concluded with, "That's all I wanted to talk to you about."
With a warmer tone, Snape said, "Thank you for the warning . . . warnings. Is Candide working less?"
"Yes," Harry said. "She's mostly home at an earlier hour now."
"Good." They considered each other during another awkward pause. Snape said, "I'll be home for longer this weekend, if I can manage it."
"I'll see you then," Harry said automatically, and turned for the door.
He was brought up short before he could grab the handle by Snape saying, "Do take care," in a tone that meant it.
Harry turned back, but kept his head down. Snape went on, "Despite someone plotting to do you harm, I am convinced you remain your own worst enemy. And I am relieved that whatever you were doing, you are safely through it."
"I am," Harry agreed. Thinking more, he said, "But if it isn't Freelander spying on Aaron or the house, shouldn't we know that sooner?"
"Owl him regarding it."
"Not a chance," Harry replied. "I wouldn't know where to start. And besides, I'll need Legilimency to figure it out if he doesn't want to answer."
A brow went up. "Well, at least you have learned that much."
- 888 -
The next day, Harry, after three peeks into the office, finally caught Tonks between calls.
"Can I see you this afternoon?" Harry asked her, thinking he could sneak in a visit before going home.
She glanced up from the report she was scratching out. "Yeah. I promised myself for once to get home at a reasonable hour. I can take over from your guard after dinner, if you want to drop by."
Harry bit his lips. He could use the excuse that he had to fetch her for a guard. Harry noticed that Shacklebolt's quill had stopped moving, indicating he was listening in. The notion that Snape may have informed the Order of his grounding nearly made him laugh aloud. Perhaps it was just the ongoing dating issue.
"Okay, I'll pick you up as a guard then. I have some things I really need to talk to you about," Harry said.
She gave him a fretful glance at that, but when he smiled faintly it went away.
"Give me until seven, and I'll be home."
Aaron followed Harry home, and when Ginny arrived, he stood to take her cloak with a butlerish aplomb. Her face mottled nearly maroon through the process and she took a seat across from Harry without really looking at him, leading him to wonder what he was missing.
She stood back up again quickly, saying, "Let's drill, I have to get home for dinner."
Harry held off on using any Legilimency on her, feeling it to be highly unfair. Wand in his pocket, Harry took up a spot across from her and had to take a step back when her wind curse buffeted him.
"Easy there," he said, tugging his robes straight from them wanting to knot up behind him.
"Sorry."
After a dozen gentle breeze-like spells, Harry called a halt. "I can't work this out," he said of his attempts to block ordinary curses by feel rather than by wand. "And I'm quite tired of standing here getting hit. Let's work on something else."
She lowered her wand and considered him. "Even I'm tired of hitting you repeatedly, Harry," she stated.
"I appreciate that you're trying to help," Harry said.
"Actually, my attenuation has got quite good of late from having to tone down all these curses to harmless level," she said. "The other day, I wanted to heat a single toffee because it had got too cold in my pocket to bite into, and it was really easy. Before, I would have scorched the wrapper."
"I'm tired of dreaming about fighting without a wand," Harry complained, rubbing his hair back and gratefully raising his wand. "Let's just do regular attack-counter drills."
"You're not giving up for good?" she demanded, automatically raising her wand too.
"For now. I'm starting to think it's not possible for me to block any sort of curse without a wand. I can feel the curse, but I can't do anything about it in time."
"You shouldn't give up," she said sharply.
"Well, I won't give up, but I need a break."
Ginny said, "We'll just do less of it, but I'm not going to let you quit. It's too amazing of a skill if you think you can do it."
Aaron, who stood off to the side listening until then, said, "It's not that amazing," a little peevishly. "Someone could still Charm him to death."
"Yeah?" Ginny prompted disbelievingly, blushing again.
"For example, a Snare Charm inside a Water Bubble Charm could drown someone."
Ginny lowered her wand and said, "Only a Slytherin would think of that."
"I'm just sayin'," Aaron returned, arms broadly uncurling as he spoke.
The conversation turned to the topic of countering spells as they fell into rounds of drills. They broke for snacks after Ginny decided dinner with her parents did not sound all that interesting and Harry sat back and watched her engage Aaron in conversation.
Candide arrived some time later and immediately dropped into a chair at the table to sort her post. She did not make a note about Harry having two guards.
Harry took a deep breath and said to her, "I need to run out to exchange guards—" He was interrupted by a tray holding two bowls sparkling in before her.
Candide sighed and picked up the spoon to eat a scoop of orange ice cream. "Just what I wanted: kumquat ice cream."
"What's the other?" Ginny asked, squinting with a funny face at the second bowl.
Candide leaned forward to sniff. "Pickled radish, I think."
"Right," Harry said, backtracking on what he planned to say. "Hm, maybe Ginny will stay with you while I go fetch Tonks, you know, my next guard."
Aaron nibbled on a crisp and said, "She doesn't get assigned as guard much, does she?"
"She hasn't lately," Harry agreed. Candide ate with too much vigor to notice that Harry may have concocted an excuse to leave when he was not supposed to.
At seven, Harry and Aaron waited at Tonk's flat, but she did not show up. Despite Tonks' poor history of punctuality, they went to the Ministry at just past the hour to look for her.
The Aurors office was busy with Ministry staff going in and out.
"Wonder what's going on," Aaron muttered as they dodged out of the way of another fast striding person while trying to listen in at the door.
Mr. Weasley went by, hands full of files, saw the two of them there and said to them. "Good, go fetch whatever Rodgers needs in Interrogation Room Two."
The two of them glanced at each other and headed that way. Inside Room Two, they found Rodgers crouched before a prisoner, who sat against the wall, looking wary and confused. Harry had his wand out, as was procedure, but his thoughts were not quite on standard procedure.
Rodgers said, "Fetch me the Truth Serum Support tray. Either he's immune to Veritaserum, or it needs a supplemental Tongueloosener."
Harry gestured for Aaron to fetch the potions while he took up a position behind Rodgers right shoulder. The man on the floor had an average appearance in his face and hair. The only things out of the ordinary were his boot was scorched and his hand was tucked against his abdomen as if it were injured.
"How'd he get hurt?" Harry asked.
"He won't say," Rodgers said, tugging on the man's arm and it limply flopped outward. His hand showed puckered streaks like a burn. "He and his companion were tied up inside the phone box and lowered into the Atrium anonymously. But I'm beginning to suspect their memories were wiped."
The prisoner's brow furrowed as he took Harry in, eyes flickering with recognition. Harry couldn't read anything in his eyes beyond general wariness, surprise, and an intrepid desire to keep a secret.
Aaron returned and hovered the tray in the far corner since the room had no furniture. He brought the potions Rodgers requested and an empty glass to mix them in. Rodgers used a spell to force the prisoner to drink it, then sat back in his heels to wait for it to work. A trickle of violet potion dribbled from the corner of the prisoner's mouth, making Harry swallow convulsively. This was all standard procedure, but it was making him uneasy.
Rodgers patted the man hard on the leg. "So, there. What's your name?"
The prisoner thought about that and faintly answered, "Francesco."
"Now were getting somewhere. Francesco what?"
"Francesco," came the monotone reply.
They went back and forth a bit, failing to elicit anything meaningful. Rodgers stood to pace and Harry said, "He's got the look of Durumulna."
"Oh, he does. We're going to have to wait a week or three for that to wear off so we can see what he really looks like." He waved at the potion tray. "Let's try the other prisoner next. But I'm not hopeful."
Harry found Tonks sometime later. She said, "I see we are both not getting away from the office."
Harry felt vaguely relieved to be putting off telling her on top of anxious because he would prefer she already know. "I left Ginny keeping Candide company, and I think she'll not mind staying longer since they get along well enough. I do want to talk to you, if you can get away."
Her eyes flickered with renewed worry. "Sure, I'll finish my reports in the morning," she said, which was unusual for her. "Let's go."
Harry told Aaron he did not need him for a guard any longer, and he gave Harry a wink as he departed. In Tonks' flat, she kicked off her platform shoes and padded, shorter, to the table to set her post down on a teetering pile.
"If it weren't for howlers, I'd sometimes open none of my post," she said. She stared at the envelope on top of the stack and then turned toward Harry, gaze lowered. "I think I know what you are going to say," she said, mouth twisted half into a frown.
"I sincerely doubt it," Harry said. "But first." He pulled out his wand and circled the flat, securing it from everything he could think of, including forcing Animagi to reveal themselves. He returned to where she stood watching him do this, wand out still after taking care of spelling the door while he did the rest.
Harry said, "I've wanted to tell you some things, but . . . well, Severus didn't think it was a good idea for me to tell you . . . anyone, actually," he amended quickly. "But I want you to know." They stared at each other. Harry said, "Why don't you sit down? That way I can sit down."
Tonks pushed back a chair, nearly toppling it, caught it, and sat down, pushing against the table to rock back on two legs.
Harry pulled the other chair around closer and clasped his hands together. "So, the thing is . . . and I do agree with Severus that it would be better if the Ministry didn't know what I'm going to tell you . . ."
"I don't plan on telling anyone, Harry," she stated a tad coldly.
"Good. Okay. It's like this. Well, first of all, you know already how I can call the Raksashas out of the Dark Plane, but what you don't know is that I can go there too." When she stared at him without speaking, he went on, wanting to minimize that. "Er, what that means is that I can Apparate, in a way, practically anywhere, without a sound. That day by the windmill when I followed you and I shouldn't have . . . and you thought I had my cloak. I had used the Dark Plane to travel to you." He stood up. "Watch." Harry went in and out, moving just a few feet.
She let her chair drop with a thud back to four legs. "That's nice," she said, intrigued. Then, confused, asked, "Your going where to do that?"
"Er, the Dark Plane." He waved his level hand over the floor. "It's just below us."
In a neutral confirming voice, she asked, "And this is where those demons live?"
Reluctantly, Harry replied, "Yeah. But they don't bother me unless I don't believe I can overpower them."
She exhaled thoughtfully, seeming to put that aside for later. After a beat, she confirmed, "And you can go anywhere?"
"Essentially. Hogwarts, Department of Mysteries, I assume any vault at Gringotts but I haven't tried that."
She snorted lightly. "You're Harry; of course you haven't tried that." She crossed her arms and raised a hot pink brow. "Fetch something from the Department of Mysteries," she said, challenging him, which made Harry warm straight through.
Harry disappeared straight away, entering the most secretive Ministry department in one of the back corridors he figured to be less trafficked. Being evening, he heard nothing from where he stood between a room holding shelves of books and one holding the glass prophecies, the shelves sparsely occupied since Harry and his friends had broken most of them.
On tip-toe, Harry made his way around to the work room. With the soothing bubble and hum of the Tank of the Ancients lulling him, his eyes sought out something unique that he could slip away with. The deep high shelves over one of the desks caught his eye. He'd seen Merton's cane there, but did not see it now. He stepped closer and spied it, tucked away better, the velvet sacked cinched and knotted. Biting his lip, he carefully drew it out from under some other boxes and packages and disappeared with it.
Back in Tonks' flat, he presented the cane to her with a little bow.
She shook her head and tested the heft of it through the sacking before handing it back, saying, "That is how you captured Fuego. You followed him, when he disappeared the way they tend to."
"Yes," Harry said, relieved that she was catching on quickly.
She stood and waved at the strip of wall beside the door to the sitting room. "You can leave that there, I'll return it later. I could use a drink I think." She rummaged in the cabinets, swearing faintly. "They wouldn't be able to hold you in the rebuilt Azkaban, either," she said.
"The French prison has some special protection, since they can hold Fuego," Harry pointed out.
"Yes. We've had to send them the one other vampire we apprehended a few decades ago because we couldn't hold her." She rummaged under the sink next, coming up with a silver bottle from behind the dusty cleaning supplies. "But we don't have the skill to add that protection, and don't need it normally anyhow. Apparition and portkey barriers are usually sufficient." She sat back, legs wide and casual, and took a swig from the bottle. "Well, I understand Severus' concern. I really do," she said grimly, biting her lips in between. "After what happened with Sirius . . ." She trailed off and frowned worriedly before looking away and holding the bottle out to him.
Harry waved off the bottle. "That's not all."
She froze mid-putting the bottle to her lips. "That was the easy one; wasn't it?" she asked. "You have an annoying tendency to do that: good news first."
"That was the easy one, yes," Harry said, plowing on, "The other thing is that from within the Dark Plane, I can go to other Planes besides this one. Places where other events have happened in the past and the present isn't the same." He waited for any reaction and didn't get one. He went on. "When I disappeared, supposedly to Latvia, I was really in another Plane where I had died as a First Year and Voldemort was headmaster of Hogwarts. I could have come back right away . . . but I wanted to destroy him before I left."
She blinked many times in a row and set the bottle down with a thunk. It was a minute before she ceased to appear stunned and ill. "Another place where things worked out differently?" she echoed.
"Yes."
She leaned forward over her fists propped on the table and said, "Are you certain you didn't imagine this? Like a dream?"
"I'm certain."
"Harry," she chastised. "Really, how can that be possible?" She grinned faintly and continued to sound critical. "Voldemort as headmaster?"
"Well, in one place he was, in the other he was just still alive. See, time is the same in these other places, but the events are different."
She rocked her spiky hair, and still did not appear to believe him. She turned to glance at the cane in the corner. "So, you fetched that using this Dark Plane and you came back here, but you could have gone somewhere else?"
"Well, it takes some extra effort to go to a different Plane. And it is super cold in between, so I nearly freeze to death. Just popping in and out of this one, I've got good at."
Her brow did not un-furrow. "How many times have you done this . . . going to this other place where things are different?"
"Three. A count I'd prefer you not tell Severus."
She picked up the bottle again to gesture at him with it, still disturbed. "You have a lot of secrets going here, Harry."
Harry glanced at the clock. "And another secret is that I'm here at all. I should get back."
She considered pocketing the bottle, but left it on the table. She sighed significantly and stepped up close to him and stroked his arms through his cloak. "I'm glad you told me." Her eyes crossed, before she closed them and held them that way. "Well, I think I'm glad. Yeah." She opened her eyes and gazed at him rather closely, sounding mentorish. She said tiredly, "You are not going to be able to resist using this way of getting around, and you'll need cover."
Harry smiled. "Thanks for that. I need all the help I can get."
"You may need help, but you don't need a guard; that's for certain," she stated crisply, sounding slightly put-upon or jealous.
"I agree. Get Mr. Weasley to agree, please," Harry said. "I'm so very tired of this."
"Well, you are grounded, so let's get you home before you get caught for that."
They arrived in Shrewsthorpe and Candide, without pickles and ice cream as a distraction, was a little sharper this time. "Where were you exactly?"
"I got caught up at the Ministry," Harry said. "Tonks wasn't at her flat where we were supposed to meet."
Tonks smoothly said, "Someone unexpectedly left the Ministry a present and we were shorthanded."
Ginny said with a weak laugh, "Little early for Christmas."
Tonks said, "Strange gift too. Minister is calling a presser in the morning, so I can tell you what happened if you like."
Ginny leaned forward. "Do tell."
Tonks, finding amusement in it, explained about the two gang members being stuffed in the phone box and sent down to the Atrium.
Ginny smiled strangely. "So, what do you think happened?"
Tonks replied, "We suspect they displeased their masters and got punished this way, which is why the Minister is more than willing to make an example of them."
"Huh," Ginny said, sitting back. She bit her lip and Harry tried to catch her eyes, but she kept them elsewhere. She departed soon after and Harry did not want to say anything in front of the others, but he strongly suspected she knew something.
Up in his room, Tonks settled in with a book while Harry penned a letter to Ginny. He wrote simply:
I can understand wanting to keep a secret, but sometimes sharing it can prevent a lot of trouble. Trust me.
Her reply arrived in the morning:
I don't feel like telling. It's under control.
Harry frowned at the message as he tossed it into the fire, remembering with a jolt that the prisoners were burned.
"So, what do you think?" Candide asked a little sharply.
"Huh?" Harry said, spinning around to face her. He had not been listening.
She laughed lightly and glanced at Tonks tucking into a second helping of breakfast. "I said, shall I convince Severus to let us all go out, even though you will still be grounded?"
"Oh. I'd like that, but it's all right. I don't want to push him." He sat down again across from Candide and let the mystery draw burn slow circles in his head.
Candide leaned back from the table with a sigh and distractedly rubbed her belly. Tonks wiped her mouth and said, "Severus ready for a baby?"
Candide laughed lightly. "I doubt it."
Harry put his other concerns aside and listened more closely.
Candide grinned and shook her head, making her hair shift. "He'll figure it out fast enough."
Harry did not feel as certain. "You think so? Maybe."
"What are you getting him for his birthday?" Candide asked. "I haven't figured anything out yet. I thought it'd be easy, but all I see when I'm out shopping is things for the baby. Which reminds me . . . we have to clear out one of the other upstairs rooms for the cot."
Harry's skin pricked at the thought that she might want to use the room where Snape had performed the dark magic spell to locate Harry the night he flew off. Thinking quickly, he said, "Maybe you should use my room and we can move me over to one of the other rooms." There was nothing but molding furniture in the farthest room on the first floor. Even he would prefer to not sleep in the room where he first felt the Dark Plane, even though he now understood it.
"You wouldn't mind? That'd be more convenient to have the baby's room next door."
Relief softened Harry's limbs. "Yeah. No worries. We can talk about it this weekend when Severus is here." Harry blinked into the distance. "But a present," he breathed. "I forgot about his birthday."
"As long as you didn't get him something fantastic that I have to top," Candide said, "we're fine."
"I have to think of something," Harry said. "And fast."
- 888 -
Friday evening, Harry waited with Vineet for Snape to come home. Harry did not feel like spending Friday reading for training, so he instead read through that week's newspapers. Several days' commentary had been devoted to the mysterious gang members handed over to the Ministry. One letter writer, calling himself Oldetimy Occlutist, stated that he hoped the blokes' parents themselves had finally grown fed up enough to turn them in themselves. Harry hoped that was not the case.
"What time does your adoptive father arrive?" Vineet asked.
Harry glanced at the clock. "Soon." Thinking he heard a tinge of impatience in his friend's voice, Harry followed with, "Have something you need to get to?"
"I am taking Hermione to dinner in Hogsmeade."
"OH," Harry said dramatically, while folding up the paper he had before him and selecting the next randomly off the stack. "Well, we shan't keep you too long, in that case."
"I will remain as long as required," Vineet pledged.
"I'm certain Hermione will understand if you're a tad late."
"Oh, it is not late I am worried about being. I was hoping to be early."
Harry raised the next newspaper up to hide his grin, and found himself faced with a photo of himself and Kerry Ann taken during one of the press visits to their training. His heart sped up when he spotted the byline of Rita Skeeter on the article below the headline Aurors in Love, but a quick read-through revealed only vague innuendo around the vastly male dominated Department of Law Enforcement. Harry folded up the paper, giving up on reading while he still had his temper.
Snape arrived minutes later and sent Vineet off with a bow. Vineet, for him, fairly scampered away.
"Ready?" Snape asked, glancing around. "Candide is not home?"
Harry stood and wandered to the front hall for his dress cloak. He called back, "I suggested she be late, so she isn't home before we return."
Snape waited for him to return to the main hall before acknowledging, "Wise of you."
Harry shrugged, resisting pleasure from the compliment.
On the walk up the drive to the rambling Freelander estate, Harry slowed saying, "I haven't figured out what I'm going to say."
Snape stopped. "Difficult to confront a benefactor," he said, an eerie echo of what the alternative version of him had said.
"What would you do?" Harry asked.
In the gloomy surroundings of the gravel drive with a night bird dashing musically overhead, Snape considered that before replying, "I would choose a framing for the issue that he cannot resist."
Harry said, "Okay. I think I have one," and resumed walking, wanting to have this over with.
Freelander was getting ready for a small dinner party. Servants bustled about, walking awkwardly upright as they rushed across the unnecessarily broad rooms. The two of them were led to a parlor adjoining the main suite and Harry asked Snape to wait in a previous room, thinking that it would be too difficult with him there.
Freelander, bright cuffs and collar undone, came in and gestured curtly at a seat as he selected cufflinks from a jewelry box held out to him by a servant. The dour servant assumed a waiting position a step back, and Harry said, "Perhaps I should speak with you alone, sir."
When the servant had departed, Harry, keeping Snape's advice firmly in mind, said, "I may be out of line here, but I must ask you something because your answer affects the security the Ministry is keeping around me." Harry took a deep breath and said to Freelander's curious gaze, "Have you sent someone to spy on Aaron?"
A thick, trimmed brow went up and Freelander tossed his other cuff straight to hook it. "Yes. Not that it is any concern of yours."
"Yes, well, it was upsetting the security around myself," Harry carefully explained.
"Oh, yes, well, I told my man to forthwith avoid investigating when Aaron is in your presence."
Freelander stood and tugged his waistcoat over his round frame. "If that is all?"
It was not all. Harry wanted to know what he was up to. "Why are you having him followed?" he asked.
Freelander reddened faintly. "As I said, no concern of yours."
"It is my concern" Harry said, finding a route out of the maze of owing this man. "He's my friend and I don't want to see him hurt."
"Hurt? How could he possibly get hurt, Mr. Potter?" Freelander asked, pulling out his watch to glance at it, clearly ready to be done with this meeting.
Harry could not understand what he had just heard and felt caution slip away. "What do you mean? You're threatening to upset everything he understands about his father and you wonder how he could be hurt?"
Freelander deliberately slipped his watch away into the small pocket at his waist. "You're easy to underestimate, Mr. Potter. Or did you to interrogate my man Young and he just did not want to tell me that."
Harry shook his head. "He got away."
The crinkles in Freelander's face shifted as he reconsidered things. "I expect you to leave it to me to tell Mr. Wickem." This was stated as a dismissal.
Harry said, "I will leave it to you if I can, but like I said, he's my friend. I can't promise you that."
Freelander sighed faintly and picked up his cane. "I have a dinner party to host, I'm afraid. Clydeswayne will see you out." A wave of his wand summoned the butler.
As they were led back through dimly lit room after room, clinking glasses and energetic voices emanated from deeper within the house. In the entryway, their cloaks were returned and the butler hurried off with a quick bow.
"Get everything straight?" Snape asked.
"Maybe," Harry said with a shrug.
"Perhaps not worth granting an exception to your grounding in that case," Snape stated.
"It WAS him," Harry said, feeling anger. "I was right."
"As you presumed," Snape said dismissively.
Harry stared at his guardian, vastly out of place in the white, baroquely plastered entry hall lit by an overhead chandelier. He wondered why they were at odds again, but felt little desire to back off. "Grounding me was ridiculous anyway," Harry said.
"I will decide that," Snape said, taking a step toward the door, but keeping his narrow gaze pinned on Harry. Harry moved to follow, and Snape turned fully on him. "What did you shake your guard for?"
"I went to rescue someone," Harry replied stiffly, thinking that in this strange place that roundabout would be the best way to speak. "Someone who, because of me, had no protection from the law and was suffering greatly as a result."
Snape slowly shook his head.
"What would you prefer I do?" Harry demanded in a harsh whisper.
"You know nothing about the situation in that place. You presume everything."
Harry met his guardian's fierceness with his own. "I knew that he'd helped me; that's all I needed to know."
"You are out of control, Harry, with this power. You have no idea the trouble you could instigate."
"What are you jealous or something?" Harry asked.
Snape's head tilted in a way that told him he had gone too far.
"Nevermind, forget I said that," Harry muttered.
Snape's cloak spread wide as he propped his hands on his hips. "I don't know what to do with you."
"Don't do anything," Harry said. "I don't understand what you're so upset about." A rush of laughter drifting in from far away, made Harry glance around in case they were being watched. He did not see anyone and all the glittery-framed paintings looking on were of the static, Muggle sort.
Snape's voice lowered. "I am upset about the unnecessary risks you take. You do not possess sufficient wisdom to go with your powers."
"I do fine," Harry insisted. "I'm an adult now, in case you hadn't noticed."
Snape bit his lips and dropped his head in frustration. "Let's go. Candide will be returning shortly."
The house was empty when they arrived. Harry dropped onto the couch with a huff and crossed his arms. To himself he had to admit he was deathly tired of being guarded all the time and was taking that out on Snape.
"You're making too much of this," Harry calmly said, looking for a bridge.
Snape faintly shook his head in more a philosophical gesture than a reply. With matching renewed calm, he said, "As the parent, I get to decide what is to be made an issue of."
"You're starting to sound like my uncle Vernon."
"Insults will not help," Snape said.
Candide arrived home during the impasse that followed and stepped into the space between them. "Am I interrupting?" she asked.
"No," Harry replied.
"Well, that's unfortunate, because it looks like you need an interruption." She waved a chair in from the drawing room and took that rather than sitting beside one of them. "So, what's the trouble?" she asked, tugging off her long pointed boot to rub her foot while making a pained face.
Snape pondering her with an air of disbelief before giving in and saying, "Harry does not obey anything I say any longer."
She tugged off a second boot. "Well, that's hardly a surprise, given his age."
Harry shot a told-you-so look across at his guardian.
"Who's side are you on?" Snape demanded of her.
"Neither," she chirped. "That's why I'm sitting in the middle." She shifted her chair and stretched her toes out. "Are your demands unreasonable, Severus?"
"I am demanding that he stick with one universe. And no, that is not unreasonable."
Candide turned to Harry. "You jumped off to some other place again?" At Harry's nod, she tsked a bit.
"I can handle myself," Harry said. "He doesn't trust that I know what I'm doing. I told Tonks what I can do and she's completely on my side," he added smartly. "Why can't you be on my side?" Harry asked, feeling a tender stab as he said this.
Snape sat forward, shoulders hunched defensively. "I am always on your side. Whatever gave you the notion I was not? I refuse to allow you to harm yourself before you learn what you are doing. What part of that is not being on your side?"
Candide's gaze came around to Harry and they both waited for him to speak. "I don't know," Harry admitted, flustered. "It just . . . It just feels like you are seeing trouble where there isn't any, just to tell me what to do."
Snape's voice entered the low dangerous range. "That is not at all the case. Your powers carry unknown dangers . . . " He held up his hand for silence. "About which you are blithely cocky. And you refuse repeatedly to listen to warnings on a number of subjects."
"You don't know it's dangerous; you're just guessing," Harry said.
"As. Are. You." Snape replied. "I want to forbid you to use the Dark Plane or to visit any other Planes, but I suspect you will simply disobey me." He stood and paced.
"You don't understand," Harry said. "If I fear that Dark Plane, it will overtake me. And if I don't fear it, it doesn't matter if I go there."
Snape's brow furrowed and he did not reply, but simply rubbed at the worry lines between his eyes.
"If I may say," Candide said, half-raising her hand like a student might. "I don't think grounding Harry did anything except exacerbate the situation. But that's just my opinion. He's already essentially grounded with a guard all the time anyhow."
Harry nodded eagerly that he agreed with this. Snape tapped his knuckle to his teeth thoughtfully.
Candide slapped her hands on her lap and said, "Why don't we go out tomorrow and do something . . . as a family."
The last word shot through Harry. He did not really intend to make trouble, but he also could not control how chafed he became from his situation.
"An excellent idea," Snape said faintly, trying to sound pleased.
"Harry?" Candide asked. "You have plans?"
"No, I was still grounded. I don't have any plans. Going out sounds good."
- 888 -
The next day, a glaringly bright mid-November day where the sun starkly angled around every solid object, found them wandering York on a shopping trip. Candide stopped before the window of yet another baby clothiers and bent to take a closer look at the delicate, lacy things laid out on display. Snape wandered ahead, stopping to peer up at a sign promising dungeon tours, complete with instruments of torture, highwaymen, plagues, and Guy Fawkes.
Candide straightened and leaned close to Harry, "Your little tiff yesterday gives me hope that he's ready to have a younger son around the house."
"It does?" Harry said.
"Don't you think?" she said, sashaying slowly on as if to draw out their conversation before they were within earshot of Snape. She took Harry's arm and leaned on him slightly, making him wonder if she needed a break before lunchtime. "Are you ready for a younger brother?"
"Yes," Harry said, thinking that he'd rather like that.
Her voice dropped. "I think you're hoping it will fully distract your father," she accused.
"It might do that too," Harry agreed, not having considered that before.
She peered up at the Dungeon advert when Snape pointed at it suggestively and said, "Here I'm telling Harry to stay out of trouble."
Snape airily stated, "I thought there might be comic value in the Muggle notion of horror."
Candide ducked her head to chuckle. "My feet need a break. Maybe something else for now."
They minced down to the corner where there was a small coffee shop. The bell on the door jangled as Snape held it open for Candide. He gestured at the neighboring shoe shop window with its array of towering, spiked-heel shoes and said, "There's a real torture chamber there."
They shared a grin, which erased most of Harry's unease. They settled around a window-embraced table with their steaming drinks and Harry put aside all the mysteries and concerns he had on his mind and just enjoyed the moment. Over their mugs, Snape and Candide shared abbreviated comments and looks that spoke of unexpectedly deep understanding given how little time they managed to spend together. Harry forced himself to not worry for a time about Aaron, Ginny, Rodgers, Moody, Belinda and his unprovable suspicions about Percy. He put it all aside and with the perspective gained from doing so agreed that Snape probably was right: one universe ought to be enough. At that moment, it certainly was.
Next: Chapter 19 — A Surfeit of Fathers
Harry wrote out two letters in a careful hand and addressed one to Snape and one to himself. He then laid everything out that he would need on the edge of the bed, all clearly in view, all straight and deliberate. His actions felt ritualistic and strange. Perhaps there was a point to be made with what he was planning, a notion that only reinforced the idea, given how constricted he was feeling from his guardian's rules.
Chapter 19 — A Surfeit of Fathers
Sunday morning, the clouds hung as thick as smoke outside the window. Harry encountered Snape on the balcony and followed him down to breakfast, where Candide waited before the hearth in a dressing gown, hair still mussed. She stood in a pose that reminded Harry of McGonagall when she had reached her limit on some repeated transgression. The two of them stopped before her and she snapped out the paper she held, folded backward to show Rita Skeeter's gossip column.
The paper came down primarily in front of Snape, so Harry leaned over to get a better look.
Boy hero now Ministry darling 'Out of control' says adoptive father.
Harry physically jerked back from the paper in surprise. Snape snatched it up and paced away to read it before tossing it on the table.
"She must have been there the other night," Harry said, heart fluttering fast because he had feared they were not alone and had not taken action to check.
Snape was leaning heavily on a hand levered on a chair back, his other hand propped behind his back. He tossed his head once to the side.
"I was careful what I said," Harry pointed out, too stunned to sound critical.
Candide lifted the paper up and read: "Head of Slytherin house states he does not know what to do with Mr. Potter. Did you really say that?"
Snape sharply nodded once, which left his hair webbing his face. He was biting his lip and glaring off into the distance. He pushed away from the chair's support. "I am losing my edge." He shook his head additionally. "You were smarter than I about how to argue in an insecure location."
"How about not arguing at all?" Candide suggested. "Or at least only at home. Or not at all? I like that idea better."
Snape stared at her without reacting. Harry tugged the paper over and, with his back tense, read the rest of the article and the insinuations about him and his powers, complete with obnoxious I-told-you-so styled flashbacks to her earliest articles about Harry. He felt tainted after reading it and did not want to touch the paper. He gave it a flick to the side and sat down, wondering why his breath was still too quick.
Candide considered the two of them, heaved a sigh, and joined Harry at the table.
Snape strode over beside the hearth and straightened a metal box on the mantel. He was taking his slip hard, enough so that Harry felt compelled to minimize things. "It'll pass. It always does," Harry said, burying a flinch.
Snape turned to him and looked away again, jaw tight.
"Can I make a suggestion, Harry?" Candide asked with enough shyness that he could not help but reply that she could, despite wanting nothing more than a target for his frustration and anger. She went on, "Grant her an interview."
"Are you nuts?" Harry blurted.
"No. I just think it's the only way."
"NO. I refuse," Harry snapped.
"What are you going to do?" she asked gently.
"I don't know. But not that for certain."
Candide raised her chin to peer at Snape. "What do you think he should do?"
"I believe your suggestion to be a valid one, but not until things calm down. Perhaps nothing will come of it." He let his hand slide off the mantel and took the short step to stand beside Harry's chair. His hand landed on Harry's shoulder and he softly said, "Sorry, Harry."
"It's all right," Harry said, his anger stunned away by the rare apology. If he could handle Voldemort in under a week, he could handle Rita Skeeter.
- 888 -
When Harry next arrived for training, he was sent down to speak with Mr. Weasley. Harry wedged himself into the guest chair and tugged the door closed, careful not to pinch his fingers doing so.
A cut-up copy of the Prophet lay out on the desk. Mr. Weasley knitted his fingers in his lap and said, "I would have let this go, but Amelia wanted to be certain that you understand she is not pleased."
"Sorry," Harry said. "It was a mistake. It won't happen again." His mind flittered off to thinking more about things he could do to Skeeter. Trapping her into something seemed like the best plan, but the details of exactly how to do it had so far not solidified. The extra glances he had garnered in the Atrium on the way in had only increased his determination to get even, despite the reactions being milder than feared.
"That's, I suspect, what the Minister wants to hear."
His boss sounded dismissive, but Harry saw an opportunity to ask some questions of his own. "What is happening with Durumulna?"
"You make it sound as if you are being kept in the dark," Mr. Weasley observed. "There's not much new to report that you don't know. We're doing our best to combat them. But it turns out that there is a limit to what we can do without cooperation from the wizarding public at large. Bones is going to use these two dumped gang members to argue for as much public support as possible." He filed the news article in the bin while he spoke. It ignited and drifted to the bottom as grey curls.
"Why wouldn't people want to help?" Harry asked.
"Why not? Because they're afraid, mostly, that the gang will take retribution. That's the standard way they operate. Not everyone wants to be a hero, Harry." He shifted some files around on his desk. "In this case . . ." Here he held out a file that rather than have a name on the tab, per the norm, read DC #12. "In this case, using the lure of a small profit, they got an otherwise law-abiding wizard involved and after that the man felt compelled to do as they said, lest they turn him in to us. You'd be surprised how little crime it takes to keep a good person quiet," he said, mouth wry. "Ironically, it's the desire to appear good to their fellows that is the hook the gang uses on them and their family to coerce their participation in successively worse things."
"So, what about the Eeylops fire?"
A few carefully arranged hairs flopped off the top of Mr. Weasley's head as he tilted it. "That was a strange one. We haven't decided quite what happened there."
And your daughter knows something about it, Harry thought, and decided that he did not want to say anything about that, probably much like a Durumulna victim. "Maybe you need to offer amnesty, or something," Harry said after a beat.
Mr. Weasley nodded. "We've floated that idea." He rocked his chair forward and added, "I'm quite certain you have training."
"Oh yeah," Harry said, standing up quickly, which caused his chair to smack against the door behind him.
"Not that I wish to dissuade you from thinking like a full-time Auror . . ." Mr. Weasley added as Harry opened the door, making Harry stop and realize that his department head had gone out of his way to cater to his questions.
"Thanks, sir," Harry said with feeling.
- 888 -
Mid-week, Aaron sidled up to Harry after training and kicked his toe against the desk leg. "I'm going to ask to be assigned as your guard. I don't like being followed."
Rodgers raised his head at this and flicked his mustache side to side. "What's this?"
"Someone has been following Aaron," Harry supplied, when his fellow remained frustrated and silent. Harry was surprised that their trainer sounded sympathetic, but he was in charge of their safety.
"And you can't catch them at it?" Rodgers then added, canceling Harry's train of thought.
"I tried last night," Aaron said. "They had a repelling charm on them, so that I couldn't snag them with anything. Not a whip charm, a chain binding . . . nothing."
Harry thought that sounded rather expert for a private eye, but of course Freelander could afford the best.
Head still hanging low, Aaron said, "If I can be Harry's guard, I'd appreciate it."
"Put the two hunted parties together, you're saying," Rodgers said, "in the hopes that what? Your stalkers will trip over each other?"
Harry suggested to his fellow, "Ginny will be over for drills this afternoon, so why don't you come over even if you aren't assigned?"
- 888 -
On the couch, pretending to read from a book thick with eye-blurring, Gordion-worthy diagrams demonstrating every last variation of the various blocks they should know, Harry contemplated sending an owl to Freelander that threatened to tell Aaron what he knew. Elizabeth was counting on him, though, so his desire for an ultimatum was bound and gagged before it could even think about where the nice stationery might be.
Beside him, Aaron and Ginny were running drills and Aaron finally rose out of his down mood from earlier. Ginny caught onto the routines easily, but unfortunately had the same resistance to reading as Aaron.
"Maybe you should read something aloud," Harry suggested as Ginny spun on her toes from trying a reverse counter which, were she to get it, would put her up with the rest of the Second Years.
"You talking to me?" Ginny breathlessly asked.
"Either one of you," Harry said more stiffly than intended.
- 888 -
The next day, Freelander saved Harry from any difficult-to-compose owls. During lunch break, Aaron received an envelope of distinctive, creamy smooth paper. Harry focussed on his sandwich while Aaron opened the letter and scrunched up his face in perplexion as his eyes moved over the page. He scratched his head and folded the message away to finish his lunch, vaguely peeved.
Harry caught Aaron before he could leave the tea room but after everyone else had departed. "What was that?" he asked conversationally.
Aaron pulled the letter out again. "Something from Lord Freelygrander," he said, making Harry hold in a cringe.
"A party invitation?" Harry teased, feeling more deceptive than he preferred to be.
"No, or, I don't think so. He wants me to stop by Friday evening. Merlin knows why. So he can lecture me about the proper role for the Select British Wizard, or something," Aaron said, assuming a posher accent as he did so.
"Do you want company?" Harry asked, not wanting to leave his friend hanging out there with a man who did not see any risk in what he intended to tell his long-lost son.
Aaron turned to Harry as they reached the training room door. "You're willing to come along?" he asked in disbelief. "Harry, I would take Draco Malfoy along for company rather than go alone." He slipped inside, saying, "I'll buy you a week of fancy dinners if you will."
Kerry Ann raised her bushy head. "What's this? What's this? Fancy dinners are in the offing?"
"You don't need to do anything in return," Harry said as he slid into his seat.
"Oh, don't destroy the market!" Kerry Ann protested. "I was just about to bid higher than you."
Harry wanted to ask if Aaron's mum was around, but held back on doing so on the theory that it may later tip off that he knew something beforehand. He could feel a more straightforward, perhaps younger, version of himself admonishing him for that.
After training, Harry waited around in the Auror's office for Tonks. He had thought of a possible present for his guardian's fortieth birthday, something that fit in well with recent conversations they had had, but he needed to know if Tonks still had the thing he would need.
Tonks finally hustled by and Harry followed her to the file room, which worked perfectly for a private conversation. Harry ran some security spells just because he felt he should all the time now. Doing this reminded him of Moody and he wondered what had become of the old Auror, as he had not been following Harry for a blissfully long time.
"Hey, Harry," Tonks said without looking up from the ten-foot-long file drawer she had slung out and let glide to a rumbling stop before perusing the labels. Harry's Muggle-raised brain could not help but notice that the cabinet it emerged from was perhaps two-foot deep.
"I was wondering if you had returned the cane?"
"The cane?" she echoed.
"Yeah, the one I fetched the other night . . ." Harry hoped she'd catch on because he was leery of speaking clearly despite checking for anyone listening in.
Her nose was buried in a file. "Oh, I guess it's still there. I forgot about it."
"Oh good. I want to borrow it."
Tonks looked over the top edge of the file and Harry expected a lecture, but instead she said in a more sultry tone, "Why don't you stop by and fetch it? I'll owl you through the Floo when I get home."
Harry smiled and felt an awakening vibration run from his shoulder blades to his knees. "Aaron's my guard, so that should work. I just have to make a run to the sweet shop and I'll be over."
- 888 -
With dread unmatched in the last few months, Harry strode beside Aaron up to the doors of the Freelander estate. As per usual under such circumstances, the journey up the drive, waiting at the door, and being led inside by a butler, took place in a quick blur.
As they stood alone in Lord Freelander's presence, Harry secretly willed Aaron to behave himself, at least until he understood the circumstances.
"Sir," Aaron said and accepted the seat indicated by their host.
Freelander fingered a thick leather binder full of papers before setting it between the three of them on a low, stout table with lion-paw-tipped legs. He began, "Mr. Potter knows why we are here, and I am glad he has arranged to attend this meeting."
"He does?" Aaron said in surprise, glancing at Harry, who neglected to glance back.
Freelander went on, "And I see that he has remained silent about something I thought best for me to apprise you of."
He gazed at Harry, expecting a response. Harry said critically, "I didn't know how to begin."
"Yes, well, I suppose that's true." Freelander reached for the paperwork and flipped it open, making Harry grit his teeth together.
This isn't about official documents, Harry silently berated the man. He felt a wave of nausea and wished he were elsewhere, but then reminded himself that Aaron should not go through this alone.
"Where's your mum?" Harry asked his friend.
Aaron replied, "Paris, at some show or another. She'll be home next week."
"Good," Harry breathed, then pinned his eyes on the side wall in case their host wished to call him on that with a meaningful look.
Freelander said to Aaron, "There are a few things you do not know . . ."
Aaron waved his hand. "There are many things I do not know," he commented dismissively in a stronger accent.
"Hmf," Freelander muttered, but his mood held, thankfully. "As I was saying. There are a few things you should be apprised of, now that I've determined you are worthy of knowing them."
Harry bit his lips to keep from mouthing the word "worthy". Part of him wanted to shout. He would prefer to face Voldemort again than face what was about to transpire and he wondered at his nearly visceral reaction.
Freelander said, "Perhaps we shall get straight to the point. It is like this, Mr. Wickem; your father is not who you thought he was."
"What are you blathering about?" Aaron asked. "What was he?"
Freelander frowned and shot Aaron a judgmental look. "Not what. Whom." He waited a pause. "As in not Bertram Wickem, but myself."
Aaron stood up and backed away from his chair. He laughed uneasily. "You're a nutter. What potions did you confuse this morning?" He glanced at Harry, who was remembering Candide's words of he may be wrong, and could only shrug helplessly. Aaron put his hand around the glossy wood edging the chair back and recovered himself. "No wonder you asked what my mum was doing," he commented to Harry.
"She should be here, maybe," Harry said to no one in particular.
Aaron said, "Yes, she should. Because I don't believe you." The last was directed at their host.
"It is no matter if you believe me," Freelander commented, sounding unaffected. He flipped to a long parchment sporting a widely-bordered rectangle packed solid with flourished writing. "These are my revised wills, for your edification."
Aaron dropped back into his chair, boney arms crossed. "Oh, so, you've deemed me worthy have you?" he asked, voice dripping with disrespect.
Freelander shrugged it off without a flicker. "Yes, I have."
Freelander's impermeable skin disarmed Aaron. His eyes danced down to the stack of papers. "You really believe it, don't you? No wonder you were always riding my arse when I was younger. If it weren't for you, I may have done my N.E.W.T.s," he accused.
"Just one of the reasons I deemed you a lost cause," Freelander stated. "Would you like to see a copy of the estate's inventory?"
"No," Aaron said. "I've seen the real thing enough times. Is this a bribe of some sort?"
Freelander propped his hands on his silk-clad knees and said, "Well, you may have gained enough drive to make something out of your life, but I see you still rampantly mis-ascribe motivation where your superiors are concerned."
Harry expected a cutting retort to that, but Aaron merely stared at the older man before him, face drained of expression.
"Why don't you speak with your mother," Freelander suggested, sitting up so straight as to put the papers on the table out of reach.
"I will," Aaron said after a beat. "I definitely will."
Freelander leaned elegantly forward to close the leather case. "Why don't we take care of the papers after you have done that. I think it will go better then."
Aaron frowned at this attestation of confidence. He sat forward, hands on hips. "Am I excused from your presence, then?"
Still unruffled and perhaps even amused but hiding it well, Freelander flipped his hand in the air. "By all means."
They did not speak as they departed, nor when Aaron saw Harry home. Snape had arrived for the weekend, relieving Aaron of his guard duty. Aaron managed a passable greeting to his old professor, and with one last pained glance back at Snape and Candide facing each other across the couches while sorting papers, followed Harry back to the dining room to use the Floo.
Harry continued the habit of quiet as he took up a spot on the couch beside Candide, pretending to read from a book he was already familiar with. He felt down and brushed off attempts at drawing him into the sparse conversation.
"Everything all right?" Snape finally asked. At Harry's shrug, he sharpened the edge of his voice and added, "You aren't still brooding about last week's detention, are you?"
"No," Harry tartly replied, and then whispered, "Detention."
"Grounding, as you will have it," Snape replied, but his tone softened and he considered Harry at length before returning to his own work.
Candide glanced around herself in consternation, sorting quickly though the files beside her. "I forgot the Witherhocks second quarter file. Drat." She set everything aside and scooted forward in preparation for standing.
Snape said, "I can fetch it for you. It is just upstairs, correct?"
"Thanks, Dear."
Snape returned with the file, unusually patting Candide on the back as he handed it over. He gave Harry a curious glance before returning to his previous seat. Harry expected that if they were alone, he would have been asked again what was wrong. Harry himself was beginning to wonder what was wrong. All he knew was that he felt vaguely annoyed and adrift, simultaneously in the mood to sulk and in the mood for an argument. Snape may very well have some insight and Harry would reach the point of availing himself of his piercing conversation, he just was not quite there yet. Watching his guardian's growing solicitousness with his pregnant wife eased his most immediate pain for some reason.
Just as Harry was bedding down his pets, Snape rapped on the door and entered without waiting to be called inside. He pushed the door closed behind him.
Said Snape, "You seem quite put-out, Harry, and I am at a loss to guess why."
Harry latched Kali's cage door and watched her burrow under her rags until only a tuft of violet showed, lost among the multi-colored fabrics.
"I'm not really in the mood to talk," Harry said while staring into the cage rather than make the effort at Occlusion. "Anyway, it's your birthday and I don't want to argue—in case it comes to that."
Shifting fabric indicated that Snape had crossed his arms. "It is no matter that it is my birthday," he observed dismissively. "It is more important to understand what is bothering you."
Harry cleared off his bed for sleep and dropped onto it, all the while keeping his gaze averted. "I don't know what it is."
"You deny that you are angry with your punishment-"
"It's not that."
"Candide believes it is."
"Really, Severus, it's fine," Harry insisted, glancing Snape's way. Snape's eyes narrowed and Harry glanced away fast enough to not give anything away.
"Why won't you look at me?" Snape asked.
Harry stared down at his bed where his feet and knees made ridges under the duvet. "Because I'm tired," he said.
Snape dropped his arms and said, "I will give you a bit more time to brood, but not much."
Harry wanted to challenge what methods he planned to employ at that time, but decided that may lead to an argument, so he said nothing but goodnight in response to the same.
- 888 -
The day began with stabs of sunlight but they were soon squeezed off by low, dense clouds. Lunch was to be the celebratory meal, so Harry slipped away well before then to arrange his gifts.
In his room, he wrote out two letters in a careful hand and addressed one to Snape and one to himself. He then laid everything out that he would need on the edge of the bed, all clearly in view, all straight and deliberate. His actions felt ritualistic and strange. Perhaps there was a point to be made with what he was planning, a notion that only reinforced the idea, given how constricted he had been by his guardian's rules, and how sharply he felt the betrayal Aaron was suffering. The letters had been difficult to write, too difficult. They should have been easy, but his mind had drifted off repeatedly while he worked at them. But they were finished satisfactorily enough and lay sealed in envelopes before him, waiting.
Harry took a deep breath, forced his lips to cock into a devious smile at the surprise this would cause, and took up the cane.
Harry stared down at the strange bed before him. The room was strange too, but he had been asleep, dreaming about failing a history examination at school, and was glad to be dreaming of something else. At least, he thought he was. He automatically picked up the envelope addressed to him. Letters were never addressed to him, so this was novel in and of itself. As he opened the letter, he noticed the clothes laid out neatly to the right, a fine white shirt, sweater vest and trousers. They made Harry more acutely aware of the flopping hand-me-down pyjamas he wore, complete with tears Dudley had inflicted on them while chasing Harry himself around the breakfast table.
The letter made very little sense.
Dear Harry,
This is sort of a strange letter, I realize, but try your best to understand it. You can back out at any time by following the instructions tied to the silver half-cane you are holding. The person who wrote this letter is you, yourself, only a much older version of you, twice as old. The magic cane cuts your age in half, you see. I (or we I suppose) have been adopted by the man who owns this house. He's a wizard, as are you, turns out.
Harry frowned at the letter and flipped it over to check the back of it, just for the heck of it. It was signed by himself all right. He kept reading, smooth, young brow creased deeply.
Well, I won't bore you with everything. Suffice to say you (or us) have got a bit old for having a dad, really, and he isn't quite ready to stop being a dad, so I thought to give him a younger version of us as a present for his birthday today. I know that sounds a bit odd, but I thought you might enjoy that too, as well as getting some nice clothes to wear (they are lying out on the bed) and a decent present, even though it isn't your birthday. Certainly you are owed some past presents.
Harry stared at the letter, finding it surprisingly hard to have his trials so well understood. He was intrigued by the notion of a decent present, given how familiar he was with his cousin receiving them.
I'll keep this short. If you don't mind having the afternoon with a real family, a nice lunch, and little present then take the other letter and go downstairs where the wrapped gifts are laid out on the side table and look for one with your name on the bottom of it. If you are scared and don't want to do this just follow the instructions on the cane and you'll be back to normal.
It was signed in a neater, smoother version of his own signature.
On the assumption that he was most likely still dreaming, Harry eagerly slipped on the nice clothes. He repeatedly stroked the sweater vest, amazed that it fit snugly instead of hanging down to his knees. He gazed at himself in the mirror inside the wardrobe door and thought that probably random strangers would not peer at him in sympathy or with disapproval upon seeing him like this. Attempts at patting down his hair failed, so he closed the door and steeled himself to go downstairs. The room was chilly so he tugged down the robe hanging on the bed post and shrugged it on, finding comfortable familiarity in having to avoid tripping over its excessive length. He scooped up the letter labeled Severus and pocketed it, figuring the odd label would become clear with time but certain it was not meant for him.
Harry, adept at sneaking silently to avoid his relatives, crept down the stairs and easily located the shifting and colorfully laden table of presents. After deciding the moving figures on the paper were harmless, he leaned close to check each of half a dozen packages from people named Minerva, Hagrid, Jiggers—which gave Harry a giggle, Candide, and Harry himself, until finally on the end found one with no top label, but with his name on the bottom. He sat down on the floor and proceeded to open it with slow relish.
Someone entered the room. It was a lean man with shoulder-length hair wearing floor-sweeping black robes. He spotted Harry there on the floor and stopped suddenly, scuffing his foot. He faintly shook his head and said, "I should not even ask, I think."
Harry fumbled in the deep pockets of his robes and held out the second letter. With confident strides, the man approached and took it from him. He tore and snapped the letter open with one quick motion and proceeded to read it. Harry went back to studying the brightly colored wooden box before him, bearing three giant interlocking cursive Ws on the lid.
When the man did not move right away after reading, Harry asked, "What's it say?"
To his relief the man replied easily, "It says, it is better to be in trouble for something truly harmless." He folded the letter away and stared at Harry rather disarmingly. "I do hope he does not think I prefer you to him."
Harry lifted his boney shoulders and dropped them again, hoping it was all right to not have an answer. With the man towering over him, Harry returned his attention to the box, which opened by sliding the lid rather than lifting. Inside, neatly sectioned areas held all manner of sweets: chocolates, fruit gummies, toffees, bon bons. Harry plucked out a toffee and happily unwrapped it.
Footsteps approached and a bark of laughter sounded. Harry looked up to find a plain, brown-haired woman holding her hand over her mouth as she peered at him. Grinning broadly, she said, "Drat, that's a good present. No wonder he wouldn't tell me what he'd got you."
"Don't encourage him so," the man complained, gliding over to sit on the couch where he folded and pocketed the letter with undo care.
"Encourage him," she echoed, laughing.
With some effort because of a swollen belly, she sat down beside Harry on the floor and examined the sweets.
"Can I have one?" she asked brightly.
Harry nudged the box in her direction and she selected a chocolate with hardy fingers. She smelled sweetly of ginger and powder, not at all like Aunt Petunia.
"Do you want one?" she asked the man, sounding to be teasing. When his eyes merely narrowed slightly, she cajoled, "Oh, come on, lighten up a little." She selected another chocolate and stood with well-practiced awkwardness. "Well, just leave him this way, then," she said, smile ringing in her voice.
The man replied wryly, "Tempting, isn't it? But it won't work. The cane's magic wears off in two or three weeks."
"Shame," she muttered. She shifted over to make space between them and said, "Come here, Harry," while patting the cushion.
Harry peered at each of them. The man's annoyed expression was amplified by his fierce profile. The woman was still highly amused.
As Harry took the indicated seat, she patted him on the back and said, "Come on, Severus, he'll be good practice."
"I doubt that," Snape said.
The woman slipped an arm around Harry, which he wanted to resist, but was not certain would be allowed, given how Dudley was forced to accept excessive affection, even when he wished otherwise.
"How are you doing, Harry?" she asked.
Harry shrugged again and waited until he had nibbled down a chewy licorice before replying, "I'm just dreaming, right?"
She patted his back. "That's the spirit. As long as you don't think it's a bad dream."
Harry glanced over his shoulder at the man, whom he felt very uncertain about. "No, not a bad dream," he said, because there was something superficial about the man's anger, unlike his relatives'. Harry felt like the man just wanted to make a point, rather than truly be cruel.
Harry plucked yet another toffee off out of the slot that had not grown short of any despite the number he had eaten. In fact, far from running out, the top one jostled up to the rim was yet another new flavor.
The woman said, "Hm, maybe you should slow down on those."
"Maybe you should cease until after dinner," the man added more sharply.
"It doesn't really matter," the woman said. "He'll change back before the sweets catch up with him."
The man stood up. "He's always resisted obeying anything," he said in the tone of Harry's aunt and her neighbor friends, proclaiming him a hopelessly delinquent cause.
Harry slid the box closed. The man turned and caught his eye with his piercing gaze, and like a candle melting from rigid taper to amorphous stub, gave in. Harry was not sure how he could tell this—partly it was his eyes and partly it was the way his shoulders relaxed. He stepped back over and stood Harry up and took the seat he had just occupied so as to look him directly in the eye.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, in an insistent and wholly new tone that promised nothing beyond stalwart assistance.
Harry, who had been badly beaten up by Dudley's friends over the last year, had finally learned to avoid them for the most part. He was only mildly bruised at the moment, from one incident where Dudley had run him over on the staircase on the way down to meet his dad, honking from the car for a promised trip to the cinema.
"I'm fine right now," Harry replied. His skin prickled because no one had ever asked him that before, certainly not in that tone.
Harry's shoulders were released, and the man said, using a conflicting tone of caring demand, "If you require anything, you will ask for it, correct?"
Harry nodded. The woman stroked the man on the side of the head once, lips cocked into a painful smile.
"Can I have another toffee?" Harry asked, finding the lure of the rare wooden box to be too much.
"No," the man replied in unison with the woman saying, "yes."
The three of them held still. "It doesn't matter," the woman pointed out again.
The man said, "It does matter."
Harry found them both funny all of a sudden. The man sat back and crossed his arms. "It seems we do have a few things to work out. I will not tolerate that level of pandering."
"But it won't matter in the end. Why bother enforcing discipline when it won't matter? It's just excess sweets. Look how skinny he is."
Harry stood there, trying to look skinnier and perhaps a little pathetic.
The man gave the woman a glare Harry now felt confident he could peg as superficial. This was confirmed when the man uttered, "Fine. Go. Ahead."
"Thanks," Harry said, and set the box on the floor to carefully select what to eat next, just in case the man changed his mind.
"He'll eventually run out," the woman said.
"No, he won't. That is a rather expensive box of sweets that cannot actually be used up."
Harry, sweet held out before his open mouth, stared at the man in surprise at this proclamation. "Wow," Harry said, peering cross-eyed at his fingers sinking into the sides of the toffee he held, thrilled at this magical notion.
The woman said, "I would expect that they could not afford to sell boxes of sweets that never run out; it would seriously cut into future sales."
"They are doing rather well, financially, as far as I can tell."
After a few minutes of silent observation of Harry while Harry studied each moving cartoon on the discarded wrapping paper, the man said, "He is the same as he is now."
"You think so?" the woman replied.
"I sometimes think the Muggles have it easy, raising children incapable of magic."
With too much emotion the woman said, "Do you really feel that way?"
A pregnant silence followed before the man said, "I'm not certain why it matters so," in a somewhat tentative tone. "I was simply making an observation."
"Well, it matters . . ." She faded out and Harry glanced up to see her face struggle while she found words. Her manner shifted to factual and she said, "You have no idea how much pregnant witches fear giving birth to a Squib, that they might inadvertently do something wrong and the child will not have magic as a result."
"I don't think anything you may do or not do could have an impact on that."
"You're rare in that case. Most of Wizardom believes otherwise."
A pause, and then the man said with a hint of accusation, "Have you been worrying about this?"
Her head pulled back, "Of course I've been worrying about this," she burst out.
Harry munched harder on the licorice without realizing it, taking piece after piece.
"Well, cease to do so. It does not matter," the man insisted.
"You really wouldn't mind if we had a Squib?" she challenged.
The man's expression retreated. That was a very hard question, Harry could tell. In a quiet voice the man said, "I'll admit I had not seriously considered that we might, but of course the possibility is always there." He fell silent again. "But rest easy that I would not blame you for it." His gaze shifted thoughtfully far away. "Perhaps partly in the interest of denying everything the bad company I have associated with in the past stood for . . . I will insist that I will not care if the boy is a Squib. I am amazed enough at having a son at all."
The woman gestured in Harry's direction, "Another son, you mean," she said with a hint of tease.
Snape looked at Harry. "Yes. Another son."
This made Harry's ribs hurt and for a second he could not breathe, but this was short lived as his next attempt at pulling forth a licorice felt clumsy and his hand as heavy as the time he had to pick himself up out of an icy cold puddle in his woolen mittens after Dudley dropped him there. Harry looked down and emitted a sound halfway between a squeak and a yelp. His hand was swelling rapidly, so much so that his fingers were threatening to disappear into the balloon of his hand.
"Yah!" Harry said, scrambling away from the box of sweets.
The man said, "And now we know how the Weasley twins can afford to sell boxes of sweets that never run out." He caught up with Harry, who was crabbing awkwardly away from the box with one hand while dragging the other, which now felt glued to a bowling, along beside. He made another noise of distress and curled around the cursed hand protectively.
The woman was crouching beside him as well, and she waved a stick at his hand, sending sparks at it.
"I doubt such a simple counter will reverse it. I expect the twins sell the antidote for even more than the exorbitant price of the sweets." He peered at both sides of Harry's globular hand then slid Harry's sleeve up to study his arm. "I can mix a curative easy enough, but I will need to fetch something from my stocks at school." He stood with a swish of his robes. "Keep him calm until I return, if you would."
"Come on, Harry," the woman said, lifting him easily to his feet and guiding him to the couch.
Harry's initial alarm was wearing off and he felt a bit silly until he studied his hand again and had to close his eyes at the horrific proportions of it. Her mantra of, "It's going to be all right. Just sit tight," worked remarkably well, especially since Harry had never had anything like it directed at him.
Harry let himself be held in a loose embrace while they waited. A clock ticking occupied the silence. Harry moved his hand slightly, surprised it did not hurt given how far his skin had stretched. He resisted trusting that something was going to be done to help him, maybe it would go away on its own, if not.
The woman stroked his head and said, "You'll be fine and then we'll have lunch."
Harry stomach rumbled at the thought. He propped his grotesque hand on the back of the couch out of the way. "I guess I should have listened to Mr. Snape," he muttered morosely. Harry, who had been sleeping when this whole bizarre thing started, scrubbed at one eye with his unencumbered fingertip and asked, "So, I really have a dad now."
"Yes."
"That's good," Harry replied, feeling too many mixed emotions to contain them all, so he closed his eyes and buried his face in the velvety, mauve-colored robes encompassing him.
She patted his head, "Yup, it is. We'll get you fixed up, have lunch and get you back to normal."
Voice muffled by fabric, Harry said, "The letter said I didn't need a dad any longer. I don't understand that."
"It's true in many ways, and not true in others."
Harry raised his head to say, "Do you consider that a reply?"
She laughed. "You're a cheeky one. Yes, I consider that a reply. How about this: you don't need Severus any longer except to bail you out when you get into trouble . . ." She shook his thin forearm to make his bulbous hand wobble. "Just like this."
"Oh," Harry said, thin mouth turning downward. "But that was that magical box's fault," he pointed out.
"You are very good at getting into trouble using all sorts of magic, Harry," she said in a tone that precluded argument, so Harry offered her none further. "All sorts."
Insistence that Harry was always in trouble came as no surprise to him and even gave him a feeling of rightness with the world. He sighed and rested his head back against the couch cushion.
Someone sitting nearby, jostled Harry awake. He blinked his eyes and tried to remember his strange surroundings. The man in black was sitting beside him. He uncorked an etched glass bottle with a satisfying plomp sound. Harry's heart increased its pace as he realized that had he been dreaming, well, he shouldn't be now, because he had just woke up.
Harry rubbed his eyes and squinted into the cup held out to him. It contained a viscous orange and grey striped slime that clung to the glassy surface of the porcelain cup. The woman handed Harry his glasses, which she must have removed while he slept. Harry did not really want to put them on given how disgusting the substance in the glass looked when he could not see it clearly.
The man held the glass out expectantly. "Go on," he urged. "It will cancel the curse on your hand."
Harry wanted to point out that drinking the offered stuff had to be worse that having bowling-ball hand, but he assumed like all suggestions he made to adults, this one would not fare well and would only bring on retribution.
Harry sat forward and took the cup but moved it no closer to his nose. It sloshed strangely in the cup; the colored layers slid and snaked over one another, refusing to mix. A black-stained, thin liquid swam in between the layers, pooling disgustingly when he tipped the vessel.
"You want me to drink this?" Harry asked, voice croaking.
Candide laughed and put her arm more firmly around him. "'Fraid so. It won't hurt you. It's just a potion."
"A potion," Harry echoed doubtfully, resisting more because the scent of brackish water had reached his nose, wrinkling it.
"We can leave him like this and just change him back," the woman suggested.
The man said in a questioning voice, "I thought we were going to keep him for dinner."
The woman froze, Harry could feel it transmitted through her arm. Then she laughed lightly. Harry glanced her way to find her eyes brightened by gladness.
"I guess, you have to drink up, Harry," she said kindly, but firmly.
Harry, holding his breath, gulped down the contents of the glass. As the potion slipped and swam down his throat he realized he had not done it to get back his hand; he had just done it for them, mostly for her. They seemed worth the effort, too much so, because if he was not going to stay, as they implied, he did not want the burden of these feelings later when they would be of no use, and in fact threatened to haunt him.
Harry, hand normal, slid off the front of the couch and knelt before the wooden box of infinite sweets, and simply stared at it, not wishing to touch it again right away.
"It's dinner time," the man said. "Come, Harry," he added, expecting to be obeyed, and Harry did.
Author's Note: Thanks for all the great feedback. It's really nice to have. Hope everyone is having a great new year (for those on the Gregorian calendar, that is).
Next: Chapter 20 -- Twenty Years Later, Part 1
"Harry," Candide said firmly, teeth clenched, gaze blazing. "Sit down."
Harry glanced at the empty floor behind him.
"Yes, right there," she demanded furiously.
Harry had never seen her in this full on angry mode, and never imagined it would be he who put her there. This jarred him out of angry into stunned. He sat down on the cool wood floor, fingers finding knot holes in the wide boards, which he grabbed hold of with his fingertips. He avoided both their gazes.
Chapter 20 — Twenty Years Later, Part 1
Harry, supporting his overfilled stomach, retreated to the couches and dropped on one with a groan.
"You did eat too much," Candide pointed out, sending an accusing glance at Snape.
Snape waved his hand in a manner that replied no matter.
Candide began ferrying the gifts from the table. "You should open your presents."
Snape sat beside Harry and said, "Perhaps we should return this one, before opening the others."
"Oh," she sang in disappointment. "Well, let's get a photo of you two, first." She strode into the drawing room and returned presently, holding a large black camera. With a clack she slid a holder of film into the back of it and said, "Okay, smile."
Snape subtly tugged Harry closer. Harry glanced up at him and the flash went off.
Harry rubbed his eyes, the light had filled the room and made his eyes water. Candide loaded another slate of film. "Hang on," she said, hovering the camera with her wand. "I want to be in the next one."
She sat on Harry's other side and flicked her wand at her side and the flash went off again. Harry peered through floating spots now. When Candide plucked the camera out of the air, Harry said, "More magic!"
"If you wish," Snape lazily said, and he hovered the cane down over the balcony. It came to rest on the floor at their feet where it rolled a few inches before coming to a halt.
"Are you ready to return to nineteen?" Snape asked.
"Maybe. I'm having fun. I don't usually get to have fun. Or have photographs taken. Can I see it?"
"The photograph has to go to the chemists," Candide said. "It doesn't come out right away."
"Oh," Harry said, disappointed. "I've never seen a picture of myself before."
She said, "Oh, there's your album upstairs." With a wave of her wand, she brought it along the same path as the cane.
Harry's face brightened upon opening it to the first page. "Is that . . . who's that?" he asked, not wanting to dare believe.
"Your parents," Snape replied neutrally, but he leaned in to give a tour of the photos. "Your parents many friends; they had no shortage," he added dryly. "Yourself at school."
"That's a different school."
"Yes, one you appreciated more than your previous one, I should think."
They sat like that until the album had been fully paged through, including the numerous loose photographs stuck in the back, and Harry blinked, disoriented by everything he had seen and all his questions which had received insufficient answers. "I think it's time to return you to that young man there in that last photographs," Snape said, setting the album gently aside. "Take up the cane if you will."
Harry bit his lip and unfolded the paper tied to the cane. With a last glance at each of them, he worked up some courage and followed the instructions. He grew taller in a small rush of wind.
Harry, at nineteen, glanced between the two of them. Candide spoke first. "Good present," she said. "I had fun. Severus had fun too, but he is going to pretend he didn't."
Harry set the cane on the floor in case it may decide to reassert its magic because he held it too long. "Am I in trouble?" he asked his guardian.
"No," Snape replied softly. "I AM a bit concerned that you decided that was an appropriate thing to do. Up to and including borrowing that from what must have been the Ministry Magic Artefacts Archive. . ."
"It was still in the work area," Harry glibly replied with a small smile. He waved the velvet sack down from his room and began the difficult task of hovering the cane into its narrow confines without touching it. "But I should return it right away."
"Do you think it'd be missed so soon?" Candide asked. "I think it'd be fun to see it on someone else I know." Her sly grin stretched her face.
Harry ceased hovering the cane into the sack and grabbed hold if it through the velvet with the curved handle still sticking out. He gave his overly serious adoptive father a looking over. "That's an excellent idea," Harry said, also grinning.
Snape's gaze bounced between them, disbelieving. He crossed his arms. "Surely, you have lost your minds."
Candide stepped over and tugged on his sleeve. "Oh, come now, Severus; it would only be for a few minutes. I'd so much like to meet your older, I mean, younger self."
"It isn't my fault you don't remember me," he sniped at her.
"I was buried in books from day one. I've told you that. I certainly wouldn't have paid any attention to a grouchy Slytherin five years ahead of me," she teased. "Come on. You're so secretive, and that only makes it more alluring."
"You truly do not know what you are asking for," Snape argued, growing angry. "I was not what most would define as 'good company' twenty years ago; it is unbelievable that you would seriously suggest that I do this." He gestured at the cane with his upper hand without uncrossing his arms.
Harry lifted the cane closer to his reach. "So, get on with it, then," he urged.
Snape turned his dismay Harry's way. "Why in Merlin's name . . .?"
"I'm curious too," Harry said. "I think it's a brilliant idea. Don't you want to be twenty again?"
"NO."
"Well, we want you to be, come on," Harry cajoled. "Just for a few minutes. We promise to be nice to you."
Candide nodded in support of this, showing her broad teeth, she smiled so widely.
"It is not you I am worried about," Snape insisted, but he sounded worn down. "Merlin . . . you will regret this." He held his wand out in Harry's direction. "Take my wand."
"You don't need to do that. I could use a good duel," Harry continued to tease, pocketing the wand. "Sure yours won't just come with you? I had my old clothes on."
"As powerful as this device is, I do not expect it can regenerate a magical item from the past." He huffed and stared at each of them before shoving to his feet. "You truly will regret this," he repeated, angry again. "I am only doing this to prove it to you."
Good natured with anticipation, Candide said, "We'll take any reason."
Snape behaved even more uncertain when he turned to her. Harry interpreted this effortlessly and said, "Really, Severus, isn't it you who told me you can't run away from your past?"
"That would not have been me," Snape stated in a low voice.
"Oh. Maybe it was Dumbledore then." Harry held the cane out invitingly, face overtly pleading, which rendered it years younger.
Snape gestured and commanded of Candide. "Stand back."
Candide moved over, putting Harry between them.
"Much better," Snape said. He reached for the cane. "Fools, both of you," he snarled lightly before a small woosh replaced him with a different version in exactly the same pose.
No one spoke.
A much younger Snape, sallow skinned and thinner, glanced away from Candide and glared at Harry. He noticed the cane he held, still half inside the sack. Candide took hold of Harry's robe sleeve, not so much in alarm as in overwhelming amusement.
"Put it down on the floor," Harry suggested.
Snape did so, slowly, eyes taking in the room without leaving Harry for more than a second at a time. He wandered sideways around the hall in this manner. His robes were reminiscent of Lupin's, patched and faded at the seams. His sulky posture gave him a pronounced vulturish attitude as he took in the details around him.
He stopped in the dining room, the most inviting room in the house, Harry and Candide quietly shuffled in behind. "What is this place, and who are you . . . some Potter cousin?" His eyes narrowed, but Harry had his mind Occluded.
"Something like that," Harry replied. "As to where you are, this is your house."
On his younger face, Snape's brows twisted more starkly in confusion. His eyes danced over the items on the mantelpiece, picking out two for special attention. He did the same on the back wall where decorative bottles lined a high shelf. Harry suspected they were things Snape had owned long enough to recognize them.
"My house," Snape stated. He stalked by Harry, moving faster than expected, while still glancing back to keep tabs on Harry. While he circled the hall again, he felt in his pockets and bit his lip, presumably not finding his wand. He ranged farther, stopping in the library to stare at the shelves, shoulders falling as he grew distracted by the plenty arrayed before him. Harry and Candide stood in the doorway and watched him scan the collection.
Snape finally drew himself from the multitude of books to stare at the two of them again, still generating a glare for Harry. Winky appeared in a sparkle.
"Master is wishing for tea," the elf said, bowed, and left a laden tray behind on the writing desk.
Snape stared down at the tray and his lips moved silently repeating the word "master". Given how thin he was, Harry expected him to take up a currant scone from the pile provided, but he did not.
He looked over at the two of them. "I don't understand this."
Candide slipped in and helped herself to a scone, brushing crumbs off her belly after each bite.
Harry said, "You are twenty years out of time."
There was no appreciable reaction to this. After a glance around the room again, Snape turned to Candide. "Who are you?"
Candide was chewing, so Harry supplied, "This is your wife."
The overly expressive eyebrows came into play again. Snape looked Candide over, especially her clearly pregnant belly. No one spoke, letting him take that in. Candide grinned at him, enjoying this.
"How did I get here?" Snape asked slowly with strange care.
"We didn't use a Time-Turner if that's what you're asking. You can't damage anything."
Snape's attention redirected to Harry. "Twenty years," he repeated. "You cannot be James Potter's brother, in that case."
"I'm his son," Harry said, getting an odd stab from having to provide that information to this man.
This produced no change in Snape's expression. He slipped by Harry and circled the hall as though hunting for something, hands checking his pockets again. "So, where is your father?" Snape asked.
Something clicked decisively inside of Harry. "He's dead."
Again no change in expression occurred in their guest. "Why am I here?"
Candide wandered over by the couches to where Snape's circle would take him. She sent a sympathetic frown at Harry. Snape came up short and stared at her, bordering on undone.
"We just wanted to meet you," she said. "And to wish you a happy birthday. It would be your birthday today, even for you."
He clearly did not find this a valid answer, but his scowl faded as he read her eyes.
"Severus?" she prodded with some feeling.
It was subtle, but Harry caught it. Snape rubbed the front of his left arm. Harry, still closer to the library than the two of them, announced, "Your mark shouldn't be bothering you."
Snape's clear shift from borderline amazement to be faced with Candide to glaring suspicion of him pleased Harry. Somewhere deep inside of him, it irked him to see this Snape believing he deserved a family. The two of them locked gazes.
"Harry?" Candide queried, confused.
"You didn't ask what happened to James," Harry said, approaching them without meaning to.
"I don't care," Snape returned. "Good riddance to him."
"Uh oh," Candide breathed. She stepped between them, but Snape stepped smoothly out from behind her.
"Are you trying to protect him?" Harry asked her, feeling something brackish rising up in his core. "He's nothing but . . ." a Death Eater, Harry held back on finishing but it felt true in a way that could not be denied.
"Harry," Candide said more sharply. "You know who he's going to become."
Harry stepped closer, instinctively thinking he should get Candide out of the way, or at least get between them. Snape stood his ground as Harry came close, but it appeared to require some resolve to do so.
"It's a wonder what Dumbledore saw in him. He doesn't know what he's done," Harry said, feeling angry and like he needed to empty his stomach of a foul meal.
Snape rubbed his arm again, and Harry, without warning grabbed hold of Snape's left wrist. He could feel the taint of the mark under his hand, calling to something deep within him. Harry heard himself say, "He's just Voldemort's servant, nothing more. Just an empty vessel for dark magic." Surprising vehemence powered these words out, holding Snape from struggling despite flinching at the Name.
Candide touched Harry's arm. "Harry, don't hurt him."
"I'm not hurting him," Harry said, even though his grip was quite firm. "He just can't stand to hear his master's true name." Candide let go and took a step back. Harry said to Snape, but not in a reassuring tone, "I took care of your master. He can't bother anyone now that he's a helpless Muggle."
The smug doubt that flickered over Snape's face, made heat flare into flame inside Harry. He put his thumb over the Mark and felt for the foul energy of it, lying dormant. It sang to something inside himself, which made his anger and frustration go white hot. Snape jerked his arm as his mark burned, freeing himself. Now he stared at Harry with open alarm, bent over his clutched forearm, all of which fed satisfaction into Harry.
"Harry!" Candide snapped, stepping into his face. "Back. Off."
Harry, before he could re-assess what he was doing or regain any control of his runaway pain, let slip, "You aren't my mother. Ask him what's happened . . . what's going to happen to my mother. It was his fault."
His statements, which he knew could sting, found their mark. Snape's alarm ratcheted up as he glanced between the two of them.
"Harry," Candide said firmly, teeth clenched, gaze blazing. "Sit down."
Harry glanced at the empty floor behind him.
"Yes, right there," she demanded furiously.
Harry had never seen her in this full on angry mode, and never imagined it would be he who put her there. This jarred him out of angry into stunned. He sat down on the cool wood floor, fingers finding knot holes in the wide boards, which he grabbed hold of with his fingertips. He avoided both their gazes.
"Sorry about him," Candide said. "He-"
"What is he referring to?" Snape asked warily, interrupting her.
"Something that happened a very long time ago." Harry could hear by her modulating voice that she was looking back at Harry frequently as she spoke. "We should switch you back to your normal self now, I think. You're setting him off, which I didn't expect."
"Switch me back . . .?"
She hovered the cane from the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw her catch it awkwardly with the felt-covered end. "Switch you for your forty-year old self."
"Forty?" Snape sputtered, dismayed in a whole new way.
"Come now, it's not that bad," she teased. "You have this house, this family . . ."
He must have been Legilimizing her or she had gestured to take Harry in. "Including him?" he gasped.
"Thank you very much," Harry said, lifting his head. Their glares battled.
"Let's not start that again," Candide insisted.
Snape looked away first, down at her feet. Part of Harry wanted to recognize how very lonely he must be to obey her but residual anger and the awakened spirit of something that only wanted hate battled back at that understanding. He watched Candide walk Snape through the cane's instructions.
Their Snape reappeared and blinked at them. He found Harry on the floor and asked in surprise, "What are you doing there?"
Harry did not feel like explaining. Candide said, "He was being just a bit difficult, so I told him to sit there."
Snape paused in slipping the cane away. "Harry was?" he asked. His surprise boosted Harry's embarrassment. They stared at each other with vastly different emotions than moments before: Harry with confused regret and relief that he had control again, Snape with with curious disbelief. Snape tugged the drawstrings on the velvet sack tight and tossed it aside. To Candide, he said, "Give me a few minutes alone with Harry."
Candide patted Snape on the shoulder with a "welcome back" and went upstairs.
"Can I get up now?" Harry asked, trying not to sound annoyed.
Snape gestured that it did not matter to him. "Have a seat somewhere more comfortable."
Harry rose with ease and dropped on the couch opposite the one where the cane lay. He fixed his eyes on the black-as-night, supple fabric sack and waited.
Snape waited too, but finally asked, "What happened?"
Harry filled his lungs with a breath then let it out in a rush. "I got annoyed with him . . . you . . . him."
"Yes, but why?" Snape asked in a tone of seeking facts. Harry marveled how very different Snape seemed, standing there in new robes, posture neutral, face concerned. Harry's anger had disappeared just as quickly as Snape had changed, which worried Harry as much as it let him relax. He felt like a puppet with a string pulled by someone else, someone he did not trust.
Harry did not know what to say that would recover his pride. Needing to say something, and getting more upset as he went along the path of these thoughts, Harry explained, "He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't care what he was going to do."
"Ah," Snape uttered.
"'Ah', what?" Harry snapped. "What's this 'ah' stuff. Like you could possibly know what the problem is . . ."
Snape displayed only amusement at Harry's exasperation.
With less force and some contrition Harry asked, "What?"
"You cannot alter the past," Snape stated.
Harry clenched his hands together and pressed them between his knees. "I know that."
"Yes, but faced with a version of me from November of 1979, you were facing the future, not the past." He sat down beside Harry, slowly as if concerned Harry may object. He spoke deliberately as he went on, "Since I am quite certain you have forgiven me for that mistake, I think your anger was at your helplessness to change things . . . things which at that instant, for that me, were still to happen."
Harry thought about that. "Maybe," he uttered grudgingly and sighed.
"Are you angry with me now?"
Of all the conflicting things Harry felt right then, including pain at himself for losing control and a hint of fear at the enmity that had risen within him so willingly powered by something he could not control, he could not list anger at Snape among them. "No."
"Hm," Snape uttered. "I expected my younger self to make trouble, not you." He studied Harry as he thought things over, adding, "Interesting test."
"I think I failed it," Harry said, trying to lighten the mood. He regretted most making Snape's mark burn. Why had he done that? He did not like to think of himself as being that cruel.
"Harry?" Snape prompted after a long wait.
"I'm glad you don't have a mark anymore," Harry said, moving one shoulder in a spasmodic circle. "The feel of it wasn't very nice."
"You sense it directly now?"
"When I touched him, yes." The memory made it even more relieving to sit brushing shoulders with his guardian and receive no tainted sense. "I was . . ." Harry started to say more of what happened, but decided he would rather not.
"You what?"
Why had he been so cruel? "I wasn't very nice to him is all."
Snape leaned away as if to get a more general look at Harry. "I feel safe assuming he was not banking on kindness, believe me."
He responded to Candide, though, Harry thought with a twinge.
Candide returned on quiet feet. "How is it going?" She tossed the sacked cane aside and sat across from them.
Snape touched Harry's shoulder. "Everything is all right," Snape said. "And you?"
"Oh, fine. It was nice to see that you. Harry surprised me, is all."
Snape said with gentle ease, "You had yet to meet Harry in his colors of full temper."
Harry rolled his eyes. He thought they were past the worst until Candide said, "I had never seen a Dark Mark before."
Snape's brow nearly obscured his eyes, it dipped so low. To Harry he said, "You did what?"
"I don't know why I did that," Harry said, thoughts far away.
Candide's face contorted in sympathy. "That was the worst, when Harry made that awful snake tattoo appear, just by grabbing your arm."
Harry held his breath. Snape's hand slid off his back and clasped together with his other. His knuckles went white.
"Without a wand? I did not realize you knew how to do that."
Harry shrugged.
"Harry?" Snape was going to insist.
"I figured out I could do that—when I went to rescue one of the alternate yous."
A thoughtful pause ensued. "Anything else new you are capable of that I should know about?"
Harry leaned back to consider that.
Candide said, "What does it say that he has to think so hard about the answer?"
Snape said to Harry, "I repeat that I would like to hear about such things in a timely manner."
"I'll try to do better about keeping you informed," Harry said quietly.
Candide slapped her lap before standing. She said, "But please, don't discuss it in front of Rita Skeeter . . ."
Both of them looked down at their hands.
That night, Harry received the expected visit from his guardian. He had, in fact, stayed up reading in anticipation of it. The cane, in its sack, stood propped against the wall beside the night stand. Snape's eyes took it in as he sat on the bed. "You can return that without trouble?"
Harry wanted to snoop around the Department of Mysteries after returning it, so he was waiting until the middle of the night. "Yes," he replied.
"Do be careful when you do so." When Harry glanced up at this, his thoughts were snagged. Snape asked, "What do you think you will find there?" with his old kind of cold calm.
"I wanted to look around Moody's desk. If he has one."
"Why would they assign him one, he is dead . . . officially."
"Well then, Percy's desk. I just want to look around."
Snape reached over for the black-clad cane and held it out. "Do it now, so I know you returned safely without having to find out in the morning."
"It will be safer later," Harry insisted.
Snape set the cane back. "At five then? I want to know you succeeded and do not require rescue."
"Rescue? From the Department of Mysteries?" Harry blurted, chuckling enough to let his book slide off his knees. He laid it face down beside him and hitched his arms around his knees. He did not want an argument and really it was fine if Snape was up waiting for him. "All right."
Harry figured Snape would say more, but he did not. He looked Harry over briefly, stood up, and with a "good night", departed the room.
Harry woke from a groggy dream about playing Quidditch on flying carpets instead of broomsticks to find Snape shaking him by the shoulder. The darkened room reeled while Harry took his bearings. "Is it five?" Harry mumbled.
"Yes," came the familiar warm voice out of the darkness before the lamp flared. When Harry leaned over to grab up the cane, Snape asked drolly, "Perhaps you want to not be caught in your pyjamas?"
Limbs groggy, Harry tossed back the covers and fished some well-used robes out of the bottom of his wardrobe and tossed them on. Snape followed him over and held out the long sack that in the dim light could have been a rent in the fabric of the room.
"Thanks," Harry said. He blinked vigorously to clear his vision, swept his hair back again and slipped away.
The Department of Mysteries sat in silence as expected. Harry slid the cane back where he had found it: at the bottom of the deeply piled shelving over a work table. He then hunted around for Percy's desk. After circling the two likely work rooms twice, eliminating desks sporting photographs unlikely to be Percy's or discarded envelopes addressed to others in the nearest bin, Harry decided the decisively neat one in the far corner of the second room must be it. He squatted and checked the floor and found two stray red hairs, supporting this. The desk radiated curse sickliness, making Harry hesitate to use a spell to pull open the drawers. He may have to be satisfied with what he could see without moving anything or try out his curse negation and risk setting off an alarm. He wanted to step away more than anything, not get closer and certainly not touch it.
Harry stood on tiptoe to peer onto the shelf over the desk and nearly leapt into the air in startlement when a voice said, "Find anything?"
Harry patted his chest and turned to face Moody. Calmly he replied, "No."
The old Auror stood with his arms folded, shoulders cocked with swagger. Behind his scars it was hard to tell if he were angry or delighted at his catch.
"What are you doing here?" Moody asked.
"Looking around," Harry replied. He had no right to be here, but he found it easy to pretend he did.
Moody's glass eye roved over the desk behind Harry. "I wouldn't touch that desk if I were you."
"I figured that out. What's he got to hide?"
"His excuse is that his mates don't like him very much and were fond of leaving him little surprises until he resorted to some decent protection."
Harry stepped back and pondered the desk. "What is it that is so blasted cursed?"
Moody sauntered closer. "An amulet. In the top drawer there. I've never seen the likes. It came in on one of the sweeps of Knockturn Alley's less reputable establishments."
"They let him keep it?"
Moody shrugged. "People that work here like to mess with things like that. Otherwise they'd've found other lines o' work."
They gazed at each other. Moody with sleepy eyes that hid his expression. "Go on home, Potter. Isn't it past your bedtime?"
Harry, despite being grateful to get off without trouble, extended his welcome by saying, "You haven't been following me."
Moody strolled away. "Been busy."
"You told Fudge you were following me."
"I did no such thing. What makes you say that?"
Harry did not want to answer that because it would prove he had been sneaking into the Department of Mysteries regularly. In the room beyond, the glow of the lamps brightened, indicating someone else had arrived.
Quietly, Moody said, "I know you can jump in and out of here without a hitch. It's sufficient for the moment that you know that I know you can." This sounded vaguely threatening. "I see from the papers that your adoptive father has let the veil fall from his eyes as well. Good."
Harry bit down his reply. A desk drawer opened and closed in the next room.
"You're right I have to go," Harry whispered. "Bedtime and all." And fell through the floor.
Back in Harry's bedroom, Snape stood before the window, hands clasped behind his back.
"It's all set," Harry said. He tossed his robes onto the floor and plonked back onto his bed with a groan at the early hour.
"No additional trouble?"
"Less than expected."
"Good."
Snape departed at lunchtime the following day, allowing Harry to invite Tonks over to replace him. Pink hair standing straight, Tonks greeted Candide first upon arriving, before giving Harry a peck. The extra attention Candide garnered continued to grow in proportion to her belly size.
Tonks sloppily saluted Snape to indicate he was relieved, grinning at her own antics even as she toppled an empty water glass on her back-swing.
"I'll trust you are in good hands," Snape stated dryly before disappearing in the Floo. He dropped fewer hints about disapproving of them each time Tonks visited, giving Harry some relief from his previous relentless disapproval.
The afternoon passed in idle conversation, until Harry insisted that Candide put down her work and join them in a card game. Candide put up a fight, but at the end of the first game, insisted they play a second. Perhaps this was because she lost, but any reason was a good one.
Harry held his hand up close since Tonks' eyes had wandered too much the previous game and he did not want her to win two in a row. "Any progress on convincing Mr. Weasley to remove my guard?" Harry asked.
Tonks shook her head, while Candide tsked Harry.
Harry argued, "I'm so very tired of this, and nothing has happened."
"That couldn't be because you've had a guard?" Candide pointed out, accentuating her sharp tongue by snapping the corner of the card down as she played.
Harry still had no good counter argument to that, and he wished he did. He tapped his fingers on his cards and sighed. "If Dumbledore had treated me this way, we'd still have Voldemort around, you know," he complained.
Tonks patted him on the shoulder sympathetically.
After the second game, Candide insisted she must return to sorting through the disarrayed files from her client for the next day's work.
"Look at this!" she exclaimed, pulling out the first slip from the file. "They are trying to expense Honeydukes purchases. We told them last year that wouldn't fly, even if they got a Healer's note saying it was medically required." She put that slip aside and with a hand propped on her forehead, peered at the next crumpled and reflattened strip on the pile.
"Maybe we'll leave you to it, then," Harry said, standing up and thinking ahead to having some much needed time alone with Tonks. "It's almost over, right?" he asked. "November is."
Candide's squint remained fixed on her work."One way or another, yup. Except those few who risk swallowing Opix Auctoritatis potion before filing for an otherwise impossible extension."
"What potion?" Harry asked.
"Influence potion," Tonks provided. "Should be banned."
"Why?" Harry asked.
"Because it can be dangerous if it gives you too much influence over yourself. You know, delusions of grandeur, thinking you can fly without a broomstick, or that you can convince Goblins to show you where the gold is hidden. Stuff like that."
Candide curiously asked, "Why wouldn't that work?"
"Goblins are immune to it," Tonks provided. "As are dragons." She turned to Harry. "Rodgers hasn't covered potions on the Proposed to be Banned List with you?"
"He covered banned ones. There were enough of those already," Harry insisted.
Tonks gave Candide a pat on the shoulder and wandered into the main hall where she sat down on the couch. She picked up Harry's photo album and began flipping through it.
Harry sat close to smell the vaguely peppermint scent of her while peering over her shoulder. She held the album open to an old photo of the Order, finger tracing along figures. The photo had been taken in the dining room at Grimmauld Place. Sirius caught them looking and hid a large parchment behind his back with a sly smile, making Harry's heart twinge. Moody reached over to take it away, and Sirius relinquished the partly crunched roll and stuffed it away inside his jacket.
"Let's go up to my room," Harry said, torn between sleepiness from his early morning foray and wanting to get closer to her. She made a noise that probably agreed with the former.
Up on his bed, Harry opened the album again to the same picture. His parents stood off to one side, heads leaned in close to discuss something in private. Harry prodded their feet but they just high stepped in place and ignored him.
"I want to see my parents," Harry said, mind latching onto an idea that felt so elegantly easy it made his mouth water.
Tonks sat down beside him, hands clasped together and stretched out before her. "Of course you do."
Harry looked away from the album. "No, I really mean it," he said, excitement budding.
"Harry, please don't talk like that," Tonks pleaded, sounding sad.
Harry closed the album and stared at her. "What's wrong?"
She struggled for words and quietly said, "Please. Let's just talk about something else."
Harry, who wanted time to think over his idea, silently agreed, even though he wanted to grill her about what bothered her so. He pulled her back on the bed and lay beside her, staring up at the ceiling.
She was slithering closer, but Harry's mind was flitting off elsewhere. "Do you ever see Belinda around the Ministry?"
Tonks shot him a disgusted look and climbed on top of him. "What kind of question is that, Moodkiller?"
"I worry about her, is all," Harry said, struggling to find connections in his memory, and wishing dearly he could prove to someone that Percy needed to be watched, or questioned, or exiled, or something.
From her position lording over him, she grabbed the edges of his robe front and shook them. "Harry, all the world and all the witches in the world are not your problem. Your long-dead parents are certainly not your problem. You have enough to deal with already."
"Will you go talk to Belinda this week?" Harry asked. "See if she'll talk to you."
"Grrrr," Tonks said, rolling off him, but kept one hand fastened to his robe.
Harry rolled to the side to look at her. "Promise her you won't tell anyone what she tells you. Maybe that will help. Well, except me."
Tonks' pink brows dove close to her eyes. "You are very frustrating, Harry. All right, fine. I'll try to talk to her. Take her out for coffee or something. Can we drop this topic now?" she demanded.
The next morning they went into the Ministry together. There was something comfortable about doing so that made him think marriage, as a general idea anyhow, wasn't such an bad notion.
Harry took his seat in the training room beside Aaron and wished he had arrived early enough to talk to his fellow, but his dark mood showed on his face.
"When's your mum coming back, exactly?" Harry asked, attracting the attention of everyone else, keen as they were to learn what had sunk their normally irreverent, smiling fellow into glumness.
"Tomorrow, maybe. I tried to send her an express owl, but she's most likely on the Baden Baden to Paris section of the Magiekech Express, because it came back undelivered. That would get her in late tomorrow."
Kerry Ann asked, "Something going on with your mum?"
Aaron faintly shook his head. "It's nothing. Just something I need to talk to her about," he replied dismissively, confirming Harry's suspicion that he did not want anyone to know.
During drills he returned almost to normal, and Harry switched with Tridant to be Aaron's drill partner. Aaron said, "Oh good, someone I can pound on a bit more." And indeed, he put more behind his attacks than normal, with many flying wild and wide as his emotions scattered his magic.
Harry felt the curses as they flew and bounced around him, but still could not figure out how he could possibly influence them without lifting his wand against them.
Rodgers returned and shouted, "Hey there! What is this, playtime? Let's work on something serious instead. Get out your books again." They lowered their wands and pulled their desks back into position.
- 888 -
Tuesday, Tonks waylaid Harry in the corridor and gestured that they should slip into the file room.
Tonks began, "So, I dragged your former girlfriend out for coffee this afternoon, so you owe me." She poked him painfully in the ribs.
Harry rubbed the spot and said, "Thanks. Let me know how I can make it up to you."
"Nice dinner out."
"Anytime," Harry burst out. "Tell me when you have time."
"Yeah, I know," she grumbled. "Back to Miss Ex-Harry's-Girlfriend-"
"Why are you calling her that?"
"Don't interrupt me." Tonks slid away to pace between the notice board where the filing rules hung in boldface cracked and yellowed glory and the first cabinet on the row. "She's definitely hiding something and had no interest in saying what it was. If she'd been an ordinary witch I'd have been tempted to slip her something to loosen her tongue, and I'm not convinced that's a bad idea even if she is Bones' receptionist." Her mouth twisted thoughtfully. "I got the sense she thought she should say. More annoyingly."
"Did she say why she wouldn't say?" Harry asked, not wanting to divulge Belinda's fear that she might lose her job if Belinda herself had not.
"She said she's had Skeeter jump out of nowhere on her several times in the last few weeks, asking questions. Said she's afraid she's listening in." Tonks picked at her nails, making a clicking noise that sounded loud in the quiet room. "I insisted I could remedy that for a conversation but she wouldn't budge."
"I can understand her fear," Harry muttered.
Tonks propped her hands on her hips and said, "I hate to say this, believe me, but I think you should take her out and chat her up a bit. I'm suspicious now." When Harry did not comment, she went on, "Consider it your weekend fieldwork if you want."
"I couldn't do that," Harry said, finding the thought distasteful.
Tonks stepped closer until their fronts touched. "Harry, the distance between your private life and feelings and your life as an Auror is like the distance between us right now. None."
"If I decide to make her talk it will be because I care what may be going on. Honestly she's much happier than she used to be back when she was dating Percy."
Tonks leaned in tighter and said, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave."
"It's not like that," Harry said.
Tonks back away and said, "She broke up with you, right?"
Exasperated on several fronts, Harry said, "I was having problems with the Dark Plane. I couldn't control it then. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Nothing I suppose." She stepped back and fluffed her hair back up. "I'm not your guard this evening but I could arrange to be tomorrow."
"Uh, I should probably get Aaron assigned, if possible."
She propped a hand on one angled hip and teased, "Do I have to worry you're hoping to date him as well?"
"Not a chance," Harry returned. "It's our regular night to help Ginny with her drills, and readings so she can get into the program next year."
"That's nice of you, Harry, to do that. She'd do well, I think, and we need some more women around here." She glanced at the door as if she heard something. "Speaking of which, they will notice I'm missing soon."
Harry did get Aaron assigned as a guard the next day after training. Aaron packed his books up slowly, distracted and fussy about how they were arranged in his designer bag.
"Let's go to my place, if you don't mind. Candide won't be back for a while, right?" Aaron said, and despite the question phrasing, was really making a demand.
Harry shrugged to indicate that was all right with him. "And Ginny can keep Candide company if she gets there before us. Women seem to have no problem doing that."
At Aaron's fancy flat, he noisily sorted through the liquor cabinet, before sighing and letting his arms rest limp at his sides where he crouched.
"Did you talk to your mum?" Harry asked, feeling the answer must be yes.
Aaron did not move, holding the pose of a young bird with useless wings as he replied. "Yes."
"I suppose I don't need to ask what she said," Harry ventured.
Aaron snagged the front bottle without looking at the label and stood straight. He set it down on the glass-topped, stainless steel cabinet, but did not reach for any of the glittering array of crystal tumblers. He leaned on his hands on the cabinet instead and fell still.
"I'm sorry about this," Harry said, feeling he should say something. His words rang true inside him.
"I liked my dad," Aaron said with no preamble.
"Of course you did," Harry said with a spark of defensiveness.
"All this time though . . ." Aaron pushed away from the cabinet without pouring himself a drink. He paced, long neck bent ungainly. He stopped, framed by one of the tall windows full of diffuse afternoon light. "I don't know who I am," he complained.
"I don't think that's changed," Harry said when Aaron had paced back in his direction.
But Aaron gave no sign he heard him. He stared off somewhere or sometime else. Pangs plucked at Harry's chest but he made no further attempts at soothing his friend because his own heart was churning and he could no longer see past that.
Harry fished around for something to say. "What did your mum say? Did you ask her to . . . I don't know, explain?" When Aaron did not answer, Harry said. "Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have asked that."
"No, it's all right. Let's go to your place; I feel like hitting something with spells some more."
Ginny arrived while they were working out the fine points of the Loaded Orb spell they had learned that day. The glowing orbs that erupted when the spell was executed properly could be filled with all manner of things, like smoke or mist. Rodgers promised that they could be filled also with fire or blinding light, but he was waiting to show them how to do that until later. That did not stop Harry and Aaron from trying to work out how.
"Did you check your copious library for a book on the topic?" Ginny asked after observing them producing endless streams of harmlessly popping orbs.
Harry dropped his arm. "I didn't think of that." His friends followed him into the library where the extra books from upstairs were now stacked on the floor, waiting to be properly organized or sorted out to be disposed of.
"Gosh, what's this?" Ginny blurted, reaching down for a book with a rail-thin, cloaked figure on the cover sporting a bowler standing with feet widely spaced and grinning maliciously. The title in metallic red that could only be discerned by tilting the book repeatedly in the lamplight, read Vile Virtuosity.
"Watch out," Harry warned too late. The book let out a maniacal laugh when she picked it up, and sighed in deep satisfaction as she flipped it open. "Some are worse than that."
Ginny shot him a look of disbelief at the very notion.
"Oh excellent," Aaron chirped upon picking up Grotesque Grades, oddly by the corner. He held it up that way until it ceased flapping like a bat and fell limp. "I had a copy of this once."
"Severus is sorting through his old things to clear out the rooms upstairs."
"Are you getting pushed aside by the new arrival?" Ginny asked with telling innocence.
"Yes, but it's all right," Harry said, taking up a book too, but one off the shorter "keep" stack. "Is it just me, or is there way more dark magic than good?" he asked.
Aaron said, "There is certainly more interesting dark magic than good. That's why I was so happy to be in Slytherin."
Ginny stared at him. "Maybe I should have been in Slytherin."
"What?" Harry blurted. But after reassessing the way she pondered Aaron, he decided to not pursue it further. Instead, he found a spot on a high shelf for the book he held. That was another thing that had to happen: books that might fight back had to be moved out of reach. The three of them settled into perusing the grim volumes littering the room, while Harry tried to reorganize the books, grateful to have Aaron thoroughly distracted by anything enough to forget he should be moping.
- 888 -
Harry waited until Friday to again broach his plans with Tonks. He had no duties until Saturday evening and she finished up a night shift and paperwork well before lunchtime. It took him a while to get the topic in because as soon as they were alone and the room was sealed against eavesdroppers, she uncharacteristically brought up the subject of Belinda.
"Did you get a chance to talk to her?" Tonks had asked as soon as she dropped into a chair at her rickety old table.
Harry sat across from her and heated his mug of tap water before hunting around for a less-overused-than-average teabag from those scattered around. "I stopped by Bones' office twice yesterday and once this morning, but she was too busy to talk," Harry explained. "They're having some major meeting with officials from the French Ministry of Magic so the office was full of people both times. She seemed all right, though. Happy enough."
"She wasn't before?"
"No. Percy was always hanging around and would get in my way if I tried to talk to her. She didn't seem to know how to tell him to get lost."
"Well, if they were dating, why would she?"
"Maybe, but if, say, Ginny wanted to talk with me and you were there, I'd just ask you if I could have a few minutes alone with her. There's something wrong if you can't do that." At her raised brow, he replied, "Come on, Ginny has her eye on Aaron, no worries about her."
Tonks grinned and her eyes glittered. "Does she now? I can see the appeal of all that money. Someone might as well be enjoying it."
"I don't think it's that," Harry said. "You think it's that?"
"I think it probably doesn't hurt."
"Enough office gossip," Harry said, shifting his chair to a spot where it would not rock so much. "I want to do something but I need your help to do it."
At first she appeared interested, but her face darkened. "This isn't the find-your-parents thing again, is it?" she tentatively asked.
Harry bit his lip. There was a thicket here that he was going to have to sort out and he feared it may leave a few marks before he broke through. "Yes," he answered, going for straightforward. "Remember how I told you I can go to other places where events have played out differently? Well, I realized that there is probably a place where my parents weren't killed by Voldemort, where they would be still alive."
Watching her face, Harry decided she still did not believe him. She said, "But how old would they be? Would they want to see you?"
"They'd be the same age they'd be now if they'd lived. I can't travel through time. It'd be exactly the same date as today. As to seeing me. I'd put on a disguise. Too much to explain otherwise."
She gazed at him in a way that made him vaguely uncomfortable. He said, "I get the sense you think I'm a bit off my rocker here."
"I don't know what I think. I like that I don't sense that you're hiding anything," she stated with vague glumness.
"I suppose it sounds a little hard to believe."
"A little?"
Harry frowned, rubbed grit from his eye, and sighed silently. "I don't know how to convince you. I can't just jump off and retrieve something to prove it to you. It's harder than that."
She interlaced her fingers and leaned forward to peer at him openly. "You believe you can go to other places that are like the real world, but different?"
Harry shrugged. "Yes. I did it accidentally twice, and once intentionally. I just have to imagine that place and I can go there. Like Apparition, but to another reality." Before she could express the doubt on her face, he went on. "You don't have to believe me, if you trust that I can stay out of trouble and will let me go off for a few hours. I promise I'll be back on time. If I can't find my parents, I won't try again." He was pleading by the end. He loathed to hear it, but with his normal guard schedule it would be nigh impossible for weeks to try, and once he had thought of it, he could not get the idea to leave him alone.
She sat straight, resisting, based on her face. "That's what you are going to go . . . try to do: find your parents? Nothing dangerous?"
Harry brightened. "Exactly. Nothing dangerous."
Her brow went up again, doubtful and perhaps accusing. "It never seems to work out that way, Harry." She gazed at him longer. "You're going to sneak off and try anyway, aren't you?"
Harry gazed with overdone innocence at the floor and then the wall to the left, making her snort.
"I clearly like you too much, Harry," she said, smirking. "If you don't come back, though, what the hell am I going to do? If you are not delusional, there is no way to go looking for you." Her expression hardened. "Maybe you shouldn't go."
"Tell everyone you took a nap—which you need after the night shift—and I went off without telling you." Harry made his eyes sad. "Please, really, you admitted I don't need a guard."
"Harry you need something more than a guard. I don't know what it would be called." She huffed and crossed her lean arms, tossed her head and said, "I get the sense Severus is giving up on you. I wouldn't have believed it, except you behave like he has."
Oddly, this hit Harry's midsection harder than her disbelief. "I'm not a child," he said, but this was not the issue, he realized after hearing it. He jumped ahead to assuming she would give in, in the hopes it would help her do so. "I need a little help when I return. The space between the Planes is absolute zero or something. Colder than you can imagine. I need warming up when I return."
She gazed at him, trying not to smile. "Oh, now I'm getting some kind of come-on from you?"
Harry laughed. "Like a warmed blanket."
"Oh, blanket. Right."
"I'll also need a disguise. Can I look through your wardrobe?"
"Oh, I don't know. That may be going too far." She grimaced through a smile and stood reluctantly, like one doing something they expect to regret later. "You'd look right awful in pink."
Author notes: Thanks as always for the feedback. Some of you I will reply to on my lj after we get a little farther along. This story is very different from the others in what I'm trying to accomplish and I'll try to explain that in hopes that it will better help me manage it.
Next: Chapter 21 - Twenty Years Later, Part 2
A wadded up sweet wrapper was tossed hard at Ginny by Fred, jolting Harry before anyone could notice how enamored he had become.
"Another butterbeer?" Ginny asked Harry beside her, nearly snarling. "My brother can get his own."
"Yes, please, my dear," Harry said, struggling to sound old and uncaring.
Ginny fetched the fresh bottles by hand. Upon returning, she glanced surreptitiously at the new arrivals, eyes nearly hidden by her hair. But Harry was well-practiced in interpreting glances through a veil of hair. He leaned close and whispered, "You are undoubtedly too good for him."
Chapter 21 — Twenty Years Later, Part 2
Harry, warmed by the grace of the sun's rays, awoke enclosed by the nodding brown grass of the field adjacent to the Burrow. Painfully, he forced his creaky limbs to push him to his feet, and staggered twice before righting himself reliably. It was a gorgeous day, just like the one he had envisioned, despite the season. He sniffed. The air smelled cold even as it stood still and warm.
Deciding these oddities were the result of whatever magic rendered the weather so lovely, Harry pulled out his wand and put his usual disguise on himself. He wanted to appear non-threatening, so he went with what he was practiced at: a long white beard, white eyebrows, and even longer, flowing white hair. A few strokes of his beard where it met his face left him confident that it was convincing, but his hands were much too young. Harry masked those with a spell for spotting and one for wrinkles. He needed several tries to get the wrinkles right, and only managed it after adding a flesh-loosening hex. Usually, he did not feel jealous of Tonks' Metamorph abilities, but at this moment, they would be wonderfully convenient. He unfolded the borrowed hat from his pocket and smoothed it straight against his leg before adjusting it on his head tightly enough so it would not topple off as he walked.
The Burrow came into view beyond a copse of trees, as tilted, slapdash and unpretentious as in Harry's world. Harry smiled just at the sight of it. Outside the door, between the Ford Anglia and the garden, the twins and Ginny were setting up a second row of tables. One of the twins looked up and spotted Harry.
"Hullo!" the twin shouted.
Harry approached at a leisurely pace, thinking quickly how he was going to explain himself. The three redheads all stopped arranging tables as he made his way, long robes catching on the unmown grass, which made him even more ungainly.
"Hello," Harry greeted them, forcing his voice gruff, and giving a small bow of his head. "I just got into the country. I heard there was a picnic here." This seemed a reasonable assumption, given the weather and their activities.
"Ay, in a few hours," the other twin said. "You're early."
"Ah," Harry said, disappointed, because he did not have much time. As he fumbled for what to say next, the door banged open and Mrs. Weasley emerged, hovering two sizable covered dishes before her.
"Whom do we have here?"
"Uh, Aaron, Madame," Harry said, knowing from experience that his fellow trainee's name often made him turn his head because it sounded similar to his own. "Totten. Aaron Totten."
"Early for the picnic," a twin leaned over to inform his mother, voice insinuating that perhaps Harry was a bit old and daft.
Harry smiled pleasantly despite the perceived insult. Old and daft was fine with him just now.
Mrs. Weasley was undeterred. "Please, join us anyway since you're here. Been away long?" she asked, keen of hearing, apparently.
Harry helped Ginny hover chairs into place while they talked. "I've been away for a very long time. Years," he said, hoping to explain away his ignorance with something other than senility.
The Weasleys all gathered outside to help get things ready. Introductions needed repeating each time another cluster came out. Bill had two young children, twins. Charlie sported an animated dragon tattoo down his left arm. It appeared to be trying to bite Percy standing beside him. Percy shrank away a bit, as though it might possibly manage it.
Mr. Weasley wanted to know if Harry knew how Muggle strimmers worked. Harry from using one extensively at the Dursley house did know, but pretended that he did not.
"Fascinating and clever things. I had one you know. Still do, 'cept it doesn't, uh, do anything. Hasn't for a while. Makes a rather painful whining noise if you plug it in. You know about plugs?"
"So, where have you been . . . traveling?" Bill asked, letting his father's question lie.
This was not a good question for Harry, who rarely left England. He had to play it safe. "Switzerland. Finland. Around the Mediterranean."
The twins wandered out of earshot and put their heads together to chat in private. They seemed to be heatedly debating something. The remaining Weasleys stood relaxed. The small children played energetically on the large lawn. The whole scene practically bled idyllic.
Ginny leaned in close and said to Harry, "Fred and George are trouble."
What would Dumbledore say here? "Young men usually are," Harry knowingly stated, holding back on a grin at clearly imagining his old mentor saying exactly that. This brought a laugh from Mrs. Weasley, who, after a short struggle, had tapped a pint of ale from a massive wooden barrel under the eave of the house. She blew the excessive foam off the top of it before handing it to her husband, who gave her a reproving look before smiling in thanks.
"So, what do you do?" Charlie asked.
"What do you do?" Harry countered. "No, let me guess . . ." Harry stroked his beard and squinted at Charlie and his tattoo. "I will hazard to guess that you work with dragons."
Unexpectedly, Charlie blushed with pride. "I do. I suppose that's an easy guess." He rubbed his tattoo, which rolled over onto its back to expose its less scaly belly to the attention.
"But what do you do?" Bill repeated.
The tables and chairs were all arranged, so there were no more distractions. "Me? Oh, not much. Things. I get around."
"But you must do something," Bill challenged, accepting a pint and holding it away from himself to let it drip on the grass as the foam surged over the brim.
Harry conceded, "I sometimes hunt dark wizards."
Bill nearly dropped his beer.
"Do you really?" Ginny asked.
"I try not to make a habit out of it," Harry offered in a kindly voice, grasping again for something old sounding. The reaction had been unexpected; it was as though he had said something rude.
"None around here, I hope," Mrs. Weasley said.
Mr. Weasley dabbed his mouth with a napkin, saying, "We get troublemakers around here, Dear."
"Yes, but a prankster replacing manhole covers with an illusion of one is not a dark wizard."
"Have you actually captured a dark wizard?" Ginny asked Harry.
Harry blinked at her. She sounded so . . . naïve. "Of course. Many."
The group again froze as though waiting in tense excitement.
"Well, tell us about a few," Charlie insisted.
"Oh my," Harry said. "I wouldn't want to bore you to death with such trifles." Harry plucked up a biscuit, thinking that he sounded alarmingly like an old man, but he would rather not have to tell a story that might blow his cover with facts in conflict with this world.
Several of the Weasley children were laughing. "Come on, now," one said. "You can't leave it at that!" another insisted.
Harry wanted to point out that Mr. Weasley himself worked in the Magical Law Enforcement Department, but he probably could not be supposed to know that, and it may not be true here. The ruckus continued, and rather than abating, grew louder, his audience displaying a terrible hunger for such stories.
"Well, there was this rather interesting shaman in Finland, in the far north, above the arctic circle. Like all the Shamans there he has an Animagus form of a wolf."
"An Animagus? Really?" Ginny said, clearly intrigued.
"Oh, yes. Animagi are not as rare as you think." Harry let his eyes sparkle as he said this, teasing. "This particular shaman was fomenting trouble by kidnapping young children from a neighboring region."
"So, what did you do?"
"I chased him down as he was in wolf-form, leading off a young girl. I put a serious enough scare into him that he will think long and hard before trying it again."
"But how did you catch him?"
"Like I said, Animagi are not as rare as you think." Harry gave a wink to Ginny this time.
The twins and Ron said in series, "So, are you one? What are you?"
Harry smiled faintly. "Let's just say . . . a wolf is not a problem."
"Oh, come on!" The whole family reacted with dismay at his dismissal of the question. Except Mr. Weasley, who asked, "Are you registered?"
Harry shook his head. Bill grew sober. "Well, better not show Dad then. He's obliged to report you." He shot a glance at his father and bent to setting out the platters Mrs Weasley brought out and charming them to repel flies.
"Why aren't you registered?" Ron asked.
Harry found a lie easily enough. "Because I want to surprise the wizards I am hunting, if need be."
"And are they?" Ginny asked.
Harry sipped the butterbeer he had been handed, dragging the story out because it made them all so antsy. "Oh, this troublesome Indian witch and wizard I chased down once; they thought I was one of their god's own servants."
"Wow."
They all hung on his every word now. "I don't intend to create such confusion, normally," Harry said, sounding his humblest, which elicited a laugh from all around.
"You must be a great wizard," Ron said. "Don't you think, Percy?" he prompted his brother, who had been eating from a bowl of nuts on the end table.
Peanut shell fell from his lips as he said, "There hasn't been a truly great wizard in almost twenty years."
Because he needed to know, Harry guessed, "You must be referring to Albus Dumbledore."
Percy snottily said, "Of course I was." He looked Harry up and down doubtfully. "There hasn't been anyone close in all this time."
"Oh, I agree," Harry said.
"Did you know him?" Bill asked. "I just barely remember seeing him once, at a Quidditch match. You remember that, Dad? You had tickets to the VIP booth and he was there? He died right after that. Told everyone that with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gone and things being quiet for a few years that he wasn't needed around anymore." He turned back to Harry with a soft and distant expression. "DID you know him?"
"Yes," Harry said, unable to lie to make his ruse easier. "I knew him for many years."
"Wow," a few breathed again.
"So, you must know a lot of Defensive magic," Charlie asserted.
"I know quite a bit. Don't you?"
Several laughed. "They haven't taught it since Dumbledore died."
"No?" Harry prompted. Voice stern, sounding exactly his fake age. "Why ever not?"
"Don't need it," someone said. "Encourages dark magic," a twin suggested, making quotes in the air with his fingers.
"That's ridiculous," Harry said, getting heated.
"That's the policy," Mr. Weasley confirmed. "There hasn't been any concern about dark wizards since Potter destroyed You-Know-Who as a baby."
"Amazing that," Harry said, hoping for more information.
"Yes," Mr. Weasley agreed, nodding so that his comb-over flipped forward. "No one knows how he did it."
"It's unfortunate that someone didn't see it," Harry mused aloud.
Mr. Weasley chuckled lightly. "Yes, well, James and Lily should have but, well, you of course know about that confusion."
Harry nodded sagely, although curiosity pained him viciously to do so. How could he claim to not know? He took a stab by saying, "Er, yes, Pettigrew and all that."
The faces around him grew grim. "Yes, sleazy one he was," Charlie said, "He's the one whose owl for help drew Mrs. Potter away."
Ron added, "Lucky for her, Who-He had already finished Pettigrew off."
"Now, now," Mrs. Weasley said. "Enough with this dark talk. I need some help in the kitchen."
Much of the family wandered off to chase down small children or to assist. Early guests began to arrive.
Ginny asked, "Can you show me some defensive spells?" She then blushed and admitted, "Some of the other students at school, we got together in secret and taught each other the few spells we knew. But I'm out of school now and we haven't continued it."
"Did that work out while you had the chance?"
"It helped when we had class time with the Slytherins. Removing hexes is really helpful then."
"Certainly I'll show you." Harry started to stride over, but remembered that would look strange, so he pretended his limbs pained him as he moved.
He led Ginny a bit away, over by where the lawn had been rutted by the car rolling in for landings. The ruts trailed off far before the distant road. He pulled out his wand and said, "The most versatile counter, I've found, is a block called a Titan. Take out your wand."
Ginny eagerly did so. Harry showed her how to hold it, flat against her palm, hooked under her thumb. "Hold your palms out like this. Your wand hand builds the spell, but the other helps stabilize it so that it is wide enough to protect you."
The twins were loitering nearby, listening in. Harry said, more loudly, "Perhaps your brothers will help us out."
Grinning, they ambled over. "Can we throw hexes at our sister?" one asked.
"In a moment," Harry explained patiently. To Ginny, he said, "This spell is pushed out through your palms. Let me do it for you a few times so you can feel it. Give us a hex, could you?"
Harry walked her through the spell until she had it. By this time, most everyone had gathered to watch. Even those hitting a Bludger around locked that up and came over instead.
"Show me another," Ginny said excitedly, when she withstood the second hex from her brother, Ron.
"What do you need protection against?" Mr. Weasley asked, sounding half teasing, half dubious. He stood nearby with his arms crossed, vague scowl upon his brow.
"Well, Draco hit me with a Jelly-legs in Diagon Alley last week."
"He must like you," Harry said.
"Oh, please," Ginny muttered.
"I can show you how to counter that one," Bill said. "Why didn't you ask?"
"I did. You said I was a girl and I should find a boyfriend to throw my hexes for me."
"I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did."
Harry stepped in between them, even though they were not all that close together. "There is a useful counter that works on the Minor-Neural class of hexes like that."
"The what of the what?" Ron stuttered.
Harry, keeping with his character, patiently explained, "It helps immensely to know a little spell theory. If you know what class of spell is coming at you, often you can utilize a generic counter or block, rather than learning a different one for every possible circumstance."
Harry had Ron send a Jelly-legs at him to demonstrate the counter, then had Ginny try it. She collapsed on the ground, to a few hidden grins. Blushing, she stood after Harry canceled the spell for her and tried again. She fared no better the second time.
"Let's do a different one," she said, sounding spoiled.
"No, let's finish this one."
"Are you trying to make me look foolish?"
Harry glanced around at the gathered Weasleys. They did perhaps seem more amused than supportive, but they also did not take Defense particularly seriously.
"I am trying keep you from failing. You and I can work on it. The others can go off now." Harry stated this sternly, eyeing each of them. Shrugs and grins greeted his obstinacy and eventually they were alone, except for Ron, who said, "I want to learn it too." To his sister, he insisted, "I wasn't laughing at you, honest. I've been knocked on my arse by that one at Hogwarts enough times; I wouldn't laugh about it."
Ginny gave Harry a pleading look. "Do we really have to work on that one more?"
"You cannot just give up on the second try," Harry said. "I'll show you using a different technique. I have several."
"Did you use to teach?" Ron asked. "You should have."
Harry found this amusing. "I tried once, but I don't care for handing out assignments, marking, and examinations as much as just playing with magic all day until I have it perfected."
Avidly, Ron said, "You sound like a great teacher! I hate revising, reading, essays, and taking tests."
"It is not as simple as I made it out," Harry said, finding the words flowing like a spell he was just getting the hang of. "I study a great deal, life administers the examinations, and the marking can be brutal."
Harry demonstrated the spell three or four times, adding advice as he thought of it. "Why don't we have Ron try it a few times and then go back to Ginny," Harry said, upon seeing the stress on Ginny's face. It transformed into a half-malicious grin.
When they each could produce the counter perhaps a third of the time, Harry proclaimed them done with it for now. The sun had appreciably moved in the sky and the picnic had swelled with new arrivals.
"Show us another," Ginny urged him as he was pondering the sky. "What do you think is most useful."
Harry glanced around, hopeful of seeing the Potters. "I think we should take a break for now."
"We want to hear more about Dumbledore, too," Ginny insisted. She was actually tugging on his sleeve to convince him. She quit it and bit her lip.
"It's all right, my dear," Harry said, finding his old man character easy now. "You flatter me. You know, an old man like me doesn't get many invitations to things."
People began arriving in earnest now, popping in and landing on broomstick and room-sized carpets. The three of them wandered over to where Mr. Weasley was directing something on the roof with his wand.
Charlie said, "Want me to fly up and adjust the Weather Vain properly, Dad?"
"Nah, I think it's all right. Seem warm enough to you? Sunny enough?"
Harry blinked up at the green corroded rooster with glittering ruby eyes perched on a bent grey arrow. Sparkles flickered off the arrowhead now and then. That explained the exceptionally nice day. Harry sighed with a hint of jealousy and surveyed the mollycoddling peacefulness of it all. Blankets were being laid out, the tables groaned under the weight of heaped plates and pots of food, children chased each other on small starter broomsticks.
Harry left his new friends and circled, mixing in easily, gathering only a handful of second glances. He resisted looking at his watch, not wanting to leave when he had come this far. Tonks would wait for him, he told himself.
He didn't see his parents, so when he found the table with Ron and his sister he asked if he could join them. Ginny literally jumped from her seat and found a chair for him two tables away.
"When were you last off fighting dark wizards?" Ron asked, even putting down his fork he was so involved in the question.
Harry said amiably. "Yesterday."
Ron leaned forward, so his elbow went into his mashed potatoes. "Really? Where?"
Harry waved a finger before him admonishingly. Amazingly, that's all it took.
"Drat," Ron muttered.
Ginny laughed. "Dad says you remind him of Dumbledore."
"Your father honors me no end by saying so," Harry said, accepting a butterbeer she had Accioed over. "Thank you, my dear." He gave her a wink.
She blushed and dabbed her mouth with a shredded serviette. "Too bad you're too old for me," she said with real regret.
Harry smiled, thinking idly that this was a side of Ginny he only usually caught glimpses of. She must not behave quite the same with him around. Maybe Snape's proposed match for him was not so unworkable. "I have a formula for a youth potion . . . but it only lasts a few days, alas."
Ron and she both giggled at this, making Harry amazed at how unthreatening he must seem.
"Can I stroke your beard?" Ginny asked.
Harry held it up for her.
"Wow, soft."
"Thank you, young lady, I made it myself."
Ron snapped his fingers. "That's what dad said. He said you liked to joke around the way Dumbledore did. But I can't believe such a great old wizard could be as goofy as he insists."
"Oh, Albus was quite an amusing fellow. Especially if he was forced to give a speech."
Harry recounted a few stories, altering them as needed, or averaging out several different events to avoid specifics. The twins joined them halfway through the storytelling, each bearing plates overflowing with food.
Fred said, "Hey, Ginny, your boyfriend's just arrived." He tipped his head behind him and to the left.
"Oh, get off," Ginny snapped, angry in the way that only a person stung partially by the truth could be.
"What is this, my dear?" Harry asked, teasingly stung, but trying to sooth her. He just embarrassed her more.
"It's His Royalty," George offered. "An old crush of Ginny's. She insists she's over him, but we think she doth protest too much."
Ginny appeared ready to stand up and stalk off.
Harry said, "My dear man, you lack a certain minimally desired charm when you publicly embarrass your sister like that."
Ginny glanced at Harry's old countenance and stayed put, but sulked and drank her butterbeer, double time.
A boisterous group trouped through the picnic, turning people's gazes. Some picnickers rolled their eyes, others stood up to join the pack. Harry froze upon spying his father, leading the assembly, arm chummily around someone, to whom he was speaking directly in the ear. He released that person and turned to someone on his other side. The crowd shifted, parting and re-parting, and Harry caught sight of long reddish-brown tresses, a smiling face, glittering green eyes.
Transfixed, Harry watched the pair of them pass in and out of view through the thickly accompanying robed figures. A trailing figure split the crowd when it stopped at a table to high five some sitting people, Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, and other familiar faces.
Harry watched the vision of himself chummily greeting the table before joining it.
A wadded up sweet wrapper was tossed hard at Ginny by Fred, jolting Harry before anyone could notice how enamored he had become.
"Another butterbeer?" Ginny asked Harry beside her, nearly snarling. "My brother can get his own."
"Yes, please, my dear," Harry said, struggling to sound old and uncaring.
Ginny fetched the fresh bottles by hand. Upon returning, she glanced surreptitiously at the new arrivals, eyes nearly hidden by her hair. But Harry was well-practiced in interpreting glances through a veil of hair. He leaned close and whispered, "You are undoubtedly too good for him."
This had been an attempt to ease what he guessed was bothering her, but her reply was a silent, flat expression. She drank half of her fresh butterbeer down in one rapid set of swallows.
"He's a prat," Ron said, seemingly in support of his sister because it lacked real animosity.
Harry turned to the vision of his best friend, trying to grasp what he had said. He could not pull in a full breath right away.
Fred said, "Ron's just jealous. He wanted to join the Quidditch team, but Potter was the captain, and Ron could never convince him to let him join. 'Course, Ron isn't all that good . . ."
Ron frowned, but then brightened. "We should play a match today, don't you think? It's our pitch, so we get to decide who plays." He grinned slyly.
The twins chuckled. "Nice try, but I don't think you can keep Boywholived from doing anything he wants to. Besides, Dad won't let you upset them, he has to work with Mr. Potter, after all."
Harry let his focus relax beyond their red heads to where the topic of conversation sat, face bright. An animated conversation flowed around his table, buoying him.
Ron was saying, "We don't even have a Snitch. You'd think he'd be happy playing honorary Seeker for Puddlemere twice a season."
Disguised Harry shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. The twins were whispering fiercely to each other. They both stared at him as though maybe they were in trouble. "Uh, we're going to go take care of something."
Harry Legilimized them and found a prank forming in their minds aimed at his other self. "Is it worth it?" Harry asked gently.
"It what worth it?" George asked.
"The trouble you are going to cause?"
Fred's face twisted into a frown. "How'd you know?"
Ron burst out laughing. "You're always making trouble. Pretty safe bet, isn't it?"
Harry was getting more of the plan as they stared at each other. He said, "Such a plan as the one in your mind right now will cause panic, which is always harmful in a crowd of this size. Come up with a better one or wait until he is isolated."
The twins stared at him, showing him their thoughts as plainly as speaking. Harry said, "Yes, I am reminding you of a certain Potions professor." He cocked a smile at their now rather horrified faces. They slid off, at first walking backward to keep an eye on him.
Harry smiled back, holding it longer to display confidence that he could take them down.
Ginny said, "They keep begging mum and dad for Galleons to open a joke shop, but mum, especially, won't go for it. She tells them she might have if they had actually stayed on to finish their NEWTs. They've been selling their services on Diagon Alley, but haven't saved up enough money yet."
The twins finally stopped glancing worrisomely back and disappeared behind a hedge.
Harry idly asked, "What services are they selling?"
"They're installing what they call "security systems" in some of the shops. I'd call them death traps myself, but that just may be my years of living with them talking."
Harry turned to her in surprise and she stared curiously back, saying, "They need a shop of their own. I think it would keep them busy enough to keep them out of Azkaban, which is where they are going to end up when something goes really awry."
Harry rubbed his long mustache, wondering if he had learned something he needed to know for his own Plane. The twins reappeared and slunk off toward the drinks table, glancing back once at him. "If they make too much trouble here," Harry said standing up to better watch them and thinking of the riots that had destroyed the Ministry atrium, "I may have to come down on them. Innocents should never be hurt just because you have your own vendetta." Harry strolled slowly around the table, which also gave him a better view of the people he had come here to see. They were eating, chatting, smiling . . . alive, and he stared at them without breathing.
Ginny came aside him and broke him free by asking, "How often do you have your own vendetta?"
Harry fumbled for words. "I don't any longer. I used to."
Ginny willingly dropped that topic, presumably hearing something in his voice. "Can you teach us some more spells. I read about one that sounds wicked useful, an Expelliarmus, but I need it demonstrated. Ron here can't get it either."
Harry smiled. "I'd love to, but . . . " Across from him, his double was changing tables to sit with some middle-aged witches and wizards that Harry recognized as working in Games and Sports in the Ministry. Harry glanced around to see where the twins had slipped off to.
"Trying to protect him, now?" Ginny asked, sounding unhappy.
Harry laughed. "He is an interesting person."
"No, he isn't," Ginny snapped. "Thinks he's the best at everything. It's annoying."
"Is he?"
"Is he what?" Ginny asked.
Harry innocently asked, "The best at everything?"
"NO," both she and Ron replied.
"My dear," Harry said, finding that phrasing so easy and natural that it stunned him. "I will gladly show you an Expelliarmus, but would you first do me the pleasure of introducing me to the honored guests; your brothers' reactions intrigued me and I wish to get better acquainted with them all." At her grim turn of disappointment, he reached for a better explanation, and added in a lower voice, "It gives me something to chat about with my drinking friends when I go back abroad. Old men like us have so little to talk about that we haven't already talked about."
Before they could reach any of the Potters, a familiar figure in deep green strolled up to his shoulder. Harry greeted McGonagall with a little bow.
"Ah, I have heard a bit about you, Mr. Totten, from Arthur. I had to admit I have not had the pleasure and I believe I should have."
Harry gave the back of her hand a gallant kiss mid-bow. She could blow his cover if he slipped up while discussing the past, so he wanted to get her off-guard.
Flustered, McGonagall said, "Well, my, that is . . . you must have been out of the country for quite a while."
"Many, many years," Harry stated vaguely.
"Well, please join us," she said, glancing at Ron and Ginny a bit dismissively for Harry's taste.
McGonagall had been sitting at the table with his parents, so he said, "I promised my young friends some spell demonstrations, but I think they will grant an old wizard a little first to reminisce." The two youngest Weasleys reluctantly relinquished him.
As McGonagall stepped toward a group reclining in overstuffed chairs, Harry leaned over to say, "You will forgive me if my memory occasionally fails me. Unlike Albus, I have never availed myself of a Pensieve."
"Of course, Aaron . . . may I call you Aaron?"
Harry merely nodded, unbalanced by the notion of being treated so reverentially. He and McGonagall sat down in great comfort for a picnic, sharing a pink and yellow flowered settee pulled up to face the end of the table.
Harry stroked the gaudy fabric as a way of not simply staring openly at his parents, who from this close were showing their forty years more plainly than they had from across the yard when they resembled a wizard photograph come to colorful life. Harry said the first thing that came into his head to explain his fascination with the upholstery, "This would have been to Dumbledore's liking."
"When did you meet Albus?" McGonagall asked. She now had a cup of tea, which Harry had not seen appear.
Harry took a deep breath and said, "I was very young. It was a very long time ago." He faded out, not sure where to go from there. He decided to deflect the question. "I admit not all of those memories are worth dredging up. They were painful times." True enough.
She squeezed his arm. "I am sorry. Here let me introduce you around."
Harry was introduced to two moldy members of the Wizengamot who vacillated in rockers off to the left. He was then introduced to Lily and James. James gave him a momentary narrowed gaze as though recognizing him, but he then smiled faintly and got up to shake Harry's hand before returning to give Lily a fit of giggles as he grabbed her under the arms before enclosing her in his own. Harry worked on hard on concentrating while shaking more hands, deaf to the names being related. He spent the next few minutes using nearly sport-level tactics to dodge questions he dare not answer. The table went back to previous gossip and Harry used repeated small sips of tea as a means of watching his parents over the rim. They were happy, clearly. And so alive, it continued to make breathing problematic. James teased nearly everyone who passed, until Lily tapped him on the arm as a subtle correction.
Harry stroked his beard to check that his disguise held true. Soul-deep sadness pressed in upon him. He had imagined this to be fun, but instead it felt desperate, and Tonks' concern entirely valid.
James behaved himself until Sirius strolled by, putting his hands on James' shoulders. His features were so much less unlined than expected it made him seem a decade younger than James. Only when he smiled did his eyes wrinkle into their familiar appearance. At Sirius' urging, Lily and James moved on to get seconds on food. Harry watched them amble over and be joined by Remus, who, of them all, most resembled himself.
A man by the name of Horace Slughorn wandered by and really began giving Harry a grilling. He acted highly and loudly perturbed to not have heard of an Aaron Totten previously. Harry stood to chat with him away from the table, thinking to shake him using the help of a few Weasleys. He glanced over to where Ginny and Ron were standing just outside the crowd, practicing the few hexes and the counters they had learned earlier.
Harry waved away the question about where "Aaron" had trained in Defense. Harry tugged Dumbledore's ideal persona over himself again and said, "I'm terribly sorry Mr. Slughorn, but your question reminds me that I promised these young people a little of my time and they are waiting ever so patiently. One does like to reward them for that."
Slughorn grunted, not wanting to disagree. Harry gratefully joined Ginny and Ron, leaving the unusually wide man frowning at his back.
"I didn't think we would get you back," Ginny said. "Ron thought maybe you had forgotten so we came over to this side to remind you."
"Oh, I would much prefer practicing the dueling of wands to that of dusty tongues. Come, let me show you my favorite disarming spell. It has saved my life more than once, I'll tell you."
He had their full attention then and the lessons proceeded, quickly becoming a game between the siblings. Eventually, a few others made their way around the large furniture, including Harry, Katie and Oliver, who stood like a matched threesome, poses relaxed, faces judgmental.
"Do some others wish to join us?" Harry in his disguise asked.
"No," Ron said. "They'll just want to duel."
"Why, don't you? Sounds like fun," disguised Harry urged.
"I'll duel someone," Ginny said, sounding very much in the mood for it.
This was overheard and Oliver said, "Away from the old-timers." He angled his head off behind the Burrow, which was empty.
"Why, is dueling illegal now outside Hogwarts too?" old Harry teased.
"No, it's not. All right, then," Katie said, stepping up before Ginny.
This Plane's native Harry stepped in with practiced ease and refereed. "Back to back," he told them, deciding where the pace-off line would be. Visiting Harry stepped back to make space for the others gathering to watch, including the Potters. Harry slid slowly over to be three people down from his parents where he could observe them freely. The rules were relayed to the participants, with some corrections because the style of duel was agreed to be freeform rather than regimented. Harry's chest grew stiff again staring at James and Lily, but he could not stop himself. Sirius ambled up beside his father and they shared an amused exchange. Sirius perched his hands on his hips, parting his loose robes. He stood straight and with ease, a pristine, undamaged version of the man Harry held in his memories. His heart ached again.
The duel began with a loud countdown. Katie and Ginny were evenly matched, but Ginny had her new disarming spell and on the third exchange, Katie's wand flew away over the onlookers.
Native Harry fetched it with a flick and held it out to Katie. "Let me try next," he said.
Ginny's eyes grew wider. Disguised Harry saw in them that she truly did not want to duel his double, was certain she would be embarrassingly put on the grass, at best.
Harry stepped up to her, blocking her view of his alternative self. "Shall I handle this round? May I borrow your wand?" She willingly gave up her wand while biting her lip.
"The old man wants a piece of Potter!" Oliver announced, laughing.
Disguised Harry looked his double over. The other Harry was taller than himself, tanned, well-fed and stood with overt confidence. "We can skip the pacing," disguised Harry said pleasantly as he cheated with a little Legilimency. His double's eyes were filled with heat, anticipating the challenge of the duel. The only scar he possessed was the one on his forehead; his mind was utterly clear of any others as though he were merely a Mirror of Erised projection.
A Jelly Legs came at Disguised Harry when the countdown completed, easily countered. An electric eel came next, deflected to vanish in twirling sparkles against the blue sky in a purely stylish move.
"Aren't you going to come back with anything?" Native Harry demanded after two more spells were sent aside. Disguised Harry could see in his mind many rounds of practice with James and faith that he could handle anything as a result.
"I don't want to hurt you," Disguised Harry said pleasantly, affectionately, instinctively knowing exactly how to duel with this young man using words.
"Oh, please. I can take care of myself." Native Harry laughed, slightly mocking because the comment had stung, as intended.
Disguised Harry bowed his head slightly and swung his arm around, wand tip twirling in an elastic mummy hex which, due to the force on it, could not be stopped. Native Harry was tangled helplessly until he curled on the ground, wound up so that only a few black hairs stuck out the top. The surrounding crowd gasped.
Disguised Harry cancelled the hex and watched his mirror image rise up, straightening his hair with undo care. "Huh," he muttered, temper bottled up so that it made his wand tap faintly on his leg. He thought he gave no warning for his blinding curse, but Disguised Harry, due to the risk of being revealed, was still cheating. He had the burst of light blocked with a rubber shield that swallowed it before it travelled half the distance between them. He felt the curse grow and channel, just as he had every other curse thrown at him for months while trying to work out how to block them wandlessly. This time, though, each part of the curse's progress felt accessible. Harry breathed heavily in excitement. He probably could have blocked that one without casting a counter.
"How'd you do that?" Native Harry demanded.
"It is a minor counter. Perhaps you need a new dueling teacher," Harry said, finding that verbal hex rising out of his aching heart without forethought.
Young Harry glanced at his father in consternation, looking for advice. The pressed in friends began shouting encouragement. "Go on, Harry!" "Show him what-for!" and "Stop holding back."
Native Harry tried in rapid succession a Cannon Ball, a Blasting Curse, a Chain Binding, and a Rictusempre which were all handled without disguised Harry even twitching more than his wand and wrist. He obsessively traced each curse on its journey from mind to magic, heart racing triumphantly after so many weeks of useless exercises.
Native Harry faintly stomped one foot in frustration. "You're still not hitting back."
"You want another like the last? I only have so many gentle spells and I truly do not wish to harm you."
"Stop worrying about me!"
Disguised Harry, letting his own jealousy leak into his judgment said, "You have potential, but you need a qualified teacher. Clearly Professor Snape is not allowed to teach dueling or you'd be better than this."
Old Harry felt the next curse before his rival even finished thinking it through. It was a Sectumsempra, borne on a key source of anger inside this version of himself. Disguised Harry squeezed it back into the wand before it could be cast or even finish generating. Since the spell was as close to his own nature as any Forbidden Spell could be, blocking it was as easy as turning off a tap.
Native Harry fell with a shout. He dropped his wand and clutched his arms around himself. Disguised Harry felt anger turn his blood acidic. Still aiming his wand at the vision kneeling across from him, he said, "Don't you ever cast a spell like that . . . AT ANYONE." He took a few steps closer as the crowd murmured. Lily Potter moved in to assist her son and James pulled his wand from his breast pocket and stepped in to guard both of them.
Disguised Harry forced the burning in his veins out through his breath and lowered his wand. Poisonous jealousy crowded around his anger, which did not help.
McGonagall stepped out of the spectators. "What happened?" she asked.
"I turned his own spell back upon him," Disguised Harry said, slipping his wand away, only to find that he already had one, one he had not wanted to reveal the core of. He held the wand out to Ginny instead, whose eyes were as wide as ever. "Thank you, young lady."
Native Harry was getting to his feet with assistance. He shot a befuddled glance over his shoulder before being led away to sit in a comfy chair.
"How many dueling tournies have you won?" one of the twins asked, enthralled.
Disguised Harry chuckled. "I am not allowed to participate. I get assigned as judge."
The twins and Ron chuckled too. They all turned to observe the scene around the chair. Harry felt nothing for his double, who had both parents to help with one painful spell in his entire memory. "You'd think the boy never felt an abbreviated Sectumsempra curse before," he said.
Fred exploded, "He sent that at you?! Even I think that should be on the Forbidden list."
Harry regretted speaking. "Perhaps he would have held off on actually casting it."
"Too bad you couldn't let him. Think of the trouble. Boy!"
"I should not have mentioned Professor Snape," Harry mused, serene now, buoyed by his own amusement at causing so much trouble so easily.
Beside him, Ginny giggled into her hand.
"Good thing you weren't planning on staying around for long," George said.
"True." Harry was very much ready to go home. Jealousy, now released to run wild inside him, threatened to take his own self-control again at the slightest provocation.
"Have one more Butterbeer, or teach us one more spell," Ginny pleaded.
"We are done with spells for now. Perhaps just a Butterbeer."
Their little pack went to the drinks table and Fred and George heated some bottles that were still in the crate on the grass underneath.
As he reached out to accept one, Harry was tapped hard on the shoulder.
"Totten, I'm told your name is," James Potter said. Harry fully recognized the fury distorting the edges of the face before him. It was the same as he had just battled inside himself.
"That's right," Harry confirmed softly, wearisomely pulling out a pleasant voice from a past that had receded into the mists after the duel.
"What's the idea challenging my son like that when you can clearly out-spell him?"
Harry had a hard time facing down his father—it made his chest tight—but he managed to come up with something befitting his disguise, even if it did nothing to express what longed to escape. "I am a bit old fashioned you see," Harry rambled. "In my time one would always step in for a lady in distress."
Ginny rolled her eyes and ducked her head.
Harry found his footing and stepped closer to the familiar anger of his father, close enough to feel the debilitating energy of it along his nerves. "You wanted me to do that," Harry said as if sharing a secret. "If I had let him cast that, he'd have been up before the Wizengamot." Backing off, residual anger flaring up again, he added, "Unless they are so doddered by his fame that they are incapable of it. Perhaps that's the case." More insinuatingly, "Perhaps that's even happened before."
"Oh, get off," James said. "My son would never do anything the Wizengamot would care about."
The surrounding Weasley's all looked away with various amused and dubious expressions. Harry stared at the man before him. James radiated protective instinct to the core—exactly as Harry fantasized about having from a father all those years when he had none at all. Harry could not feel additional jealousy, he had overdosed on it already. It could have worked out like this, Harry thought. Twisted and conflicting remorse torqued within Harry's gut instead, trying to metamorphose into something that could escape him.
James glanced around the unfavorable audience and snarled, "Stay away from my son," before stalking away.
Harry, untenable emotion clouding his thoughts, grabbed James' robe, his artificially aged hands just as strong as ever. Like in a duel he instinctively struck back at his opponent's weakest spot. When James spun to face him, eyes flashing, Harry said, "I was serious that he needs a new dueling tutor. He has potential."
James glowered and jerked his robe free, nearly running into Sirius, who stood a pace behind him. Harry stared longingly at his godfather, unable to stop himself. Sirius stared curiously back until tugged away by James, who felt less real. The mystified look from a purely compassionate Sirius made Harry starkly aware of how violently jumbled his emotions had become, simultaneously detached and over-involved: a recipe for disastrous distress if there ever was one.
Harry accepted an un-spilled drink and stared around the happy picnic. "You are all terribly spoiled," he muttered, understanding in a flash of disturbed thinking the motivations Svaha had in building spelling devices just to cause chaos. She had accused him, Vineet and their wizarding world of not appreciating the peace they had. She would go wholly berserk should she ever find her way to this place.
"You all right?" Ginny asked, when Harry rubbed his forehead.
"I am, my dear girl," Harry said, finding the persona of kindly old man debilitating now. "I should return home, however." He handed her the bottle back and closed her hand around it when she resisted taking it.
"Don't go because of his His Highness there . . ." one of the twins protested.
"It isn't that. I just have much too much to do." Indeed, Harry risked upsetting Tonks and even getting caught missing the longer he remained. He was happy to get away without any entanglements, and if he left now, there would be none. Tonks would be waiting, he was confident, but bad luck could easily show him to be missing.
Harry made his goodbyes to them, touched by their pleading that he remain. He stepped away, intending to go the long way around the picnic via the ruts in the drive. He was waylaid by McGonagall before he reached the orchard.
"Aaron," she said gently enough that Harry believed the topic was not his double and the duel.
He stopped, clasped his hands together and assumed a patient, in-character, pose only with immense effort.
"Given how well you knew Albus, I was hoping to get your advice on something." When Harry bowed, she led him closer to the orchard and gestured for Griselda Marchbanks to join them. "This is an issue that has been restricted to the Wizengamot and I do hope you can respect our desire to keep it there for the time being?"
"Of course," Harry said, thinking that he was never coming back, so how could it possibly matter?
McGonagall fidgeted before saying, "We have a Divination instructor at Hogwarts who for the most part is a harmless pretender. Albus hired her-"
"Sybill Trelawney, you mean?" Harry prompted, not at all liking the path of the conversation.
"Yes, of course Albus would have told you about her, I suppose?"
Harry nodded knowingly.
"Well, last week she uttered one of her rare true prophecies to me. I would be most appreciative if you could offer advice about what you believe is the wisest course and, more importantly, how you think Albus would react."
Harry breathed deeply and let it out slowly. He should have left sooner. "I'll do my best."
"The prophecy is as follows, and please do not tell another, we fear the damage caused purely by the reaction. A dark shadow approaches undetected, gathering the slumbering willing in its web. It will shatter half a century of peace so that the time before it will seem as if a dream."
Harry closed his eyes. There was no Voldemort here, of that he was certain, which gave him some relief. He must not have made Horcruxes in this place.
". . . power indescribably heartless will wreak cold vengeance upon wizardom. All will be touched for the worse. The only magic capable of defeating it is contained within the seventh pureblood son who is not."
Harry's pure white brow lowered as he pondered that. He wondered if the prophecy were warning about Svaha and Merton again, or something completely new. If the prophecy had said chaos instead of vengeance, Harry would have felt certain.
Harry said, "I think you need to start preparing the wizarding public for some tough times. If you don't want panic, make up an excuse, any excuse, for better awareness of danger, of dark magic." Unaware that he stroked his beard thoughtfully, Harry added, "Start teaching Defense to all years at Hogwarts again. And find this person."
Marchbanks complained, "There was confusion last time, too, over whom it may be."
Harry nodded. "The future is not fixed so the prophecy cannot be certain." He stated this with such authority that McGonagall's shoulders relaxed.
"Would you be willing to consult with the Wizengamot?"
Harry said, "I was not planning on staying. I have responsibilities distant from here. I cannot shirk them. I shouldn't even be here. Nostalgia got the better of me," he admitted in a bout of full honesty. "I shouldn't be here at all," he repeated.
"I understand," McGonagall said on automatic, regretful.
"I don't wish to abandon you at such a trying time, but I must. I can offer some advice. Take the worst case plans for the worst case outcomes you can think of and triple them." She stared at him as though he had lost his mind. Harry patted her on the arm, truly saddened and trying to imagine the times they had just been through applied to this peaceful place. "A year from now, you will remember I said that, and know that I was right. I don't say that to be cruel . . . quite the opposite."
He stepped back and tiredly said, "My own responsibilities are equally dire. I was granted a small break from them and I should not abandon them any longer, I'm afraid."
"I do understand," McGonagall said. Harry could see in her eyes that she hoped that if worse came to worse, he would magically reappear to help right things.
"Treat the wizarding public with respect and let them know the danger. They are allies if you let them be or victims if you don't." As he spoke, he felt grateful that this wasn't normally his role. He did not envy Dumbledore's old responsibilities as wizened leader one bit.
Harry made his goodbyes, and strolled through the orchard, where groups of wizarding youths had gathered in their own small parties, a few around magical fires. This meant Harry needed to walk farther away before slipping into the Dark Plane. But the walk allowed him to clear his head before facing the awful transference to his own plane.
Harry woke up on the floor of Tonks' flat, with someone playing with his ear. He giggled because it tickled. "Ger off," he mumbled, but smiled broadly into Tonks' worried gaze. He lay covered with warmed cushions from the couch and pillows off the bed.
"You were right that you'd return covered in ice," Tonks marveled.
Harry, with assistance, managed to sit up. "Thanks for helping me."
"You were gone a long time."
"As long as I wasn't missed," Harry said, thinking back over what he had learned. The most important thing would take some time to settle in. As to the other thing he had learned . . . "I need to go talk to the Weasley twins," Harry said. "Care to come along?"
"Do I have a choice?"
Harry shrugged. "I'd happily go on my own," he suggested.
As they arrived on Diagon Alley and stepped through the brick wall, Tonks said, "You visited someplace far removed from here and now you need to talk to Fred and George?"
"These other places aren't as removed as all that. Some things are the same."
"Did you find your parents?" she asked, wanting to believe, Harry could hear in her voice.
He nodded.
"Well, how were they?" she asked, teasing as she played along, but also sounding strained.
Harry hesitated before proclaiming, "Doting. Too doting." Jealousy threatened again, muted. "Their son Harry has no idea what he has."
Tonks grabbed Harry's sleeve as he moved to moved to a better spot to Apparate from. "Wait, you saw yourself?"
"Well, certainly. Odds are a James and Lily Potter would have a me; wouldn't they?"
She released him. "That's really disturbing, Harry. You shouldn't be playing around like this."
They strolled in silence past the soot-stained shopfront of Eeylops. At the door to the twin's shop, Harry said, "Can I talk to them alone? I may be far off base, but I have a suspicion about something."
She parked herself on the narrow window ledge of the shop window. "Five minutes."
"Ten."
She peered at him. "This official business?"
"It may be," Harry conceded.
"All right, ten. You owe me dinner, though."
"Any time." Harry reached for the door, setting off a series of jangles, bongs and squawks.
"Tonight."
"You're on."
The shop was shrouded in grim light in contrast to the outside. One of the twins was helping a customer at the counter. Ginny popped her head up from the corner where she was straightening the shelves and tracked him crossing the room.
When the customer had moved on, Harry said, "I need to talk to you and your brother."
The figure across from Harry made no jokes, no faces, just gestured for Ginny to take over. He gave his sister a sharp glance before slipping through the back door to the stairway. Harry pretended that the glance meant nothing to him.
Upstairs, cauldrons were lined up on the long crooked table that had been repaired several times with scrap wood to cover blackened holes or long cracks.
"George!" Harry's escort shouted as he opened the door. "Guest."
George looked up from the parchment he held and spelled the stirring stick he held to keep on without his hand. He stuffed the parchment quickly away in his pocket. "What's this?"
"He insisted on a word," Fred said.
Harry dived right in and asked, "Did you have anything to do with the Eeylops fire?"
The two of them did not move and Harry realized his error. He had left open the possibility of denial. He tried something stronger. "Come on. I know you've been selling security systems to at least one shop down here."
This made them shift from foot to foot. Fred said, "What'd Ginny tell you?"
"Your sister didn't tell me anything," Harry insisted, conscience clear on that specific point. He tried to think ahead as quickly as possible. If the twins were responsible for dumping the gang members then why had the perpetrators no memory of what had happened? Harry, excitement building with understanding, said, "You wiped their memories, didn't you? Why the devil did you do that?"
George rounded on Harry at this accusation. "Why did we do that? Are you a nutter? They'd have turned us in."
Harry leaned into his disbelieving face. "We needed their memories for the investigation! Did you even stop and think about that?"
George angrily attended to a cauldron that was sending sky blue foam in a sheet onto the table. More calmly, Fred said, "We did think of that. They didn't know anything. Durumulna lackeys never know anything dangerous to the organization."
"You interrogated them?" Harry asked, too sarcastically, because it set Fred off.
"Yes. With stuff we got here, which is at least equal to yours. We're not stupid, Harry. Give us some credit."
Harry made himself back down. "So what went wrong? What happened?"
"What went right?" George asked. "Eeylop was tired of those guys coming around, demanding protection money. He wanted them stopped if they tried anything. We set a trap, but it, uh, backfired. No pun intended."
"Why didn't Mr. Eeylop come to us for help instead of to you?"
"Because he'd be spelled to a state of wishing for death within the hour, Harry. Don't be so naïve." He took a cauldron off the heat and set it in a water bath. "People can come to us for help without risking the gang's wrath. They've been doing it more and more. We can help them in ways you can't."
Harry fixed his gaze on the overcrowded mantel piled with ingredients and half-folded boxes and tried to decide what to do. The twins were thinking along the same lines.
"You going to turn us in?"
"I don't know," Harry said. They all glared at each other. "You shouldn't have wiped their memories."
George grew ferocious again. "Their memories were already wiped. Maybe I didn't make that clear."
"Maybe I only have your word on that," Harry countered.
After a space Fred quietly said, "You can help us help other witches and wizards, but you can't do it officially."
Harry felt the weight of responsibility settling onto him like he had in the other Plane. Turns out he could not escape it after all.
"I reserve the right to turn you in if you mess up again." He did not like his options and resisted being hard nosed and getting them into serious trouble if the result was as they insisted. Sounding stubborn he said, "Contact me if you get into a similar circumstance. We can work something out."
George mumbled, "Something you get the credit for."
Harry gaped at him. "I don't care about the credit. I can't believe you said that."
Fred stepped in front of Harry, hand on his chest to hold him back. Harry realized he had overreacted. He needed a break after his excursion to the alternative Plane, clearly. "Sorry," Harry said quietly. "I don't care about the credit," he stated factually this time. "I can arrange for someone else to always get it if you want."
Fred said, "It doesn't matter. Ignore my brother. He's upset we didn't get credit this time. He wanted a medal." It was not clear if he was serious.
Back out on the Alley, Harry put off Tonks' questions, saying with determination, "Let's drag Candide away from the office and take her home."
The accountancy was just a few doors down. When Harry entered, most of the activity stopped. Candide's coworkers looked up in surprise and vague wariness. Deciding to use his bad reputation to his advantage, Harry said, "I'm here to fetch Candide."
"Are you now?" the boss said, striding out of his office. His attitude shifted. "Oh, Mr. Potter."
Harry gave a patently false smile and turned to his guardian's wife, who stood still, hands full of files. "Ready to go?" Harry asked.
She glanced at Mr. Farnsworth and said, "Sure. Let me get a case for these files I have to sort."
Tonks helped her out packing things and they were soon on their way. Outside, Candide said, "Wow. I would not imagined it could be that easy."
"Your boss is scared of me," Harry stated.
"Come by at five every day, won't you?" Candide invited.
Author's notes: My betas deserve a special call out here. The criticism, especially on this last chapter, was super-useful and the chapter and the story would be a pale version of itself without you guys. So thanks!
Next: Chapter 22 -- Twenty Years Later, Part 3
As the last of ten long lines were drawn, Harry felt the floor vibrate. "I don't think this is a good idea," he said. "I can already feel it. I don't want you messing with anything dark."
Snape handed him the chalk. "You finish it then."
Was this a test? Harry wondered. He studied the diagram and Snape said, "You need to make a string equal to the length of the distance between the outer circle and the pentagon vertex." When Harry had done that, he made arc inward of the pentagon. Then he made more long lines, the intersections of which told him where to draw an inner pentagon to the first. He was not as adept at mounting the dowels and tracing the twine for a straight line, so this proceeded slowly.
Chapter 22 — Twenty Years Later, Part III
Exhausted, Harry fell back on the couch in the main hall in Shrewsthorpe. He dearly wanted to attempt suppressing a curse cast at him by someone other than himself, but he did not, at all, feel like getting cursed right then. Tonks settled in beside him, arm around his shoulders.
"You two are so darling together," Candide said, leaning back with relish on the couch opposite. "It's the contrast with your hair I guess. Harry's dark and short, Tonks' long and upright."
Tonks' hair drooped, darkening until it looked like Harry's. Her face shifted too, nose and brow changing until she was a glancingly passable imitation of him.
"Oh, now, that's just disturbing," Candide said, eyes dashing between them.
"Tell Harry that," Tonks opaquely said.
Candide's face grew curiously perturbed but she withheld a follow-up question and turned to her files instead.
"Still too much work, eh?" Tonks asked.
"After Tuesday it will all be over with, for the most part. That's the end of the month." She looked up at them. "Why don't you lovebirds go out for the evening?"
Harry shook his head. "I'm tired," he said, leaving off explaining that someone should guard her as well.
Tonks said, "I'm looking forward to a proper, elf-cooked meal, I am."
"You wouldn't look so terribly forward to it if you actually bought groceries on occasion," Harry pointed out.
"Like I have time." She glanced around the hall. The tall clock chimed once for the quarter hour. "If I wish for a drink will Winky bring one?"
"You have to want one badly enough," Harry teased.
She sighed and propped her chin on his shoulder. "I thought I did."
Moments later Winky appeared in a sparkle, delivered something tall that smoked, and disappeared again.
With feeling, Tonks said, "Wow, you've got it so good here, Harry."
This gave Harry pause, since it echoed his thoughts from the other Plane. "You think?"
Tonk's propped her drink on her palm and licked the rim. "What? You don't?"
"I suppose." Harry considered that other place. He did not want to be that other Harry, and imagining that he could have been made him uneasy. Dumbledore had specifically made certain he did not grow up that way. So the risk had been real, even in this Plane, without his parents to help him along that path. It was Harry's low upbringing at the Dursleys that had made him choose Gryffindor over Slytherin when the time came to do so. Although, that seemed less important a decision now than it had before. Maybe that other Harry choose Gryffindor because that's what his father would have wanted. That Harry already believed he was "great"; the hat could not use that as bait like it had for him.
Tonks hmed over her drink, savoring it. Harry watched her sip the milky brown liquid that left foam strata rings on the glass as it disappeared. "What is that?"
"Hot Butterbeer milkshake. I just had a craving for one."
"Uh oh," Candide said without pausing in her sorting.
Tonks scoffed. "Not to worry."
Harry's heart found a semi-normal rhythm again, but it took a while to settle down completely. He found Candide grinning at him when he next looked over at her. He let her see his relief, badly needing to share it. The both relapsed into smiles and Candide returned to her work.
He leaned back and breathed in the familiar scent of home. What was he missing, he wondered. Not much, if anything. Well, his adoptive father was not exactly home often. But he should be home tomorrow. Harry felt an acute need to see him, which had not happened in a while. He was the main reason Harry's life had sorted out like it had and Harry wanted to be reassured of that reality.
Tonks set her glass down and leaned against Harry, who distractedly slipped an arm around her and rested his head back.
"You two are very twee there," Candide said.
"No we're not," they replied in sync.
"Even that's cute," Candide asserted.
The clock ticked, marking the evening out. "You're my guard all night, right?" Harry quietly asked the head resting beside his lips.
"Yep."
"Good."
- 888 -
Snape arrived home Saturday morning while Harry, Tonks and Candide sat in the main hall, each involved in their own reading. Tonks stood up just as Snape strode into the room, tugging his gloves off, a finger at a time. Her quick departure made Harry wonder if she was eager to leave. He was torn between this concern and his pleasure at seeing his guardian.
"I'll see you later?" Harry asked the departing Tonks.
"You have field work tonight, right?" she asked. "I have things to take care of before shift. So I'll see you then, probably."
Snape watched her go and, appearing thoughtful, strolled over before Harry. He shook the Floo soot from his gloves and folded them away. "If you have time, I wish to speak to you," he said to Harry.
Candide lifted her head, jostling her hastily pinned hair so that it fell. She tugged the clip free and held it while shaking her hair loose. "Do you want to be alone?"
"No," Snape said. "Please remain, unless we are distracting you."
Harry could not read him. He wanted to ask him to try some curse drills with him, but that idea slid aside when he fleetingly worried that he may be facing another grounding. "What is it?"
Snape checked the house for bugs and returned to the same spot before Harry. He spoke deliberately. "Meeting your younger self made me realize a few things," he began, snapping his sleeves once before letting his hands rest at his sides. "When you were young, first starting at Hogwarts, I do not believe you were looking for a parent. Nor do I think you would have accepted one. You were far too accustomed to getting by on your own. What I think you needed were friends more than anything, which you found, easily enough."
Harry blinked in surprise at this conversation. After his trip yesterday, he wished to share how he newly perceived his life; how he accepted now that a grim start could work to one's advantage. He had not figured out how to broach this topic without admitting he had journeyed out of this world yet again, but he had hoped to come up with something. To be faced with Snape expressing usually close-kept thoughts struck him as flukish.
When Harry remained silent, Snape paced once, hands clasped behind him and went on. "When I brought you home here, you were marginally willing to accept having a father, partly because you saw it as your last chance ever to have one. That and you were quite worn down and, for the first time, willing to accept a home as well as help from someone older than your friends." When Harry remained stunned silent, mind following too many trails to respond intelligently, Snape prompted, "Do you concur?"
"Yes," Harry said. He thought back to that time when the house surrounding him now was novel and everything about his life felt terribly uncertain. He struggled while piercingly remembering that the hardest thing had been trusting that this help would not be unceremoniously pulled out from under him. Rather than voice this, he resorted to nodding to accentuate his agreement.
Snape sighed and said, "But I think we have come full circle at this point. I think you are back to needing friends, not a father."
"I don't think that's true," Harry countered. When Snape did not argue, just waited, Harry tried to explain. Across from him, Candide had abandoned her work to watch the two of them, tennis-match style. "I still need someone to tell me when I'm messing up."
"Good friends do that," Snape pointed out.
"Yeah, but it's different with a father," Harry said, despite being unprepared to express in what way.
"Oh, it is," Snape filled in. "To wit: fathers expect to be obeyed . . . at least some of the time."
Harry frowned wryly.
"You see," Snape gently said, "you have returned to trusting only your own judgment. You give mine very little regard."
"I listen to what you say," Harry said. "I just . . ."
"Don't follow it. Correct." Snape shifted to cross his arms, but appeared to consciously drop his arms to the sides.
Upstairs, Harry's pet rattled her cage loud enough to be heard. Harry waved his wand in that direction to free her, and she sailed several loops around the room before settling on his shoulder.
"I do not bring this up to disturb you," Snape said, glancing at Harry's uneasy pet. "I think we need to change the situation to something more workable, so I am merely stating things as I see them."
Harry, neck sore from peering upward, said, "Why don't you sit down? Make yourself at home."
Snape pulled a straight-backed chair over between the couches and sat rigidly in it, hands steepled in his lap. "I think you temporarily accepted a father, but that time has passed." He cut Harry off. "Yes, you wish to deny it. Which is fine, really. Touching perhaps even, but it is some residual instinct only, I feel certain."
"Severus . . ." Harry argued. "I like being in this family. I like living here, having your advice and to have you as, er, backup when things go wrong."
Still unerringly calm, Snape returned, "I have not disputed any of these things. All I am disputing is that you remain willing to allow me to act as a father to you."
Hearing Tonks' words echo in his head, Harry said, "You're not giving up on me, are you?"
Snape's face gave the first twitch of pain the whole conversation. "Never. That is precisely the opposite of what this is about."
"Oh, good."
Snape crossed his arms and fell into lecture mode. "This is the dilemma: You are unable to do as I say, but I insist on making certain you come to no harm." He let that lie for a moment. Harry's eyes flickered downward, partly because he had just the day before done something he knew would strongly meet with disapproval and he was not Occluding his mind all that strongly.
Snape went on, "What I am proposing is a change in how we relate. I will resist my penchant for directing your actions and you will seek me out more often for advice, as well as keep me better informed of what you are doing."
Harry did not feel certain it could be that easy. "You think that will work?"
"I don't know. I think it is up to you."
Candide's papers shuffled as she returned to sorting during the lull that followed. Harry plucked his pet up off his shoulder where she was chewing his hair and propped her on his knee instead.
Snape said, "For example. You returned again to that other Plane where you destroyed Voldemort. That was not wise."
"I didn't have any choice," Harry argued.
"You always have a choice."
"That's not true. I couldn't leave it like that, with your double in bad circumstances. Circumstances I caused." Kali began chewing on his robes as his agitation affected her. "I don't know how you could think I could just leave it."
"You believe you fixed things?" Snape asked.
Harry sensed a trap; it was something about the tone Snape used to ask the question. It reminded him of a dungeon door slowly creaking open, revealing an unlit passageway.
Harry answered honestly, "Yes."
"You received two short glimpses of another world and you believe you knew enough to meddle so thoroughly in that place?"
Now at least, it was clear where this was heading.
"That place wasn't so different from this one," Harry said, no longer arguing. "I had to off Voldemort and I had to rescue that other Snape."
Softly, Snape pointed out, "You did not answer the question."
"I suppose, then, yes, I think I did know enough."
Snape stood at this and produced a rolled leather satchel like a craftsman might use to tie up fine tools. Moving with purpose, he set his chair aside, hovered the couch Harry rested upon to get it out of the way, and said to Candide, "If you wouldn't mind. I would prefer that you remain at least thirty feet from what I am going to do."
She blinked at him. "Can I watch?"
Snape gestured at the dining room. "From the other side of the room. Certainly."
Candide eagerly gathered up her things and vacated them to the dining room and then stood in the doorway. Snape had already moved the other couch to clear a wide space on the floor. He unrolled the satchel at his feet with a flick. Inside it, caught in neat leather loops were rolls of fine, silk twine, chalk, telescoping rods, candles and other oddments.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked.
"Without sending you away again, I wish to demonstrate your mistaken belief in what you did."
Harry stood and came around to where Snape was fixing a dowel to the floor with a dab of wax. "How do you know it's a mistaken belief?"
"The world, this world, any world, is far more complex than you are treating it. If I am wrong, so be it. But if I am correct, I will have proved something very important to you . . . without having grounded you, or shouted, or anything of that nature."
"You haven't shouted in a long time," Harry said, feeling sheepish and willing to fall into to a teenage mode. He drew his lips in between his teeth as he watched Snape use twine and chalk to draw a large circle on the floor. Harry had to step out of the way of letting the broad arc of it close off. "What are you doing?" Harry asked again as the dowel was freed from the floor with a quick heat spell and placed at the top of the circle.
Snape took the twine he had used for the large circle and folded it into thirds then twice into halves. He then unwound five sections of that and made a knot. He used this length to make smaller circles around the circumference of the first. He did not answer until he had waxed down two rods at two seemingly random arc intersections and drew a blue chalk line along it, fingers positioned expertly to avoid deflecting the string. "I am preparing a five-sided device, with the expectation that you can use it to see into this place you visited."
Harry's jaw dropped open. He said, "I don't want you to make a pentagram; that's dark magic."
Snape gathered the twine around his wrist and held up the wooden dowel tied to it. "This is interesting, is it not? You believe this is not the best activity for me to be engaged in, but I think otherwise. I frequently think the same of your activities and you likewise disagree." They stared at each other until Harry backed down by dropping his gaze.
Harry watched as more long lines were drawn between arc intersections, slightly off from the center, forming a perfect pentagon in the middle. "That doesn't look like a pentagram," Harry said, despite seeing how it could be easily extended into one. He felt like being difficult, so the comment came out critical.
"It is actually a much more powerful device referred to as a twenty-vertex snark."
Harry raised a brow and considered making a comment about that.
"Something you want to say?" Snape eloquently asked, looking up long enough to give Harry an opportunity to do so. Harry declined and Snape returned to his attention to the diagram.
As the last of ten long lines were completed, Harry felt the floor vibrate and Kali took flight back to his room. "I don't think this is a good idea," he said. "I can already feel it activating. I don't want you messing with anything dark."
Snape handed him the chalk. "You finish it then."
Was this a test? Harry wondered. He studied the diagram without moving, and Snape said, "You need to make a string equal to the length of the distance between the outer circle and one of the pentagon vertices." When Harry had done that, he did as instructed and made arcs inward of the pentagon. Then he made more long lines, the intersections with the arcs told marked where to draw a perfect inner pentagon to the first. He was not as adept at mounting the dowels and tracing the twine for a straight line, so this proceeded slowly.
"I don't like this, Severus," Harry said again while bent ungainly over the artwork.
"Can you not control the interstice? I thought you were adept at this."
Another test. Harry was tiring of tests. "I can keep everything pressed down where it belongs," he insisted. "But you don't understand."
"Finish the points of the pentagram and we will move on. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can destroy the device." Snape levered himself to his feet, robes streaked with white chalk. "Candide. Thirty feet and if the baby so much as twitches I want you to Apparate away immediately."
"Severus . . ." Harry said, nearly pleading. He felt like he moved in a dream. He wanted to believe he was in the wrong place but some base instinct screamed that this was exactly right and believing otherwise a lame excuse. He had pushed Snape into this. "Why are we doing this?" Harry asked.
"Is it not safe?" Snape gestured at the nearby wall with his arm. "You treat journeying to this dreadful place as a stroll down the street outside. This is merely a minute gateway."
"There's a difference," Harry insisted. "You don't understand . . . I keep telling you. There's a big difference between traveling there and what happens when the Planes intersect."
Snape stared back thoughtfully now rather than haughtily. "Can you control it?" This was an honest question. "If you cannot, destroy the device."
"I can control it," Harry said. "That's not the problem. I just don't like it."
"I prefer that you don't like it. I wish you equally disliked every aspect of it." After a pause. "Finish the points of the pentagram."
While Harry drew in the last two, exerting increasing force to keep the interstice closed, Snape mounted a small brown candle on a skull and lit it. He handed this to Harry. "Set it in the middle and move aside."
Biting both his lips, Harry obeyed by leaning far over, limbs spread like a spider, careful of the chalk lines. With his fingertips, he pushed the skull to the center. Smoke bloomed from the candle, but it ceased to rise; it parted into five streams which snaked towards the vertices and disappeared, allowing only small spurting wisps of smoke into the room.
"You receive an "O" for this assignment," Snape drawled. "Well, done. Fetch me the skull."
Harry did not want to be anywhere near any of it. It pulsed and vibrated with morbid life or morbid death, or some halfway version of the two.
"Go on. If you can travel there, I do not see how this can harm you. It is the merest cracked window on that place you visit, frequently I suspect."
Harry, stretched long, propped on one knee, one toe and one hand, and grabbed up the skull candle. "This feels much worse than being there," he said, setting the skull aside.
"I think this is the only circumstances under which you truly can understand how foul that place is: when it is placed in stark contrast to this world." Snape fixed a lit white candle to each pentagram vertex, straightened, and gestured bluntly. "Go on. Step inside or destroy it if you cannot bear to."
Harry breathed deeply, preparing for a dive, and minced between the candles and over the lines until he stood in the very center of the center pentagon. Dizzying colorful sheets of sky and ground sailed up from the floor to disappear overhead, whispering and murmuring to him as they passed. When they passed close, they buffeted him, frosting his skin. Harry pulled his arms in and hunched over against the assault.
"Are you all right, Harry?" Snape asked.
Harry heard Snape clearly even over the wisps of noise. "Yeah. Can you see that?"
"No. What is it you see?"
Harry tried to better examine one of the fluttering membranes as it whisked by. His attention slowed the scene's course and he glimpsed fields and a city with red banners fluttering on the towers before it slipped away. The next one he focused on bulged with smoky clouds and he glimpsed a gloomy London in a fog thick enough to hide the ground. Glowing street lamps rested atop the grey blanket flowing along the roads between the buildings. On the next he glimpsed witches sharing a broomstick while flying low over winter-bare trees.
"I see all possibility," Harry said, then rethought that absurd notion. "I think."
"Can you see the place you were before, the one you heroically returned to, certain you knew what was best?"
Harry opened his eyes, only then realizing they had been closed. Upward-sailing scenes continued to strike him, visible whether his eyes were open or closed. He stared at his guardian through them. "You really think I shouldn't have done that?"
Snape's pale countenance, floating in the frame of his pitch black hair and robes, was remarkably easy to focus on through the deluge. He said, "I believe it imperative that you understand what you are doing, what you have done, and what you could do. I do not believe for an instant that is true at this time."
- 888 -
Severus Snape slept through the long nights, nursing the last of his wounds, which had gloriously faded to dull throbs that only accompanied sudden movement. The hut he had been set up in felt more like a home than he would have imagined it could, perhaps the influence of the close, companionable fire that burned nonstop. The green wood he had magically chopped and piled outside smoked terribly, but the hut had been cleverly designed to funnel everything away through the roof when the smoke-hole tarpaulin and the ground vents were given periodic attention.
More healing to his stress-worn spirit was the absolute quiet of the place. After living in dread of his tormentor's boot steps approaching along the dungeon corridor, the deathly, white-dusted stillness acted as a balm. Rarely did anything ever stir, and if it did, its animal origin was always instantly clear. Reindeer trotted by, their hooves a subsonic thundering, felt more than heard. Wolf cries carried from far across the frozen lake. Birds called overhead. These were all welcome noises, reminders that the world had not been utterly drained of existence.
Snape bent to sort through the collection of possible potion ingredients from his last foraging trip. The takings were sparse, but unusual, requiring creativity to make the best of them, an intellectual lure that drew him willingly each morning from sleep deep within the bundled rough furs and borrowed cloak.
Fire stoked comfortably high, Snape sniffed at a dried pine needle, rubbed it on a dark stone, sniffed it again. That was when he heard the strange swish-swish like a sheer curtain being pulled aside and dropped again. Then came a crackle of icy snow, just outside the door. Snape silently put everything aside and stood up, wand out.
Nothing moved. The rushes under the furs that made up the floor were brittle and would snap if he walked across them, but to avoid the fire, there was no choice. Biting his lip, Snape bent low and dashed for the door, hoping to take the person outside by at least modest surprise.
Snape's exit from the small tilted door was met with a low growl. He stood to face a scrawny grey and white wolf showing every last yellowed tooth through its loose gums. It growled hard enough it had to pause and lick up the saliva that dribbled off its jowls. Startled to find an animal bold enough to venture this close, Snape backed up a step and considered retreating to fetch a burning log from the hearth, figuring this would teach the animal better than magic would that it should give the village a wide berth.
The wolf growled again, territorial instinct plain in its eyes, but oddly centered on the hut behind Snape. Snape lowered his wand fractionally. "Are you the shaman who lives here?" he asked, assuming that if he were wrong, no harm in talking at an animal.
The wolf's jaw snapped closed and it tilted its head curiously. An instant later, a man in animal skin breaches, tall rubber boots and long fur tunic stood in the wolf's stead. Snape, seeing no wand on the man, lowered his own. "I am an uninvited guest, I think," Snape admitted, trying to come up with appropriate human society noises to explain his presence. Seventeen days, by the counting of the low sunrises, he had been alone here, long enough to forget something he rarely practiced at the best of times.
The shaman, pale steel eyes glowing in the blue, otherworldly light, held up a hand to halt Snape's speech and slipped inside the hut, clearly adept at using the odd door.
He stepped over to stand among the things Snape had spread out and stared down at them. Snape waited in the entry area where a wedge of bare dirt was framed with logs. The shaman picked up the leaf parcels of ingredients, examining some of them with interest, and handed them to Snape with a curt gesture to set them on the other side of the hut. Snape did so, spreading out his cloak to set them, as well as himself, on.
The shaman did not speak, and when Snape tried to explain a bit, the shaman waved him off and felt in his tunic for something. He extracted a pouch and pipe, lit the pipe without a match or a wand and began puffing on it. The smoke smelled of nothing familiar, certainly not tobacco, perhaps bark.
Snape waited—for what, he was uncertain. An hour passed in this awkward silence.
The sound of Apparition outside startled Snape, but not his host. The door opened and a middle-aged woman with almond eyes and round cheeks ducked through the doorway. She sat down on the other side of the hut and shared the pipe. Despite the new arrival, no words were spoken for quite some time. Snape, who was grateful still simply to no longer be a prisoner at his guards' whim, had limitless patience for their slow pace.
It was some time after Snape laid down for a nap that the witch spoke, but in an incomprehensible tongue. The shaman replied likewise. Snape rocked to a sitting position and expressed interest even though he could not understand.
Silence fell and stretched long. Snape cleared his throat and said, "I do apologize for my intrusion. The person who brought me here seemed to know you. Perhaps you know him? Harry Potter."
The pair visibly stiffened. The shaman knocked the pipe bowl on a hearth stone and put it away with solemnity.
"Harry Potter brought you here?" the witch asked, disbelief clear.
"Yes," Snape said.
The pair glanced at each other, Snape could not catch their thoughts over the brightness of the hearth flames shielding them.
"Why?"
"To recover. I was injured."
Another impenetrable burst of conversation, then, "But why here?"
"You don't know Mr. Potter?" Snape asked, knowing well the best way to combat uncomfortable questions was with more questions.
Unsatisfactory silence met his query and nothing more was said.
Meal preparations commenced in equal silence, the only chatter coming from the implements used. By the time a wooden board with food was passed over to him, Snape was beginning to really like these people and especially their lack of incessant prattle.
After the meal, Snape's hosts began packing up amidst abbreviated back and forth conversation. The witch said, "We can just make it tonight. We will take you."
"Take me where?"
"To Potter."
Snape revealed more surprise that he liked when he blurted, "You're going to take me to Harry Potter?"
Nods from his hosts as they shrugged on their coats and shuffled out of the hut. Snape grabbed up his satchel of ingredients and his broomstick and hurried to follow. Outside, the two of them were strapping on skis. A pair was put down for him, which he balked at. He hovered his broomstick instead, and sat upon it. The shaman pointedly bundled the abandoned skis together and held them out. Snape perched them on his shoulder since he could not argue, as they shared no language in common to argue with.
Off they went, at a surprising pace given the age of the expedition. Snape flew along behind, sometimes holding the bundled skis out as a tow line to speed up long ascents. The first time this offer was made, it was turned down, but not the second time.
Hours glided by over the snowy, rocky landscape. In the distance to the left, deep valleys opened up, green with pines, but ahead of them the ground grew increasingly rocky and barren beneath the hissing snow.
Eventually, the broom gave out. It simply settled to the ground. Snape stood and brushed the snow off his cloak and stared down at it. The shaman gestured at the skis, which Snape reluctantly donned. The journey progressed far slower after that, especially since rather than pulling others uphill, Snape had to remove the skis and walk. An hour into this and his breath filled the air before his face with panting fog and he could not draw relief into his lungs no matter the effort he put into it.
Snape called for a rest and sat down on a rock, not caring that the cold of it sucked the heat from him. He remained hunched there until his breathing returned to normal. With a clearer head, he took in his surroundings. There was nothing here but blowing humps of white: the Sahara desert of snow. He peered at each of his companions in turn, but could detect nothing in their minds of concern to him, just a desire to move on and return home quickly.
Legs quivering, Snape stood and began breathing heavily to get ahead of it in hopes of not immediately falling breathless again. They continued their slow progress until the light began to fade, rendering the snow a slate blue-grey that masked large dips and buried rocks. Snape fell repeatedly, so he removed the skis and used them as walking sticks until the next downhill where he waited for both of them to reach the bottom and utilized the deeper of their two trails to follow.
The sloping ground met a rocky incline too steep to climb. The shaman pointed along this cliff-face and the witch said, "You'll have to go on alone."
Snape's tired brain did not allow him to do more than than stare at them. The skis were taken from his unresisting hands and the woman said, "Up around that way. Just a kilometer more. Go on. You cannot miss it."
"Miss what?" he asked, but they were already moving off with haste and glancing sharply around themselves, then up at the sky, which gave the distinct impression of apocalypse the way it fell in tumbling, torn flakes.
Snape pulled his cloak tightly around his body to block the wind and leaned into the path, picking his way carefully along the rugged join where the ground met cliff. The curving slope leveled off and the going became much easier even as the snow began to fall blindingly thick. As he parted the swirling wall of flakes, Snape kept the steep hill in view on his right to avoid losing his way in an endless, fatal circle.
The snow gusted first one way, then the other, alternating pelting and pushing, and then within a span of feet it slowed and trickled off to a few drifting flakes. Snape stopped and glanced behind him where the wind visibly corkscrewed the snow along the barren cliff.
Feeling more optimistic about finding something, Snape walked forward and stopped again when a glittering fortress trickled into view through the low-lit gloom, nestled in a dry gorge. At first glimpse it appeared to be a magnificent soaring ice replica of a castle, but closer in, deficiencies appeared. The turrets had melted and refrozen many times and in between had been re-grown with less skill than the original maker possessed.
Snape huffed in and out, fogging his view as he considered the scene. A sloping entrance had been cut in the side of the cliff and ice wall, leading to a high door, but below this, another door, a crack in the rock, really, led inside too. That way promised safer exploration of this strange place.
Snape made his way under the looming ice castle's gaze and slipped inside the crevice beneath it. The scent just inside alarmed him with its misplaced familiarity. He tossed a Lumos out of his wand and reeled back from what it illuminated: raw flesh. Catching himself on the wall of ice behind him, Snape gazed around at another hanging figure, half-butchered, thigh bone protruding. The thing swayed on a hook, antlers grazing the uneven stone floor. Snape patted his chest—a gesture he would have been appalled to be conscious of. Moving the wand, he examined the next figure, also partly butchered, but half-encased in the ice growing out from the wall. Beneath the glittering frozen surface, endless blood red figures hung in long rows, fully entombed.
Snape shook the spell from the wand and made his way back outside where the castle's splintered glow lit the gorge opening in a mockery of welcome. There was nothing for it; he could not stay down here and there was no other shelter. He could Apparate away, but the only destination in range was the place from which he had just been evicted.
Snape made his way gingerly up the icy path arcing along the cliff-face, wand at ready. At the top, the path broadened to a platform, framed by the ice columns of the doorway. There were no doors, so Snape slipped inside, shaking off the Lumos spell.
A wall blocked the entrance and, by design, the wind, but passages curled around it on either side. Snape slipped to the right, lured by a flickering hint of flames catching on the rippled, wet wall. Snape hesitated long enough to reassure himself that if this were Potter's house, he could be safely presumed to be hospitable, given his recent actions. Having seen the young man in battle, Snape had no desire to face his ire unleashed. He hesitated longer, even after establishing this logic, before reminding himself again that he had no choice.
Around the bend, indirect light mutely flooded a grand hall of ice, complete with facing ice hearths holding merrily crackling fires. The cathedral-like ceiling arched high above, interrupted only by the cliff face flattening it preemptively like a wound. A figure sat on a pile of furs, bent deeply over some sewing. Snape stood as frozen as the walls framing him as he took in the bizarrely familiar lines of the figure. The woman moved, sending clearer auburn hues off her hair. Snape ceased to breathe as he watched, transfixed. Finally she raised her head to tug her work-piece around ninety degrees, removing all doubt besides that of lost sanity.
The woman froze as well and raised her gaze, alert. She stared at Snape, who could do nothing more than stare back. Lily Potter slipped her feet under her and stood straight with lean ease, showing alarm in her pose, even as her voice held something quite different. "Severus?"
Snape managed to shift one arm, the one holding his wand. He must have fallen in the snow, fallen and had lost his mind to the cold. That would explain the conflicting hallucination of ice and fire—he was hypothermic, dying. He could not bring himself to care about this conclusion—to spell himself with a heat charm to recover; he feared the vision would fade if he did and that would be another, less palatable death.
Lily stepped closer and repeated his name. Snape glanced down at himself. He wore the cloak Potter had given him—the cloak of humble acceptance. What a thing to die in.
"Severus, what are you doing here?"
Snape blinked at her. Up close she no longer appeared a vision of twenty years before, but a more reasonable one of grey-sprinkled temples, crudely pampered hair, and faintly lined eyes. Why would he hallucinate her that way?
"Come over by the fire," she invited, tugging on his arm, which snapped him from his doomed revery.
By the time they traversed the fur-carpeted floor and reached a fur-clad ice block before the seemingly glass-enclosed fire, Snape bumblingly managed to ask, "What are you doing here? What are you doing alive?"
Her face fell at this, which was not rational; how could it be? She touched his cheek to check his temperature and he nearly fainted at the contact, barely catching himself on the unforgivingly hard edge of the ice chair. He crouched over his quivering arm, trying to comprehend what was happening, trying to establish what was real.
She hovered another ice block close by, tossed a spare fur from the floor over it, and said simply, "I asked you first."
Snape raised his head to stare at the closest set of homely flames, at the surrounding hearth, which perpetually melted and refroze he now noticed. "I can't possibly explain that," he said, wondering where reality left off and his delusions began. He had to admit, it could have left off a long time ago and he just had not noticed until the small changes added up to such undeniable absurdity.
"Nothing today, Mum," a voice announced from the doorway. "No game for miles."
Snape stood and spun around to face the familiar voice and found himself swaying again. It was Harry Potter all right, but not at all like he expected. This young man had a boy's stature, and correspondingly oversized head accentuated by his mop of dark hair.
Harry came to a halt and gaped at Snape. "Professor?" he blurted in sheer surprise.
"Potter," Snape greeted him with a nod, trying to gain enough time to connect dots that had no relation to one another. He gave up.
"What are you doing here?" Lily asked Snape, emboldened by having backup.
Snape answered, "I was led here by the shaman in the village. I came looking for . . . well, for Harry." That was a good enough story, he thought.
"Does Voldemort know you're here?" Lily asked.
Snape removed his eyes from the elvin-like green ones of Harry. They were too dark as well as too large. He fixated instead on the identical feminine ones peering up at him in concern.
"Voldemort is dead," Snape said, and started when Harry exclaimed, "I told you, Mum! I could tell."
"He's really gone?" she whispered. "What happened?"
"A powerful wizard came and destroyed him," Snape stated slowly, glancing back to Harry, who jumped down to cling to his mother's hand, kneeling beside her in a gesture that struck Snape as Victorian.
"So then you came." Lily said. "Did you know we were here?" Her brow furrowed as her mind worked, as sharp as ever.
"Not exactly," Snape said. "Before I can reasonably explain, I need to figure out some things for myself." He stated this with some authority, hoping it would keep the questions at bay. "But, what-" he began, but locked his jaw when she held up her hand.
"Harry," she said fawningly to the young man resting on one bent knee beside her ice block. "Can you go fetch more wood for the piles in here, please?"
Harry bit his lip and nodded eagerly, fairly skipping from the room. The wood piles already teetered near the ceiling, two to three deep.
Lily said, "You were going to ask again how I am alive." She sighed sadly. "I don't want to repeat it in front of him. It tears him to pieces."
Snape held his breath as her jewel-green gaze faded and she explained, "Years passed before Harry could even confess it all. Voldemort, using one of his weakest servants, had defeated Harry. He had offered Harry us, James and me, in exchange for the Philosopher's Stone. Harry said he wasn't certain how he ended up with the stone; it just fell into his pocket when he looked into the Mirror of Erised. After that he was defenseless. Voldemort's servant subdued him with a spell and took the stone. But after having promised him us in exchange for retrieving it, Voldemort believed he was bound to the contract of his promise or risk the stone being of no use. So he brought us to life using what Harry describes as rather gruesome Dark Magic executed in the graveyard in Godric's Hollow."
She drifted off, gaze pained. The lines of her face grew deeper and Snape needed time to build up the cruelty needed to prompt for more. "But, what became of James?"
The change was barely perceptible, but a shadow darkened her features. "He could not take being here. He insisted upon challenging Voldemort." Another long gap, but she restarted on her own. "He lost of course. Voldemort dumped him here . . ." She gestured at a spot on the floor nearby. "Making it clear it would not be tolerated again."
Snape tried to imagine the scene. The headstrong James Potter sitting still in an ice cage. "But he did it again?"
She nodded, drained by doing so.
"That was selfish of him," Snape said. "Abandoning the two of you here like that."
Nearly inaudible, she said, "It broke the rest of Harry's heart." She turned away, as the object of her statement, returned, hovering a load of wood before him.
Lily was biting her lower lip and fighting for control, so Snape stood and approached the young man. "How about there?" he suggested, picking an area with a small gap between the pile and the ceiling.
Harry responded to his attention with strange shyness, and moved quickly, and therefore clumsily, to comply. Snape gave no notice to the banging of logs while he occupied his time examining the ice hearth. The spells must be renewed regularly he suspected. Smoke had blackened the ice blocks, visible through the wall all the way up to the roof.
Harry glanced at his mum, brow twitching low. Snape had been watching for that. He asked, "Who renews the spells?"
"Mum, usually. Me, sometimes."
Lily stood and came over to help hover the excessive wood to other open spots. She had recovered but the strain showed in the rigid lines of her neck and back.
"Shall we have a roast?" Harry asked as he hovered more wood into the nearest roaring hearth. He turned his large eyes on Snape. "Are . . . are you staying for dinner?"
"If I am invited," Snape said, pretending he had an option.
"Of course. There's plenty to eat."
Snape knew for a fact this was true. "You must hunt a lot . . . and successfully," he observed, pulling out a flattering tone with some effort.
Harry leaned in a little, eyes sparkling for just an instant. "I can sneak up on them in deer form and catch them by surprise."
This time effort was not required. "You're an Animagus?" Snape asked.
"Mum taught me," Harry said, turning shy again, but then in a blink his face lit up. "I learned quickly, she thought. Isn't that right, Mum?" he blurted loudly.
"Yes, of course, Harry," she said calmly.
The evening passed with copious meat served in the high open space between roaring fires. Snape repeatedly shook himself from a reverie to find, yet again, that this unexpected place, and unexpected people, were as real as himself. While extracting the marrow from a heavy bone, he pondered the mystery of the two Harrys. By this time he had expected at least a sketchy theory to have manifested itself, but the facts refused to find any arrangement, even an implausible one. His expectations still jarred him when he studied the young man on his left. This Harry rarely met his gaze and when he did, he demonstrated clearly that he knew nothing of Occlumency. Snape took advantage of the glimpses he got, finding a wounded and straightforward boy, whose ego spent most its time trying to guard against utter self-loathing through distraction or servitude to his mother.
Snape tried his best to be nice to him, limited in this by his resistance to sounding false. The boy gobbled up any nibble of kindness sent his way.
"Can you show me that spell?" Harry asked, when Snape quartered and cored a half-desiccated apple with one wave.
"Certainly."
Harry grinned eagerly and drew out his wand. Snape said, "But there are far more interesting ones I could teach you."
The short remainder of the late evening was spent on spells. The radiant walls of the hall rendered night into endless twilight. Harry proved to be an impatient student, but given Lily was the audience, Snape found patience enough and with firm but light prods of chastisement, Harry fell into better behavior. He was like a child seven years younger than his calendar age. Removed from his peers and faced with nothing of solace, he had stagnated on maturing.
To keep the wild spells from disturbing Lily, the lesson proceeded on the other side of the long room.
"You have a partial grasp of that one. Perhaps that's enough for tonight," Snape said after Harry managed to transfigure a cup into a capon's wing, rather than a whole, live capon.
Harry's eyes turned blatantly hurt, so Snape firmly said, "We will do more tomorrow. Do not worry yourself."
With an unskilled surreptitious glance at his mother, Harry sidled closer to Snape and whispered, "How long are you going to stay?"
This was an excellent question. "As long as I am welcome." He left out that he had no place to go. He had planned to begin a long journey, possibly to Australia, but traveling untraceably it would be a lengthy journey. Other options, still half formed, had begun to occur to him. Whispering as well, he asked, "Do you wish me to stay?"
Harry's lips trembled, immediately overwrought. "Mum hasn't been this, well, happy in a long time."
Snape resisted glancing behind him. He swallowed hard, finding additional old feelings rising to life. If this was happy, he loathed to see how she was normally. He dreamed of staying, so to be begged to stay made it hard to control his voice. "If you feel that is true, I shall stay," he stated primly.
Harry nodded, equally sober, eyes radiating gratitude. Snape put aside the cups and stones they had been using for spell work, catching Lily's gaze when he turned. She did not practice any Occlumency either.
"Will you go hunting again in the morning?" Snape asked, thinking of when he would next be alone with Lily.
"Do you want to come along?" Harry brightly asked, keen on the topic.
Snape let his lips twitch, thinking how ridiculously naive the question was. "I am certain I would only slow you down and lead to failure. I just inquire because there are potion ingredients I could obtain from a fresh kill, and there is some brewing I would like to do." He sized Harry up. "For example, would you like to be a bit taller, perhaps?"
Harry grinned. "Am I small?" He peered up at Snape with his deep green eyes. "Compared to you, I guess I am."
Snape shuffled forward to better compare. "Yes, I think you should be about my height. And we'll work on spells when you return from hunting. Lots of spells." The eyes would be hard to fix; they would have to do.
Harry's smile held pain it so pressed itself upon his mouth. "I'd like that!" He rushed over to his mother to share the news.
Under his breath, Snape said, "I'd like to return to England, eventually. And with Harry Potter, powerful wizard and defeater of the Dark Lord as an ally, I might just be able to."
- 888 -
Harry flew his mind over snowy ranges, flat lakes of ice, tree-covered slopes, until he found Per's village. The ground around the huts showed trampling, but there was no life about and no smoke. Not skilled at steering, Harry veered one way and then another, trying to see closer in. He found the ski trail departing the village accidentally while trying to better tune his vision. He could freeze the scene well enough, and he did so now, pondering the two tracks leading away. Uphill they split into two and downhill merged into one.
Harry swayed on his feet. He ached to quit this task. His mind had rapidly exhausted just finding this place, and now all he wanted to do was release what he struggled to keep hold of and step out of the maelstrom whipping by him. With a deep breath he leaned forward, instinctively using broomstick motions to fly, but this did not work. He had to concentrate in a wholly new way, and each time he managed it, he grew increasingly worn raw by the effort.
The ski trail rambled up and down, suddenly splitting into two with a less skilled third veering between them. He cared little for this mystery, and flew past the last of the trees and into a sharply hilly area. Harry followed mindlessly, casting ahead with dead reckoning in the spots where the trail had blown smooth, until he blinked and froze at what he saw in the crux of two sharp cliffs. Glittering in the sunlight was an ice castle as tall as Hogwarts. This time his curiosity drew him forward without will, which was fortunate because he could not have expended even one more ounce of effort to move himself within this place.
He passed through the walls of the castle and looked down upon the ice floor. Ice-hearths rose out of the floor, facing each other, glowing yellow-orange with flame. One long wall was lined three-logs-deep with fresh wood. Ice blocks formed furniture, some draped with hides to make them livable. Upon one, two figures were curled around each other. The hair and beaked nose on the taller one was instantly recognizable. The other . . . Harry nearly staggered and lost the scene while he caught himself. The maelstrom buffeted him helplessly again.
"Harry?" Snape's voice prodded in concern, disturbing Harry's fragile reality all the more.
Harry waved him off and finding renewed strength in determination, grasped that scene out of the flow and forced that place to return to view. Determination worked well and moments later he was facing the same icy architecture. He passed through the glowing outside wall, lower down where the view would be clearer. Startled again, this time by finding a vision of himself sitting on a skin on the floor, cutting up something with a knife. Well, it was sort of himself. Almost a simultaneously younger and older version. So his counterpart had not died in this place, and his mother was alive. Harry puzzled that, stiffening in distressed surprise as Snape ran his fingers casually through his mother's hair. When his mother rested her head on Snape's chest in response, Harry let the scene go and simply floated there, battered without will in the surf of possibility.
"Step aside," Snape commanded through his stunned paralysis. Harry could barely concentrate on his guardian beyond. Given the tone he used, Snape may have repeated himself several times and Harry only now heard him.
Harry rotated his head to peer down at his feet. He stood in a nearly solid upwards tunnel of rushing scenes. They felt natural now, in tune with his being, the same way one feels after floating in water too long. But his mind was dissolving, losing track of itself. If he slipped through to the Dark Plane now, he felt he could slip into all places at once and cease to exist. He was too tired to even feel alarm at this daunting prospect. Harry took one step to the side, scuffing the inner pentagon, and the scenes faded and fluttered, releasing his focus to find on the perfectly normal room beyond. Another step and he was freed from the deluge.
Snape destroyed the device with one sweeping Scourgify. Harry stumbled to the closest couch, disoriented from being released from the sensory confusion into stark solidity. He gripped the edge of the couch cushions and breathed deeply.
After several minutes of this, surprise took over that Snape had not spoken. Harry glanced up at him. His guardian stood, gaze watchful, arms across his front, wand held horizontally to the side. "Are you quite all right?" he asked in concern.
Harry rubbed one tired eye and nodded despite his shaking hand. "You were right; I didn't understand what was happening there." Overwhelmed again by what he had found, Harry flopped back and tilted his head up to stare at the chandelier, noting that the unlit candles mounted on it were all of varying lengths and that long drips of wax had formed beneath the stubby ones. This was not important, but he could not stop himself from observing it. Also the daylight from the upper windows cast broad ovals on the ceiling. He had never noticed that either.
"Safe to approach?" Candide asked from across the room.
Snape turned on his toes. "Yes."
Candide strolled over and stood beside Snape, putting an arm loosely around him. Harry watched them in the edge of his vision. The scene reminded him of another, which he thought best to wait on discussing until Candide was absent.
"What did you find?" Snape asked.
Harry pulled a dismayed face. "Let's just leave it at: I didn't understand what was going on." He turned to the two of them. "But I don't regret what I did. It still worked out," he asserted, but felt another ripple of surprise. "But, it's true I didn't really understand," he reiterated yet again and sighed.
Harry's muscles quivered from being over stressed. He pillowed his head on his arm and shut his eyes, intending to just rest them for a moment.
Candide whispered, "You didn't set him too hard a task, did you?"
Snape took a step to the side to better study Harry who was lying on his arm with his hand hanging out into space, half-closed around something invisible. Dismissively, Snape said, "He's young; he will recover."
It was Ron and Ginny's arrival for lunch that roused Harry from a light doze where he dreamed that he was arguing with a vision of himself about which of them should do what.
Ron slapped Harry hard on the shoulder as he tried to clear the stray threads of the dream from his thoughts.
"Ouch," Harry complained. "Wotcher, Ron."
Ginny said, "I thought you had the late shift tonight, not last night."
"I do." Harry said. He pushed himself to his feet and felt for his wand, but then realized he did not need it out for what he wanted to try. "Ginny, feel like a few curse drills?"
Sulkily, Ron complained, "You never ask me to help with those."
Harry still felt weak and if he got hit with some wild thing Ron sent his way, it may knock him out. "That's because your attenuation is non-existent."
Ron tossed his hands out, fingers spread. "I work with Trolls, Harry. Do you know how much spell it takes to get a Troll's attention?"
Ignoring his sore body, Harry took up a position opposite Ginny, whose face was already deep in concentration. When she sent a weak Jelly Legs his way, it did not feel the same as when he had been casting at himself in the other Plane. But, of course it would not be the same, he told himself, holding frustration at bay. But he still knew now how things worked, even if he could no longer touch the spell all along the way. He could feel a curse being generated at the beginning, and he could see it come out of the wand. Maybe he could just guess on the timing in between.
Ginny changed to a blinding curse. "No," Harry said, "go back to the other one." She obliged without comment. Harry thought through the steps. He could feel the curse forming, then it had to be cast, passing down the arm and into the wand, where it was focused and modulated, then it came out. If he wanted to crimp the curse off as it entered the wand, that was about three quarters of the way along.
For several rounds, in the manner of a musician, he counted out the rhythm between generation and emission, estimating the stages and on the forth time, he squeezed down, blindly it felt like, on the spot where her hand met the wand.
Ginny dropped her wand, habitually stooped to reach for it, then brightened and left it for a moment. "Harry! That was excellent. My fingers went limp."
Ron bounced off the couch. "Can I try?"
"Let me try a few more rounds with Ginny. Same spell."
Snape wandered out of the drawing room and leaned on the doorframe to observe. The extra audience was a distraction, and it required to more tries to get the timing right again. Too early and the spell still came out as if his crushing it down failed because it met no resistance. Too late and he still got hit, but with less power, and Ginny could still hold firm to the wand.
Harry's heart beat faster and his focus grew farther inward as he counted and crunched each casting. When he had that spell stopped reliably, Harry said, "Try a different curse."
He counted again against a Blindness Curse, feeling like he had it just right, but he missed, and his vision flickered out. "Drat, that one's different." He asked her to repeat it until he could find the right timing on that spell as well.
After uncountable dozens of rounds against both his friends and many dropped wands, Harry waved them off and looked over at his guardian. Daunted by the task before him, he said, "I need some help on spell theory. I don't want to have to learn them all individually."
Snape stood with his arms half crossed, thumb thoughtfully grazing his lower lip. His expression was inscrutable. "Of course," he said.
After lunch, Harry and his friends walked around the village to take advantage of a warm shift in the weather. Harry thought about that other, unbelievably peaceful place where the weather could be nice all the time with the right magical device. Ron and Ginny argued half the walk. This proved a distraction to Harry, who wanted more than anything just some quiet time to think.
When they were approaching the house again, Harry said, "You know, I have a ton to do, and-"
"Ah," Ron interrupted. "Harry needs to assemble his plans for world domination, now that he is unstoppable."
"I, uh, what?" Harry rolled his eyes. Trouble was, really, which world, a darkly humorous part of his mind supplied. "I have field work after dinner and I can't take over the world if I haven't done my readings."
"I understand," Ron said. "Plus, Ginny's got a date to get ready for and if she doesn't start six hours ahead of time . . ."
It was Ron's turn to rub his arm where he had been struck. "It's true," he argued, veering out of range.
Despite Harry's prior insistence that he needed to do his studies, when he returned alone to the house, he sought out Snape instead of his books.
Snape stood over the small trunk he used to ferry things home for the weekend. He was sorting things out of it into either a pile or the low-burning hearth. "Do you want help with curse negation?" Snape asked.
"I do," Harry said. "But I have something else I want to talk to you about."
His glance out the door prompted Snape to say, "Candide has gone to the office for a few hours."
"I'm surprised you let her."
"She insisted that you could liberate her on your way into the Ministry, if need be."
"I'd be happy to," Harry said.
Snape gestured at a chair and set the trunk aside on the floor, giving Harry his full attention from the seat behind the desk.
Buying time, Harry said, "I'm still thinking about what you said, about you acting less like a father." He stopped, startled by how hard it was to hear himself say it. "I wish it didn't have to be that way."
Snape gave a marginal, crooked nod of acknowledgment and waited for Harry to go on.
"But you are probably right." Harry rubbed his fingers together and fell silent. Snape was correct that Harry could no longer find the will to obey him.
Snape said, "I am quite curious what you found in that other place and I am wondering if you will tell me."
A prickle went through Harry. He looked up again and tried to gauge how to explain. Words failed him and he snorted lightly. Diving into the safer waters of this topic, he said, "Well, that place's Harry wasn't really dead."
"No? Previously you were confident on that point."
"That was based on Voldemort's reaction. But he knew something I didn't know: that he had that Harry helplessly under his thumb."
Snape's brow rose and his chair creaked as he leaned back and steepled his fingers before him. He waited.
Harry hesitated. Finally, he said, "I once accused you of having a thing for my mother and you said you didn't."
Snape's expression did not change, but he fell into stillness. "I did say that."
"But was that true?" Harry asked, finding he could not let this question lie unanswered.
Snape's face shifted an iota into confusion without losing an edge of hard challenge. "What does it matter?"
"It might," Harry insisted dramatically. "You never know."
At this, Snape's brows came down and he stared at Harry with obvious scrutiny. Trouble was, every time Harry thought about this issue, his emotions landed somewhere else. He was starting to feel that he should not let them settle anywhere, for fear of where that may be. If Snape had lied, maybe that was why: to simplify things.
Snape hmfed. "Perhaps I withdraw my question."
But Harry's emotional merry-go-round had just stopped somewhere else, and without thinking he said, "So, if you liked my mum a lot, why were you so cruel to me when we first met?"
The answer to this came easily. "Because you were nothing like her."
"I wasn't?" Harry challenged.
"You were just like your father," Snape insisted, voice snapping lightly.
Harry, who knew for verifiable fact that this was not true, hesitated for fear of revealing his evidence. Given how much he resisted that thought, he felt stung. "Are you certain of that? I don't believe it."
He was hiding his thoughts, so something must have come out in his voice. Snape backed down. "Perhaps not," he conceded softly.
"I don't think I'm anything like him," Harry muttered, dismayed.
This brought the edged eyes back again. "I fear you speak from experience."
The chill returned along the flesh on the back of Harry's neck. "So what if I do?" he replied with a cocky edge of his own.
Snape pointed at him, dragging his broad sleeve over the loose papers piled on his desk. "That's your father, right there."
"Oh."
Silence fell. Snape sat back again and did not take his eyes off Harry. "Are you speaking from experience?" he asked outright.
Harry stared down at his fingers. They were young fingers. "Yes." And then before he could be interrupted, he added with feeling, "But I learned something super important."
"Shall I hazard a guess what that may be?"
"Er, sure," Harry said, awkwardly derailed from speaking something from the heart.
Snape leaned forward and said, "You learned that it is highly unwise to jump around into different existences?"
"Um, no."
Snape sat back yet again. "Pity," he snipped.
Harry stared at Snape, who was holding firm on his display of disapproval. Harry found himself grinning and unable to stop. The man sitting before him was responsible for most of the difference between himself and that offensive version he had dueled.
Snape sighed audibly. "What in the world is that about?"
Harry shrugged knowingly. "It's just that . . . I wouldn't have wished for things to turn out a certain way. How could I? But nevertheless, they may have turned out for the best."
Snape lost all of his edges in the face of this. He pondered Harry openly. After a time he sighed again and asked, "So during the time that I was plotting how best to prove to you that your actions in leaving this Plane were unwise, you had already left to visit yet another place?"
"Yep," Harry replied.
"For what precise purpose?"
There was nothing for it. "I wanted to see what my parents would be like if they'd survived."
Snape closed his eyes for an instant while he took that in. "And?" he reluctantly asked.
"They were all right. But I didn't like what I'd become, at all. I was spoiled and miserable and not friends with the people I care about here."
"What . . . had you turned into your father?" Snape immediately returned.
Harry held back on a retort. Oddly, despite agreeing, he still yearned to strike back at that.
Snape said, "Sorry," with real feeling. "I should know better. Tough to compete with such endless possibilities."
"Merlin, don't be jealous, Severus."
A harder tone now. "Did I say I was?"
Harry smiled faintly. "There's no reason to be." He stared far away, feeling a painful metamorphosis churning inside him. "It all worked out for the best," he stated with certainty this time.
"Very odd to hear you say that," Snape said, undone.
"I saw them," Harry explained. "All three of them. Not a care in the world. And . . . well, my dad— James was raising his Harry like some kind of Dudley. I didn't want to be him, or even change places with him. I wouldn't've traded for anything." The truth of that freed up something in Harry's midsection and he took an easy deep breath. "Although I wish my mum . . . but never mind."
Quietly, Snape said, "I will always be sorry for your mother, Harry."
Harry knew that to be doubly true now. "I know that."
Harry turned what he had seen at the picnic over in his mind. "But, you know, she let James spoil their Harry terribly. He didn't have to take care of anything himself. And his friends, well, they were all right, but not my friends. My friends didn't even like him." Far away, Harry said, "Can you imagine, not ever having a single bad thing happen to you?"
"No, I cannot." They stared at each other. Snape slowly and clearly said, "Harry, do please come and warn me that you intend to do these things, whether it be trying out a new magic, or . . . simply running off to find a place where Dumbledore still lives. I have given up on punishing you for exploring your skills. If you are going to learn better it will have to be learned the hard way. I want to keep you from harm, not force you into a box too small to contain you. I reserve the right to advise you, but in the end you may do what you think best. I have no power over you in that regard—I admit that now. But I wish to know, to be kept informed. Is that equitable?"
Harry stared at him. "Do you think there could be a place where Dumbledore is still alive?"
Snape closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his long fingers in a pose of defeat.
Next: Chapter 23 — Worth a Weight of Gold
"Why didn't you come to the door?" Harry asked.
Ginny peered at him in disbelief. "Do you know what kind of night-activated spells this place has on it? I didn't even dare touch the gate."
"I didn't think of that," Harry said. "The spells don't bother me." Harry glanced at Hornisham who was enjoying watching them. "Er, what do you need?"
Ginny paced to the wardrobe and back, fitfully. "I had a date . . . I was supposed to have a date with Aaron last night, but he stood me up."
Chapter 23 — Worth a Weight of Gold
Ten minutes ahead of schedule, Harry checked into the Auror's office for his field work. The office exuded a quiet intensity, the kind where it was so busy only one highly engaged person was left to man the office. Tonight, that assignment was covered by Shacklebolt, who stood hunched over the log book, sorting through the assignment slips with fingers too large to easily handle them.
The sight bolstered Harry, who was hoping to get out on a real assignment. He was feeling confident due to partly working out how to squelch curses and hoped to make himself useful rather than going out on regular, usually mindless, patrol. Harry slid over beside the stand holding the log book. When Shacklebolt put down the slips and glanced up, Harry asked, "Can I do anything?"
"Who are you assigned with tonight?"
"I don't know," Harry admitted.
Vineet stepped into the room, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped just inside the door, the picture of innate patience until the Auror said to him, "Tonks said for you to meet her in Scunthorpe. You know how to get there?"
Harry's heart sank a smidgen that this instruction was not directed at him.
Vineet said, "I have knowledge of an Apparition spot in Dragonby . . ."
Shacklebolt, keyed up by the busy night, did not let the Indian finish. "Good, then take a broom." Harry watched his fellow depart, remaining as patient as possible.
There was nothing beyond filing for Harry to do until Rodgers arrived at half past the hour. He rubbed his hands together vigorously and said to Shacklebolt. "You called me in. Luck for you, I didn't have a date."
"Things are busy. Do you ever have a date?"
This made Rodgers' eager gaze slip into insulted.
Shacklebolt rubbed his eyes and sorted through the slips from the beginning. "Busy weekend. We sent Mr. Wickem and Ms. Kalendula home late last night, both complaining about being late for dates. In their case, I believe it was honest."
Something thumped against the stand. Shacklebolt picked up the small chalkboard chained beside the log book. "Tonks has requested backup before forcibly going in to investigate an MCC."
"I get Harry?" Rodgers asked.
Shacklebolt shrugged his broad shoulders. "I'm assuming."
Harry jumped up from Tonks' desk, eager to go. "What's an MCC?" he asked.
Rodgers took his arm. "A mysteriously charmed construct."
A minute later, they arrived in a world of twilight and looming piles of twisted metal parts. Upon arriving Harry, with a thudding heart, imagined that they had leapt into the Dark Plane. But the ground was pitted tarmac rather than dust and the metal stood in sorted piles.
Before Rodgers could slip out of view, Harry ducked down to follow, leading with his wand and enjoying being out in the night air. They crept a long way down an aisle cutting between piles large and small, crossing similar rows that stretched to the sides as far as the dim light could reveal.
A building came into view and Rodgers gestured over his shoulder for Harry to halt. Harry crouched low a few steps behind his trainer's back and glanced around the greyness, instinctively training his wand on a spotted cat that darted stealthily between an old railroad car and a double stack of sagging lorry trailers. He exhaled hard, glad he had held back on a spell that would have given them away.
Rodgers made a nightbird sound and a count of ten later an answering call came from two stacks over. Two figures approached and crouched beside them, both with dark-skinned faces, one with rusty-red hair standing up in a Mohawk.
Tonks whispered, "Nothing on the grounds, but the large metal shed is sealed."
"Magically?" Rodgers asked.
With an air of gripe, Tonks said, "Any other kind of seal would not present a difficulty." She relented on her attitude and said, "The large sliding doors are around the other side. Should be easier to get open."
Following along her lead, Rodgers said to Harry and Vineet. "You two watch the back. Don't make any moves unless the fireworks start, you're signaled, or someone makes a break for it."
They crept off, melting into the background with what must be Obsfucation Charms.
A minute later, Harry, feeling confident, said, "Let's get a little closer than this."
Harry was glad he could not see his fellow's expression in this light. He did not wait for a reply, just slipped ahead to hide behind a pile closer to the small rear door. The painted metal of the long shed glowed in the ambient light of the nearby city. It looked quiet and innocent enough. Harry felt nothing ominous.
When Vineet came aside him, Harry asked, "There was no guard or anything?"
"The dogs sleep most soundly with some assistance," Vineet stated.
Crickets chirped. A car rolled by on a nearby road, its headlights appearing to float.
"How are things with Hermione?" Harry asked, mind wandering after ten minutes of waiting.
He heard rather than saw Vineet swallow hard. "As good as could be expected under circumstances of this nature."
"You don't talk to her like that, do you?"
A pause. "She seems to appreciate this."
"Yeah, I suppose she would."
Far off a dog barked. Another car floated by, stereo thumping. A breeze that threatened to grow chilling drifted through.
"Why this place?" Harry asked, wishing they were kept a little more informed, annoyed that they were not.
"This location was given up by one of the prisoners, after sufficient potion was applied to him."
Harry heard a noise, or he thought he did. His attentive imagination was straining to sense things.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
Vineet nodded. Harry rocked forward off his heels onto his toes. "I wonder what's going on."
Vineet said, "We could not get in."
"Even with you helping?"
"It was not an ordinary barrier. It was something else."
The small noise came again, still too low to give a hint of what it might be.
"I can't stand this," Harry said, gauging the distance to the door in the side of the shed. "Hey, was that open before?"
Maybe it was a trick of the oblique light, but the door appeared to be hanging a few inches open now, based on the wider shadow it cast against the ridged exterior wall.
"It was most definitely not open previously."
"All right, I'm going to stay here," Harry announced in a whisper, wishing he were trusted enough to actually do something directly. He felt more eager tonight than usual, and his wand responded to this, electrically charging his hand. But he may not need it, he thought with excitement; he could squelch two curses for sure, although an angry organized crime wizard was unlikely to resort to a Jelly Legs.
"We were instructed to remain here," Vineet said. "This is a strategic location. We will see anyone depart and will have warning of attack."
"Not if they're invisible. Oh, shit." Harry dashed forward, mind spinning to bad possibilities, such as the perpetrators slipping away under cloak, leaving a deadly booby trap behind.
Harry reached the door and pressed his back up beside it. This made the side of the shed creak just at the edge of hearing. Harry used the tip of his wand to push the door open farther. It swung easily. Vineet had moved to cover him from behind the closest stack, composed of tangled, ropey wire.
Harry pushed the door open further, listening hard to the echoey inside of the building. Their multi-person coordination training made him resist going in. The others would not know he was there. He made himself wait where he was, listening with the door completely open. Inside, loomed ceiling-high racks, barely discernible in the red light glowing from the light switches.
A crash sounded from the other end of the shed, and Harry immediately imagined Tonks had tripped over something. But then a small voice came, speaking something he could not understand, followed by another crash. A high-mounted light flicked on in the distance, outlining the building roof in shadow over the scrap yard.
Harry felt a touch on his arm and found Vineet beside him. Harry, in the lowest voice possible said, "Maybe stall the Muggles if they are coming. I can guard the door." Harry would have offered the other a choice if Tonks had not been involved. Vineet moved off and Harry was just stepping in when something darted in front of him. He had a vision of uplifted, low but oversized palms facing him and then he was airborne. He struck the door and landed in a half-roll, half-skid on the tarmac outside. There had been no warning at all.
Harry scrambled to his feet and pressed himself beside the door, noting with accented stabs in various places that the light metal door hung crooked now, still swaying from his body striking it. He used his toe to move the door out of the way and stood waiting with his wand out. A small, light figure moved inside, and Harry instinctively cast a Netting Charm, followed by a full force Mutushorum. The dim light made it hard to tell, but it seemed like the netting bulged over something.
There may be more than one. Harry thought he should wait until the Aurors inside swept the space. The freezing spell would hold for a while. Content with that mature decision, Harry held his wand at ready and waited for a signal.
A few minutes later, Vineet reappeared and from inside, Tonks said, "Did you do this, Harry?"
Harry stepped inside, guided now by a Lumos from Tonks' wand.
"Yeah."
Under the net lay an elf, albeit a strange looking one with unusually coarse, long hair and black finger nails. Rodgers crouched close and examined it. "Looks like a Caspian elf, or a close relative."
"They don't have the same restrictions on elf powers, I take it?" Tonks asked, rubbing her elbow and frowning painfully.
Vineet interrupted, "The Muggles are delayed, not stopped."
Rodgers stood and waved his wand at their prisoner. "Let's go then. That back door looks like an ordinary break-in, so we are covered."
In the light of the Ministry department, Harry's injuries even attracted the attention of the busy Aurors.
Tonks said, "Take yourself to St. Mungo's, Harry. Skip the next call."
"I'm okay," Harry insisted, using a damp cloth to gingerly soften the caked blood gluing his brow hairs together. His skinned knees stopped hurting when he used a quick healing charm on them. The skin covering his kneecaps looked strangely mottled after the spell, which he was not so adept at. He ignored it till later and tugged his torn trouser legs down. Candide was good at clothing repairs of that sort, so Harry did not attempt to fix them himself.
His body complained when he was summoned to head out again, and he wondered how he could have started the evening so eagerly.
This time they were called to a brawl in a wizard pub in Maidstone. Tonks walked through the melee and straight up to the red-nosed owner. "Why didn'tya close down sooner?" she asked over the noise of smashing chairs and sizzling hexes. The abandoned Harry and Vineet pressed back against the heavy door, partially protected by an alcove, hoping for an opening in the confusion to get across to join Tonks.
Harry stunned a rough looking middle-aged man about to throw a curse at someone two tables away whose back was turned. The stunned man's friend turned and shouted, shaking a fist at them. For a moment the crowd noise eased and the apprentices made a clean dash for the bar.
"It's opening day of Quidditch tomorrow, I can't possibly close down early," the owner was explaining.
The spells and projectiles started up again, bouncing around the hard stone walls like a pinball game. Harry's bruised limbs flinched every time one flew near. He and Vineet took up positions guarding Tonks' back while she talked to the man behind the bar. The man was arguing against arresting everyone since they were his best customers.
A short figure was hurled across the room, and Vineet caught him, or possibly her, with a Hover and lowered the person to the beer-sopped floor. A large wizard muttered, "Bloody Pakki," and rushed at Vineet with no wand in sight. The man was on the floor an instant later, no spell needed. Harry adjusted to better cover Tonks while Vineet set this person aside out of the way. The room had divided itself by colored accessory, mostly scarves and hats: yellow and black on one side, blue and gold on the other. Harry tried one of the crowd control spells they had learned, putting up a wall that stretched to the door. His wand shook as he held the spell and the door across from him rattled in a rich low tone. He should have aimed the spell at the solid wall, he realized, shaking his head at forgetting the rules of a spell they had learned half a year ago. The fighting eased as the parties drunkenly sensed they could not penetrate the barrier to get at each other. One large wizard pressed his forehead against it and futilely swung his arms in loops.
A young man with hair like unmown hay staggered over someone else and pulled his wand on Vineet, who was checking someone draped like a broken doll over an overturned chair beside the wall bench along that side. Harry shouted a warning. Behind him, he heard Tonks spin around. Harry, wand otherwise occupied, scrunched the curse down just as it sputtered from the troublemaker's wand. The man shouted and tossed his wand, holding his sparkling hand, then running around holding it away from himself as though it were on fire. He ran in a panicked circle until he met Harry's wall and then knocked himself out striking it.
This scene shook the crowd to its senses. They all stopped to stare dully at the fallen wizard, so Harry dropped the barrier. The room remained quiet, until someone else staggered and fell. This was a cue for the conscious to start hunting for their possessions amidst the rubble.
The owner came around and cast a Reparo at the first broken thing on the floor. Parts flew in from everywhere to reassemble into a table. Harry had never seen anyone better at that spell. He was sure that was a footstool moments before the parts were so small. Someone cursed and held a shin that had been struck by a flying table leg. The owner said, "Get on out then! I got work to do here and yer in the way."
Tonks stepped down the bar and Harry turned and found her filling a mug from the tap by leaning far over the bar in an unladylike manner. She poured out an inch or so and slid back down to the floor and handed the pint to Harry after taking a gulp. "Vineet?"
The Indian shook his head. Tonks took Vineet's share and gesturing with the mug, said, "You were lucky that pillock's wand backfired."
Harry turned to her a little sharply. Snape's instructions to him about seeking advice and keeping him informed bled over into that moment. "I did that."
Tonks grew hard. "Was that a Forbidden Curse?"
"No, just a . . . what was the incantation?"
Vineet said, "I believe it was a Morey Eel Curse."
"Something minor," Harry assured her.
"Depends on where it latches on," Tonks stated with insinuation. "So, you're getting better at blocking things sans wand," she said. "You been practicing during training?"
"No. I can't always use it on someone I like, since the spell backs up into their arm."
She appeared doubtful and with a snort, said, "I think any spell someone is willing to throw at me, I'd be willing to make them eat."
"We shall keep that in mind," Vineet stated.
- 888 -
Harry shed the heaviest of his clothes and dropped into bed. His shoulder and several other spots complained bitterly when he shifted, as if they had been holding back on their grievances until just that moment. He rubbed his eyebrow and found it tender and stinging and crusting over with a scab. Perhaps he should not have resisted suggestions that he see a Healer. Had it been daytime he would have willingly visited the Ministry's own Healer, but he could not avail himself of that after hours.
The late hour and the release from stress let him fall into sleep despite his aches, which followed him into his dreams. He dreamt that he again stood before his own defeated double, wand held out, his mum and dad attending to his rival. In the dream he wanted to argue that he was hurt too and deserved some attention, but his mouth refused to move. He stood frozen in place, wand aimed, peering out of locked eyes as everyone diverged around him like a rock in a stream.
Someone shook Harry's shoulder and with a flinch of pain he was back in his room, blinking in the glaring lamp flame. He rolled to sit up and reached for his glasses, only to have them placed in his hand.
Harry wearily fitted his glasses onto his head and looked around. The world was still well inside night beyond the window. He asked, "What time is it?"
"Half past four. What is in your nightmare?"
Harry had only been asleep an hour. The Monitor did not rest on the night stand. "How'd you know I was having one?"
Snape remained still an instant before tugging the night stand drawer open. The half globe of swirling glass threw its eerie light around the contents of the drawer.
"Ah," Harry muttered. "Don't worry; the nightmare is nothing."
"No?" Snape prodded doubtfully. But he distracted himself from that line of questioning with, "What happened to your head?"
"I got thrown out a door. I was a little overconfident, I think." He frowned, remembering getting hit with no warning. "Here I thought I had worked out something really useful, but it turns out elf offensive magic is something I can't sense, even it if feels like a curse when it hits."
"You were battling an elf?"
"A strange elf. Rodgers said it looked like a Caspian elf."
"Interesting," Snape said. He reached to prod Harry's forehead, making Harry flinch away. Snape continued talking as he held Harry's head steady. "They are bound to their masters differently than our own elves. I have heard it theorized that this is because they have more rogue power than our own elves, since they were domesticated more recently." He tapped Harry's brow with his wand and let him go. "And even in this day are sometimes taken from the wild."
Harry rubbed his brow, finding only a faint sensitivity there. "Thanks," he said, trying not to feel chagrin.
"Need a Healer?"
"Not anymore."
Snape slipped his wand away into his dressing gown. "So, you learned this evening that understanding the limits of your power is more powerful than having new and unusual powers?"
"I did better at the pub brawl."
"Busy night."
"Yep."
Harry settled back under the duvet, undisturbed by dreams until the scent of breakfast drew him from a deep slumber.
That afternoon, Harry found a few books on elves among Snape's collection and took them to his room. In the back of his mind he thought he behaved too much like Hermione, but such knowledge did not seem trivial anymore. Perhaps no knowledge seemed trivial to Hermione. It was not until Hornisham came for her shift, that he realized how long he had been reading. He arrived downstairs just in time to find Snape making his goodbyes to Candide.
"You're not staying for dinner?" Harry asked.
"McGonagall prefers I make an appearance on Sunday evening. Remus fares well enough as a backup Head of House, but he is too easily fooled by those who do not wish to put in the effort to complete their assignments for Monday morning."
Snape accepted a peck on the cheek from Candide. "Owl me, Harry," was the last thing he said, before stepping into the Floo.
Hornisham was pleased to join them for dinner after some urging. She had unlimited stories about magical animals and tonight told them one about an old wizard who brought in a boa constrictor to Control insisting it was the spawn of Nessie. The boa ate a fire chicken and burped hard boiled eggs for weeks after, which one of her colleagues insisted tasted fine.
With Candide suitably engaged and thinking sheepishly of unfinished assignments for Monday morning, Harry headed up to his room to start his readings. He stacked the elf books aside, amazed at how far he had read into them based on the bookmark locations. If only he had started in on his assigned readings instead, he considered with a long exhale as he leaned back onto a stack of pillows. Hornisham joined him a short time later, and the ticking of her steel needles made for an accelerated marking of the time.
A light tick sounded against the glass, nearly lost in the clicking of knitting needles. Harry thought it must be his owl, but Hedwig was already asleep in her cage. The sound made her ruffle her feathers. The noise came again. Harry stood to go to the window, but Hornisham gruffly gestured him back.
Harry backed up with a roll of his eyes, head lolling to the side in frustration. Hornisham levered the sash open and leaned out. Ginny's voice came floating up, "I need to talk to Harry."
When Harry moved to the window a second time, his guard's rough hand blocked him. Used to handling large animals, he had no chance. "How do ya' know it's her?" she growled.
Harry ducked as close to the window as he was allowed to. "Ginny, fly up here," he shouted down to the figure in the road.
Seconds later a redtail hawk alighted on the sill and hopped inside, transforming smoothly back into the youngest Weasley.
"See," Harry said. "Has to be her, no one could fake that."
Hornisham gave in with hmf of approval and resumed her seat.
"Why didn't you come to the door?" Harry asked.
She peered at him in disbelief. "Do you know what kind of night-activated spells this place has on it? I didn't even dare touch the gate."
"I didn't think of that," Harry said. "The spells don't bother me." Harry glanced at Hornisham who was enjoying watching them. "Er, what do you need?"
Ginny paced to the wardrobe and back, fitfully. "I had a date . . . I was supposed to have a date with Aaron last night, but he stood me up."
"Oh," Harry said. "Sorry about that."
"Why? What's going on?" Ginny demanded.
"I don't know," Harry helplessly said. "I just thought I should apologize for him."
She appeared confused by this, but went on. "So, I thought, fine, his loss. But today, I thought differently and went to go see him. But I can't find him anywhere. I sent an owl to his mum and she sent me this reply. See."
She held out a letter, which was strangely crinkly. It basically stated that she could not reply. "That's odd," Harry said, turning the letter over to stare at the blank back of it in case there was more.
"Those are tear stains, Harry. I checked."
This gave Harry pause. "You have a spell to check for that?"
"I have drops from the twins that check for that. They didn't sell the same stuff to the boys at Hogwarts as they did to the girls."
Harry stared at the letter. "What's going on, I wonder?"
"I was hoping you knew her well enough to go over and ask."
Harry vividly remembered his luncheon with the worshipful Mrs. Wickem. "Yeah, I think I do."
After some negotiation and a quick chat with Candide, Harry convinced his guard to let him head off with Ginny while she remained behind. "After all," Harry said in a whisper. "Who needs more protection, me or the woman with child?"
Hornisham nodded sagely and returned to the hall where Candide sat working. When Harry turned to face Ginny, pleased with the results of this argument, he found his friend fixing him with a glare.
Arms locked across her chest, she said, "Oh, a 'woman with child' needs more protection?"
"Er, well, I convinced her, didn't I? Come on, it's getting dark."
Harry Apparated them both to the empty stables, which he remembered from the Ministry party the Wickems had hosted. Unlike that cheerful night, the lawn beyond the stable door lay in impenetrable darkness canopied by old, long-limbed trees. A light glowed deep inside the rear of the house. Harry took Ginny's hand and led the way across, tripping repeatedly on half-buried bricks used to border the trees and lines of shrubs. He almost pulled Ginny down with him one time.
"I'll just fly, thanks," she said after that, and assumed her hawk form, changing back to wait for him beside a white pillar topped with a carved capital that held up an overhang on the side of the house. Harry changed to his form and tried to follow, but the trees were too closely spaced, forcing him to tuck in his broad wings and canter, but at least he did not trip again. He came up beside her and changed back after a windy flap for good measure and perhaps some showing off. He decided that the nearby door would work enough for an uninvited guest, so they knocked there, finding no bell.
The light came on over the entryway and the butler came to the door, dour as usual. His expression shifted as he recognized Harry, his unexpressive face doing a complex dance of twitches. "Come in, sir," he simply said.
"This is Ginny Weasley," Harry said as the butler held the door for her to enter as well. Ginny sheepishly slunk in, eyes taking in the grand foyer with its domed ceiling and plaster accents.
The man took a step and turned. "Are you expected?"
"Not exactly," Harry said.
The man hesitated, but appeared to come to a decision and led them farther in, footsteps echoing. Ginny remained quiet, even falling behind as she craned her neck everywhere, stutter-stepping when they passed two Chinese vases taller then her. She came to herself and plowed on with purpose after that.
Mrs. Wickem sat in consultation with someone Harry did not recognize, a witch whose dress reflected the style of Trelawney's robes. They had little metallic stars scattered on the fabric and overlapping layers that floated about her. They both blinked in surprise as Harry was introduced by the butler.
"Mr. Potter," Mrs. Wickem said in the mode of an accusation.
"We're just looking for Aaron," Harry explained.
Mrs. Wickem shifted her substantial frame in her chair and looked about the papers before her, flustered. "Oh, I uh . . ."
The other woman clasped her hands before her and serenely stated, "He isn't here."
Ginny asked, "Do you know where is?"
When no reply came right away, Harry held up a hand before his friend to stall her next comment. Ginny had the letter in her hand. She pocketed it and huffed.
Calmly, in the voice he had heard the Aurors use in countless similar situations, Harry asked, "What is going on, Mrs. Wickem?"
Mrs. Wickem raised fleshy arms, her elbows like indents, rather than points, to blow her nose daintily. Harry held up his hand again, since Ginny had twitched, threatening to approach closer.
"I just don't know what I'm going to do," Aaron's mother muttered into her hanky.
"Is there a reason you can't explain?" Harry went on still as smooth as glass with his speech.
Despite his calming voice, this triggered something. Mrs. Wickem's beefy fists came down on the small table with a bang, making the papers upon it jump in unison. "I cannot explain; don't you understand? Terrible things will happen if I do." She buried her nose and mouth in the hanky again, the picture of misery. "Terrible things. The letter contained a curse they said, just reading it seals the spell."
"What letter?" Harry asked.
Mrs. Wickem gestured at the white lacquer box beside her. Harry walked over, prompting the other witch to put her hand on it. "Why are you interfering when you are clearly not welcome?"
"I don't think we were introduced," Harry said.
Mrs. Wickem lowered her hanky to her breast long enough to say, "Heather Feyther, this is Harry Potter." She covered her hiccup with her hanky.
Ginny had slipped up beside Harry, "Don't you write a column for Witch Weekly called Portents and Providence?"
The bob-haired woman gave a stiff little bow. "Yes, I do young lady, and what would your sign be? No let me guess . . ."
"Don't we have more important things to worry about?" Harry interrupted sharply. He pointed at the box, which was now unprotected. "Can I just see the box? I won't open it."
Mrs. Wickem handed the box over. Harry held it out before him and emptied his thoughts to concentrate. "This isn't cursed."
"How do you know?" Feyther asked.
"I can tell when something is. Like your bracelet there. That's cursed."
She held out her jingling arm and demanded, "Which one?"
There was quite a choice. Harry leaned close and pointed at a black and white one that resembled a chess board stretched long.
"Really?" she asked. "Rita gave that one to me for my birthday."
Ginny snorted and had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. With a jangle, Feyther tossed her arm to her side and glared at them.
"Please, Hettie," Mrs. Wickem said. "You mentioned you could help."
"I expect I can. I need a lock of hair and something he kept with him often."
Ginny said, "Where is Aaron?"
Feyther turned on her in a huff. "If we knew that we wouldn't be trying to scry for him, now would we?" She put her hand over her mouth, eyes wide, showing the whites all around.
Harry put the box down. Mrs. Wickem started to speak and Feyther said, "Mitzy, you can't. They explicitly said not contact the authorities."
"We're not the authorities," Ginny said. She glanced at Harry. "Well, not really."
"We're certain the house is being watched," Feyther insisted primly.
Harry turned to Ginny. "Let yourself out an upstairs window and circle around to see if anyone is skulking around."
Ginny strode off to do this, and Harry was glad for her absence a moment later when Mrs. Wickem opened the box and held it out to Harry, hand shaking. Inside was a letter, spotted with red and an ear, just beginning to shrivel. Despite all the death Harry had seen in his life, he still shied from it. He used a spell to make the letter float out of the box and unfold. It was a ransom note, signed with three vertical lines in the shape of an upside down triangle, like the slits in the masks worn by Durmulna. He waved the letter back away and gestured that he was finished. She closed the box and set it down, then rested her face on the table, arms outstretched, still holding the box.
Harry had thought taking responsibility for the twins by not reporting them was too much, this was ten times more difficult a predicament. What would Dumbledore do? he wondered. He repeated the question again, like a mental mantra.
His brain latched onto the letter. "They demanded how much . . . five-hundred thousand Galleons?" Sad affirmation followed. "That's rather a lot."
Mrs. Wickem nodded with more tears. Harry asked, "Have you contacted Lord Freelander?"
Feyther perked up at this, gazelle-like neck stretched out in curiosity. Harry realized he should not have said that in front of her. He quickly amended, "He has been generous in the past with me. Of course that was a pittance compared to this . . ."
More tearful nodding, but Mrs. Wickem had fallen thoughtful, which was an improvement. What would Dumbledore do? Harry thought again. Then he answered himself, he would be very prudent, not rash in the least unless death were imminent. He would wait to see what everyone would do. He would observe everyone's reactions and even their thoughts until he had a good picture of the situation and who could be counted on to help and who not.
Ginny returned. Quietly she said, "There are two watching from a house two doors down, though at the moment they are playing a card game and not paying so much attention. Should we nab 'em?"
Harry shook his head. "We have to be very careful. If past prisoners are any indication, they probably don't know enough to help, and it will tip off the leaders." Harry cast his mind ahead, finally finding some purchase in his thoughts rather than just spinning helplessly. To Mrs. Wickem, he said, "Aaron will be missing tomorrow at the Ministry. I want you to send an owl first thing in the morning to the Department Head, Arthur Weasley, telling him Aaron is . . . I don't know, ill or something, or his uncle in Albania died. It much doesn't matter what you say as long as it sounds convincing."
Ginny broke in, "But why don't you-"
Harry cut her off by touching her arm and holding it. "The owl is for your watchers to intercept."
"Ah," Ginny said, and Harry felt her relax through his grip on her.
"I'll talk to Arthur myself in the morning, Ginny, if she thinks it's safe to, can explain tonight, but I think no one should do anything unusual tonight. I think we slipped in here unnoticed, hopefully. I'll explain in a second," Harry said to Ginny.
To the Witch Weekly astrologer, Harry said, "If you find anything scrying . . . let me know by sending an owl through the Floo from your house, not from here." He could not generate any faith that she would find anything, but he could not justify turning away any help, and he did not want her accidentally tipping off Durumulna if she believed she had found something.
Feyther nodded and kept her gaze down, making it impossible for Harry to see if she had any faith in herself.
"If you think you know where he is. Don't tell anyone else. Just me. I can fetch him if I know where he is." Harry said this with such force that all eyes came his way and held there. To Ginny, he said, "If we slipped through any barriers undetected, it's because we were in Animagus form when we crossed them. Let's leave that way from the window you just used.
Harry turned back to the lady of the house. "I'll be back tomorrow Mrs. Wickem."
She nodded. Her tears had dried, or perhaps she had run out. There was nothing else to say. Harry could not think of anything else that should be covered so it could not go more wrong.
Back in Shrewsthorpe, he and Ginny huddled in Harry's room, scheming. Harry explained what he had learned and mentioned the ear, only because Mr. Weasley would need to know.
"Oh, Harry this is awful," Ginny said, sounding very much like Aaron's mother.
"I expect your dad will know what to do. I don't have very many ideas right now." Quite the opposite, his mind was going in spirals, imagining his friend subject to all manner of horrors, some of which he had personal experience with.
"Half a million in Galleons," she muttered several times. "Harry, that's insane."
Harry said, "Go on, your dad needs to know."
Ginny stood and said, strained, "Hopefully he doesn't do anything daft that gets Aaron killed."
"Your dad was in the Order, Ginny, and he is department head. He knows what he's doing." She disappeared, and Harry breathed, "I hope."
Harry called down from the balcony that he was home and was going to bed. He dumped his books on the floor and quickly got ready for sleep. He needed rest now while he could get it. He may not get any again for quite a while.
Sleep did not come right away. Harry kept thinking that Aaron was most likely not in a comfortable bed like he was. He could only imagine he was huddled anxiously on the floor somewhere, wishing he were anywhere else.
- 888 -
The next morning Harry was awake and ready to leave more than half an hour early. But he should not break his routine, he knew, even though it wrung his heart to not get started. He used the time to write an eyes-only letter to Snape that he felt confident added no risk to the situation.
Harry read the letter over while stirring the ash-stained wax he would use to seal it. The letter had stretched long, the facts written out stark and cold, interspersed with guesses that Snape did not need to read but Harry had needed to write to make himself feel better. Harry assumed Snape would ignore them, and he need not start again. His suppositions, upon a re-read, painted a pretty accurate picture of his current frantic state of mind, which Snape would like to know, Harry was certain.
Harry sighed and magically charmed the letter before burning it and casting the spell to reform it, locking in the destruction that would render the letter unreadable to anyone but the intended recipient. Of all the people Harry knew, Snape would never make a wrong step for having been informed of what was going on. Harry fingered the rolled parchment, checking that the ring of fouled wax was intact, thinking that there really was no valid excuse for holding back with his guardian on any matter.
Harry arrived at the Ministry five minutes early. Before he could step into the training room, Rodgers gestured out of the office door for him to come that way.
Rodgers led the way to the tea room and closed the door. "Did you hold back anything from Ms. Weasley?" When Harry shook his head, Rodgers said, "Drat it all, we were hoping for a little more. All right." He rubbed his mustache back and forth before smoothing it down, a rare nervous gesture for him. "Your training is cancelled for now."
"Are we being allowed to help search, then?" Harry asked, hopeful his black thoughts could be eased by action.
"You four are going to help Rogan cover the calls while we investigate and search . . . with great care."
"We can search with great care," Harry said.
Rodgers shook his head. "More care than that."
Harry's settled into an open desk in the Auror's office, glad to be helpful in any way possible. Tridant was assigned to him as a partner for the day, which Harry took as a compliment implying that they had confidence he could cover for their youngest apprentice. Before their first call, after Tonks joked about sending the babes out, Harry aged Tridant to appear something around late-thirties.
"Wow," Tridant said, peering in Tonks' small mirror. "Is that what I'm going to look like? I better find a bird and get married, right quick."
"If you don't come on . . ." Harry said from the door. "Next time, I'll make you look like a crone."
Harry's last glance back revealed Shacklebolt and Rodgers grinning at him with more confidence than expected. It buoyed Harry's heavy spirits just enough to get him through the day.
Their calls were easy ones, as if fate intended to help them recover Aaron. Harry and his partner only had to cast a spell once against a wizard who insisted on continuing to argue, wands out, with his business partner in the back of a Muggle shop, long after it had attracted the attention of passersby.
While they made their way along the pavement to find an Apparition spot out, Tridant said, "Are most days like this . . . with just useless calls? Old witches who forget that their money tin was always cursed . . . wizards who don't trust each other and decide to duel in an office the size of a closet?"
"Most stuff is pretty lame," Harry agreed, feeling like he had been doing this longer than a year and a half as he went on. "Showing up for these things isn't useless; it reminds Wizardom that we're here. And there are times like these when you want easy calls, because you already have too much to take care of. But this easy stuff can be bad, too: you lose your edge and one comes along where someone is intent on killing you and you aren't expecting more than drunken Quidditch fans playing with a Bludger on some Muggle High Street at three in the morning."
The day passed quickly and, to maintain appearances, two of them were sent home for the night, including Harry, who would have complained louder, but he wanted time to think and to make his promised visit to Mrs. Wickem. Harry contemplated dropping by the Burrow to bring Ginny along, but decided his visit would be quick.
Mrs. Wickem flowed over a divan in a dim room surrounded by windows letting in the late sun and the street lamps which had just flickered on. Harry hung back, not wanting to be seen from outside. Feyther perched across from her friend on the edge of a chair, bony knees out to the sides, long neck bent. Behind her sat a collection of crystal balls and a heap of shiny painted bones.
"Any news?" Harry asked.
Feyther shook her head when it became clear she was the only one willing to respond. Mrs. Wickem did not take her eyes from the window. "And what of the Ministry?" Feyther asked.
"We are proceeding very carefully, but there is no news yet. You haven't received any more letters?"
Mrs. Wickem did not turn. She said, "We have until Thursday, Mr. Potter."
"I know that, ma'am. Believe me, there is nothing I wouldn't do to get him back."
At home, it was difficult for Harry to settle into his books, so he settled into the last week's worth of Daily Prophets, hoping for any kind of clue. He wanted to go out searching, anywhere, even just from one horse barn to the next, but the risk of tipping someone off and triggering retribution by Aaron's captors was too much, even for the impatient Harry to risk.
Feeling like a prisoner himself, Harry planted himself on the couch across from Candide and went through each paper, every line. He learned all kinds of things, such as the fact that the long-whiskered owlet had won best of breed in the Eastchester Cage Club Show. It was a tiny owl, bred by South American witches to carry messages through crowded barrios without being seen. It escaped into the wild in the seventies, to the delight of Muggle bird watchers.
Harry put the paper down with a disgruntled rustle, wondering how anyone could worry about such trivialities with so many terrible things going on. This attracted Candide's attention, which he had not meant to do.
Harry said, "I thought I'd catch up on the papers, but it's . . . boring."
Candide bent back to her work. "It's tough when people at the office are talking about some recent event and you don't know anything about it."
"Er, yeah," Harry said. He eyed her tall piles of files. "Last night before deadline," he stated. "Can I help you out?"
She peered doubtfully at the wave of paper washing over her lap from tall piles on the left to shorter ones on the right, with a side creek lapping onto the floor. "I suppose you could sort one of these. If you really don't mind."
Harry would be happy to do anything to keep his nervous hands occupied but leave his mind free to wander.
Harry did just that for many hours on end, beyond midnight when he probably should have insisted Candide go to bed. He stared at invoices and receipts, numbers and more numbers, all but a few rare ones stretching for four digits or fewer. They needed a hefty six to ransom Aaron. It seemed impossible. It had never occurred to Harry to think about money at that scale before. It was enough to buy every item Harry had ever seen for sale in a shop, put together. How would one get that much money in one place even if one had access to it?
Harry had been staring at the same small receipt for Never-Out quills and Ink 'B' Gone for many minutes. Candide leaned over in question, and Harry put it down on the wrong pile before correcting his error.
"You should go to sleep," she said.
"You should too," Harry countered, blinking to moisten his eyes to better read the exceptionally decorative cursive columns of numbers on the next slip.
But Harry gave in soon after, knowing his duties could grow to twenty-four hours a day without warning. "This is your last night of poor sleep?" he confirmed before departing for his room.
She smiled at his tone and nodded. Harry sighed. If Snape could not intimidate her, how did he imagine he could possibly have a chance?
- 888 -
The next morning, while filling out the fourth report of the day and thinking wryly that Auroring and Accounting bore remarkable similarities to one another, an owl arrived for Harry, delivered by a grand old bird that Harry recognized as belonging to Lord Freelander. Harry accepted the letter and pocketed it until he had finished. It reminded Harry that he had not received a reply from his guardian.
Harry stared at the long form before him; he really needed a file out of the file room to look up an address and case history, but he was the only one left in the office so he could not fetch it. He sighed that files were charmed so as to not be hovered out magically. Mr. Weasley wandered in, heading immediately to the log book. Harry thought of asking him to cover, then decided it could wait.
"Any news, sir?" Harry asked
Mr. Weasley shook his head. "Rodgers thinks we should limit contact to Mrs. Wickem through you. Feel like heading over there to get a report?"
"I can go when my replacement comes, or right now, if you prefer. I assume I can go without a guard?"
"This afternoon after Ms. Kalendula returns with Mr. Abhayananda you can go." He peered at Harry with underslept eyes. "It feels like we need to guard all of you. But I think you are safe to go without a guard, Harry. No one should know where you are going."
Harry opened his mouth to say he felt confident it should be no problem and decided that was completely the wrong thing to say. "I'll be careful, sir," he said instead, garnering a nod and small smile from his boss.
An owl caught Harry as he crossed the Atrium, thinking to make an exit from somewhere tracked less carefully by Transportation. Harry uncurled the letter from Snape. It simply said: you can not be too careful, nor too wise.
"Thanks Albus," Harry muttered before stashing the letter in his pocket with the other one.
- 888 -
Lunches felt like snippets of immorally stolen time. Harry ducked low over a bowl of soupy Asian noodles heated unevenly with a distracted wave of his wand. His mind had been in overdrive all morning and despite having no work before him, it kept working at high speed. "The seventh pure-blood son who is not," he murmured.
"What?" Tonks asked, holding out a soggy chip left over from someone's take-away order from the night before. "Is that a puzzle?"
"Sounds akin to prophecy," Vineet said. The only thing he had volunteered all day.
"Know something we don't, Harry?" Tonks asked, sounding quite concerned.
"It's nothing important," Harry said, "Just something I was thinking of." He bent back over his loudly-printed styrofoam bowl, thinking that he knew who that must be. He wondered if he should owl McGonagall to double check that there were no new prophecies in this Plane. He hoped not. He especially hoped that someone would tell him if there were. Just in case, for the future, he should ride Ginny harder to make sure she got into the Auror's program next year. All of this flitted through Harry's mind in two eye blinks.
"If you say so," Tonks remarked, doubtfully assessing Harry's far away expression. With a loud crackling, she bundled the brownest bits up in the grease-spotted basket liner and tossed it in the rubbish bin. That was the cue for everyone to get up and return to duty.
- 888 -
At the Wickem residence, Harry found Lord Freelander, hat in hand, speaking with the lady of the house.
"Ah, Mr. Potter. You did get my owl."
Harry resisted patting the pocket where the unopened letter rested. He greeted Mrs. Wickem and asked if there was any news.
Freelander shook his head. "We cannot possible come up with the requested funds by Thursday. Mitzy's holdings are even less liquid than my own. Properties in far flung places would have to be sold or put up as collateral, holdings in corporations divested, carry trades unwound . . . A month would be unreasonable, let alone four days!"
Harry who had been doing accounting the night before, almost followed along with this tirade. "How much can you get together?"
"Ninety-thousand, perhaps ninety-five."
Harry thought that quite a lot of money for being so far short. For the first time he resisted the notion of giving thugs that much money for any reason. There must be another way.
Freelander said, "I expect we could negotiate down to three-hundred thousand or a quarter of a million . . ."
"I will not barter over my son!" Mrs. Wickem burst out, her arms spasming in anger.
Freelander's shoulders slumped. Speaking in a hush, he said, "I did not intend to devalue Aaron . . . I am trying to be realistic."
The air showed no sign of warming after that, and Harry took his leave after spouting more of what felt like empty assurances that everything was being done.
- 888 -
At dinner time Harry's department again insisted that he go home. When he resisted, Tonks said, "Harry, of all of us, you are the most likely one to be watched. Things have to look normal."
Harry thought ahead to going home, knowing Candide would not be home until after the midnight deadline.
In a commanding manner, Tonks said, "Harry."
Harry stood up. "All right. All right." He stared into her changeable eyes. "Are you going find him or not?" he asked, finding that his patience with how things were supposed to work had run perilously thin just over the course of that day.
She rested her folded hands over her crossed knees and said, "We hope to. We intend to."
Harry remembered so many years of empty help from the Ministry when things were desperate for him. He tried to shake that off by reminding himself that he was part of this now and knew better what the department was up against.
"Harry?" she questioned, sounding quite concerned. "If you have ideas you should tell them to someone rather than going off on your own."
Harry bleakly shook his head. His only ideas involved dark magic and he did not think he need share them.
Author's Notes: Sorry for the delay, had to finish 24 before posting this. So we are on track for 24 to be posted at the regular time.
Next: Chapter 24 -- The Ransom of Red Twin
"Remain there," an echoing voice commanded. Harry let the trunk drift. Another rumble built and receded as if the very earth were sliding by, seconds later a rush of air lifted his hair and robes one way and then the other, as though he stood before the gaping maw of a great animal.
"Touch the railing. If you are not in the employ of the Wickems this will render you senseless."
Harry rested his hand on the iron pipe railing that split the stairs, amused as well as worried to think that his trunk was full of the same cheap material, and he was going to ransom a life with that.
"Send the trunk up."
Chapter 24 — The Ransom of Red Twin
Snape looked up from his notes; Harry stood with his back pressed to the door, arriving with no sound, but nevertheless choosing to arrive near the entrance so as to not interrupt too rudely, and to have a chance to pretend he had entered the normal way if Snape were not alone.
Harry's voice came out strained as he asked, "Can I talk to you? Do you have class soon?"
Snape backed up his chair and stood. He cast a silver streak through the ceiling with a blurred motion of his wand, and slipped out from behind the desk. He gestured crisply for Harry to approach. Harry had remained still, already sucked back into his relentlessly circling thoughts. He made his feet move until he stood before the desk, unwilling to relax and take a seat.
A knock came on the door and Lupin put his head in. The knock jarred Harry from his revery. His eyes narrowed at the Muggle book on Snape's desk. The brightly printed and shiny paper cover made it stand out from the hundreds of hand-sewn books in the room. Musings on Existing, the title read.
Behind him Snape said to his colleague. "Can you take my next session?"
Lupin said, "Yes, of course. Seventh Years, right?"
Snape did not reply aloud. Harry assumed he had nodded. Harry felt bad making Snape rearrange things and turned to Lupin to see his judgment on this. But Lupin appeared only pleased. He gave Harry a nod of hello and an understanding smile before departing.
"I want to do the Beacon Spell," Harry said the moment they were alone.
Snape took the two steps to the window and peered out rather than reply.
Harry went on, "I mean, we may not know for certain who Aaron's father is, but we certainly know who his mother is."
He watched Snape exhale slowly, face and shoulders lit softly by the cloudy day.
"That is extremely unwise," he stated without turning.
"Why? You had McGonagall run it when I went missing again," Harry accused, unable to contain any sharp edged emotions.
"I should not have allowed her to do so. She insisted the spell was not so dark to put her at risk, given her past avoidance of blood magic. Afterwards she agreed it was not wise." He crossed his arms, still peering out. "I'll confess, I find her a better manager of the students since she has done the spell. She yields to pity less than she used to."
Harry took in that notion, wanting to argue against it, but Snape's judgment of people's behavior was generally spot on. "But what about Aaron?"
Snape turned with a snap of his head. "If you do this spell and succumb to dark magic there will be a thousand Aarons."
Harry's shoulder's fell and his eyes burned with moisture. In a lower voice, he said, "I have all this power, but I can't even rescue my friend. It's useless!" He waved his arms in a helpless gesture. "You keep insisting how potentially dangerous I am, but I can't even do this one simple thing!"
Calmly, Snape suggested, "Come over here."
Harry stared at him, arms limp at his sides. There was no reason to deny so basic a request. He joined his former teacher at the tall window. Snape took his shoulder and made him sit on the stone sill.
"Look out there."
Harry hitched his knee on the sill and twisted to look out.
"What do you see?" Snape asked.
Harry wanted to resist, but he said, "Hills. Clouds. Trees."
"That's all?"
Harry shrugged. Snape looked out too, his expression implying that he saw something else.
Snape spoke, sounding like one quoting, "The world waits, appears to slumber, but she is awake and riotously plotting, simply doing so on a scale too broad and patient for the small mind of man to grasp."
Startled, Harry blurted, "What's that?"
Snape crossed his arms tighter. "I have spent my life thinking only of immediate things, partly because my survival depended upon it, and partly because I felt derision for such broad views. But your explorations of parallel worlds has forced me to re-evaluate my limited perspective. I think that you may benefit from broadening yours as well. McGonagall lent me a few dubious books of poetry along those lines and I have been forcing myself to read them."
Harry took Snape in. "Are you sure you are you?" Saying this made Harry slump additionally, burdened further.
"I'm quite certain about myself. How about you?"
Harry could hear he was being needled, so he did not answer, just sighed. He stared back out at the mountains. Something large flapped clumsily from one tree to another in the Forbidden Forest. A light mist pooled in the deeper gaps in the thin foliage.
Harry said, "What are you hoping I'll conclude . . . that even if Aaron is suffering, it doesn't matter because people are suffering all the time? That I can't save everybody, so why try to save anyone?"
Snape's brow furrowed. "No, that is not where I am going with this. That is an even more worrisome viewpoint than your usual penchant for sacrificing the future for the present."
"What?" Harry demanded, cutting Snape off.
"Short term thinking is a product of your short years. That was not a personal criticism." Snape turned back to the window, tenser than his pose indicated. "I have been contemplating these other worlds. All of those small decisions and random chances that tally up to form a completely different place, every jagged path drawn along spindly branches resulting in its own existence."
"Maybe you should write poetry," Harry criticized, feeling uneasy with this conversation.
Snape let the bait lie. He said, "There are many places where Voldemort never existed. There are places where Hogwarts is a Muggle school. There is probably at least one place where you really are my son."
This notion drew Harry to the present. He scoffed in amusement, but it lightened his mood. He added, "There is at least one place where you end up with my mother."
After a pause, Snape began, "Undoubt-" and stopped, eyes slitting.
"You wonder if I speak from experience?" Harry needled back, glad to get even.
Snape shook his stringy hair. "We have a here and now to worry about that already exceeds our abilities." Snape touched Harry on the arm. "I know it is a lot to ask of you at this age, especially since you have had more than your share of responsibility for the state of the world, and most certainly deserve a break from that, but you must keep the larger picture in mind." He pondered Harry intently before saying, "At the risk of suggesting another use for a five-sided device, I wonder if you could see where Aaron is using your abilities to peruse alternative Planes?"
"I already tried that," Harry admitted. "I couldn't find him that way. I saw him all right, but only in the kinds of places I already know him in." After a pause, he added, "I did find Dumbledore still alive, in one place."
"Did you? And what, pray tell, was he doing?"
Harry gestured at the glass before them. "Sitting in an old tower. Staring out the window, like you are now," he added critically.
Snape laughed through his nose, then grew grim again. "Please, Harry. No blood magic. I cannot forbid it, so I am reduced to pleading with you to forgo it. There must be another way. The darkness does not care that you perform the spell for the right reasons. It will take something away from you that you, and the world, cannot afford for you to lose."
Harry drew in a breath past a constricted ribcage. He felt sadder and even more helpless than when he had arrived seeking help.
"There must be another way," Snape repeated. "You are clever. You have many friends who would do anything for you. Think of something else. If it falls short; you did the best you could."
Harry swallowed hard. "I can't fail," he pledged. But it was true that he had not asked for much help from his old friends beyond jokingly suggesting Ron steal enough gold from the vaults in Gringotts to suffice. He could steal it for himself, in theory, if there were that many Galleons to be had in Gringotts. Aloud, Harry said, "Why did they ask for so much? It's an unreasonable amount of money, even Freelander can't come up with that much. There may not be that much to be had in all of England. They want us to hand over the full wealth of the wizarding world."
"Has anyone attempted to negotiate a lower ransom?" Snape asked, his clear concern a salve to Harry's frayed nerves.
Harry nodded and swallowed hard before saying, "Mrs. Wickem finally did. They sent her his cursed-off nose in response."
Snape bowed his head over his crossed arms.
Harry said, "If this goes on much longer, I'm going to find someone safe enough to do the Beacon Spell."
"That will not fully exempt you. Dark magic is a entwining and clinging pollution that leaves all involved touched in some way, no matter how remote they be."
"More poetry?" Harry asked.
Snape shook his head, "More experience."
- 888 -
Friday had arrived and the quiet intensity of the Aurors' office had turned to frantic. Mrs. Wickem and Lord Freelander had missed the deadline to collect together the necessary funds and had been punished for doing so. Harry was beginning to believe that at least part of the purpose of all this was to sow fear in the Ministry, to make a point about who had power over whom. This point was not lost on anyone Harry encountered that day. The language had degenerated and nicknames for their opponents sprang up as fast as others could learn them.
"Bloody hell," Rodgers said while reading a memo.
"Sir?" Harry prompted, not wanting more bad news but unable to hold back.
"Scant help from our foreign offices is all. Potter, weren't you supposed to go home hours ago?"
Harry stared painfully at his trainer. It was true that he did not have field duty until the next day. "I can't do that, sir. Don't you think they realize by now that we know?"
Rodgers frowned. "Possibly. But when we make it clear they will most likely punish everyone by cutting something else off their prisoner. Go on home."
Harry tossed his head but he obeyed. At home, lunch was just being served and the scent of it filled his head like a spell. His mood brightened more when he found Ginny and— even less expected but welcome—Hermione had joined Candide at the table.
Hermione said, "We were just starting a pool on whether you'd make it. "
Harry took the last open seat, more grateful for their presence than he would have imagined. He accepted a steaming cup of tea, but merely stared into it, at the oil playing on the surface.
Hermione hesitated before saying, "Ginny caught me and Candide up."
Harry tossed his shoulders up and down uncaringly. He now felt numb to the ruse that had so driven them early in the week, yet had come to nothing with their adherence.
"What are you going to do?" Hermione asked.
"Cast a blood magic spell," Harry replied, not having decided until that moment, but confident of his plan now.
Hermione dropped her cup, spilling her tea over her rice. "Harry, you can't."
"That's what Severus insists. I need to find someone less dangerous to actually cast it." He stared at Hermione. He trusted that she could remain untainted for one spell.
Her eyes went wide. "Harry, really," she snapped.
Ginny leaned forward with her hands gripping the table edge, her food untouched before her. "What spell is this? I'll do it." She ignored Hermione's sharp look.
Harry, thinking of prophecies, shook his head. "No. Not you either."
"Why not?"
Harry felt more like Dumbledore than he ever had in his life when he was forced to reply, "I have my reasons."
This reply stunned Ginny into silence. She pushed her food around with her fork rather than throw her disappointment back as anger.
Harry put his forehead on his fist, saying, "There's got to be another way."
Candide, sounding grim, said, "You really need half a million?" When Harry nodded, rocking his head side to side over his fist, she exhaled in a rough whistle. "That's a lot."
"Is there even that much in Gringotts?" Harry asked her.
She studied him a long time before replying, "Probably."
Harry guessed that she knew what he was contemplating. Ginny bit her lips. "Thinking of stealing it?" she asked.
Hermione juggled her newly freshened cup of tea, burning her hand. "What is going on with all of you?" she demanded.
"I think there's a better way," Ginny said. "I was talking to my brothers this morning about an incident where they had far more money than they really had."
Harry shut down his chaotic thoughts and turned all of his attention to her.
Ginny said, "No one can say anything though." Everyone readily agreed to this, so she went on. "When my brothers wanted to start up their shop, they got some money from Harry, but it wasn't enough. It was enough for the lease on the shop for a year, but not the ingredients, which were ten times that just to get going. They didn't have any collateral, so they . . . they went to Gringotts for a loan to buy ingredients. They showed them twenty-five thousand Galleons that they already had, and lied and said they needed that to buy the property for the shop, which they were actually only letting. Gringotts gave them the loan, so then they had real Galleons for stock ingredients."
"They used the property as collateral, but they didn't own it?" Candide confirmed. "Glad I'm not their accountant."
Ginny tried to cover. "They own it now. They just needed more money to get started, and the Goblins will only give money to people who already have too much already. That was their excuse for pretending they had more."
Candide said, "They managed to fool the Goblins with fake coin?"
Ginny nodded.
Trying to feel hope, Harry said, "How did they do that?"
Ginny replied, "You need some real Galleons to make the spell work, and metal disks of the right size for the fake ones."
Hermione, eagerly rising forward in her seat said, "It's some kind of Metamorphic Protean Charm? So each real coin can have its qualities pressed onto maybe twenty others?"
Ginny nodded. "Fifteen was all they thought safe, and even then some refused to hold for more than a few hours. It was your Dumbledore's Army coins that made them think of it."
Harry said, "If they were convincing enough to fool the Goblins, who are very hard to convince, then they should be convincing enough to fool Durumulna."
Ginny said, "We need tons of metal disks."
Harry thought back to his field work of last weekend. "I think I know where we can get some."
The four of them skipped finishing lunch and went into motion.
Harry asked Hermione to stay with Candide while he and Ginny went to speak to the twins.
They found Ginny's brothers in a meeting with four AWOL Hogwarts students who sold their wares inside the school. The students had not even removed their uniforms, but had pulled their cloaks firmly around themselves. They glanced nervously at each other when Harry appeared.
They shuffled to their feet and the Slytherin, biting her lip asked, "Are you going to turn us in to Professor Snape?"
Fred put an arm forcefully around Harry's shoulder. "Nah, he wouldn't do that. Would ya', Harry? This is our second-best sales channel here."
Harry glanced at the four of them, memorizing their faces. "I don't care what you're doing as long as you don't get hurt doing it. But right now I need to talk to Fred and George."
The students hurried off, fighting to get out the door. Harry glanced at those remaining. "Ginny, can you watch the shop while we talk?"
She nodded grimly, and rubbed one tired eye as she took a seat behind the counter.
Upstairs the twins paced nervously before offering Harry a chair, a cup of funny colored tea and a deluxe box of BouncySweets: an excellent gift for pet owners.
Harry set the box aside. "Look I need a favor . . ."
George swooped the box away back to the shelf. "In that case . . ."
Harry laughed, then fell sad again. "I need your help. I need to fake a lot of money, really fast."
The twins gaped at him. "What business are you getting into?"
"The wrong business," Harry said. "But other than filching the money, I don't see any other way."
"We need slugs, you know," Fred said. "You can't make money out of thin air."
Harry nodded. "I'll get those. Can you help me?" He held off on informing them that Ginny had informed on them.
Fred, arms swinging loosely— a sign he was feeling up for a challenge, said, "How much do you need?"
"Half a million."
Fred fell to his knees in shock. George burst out laughing and had to support himself on the litter-strewn mantelpiece to stay upright.
Harry said, "If I get the slugs and thirty-three thousand Galleons, will you help me?"
The two of them fell completely silent, eyes goggling. "You are a nutter. You're serious!"
Harry spent the afternoon collecting things they would need. He borrowed a triple-expandable magical trunk from Freelander, already containing the necessary number of real Galleons. The man behaved surprisingly insistent about the trunk as if driven by guilt that he wanted to be rid of along with the money. He stood distractedly while Harry verified that he could figure out how to use the trunk's magical compartments. Before he departed, Harry wished he had something hopeful to say to the grim man, but he could dredge nothing up out of his own worries.
While he waited for night to fall, Harry sent another letter to his guardian, but this time thought it best to simply speak in code and make the letter seem innocent. He wrote: There is a Lumos Charm in the darkest part of the forest now. Trust that I'm going not going to do anything you advised me not to do.
After dark, Harry went to the scrap yard and carrying a real Galleon, found fat rods of the right diameter. Moving stealthily so he would not have to deal with the dog, he used a welding spell to split them in half and silenced and hovered them into a neat bundle so he could Apparate into the Wheezes upper room with them. The bundle regained its weight when he arrived, landing with a deafening, thudding crash on the floor. No one complained about the noise, including Ron, who had covered his ears and winced. Everyone remained serious, barely speaking as the chopping began. They argued briefly over what chopping spell would work best, finally settling on the one used by cooks for root vegetables.
On long, cleared tables, real Galleons were laid out along one edge and fresh, hot disks of iron were laid out in long lines beside them. Fred, with much flourish, performed the spell to make them all sparkle golden and the process was repeated.
Long into the night they did this, until everyone's head nodded despite a dozen pots of tea. Ginny went to change places with Hermione guarding Candide and in the end they all returned to help. Even with the efficiency of magic, the process proved laboriously long. Like some reverse sorcerer's apprentice spell, horde after horde of golden disks were swept up in flocks and dumped with a rich clatter into the fancy trunk and more iron slugs laid out in long regiments, headed by a gold captain.
Early the next morning when it became clear how long the project would take in total, Harry headed off to Mrs. Wickem's house. It would be Sunday around five in the morning before they had the right number of Galleons, and the ransom would have to take place quickly after that. After the first missed ransom drop, the second had been left unscheduled, as far as Harry knew.
Harry flew in an upper window that was left unlatched for him. Downstairs he found Mrs. Wickem alone with the butler standing off to the side, looking like he wished he could provide more than the usual silence.
Harry skipped the niceties beyond a quick hello, far too tired for them. "Have they given you instructions for a second drop?"
Mrs. Wickem sniffled and handed over a letter. The deep red ink used to write it out did not bode well. Harry swallowed and asked with a wince, "Did they send anything else?" When she nodded, Harry muttered, "Oh dear."
"Just a little finger," she said with a gasp into her hanky.
Harry breathed out in relief. "Could be worse," he heard himself say. He really needed to sleep. "It says one of your servants is to come at noon to Down Street tube station. Just one, who will be magically verified as being in your employ." Harry handed the letter back. "That's easy enough. Write up an employment contract and I'll sign it. I want to make the trade myself."
Mrs. Wickem peered at the letter, her face sagging with the weight of sadness. "I'm afraid the Ministry is going to try something and my Aaron will come to harm."
"The Ministry isn't going to do this, I am. I'm just going to fetch Aaron, nothing else."
"But we don't have enough . . ." she stated slowly, as though he were the dim one.
The twins were adamant that the more people who knew the money was fake the shorter time it would remain convincing. Harry doubted that, but it was easier to say, "We have the money. Just don't ask where it came from."
"Alfie must have . . ." she began.
"Lord Freelander helped a lot," Harry confirmed, eager to get away again to help so they would be finished in time. "I have to go. Write up the contract and I'll be back in a few hours to sign it."
They each in turn took a three hour break that day when nerves took over and patience grew short. The room, with only one heavily-curtained window, remained the same night and day, giving the place a relentlessly timeless feel. When Harry closed his eyes he saw only fluttering gold coins. Eventually they sparkled across his vision even when he kept his eyes open.
Candide insisted she had done nothing but rest since Tuesday but Harry insisted she take a break before him. Her help was invaluable, as she was one of only three of them, including Hermione, who could get the entire table worth of iron slugs to change, everyone else needed several cancellations and re-tries, which often left a handful ruined and in need of sorting out.
Candide returned at dinner time to replace him. When Harry arrived in the main hall in Shrewsthorpe, the first thing he noticed was the silence, the disturbing absence of clattering coin. The second thing was the fresh air; the work room of the Weasley twins was not exactly lightly scented. Harry fell into bed, with an alarm spell added to his pocket watch set for exactly his alloted three hours of break time before he had field work for his apprenticeship. With his pocket watch tucked against his breast where its shaking would certainly rouse him, Harry dropped into a hard sleep.
Harry's watch woke him to a dream of the Wheezes work room full of swarming cold metal and a shadow skulked around the edge of the walls holding forth a dark wand trailing smoke. Harry snapped awake and groggily rubbed his head. He felt more tired than when he had laid down, but his rumbling watch insisted that three hours had passed.
Harry yawned and rocked forward and back to gather the momentum to get out of bed. He had not taken off his robes, for which he was glad because he could not raise his arms to change his clothes, he was certain. With a sniffle, Harry wondered if it would have been better to not sleep and simply taken more of the twins' strange wake-up concoctions.
The stairs down nearly defeated him because his toes seemed numb to the notion of walking. Perhaps the twins' concoctions were the problem. Harry caught himself with the bannister and descended slower after that, unwilling to take a fall on limbs that felt sleepy and brittle. He found Snape in the doorway to the drawing room, peering at him in surprise. He wore a heavy robe as though the fire were not burning high in the hearth behind him.
"Oh, you're home," Harry said, scratching his head.
"Yes," Snape replied. "I thought I would . . . see to some things." He appeared dubious of Harry's state.
Harry's mind was not working well, only half of it had come even partially awake and the other half was mired in dark thoughts about his friend. He did not feel like trying to explain what was happening, but he should say something, for backup at least. He strode around the hall, running a few eavesdropping prevention spells. When he came back around to the drawing room door, he said quietly, "I'm going to fetch Aaron tomorrow. Alone, because that's what they insisted."
Snape stood with his arms crossed, looking strained and a mirror of Harry's poorly slept state. "All right," he said, studying Harry intently.
Harry had expected an argument, and he was glad he did not have to hold up his end of one. "I've got it all arranged, I think," he assured his guardian. When Snape did not reply, Harry slumped slightly, feeling increasingly frustrated and angry as he spoke. "This has to work. Mrs. Wickem keeps receiving body parts. Pretty soon they are going to be major ones. It's really terrible." Really, Harry thought, he should have had the power to do something before now and that helplessness gnawed hard on him, making him want to lash out.
Snape glanced away, and Harry wondered suddenly if he had not at sometime in the past been a witness, or worse, to the other side of exactly this. Harry felt forceful ambivalence about that possibility. He bit his lips to keep from saying something he may regret. Feeling antsy on top of sleepy, Harry said, "Well, I won't be back until tomorrow. Will you be here?"
Snape stared at him. "What time?"
Harry shook himself. He should have said. "Noon, or right after."
"I'll be here," Snape stated flatly.
"Good. We may need your help."
A pause and then a nod. Harry felt uneasy but could focus on nothing beyond getting through his field work and then getting all the gold finished. So much gold . . . an inconceivable amount. He Disapparated for the Ministry with a groan.
By ten the next morning they had everything finished. Harry had sent Candide home hours before even though they missed her help almost immediately. The remaining six of them knelt around the trunk and peered down into the vast, cone-shaped pile rising from the depths.
"Mother of Merlin that's a lot of money," Ron said.
"It is," Hermione agreed, sounding disgusted.
Harry picked up on that and said, "I'm glad we're not giving them that much real money."
Hermione raised her head to look at Harry. "Did you tell the Ministry what you were doing, Harry?"
Harry shook his head. The other five glanced at each other. Fred said, "I wouldn't tell them."
Ginny said, "This is dad we're talking about, though . . ."
"All the more reason," George agreed.
Harry had been half-planning this morning to tell someone at the Aurors' office what was happening, but at the moment, he felt very much like going it alone with no interference. In fact, he wondered now why he had intended to tell them at all. He could do this better alone.
Fifteen minutes before the prescribed meeting time, Harry wheeled the trunk along Down Street, toward the blood-red brick façade marring the shopfronts. He peered inside the grimy window and tugged his mitten off to pretend to fix his laces until the road cleared of Muggles. The road was most likely being watched by someone from Durumulna, but Harry could not sense it if it was. He checked one more time to see that it was clear before Apparating inside the station.
Harry immediately pulled his wand believing he had been struck by a Blasting Curse. He caught himself from completely tumbling over the trunk and levered himself up against the brass edge of it. It was only the wind howling up from the staircase before him. He shook his tired head and jumpy body and hovered the trunk to tackle a flight of stairs, only to then be faced with a dauntingly deep spiral staircase.
Harry considered and then dismissed using a Silencing Charm as he went; he had no need of stealth and in fact did not want to surprise the other party. Realizing he should have left more time, Harry jogged downward, the endless turning rubbing raw his overwrought mind in the same way the endless repetitive spells of the last few day had.
The trunk bumped along ahead of Harry, carried by magical momentum to the concrete floor at the bottom. The lights glowed brightly down here, providing pretend normalcy rather than abandonment. With a wave the trunk leapt airborne again. Harry jogged along a tiled tunnel until he stopped to blink at a carefully painted sign that read Enquiries & Committee Room with an arrow below. A rumble built and receded, vibrating the floor, moments later a gust rushed through the shiny confines of the tunnel. Harry looked both ways along the old tube station corridor, but he could not piece together what the sign might mean so he hurried on, following the wind. The fanciful Way Out signs provided much-needed reassurance. Harry wanted to imagine leaving again, as soon as possible, with his friend safely in tow.
Harry proceeded from tunnel to tunnel until he met another staircase up, this one darkened, the electric lamps doused. Shadows shifted and slipped out of view around a bend at the top.
"Remain there," an echoing voice commanded. Harry let the trunk drift. Another rumble built and receded as if the very earth were sliding by, seconds later a rush of air lifted his hair and robes one way and then the other, as though he stood before the gaping maw of a great animal.
"Touch the railing. If you are not in the employ of the Wickems this will render you senseless."
Harry rested his hand on the iron pipe railing that split the stairs, amused as well as worried to think that his trunk was full of the same cheap material, and he was going to ransom a life with that.
"Send the trunk up."
Harry had not taken the time to think ahead. Instinctively he said, "I want to see Aaron first."
More shadows shifted, outlined by a weak light somewhere on the other side of the tunnel bridge. Another rumble passed by, teasing Harry's toes with vibration and sucking at his clothes a breath later.
A hunched silhouette careened toward the wall of the tunnel, manhandled into stopping at the lip of the top step. A single electric lamp came up for an instant before darkening again. Harry blinked at the afterimage smeared on his retinas. He had received a glimpse of a shiny stripe of blood red tile and a hooded figure that certainly resembled Aaron.
"Not much of a look," Harry sharply complained, one part of him thinking he should get on with it as another thought he should try to punish these criminals as much as possible by being difficult.
"We can simply take the money and kill him."
The hooded figure fell to its knees, or was pushed, it was hard to judge. With a malicious grin Harry said, "I'd like you to try that," with a tone that caused murmurs to slip along the hard walls from beyond the bend. Harry leaned more casually on the railing, wand flicking playfully, and added, "It certainly wouldn't be the first time I was the only survivor."
More murmuring.
Harry jumped ahead of their thoughts. "Aaron knew the risks when he signed up to be an Auror. I'm sure at this point he'd be more than happy to know his death let me take you out. Every. Last. One. Of. You."
Things moved along faster after that and more cooperatively, Harry was pleased to see. He could find no patience for their games. An unmasked figure with the typical generic look of the organization came down the steps to escort the trunk to the top where another figure waited, wearing their trademark netted mask. Harry followed, hoping to get a closer look at Aaron. The figure restraining Aaron lifted a wand to Aaron's ribs, so Harry diverted to face down the figure who seemed to be in charge, noticing the person wore platform shoes. Harry glared up at the slitted face and said, "Let me guess, costume shop was out of Death Eater masks?"
The figure took a physical swipe at him. Harry caught the figure's arm, and found less muscle there than expected. Many wands came in out of nowhere and aimed at his heart. Aaron, left to lean against the side of the tunnel, made a rather pathetic sound of distress. The sound shook Harry out the derisive mode he had slipped into.
He let go of the leader's arm, noticing the person wore something cursed around their neck, under their cloak where he could not see what it may be.
The unmasked man verified the money, dipping far into the magical cavern of the trunk for samples of coin and running spells upon them before dropping them into a colorful liquid with audible plops.
Aaron made another noise and slid farther, unable to prop himself up with his hands bound behind him and his returned guard offered him no help. "We're almost there, Aaron. Hang in there," Harry said.
"They're good," the man kneeling beside the trunk declared after drawn out minutes of testing.
Harry worked very hard to not release the breath he held. The eyes of the leader were certainly fixed firmly upon him and he wished to give nothing away when he was so close.
"Take him. Get out of my sight."
Harry grabbed up Aaron and helped him quickly down the steps and around the corner before trying to Apparate him away. Harry fell to his knees instead, struck by a barrier, and pulled his wand and waited to make sure he wasn't followed with the notion that he may stupidly try just that. Watching behind him, he helped Aaron along the tunnel. A chorus of pops reverberated over the hum of another train passing. Two bends later and many spells laid behind him, Harry stopped and started untying the hood hooked around Aaron's chest. But Aaron fought him doing this, making noises like talking through a gag.
"You don't want that off?" Harry asked.
The hood shook its head.
"Aaron, I have to know I've got you and not someone else," Harry insisted, even though he knew his fellow's lean physique well enough that he had not doubted who it was.
Harry untied Aaron's clutched hands, noting that his friend had a fresh stub where the ring finger on his left hand should be. Again, Harry tugged at the hood and his friend resisted. Aaron pushed away with an elbow and reached under to untie the gag. He tossed the wet thing away on the dusty floor, where it left a clean smudge.
"It's me," Aaron said, voice breaking, hand still holding fast to the edge of the hood.
"All right," Harry said, giving in and taking his arm. He Apparated them both to the main hall in Shrewsthorpe.
Ginny, Hemione, Ron and one twin waited for him there. Harry guided the blinded Aaron to the couch, where he promptly curled up, one arm around his covered head and the other hooked on his knees, seemingly chased inward by the rush of voices welcoming him.
Harry waved the others away and forced Aaron to give up the hood. His sense of cursedness was bothering him and he wanted to remedy that. "Come on, Aaron, it's all right." Aaron ducked inside his arms, turning away from them to hide his face.
Ginny said, "I'll go fetch Mrs. Wickem."
"No," Aaron moaned piteously, "I don't want to see my mum. I look horrid."
"Aye," Ron breathed.
Ginny moved in closer to sit beside Harry, who was trying to figure out how to best handle this. Snape slid over behind the couch, observing with a hard expression. Harry considered that as a last ditch effort, they could potion Aaron into cooperating.
"Aaron, come on," Ginny urged, tugging lightly on one arm.
"Aaron, we're just trying to take care of you," Harry said, trying to sound patient.
Muffled, Aaron replied miserably, "No, it's cursed. I'll be like this forever. I look like bloody Voldemort," he added, voice breaking.
Ginny shot Harry a look of dismay. Harry leaned closer, moving Aaron's hand so they could see where he had lost an ear.
"That's not cursed off," Harry said.
Eagerly, Ginny said, "I can give you an ear. Let me see your other one."
Hermione leaned on the couch arm. "Maybe you should take him to a Healer . . . ?"
Aaron ducked back down into his vice-like arms. "No . . . I don't want to be seen."
Harry gave his old friend a dissuading glare, and she stood upright, realizing her mistake.
Ginny half teased, half criticized, "Your students must love you at Hogwarts."
Snape's robes rustled as he glanced at his colleague, who visibly sighed. At the attention, Hermione said, "I'll get some stuff to purify the wounds with. You shouldn't heal them if they aren't clean."
"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said to her back as she departed for the toilet. They had grown too snippy with each other and that needed to stop.
Harry pried Aaron's arm free again so they could see the uneven hole with a curved red ridge that was all that remained of his ear.
"I need to see the other one," Ginny said. Still ineffectual at getting cooperation.
Snape leaned over the couch from behind. Sharply, he said, "Mr. Wickem, shape up and act your age. I am quite certain your friends are only trying to help, which you are fast losing any deserving of."
Harry froze and stared at his guardian, but he did not have much chance to react because Aaron had shifted his long legs to sit properly on the couch, head bowed and limp, but cooperating now. His nose did resemble Voldemort's, just two high slits between his eyes. Harry fought a cringe. Aaron kept his hands at his sides, tugging nervously on his robes. Apparently a sharp word from a former Head of House was exactly what he needed, as much as it stunned Harry under the circumstances.
Ginny turned Aaron's head one way and then the other, gauging the spell. Hermione handed over a cloth smelling of disinfectant and with much gasping in pain, Aaron let that be used on him. Face laden with concentration Ginny checked Aaron's right ear one more time and tapped, wove her wand in quick loops then tapped again.
"Nicely done," Harry said, surprised how perfect the new ear looked.
Aaron jerked his hands up to feel both ears all over with no little desperation.
Ginny said, "Yeah. Remember my long unicorn ears at the last Halloween party? I learned a quick spell to make them and then I did some serious damage getting rid of them later. By the time I got my own ears on right, I had the spell perfected, that's for sure." To Aaron, she said, "I can do a nose too. At least a temporary one." She tapped between his brows with her wand but the spell fizzled.
"It's cursed off," Harry said. "I can take care of the curse. But you're going to have to hold your breath or breathe through your mouth while I do." Snape leaned over the back of the couch, interested in the procedure.
Even after Aaron's cursed nose was replaced by one that did not quite look like his old one but worked well enough, and his hand was de-cursed and bandaged, Harry could still feel something accursed about him.
"Do you have anything on that they gave you?" Harry asked. "Jewelry or anything?"
Aaron shook his head. He sat up straighter now, but his face still hung long and disconsolately. "I could use a bath. Maybe that's what you're noticing."
Harry laughed lightly. "Maybe. We have to take you to your mum's before you'll get a chance."
Whinging instantly, Aaron said, "I want to go home. To my flat."
"Yeah, all right," Harry said. "But mum first."
Aaron, visibly cringed, which Harry could understand. Mrs. Wickem was a lot to take even whole and healthy. Half broken, she would be a painful experience.
"I promise it'll be quick," Harry said. "Then your flat. You weren't kidnapped from there, were you?"
Aaron shook his head. "Tricked by my date."
Ginny theatrically rolled her eyes.
"Oh," Harry said. "Well, we'll take you home, then I have to go to the Ministry." He stood and tugged Aaron to his feet. "And get reamed, I expect." A glance at his stony guardian made him wonder if he was not in trouble on two fronts, as usual. Harry had a thought. "Ginny, can you go into the Ministry and tell them what happened, then meet me at Aaron's flat?"
Ginny nodded. She glanced around at the rest of the crew, dismissed each of them in turn until she reached Hermione, and said, "Mind going with me?"
Hermione pulled herself straight. "Of course not."
Harry took one last eyeful of his guardian, standing behind the couch, unreadably grim. Harry had tried to keep Snape informed this time, as much as possible under the circumstances. Feeling at a loss, Harry sighed and Disapparated for the Wickem residence with an arm firmly around his friend in case he did not land perfectly.
Fortunately, Mrs. Wickem attacked Harry as much as her son. Aaron withstood a lengthy, cheek-pinching inspection with stoicism.
"Oh, my baby, you look fine. A few good meals and you'll be good as new."
Harry, who could still see the haunted depths to Aaron's eyes, thought that a bit optimistic.
"Look at you . . . is that your nose, or Harry's nose?"
"It might be my nose," Harry said.
"Does it look funny?" Aaron asked his mum, rubbing it.
"No, it looks fine, Dear," Mrs. Wickem said falsely. "We'll get that straightened out. Don't you worry."
Lord Freelander, who had remained beside his chair at the small tea table, finally approached and shook Aaron's hand. "Good to have you at liberty, young man," he said.
Aaron nodded broadly. "I have to go," he said, before his mother could swoop in again. "I have reports . . . and things."
"Long debriefing," Harry said in support. "I expect."
Mrs. Wickem said, "My poor dear. Why can't they leave you be?"
Aaron put a hand out to stop her approach. "It's all right," he said with the most strength than he had shown yet. "I want to get it over with. Let's go, Harry."
"But . . . you aren't going to stay?" Mrs. Wickem exclaimed.
"I need a bath and some sleep," Aaron pleaded. "I'll visit tomorrow, when I'm rested."
"Well, a bath for certain," Mrs. Wickem said with a twitch of her nose. "Well, all right. Just don't be a stranger to your worrying mother."
Aaron rocked his head away. Harry grabbed hold of his arm and took him home.
The serene silence of the flat was accented by the sun beams angling in through the tall, pointed windows. Aaron made his own way to the leather couch and fell on it, on his face.
"You all right?" Harry asked.
Aaron nodded.
Harry said, "You want me to get a bath ready?"
Aaron's head cranked down to peer at him, upside down. "You are offering to draw me a bath?" he asked in disbelief.
Harry chuckled. "I don't mind."
Aaron levered himself to half sit up so he could stare at Harry with a tilted head hooked to a tired neck. "If you would. You're rather tall for a house-elf, you know," he added to Harry's back.
Harry wandered the large open flat until he found the bath, which was a veritable Greek temple of marble tile. Harry started the gold plated faucets running and returned to check on his friend.
"Really nice place you have here," Harry said.
"For now." Depressed sounding, Aaron said, "You gave them all my money. From both my parents."
Harry said, "The hell I did."
Aaron stared at him, strangely free of expression. Harry did not leave him waiting long for further explanation. "We tricked them," Harry said. "I have friends with dangerous knowledge, like how to fake large amounts of Galleons."
"They checked them," Aaron said. "I could hear them running the spells."
"There was just enough real money to magic the fakes to pass the test."
"How much for real?"
"Thirty-three thousand, three-hundred and thirty three, or four. I don't remember how we decided on that in the end. Hermione and Candide argued about it for a while, but I don't remember how it turned out." Memories of the last few frantic days swooped over Harry, leaving behind overwhelming exhaustion.
Aaron moved aside and patted the couch. Harry accepted the invitation and collapsed beside him. "Still some serious coin," Aaron said, "but not half a mil, thank Merlin. I'd like to take half a mil out of their skins, personally."
Harry rubbed his tired eyes. "You may get the chance. When they discover what happened, they'll probably come looking for us. Or me at least."
Aaron's eyes filled as he grew hotly angry and his neck leaned outward. "I relish the chance . . . just as soon as I get a bath and some sleep in my own, much-fantasized-about bed."
Harry could feel the extreme anger in his friend, like a poison that dimmed the light of his bright demeanor. He put out a hand to restrain Aaron from rising, and said, "Taking revenge will hurt you more than them. Really it will."
Aaron pulled free and glowered down at him. "What are you on about?" he sputtered, so unlike himself, it hurt to watch.
Carefully, Harry said, "I'm not belittling what happened to you. I'd be the last person in the world to do that." Harry stood, trying to sound older and wiser and, hence, more convincing. "Justice is fine, Aaron. Revenge is not." Aaron merely stared at him, so Harry added, "I've been where you are, right now, more than once. You've been hurt, but you're not letting the damage stop. The damage going on now is caused by you. The kind of emotion you were feeling just now—it's like a curse. It poisons you from the core outward. Whatever happens, it's not worth losing yourself to."
Aaron sighed, perhaps accepting this for the moment, perhaps falling victim to his own over-tapped spirit. In the distance the sound of the tub overflowing drew them both that way.
Aaron tip-toed over the overrunning stream and stretched out to tweak the faucets off. Harry pulled his wand, but the excess water was neatly heading for the drain in the corner. Aaron sat on the wide, square edge of the tub and scrubbed his eyes.
"I'm glad for the break from Rodgers and Mr Weasley," Aaron said, slipping off his shirt. "I'm getting the notion that this wasn't a Ministry operation."
Harry shook his head. "I was off probation," he said teasingly, garnering a painfully quick smile from his fellow.
Aaron finished stripping and slipped into the tub, sending more cacophonous sloshes onto the floor. Harry saw quite a few bruises and gashes before the water engulfed them, and Aaron washed with trepidation.
"I'll wait for Ginny out here. Want me to make you something to eat? You look like you could use it. Something light or heavy? How much did they give you to eat?"
Aaron dropped the arm he had been scrubbing into the water with a splash. His gaze slipped off into the distance. Voice low, and swallowing often, he said, "They wanted me to beg for scraps." He pulled himself together after saying this and more calmly said, "So I haven't eaten much. It depended on who was left guarding me."
"Something light, then," Harry said easily, leaving him to his bath.
Ginny waited in the kitchen, sitting on one of the tall stools beside the counter. "How is he?"
"Doing better. He needs to eat."
Harry went to the fridge, but Ginny's deadpan voice halted him, "You need to go into the Ministry, Harry."
Harry closed the fridge and said, "Yep. You didn't get into trouble, did you?"
Ginny nibbled on a gilded chocolate from a dusty, five layer deluxe box on the counter and said, "I told dad if he wanted me to work within the Ministry that I couldn't do that unless he made me an Auror." She gave up a tired grin.
Harry sighed. "It's tough to work inside the system. Useless sometimes." He gestured at the range. "Can you make Aaron some soup or something light and easy on the stomach."
She jumped down off the stool. "Yeah. 'Course."
- 888 -
Harry strolled down the corridor to the Auror's office with far more confidence than he felt. Trouble was, he had lost track of why he had gone it alone. He had planned to say something that morning, but completely changed his mind. Perhaps exhaustion had something to do with that.
As he stepped into the Auror's office, Rodgers directed him down to the tea room and into a chair. Harry obeyed silently. Moments later Rodgers returned with Mr. Weasley. Harry fortified himself by imaging that he was delaying Aaron from facing this.
Rodgers stood with his arms crossed, studying Harry curiously. Mr. Weasley seemed at a loss for words. He leaned on his palms over the table and angled his head at Harry, disappointment clear in his gaze.
"Harry," Mr. Weasley started, but stuttered to a stop.
"What Arthur is trying to say, Potter, is what the hell were you doing?"
Harry decided stating the obvious would be childish, so he said nothing. Rodgers went on, "I might have to reassess whether you really are just a glory freak, even though you convinced me otherwise."
"I don't care if I don't get any credit," Harry assured him. "Really I don't."
"Why Harry?" Mr. Weasley asked. "Why didn't you say anything?"
Harry wondered if he could use the notion of a security leak inside the Ministry as an excuse, even if it had not really been a reason for his behavior.
"I actually don't know, sir. We got sort of caught up in it all. It's not legal to make fake Galleons . . ."
"The Galleons were faked?" Mr. Weasley said.
"Er, didn't Ginny mention that?" Harry asked, wondering if he should have held that back. He decided he did not need to. "Yes, your sons worked it out," Harry said, feeling confident in that not going any further than it had to.
Mr. Weasley sighed musically. Rodgers said, "That's better. The Minister nearly had a aneurism believing you'd given Durumulna that much money."
"We gave them thirty-three thousand. We needed those to fake the rest convincingly."
Rodgers appeared vaguely amused. "There's a spell I'd like to see."
Mr. Weasley rubbed his eyebrow. "Maybe we shouldn't tell the public that Galleons can be faked."
"What?" Rodgers blurted. "There are lots of ways to fake Galleons. Nothing new."
"It'd be nice to have a few weeks rest before Durumulna realizes . . ." Harry shyly suggested, not hopeful for any favors.
Rodgers grew increasingly interested. "What will they turn into?"
"Disks of iron that we cut."
"Ah . . ." Rodgers said, excited. "We can track the bastards this way, by how they spend those Galleons."
Mr. Weasley glared at Rodgers. "Are you encouraging him?"
Rodgers shrugged. "He was on full duty, remember? We changed their status temporarily."
Harry's spirits lifted at that. Firstly because his trainer was not angry with him, and second because he did not want to be back on probation.
Mr. Weasley leaned over close to Harry again. "Did you tell Tonks what you were planning?" When Harry shook his head, he challenged, "Really?"
"No, I didn't tell her. Why?"
"Well . . . because she insisted she was not involved and I didn't know whether to believe her."
Harry leaned back in the hard chair and stretched his arms out before him, palms flat on the table top. "I meant to say something this morning . . . I'll be honest, after it would be too late to change plans. But I just, got caught up in things, I suppose. I don't know why I didn't. I meant to. What's going to happen?"
"Well, you are certainly back on probation."
"With Aaron," Harry clarified.
"He's at his flat?"
At Harry's nod, it was decided that Rodgers should accompany Harry back for a debriefing. Mr. Weasley stalked from the room, shaking his head in grand disgust. Rodgers asked, "How is Mr. Wickem?"
Harry replied, "Not so good. But he may bounce back quickly . . . it's hard to tell. I do hope he bounces back." Harry silently pledged to avenge his quick-witted and gentle friend if he turned out to be permanently damaged. Harry did not think that a fair thing to steal from someone.
- 888 -
Aaron reappeared from the bath wrapped in and trailing a regally cut maroon dressing gown. Ginny slid the hot soup on the counter over before one of the stools.
"Or do you want to sit at the table?"
"This is fine." Aaron took up a spoon and stared into the bowl. "Nothing nasty floating in it. That's good."
An owl came to the window, and Ginny fetched the letter it carried. "It's from your mum."
"Wonderful. Read it to me."
Ginny opened it, but before she could start, Aaron corrected, "No, never mind, just tell me what it says; I've been tortured enough for one day."
Ginny read over the neat hand writing. "She wants you to come to dinner when it is convenient for you," she quoted aloud. Ginny moved her lips, holding back on an opinion.
"No, go ahead and say it," Aaron growled.
"I was going to say your family is nuts, but I thought I shouldn't say that."
Aaron bent back over his soup, managing to eat it in complete silence. Ginny had not seen him use a spell and wondered how he did it. He paused to say, "That would be a fair assessment."
Ginny took a slouched seat on the couch and closed her eyes. Aaron said, "Are you staying for a while?"
Ginny jumped forward as if to leave. "Do you want to be alone?"
"Not really." Aaron pushed the remainder of his soup away.
Ginny came around to the kitchen side of the counter. "Are you done already? Do you want something else?"
"You're behaving like my mother," Aaron accused.
Ginny froze on going to the fridge again, dropping her arms. "I really don't mean to." She remembered the surprising way Aaron had responded to Snape's tough commentary and said, somewhat stilted, "Well, if you want something. I expect you know where to find it." And went back to the couch.
Aaron felt in his pockets and then put his head in his hands. Ginny felt at a loss how to deal with this new mixed message. "I lost my wand. Those bloody losers kept my wand."
Ginny normally would have offered the use of her own, but that might be mothering. She looked around at the well-appointed flat, full of all kinds of extra, high-quality things. "You don't have a spare?"
Aaron rapidly raised his head. "Yeah." He looked about the broad room thoughtfully and pointed. "In there."
Ginny went to a fancy little darkly varnished desk and pulled open the incredibly light drawer. A ceramic wand case rested inside along with other odds and ends. She brought it over, feeling it too bold to open the strange thing.
Aaron slid the long top off the case and lifted out the diminutive wand. It was a narrow wand with an amber hue to the wood. "My dad bought this for me on one of his trips." More sadly he added, "One of his many trips. It's Egyptian."
He hovered the teapot over and poured some out. "Works just fine. I'd forgotten all about it. Thanks for the reminder."
Ginny resumed her spot on the couch. "You're welcome."
The doorbell chimed and Ginny, wand out, went to answer it. She escorted Harry and Rodgers inside. "Didn't expect you to use the door."
"Mr. Rodgers wanted to be polite," Harry said, in a high-minded tone that could have been poking fun.
"How are you doing, Aaron?" their trainer asked with about as much kindness as he ever used. He gestured for Aaron to retire to the couch, which he did with an obedient dip of his head. Rodgers pulled a chair around to face him, leaning his elbows on his knees. He tugged out a notebook and said, "It's storytime now, I'm afraid."
Aaron nodded bleakly as memory sucked him in.
- 888 -
Harry left Aaron in others' hands and went home, hoping to catch Snape before he departed for Hogwarts for the week. His getting out of trouble easily at the Ministry made him want to make sure there was no trouble at home. But Snape was already absent.
Candide sat at the dining room table in a dressing gown, sipping from a vast mug of tea.
"Hello, Harry," she greeted him vibrantly.
"Wotcher," Harry said. He was tired, but he took a seat across from her and nibbled on a triangular mini sandwich from the platter in the middle of the table. "Severus left already, it looks like."
"Yep," she said, brow furrowing. "He seemed eager to go." She shook her head.
"Do you think I'm in trouble? I haven't got used to this new setup we have. I tried to keep him informed, but everything moved too fast. And you got dragged in too. I hope you didn't get any flack." The last was a question.
Candide shook her head and flipped the page of her magazine. "He was quite surprised to find me asleep in the middle of the day, but then he didn't even mention it again."
She put the Better Gnomes and Gardens Winterfull Wonderland issue down and said, "Where's your guard?"
Harry's eyes moved around the room. "I don't seem to have one now." The prospect of losing his guard relieved him greatly until he considered that lately he had been maneuvering to get his guard shifted to Candide, whom he believed should have one.
Candide said, "Is Aaron going to be all right? You didn't leave him alone, did you?"
"There were people there when I left. Our trainer and Ginny. I'll check on him in the morning." Harry nibbled another sandwich. "I don't know how he's going to do. He seems . . . fragile. I don't know what to do about that."
"You can't give someone else strength, Harry."
"Well, Severus knew how to brow beat him out of feeling sorry for himself. Not something I would have tried. We'll have to do whatever works, though."
Next: Chapter 25
Dear Severus,
I believe this is my only chance to take care of something I feel I must complete. I expect you to object, but things will only become more busy soon enough after more is revealed. I feel strongly about this and don't believe it will take long to resolve. What do you say to this?
Harry sent the owl off right away and that night as he slipped the cover over his owl's cage, found Franklin at the window.
The reply was short and on the back of his own letter.
Do as you will, it read. Harry peered at it, tried a few revealing spells, read through his own message and again pondered the reply. Was he giving in, despite his earlier insistence that he never would? Was he expecting Harry to fail and therefore learn on his own? Whatever Snape was thinking, it surely was making Harry think a lot more.
Chapter 25 — Exchanging Glances
"He probably shouldn't be left alone," Rodgers said after Aaron's back had disappeared into his bedroom.
Ginny swayed on her feet, certain that she would collapse any second. "I can sleep out here on the couch. Tell my dad that I'm here, okay?"
"Keep your wand close at hand," Rodgers stated in a voice of serious instruction.
Ginny's wobbly brain could not decide if he were teasing, or not, or implying something, or what. She chose to treat it seriously. "I always do," she returned as though to suggest otherwise was ridiculous.
Rodgers had turned to go but he stopped. "You're hitting the books, right?"
Her mouth worked before she replied. "Trying to."
"Good."
The Auror Apprentice trainer was gone, then, with a pop! and a flash of gathered cloak. Ginny had somehow forgotten who he was while he was here. Her insides warmed at the thought that he wanted her to get into the program. "That's a treat," she muttered happily to herself.
She decided to check on Aaron and maybe try to get him to eat something more. He had twice turned away his soup after just a few bites. Now she worried he may be ill and in need of a Healer.
Aaron lay on his front, bare-backed, clutching his substantial pillow around his head. The room smelled of wood finishing oil and something floral like a laundry scent from the bedding. Ginny doubted he was asleep already. She said, "Do you want something else to eat?"
Aaron rolled over and scratching his new ear. The covers made a crinkling sound as he shifted his legs. "Mmm, no."
"You must be hungry."
Aaron propped his head up with an arm behind his head and glowered into the dimness of the room.
Ginny asked, "Why don't you want to eat?"
Aaron gave a huff while exhaling through his nose. "You wouldn't believe the stuff they tried to get me to do for food."
Ginny pushed aside the overflowing duvet and sat on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, but you aren't with them any longer."
"Do you have any idea what it's like to be a prisoner like that, at the whim of some mad wizard or another?"
"Yes."
Aaron's breathing fell quiet. Ginny went on with some reluctance at dredging up old memories. To her own ears she sounded remarkably detached. "I was Voldemort's prisoner . . . inside my head."
He stared at her, mouth twitching side to side like a rabbit. "That's right. We all blamed Harry for that." He laughed lightly.
Ginny felt a smile twitch at her own lips; Harry may have deserved that, she thought now with dark humor, but the scent of Aaron from the bath pulled her back to the here and now when he shifted his knees and neatly folded the edge of the duvet at his waist. Training had put muscle on Harry, but Aaron's chest and arms looked merely wiry from what must be comparable routine. He was lean enough that his ribs stood out the way he laid.
"Let me make you something. I noticed the panini press in the kitchen. I can probably work out how to use it, even though it's electric."
"You don't have to make me anything. I ate enough; I can wait for breakfast."
"Change your mind, let me know. I'll be on the couch."
Aaron snaked his loose hand around her wrist. "Why?"
Ginny could not straighten out her lips; they might as well have been hexed into a silly grin. "Aren't you tired?"
His hand slid up to her shoulder. He closed his eyes and said, "I can't imagine sleeping. My mind is stuck in a loop." When she did not move, he added, "Bed's big. Come on."
"I will admit . . . I have not seen larger."
"Well," he huffed, feigning affront, and holding the covers tight up to his chest. "I did not expect you to be so forward."
"What!?" she balked, but her complaint was muffled by his pulling her down for a kiss.
His spasming hands fell limp within moments and Ginny lay resting across his chest, which rose and fell without rhythm. Voice distant, one finger trailing through red strands, Aaron said, "I didn't think I merited you before, but . . . it'd be nice if you stayed . . . here, close."
"Merited?" she echoed, lifting her head. "Was that why you leapt away last time?" When he shrugged faintly and looked away, she added, "That's silly."
"I was too silly," he stated grimly, shifting his shoulders jerkily. "Too shallow to be someone's first time."
She climbed up to better meet him eye to eye with him averting his gaze. "I like that you don't take things seriously. My whole life has been nothing but fear and responsibility and since I've met you, I've been trying to enjoy things more. Things are much nicer that way." Boldly, she ran a finger over his prominent collarbone. "I like you the way you were." She put her head back down on his chest, flooding her nose with intriguing layers of scent.
"You are much too serious," he said sternly.
"Well," she said with a sigh, "I'm trying."
He said factually, "You'd be much less serious with those clothes off."
- 888 -
The front door chime woke Aaron and Ginny from deep within dreamless sleep. Ginny raised her blurry eyes and looked around in confusion.
"It's Harry," a voice said, echoing clearly over the top of the partition wall of the bedroom. Daylight from the windows poured into the white-walled sleeping area even with the door closed.
"Eep," Ginny squeaked and leapt up, but then had to grab the covers.
Aaron stretched an arm and rolled over, bare to the raw air. "Ah, yes, Harry won't get nearly as much entertainment out of seeing me in the buff as you . . ."
Ginny, with some fumbling, found Aaron's dressing gown from the night before and had just wrapped herself in it when Harry knocked on the bedroom door and immediately opened it.
"It's late, so I . . . uh," Harry stopped, fingers still clasping the door handle. He took in the scene of Aaron stretched out under the skewed duvet, of Ginny fast reddening, holding an oversized dressing gown around herself.
Ginny straightened her shoulders and it became Harry's turn to blush nearly as fierce a red. "Sorry, I didn't think . . ." No one spoke. Ginny's brows had risen up under her hair; Harry held the door handle for balance; Aaron looked to be falling back to sleep but with a sloppy grin. Harry pointed behind him, over his shoulder. "I'll be out here. I'll make some coffee."
The door closed. Aaron sat up in bed and ruffled his hair so that it stuck up equally in all directions.
"Oh Merlin," Ginny whispered.
Snapping from curled grin to overly concerned, Aaron asked, "What's the matter?"
"Uh, nothing, I suppose." Gathering the crumpled gown closer, she said, "I'll just go shower and dress." In a more reassuring tone, she added quickly, "Nothing's the matter, Aaron."
Aaron slid onto one of the stools at the counter bordering the kitchen, wearing grey jeans and a shirt which he buttoned as he said, "For someone who's faced Voldemort multitudinous times, you sure stun easily."
Harry stopped what he was doing and turned to meet Aaron's mischievous gaze, relieved to see it, even as short lived as it proved to be. Aaron's brow furrowed and he rubbed his shoulder in a manner that clearly pained him. His next glance at Harry was wry. "Can't kvetch to you, really," Aaron pondered aloud.
"You may if you like." Harry set a small cup beneath the spout on a rather large, boxy, and mysterious coffee maker with just a few buttons marring its smooth brushed-metal face. He had seen Aaron use it before, but his memory of it blurred too much to glean the details of how it worked.
"Need rescue from that?" Aaron asked a minute later when an angry hiss of steam made Harry leap back. Aaron sat with his arms crossed, appearing wearily amused.
"I grew up in a Muggle household," Harry reminded his friend.
"Not the right kind. That cost more than your uncle's last car, I bet."
Harry took the cup away and cradled it in his hand. "Well, I definitely don't want to break it, then."
"Oh, don't worry about that. It's been worth every pound already, watching you."
Harry normally would have glared at this, but he did not think Aaron was quite up to taking it the right way. "Well, as long as you don't want any coffee . . ."
"Good point." Aaron slid down off the stool and came around the floor-to-ceiling column that anchored the end of the counter.
Seconds later two steaming cups were set on the counter and a third placed beneath the spout. Harry stared at it and then noticed the shower running. He had forgotten about Ginny. "Er, sorry about barging in like that. I didn't think . . ."
Aaron, in a corrective tone, but with a flash in his eye said, "That much was obvious."
The coffees went down in silence, with Harry lost in thought over what Durumulna's reaction may be to having been cheated . . . or cheated as they would see it. Harry's thoughts darkened at the notion of holding someone hostage. No one deserved money for that, only punishment. If he expected and prepared for their retaliation, maybe he would get a good chance to get even.
Ginny was a long time appearing, and when she did, she kept her eyes on her coffee cup more than anything else. Harry too, found the objects on the counter more interesting than before. He touched a letter that had been left off to the side, then realized he should not read it and pushed it away.
Ginny said, "Oh yeah, Aaron, you have to go visit your mum today."
Harry, thinking Aaron did not look ready for stress of any kind, said, "Do you want someone to go along?"
When Aaron hesitated, Ginny added, "Someone who could help distract her?"
Aaron stalled replying. He refilled Harry's cup before setting it down with a waiter's flourish. He said, "I'm not sure the Wimbledon Boys' Choir would be enough to distract her today."
Ginny said, "And how many of your birthday parties did they sing for?"
"Eh, just one."
Ginny shook her head.
Aaron slipped his hand into hers and leaned over to peck her on the cheek. "They ate two pieces of cake each, so mum didn't have them back."
"Big cake," Ginny said while blushing again. "So, who's making breakfast?"
Harry slid around into the cooking area. "I will." As he assembled things, he glanced back at the two of them.
Ginny shifted the topic and asked Aaron, "Are you going into training today?"
Aaron pulled a gold watch from his dressing gown pocket and tilted his head to read it. "Harry must be skiving off this morning."
Harry came over with toast on plates and said, "You should take today off."
"That the official word?" Aaron asked a tad sharply.
Harry, familiar with the rapidly sea sawing emotions that followed bad experiences, said calmly, "Not exactly. Rodgers said to ask what you preferred. You can have all week off if you need it." Harry watched Aaron for any reaction. Aaron stared through the cabinets on the floor behind Harry, still clutching his shoulder. With care, Harry said, "I think it'd be better if you went back tomorrow if you are at all up to it."
"I'm not really in the mood to get knocked around," he stated distantly.
Harry, despite not having been informed of such, said decisively, "You can sit out the defensive drills. You shouldn't sit here alone, even if all you do is work on readings at the Ministry."
"I'm not alone, I have Ginny."
Ginny snapped her toast off sharply, setting off an explosion of bread crumbs. Harry gave her a single waggle of his eyebrows when she glanced his way in shy surprise.
- 888 -
Harry had indeed lost his guard, it seemed. No one was assigned to follow him at lunch, so he took himself off to the Minister's office. Belinda glanced up at him in surprise and dropped her gaze immediately.
Harry had other things on his mind today beyond wondering what her secrets may be. Perhaps when he finished with the Minister. He asked, "Is the Madame Bones in?"
"Her lunch was just sent in." Belinda waved at the door without looking up. Harry took it as an invitation and slipped over there to knock.
"Harry, I don't think . . ." Belinda was saying as Harry opened the door in response to a muted summons from inside.
Bones left her fork standing upright, puncturing layers of salad piled in a plastic box, and wiped her hands. "Mr. Potter, what a pleasure; what can I do for you?"
Harry shut the door behind him. He felt a clarity of purpose today that he could not resist the call of. Surely a band of random ruffians could be brought to heel; how hard could that be? He asked, "Is absolutely everything possible being done to combat Durumulna?"
She took up her fork again. "Ah, a business call." When she finished that bite, she said, "Yes, Harry, it is." She waved for a chair to set itself closer and indicated it with a flat palm. "Please."
Happy to be treated with such automatic consideration by someone so high, up, Harry took up the chair and sat upright with his hands interleaved. Finding the words easily, Harry stated, "It seems insufficient, the Ministry's actions to date."
She spoke through her napkin. "If you have any ideas, Harry, please share them and we'll consider them."
Her tone came across too pat to believe her. Harry took her in, wondering what the best approach may be. He felt more calculating that usual, and remembered with a jolt sitting in precisely this spot across from her, analyzing her and her office under the influence of Voldemort. Stroking his hair back, Harry composed his thoughts. "You are not making the best use of the public. The average witch and wizard do not wish to cooperate and they should."
"Of course they don't," she said, setting her lunch away. "The cost is too high. Curse and hex treatments on patients at St. Mungo's are up forty percent this quarter already and we have another month to go." She pulled out a file. "Magical Fire Equivalents up thirty-five percent."
Harry cut her statistics short. "But if you made it clear to them, through some kind of campaign, that they would get protection if they helped us . . ."
"Trouble is, Harry, people remember the previous leadership all too well. They are hard to convince."
"But you aren't even trying," Harry came back firmly.
This gave her pause. "Your department is part of the outreach, I'm quite certain, Harry. Every wizard shop in Britain is supposed to be contacted personally by someone from Enforcement by the end of the year."
"Yes, but that's just as secret as Durumulna. They survive in the shadows, on secrecy, so it plays to their strengths." Masks, cloaks and whispered threats, Harry thought with a strange thrill of comfortable familiarity. He composed himself again, covering his unease. "We need a public campaign of . . . shaming or something. Make the public resist them harder. People who hide behind masks, slinking about, lazy and conniving, taking what's not theirs . . ." Harry had built to a crescendo and found he did not recognize himself. He backed down. "It just seems . . . not aggressive enough," he finished weakly, feeling slightly dizzy.
Bones had stood to pace, which Harry only now noted. She picked up a long white quill and ran her fingers over it. "Are you here at the behest of someone in your department, Harry?"
Harry shook his head, wondering belatedly if he should have come only at such behest, but then putting that concern aside as unimportant; something had to be done. This had gone on long enough; someone had to take charge. Such minor thugs could be brought to order by simple enough application of bait, whispered words and threats of pain and humiliation. He could not understand why that hadn't happened already. It would be so easy—the cloaks and masks would make it even easier, keeping everything in the shadows.
She said, "Your rescued fellow is faring well enough, I am informed."
Harry focused on her words. "He's . . . not quite himself."
She smiled sadly. "I expect not, for a while at least." She sighed. "I'm afraid, Harry, that I have meetings to prepare for this afternoon . . . and if you are here on your own initiative, then perhaps you should sneak back before you have gone missing." She gave him a wink.
This understanding shook him from his introspection by cutting through his confused concerns to the clearer core of him. He felt humbled: jarringly the opposite of moments before. Why was he thinking this way, he wondered with suddenly clammy hands.
In the outer area of the suite he strode to the door deep in thought. With a half-wave at Belinda he headed for the back stairs at a shuffling, distracted pace. A dark shadow approaches undetected, gathering the slumbering willing in its web, the prophecy came back to him. Minutes ago he was imagining how childishly easy it would be to bring Durumulna to heel. Maybe he should stop imagining that.
As he made his way back to the training room, he considered that Durumulna was not exactly slumbering, but this was little consolation. Harry pulled out his books, wondering if he should go speak with Snape that evening. Something seemed to be waking that chunk of the Dark Lord he still carried or, at least, he expected that was the explanation.
Harry forgot about his half-planned visit to Hogwarts when Ginny and Aaron arrived for dinner that evening, followed closely by Ron, who did not hide well that he was only checking up on his sister.
In the corner of his vision Harry noticed Ginny leaning away from Aaron, and putting her hands in her lap. Ron ambled over and took a seat beside his sister, sitting far forward to half turn toward the two of them. He appeared to want to speak, but could not find words.
Harry filled in the silence with, "How are things at the bank, Ron?"
"Er, less trouble, and a lot fewer customers, with the new security schemes. Quiet."
"Too quiet?" Harry prodded, simply to distract him.
"No. Er . . . whatcha mean by that?"
Harry was not certain what he meant by that. He looked over his friend, his mussed hair, the spray of freckles across his nose, fading with the onset of winter. He would be an easy pawn, some inner instinct told him.
Harry stood suddenly. "I'm just going to make sure that Winky knows you're staying for dinner."
Ginny laughed. "I'm sure she's already doubled everything she's cooking," she called over her shoulder to Harry.
In the darkened corridor leading to the kitchen, Harry stopped and leaned on the wall. Ahead of him, through a low doorway, he could see the cookfire fluttering hot, casting pots and cauldrons and baskets into gilt-edged silhouettes. What was happening to him? He had not dreamed of Lockhart/Voldemort in a long time. On the other hand, what was wrong with trying to get things moving at the Ministry? The masked figures of Durumulna again passed before his mind's eye. It would be so easy. Each of them would have a weakness or two; something they would do anything to get. It started out about money, but it always turned into something else. Harry could taste taking charge of them as an astringent stain on his tongue.
He pushed away from the wall, heart speeding. If this was the prophecy, was he trapped into following this instinct? It couldn't be the prophecy, he assured himself. That was for another place. Or was it?
"You know Ron is here for dinner, right?" Harry asked the house elf.
Winky turned her large, slowly blinking eyes on Harry. "Winky is knowing this, yes."
She looked concerned. Harry managed a small smile and said, "Thanks," before turning away.
At dinner, Harry snuck extra glances at Ginny, unable to shake the implications of the prophecy. She played expertly coy with her brother; even Harry, if he did not have absolute knowledge otherwise, would not have known how close she and Aaron had grown. Aaron for his part would become lost in the conversation for longer and longer periods of time. But every time he bordered on a flippant comment, he fell quiet and rubbed his shoulder or his arm, turned again inside himself.
At the end of the late evening, after Candide had retired, Ron nixed the idea of Ginny taking Aaron home to guard him. Harry intervened before it could grow ugly between the siblings.
"I'll take Aaron home, Ginny, if you stay here as guard."
Ginny looked around, seemingly for the first time. "That's right. Where's your guard?"
"Don't have one. And I'm glad for it enough to not ask about it. But I'd feel better if someone is here with Candide."
Ginny hesitated, lips twitching with the desire to argue more with Ron. "All right," she agreed.
Ron glowered at them in turn, reluctantly mollified.
Harry took Aaron home where he plunked down on the couch with a groan. Harry wanted to allude to his clearly feeling better, but held back, remembering how much he always hated that comment in similar circumstances.
Aaron stretched and with a weak attempt at humor, asked, "So, am I getting a massage from you tonight or are you trading at some point?" He lowered his arms and rubbed one shoulder, face pained, head angled away from Harry.
Harry swallowed. "You seem to be avoiding being funny."
"What good's it do?" Aaron snapped at him, eyes brightening. "Pathetic anyway."
"No, it's not," Harry gently disagreed. "You're always so cheery and lighthearted. People need that."
Aaron did not reply, and Harry sensed he should wait and push on the issue later. Harry sat back with a sigh of his own. Caring about Aaron's state of mind had freed him from darker instincts, another bad sign. Harry shook his head.
"Wha's that?" Aaron slurringly asked.
Harry decided to be honest with him as he had in the past. "Something's going on with me. Like I'm thinking like Voldemort again . . . in a minor way. It just started. Maybe I should ask Mr. Weasley to check that nothing is happening with Lockhart in prison."
"Happening like what?"
"I don't know." He looked at his friend, glad he had pulled him out of his funk. It felt good to feel like himself, so when Ginny arrived at one to change places, Harry was a little disappointed, but he left the two of them and went home.
Harry immediately went to Kali's cage and released his sleeping pet. She happily crawled onto his arm and investigated his pocket, finding nothing amiss with him.
Relieved by this, Harry crawled into bed, but found sleep elusive. He kept thinking about the Ginny he knew and the other Plane's Ginny. The prophecy could not be about him, Harry assured himself, but that meant the other Ginny was naïvely living with dark fate stalking her, failing to prepare properly.
Harry turned himself over and pulled the duvet tighter, forcing his mind to clear so he could rest.
- 888 -
Harry repeatedly told himself that he had far and away enough to worry about in his own world without traipsing off to involve himself in another one, but by mid-week he began to have second thoughts about this. He considered that once Durumulna discovered the ruse about the Galleons, he would have approximately zero chance to get away. He also found it reassuring to worry about his friends, since it kept other less savory notions and instincts at bay.
Wednesday evening, Harry sat across from Candide, who now spent her evenings buried in bawdily-covered romance novels rather than accounting files. The miniature novel she held up to her nose tonight had an animated picture of a hunchbacked and tattered young man stretching up into a prince just in time to catch a swooning woman in a tall white hat and veil.
Harry decided he should do as he was instructed and ask for advice from his guardian. He dearly felt he should warn the other Ginny. Just warn her. After that it would be her responsibility to see to getting prepared. Relieved to take any action, even just planning, Harry liberated a clean parchment by tearing a used one in two and penned a couched letter.
Dear Severus,
I believe this is my only chance to take care of something I feel I must complete. I expect you to object, but things will only become more busy soon enough after more is discovered. I feel strongly about this and don't believe it will take long to resolve. What do you think of this?
Harry sent his owl off right away bearing the letter. Later that evening as he straightened his room, he heard Hedwig scratch at the window.
The reply was short and on the back of his own letter.
Do as you will, it read. Harry peered at it, tried a few revealing spells, read through his own message and again pondered the reply. Was he giving in, despite his earlier insistence that he never would? Was he expecting Harry to fail and therefore learn on his own? Whatever Snape was thinking, it surely was making Harry think a lot more.
- 888 -
Hermione brushed her hair from her eyes but it immediately fell back, catching on her eyelashes. She bounced her knuckles on the smoky finish of the Defense Against the Dark Arts office door and entered when a voice sounded from inside.
But what she had heard might not have been a request to enter. Hermione stopped in the doorway while taking in the slightly heated conversation between Professors Lupin and Snape.
Lupin barely glanced up before going on. "Severus, we've been over this before. I don't mind your deciding what is taught as part of OWL preparation, but I'm already in the middle of Wee Nettlesome and Vexing Creatures and I want to finish that before moving onto a new subject." He wound down and turned to Hermione. "Ah, you have a meeting."
At his desk, Snape lifted the dark brown cover of his large desk journal and glanced into it before letting it fall closed.
Lupin turned back to Snape, arms conciliatory. "It's true; I'm here at your convenience, but I put a foot down at changes mid-lesson."
"As long as it isn't a paw," Snape muttered. "Ms. Granger, I believe we have a meeting."
Lupin, taken aback by the comment, hesitated moving, as did Hermione.
Snape sighed audibly. "Fine, Remus. But I do want to go over the syllabus before we get any closer to the end of the year."
Lupin gave Hermione a wide-eyed glance of disturbed surprise as he passed her. Hermione, feeling more like a student than she had since becoming a professor, took the visitor's chair.
Snape, as usual, was right to the point. "And your last week of teaching went how?"
Hermione dove right in, upbeat. "Better. Things are feeling more natural."
Snape glanced over parchments that she assumed to be notes of their previous sessions. "You aren't just saying that because you have Sixth and Seventh-Years immediately before this meeting, are you?"
"No, sir," she said automatically. "They actually aren't easier. Well, they are easier to teach, but the expectations are much higher, so really, success is just as difficult to achieve. The younger students, well, they can be maddening at times, but one good session can catch them right up."
Snape tilted his head as though acknowledging this observation and Hermione relaxed marginally. She was trying too much to please, but knowing this did not make it easier to stop doing it. Remembering Snape's uncalled-for comment to Lupin, she put down her own notes and took a closer look at the man across from her. He seemed hard and withdrawn. Well, he always seemed that way, but it had an edge to it today. It was true that something had gone magically awry in the Slytherin Dungeon two nights before and quite a few students were in detention. Even Hermione had been assigned two young Slytherin girls for the next weeks' late evenings. They were the most well-behaved students she had ever had in detention, subdued into keeping their noses down in the books she had assigned them, and answering her followup questions about the reading with undo care.
When they finished discussing the best means of occupying the brightest students and Snape was putting away his notes, Hermione asked, "How's Harry?"
Snape did not exactly glare, but he gave no indication that he may answer. Hermione said, "Yes, I know: Owl him if I want to know."
"I should think."
Her papers gathered to her chest, she hesitated beside the desk. "I think you were a little harsh with Remus, Professor."
With a flickering of his lids, Snape rolled his eyes. "He turns into a werewolf approximately once a month. If he hasn't accepted that yet, there is nothing for it." He pulled out other papers and files, needing to rearrange his unusually crowded desk to do it. "As his potion brewer, I believe I am at liberty to be snide about his situation if I desire to be."
"Still," she said, finding herself on better ground once she had begun to stand upon it.
They stared at each other. "Anything else?" Snape demanded.
He looked busy. "No. Thanks for the review. When's our next meeting?" she added with less than relish.
Snape opened his desk journal again.
- 888 -
Harry spent much of the rest of the week trying to decide what to do. Aaron had returned to full training, even if he had not returned to his usual joking self. Perhaps as a way of avoiding traveling to that other place until he had thought about it longer, Harry invited all of his fellows over for dinner Friday.
Kerry Ann, Ambroise in tow, arrived early because she would depart early for field work. Ambroise held an armful off flowers and a magnum of wine.
"Those are for us?" Harry asked. "You didn't need to do that."
Ambroise bowed with a crinkle of the plastic cradling the flowers and held them out.
"Thanks," Harry said. Winky arrived then with a vase full of water, and Harry handed them on without hesitation.
"What a lovely elf," Ambroise said, perhaps regarding the timing, but Winky squeaked in surprise, and flushed purple around the edges of her ears.
Kerry Ann gave Harry a kiss on each cheek and then Ambroise did the same.
"Erm, why don't we have a seat," Harry said, hoping he wasn't blushing too, and gestured at the couches.
Kerry Ann made a circuit of the room while her date stood patiently beside the couch, refusing to sit before she did. Harry found himself observing all of this, wondering if he should be trying to emulate any of it if the occasion called for it. Ambroise's natural, alien gallantry and style he probably could not copy. His hair looked as wild as Harry's but it was parted far on one side and cut in a wedge that suited his deferential posture.
Kerry Ann finally sat, with a delicate assisting hand from her beau, asking, "Where's Candide?"
"Still at work," Harry replied, thinking that these Frenchmen would spoil the women and good thing there were not more of them about.
Vineet arrived, also bearing a gift, and the table by the couches began to resemble a birthday. After five minutes of sitting across from the attentive couple, he stood and said, "I'll return shortly. Excuse me."
Candide came home, and Harry tried to get her to join, but she said she needed some quiet time before dinner. Ambroise saw her to the stairs like one guiding an invalid, and released her there with a bow and a quaintly accented, "Madame . . ."
Candide looked them over Ambroise's shiny haired head and said with certainty, "I'll be back down for dinner."
Aaron and Ginny arrived and again the gift pile swelled. "Let's open this," Ginny said of the magnum. Ambroise stood up to do it, tying Harry, who also got a hand on the bottle. Winky arrived in a sparkle and made a small ehem. They relinquished the bottle to the elf at the same moment, staring at each other, and Harry realized only then that Ambroise was also competing here.
Tridant arrived and Vineet returned, from the Floo in the dining room, tugging Hermione along by the hand.
"Harry, I didn't get an invite," she complained from inside a hug.
"It was last minute. I didn't know you could get away so easily."
Hermione casually transfigured the spare end table into a chair and sat upon it beside him when he offered his spot on the couch. "Minerva insists I work too hard. And in case I end up as Head of House next year I should take advantage now while I can."
Harry introduced Tridant to his friend and Tridant complained about not knowing he could bring a date. Kerry Ann from across the room, over the din of conversation, said loudly, "Oh, yes. By all means. We'd love to meet her."
Tridant looked around the room. "Well, maybe not. We've only been seeing each other a few weeks and she's from out of town and . . ."
"Not a friend of Aaron's evil date, I hope," Harry said.
Aaron looked over and levered himself off the tightly packed couch, pain backstopping his gaze. "What's this?" he asked quietly.
"Maybe you should bring your new girl over sometime," Harry said.
Hermione said, "Aaron had his troublesome date over for your Halloween party and no one noticed her."
"Oh, we all noticed her," Ginny chimed in, then wrapped her hands around Aaron's elbow.
"I have to have my dates approved?" Tridant said in annoyance. "I don't have a wealthy family, what would anyone want with me?"
"I don't know . . ." Kerry Ann said knowingly. "I think you should bring in her vitae for us to check over."
"You are such a gossip," Aaron said.
Tridant held up his hands and backed out of the group that had gradually surrounded him. "I can take care of myself, really." And from someone his size, this sounded reasonable.
Harry plunked down on the couch with, "I've said that before."
Kerry Ann pressed on, leaning closer to Tridant, "You're the only one dating someone questionable, you know."
"Yeah, you're tight with the French-Flaired Foreign Lege-wizard, here." Tridant stepped up behind Harry and towered his large frame over him. "And Harry's dating another Auror, which he's not supposed to be." He then gestured at Aaron, still with Ginny attached to his arm. "You're dating the boss' daughter . . . are you supposed to be?" he asked in disbelief.
Harry sipped his wine and gave a wink to the two of them, standing there, clinging together like lost puppies. "I don't think the boss has acknowledged it yet."
With a swish of her robes, Kerry Ann returned to her seat and proclaimed, "You're safe for a year, at least. Mr. Weasley is always the last to know anything."
With that, Winky arrived in a sparkle and announced that dinner was being served.
Harry made the mistake of sitting across from Ginny, who was trading whispers with Aaron in a way that helped to keep the other's spirits propped up and involved in the party. Harry had no problem with this. He was pleased that someone had taken his fellow's mental health into attentive care. His difficulty came from the constant reminder of the plight of the other Ginny, a plight that stemmed from an ignorance that would be easy to fixed.
At the end of the night, after his friends had departed, Tonks arrived from her late shift and cuddled up with Harry on the couch where he had been sitting, thinking.
"Kerry Ann does well on field work. She knows just everybody, and people she doesn't know personally, she still knows something about. Bloody useful."
"She was giving Tridant the third degree about the strange woman he's dating."
Tonks stretched, changed her hair to flat, and found a comfortable spot for her head on Harry's ribs. "She's clean. We already checked her out."
"Already?"
"While Aaron was still missing. We're not taking any chances."
Tonks felt pleasantly warm pressed against him in the cooling air of the hall with the scents of the guests fading. Harry said, "I need to take care of something quick in another Plane . . ." He stopped because Tonks was pounding her head against his chest. "I just need a warm up when I return. Come on, I just have to go talk to someone."
She raised her head to look at him, eyes slitted like a cat's, but it faded to normal. "Harry, going to see your parents again is not a good idea."
"I wasn't going to do that," Harry argued. "I have to go talk to that Ginny, to warn her."
"Hm." Tonks put her head back down, wiggling around to find a good spot to rest it.
"Tonks, do you think a prophecy in another place like that could have any bearing in this one?"
She reached up to scratch her head. "I have no idea. What's the prophecy?"
Harry quoted, "A dark shadow approaches undetected, gathering the slumbering willing in its web. It will shatter half a century of peace so that the time before it will seem as if a dream . . . power indescribably heartless will wreak cold vengeance upon wizardom. All will be touched for the worse. The only magic capable of defeating it is contained within the seventh pureblood son who is not."
"Seventh pureblood son who is not? Oh, that does sound like Ginny. Have you told her?"
"That's what I'm going to go do."
Tonks lifted her head again, "No, I mean, this Ginny."
Harry stared at Tonks, the tips of his fingers going numb. "I didn't think it applied."
"Well, but you know it. You're here now with it. Doesn't that make it apply?"
Harry's unblinking eyes widened more. "Do you think that could be true?" he asked in alarm. "Wait, we haven't had a half century of peace," he argued.
"Oh, true," Tonks said, putting her head back down. A moment later, her voice drifted up, "Well, but the Muggle world has."
Harry held his breath. "It can't count," he insisted after a minute. Tonks shrugged in his arms.
"At least you know it's Ginny. We have to get her into the program," she added with confidence.
"Yeah, I was thinking that. Just in case."
Author's Notes: Yes, very very late. Driving cross-country took out more than the week required, I had to then catch up on work. We are back on schedule though. 26 is more than half done.
Next Chapter — 26
Ginny said shakily, "Why don't we both just sit down, hey?"
Harry did so, dizzy with something, perhaps just lack of control over himself. He rubbed his forehead, found he still held his wand, and set it down. Ginny scooped it up and said, "Professor, may I have yours too?"
After a long pause where he searched her gaze, he relinquished his as well.
Chapter 26 — Ensnared by a Ruse
Early the next morning, as if fate had decreed it, Candide gathered up her cloak and bag and announced she was spending the day with her parents.
"Severus isn't coming home?" Harry asked.
Candide ducked her head to free her hair from the collar of her cloak. "He hasn't owled saying he will. I'm not going to wait around. I didn't have time to visit at all before the accounting year closed."
She wore fuzzy warm robes under her cloak, and tugged on thick woolen mittens, just to travel by Floo.
"Going to be warm enough?" Harry asked of her gear.
She held up one tan and grey mitten, which flopped off the ends of her fingers. "Frankly, I used these to breath through. Floo dust is bad for people who are pregnant."
Said Harry, "Floo dust is bad for everyone."
She took up her handbag with a chuckle and said, "Yeah. Funny the things you don't worry about until you're pregnant."
"Are your parents excited?" Harry asked. "I would think they'd be."
"Eh, what's one more grandkid? This will make five."
"Are they all magical?"
Candide rested her handbag on the table, still hooked on her shoulder. "Mostly. There is one still in question, the youngest. We'll see when he turns eleven at the latest."
"I can probably tell," Harry said. Then thinking back to the crowded tent and all the guests added, "I don't think I noticed at the wedding."
"We'll have to have them over for dinner, then, so you can." She patted her belly. "I hope this little one is. But it's all right if he's not," she added quickly.
"'Course it's all right," Harry said.
She sighed, "Well, if you get an owl from Severus, owl it along to me. Maybe my mentioning wanting to visit my parents is the reason he isn't here.
Harry replied, "I don't think that's it; he knows that he wouldn't let you talk him into going."
She bundled her cloak tighter and stepped into the Floo. Harry thought that if he were going to travel to this other place, he should do so soon too. He went to his room to prepare a warm landing area, just in case he was gone long enough to worry that Tonks may be on duty.
Harry arrived in the other Plane, and discovered a major downside to traveling in the morning: the weak sun did not warm him much. Harry lay on the cold, matted field, barely able to breathe or move except in spasms, fumbling with his wand to warm the ground beside him so he could roll over onto it and remain alive. By the time he was able to stand, his bones ached and his head pounded. He could hear Snape in his snidest voice telling him he had been overconfident.
"Yeah, yeah," Harry replied to the empty air.
Harry applied his disguise and needed no acting to hobble, bent-backed, up to the hedge surrounding the confectionary architecture of the Burrow. The Weather Vain on the peak of the roof must not be operating today since it was bone cold and damp like only December could be. Harry did not particularly desire to rouse the whole household.
Stretching his stiff shoulders back, Harry transformed into his Animagus form and took wing for the roof just above where Ginny's room should be. He may be guessing wrong, but with his keen sense of animal smell he expected he could tell just by getting close.
Three long flaps brought Harry to a delicate landing on his knuckles because he feared knocking shingles loose with his claws. The roof beams creaked with his weight but not loudly. Harry unfurled each foot in turn and placed them carefully where he could lean over the peak and look down into the window. It smelled of Ginny, and many other things, like mice and bats and faintly of illicit potion ingredients, which must be something of the twins'.
Harry scratched on the window frame, then scratched again. The second time, the bedspread used as a curtain jerked aside. Not wanting to scare Ginny, Harry took flight and landed just on the far side of the hedge where he could quickly check his disguise and step out.
Mouth agape, Ginny leaned far out of her open window, the makeshift curtains draping out beside her hands. Harry waved. Her head popped inside and a minute later, she emerged on broomstick and swooped down beside him.
"Hi!" she greeted him warmly, adjusting her hastily thrown on cloak. "You're an early riser."
"It's around nine, I believe," Harry said in his older, plodding voice.
"That's early for Saturday. We always sleep in."
"You have it very easy here," Harry commented. When Ginny shrugged, Harry said, "I need to speak with you. If you would accompany me on a short walk?" He held out a hand to invite her to lead the way.
She flipped her broomstick over to use it as a walking stick and stepped through the hedgerow. Harry followed along beside, remaining quiet until they found a trail bordering the orchard and followed it.
"Has anyone spoken to you?" Harry asked.
She seemed younger than the Ginny he knew. Her hair trailed a strawberry-scented haze and she walked with an unnecessary bounce to her step. "Lots of people talk to me. Like who?"
"Minerva McGonagall or someone else from the Wizengamot?"
She choked a laugh. "Are you joking? No, no one like that has talked to me. I'm not sure they know I exist."
Harry stopped and she turned her freshly curious gaze on him. He stroked his beard, mostly to keep it from blowing around in the wind so much. "Then they haven't realized the truth then," Harry thought aloud, setting Ginny back on her heels with a quizzical expression.
Harry said, "There's been a prophecy about the good times ending here. That a dark wizard . . . or witch is going to start making trouble and lots of people are going to get hurt."
"A prophecy?" The wind had a hold of her thick hair, tossing it back and forth behind her.
Patiently, he said, "Yes, like with Harry Potter and Voldemort you know."
"Huh," she muttered. "And why are you telling me this?"
Harry recited the prophecy to her and gave it time to sink in. He closed his eyes and felt for the shadows. There was no Voldemort, but his followers certainly were all there, scattered like dark stars around Britain. "See, I think the seventh pure-blood son who is not, is you." And I think the slumbering followers are Voldemort's old Death Eaters, long since forgotten.
Her face twisted into a humorous expression that Harry had no desire to laugh at. She giggled uncomfortably. "What is this magic I am supposed to have?"
"I don't know. No one knows. It's likely not something obvious or expected." He took her shoulders. "But you must prepare for this, or you may not survive to fulfill the prophecy."
Harry miscalculated badly with this. Ginny stepped back with a jerk, out of reach. With a hint of distaste, she said, "I think Harry might be right, that you're a doddering old showoff."
Harry drooped slightly, chastising himself. He had rushed things and now faced a poorer prospect for convincing her of what he believed should be done. With more emotion, he said, "Ginny, look . . ."
But this made her back up another step. He could see in her eyes she was recalculating being there at all with him, alone, could see her memory of the duel with his counterpart, flashing before her mind's-eye. Her wariness ratcheted up and she was preparing to Apparate away.
Harry stepped back, hands out in plain view. "I don't mean to alarm you," he said in his humblest tones. She gradually relaxed as he held that pose, head slightly bent. Harry was considering that it was no wonder that Dumbledore had left him to his own devices for so long without telling him the truth.
"Ginny, I cannot stay long. I should not be here at all. You must ask Minerva McGonagall for advice. Tell her I believe you are the one in the prophecy. Will you promise me that you will do this?"
Ginny's flexible face twisted into series of unlikely shapes that did not promise much.
"Please, Ginny," Harry said, pinning his beard down with one hand on his chest in entreaty.
"Why are you doing this? Saying these things?" she demanded, recovering some spunk.
Gently, knowing with ironic pain that he sounded like his old mentor, Harry said, "I'm not doing anything. I'm trying to help you." He needed a new tactic, as her eyes indicated imminent departure again. "You enjoyed my lessons in Defensive magic, right?" he asked, as though of someone much younger. How was she ever going to survive without growing up?
"Of course. They never taught us any of that and it's fun to learn stuff the teachers don't think we should know."
Harry's mind worked fast. "All right then. What if, just in case, you were to find an instructor in Defensive magic." He laid the endearing salesman mode on as heavily as he dared. "Someone who could teach you all kinds of things that are not generally known and in some cases are forbidden?"
He had her attention, so he went on. "You could learn all kinds of spells brothers have never seen. You don't have to believe in the prophecy to find that appealing, I'm sure."
She crossed her arms and considered that. "But why can't you teach me, then, if this is so important?"
"I cannot remain here. For reasons that I cannot tell you, but believe me they are real and dire."
She frowned, but appeared to yield. "So where do I find this great teacher?"
"You know him already. The person I have in mind is Severus Snape."
She physically stumbled backward upon hearing this. She righted herself slowly as though expecting attack and laughed in a nervous burst. "That's nuts. I'm not going anywhere near that slimy dungeon bat, not for all the Galleons in Gringott's." She took a few steps away, back down the trail. "Take your crazy ideas somewhere else. What an awful thought."
Harry called lightly, "Ginny, this isn't about gold, this is about surviving. It's about making sure everyone you know and love survives."
She stopped, shoulders bent. "What if I don't believe any of this?"
Harry resumed his earlier placating pose. "You may simply ask Minerva and she will confirm it."
Pained, she stared down at the ground. Harry tried to decide if he had accomplished enough here. It did not feel very settled, and he did not want to return again. He needed to be done with this for good.
"I'm not going anywhere near that greaseball of a Potions teacher," she stated firmly. "The best thing about finishing at Hogwarts was never seeing him again." She shuddered for effect. "He hates me. He hates everyone, really." She laughed.
Harry's mind ruffled through his options. He wanted to personally put Ginny in Snape's hands. If he did that, then he could leave in good conscience. "I wonder if Professor Snape is at Hogwarts," Harry said.
With clear disdain, she said, "I have no idea. It's not something I regularly contemplate. Quite the opposite." Relenting slightly, she said, "Many of the teachers go home on the weekends."
"They do?" Harry couldn't imagine it.
"So do loads of the students. If they want."
Harry stared at her. "What an odd thought."
She did not understand his confusion and sounded corrective as she said, "Why not? It only requires a few minutes to get home by Floo. And wouldn't you rather be home with your parents than stuck at school?"
Harry rubbed a hand through his beard and took her in. Growing strategic, he said, "You know, Harry rather hates Professor Snape. If you got lessons from him, you could face Harry down in any duel and imagine his annoyance when you beat him. Every time."
Ginny wavered and bit her lip. Unrequited, adoring love, grown poisoned by time showed from her eyes. She appeared strategic too. "He won't take me as a student, you know." Her lip curled unattractively as she spoke. "Not that I could stand to be within ten miles of the overgrown Slytherin bat."
Airily, Harry said, "I'd recommend finding a better title for him. At least until you learn to counter more curses." She expressed mocking amusement at this, but then seemed to find it genuinely funny. Seeing the best opening he was going to get, Harry said, "Wait here, all right? I'll be back in five minutes."
"You're not bringing the Dungeon Dungbomb back with you, are you?"
That one Harry almost could not let slide. Stiffly and with his annoyance clear, he said, "No. I'm just going to check where he is."
Harry, wanting to impress her, slipped silently away and arrived moments later in the Hogwart's Dungeon, inside the Potions office. The room sat in stillness, hearths and candles cold. Harry walked around to check the classroom. Two students were brewing something on the floor, whispering. They panicked when Harry approached, tripping on robes and nearly upsetting the cauldron.
"Just looking for the Professor," Harry said kindly to the Ravenclaws.
The boy's Adam's apple bobbed rapidly as he swallowed between words. "He's. . . .he's supposed to be home." Both his and his friend's eyes glared out as big as saucers. The potion smelled like Memory Magic.
Harry gently said, "I'm assuming you're selling that since, given your house colors, you certainly shouldn't need it yourselves. And it's frothing over, so you should get back to it."
They dropped back to a crouch and returned to brewing. Chuckling lightly, Harry stepped out and slipped away to Shrewsthorpe, wondering if in this perfect place Snape did not live somewhere nicer. Unwilling to invade the privacy of the place by slipping inside, Harry arrived beside a hedge across the street. While he waited for the cars to clear, a woman came by, walking a pug. Harry asked her if she knew who lived in the house across the way, and she replied, "The Snapes: Professor and the missus."
The Snapes, Harry thought with a small grin as the dog's claws clicked in retreat. He returned to Ginny, who abruptly said, "How do you do that? Not make a sound?"
Harry gave her a finger to the lips and wink. "It took me such trouble to learn that. But let me take you for a visit and make a proposal. I think with a little illumination of the situation, the good professor will see things my way."
He took her elbow, but she raised it. "Where are we going?"
"Professor Snape's house."
"He has a house? He doesn't just live in a hole somewhere?"
Harry corked his anger, but each time it grew harder to bottle up. "Let me give you a little advice, for your own good. That mouth is going to get you taken down to about an inch high if you use it that way in front of Professor Snape."
"Good reason not to go," she commented, but lowered her arm into his hand and slouched. "This is all on your head, you know," sounding honestly blameful and a tad spoiled.
They arrived at the garden gate. "I know that, my dear," Harry said, returning to his more raspy voice, which he had let slip while arguing with her.
A knock on the door made it open almost instantly by Tidgy's hand. Harry gave the elf a small bow and asked, "Is your master at home?"
Tidgy did not have a chance to reply before a familiar voice brought an instant smile to Harry's lips.
"Who is it, Tidgy?" Candide came into view, mauve robes filling the corridor as she approached, moving like one not in the least pregnant.
Harry gestured for Ginny to answer. "Uh, I'm a student of Professor Snape's, er, I was, I'm, er, wondering if he's here?" She sounded as unpleased at the prospect of a yes as she possibly could.
Candide smiled wryly. "Why don't you come in for tea, and we'll see if we can rouse him from his books."
Ginny strode in behind Candide with a pose of defeat and wary hostility. The main hall was brighter and cheerier than Harry was accustomed to. The wood had been stripped and re-varnished in a lighter shade and woven hangings adorned the outside walls. While Harry admired this, Ginny sharply whispered through clenched teeth, "I don't know how I let you talk me into-"
"What is this?" Snape hissed from beside the doorway to the drawing room. He hadn't made a sound coming into the hall.
Pleasantly, as if this were a game, Candide replied, "Your former student and . . . I didn't get your name?"
"Aaron Totten, Madame," Harry said with a bow that he tried to make look creaky and painful given the eyes upon him.
" . . . and Mr. Totten are here for tea." She turned to the elf. "Tidgy prepare some tea in the dining room."
Snape eyed Ginny suspiciously after a sharp glance at Harry, who had his mind Occluded. Harry, wanting to explain things himself, turned Ginny's eyes away by taking her arm to lead her in the direction indicated by their hostess.
As they settled at the table, Snape stood in the doorway and said to the elf, "Tidgy, the smallest teacups, mind you."
Harry, in his best Dumbledore impression, said, "Ah, that will make the pot require even longer to consume. Such gracious hosts."
Snape's eyes narrowed, and Harry had to swallow a laugh by biting into a biscuit.
"Severus," Candide said in a long suffering but superficially annoyed tone. "I don't mind at all if we on rare occasion have someone over for tea. Frequently would be even better." She sat down across from Ginny and clasped her hands nicely. "So, you must be a Weasley."
"Yes," Snape answered from his cross-armed position by the mantel as Ginny opened her mouth. "One of far too many of them."
Candide asked, "Severus, are you going to sit down, or are you just going to loom?"
"He prefers to loom," Ginny said at exactly the same time as Snape said, "I always prefer to loom."
Harry bit hard into his treat and had to scrunch his eyes against a laugh. But he quickly fell more serious when he considered what he had to accomplish.
Snape tugged out a chair and sat on it, arms crossed. "To what do we owe the displeasure of this visit?" he asked in a falsely genteel manner.
Harry glanced at Candide. "We have something we need to discuss." He considered that the Candide he knew was the model of discretion, partly because of the habits of her job. Lips cocked, he said to her, "My dear lady, you must be an accountant, am I right?"
This drew newly vigilant, narrowed eyes from Snape. Harry went on, "I only suggest it from the ink stains on your hand and a bit on your sleeve, almost removed by your elf, but not quite, and the strength of your hands, presumably from moving the rolls and files around the office."
Unlike Snape, she found his guess less than surprising. "Yes, I am."
"Well, then," Harry said, sipping his tea. "I think I can speak before you." He turned to Snape, who was analyzing him more closely than the disguise would probably withstand if not for the backlighting Harry had intentionally chosen when he picked this seat. "Professor Snape, I wonder if you are aware that Professor Trelawney has prophecized again."
Snape's attention fell into a strange stillness. His head tilted to the right and held that way, like a giant parrot.
"I was not certain if you would have been told." Harry slowly recited the prophecy and, as he finished, Snape reached out two long fingers, which he placed on Candide's shoulder.
"This is to not leave this room," he said to his wife.
Vaguely stunned, but more curious, she replied, "I understand."
Snape sat back, clutched his hands together and touched the steepled index fingers to his nose as he sank into musing. His eyes drifted over to Ginny. "I see where your thoughts are leading," he said with little enthusiasm.
Harry nibbled his fifth biscuit, not because they were particularly good, but because they rekindled memories of when Tidgy was still alive. "I am here with the suggestion that you train this young lady in Defense."
Snape turned a baleful eye on Ginny. "Oh, are you now?"
Harry had thought this would be easy. He expected Snape to see the wisdom of the idea and agree without argument. Snape was not giving any indication of that, quite the opposite.
Snape said, "You think I have time for such things?"
Candide said, "You don't think it is a good idea, Severus? The prophecy does pertain to Ginny, does it not?"
"Who knows?" Snape muttered coarsely. "And in any event, she was one of the most horrid students I have ever faced. I certainly do not want her back again."
Ginny tossed her hair and crossed her arms to match his. "For the record, I don't very much want to either."
Snape turned to Harry, "And what is your interested in this?" he asked with suspicion. "I have never heard of you, yet you come in here setting things up like you expect to be next in line for Minister."
"I'm an old friend of Albus'. I've been out of the country for rather a long while." They stared at each other, Harry certain his disguise was not going to cut it if Snape's suspicions were roused for long. "Are you refusing to do this thing?"
"Yes. Are you as doddered as you appear?" Snape returned.
Candide rolled her eyes and sighed. Ginny pushed her heavy chair back with a noisy rumble and stood. "Well, I guess that's that," she said happily.
"Sit down," Harry commanded.
"Why should I?" she retorted, her voice pitching higher. "I hate this creep to the bottoms of my feet. I always have. He did nothing but mock and secretly ruin the assignments of anyone who wasn't Slytherin."
Harry, wanting to regain her attention in one go said, "Dark wizards do not play nice, so you might as well have got used to it. If you don't sit down, you are going to wind up dead."
This bluntness shocked everyone. Chastened for the moment, Ginny sat, but she pinned her eyes on the wall beside her.
Harry huffed in frustration, sounding old to his own ears. He did not feel like playing nice anymore, himself. "Professor . . . like I said, I am an old friend of Albus'. . . " Harry glanced at Candide. "Perhaps your lovely wife has errands or something she needs to take care of. There are few things I want to say and they should perhaps not be said . . . in the presence of a lady." It was the best excuse Harry could come up with; he was tiring of this role.
While Candide glanced to Snape for advice, Ginny said, "What about me?"
Harry turned to her. "You've proven you're not a lady with that mouth of yours."
When Snape gave no signal to Candide, Harry said, "Professor, I think this conversation should be between you and me. She's heard a lot already. Prophecies being what they are . . ." he trailed off and sent Snape the most meaningful look he could. And the first crack in the man's stalwart attitude appeared, for just a flicker.
"You said you needed to run to Diagon, did you not?" Snape asked Candide in a far less cocky voice.
Harry helped her along, "He can fill you in later, if he wishes. You can make an old man's visit easier . . . my brains don't always plan ahead as well as they used to."
With a grumble, she gathered up her cloak and baskets with a wave of her wand, and moments later disappeared in the Floo after terse good byes.
Snape's fingers traced a whorl in the tabletop. "You were saying?" he prompted with zero warmth.
Beside Harry, Ginny shrunk down in her chair to make herself smaller. Harry said, "I thought I could convince you amicably, Severus, but was mistaken."
"Dumbledore was often mistaken as well," Snape stated.
Harry suspected the comment was a test. "Yes, he was. You think I'd argue with that?"
Snape tossed his tea back and poured out more for himself. "Well?"
Harry struggled to find the best tactic. "You of all people should understand the position wizardom is in right now given the prophecy."
Sneer in place, Snape stated succinctly, "I didn't even know there was one."
"This time," Harry returned with ease.
Snape's fingers began to vibrate as they stroked the lip of his teacup. This was a deep secret Harry was hinting at. There was not time to work at this slowly. Moments past. Snape said, "So, this is blackmail?"
Ginny's head snapped to Harry, drawing Snape's unnerved glance.
"That's such a dirty word," Harry said.
Snape spoke in rapid fire. "I do not wish to do this. Why me? If you know so much about me . . ."
"That is precisely why you," Harry countered. "And I do know rather a great deal about you. For example, you look in need of a drink and I believe that silvered bottle up there has sherry in it, does it not?"
Snape froze. Of all the personal things to have revealed, that one caught him utterly by surprise. When he held still longer, Ginny asked, "Does it have Sherry in it?"
Sounding drunken already, Snape asked, "Yes. Would you like some?"
"'Course," she replied bluntly.
Snape slid out of his chair, which was easy to do since he had not pulled it to the table fully. "Why don't we have a round, then?"
Harry felt a bit bad for Snape; he sounded rattled and like everyone else here, he had grown soft, even if he kept up a convincing front otherwise. Harry talked as Snape polished small crystal glasses and poured dark red liquid into them. "You're the perfect choice, Professor, because I believe the slumbering followers to be Voldemort's former associates."
The decanter hit the table hard. "Do not speak that name in my presence," he hissed through his teeth with a threat that Harry did not doubt.
Harry sighed. "His name is meaningless. But if you insist. Fine. Dark Lord would be your preferred term, then?" Harry tossed out, knowing it was the preferred term for a Death Eater to use.
A ripple ran along Snape's jaw. He sat down and downed his sherry in one shot.
"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," Ginny said, while tugging on Harry's sleeve.
It seemed very right to Harry; things were so unfinished. "Fate has not unwound here so I think there is no choice but to at least try this. Professor Snape is unequaled at Defense and other things you will need to know, like Occlusion."
Sounding unconvinced and wanting to talk out of nerves, she asked, "What's that?"
"The skill at hiding your thoughts from others who might see fit to penetrate them face to face or even in your dreams."
"Who can do that?" she blurted rhetorically.
"Professor Snape can."
Ginny turned an alarmed gaze Snape's way. Snape raised his head and snarled faintly, "That's why I know exactly what you miserable Gryffindors think of me. You get exactly what you deserve in my class."
Ginny's shoulders were pulled back in surprise. Harry said, "Now, now, we'll have to have less of that if this to work out."
"This is not going to work out," Snape growled at Harry, and pounded his empty glass once sharply on the table.
Harry ignored him, as Dumbledore had often done when he stubbornly stuck to his own track. Harry asked the ceiling, "So, I'm curious, how many Death Eaters are roaming free, outside Azkaban?"
"I don't know," Ginny answered.
"I wasn't asking you." Harry lowered his eyes. "I was asking someone who would know."
Snape did not stun this time, nor did he grow warier, he just stared through Harry, thinking.
"Why would Professor Snape know?" Ginny asked.
When Snape still resisted, Harry saw a way to set this up better. "Professor Snape knows too well, in fact. That makes him invaluable, as I suspect there are Death Eaters in all kinds of bad positions, even in the Ministry. At Hogwarts even."
Ginny blinked a few times and shot Harry a questioning look. "Uh, you sound like you're saying . . ."
"Shut up," Snape said.
"That's pretty plain vanilla from you," Harry said, concerned by Snape's lapse into the mundane. "Usually you go for something subtle and twisted."
Snape rose partly out of his chair. "How do you know what I would usually "go" for? We have never met."
"Oh yeah, true," Harry said, going for old and fickle again to cover.
Ginny was tugging on Harry's robes again. "You aren't saying . . ." she whispered.
Harry addressed his comments to Snape. "People forget, don't they? Especially things they don't want to think about."
"I definitely don't want to think about this, or do this," Ginny said. "I'm backing out." Unconvincingly, she added, "I think I hear my mum calling me." She scooted her chair out farther.
Snape's fingers were tracing the grain of the wood again. "Severus?" Harry prompted.
Snape regained himself and said, "I will do it on two conditions. Sit down, Weasley, or the next time your dear mummy is calling you it may be from beyond the veil, and you will hear her everywhere."
Ginny did not sit, but she did not move either, even to breathe. Harry said to her, "Ginny, things are going get very bad before they get better. Death and violence are new to you, I realized, but you are going to have to get inured to them to survive this. Sit down, please."
Ginny sat, appearing very sad and alarmed, hands locked under her arms, shoulders nearly touching the table edge she slouched so.
"What magic could she possibly have?" Snape pleaded with Harry.
"It could be anything," Harry said, "Loyalty to her family perhaps, or simply a resistance to evil's pull. I would tell you if I knew, but I don't." Not wanting to dwell there, Harry asked, "What were your conditions?"
Growing vaguely angry, Snape said, "First, I expect full cooperation. When I assign reading and practice, I expect it to be done, memorized from start to finish, and impeccably fine-tuned if it is a spell practice assignment. None of this half-effort nightmare of your schooldays." The first he addressed, to Harry, but he turned to Ginny as he went on, a good sign.
His voice softened as he added to Harry, "And the second thing is, I want to know who you are. You have on an expert, but hastily applied disguise, and you look vaguely familiar as well as act familiar." He sat back like a man who finally won a round and said, "Those are my conditions."
It was Harry's turn to freeze and try to quell his panicked thoughts. Swallowing, Harry said, "I can't do that."
Snapping quickly into heated anger, Snape said, "Than I cannot either. Take it or decline it. I do not honestly care which."
Harry bit his lip. "Ginny should go," he said, thinking that was the very least.
"I do not think so," Snape said with a note of triumph at gaining the upper hand. "You have been acting as manipulative of her as my old mentor at his worst. I think she deserves to see who you really are."
Harry schemed quickly, wondering if he could layer on a different disguise as he removed the first.
"Come, come, it cannot possibly be that difficult a decision. Have another drink."
"Thanks I've had enough," Harry said, thinking that he had not seen anything get slipped into it, but he would not put it past Snape to do so.
Harry had trapped himself, he saw now. And he could not see a way out of it. Ginny had recovered slightly and peered at him worriedly. He gave in, thinking he would just have to explain. He had explained once before and nothing bad had come of it; he could just do so again. He stood and said, "All right then. We have a deal. You will train her and help her along."
Ginny sat up and grabbed at Harry yet again. "But, I don't want training from a . . . didn't you say he was a . . . a Death Eater?"
Harry calmly took her hand from his robes and held it loosely. "Yes. You have a better suggestion for who can help?"
"Wha . . . well . . . uh . . ." She choked a bit more, then shut her mouth.
"He's the best for now, and when he ceases to be, should you have the luxury of doing so, he should find you others to help as well." He glared at Snape. "Right?"
Snape nodded crookedly, once, and waved down a different smokey bottle to top up his drink. "I am still waiting for your half of the bargain."
Harry stepped back and ducked to apply some quick wand taps. When he straightened back up as himself, Snape leapt up as well, and faster than Harry could have ever imagined, had the hover spell canceled and his wand re-aimed. The abandoned bottle shattered wetly on the floor. The hand aiming at Harry shook with rage.
"Potter!"
"Harry?" Ginny blurted in utter confusion.
"What the devil are you doing?" Harry spouted at Snape, alarmed at his attacking him. "You're going to what, curse me? I'm not who you think I am."
"I know exactly who you are you conniving little bastard." Snape sent a curse his way.
Harry had not reached for his wand, too surprised to be faced with this man threatening him. Harry didn't managed to scrunch down the whole Leather Slap Curse, but he cut it short, enough that he held his feet. Snape's wand struck the ceiling then clattered to the floor. Snape clutched his hand and stared at Harry.
"Why did you do that?" Harry yelped, rubbing his face and feeling something rising in him, responding to the man before him. Voice low, Harry demanded, "What makes you think you could get away with that?" Stung by a vision that generated such strong feelings, Harry couldn't contain his wounded anger, not with this thing inside him reaching for it, stoking its energy. The light in the room dimmed slightly. Snape retrieved his wand and Harry had his out in the next second. Ginny dove under the table and crawled to the other end of the room under its protection.
Snape and Harry exchanged spells, nasty ones that sizzled along the furniture before dissipating. "You always were bright only when it involved being a obnoxious brat," Snape accused. "If you had applied that a little better, you could have made something out of your pathetic fame."
The light dimmed more, Harry felt something sucking away at his core. He felt dizzy. The next curse he Squelched again, wand lowered. Snape held onto the wand exploding with magic in his hand, but he doubled over, clutching his middle.
Angry beyond what was safe, Harry hoarsely said, "You don't know who I am. Or what I can do." It was half a plea for the other to stop and half a threat should he not obey. Snape had not recovered enough to aim his wand. Harry readied something to take him down, but hesitated using it on a defenseless Snape.
"I don't know how you are doing that . . . but . . ." Snape finally straightened and held his wand out, uncertainty clear in his pose, head tilted with suspicion and hate.
Harry shouted, "Stop it! You don't understand anything."
The light dimmed even more and the others noticed it, noticed that the corners of the room were in total darkness, that the sunlight filtered in the window as yellow-grey beams. Ginny glanced this way and that, trying to find the source of the problem. Harry willed it to stop, but could not find the shutoff in his mind. Snape lowered his wand, glancing around with his eyes, head fixed.
Harry leaned on the table. "I'm not who you think I am," he said, grappling with what had risen within him—this need to control others, especially one of his Death Eaters, by force if necessary, by manipulation, preferably. He shook his head broadly between his propping arms. They weren't his Death Eaters. Trouble was he could feel something within Snape calling to something deep inside Harry and his part knew it dominated, or should.
Snape glanced at Harry's wand, then at his own.
Ginny said shakily, "Why don't we both just sit down, hey?"
Harry did so, woozy from something, perhaps just lack of control over himself. He rubbed his forehead, found he still held his wand, and set it down. Ginny scooped it up and asked with shaky politeness, "Professor, may I have yours too?"
After a long pause where he searched her gaze, he relinquished his as well. Harry said, "He'll have another."
With one brow cocked, Snape pulled a wand out of his sock and gave that to Ginny, who dangled it out like it were a drowned rat until a sharp look made her bundle the three together and take a seat too, wands clasped in her lap.
Snape spoke first, to Harry. "You are correct. You are not who I think you are. The Potter I know doesn't have a tenth of your magic. Perhaps less."
Ginny said, "Yeah, and at the picnic you dueled Harry, yourself, um, you dueled someone who . . . oh, I don't know how to explain it."
Harry sat forward just enough to pour a splash of sherry out for himself before sitting back again, holding it shakily. He still wanted to punish Snape for his actions and the desire sickened him.
Asked Snape, "How did you do that . . . counter a curse without moving or even taking out your wand?"
Harry said, "The answer to that wasn't part of the bargain," and part of him cheered his regaining ground. "But I'll tell you anyway . . ." He put the glass to his nose, making himself smell the thick, rotted fruit essence within. Nauseated by it and remembering it was probably doped, he pushed the glass forward out of reach. Tiredly, he said, "I'm not a wizard . . . I'm a sorcerer. And you made me angry, which is not a good idea."
Snape and Ginny considered that until Ginny asked, "Can we get the light back. The sun?"
Her childish plea snapped him out of the spiral. "What? Oh." Harry leaned his head back and let go of his distress at being attacked by the vision of his adoptive father while simultaneously craving control over him as a follower. The room brightened.
"Thanks," Ginny said.
"How did you do that?" Snape demanded.
"I don't know," Harry admitted. "That just happens sometimes. I think I'm pulling another reality on top of this one without really trying. A reality where there is no light."
"Oh, right," Snape said, sounding unlike himself by his mockingly friendly tone. He and Ginny shared a glance.
"I didn't know who he was, honest," Ginny insisted, but then ducked when Harry looked her way.
"I didn't mean to make trouble," Harry said. "I was trying to fix things. It's so peaceful here and it won't be for long and no one understands what's coming. I thought I should do something."
"Well, you definitely sound like Albus Dumbledore," Snape muttered. "But who are you?"
"I'm Harry Potter . . . just not the one you know." He stared at Snape to see if he understood.
Ginny said, "I don't get it."
Snape considered that at length, giving away nothing of his musings. "You travel that way, do you?" he asked Harry all of a sudden.
"Sometimes. I should quit it. I really should. It does me no good." Harry stood up. "On that theme . . . I need to go." He started to walk by Snape, then stopped, realizing it did not matter if they saw him slip away. "You are going to take care of things here?" he asked Snape.
"As best as possible. You have exposed me," he added, with a slit-eyed glance at Ginny.
"I didn't mean to make trouble," Harry repeated, too mentally deficient to say anything else.
"You have a very odd way of not making trouble," Snape said, standing as well. He looked Harry over from close range. "Those eyes from playing around with raw magic, I suppose?"
Harry nodded.
"They are going to be white if you keep it up." He gestured for Harry to exit. "You are my worst nightmare, a Harry Potter I cannot hope to fend off, so if you would prefer to be on your way, I would not complain."
Ginny followed behind Harry to the main hall where he stopped and looked over the decor again. The bright, almost fashionable room held promise. He turned back suddenly and closed the gap with Snape. "You know; there is redemption for you, if you want it."
"I don't care," Snape stated.
"Yes, you do," Harry countered.
"And you would know that too?" Snape asked mockingly.
Harry cocked a smile at him. "In my world, you're my adoptive father, so yes, I would know." He turned from Snape's re-rattled expression to Ginny and said, "Good luck. And remember that you can't be too careful. Good luck to you too, Severus . . . Dad." With a chuckle, Harry slipped away.
Harry woke on the floor before his own hearth, after deciding it was best to use his magically warmed hearth stone given how long he had been absent. Tonks could easily have been called away to the Ministry and he did not fancy struggling alone on the floor of her flat.
Feeling vaguely unsettled but warm enough to move, Harry sat up and brushed off his robes. The hearth had only recently gone out from the overnight fire and his movements induced floating curls of ash to lift into the air. Harry rubbed his head, which ached just behind his eyes. He really had to limit this kind of travel. Leveraging himself to his feet, he promised his aching body that he would do just that. He had done all he could in that place; it would have to take care of itself from here on.
Too stiff to lift his feet properly, Harry scuffed his way over to Kali's cage and raised her to his shoulder since she too creaked when she tried to climb. "Sorry," Harry said to her. "Didn't mean to make you suffer too."
With evening fieldwork looming, he really should do a little exercise to loosen his muscles, but instead he fell onto his bed with one of his assigned books. Kali curled up under the hair on his back collar as he read, making him loath to move. Her sleepiness infected him, and in the middle of a page listing potions to detect magically arranged dust, Harry fell asleep.
Harry woke to a familiar voice, in the middle of a very strange dream where he was arguing with Snape about Ginny, but in the dungeon at Hogwarts back when they were both still students.
Ron strode into the room just as Harry raised his disoriented head. "Hey, do you know where my sister is?"
Harry shook his head while combing his hair with his fingers. "Nuh, haven't seen her." He sniffled and blink broadly, feeling tethered still to his dream. He closed the book he had left open on the bed, feeling regretful that his intention of finishing his readings early looked to be falling short.
"Help me go look for her. I want to find her before dinner."
Harry pulled a muscle jumping in surprise at what time it may be. "I . . ." He fumbled hurriedly for his watch. It was only four. Harry stashed his watch back away and imagined Ginny planning on dinner with Aaron. "I'm sure she's fine."
Ron kicked the bed post. "Where's that smarmy bloke in your program live? I want to make sure she's not with 'im."
Harry stood up and slipped by his friend, not wanting to give that information away.
Ron went on, "It's not a listed address."
"No, and it's got a lot of protection on it. What does it matter if she's there . . . she can take care of herself."
Ron poked Harry in the chest when he next came in range. "She's my little sister that's why it matters. I don't like that bloke much."
Harry pushed Ron's finger away, finding a little agreement with the first part. "Look, Ginny's like a sister to me too. But what are you going to do? She can do what she wants. And Aaron's okay, if that's who she's with."
"You know what Dad's going to say when he finds out?"
Harry worried a bit about that too. "Don't tell him."
It was early by two hours to leave, but Harry said, "Look, Ron, I gotta go. Training, er, field work. I'll see ya." With that, he Disapparated.
Tonks was manning the Auror's office when Harry arrived, scratching out a report with a battered quill. Since they were alone, she stood mid-word to give him a kiss. Harry tugged a chair over and sat near her, knees bumping.
While she wrote, she said, "Quiet night so far. Kingsley's out on an easy one. Seems our friends in Durumulna are taking a holiday." Then a minute later: "Getting by without a guard?"
"For now."
She stopped and looked up. Harry explained, "When the gold starts to turn back to iron, I worry a bit what they may do. I liked having a guard for Candide."
Tonks tugged over a sheet covered in cross-outs, arrows, and sideways writing and made a note in a slice of white space. "I can have Hornisham assigned on nights when you are here."
Sincerely, Harry said, "Thanks, Tonks."
"I want to reward you for not only being on time, but early."
"I had to escape from Ron."
Winking, she said, "You're afraid of Ron, now?"
Harry snorted tiredly. "I'm afraid of rampaging older brother of sister who is seriously dating my hard-to-judge friend, yes."
She laughed aloud. "I'd think Ron would be happy about that. Aaron's no slouch in the gold department."
Harry chewed on his lips while he considered how grumpy Ron could get about these things. "I think that makes it harder for him, actually."
"Hm."
- 888 -
After a long evening of patrol, Harry thought he would sleep solidly, but he woke at least twice from an odd dream of masks and chases where at one point he finally captured a black-cloaked Durumulna member only to discover Snape skulking beneath the disguise.
Kali rattling in her cage roused Harry from his sleep-drunken stupor. The glare of mid-morning light from the small window made him blink, so despite his heavy head, he thought it best to rise for the day. He had to fumble around the teetering stack of his assigned books to find his glasses. The cloaked shadow slipping around him in his dream followed him to the wardrobe while he pulled out clean clothes and tugged them on. Harry tried to shake the impression of the dream as well as the fresh memory of desiring to control the Snape in the other Plane.
On the stairs Harry knotted the sash of his dressing gown against the chilly air and stepped into the dining room. A familiar, stringy-haired figure stood bending over the sideboard, sorting post. Harry stared at Snape's back, a vague dis-ease washing through him, making his feet tingle. Candide poured Harry coffee and handed it to him.
"Didn't sleep well?" she asked.
Snape glanced backwards sharply and Harry felt a jolt of utter wrongness, but he covered it quickly. With a rumbling rasp of wood on wood, he pulled out a chair, but merely leaned on the back of it. "Yeah, tough night . . . at the Ministry," he lied, trying to gather himself. The steam of the coffee burned his face, so he set it down and verified that he had his wand in his pocket.
Harry watched the man sorting through the letters on the sideboard. He exuded the taint of a Dark Mark.
Candide, dripping concerned, said, "Sit, down, Harry. Or maybe you should go back to bed."
Candide's gentle worry made Harry risk sliding into a seat out of a more defensible standing position. Harry rested his forehead on his palm, thinking frantically. He must have returned to the wrong place . . . a place where his guardian was still Marked.
Snape collected his post and sat beside Candide to open them. Harry tried not to stare at him doing this. He instead stared at Candide's hands, wrapped around her cup, wondering with a tractionless circling of thought what he should do. If Snape and Candide believed him in the right place, and there were not two of him here, then his counterpart— and clearly he had one as skilled as himself—was in his Plane. Was it possible they would both recognize the mistake at the same time and both decide to switch at the same time? Was his counterpart sitting in exactly this place, thinking exactly the same thing? Or was he unaware that his guardian could be unmarked. Surely if he had the same Plane-jumping power than the other would be aware of the Mark or lack thereof.
Too many thoughts. Harry calmed his heart because the discordant thrumming of it was not helping his thinking one bit. He tried to sip his coffee and coughed on it.
"Harry?" Candide prompted, sounding disbelieving.
Harry put on a false smile and pretended all was as it should be. He did not want to reveal what had gone wrong, it just wanted it sorted out as quickly as possible. "I'm just thinking," he said. "Lots to worry about."
"Like what?" she asked, sounding the kind inquisitor.
"Well . . ." Harry struggled and plucked the first thing that came to mind. "Ron isn't happy that Ginny and Aaron are together."
Snape snorted and rolled his eyes. Breakfast appeared in a sparkle, and Harry decided to eat it because that was what he would normally do—on a normal morning where his appetite had not fled due to transcendental panic. How had he messed up, he wondered? He had done exactly the same as every other time he had returned. Well, except he had taken for granted this time that it would just work out and had not been trying quite so hard. Should he go back and try again?
Harry's cold-sore bones resisted the notion with a dissuading twinge. But he had little choice. If he did find home and he found another Harry in it, he would just have to explain. As he ate, suddenly voraciously hungry, Harry promised himself he would stay put after this—for certain.
Harry felt Snape's gaze return to him yet again over the letter he held up. Harry needed to behave normally, but could not manage it. He was grateful when Candide asked, "How is Aaron?"
"Better. Ginny seems to be, er, helping him along."
Candide chuckled, almost a giggle, at this, and Harry thought: is that really true here too? He had to be careful, not everything was going to be the same. Patrol had been the same, and Tonks had been the same . . . perhaps even unusually attentive. That made Harry wonder what his counterpart was doing differently and he felt a bizarre jealousy of his counterpart. Harry gulped his coffee, antsy to get home again, refusing to dwell on the worry that he might not manage to.
Stalling while he gathered his meager strength, Harry poured himself more coffee and put his cold-stiffened hands around the mug. So many things about this place were right.
"My sister says hello, by the way," Candide announced.
"How are your parents?" Harry asked, hoping that was safe.
She smirked. "Non-stop nagging about this and that." She glanced at Snape beside her. "Just as well, I didn't insist you go along, Dear," she said, and reached to pat his nearest arm. Snape jerked out of reach, immediately relented, and sat rail-stiff until the petting withdrew.
Harry, who had been avoiding looking directly at Snape, froze while fixing his attention on him out of the corner of his eye. Harry waited for Snape's laser-vision to divert down to the next letter. Harry swallowed hard. Candide shot him an uncomfortable smile and returned to the Prophet. Harry sat back and stared openly at the man sitting diagonal from him. What if it wasn't he who was in the wrong place? He needed a test to find out.
As soon as Harry pondered taking the upper hand, his instincts fell in line behind it. The last piece of Voldemort sang within him at the opportunity.
"How was your week, Severus?"
Snape lifted his bored eyes and said, "Same as the others."
"Surprising," Harry softly returned. And when Snape's eyes narrowed, Harry backed off this direct attack and added with a casual smirk, "Well, I don't remember it ever being uneventful. The students saw to that."
Snape rubbed his fingertips together, put down the letter he held and folded the stack away to give Harry all of his attention. "The Gryffindors were their usual obnoxious selves, the Slytherins exceptionally creative, to their lasting regret."
Harry's mind churned over several times. The man before him was so wrong, and everything else so right. "Maybe you'd help me with some spells," Harry said. "You said you would when you were home next."
Candide sighed loudly. "Good thing I've never had the chance to redecorate in the hall."
Harry gave her a sympathetic smile. "When we move my room, we can do more to the hall. I'd like that. Something bright and flowery."
"Please," Snape sneered.
"You're never home," Harry prodded, baiting Snape and enjoying it immensely. A ripple passed over the man, aversion or possessiveness suppressed.
Snape's coffee was empty. Harry stood and invited, "Spellwork?"
Snape followed him out. Harry would have expected him to pat Candide on the shoulder, but he did not. Far too aware of the cursedness of the other, Harry waved the main hall furniture aside and spun to face Snape.
They exchanged a few basic drill spells and repeated them in a sequence, building in power. Candide strolled in to watch. Harry, preferring her not to be there if his suspicion was correct and he had to confront Snape outright, said, "Why don't you go to Diagon and get some tapestries for the wall in here? To hang between the upper windows. And for the walls of the nursery."
"I suppose I could."
Harry did not modulate his next block, so that the rebound rattled around the room.
"If I do, will you stop this for the day?" Candide asked. "I'd hate to see them burned to a crisp right off."
"Sure," Harry eagerly said, glad that had worked.
"I'll be back later then." On her way out with her cloak and basket, she said, "You two should take that to Hogwarts; it's built for it, unlike this creaky place."
As soon as the Floo faded, Harry waited for Snape to reach the Blasting Curse in the drill sequence. He lowered his wand and Squelched instead of blocking it. Snape's wand went flying and he gaped at Harry.
"Weren't expecting that, were you?" Harry asked crisply.
Snape took a step in the direction of his wand but stopped when the room darkened. Night dropped over the house and the air grew dank. Snape glanced around, but Harry's wand still hung at his side. Chattering sounded from the nearby wall. Snape glanced at it, not comprehending that either based on his posture. Harry waited for his eyes to come back around to him as the source of the shift in the environment. His eyes held wary surprise.
Harry helpfully stated, "You should be yelling at me about now."
Snape's shoulders fell an iota, supporting Harry's suspicion about which of them was displaced. He opened his mouth, but Harry filled in with, "Too late." He snagged Snape's wand from the corner.
"You have another?" Harry asked. "Let's see it."
Snape reached into his robes for another wand. He hesitated with it half pulled out. Harry said, "Try anything and you will regret it."
A draw ensued. The light darkened more and the stones of the house groaned like an animal in pain. Winky appeared in a sparkle. "Master Harry is doing bad things," she said, hunched over to make her plea.
"Master Harry is almost finished. Hand it over," he demanded of the man across from him. "And don't think I can't follow you if you Apparate away. You taught me how."
Snape put the wand away back in his robes. "I'll keep it, if you don't mind." He glanced at the windows and his brow lowered as he noticing now that they were not darkened but that the sunlight itself had gone slate colored where it struck the floating dust.
Harry let a little light in. "Better? Sit down."
"You are doing that," Snape stated, resolve fading as he took a seat on the arm of the nearest couch. He sat with his hands propped beside him, tense. He stared at Harry. "I didn't . . . realize how powerful you were."
Harry paced behind the other couch, keeping one eye on the alien wizard sitting tensely across from him. Winky, hands rubbing over one another squeaked miserably, "Master Harry . . ."
Harry let the light in. It was like turning off a source of anger inside himself, and he felt giddy in the wake of it. "Bring us cocoa, won't you, Winky?"
Winky hurried off.
"I asked you a question," Harry said, re-channeling his anger and feeling the thing inside him happy to sop it up.
"And I don't feel like answering," Snape returned, eyes challenging, pushed beyond care.
Harry felt around himself for the focus of the cursedness and pushed at it. Snape grabbed his forearm with a cry, making Harry smile faintly. If someone was going to invade his home, they were going to pay for it. "You continue to underestimate me."
Snape had bent partly over his arm, but he straightened with a snap of his spine and glared at Harry. "You were not like this . . ."
"I was not what? Have we met?" Harry had not considered that this stranger may not be so strange after all.
Snape clammed up, and Harry realized who he was, recognizing the depths of despair the man slipped into with such ease.
"We have met," Harry said, filling in for his guest. "I saved you from Voldemort in Weaver's End; didn't I?"
Next: Chapter 27
"Tidgy?" Snape said to the small apparition, whose long ears hung to its shoulders. "What happened?"
"Bad people is coming, Master."
"Yes, I perceived that," Snape dryly stated. His mind worked quickly, trying to narrow in on the likeliest possibilities. "Was someone here recently? Who set up the candles?"
Tidgy cocked his head. "You are having done this, Master. Is Tidgy being tested?"
Chapter 27 — Tangled Threads
"Where is my father?" Harry demanded, flicking his wand at his side impatiently, itching to take action.
"Your father?" Snape managed with a single sharp sputter. "Unimaginable. This whole place is unimaginable."
"Where is he?" Harry demanded again, raising his wand and staring along it at the impostor before him.
Snape's lips twitched. "Do you really need that magical stick you are holding?" he said mockingly.
Harry smiled. "It's hard to limit the damage if I don't use it."
Snape's gaze faded at this. "I assume my counterpart is where I departed from. That was how the gateway was purported to work."
Harry stilled his wand, thinking fast. He would have to fetch him back, somehow. "Where is this gateway? How does it work?"
"Why should I tell you?"
Harry stepped closer, wand still held out, angled down, arm arched, because Snape was sitting on the couch arm. "Because that place is where you belong."
Snape crossed his arms, but they slid down until they hugged his torso. Voice low, he said, "It is hopeless there. I could not do as you asked; I could not get close to Potter let alone get him to forgive me. Beyond Aberforth, I have no allies of any kind. I was hunted by my associates and tormented daily by my master." He scrubbed at his forearm. "Just as you just did." His bluster disappeared as quickly as it grew.
"I can do that again," Harry pointed out.
Bleakly, after a long pause, Snape said, "I could not stop thinking about the place you had described, where the Dark Lord was no more, where I did not have so many enemies. I remembered a partial, half-burned book from Dumbledore's collection, believed to be written by a deranged and delusional wizard who raved for thousands of pages about portals and gateways to parallel realities."
Snape straightened his robes and lifted his chin, gauging Harry before continuing. "And when you told me where you were from, I realized he was not, in fact, a raving lunatic, but a genius. So, I constructed a gateway by piecing together instructions from his ravings. It was supposed to take many moon cycles to open, but it latched on easily to the Inbetween, anchoring the book called it, to that horrible grey-skied place you took me to escape. Once that was set, the mirroring of the spell cast into this place was simple repetition. Then it was a simple matter of waiting for my alternate to step into the gate to engage it." He glared, hunched and grim, at Harry. "I am not going back. Only death awaits me there and I am not ready to die."
Harry considered the worn man before him and contemplated threatening to kill him, but he could not find it in himself. "You are going back," Harry insisted. "And in the meantime, not a word to Candide. I don't want her to know what's happened."
Snape's chin rose again at this.
"What?" Harry queried. "You like having a wife?"
"I would not have thought so . . . before."
Harry perched his fists on his hips and said, "You didn't make this place what it is. You don't deserve to enjoy it."
Snape retorted lightly, "If I had made this place, I certainly would not have put you in it in your current position."
Harry did not take affront at this. "No, I don't imagine you would have. If I'd told you, would you have come?"
Snape rocked back and forth slightly. "I would thought harder about it, I admit. I also did not comprehend what you really had become."
Harry paced away, slapping his hand on his thigh in frustration. He had to check on his guardian as soon as possible, make certain he was all right. His bones groaned at the thought. But from the other place, it should be clearer how to arrange for them both to return to their rightful place. He would have to try taking something alive through with him. Perhaps he could just drag both of the men to where they belonged, one at a time. He considered taking Kali as a test, but her dislike of the Dark Plane made him decide otherwise.
He glared at Snape, and said, "Be nice to your wife while I'm gone."
"I need to depart for Hogwarts soon, anyhow."
"Be nice to my friends then," Harry corrected.
Snape's lip curled into a sneer. "If they are Gryffindors, not a chance."
"Typical," Harry muttered.
Snape matched him. "Slytherin is not much better. My counterpart has grown dangerously soft. That and frequently leaving the house in Lupin's hands, of all people, has rendered my House unrecognizable."
"You must have left it in Remus' hands, to come here now."
"I realized I was expected to go home," Snape replied, bored sounding as he pulled a desperate haughtiness around him.
"You still are," Harry snapped, and Disapparated.
Harry fished agitatedly in his pocket for his coin purse as he strolled with overcharged energy along the narrow shopfronts of Diagon Alley. It was Sunday, so only every fifth shop was open, and the chill wind swooping through the length of the alley left the pavements clear of loiterers.
Eeylops was still being repaired from the fire, so Harry walked down further to A.J. Furriers, a far less savory animal dealer. Several warped cages had been parked out on the pavement. The animals inside them were crowded into the corners for warmth, their fur blowing backwards in the wind. One cage full of young chickens had a wired-on rusty sign reading Python Poulets. The next cage held small white Hat Rabbits ~ Guaranteed to Hide as Required. Harry bent down to look more closely at these. One of them had a crooked black stripe along its snout, parting its oversized pink eyes. Harry put his finger through the bars and prodded it in the haunch and it shuffled closer to its peers.
"You don't even wear a hat," a familiar voice said from behind Harry.
Harry straightened and slipped his hands into his pockets. "Hello, Belinda."
"I saw you from the window of Phantasmic Phoot Phasions," she said with a nod farther down the alley at the glittering new shop which had a bay window display crowded with dancing pairs of patent leather shoes in a variety of gaudy colors. Harry could not remember what shop had been there before.
Belinda glanced up and down the alley, in a behavior that gave the otherwise occupied Harry pause. A little nervously, she asked, "So, I was wondering if you wanted to do something, come over for tea or something. It's Sunday, you know, and we haven't had time to get together."
"I don't have time right now," Harry said. "I have something I really have to take care of."
She sighed and appeared frustrated or strained. Harry did wish to know what was troubling her, but he could not delay in finding out what had happened to his guardian.
"I'm sorry," Harry said. "Some other time."
Belinda stepped closer and straightened his robes for him by shaking the collar out and turning the lapels out. "That's better," she said. "We should take you shopping sometime." She started to let go, then stepped closer, making Harry take a quick glance up and down the alley, expecting Skeeter to jump out any moment. "You're certain you don't have time?" she asked again.
Harry gently plucked her left wrist off his lapel, skewing his robes again. "Yes. Positive."
She wrapped her arms around herself. "I need help with something," she said quietly, then bit her lip. "There is so much going wrong right now."
Harry tried to Legilimize her but she glanced away. A trio of generic looking, dark haired wizards strolled by and Belinda stepped closer again, executing a dance move so she was partly behind the cages. When the strangers had passed through the gateway in the wall to the Leaky Cauldron, Harry took Belinda's wrists again, but this time did not extract them from his robes. "Are you mixed up with them?" he asked, disbelieving.
Sounding overly casual, she pushed away and said, "No, of course no- Who do you mean?" She backed up more, glanced back at the shoe shop, and then down at her feet. "I know that you are serious with Tonks now, really. I just thought, you know, tea or something."
What Harry got was that she was really in need of help. "I'm willing to help, just not right at this moment. I really have a personal emergency I have to take care of." She nodded without looking up, and Harry added emphatically. "I'll call as soon as I can, all right?"
She nodded again and stepped away, bony shoulders bent forward, head low.
Harry did not have time to review this conversation in his head as he liked. He slipped into the shop to buy the smallest Hat Rabbit they had. The shopkeeper plopped the snow-white animal down on a sheet of vellum that read Certified Bunny Obscura and slid it over in exchange for Harry's four Sickles. Harry pocketed both items and strolled to Knockturn Alley. Once he stepped down into the dingy, crooked place, he lifted his cloak and spun a half turn as though slipping an invisibility cloak over himself, and before he stopped moving, he slipped away into the Dark Plane.
The creatures there must have smelled the rabbit because they followed Harry in parade formation at a respectful distance as he wove along between hillocks, kicking dusty grit up onto his shoes. Harry needed the walk to gather his memories of the place he wished to return to and to clear his thoughts from all other worries. He remembered the place clearly, even though he had, upon first returning, assumed it to be a hallucination of striking his head.
He went along until he stood opposite his own house in Shrewsthorpe, and stopped beside a tangle of saw grass and vicious rusty wire. He glanced down and stared at the pentagram in the grit before him. He had made that pentagram with his foot as a focal point for returning home from that other place. But he was home now, or opposite of home now. There was only one Dark Plane, it seemed, and how one left it depended upon how one entered it. Harry stepped carefully around the Device and a little away so the throng of following creatures did not muss it. Although, now that he studied it, the lines of it looked far cleaner than he would have managed with the point of his shoe. Harry stepped closer, crouched down beside it and touched it with a finger. The grit forming the pentagram felt like sandstone, and it definitely had a straighter structure imparted to it since his trainer toe had scratched it out.
Harry growled lightly. He himself had left the gateway open that let this alien swap for his adoptive father.
The rabbit, despite the hordes wishing for its sweet flesh, sat calmly in Harry's hand when he pulled it from his pocket. Alert life shined from its dilute-blood colored eyes but it gave not a twitch of a white whisker. Its far-set gaze focused on nothing and everything at once in the grey light of the underworld. Harry took close hold of the creature and imagined a place he wished he did not know.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Severus Snape came to dulled awareness in an oppressive haze of hot beeswax. Quivering, icy pain radiated dully but insistently out from his joints to his fingertips and toes, and a burning sensation sizzled on the inside of his left forearm, filling him with alarm that somehow his Mark had returned. He twitched his arm and the pain faded to a dull ache and trailed around the top of his wrist, catching on the hairs of his arm. When he moved farther the new pain faded to the same persistent throb as the rest of him.
Snape raised his head. Angled rows of glowing, off-white candles filled his vision, their glaring radiance warming his chilled core. He rolled over as far as he dared and peeled the translucent blob of beeswax off his wrist and tossed it out of the pentagram of candles surrounding him.
Careful to avoid igniting his robes, Snape stood and stepped out of the Device and onto the thoroughly dilapidated rug. He lifted his head and stared around the hall, at the boarded up broken windows, the sagging balcony, the white-edged stain down the wall where the roof had been leaking for some time. Cobwebbed desolation encased him. It felt like a bad dream except for his complete wakefulness. It was as though his long-term memories were a lie, or a delusion. He breathed in the dusty air and lowered his head to consider the illuminated pentagram. No decent meaning offered itself up to him and he was desperate for any, no matter how unlikely. Had he attempted some dark magic to escape from the past into the future, for reasons he could not recall? Or had he simply forgotten, at some point, the clearly dismal present in a hallucination?
Confusion and alarm swirled through him as he paced, shaking the cold-stiffness from his limbs and, finally, movement exercised his faculties and he knew what had happened. Somehow, Harry's journeys through alternative Planes had come to snag him, and he suspected with slowly gathering dread that this empty, decaying house was just the first glimpse of a miserable, dark world.
Vaguely heartened that the home attached to his memories most likely still existed, Snape made a search of the house. What had not been removed had been chewed away by rodents, who had left their droppings in the mildewed drawers of the desk, the one remaining piece of furniture, although it sat crooked because one corner had been sheared off.
"Master?" a faint voice prompted, giving Snape a bad start.
A small ghost floated beside the desk, feet bent behind it so that it hung, half kneeling, but not any higher off the floor than it would have been if it were standing.
"Tidgy?" Snape said to the small apparition, whose long ears hung to its shoulders. "What happened?"
"Bad people is coming, Master."
"Yes, I perceived that. Some time ago, it looks like," Snape dryly stated, tracing each line of dark spell burn on the drawing room wall facing him. His mind worked quickly, trying to narrow in on the likeliest possibilities. "Was someone here recently? Who set up the candles?"
Tidgy cocked his head. "You is having done this, Master. Is Tidgy being tested?"
"Hm. Did I?" Snape's eyes narrowed and moved side to side, taking in the room for clues. "Did I have a book I was working from?"
"Yes, Master."
Hope swelled where there was none previously. "Where is it; do you know?"
Tidgy's ears swung as he shook his head. "Master is taking it away somewhere."
Snape swore, making Tidgy put an arm up for protection. "I am too smart for my own good." To the elf-ghost, he said, "No one can hurt you, Tidgy; you're dead."
"Tidgy is knowing this," the elf said sadly.
"Well, I best go look for the book. Fortunately, I know where I would be likely to hide it. Unfortunately, I was presumably aware of that when I hid it. What did it look like?"
"The book is being large, Master, with purple ink. And half burned."
"Purple ink? I know another author who favors purple and the Dark Plane. Very good, Tidgy, thank you."
Tidgy wiped away a ghostly tear with the corner of his ragged towel. "Master is thanking Tidgy?"
"Yes. Why not?" He waved the elf away. "Go and haunt the kitchen why don't you."
Snape returned to the hall and extinguished each of the Device's candles with his fingertips, careful not to disturb their positions. He would need the Device to return home, if hope of that were rational, and he could not risk damaging it. He paused, crouched before the arm of the star where one of the candles had spilled wax onto his forearm, rousing him with bad memory, if not pain. Circumstances threatened to suffocate him along with the dust and mold of the rotting house. Raising his eyes to the poorly lit, damaged hall did not help. Grey sky showed through the gaps in the planking over the windows and through the hole in the roof.
Snape gathered a lifetime of plodding, yet vigilant, attitude about him and stood straight. Survival was the first order, and he needed to understand his situation better to manage that.
Out on the road, a ragged newspaper had plastered itself to the neighbor's chain-link fence. The usually welcoming house beyond the fence had a neglected air about it. The next house over appeared occupied, but had a pair of vicious dogs patrolling behind a crudely erected sign warning about same. A quick survey of the houses within view confirmed his fears that the magical population had departed Shrewsthorpe or wished make it appear as though they had. Snape gathered up the loose newspapers from the neighborhood with a broad, powerful spell and rolled them roughly. They made a sound not unlike fine parchment except for the film of pervasive grit that rubbed off onto his hands.
Snape crushed the newspapers under his arm to rub his left forearm where the wax burn stung with momentary eye-watering pain before easing. The rusty-hinged door squeaked tortuously as stepped back inside, leaving the neglected, dusty garden to the wild ivy intent on taking it over. Inside was slightly more appealing than outside, mostly because it was out of the wind. Out of a stash of spare Device-making materials dumped in the corner of the hall, Snape pulled out a candle stub and a torn rug and took them to the center of the floor where the light was best. Unable to bear sitting at the damaged desk, he folded the rug and sat cross-legged upon it to read the collected papers. Tidgy's ghost floated in and out of view, hands clasped in the mode of waiting for instructions.
The first two broadsheets were from the same Muggle newspaper edition and at first Snape thought the weather page would not be useful, but the article occupying a full half of the sheet spoke of a resurgence in extremely rare derecho windstorms along the coast off Yorkshire and East Midlands. Various experts were quoted discussing stationary warm fronts and dismissing as mass hallucination, sightings of giants tossing trees and electricity pylons aside as they rampaged through the affected countryside.
The torn pieces of Wizard paper, titled The Irreproachable Intelligencer but carrying the layout of the Daily Prophet, spoke of rules and edicts about what spells and topics of public discussion were additionally limited by the Ministry. Snape frowned most deeply at an interview with the Hogwart's Headmaster on the eve of his one year anniversary in the position: Lucius Malfoy. The last triangular corner of the most dilapidated page explained the newspaper's name change—prophecy had been declared an illicit word both in public and private. And the staff at the paper Formally Known as the Daily P____ could not responsibly continue under that banner given the risk to their staff.
Snape gathered the papers up and laid them in the hearth before holding the candle flame to a corner. The flame hesitated before it took hold, forced to burn through the dirt coating. Snape set the candle on the hearth and sat close to watch both burn. He was in one of those places Harry seemed always to end up in—one where Voldemort had not been defeated.
As the fire burned down and the thin black ash limned with orange glow crinkled away, Snape pondered the remaining light of the sagging, distorted candle stub. If this Plane's version of himself had changed places and was now in his home, Harry would eventually notice given his counterpart's likely active Mark. At that point Harry would come seeking him out. How long this would require was not clear. If Snape were lucky it would require mere hours; except that Harry had not been at home—he had been busily working day and night on plans to rescue his fellow apprentice. Snape fancied himself rather good at hiding where he did not belong, and he expected his counterpart to be the same.
Snape shifted to lean back against the wall beside the hearth as the candle melted lower.
The wind picked up through the broken windows, fluttering the single flame. Snape roused himself, stiff again with cold. It seemed Harry would not be arriving immediately. He stood and paced until his limbs ceased to creak. Somewhere out there were Voldemort and Malfoy and all the others, free to generate misery as they wished. Snape wondered where this Plane's Potter was. Given the ban on discussions of prophecy, it seemed unlikely Potter was dead. And if he was not dead, he must be most desperate by now.
The candle faded to a tiny blue orb hovering over a pool of clear wax that shed no discernible light. Snape stood in the murky light filtering through the holes in the ruined roof. He better appreciated Harry's desire to assist in these situations. He too felt strained imagining how the Harry here may be faring. Snape stared up at the grey sky, which seemed unnaturally bright to his dark-adapted eyes, and wondered where this Harry may be.
Snape wondered hard enough that he finally simply Apparated away to the Leaky Cauldron to consult with a long-time reliable associate on Diagon Alley. The Cauldron fell silent upon his arrival but gazes quickly turned back to their hushed conversations. The room felt as normal as ever, if a tad edgy. Strange to imagine this was not his Leaky Cauldron, but another, one of an infinite number.
The wall in back opened onto a smaller Diagon Alley than Snape knew. The shops leaned inward along a narrower passageway, and brown grime covered everything, including the windows. Snape turned toward the Apothecary shop and started when figures melted out of the brick wall behind him and one put a restraining spell on his arm.
The wizard, a thuggish man with cratered skin stretched thin over his cheeks, said, "You will submit to a check. You are not carrying proper identification." He wore bright green robes sporting a patch with interlocking Ps.
Around him, the shoppers that had been approaching the wall diverted with an attitude of suddenly remembering they needed to make one more stop, far at the other end of the alley. Others approached timidly with intent eyes, drawn to the promise of spectacle.
"Name," the second wizard demanded, pulling a thick scroll out of his robes and preparing to open it.
"I don't have to give you my name," Snape said, thinking that if his counterpart saw fit to exert such effort to depart this place, there was most likely a good reason for it.
The first man bodily threw Snape against the wall and placed his wand under his nose. "We can do this the 'ard way, Mate. I was gettin' bored anyway. Give 'im the test Herbie."
Handling the heavy scroll made it difficult for Herbie to manage his wand as well. Snape saw this as a possible opening for escape but decided to let it pass given the wand nearly up his nose.
"What test?" Snape asked. "Who are you?"
"We're the Pureblood Police, we are. Where you been?"
Dryly, Snape replied, "I don't get out much."
"Well, then, yer overdue," the wizard said. "Give me the doohickey, Herbie."
Herbie gave up on managing his wand to pull a silver cylinder out of his pocket, which he handed over. The Police Wizard snapped it open with one hand and extracted a balance. The mechanism unfolded neatly and swayed in the breeze.
Herbie leaned closer and whispered helpfully, "You should give up your name, that's easier." He glanced at the scales teetering in the wind a little nervously. "If you come up short in the measure, it'll not go well. Just give us a name, eh?"
A figure sauntered over, blonde hair flashing over a smug sneer. "His name's Snape, but finish the test anyway."
Beyond Draco Malfoy hovered two bulky, dark-robed figures, faces invisible in their deep hoods, wands out and aimed. Herbie bit his lips at the sight of them, agitated.
The policeman took his wand off Snape's nose to stack translucent squares on one side of the scales. Transfixed by curiosity and the additional guards, Snape did not move.
"Little finger, left hand right here then," the Policeman commanded, indicating a little platform on the scale's base. Snape obliged while he looked for an escape. Apparition would be traced in a place like this, departing would only buy him a very short time. The metal under his pinky warmed and the empty tray of the scale shifted of its own accord.
Herbie had found the right entry in the scroll. "Says here halfblood." He tsked with his tongue sadly.
The scales clanged, the cubes rising to the maximum they could. The first policeman said, "Scale says pure."
Draco's smile faded. "That's not right. Father said . . ."
"And your father of course knows everything," Snape stated, bored. He retrieved his hand.
Herbie helpfully said, "You should get your record set straight, you should. Bad confusion. Mudbloods 'n' halfbloods only allowed on the Alley here after ten and before eight."
Draco leaned in closer, pointing emphatically. "The record is straight. Look, Muggle father: Tobias Snape."
The first policeman disregarded this as he carefully packed away the scales. "Book's no matter, scales 'ave the final say. Come one, Herbie." He stepped back into the brick wall and melted away.
Herbie extracted himself from Draco and hurriedly set himself to rights before following his fellow. In the absence of the police, the hooded figures approached. Snape waited until just the right moment and used his off hand to spell Draco with a Blasting Curse so that he flew into the other two. Then he Disapparated for the countryside and Disapparated again for yet another spot of equally remote countryside, before landing in a Waterloo station cupboard and stepping out into the crowd after applying a quick disguise. His care turned out to be fully warranted; he could hear the pounding on the supplies cupboard door he had sealed shut even before he got out of earshot. He continued walking the same as before, keeping to the thickest stream of passengers heading for the tube lines. He didn't Apparate again until he was stepping into the Leaky Cauldron. This time he headed directly for the Apothecary, arriving in the back corner of the shop.
Content with hiding mere feet from where he had first been chased down, Snape waited calmly for the hunched witch in a battered hat to scuffle her way from the counter to the door before approaching the shop owner. Jiggers did not hide his surprise at seeing him there after he removed the disguise.
The Chemist glanced avidly around the empty shop. "Severus," he whispered. "What is it you need?"
"Information," Snape said.
Jiggers did as he always did when he got nervous, pulled out a stained rag to clean the mixing and pill molding area of the counter. "Don't have much of that, I'm afraid." He glanced sharply at the door, but it was just a passerby causing the light from the window to flicker.
"Is Harry Potter still alive?"
"Far as I know," Jiggers replied, falling mystified. The rag smoldered under his hand so he rinsed it out and hung it up more neatly than the holey and stained thing deserved to be. He leaned in, right eye giving a twitch. "You aren't thinking to patch things up with You-Know-Who by capturing the Prophe-" He stopped, bit his lips, and swallowed hard. " . . . the Devined One, are you? I've known you a long time, Severus, and I could never see you stooping that low, given what's at stake."
"That wasn't my intent," Snape said. "I would like to assist, in fact. My loyalty has always been to Dumbledore."
"Hm. Right." Jiggers straightened his board and pestles. "You got a funny way of showin' it," he muttered, turning to shelve a bottle of white powder. Without turning back around, he said, "Potter's hiding himself well, behind magic stronger than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named can break through."
"Dumbledore's magic, you mean?" Snape stated, knowing exactly where to look. "Thank you, Jiggers."
Snape Disapparated for 12 Grimmauld Place, landing lightly on the porch in the waning evening light. Safely out of view, he scrutinized the surrounding alleys and shrubs, looking for watchers. Only a few crooked or flickering street lamps glowed on the square, providing for numerous hiding places. Snape expected that the house was watched, it certainly felt watched. If it was, that would be to his advantage if an argument were to start when he knocked on the door; the occupants would feel obliged to keep things contained.
Snape composed himself before pulling the bell cord. He had a feeling his presence was not going to be welcome.
Ron Weasley, his face as doltish as ever in stupefaction, tried to close the door, but Snape put his foot in the way.
"You should hear me out," Snape stated succinctly to the hunched over young man, who was making small surprised noises with each breath. They glared at each other. "No wonder Potter is getting nowhere with Voldemort," Snape muttered.
Ron finally tried to spell the toe impeding the door, but the hex was blocked easily. Snape let the young man keep hold of his wand, for now. Ron's freckled face shifted from startled to astonished. "You said his name."
"Did I?" He regrouped. "Don't you even have an alarm to raise to bring others to help you?" Snape asked, disbelieving.
Ron's head ducked inside slightly and then back out again while he pushed harder on the door.
"Oh, you are alone then," Snape stated. "I see."
Ron's face fell into stillness, a sort of giving in to fear.
"Look, Weasley . . . let's be reasonable. I don't intend to do you any harm."
Ron grabbed the edge of the door and stopped pushing so hard against Snape's toe. "Well, what're ya doing here then?" he demanded.
"I am hoping I can assist."
Ron peered at him, utterly mystified. "With what?"
"With what else?" Snape snapped. "With the destruction of the Dark Lord."
Ron puzzled this as a breeze caught his hair. "But . . . why would you do that?"
This was going to be a little harder than Snape first thought, and that was saying a lot. Perhaps he should just retreat to Shrewsthorpe and await his Harry's arrival. It was hard to give in so utterly, though, to a fight that was woven so firmly into the fabric of his being. While he pondered this, a pop! announced the Apparition of Hermione Granger, who, due to space limitations, teetered on the edge of the porch. Snape grabbed her arm and tugged her to safety, spelling a block as a nasty disemboweling curse came sizzling out of the darkened shrubs across the way.
Hermione gave a yelp and Ron gave a tug and the three of them tumbled inside the house. Hermione recovered first and stood against the corridor wall with her wand aimed, brushing her hair nervously from her eyes. "Professor . . . I mean . . ."
Snape picked himself up and dusted off, making no move for his wand, which he had stashed away as they fell rather than risk losing it. Ron stood to lock the door, but hesitated, hands seized around the brass knobs, clearly not wanting to be locked in with him.
Snape displayed his empty hands and said, "You should most certainly lock it, given that it strengthens the spells on this place."
Hermione inched her way along the wall. "What are you doing here?" she demanded breathlessly.
"I've come to assist."
"With what?"
"Are you as daft as your boyfriend here?" Snape demanded, glad at least that the direct approach was getting him a hearing.
Ron said, "He says he wants to help bring down You-Know-Who."
Hermione with a breathy huff, said, "You have a funny way of helping with that."
This gave Snape pause, given that it was the second time someone reasonably intelligent had said that in just the span of ten minutes.
Fortunately Ron, the slow one, believed the obvious needed to be stated, "Harry said you killed Dumbledore, and I know others don't believe it, but I believe him."
Snape turned to him and the young man shrank back against the door. When all else fails try Socrates . . . or Dumbledore. "And why do you think I did that?"
Ron, clearly panicked as always by a question from Snape, shook his head overly much from side to side. "I don't know."
Snape dearly wished he understood the situation himself. He had committed a Harry-style error of charging in without proper preparation.
Hermione, wand still trained on him, steady now, said, "He always trusted you."
The truth of that still felt like a weakness. Snape turned to her and said, "And I never let him down. Ever."
Hermione's wand wavered. "Ever?"
"Well, I did not do so well teaching Potter Occlumency." He waved his hand. "But that is in the past. For the present, Potter has a task to finish that he can't seem to get on with. At risk . . ." He indicated Hermione's wand. "To my own life, I am here to help."
"But why did you kill Dumbledore?" Ron asked, distress in every line of him. At least he had his wand out now, but he was not aiming it very well. Snape considered chastising him for that. He wished he knew the answer to the question. The mystery of it made his personal worries much more acute.
Hermione answered for him, "Well, he was really ill."
Bolstered by that, Snape took refuge in the easiest possible answer. "There are things I do not expect any of you to ever understand."
The three of them stood there in a stalemate until Kreacher came slinking down the stairs, muttering to himself. He spied Snape there and, with one eye twitching, said, "Mistress will be pleased with this visitor, yes . . ." His shadow lengthened as he crept around the banister and headed to the back of the house. " . . . not like those worthless Mudbloods and, mistress forbid, Werewolf . . ."
Hermione clamped her hand over her mouth before blurting out: "Remus, I didn't find Remus! I completely forgot when I came back and . . ." She raised her wand at Snape again, who gave her a tiresome roll of the eyes in return.
Snape stood with an attitude of disregarding the threat she represented. "And what trouble has he got himself into?" he asked.
Hermione replied, "He didn't come back last night, and I need to . . . I need to meet someone else now. And Ron has to stay here . . . we don't want to leave the house empty."
"Wise plan, given the history you have with this house elf," Snape said, trying to ingratiate himself a bit, and seeing the only possible chance at gaining some trust, he asked,"Do you want me to go look for him?"
Sounding threatening in a way only long-term strain could have hardened her, she asked, "Do you know where he is?"
"I have no idea where he is. So, if you wish me to fetch him, I will need some kind of clue as to what his mission was."
Hermione chewed her lip and glanced at the horribly ugly clock skulking halfway along the corridor. "What do you think, Ron?"
"What do I think? I say we throw the git out. What's to think about!"
Hermione did not appear to take this advice very seriously. "I'm worried about Remus, he's not been well and he really wanted to find . . . well . . ." She glanced anxiously between Snape and Ron.
Snape crossed his arms. "Suffice to say, I know more than you think I know. But if it makes you feel better to pretend I don't that is fine with me. What was Lupin looking for . . . in general terms, if you must use them."
"He went to look for something Bellatrix was rumored to have. But I'm afraid he may have been caught looking for it. I just went looking for him and he wasn't at the ruins of the Lestrange estate where we thought the . . . this thing would be."
Snape gave a small bow of his head. "With your permission, then, I will see if I can locate him."
"And . . .?" she asked, pained.
Holding in his temper and a snide tone that fought for a hearing, Snape replied, "And . . . bring him back here. Is that not what you wish?"
"Yes." She nodded emphatically.
"You have nothing to lose," Snape pointed out.
"Harry's sanity," Ron offered. "When he finds out."
"One thing at a time," Snape breathed as he swept out the door.
Snape applied a disguise and Apparated for York, to the edge of the wizarding area. The Ministry could not trace exactly who had Apparated, but they could certainly trace where, precisely. The only way to shake a trace was to get lost, by broomstick or on foot, in an area where there was more Apparition activity. As he strolled, Snape tried to settle his thoughts. He was getting involved against his better instincts. Surely, Harry would not be more than a few days in seeking him out. Snape would have to leave a clue behind in Shrewsthorpe, so Harry would know where he had ended up.
Each in turn, Snape systematically checked Bellatrix's hiding places. On the sixth destination, he found her in a Muggle-inaccessible cave branch of Llethryd Swallet. All but a narrow corridor of the twisting and branching cave was Apparition blocked, and the noise of anyone arriving would be heard throughout the connecting chambers, so his arrival would not be by stealth. But because of the obscurity of the location, Bellatrix had laid no traps and expected only friendly visitors, so Snape had the advantage of surprise.
By the time Bellatrix raised her wand in his direction, Snape had already struck out with a Blasting Curse, sending her toppling over a stalagmite-mound, which also shattered the brighter of two lamps that had been hooked there. Taking mental note of where the miserable lump that must be Lupin was resting, Snape moved to his right, to get into position for a clear shot when Bellatrix stood up. He peered through the bars of slick rock sheeting from the wall beside him. A deadly blast of green shot by Snape's ear, making him duck.
"So, you dare show your ugly face, Severus?" Bellatrix taunted. Her voice echoed too much to localize it and the room's many shadows moved with the quivering lamp flame. "Master will be pleased when I present your severed head to him, which is the only way you will leave this place, Severus." She laughed heartily and another blast struck the rocks behind Snape, sending shards of limestone into his back.
Snape crawled on his elbows to a better position between two high mounds of glistening, veiny rock. Hoping he correctly remembered where Lupin lay, or that the man had managed to crawl away, Snape used a narrow, invisible Cutting Curse on the domed roof of the cave. Then spelled a basic Blasting Curse to force her to defend forward. The faint whistle of plummeting missiles accompanied Bellatrix's next taunt about what she would do to some other sensitive area of Snape's anatomy. This was cut off by a fleshy thud and a sad sigh.
Snape, fearing her faking injury, waited in silence, listening to his own breath in the trapped air. In the distance water plonked rhythmically into a resonating pool. Snape searched silently around on the floor of the cave for a loose rock, which he tossed towards the wall to see if it attracted attack. When it did not, he crawled carefully toward the flickering light, keeping to the shadows. Lupin's head was raised, his strained face peering into the gloom beyond. Snape gave him a silencing gesture and crawled on.
He found Bellatrix in a heap, impaled by a spear of rock. Not dead yet, but looking close to it. Snape raised up the lantern and found that the stark shadows were not from the light, but from the blood. Dizziness rocked him as he stood there, the angled cave floor tilting more and then back again. He stood on a precipice of choice for a world in which he had no meaning. If he stood here reeling in that long enough the choice would be made for him and knowledge of that only made him dizzier. What was he doing here, messing about with such things? He must be mad.
Snape eradicated the spike of rock and crouched to tug Bellatrix's robes aside and seal the twisted wound that made a mockery of ribs, sinew and humanity.
"What are you doing?" Lupin asked. He had dragged himself closer and clung to a fleshy-formed mound of slick rock to pull himself upright.
"Would you prefer her to die?"
Lupin had always been too soft hearted, but the question nevertheless stumped him. Snape used the silence to seal off the bleeding, but without a Healer it would only matter temporarily. With a swish and flick, he hovered her toward the narrow cave branch where Apparition was not blocked. Her robes snagged on stalagmites as they went, tattering. Lupin did not follow, and Snape turned to find he had collapsed, dull gaze reflecting the lantern light as it moved away.
"I'll return shortly," Snape said to him, noting grimly that Lupin failed to react to this promise. He set the lamp on the cave floor and Disapparated.
Snape abandoned Bellatrix on the floor of the lift inside the casualty entrance at St. Mungo's. Her wild hair had tangled hopelessly over her face, which saved him from a last sight of it.
Uncaring about being tracked at this point, as long as he evacuated Lupin quickly, Snape returned directly to the cave. Lupin lay where Snape had left him, ashen faced in the lantern light. "You came back," he said, voice weak.
"I said I would." Snape hovered him as well and Apparated him through a misdirection sequence that did not include a crowded wizarding area, but would have to do. Next trip out he would have to carry a broom, which would make interrupting Ministry tracking much easier.
"Remus!" Hermione squeaked in sympathy when she opened the door.
Snape supported Lupin more fully as he swayed, half dragging his toes over the threshold and inside the door. Hermione efficiently led the way up the stairs and Snape followed after getting a better grip on his burden.
Lupin's room was lined with disorganized brewing apparati but it sat cold. Between the two of them, they had Lupin cleaned up and laid out in bed in short minutes. Hermione rushed off to fetch soup and soda bread, while Snape remained behind, carefully tracked by bloodshot eyes as he perused the potions tables.
"Looks like you tried to brew Wolfsbane and failed."
Lupin cleared his throat. "Fred and George attempted to brew it for me. They halfway succeeded." Then after a beat. "What are you doing here, Severus?"
A very good question, Snape thought like a bell tolling through him. "I don't feel like explaining myself to you," he replied, moving to the shelves of ingredients, taking stock there, mind working out what could be made as a means of ignoring the broader question. It was the kind of answer that felt natural to an older version of himself, but it did not make him feel good to use it. Somewhere along the line he had started to care what others thought.
Snape was contemplating backing out of getting involved. He had already changed too much. If he were using a Time-Turner the world would have snapped already, gnarled into a ball of twitching, twisted fate and collapsed into itself, and that notion made him ill and uneasy.
Lupin sank back, exhausted. Snape sat on the stool beside the bed and checked his health with a Indificator, making Lupin's eyes open in surprise. "It was rumored that you had a falling out with Voldemort, that he believed you a traitor." Lupin stopped to clear his throat and gather some strength for his voice. "Everyone assumed you'd been killed."
Snape pulled a veneer of cold around himself. "Yes to the first. No to the second. Obviously."
"After everything that's happened, hard to believe you are not just changing sides because you have no choice."
"Believe what you wish. It is no concern of mine."
Lupin coughed lightly, expressing pain at doing so. "It's not quite that simple."
Snape stood and mixed a quick palliative, which he brought back in the stone cup intended for the Wolfsbane—the only clean cup in the room. Lupin took a sip, and the next second the cup thudded hard against the wall as a curse shot across the bed, knocking Snape to the floor and ricocheting around the space, shattering glass potion bottles.
"Harry!" Hermione's voice rang out.
Snape, trapped in the corner anyway, dared to raise his head over the edge of the bed. Glass tinkled and liquids dripped behind him, sizzling as they mated randomly on the floor. Harry stood in the doorway wand out, gaze wild and furious.
Snape raised his wand in time for the second blast. He held his ground, but did not retaliate.
"Harry! Don't fight in here, are you mad!" Hermione shouted. The rug began smoldering acridly and the air grew smoky. Lupin ducked away from the line of fire as best he could, cringing. Hermione moved in to help him, still yelling at her friend. "Harry, Lupin is hurt. Stop it."
"Oh, Merlin," Hermione breathed, gazing at the destruction. "Tincture of rose petal mixing with sea wasp stingers." Headless of getting in the way of the battle, she moved around beside Snape's feet and shifted things in the broken glass, spelling piles of ingredients to hover in the air in cycling globes of reddish brown and bubbles of glittering liquid.
Harry's grip on his wand eased, given that his friend was in the way, but the hatred pouring out if him did not. "What the hell are you doing here, you murdering bastard?"
"Trying to help," Snape replied calmly.
Harry snorted. There wasn't even the slightest sign of good nature in him. "Get away from there so I can kill you properly."
Hermione froze and turned. "Harry, he rescued Remus."
"A trick," Harry snapped. "Easily planned." He waved his wand. "Get out of there, away from those two."
Snape glanced at the floor and stepped around Hermione, taking care not to trail any ingredients into any others. Before he stepped completely around the bed into the open, he said, "Killing me isn't going to accomplish anything."
"It gets me a lot of satisfaction," Harry said.
Snape hesitated on the verge of safety. "Maybe you've forgotten the prophecy."
"Maybe you don't know the whole bloody thing," Harry snarled. He was in full on, temper-lost mode; Snape recognized the headlessness of it.
In his local persona, Snape did not have enough room to placate this young man. "I do most certainly know the whole bloody thing," he stated, letting some heat through, since he was well aware that interminable calm simply drove Harry further over the edge. "That's why I am also well aware that the prophecy would be null and void if the Dark Lord never heard it. Our joint mentor Dumbledore would have had to tell him himself, if I had not. He was saved the sin of doing so himself."
Harry stared at him, anger trying to derail on this new idea. "Is that why you killed him?"
"NO," Snape returned as though Harry were a First Year.
"I saw you kill him. Don't deny it," Harry shouted, pained. And Snape saw it too, in sketchy memories flickering over Harry's eyes. Snape pinned him there with a whispered spell, trying to get a better sense of what had happened.
A tower and flashing spells. Why was Dumbledore pleading so? Was he pleading with Snape to kill him? There certainly were not a lot of options for the old wizard at that moment, as far as Harry's fluttering memories showed. Had it merely been arranged to maintain Snape's reputation? That seemed a pale reason. Mercy killing and the former? He must be missing something critical, something Harry did not know.
"Harry?" Hermione prompted, making Snape release him.
"I don't deny it," Snape said, trying to find footing and distract from what he had just done. He had never killed anyone directly before, and to come up with the right dark energy for a Killing Curse against his old mentor, as frustrating as the man sometimes was, seemed inconceivable. "But there is much you don't know, too."
Harry returned to shouting. "All I know is that you keep going around killing people that I care about." He slapped his chest once, anger boiling over again.
"I did not intend to kill your parents," Snape retorted, seeing no benefit to holding back. "The prophecy did not apply to Lily and James as far as I knew. I was hardly on the announcement list, as you might imagine. Your father's oversized ego aside, the Longbottoms were far better known as defiers of Voldemort."
Growing wary, Harry said after a gap, "You said his name."
That had been a slip. Snape took a deep breath. "Why not? I'm not beholden to him any longer."
"What? You arm doesn't hurt anymore?" Harry taunted, more mocking than Snape ever would want to hear him be.
Snape resisted rubbing his burned forearm and answered honestly. "It does, but I can ignore it."
Harry's wand came up to point at his head. "I don't trust you. I don't care who you rescued. I want you to leave."
Snape relaxed slightly. "Hm, I'm moving up. A minute ago you were going to kill me." To Harry's darkened gaze, he added, "I don't think you can get by without me. The prophecy should have been finished by now. I think you need my assistance." Harry did not argue, merely held the aim of his wand steady. Snape went on, "Given the things you need to collect, I think I can be invaluable, just on my knowledge of where Voldemort tends to keep things."
"I think he's right, Harry," Hermione said.
Harry's lips twitched nervously. "I think he's a plant. I think Voldemort gave him one last shot at redeeming himself since he's the only one who can get in here. That's what I think. I think we should make him regret doing that, then make him forget everything, and then dump him in the street for his friends who are always on guard to pick up and do with as they please."
Snape sat on the foot of the bed but he kept his wand at hand. He crossed his legs and looked around at the blackened, cold cauldrons lined up along the wall. "At least you aren't being foolish," Snape said. "That's something." When Harry had no reply to this, Snape went on, "How about I give my wand to Ms. Granger, whom I trust because her temper is a little more predictable than yours, and you give me a chance to prove myself?"
Harry thought while Snape waited. When Harry nodded at Hermione, Snape said, "Oh, I'm not giving up my wand until you agree."
Harry grew thoughtful, which was a definite improvement. "It's still a setup. Whatever you do will be designed to work out and then you'll turn on us."
"Well," Snape said, sitting back slightly, making himself at home. "In that case, you get a freebie don't you? And you can decide to give me another chance ad nauseam, until such time as it becomes clear that it can no longer be a setup because Vo- the Dark Lord would never relinquish a Horcrux, even to capture you. You are just a puny, upstart boy, and the Horcruces, well . . . they are immortality."
Harry blinked at him in silence, surprised by this openness and by how much Snape knew. "Well . . . " Harry said, hesitating, anger dissipating.
- 888 -
Snape stood before the cauldrons in Lupin's room, all of them bubbling now.
Harry skulked in, wand in hand. He sniffed at the first one. "That doesn't look like Wolfsbane."
"It isn't. It is the precursor to Veritaserum, which I thought would be useful to you. There are many potions that could be of use to you." Snape finished stirring one viscous pot and set the silver stirrer on the rest before the cauldron so as not to mix it up with the others. "I am willing to do things that are more helpful than brewing, but if that is all I am limited to, I will try to make myself as useful as possible."
"I don't trust you enough to let you do more. This Hermione can double check."
"As you wish," Snape stated, bored.
"You still haven't explained why you killed Dumbledore," Harry said, raising his wand and looking fierce.
Snape fished for yet another diversionary line. "If he did not see fit to explain to you, why should I?"
Harry's frown deepened, taking this as an insult. "You're saying Dumbledore kept you informed. You, who had no prophecy?"
"Hardly." Snape said, sounding firmly like he meant it, "If you think for one minute that I am not as trapped by circumstances as you are, you are sadly mistaken."
Harry relented marginally and went back to sniffing cauldrons.
Snape's Harry, when he brought him home had been hungry for an authority figure to respect. "Sit down, Potter," Snape said with an edge of command. When Harry merely glowered, he added, "You have been fighting Voldemort a mere eight or nine years. Some of us have been fighting him for twice that. Sit down and listen for a moment."
Harry sat on the edge of the bed, looking difficult.
Snape leaned back against the bench and said, "There is not much I can tell you that you do not already know, but perhaps hearing it spoken aloud will be of use to the rut you are in."
Without looking up, Harry complained, "You sound like Dumbledore. What happened to you?"
"If we can leave off with the insults, that would be preferable," Snape commented. This garnered a raised brow, a good sign. Going on, Snape said, "You have grown too careful . . . wait, let me finish. You let your losses lead you to a sort of paralysis where you too fiercely fear losing other members of the Order, and as a result risk losing even more because you keep letting the enemy regroup and grow stronger. Every rule the Ministry adds on that goes unchallenged, every death that goes uninvestigated, all of these things weaken your position."
"You want me to risk everything. Throw it all away? I knew you were still on Voldemort's side."
"You need to be bolder; I said nothing about being stupider." Snape tended to a cauldron and then fetched the stool over to sit on. He was heartened to have the young man's attention and wanted to make the most of it, even if he lost a potion doing so.
Harry said, "I'm tired of everyone getting hurt, or killed. Especially for something that was my idea. It's my fault then."
"It isn't your fault. It is Voldemort and his followers' fault. And these friends and associates that do as you ask are doing it because they believe in what they are attempting. They have already decided that the outcome is worth the risk. That isn't for you to decide for them. Have some respect for them."
Harry mulled that over, instinctively needing to offset some guilt. Falling ever more glum, he said, "Things have got so bad that more and more witches and wizards want to volunteer, even though they don't really have the skills to help."
"The war is going quite badly," Snape said, feeling he needed to say that to someone, anyone. The newly delivered newspapers gathering in the kitchen had alarmed him more than he ever imagined he could be. They had missed this utter chaos in his world, something he was eternally grateful for . . . assuming he would one day return there. The Muggles were inextricably involved now, and the grand excuses for the destruction became more elaborate and unlikely, magic and mundane churning and over-spilling poison across Europe.
Harry raised his eyes and studied Snape, and Snape realized he had broken character too far. That had been a problem the last two days, trying to remain nasty when the outside world had that well covered had proved impossible for him.
Harry said, "The war is going so badly that my worst enemy is trying to help." His eyes did not waver from studying Snape. "There is something very wrong with you."
"So you say," Snape retorted, recovering some attitude. "I reserve the right to reach my personal limit on things. Just like everyone else."
From the doorway, Hermione said, "I've been wondering if you are really you." She stepped inside and held out a clear glass marble. "I borrowed this from Feorge. Hold out your hand."
"What is that?" Snape asked, glad to have the leeway to behave paranoid.
"It's a Truth Teller," she lectured him. "Easier than Veritaserum, except that it can't make someone talk."
Snape held out his hand and Hermione dropped the marble into it. "Say your name," Hermione commanded.
"Severus Snape."
The marble flashed white. Hermione turned to Harry. "Could there be more than one?"
"Merlin, I hope not," Harry said, exhaling hard. "Are you helping Voldemort?"
Hermione interrupted before Snape could answer. "It doesn't work very well that way. It's too easy for the person to answer some other question he or she silently asked him- or herself in between. You have to make them say a statement. Say: I'm helping Voldemort."
Snape peered at her. "You want me to say that?" He studied the marble, not trusting it. But in the end, he repeated the statement. The marble flickered pink and black. He insisted in a huff, "I would not help Voldemort," and the marble flickered white. He dropped the marble back in her hand. "Enough of that."
"Something to hide?" Harry taunted.
"Many things. Especially from prying Gryffindors."
Harry muttered, "I still don't trust him."
Snape said, "I don't care. It is better if you remain untrusting when planning. Given the powers being used against you, anyone can be turned at any time."
Hermione said, "Like the other day, Ron had a fantastic idea and I felt I should check him for an Imperio." She gave Harry an apologetic half-smile.
Snape took the opportunity to study Harry better. Usually when they occupied the same room, he kept an angry scowl fixed on his face. With his attention diverted by his friend, Harry's face softened with humor into a strained and beaten down mode.
Hermione read Harry's face too, "I made lunch. Are you coming down?"
Harry nodded vaguely. "I want to ask Snape one more thing."
Hermione glanced worriedly between them turned with a bounce of her hair. Harry slunk around the potions one last time. "Is the Wolfsbane going to be done in time to help Remus next week?"
"Just barely. He will have a supply three days before the full moon, which is not optimal, but should help with the drain on his psyche."
Harry swallowed. "Yeah, he's not been doing well." Clearly this burden draped heavily over his shoulders as well. Slowly, Harry got to the point. "What you said just now . . . about people doing what I say because they want to do it—they think it's right. Did you mean that?"
"Have you held some piece of blackmail over their heads beforehand? Held a family member captive on the side, for example?"
Harry's face contorted in confusion. "No, of course not."
"Of course not," Snape echoed. "The situation is dire. Many who volunteer now have already lost all they have to live for. They are trying to make the best of it. That isn't your fault."
He could see Harry's chest expand and relax as he took that in. "You are the last person who would say that if it weren't true."
"I expect," Snape replied, feeling terribly bad for this young man despite that weakness being identical to the pitfall he had just warned about.
Harry stared off into space and shook his head faintly. "I can't see the trap you are laying here. Nothing makes any sense."
Snape thought wryly, If I told you the truth, it would make even less. He concocted something likely sounding. "Like everyone else, Potter, I've grown deathly tired of the way things are going. Egos aside, something much change, and quickly. Even I, as accustomed to darkness as I am, cannot take any more."
As plausible as this sounded, it appeared to pile on to Harry's psychic burden, and his face fell into the distant bleakness of his inner vision.
Snape struggled for something else to say. This wasn't his Harry; he knew what to say to his Harry. "You would not be named in the prophecy if it was not possible for you to succeed at this."
Quietly, as though fearing being overheard, Harry unburdened himself, "It feels impossible."
"It isn't," Snape said with immense confidence. "That I'm certain of."
Author's notes:
Opting for sleep instead of finding a preview. Trust that it would be an incredibly cruel one anyway.
Chapter 28 — Deceptive Devices
Harry woke to the discomfort of his head lolling on an uneven surface while he fought to draw in a much needed breath. His hands fumbled for the wand in his pocket, scattering what felt like gritty ash and sticky damp shards over his robe-front. He had difficulty pulling his wand out, as though it had burrowed down too deep into his pocket. Spasmodically brushing off his cold-clumsy hands, Harry finally gained a grip on his wand and used it to warm the floor beside him. He used a spell strong enough that the heat seeped over to him without him having to move.
Eventually, with many preparatory deep breaths of rotted air, Harry sat up and peered around the decrepit hall. If this was not the right place, it was at least an equally miserable place. The oversized, candle-lined pentagram in the center of the floor, as creepy as it was, reassured him that this was the right place. Harry brushed his hand off again and froze as he spotted red flecked chips of bone amongst the fine ash clinging to his hand—the Hat Rabbit. Harry looked around the floor and then back at the destruction evidenced on his hands. The animal had not in the least survived passing in between. The paw Harry had held was the most intact part of it, but its frozen-into-dust remains spoke plaintively of the unforgiving harshness between the Planes. Harry could not even blame the rabbit's demise on its lack of magic, because it had been a magical creature.
Harry sighed and cleaned himself off with a spell before standing creakily to inspect the pentagram, which represented his next best hope. The Device exuded a distinctly Snape-like precision. Question now was, where was his Snape? Harry circled the unlit shape, an angled forest of warped candles glowing faintly with the light leaking in the partly boarded windows. As he came around to the hearth side of the room again, a translucent form wafted out of the kitchen door.
"Harry Potter . . ." Tidgy said, the ghostly sound seeping right into Harry's bones.
"Tidgy," Harry said in surprise.
"I is having a message for Harry Potter."
"Oh, do you?" Harry could barely believe this luck. "Good."
"Master says you will find him at your godfather's house, Harry Potter."
"Oh, thank Merlin," Harry said, letting relief carry away the worst strain from recent events. "Thank you, Tidgy."
The elf gave a long sniffling whine, like a gas leak, and dabbed at a transparent tear. "Everyone is thanking Tidgy."
"Well, you deserve it. And please keep an eye on the house, eh?"
Harry donned his usual disguise and Apparated for Grimmauld Place's porch, wondering exactly what he was going to find behind the dark old door. Delaying finding his adoptive father, just to find out the details of recent events here was not something he could withstand; so there he stood, unprepared.
Neville Longbottom opened the door, peaking through the crack with his wand tip sticking through. "Who are you?"
"I'm an old friend of Dumbledore's . . ." Harry began in his plodding old manner, barely managing to hold it through his impatience.
Neville interrupted, "Well, you'd have to be to get this far." But he failed to open the door wider.
Harry said, "I'm looking for someone I believe is visiting here: Severus Snape. Is he here?"
"Hang about."
The door clicked closed. When it next opened, Hermione was there, a harried, permanently-stuck-in-examination-revisions Hermione. "Who are you?"
"Aaron Totten is my name. I was made to understand that Severus Snape is here, and I need to see him. I'm an old friend of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore's."
Hermione's narrowed eyes peered at him, judging him. "What do you want with Mr. Snape?" Her head disappeared and the sound of harsh whispering leaked outside. A piece of " . . . but I don't want to leave an old man just standing out there in the cold . . . well, but he has to have been given an invite at some point, right?"
The door opened wider. Hermione said, "Come on in, but you'll have to excuse our assigning you an escort. Standard procedure."
"What is?" Neville asked in confusion, and Hermione elbowed him.
Harry put on a kindly attitude. "It's no trouble my dear. I understand." He dearly, painfully, ached to point out that they should be checking for a disguise, but decided it best to not do so.
Hermione led Harry upstairs to where an aura of brewing hung in the still air like a curtain. She opened a bedroom door and led the way inside, saying, "Mr. Snape, someone is here to see you—an Aaron Totten."
Snape turned and looked up from the notes in his hand. Harry knew instantly he had the right man; there was a firmness, a stability, beneath the depths of this Snape's gaze where the other possessed only frantic strategy and suspicion.
"Harr-on," Snape said in surprise, correcting mid-word. Hermione closed the door behind her with just a quick mutter about leaving them alone to talk.
Hermione slipped away quickly because she had just surreptitiously made sure the twins' crystal ball was well positioned on the stand by the door and that was a much better way to eavesdrop than hanging around, obviously in the way. Down in the dining room, Neville had already pulled out the other half of the pair of connected crystals and placed it on the table, and was forcing Ron to be quiet as he asked too many questions about what was happening. Lavender crept out to fetch Harry and Ginny, who were in the kitchen.
Hermione doused the lamps and knelt on a chair to lean close to the sphere to hear. Ron reached more easily with his long neck. Back in Lupin's room, disguised Harry said, "Took me too long to find you."
Snape, over his surprise, calmly stated, "I left a message."
"That worked fine. But it took me too long to figure out you were gone."
The two of them stood stock still for a breath with Harry washed limp by relief. He crossed over to Snape and gave him a firm hug he was so grateful to be standing before him.
Down in the dining room, Ron covered his eyes and said, "Make me un-see that!"
Hermione hit him on the arm and whispered harshly, "Quiet! Sometimes the crystal balls go two-way."
Snape snorted a faint laugh and said with false sternness, "You disappoint me. I thought an hour, at most."
Harry released him to pace, disgusted with himself. "Yeah. Things were a little mad at home last weekend."
"How is . . . your fellow doing?" Snape asked. He made a motion to scratch his neck below his left ear, one of several Auror signals that indicated they were being monitored.
"Better. He's not the one I'm worried about right now. It's you."
Snape did not respond immediately. "I am doing all right."
Harry glared back. "I don't like the sound of that. You need to come home."
Snape turned to tend to a cauldron that was frothing hard, mimicking the rushing sound of a small waterfall. "Severus," Harry said in a threatening tone.
"Yes, I agree. But it is not easy."
Harry had to admit that he was not sure how to make it work out, but the spell must be repeatable. "You can't be resisting coming home. You don't belong here. It's too dangerous."
Snape waited for Harry to meet his gaze. "I realize it means going back on things I've said to you, but there are tasks only I can do here."
"I don't care," Harry snapped, heating quickly. "You have responsibilities at home, if I'm not mistaken."
Snape's brow rose in surprise. "Sensitive topic, I see."
Harry bit his lip. Snape cut in with, "Is my colleague behaving himself?"
Harry paced again. The room smelled of potions and sour sweat and it keyed him up more. "Well enough. I made a point about him doing so. I don't think he could have misunderstood."
"Are you behaving yourself?"
Harry studied the colorful stains running down the shelves in a pattern that implied there had been a serious accident recently. "Of course," Harry said in his best false voice. A bit of blackmail felt good.
Down in the dining room, Hermione asked no one in particular, "Who is this wizard? How did he know Dumbledore and how does he know Mr. Snape?"
Ron, whinging faintly and backing away from the crowd around the crystal, said, "Sounds like they live together. What a thought."
Ginny said, "That would explain why he's not married."
Harry said, "It would? Like being a hopeless, evil, bat-like git isn't sufficient reason?"
Hermione shrugged as if to concede that point. "I guess everyone has at least one person who cares about them. Sounds like Totten cares. 'Though he's awfully old for . . . well."
Ron ducked his head into his long, boney arms. "Aaaarg, stop it!"
Harry leaned into the space Ron made. "I just want to know if he's yet another enemy we need to worry about."
Hermione whispered, "Doesn't . . . seem like it. He wants to take Mr. Snape away, doesn't he? Well, except that might not help."
"It would help me," Harry muttered stubbornly.
Back in the bedroom, Snape methodically stirred a grey, gruel-like potion and sprinkled in some long dried twigs that were immediately swallowed up. He said, "You'll have to locate something for me to be able to leave. I'm a bit of a prisoner here."
"The half-burned book. I know."
Snape turned to him sharply, despite his hands staying busy. "You must have made quite an impression on my colleague."
"I tried to. It wasn't difficult."
Snape bent over to sniff the cauldron before turning down the heat on it. "I don't like you doing that."
"I don't like you being here. You don't owe this place anything."
Snape hesitated replying. "I would have agreed until I got here. Now it is not so clear."
Harry rolled his eyes, and huffed in frustration. "I'll find the book and figure out how to get you back. Are you going to be all right?" he asked, placing a hand on Snape's arm and gripping it. He hated leaving him here. "I can take you somewhere safer."
Snape studied him closely. "You have not been following the news, have you? No place in Europe is safe. I do not think even you can travel easily farther than that."
Harry's hand slipped off his arm, trying to take that in. "It's like last time, with Grindelwald."
"Where has this bloke been?" Hermione blurted in the darkness. "Living in a cave?"
Snape said, "By the time it is finished, it may be worse."
"All the more reason to leave," Harry said.
With no rancor, Snape pointed out, "You are quite a fickle person in this regard, aren't you?"
Harry's only reply was a thoughtful frown. "You have other responsibilities, as I said. You aren't trying to avoid them, are you?"
Snape shook his head slowly, but with less conviction than Harry would like. "But once one is steeped in a place like this, it becomes difficult to remember there is another, more real one . . . waiting."
"Well, it is waiting," Harry criticized. "Don't forget that."
"I can't," Snape stated, strangely flat. "I killed Dumbledore for a reason, remember?"
Harry stared at him, realizing after a beat that this was a message regarding his counterpart. "Yeah," he muttered doubtfully, trying to digest that.
"Not for reasons anyone can understand here," Snape went on, eyes intense. Harry got the sense that Snape was asking him to find the answer.
Harry swallowed. "Then, I really have to go, but I'll return as soon as I can." He gave Snape another quick hug and departed.
When he made the bend in the corridor, Harry saw himself waiting at the bottom of the stairs. His counterpart stood with head cocked suspiciously, but his attitude appeared patient, as though he would wait all day there.
Harry stroked his beard to reassure himself it was intact and started down, slowly, pretending to be pained. "Hello, there, young man," Harry rumbled, trying to sound less like himself and more like a doting old uncle.
Hard as granite, slippery as glass, the other asked, "Who are you?"
"Not your concern," Harry replied. "No threat to you, I assure you. Just looking after my family."
This caught the other by surprise and his suspicion relaxed, making him appear far more vulnerable. "Oh."
"Times like these, we have to all stick together right?"
The other nodded vaguely, mind diverted elsewhere, an unshielded mind from which Harry caught a jumbled scene of helpless paralysis on the ramparts of Hogwarts, hated Death Eaters arriving, then Dumbledore, blasted off the tower in a wash of green, but it was too jumbled and fraught with disbelieving panic to piece together.
Harry said sympathetically, "He wouldn't have left the task to you if you could not do it."
The other's head snapped up sharply. Harry winked at him. "You need to learn some Occlusion. Perhaps while Severus is here."
The other went from wary to disgusted. Prompting Harry to add firmly, "There is no sacrifice too great at this stage."
Hermione slipped into the hallway, apparently to listen in better, or provide moral support. She had her wand out but her arms wrapped around herself.
The other Harry asked, "How do you know Dumbledore?"
"I knew him my whole life," Harry replied. "But never as well as I should have. He always kept something back. Obviously he did that to you too."
The other said smartly, "That doesn't answer the question."
Kindly, Harry said, "I'm not going to answer the question. It's irrelevant to you." He stood there longer, wanting to say more. The vacillations in his counterpart's emotions spoke of far too much stress and long-term damage, and Harry could see why Snape hesitated leaving. "Just keep in mind the things Albus told you."
Spoiled sounding now, the other said, "Been so long . . . it's hard to remember."
Harry had turned to go, but now turned back. Finding annoyance worming its way in, he said, "He told you what your greatest weapon was, did he not?"
The other backed off in renewed wariness, and Harry tried not to grin. "Maybe I knew Albus too well, after all. Just keep it in mind."
- 888 -
Harry did as he said he needed to, and hurried home. He woke up before his hearth, which Winky had started early for the cloudy afternoon. Harry lay there with the fire burning dangerously close to his hair, listening to the crackle of the fresh wood turning to ash.
Kali called from her cage, and Harry found the strength to strain his weary limbs and get up to fetch her out. He paced around the room, holding her in one hand and petting her with the other, remembering the Hat Rabbit with some regret. With a deep sigh, he stroked his pet one last time before raising her to his shoulder so he could free his hands to write a letter.
Harry had to go down to the drawing room to find clean parchment. Snape's desk felt violated, but Harry found everything in the usual place. He tugged out a sheet of the best, creamy-white parchment, opened an ink bottle and began:
Severus,
I hope you are not getting too comfortable there at our illustrious and quiet school, and that you are behaving as your colleagues expect, rather than as you wish to. I am going to assign a few of your students the task of keeping an eye on you. I expect you to ignore their activities if you discover them, which I'm certain you will, given that they are mere children and you an evil wizard's associate. If I hear any negative reports, trust that I will not be pleased.
Harry read through what he had written. It sounded like the words of someone who expected to be in charge. One part of him wanted to go straight there and threaten him again, it squirmed at mere letter writing. Harry suppressed that instinct, and dipped the quill again.
I have one question for you and I expect an honest and prompt answer. What did you do vis-à-vis Dumbledore?
Harry triple-underlined the word "prompt", pulled over a candle to work through making the letter for Snape's eye's only, and sent it off with Hedwig. He then composed three more letters for his old friends there including the only Slytherin he trusted fully enough: Suze. He made up a poor excuse for the task that family life seemed to be taking a toll on his adoptive father and he wanted to know that Snape was not taking that out on the students. Harry did not like that excuse, but it was the best he could think of, and anyone with an already doubtful view of the difficult Hogwarts professor, would be quick to believe it. Harry did not send the same letter to Hermione, in this case his overly sharp friend would be too difficult to assuage once her suspicions were arroused. Harry would have to hope she was too tied up with teaching to notice a shift in Snape's behavior.
Harry went to his training the next day, distracted and with his readings only partly absorbed. The workout and drills gave him a much-needed distraction from his problems until lunch when he meant to head to the Minister's office to see Belinda.
Aaron waylaid Harry before he reached the stairs. He took one of Harry's arms, like he needed the support more than to stop Harry. "I need to talk to you. Do you have plans this evening?"
"I don't have plans," Harry said. "Stop over after training, won't you?"
Aaron immediately brightened. "Great. Cheers." Hands in his pockets, he sauntered off down the corridor.
Harry headed up to the top floor and found to his dismay that the Minister's outer office contained Fudge and quite a number of other important people gathered in clusters, talking. Harry did not see Belinda in the crowd to catch her eye, so he retreated—to his stomach's delight—it was not pleased about the prospect of missing lunch.
Harry opened his reading as he ate the meat pie Winky had prepared for him. Mr. Weasley told him he would prefer Harry not buy anything, even from a Muggle shop in the area. Harry bit into the middle of the pie, surprised to find his heating spell had not made it all the way through. He definitely needed to clear up some of the distractions in his life, especially if his magic was going to suffer for it.
At home that evening, Harry took a seat with his books beside Candide. An owl arrived, one of the plain brown ones Hogwarts kept so many of. Harry put the letter away in the back of his book rather than risk Candide even seeing who it was from. If it had an Eye's Only charm on it, it would burn up before he could read it.
Something about his actions or his attitude caused her to ask, "Everything all right, Harry?"
Harry held the book Monsters Too Small To See open in his lap and gave her his attention. How to answer that?
"Things have been better," he admitted.
Taken aback, she patted his arm and prompted, "Really?" in disbelief. "What's troubling you?"
She sounded like the question really mattered, so Harry worked harder on a good answer. She brushed his rampant hair back. "I'd suggest a hair cut, but I realize short hair isn't the norm in this household."
Harry peered back at her open gaze, discovering for the first time that such a gesture, unlike Mrs. Weasley's in years past, did not bother him. He wondered now why it would do so.
Mouth curled in amusement, she said to his silence, "You're much too thoughtful for someone your age."
"I wouldn't be if I had a choice," he pointed out, smiling too without trying.
She put her book down. It was a soft-covered pale green book of rule changes for the new accounting year. "Maybe you are looking for trouble now?"
Harry emphatically shook his head. "No. If only that were true." He sat back and sighed. Part of him wanted to tell her that her husband was an impostor, but another more careful and strategic part held back. Harry may not be able to switch his guardian back, or his Snape may be killed before that could be managed. This fear kept Harry silent by itself. He cast his mind ahead, trying to accept that outcome because he knew from past experience he must plan for every possible eventuality, no matter how grave. In that case, Harry thought with grim determination, he would stay in this house and make sure this interloper took over and assured that Snape's son did not want for a father.
"Hm," Candide muttered. "You are definitely far away, somewhere."
"Sorry," Harry said, feeling vaguely depressed. "I have a lot to think about." He excused himself to go and read the letter in his room. His stuff had been packed away in trunks in preparation for moving to the other, more distant bedroom, something he had resisted doing until Snape was truly back, preferring to stay closer to their room.
The letter read:
Potter,
If you were not so straightforward in your small-minded thinking, you would realize that it is perfectly in my interests to behave predictably. But, that said, I refuse to restrain from getting Slytherin House in order or retaking my class from a soft-minded interloper.
As to your last question, I cannot earn your understanding in this. Suffice to say, with little consolation, that he was dying anyway, and he commanded me to do as I did. Though you may not believe it of me, I did not wish to and I argued against it. The old wizard died of sentimentality for a lost cause and forced me to be the vehicle for it. That is all I wish to say on the matter.
Harry destroyed the letter and felt a wave of relief that he did not have a truly evil version of his adoptive father on his hands, assuming what the man said was true. It felt like the truth, which bought Harry a little more time to work things out. But to fix things, Harry really needed the book printed with purple ink. There must be a copy in this Plane as well as the other one.
Harry went back down to the main hall and said, "I have to go to Hogwarts to look for something. Aaron is supposed to come over; I'll go to Hogwarts while he's here to keep you company."
"I need company?"
"I want you left alone as little as possible." He said this in a tone of finality, feeling like the old-man version of himself. She did not debate further, just tilted her head noncommittally, opened her rule book again and went back to taking notes in it while Harry returned to his reading.
A quick double knock sounded on the door. As expected, Harry found Aaron waiting in the garden, his impecably embroidered, shiny, unwrinkled cloak draped fully around himself in the chilling air.
"'Ello, Harry," he said breathily, before striding in at Harry's gesture of invitation. Aaron greeted Candide and took a seat opposite her, head hanging a bit low.
"Can I get you something?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, I could really use a . . . never mind." He waved his hand. "I better not."
Harry resumed his seat beside Candide. "What's going on?"
"I need to talk to someone."
Harry glanced at Candide quickly and asked Aaron, "Do you want to move to the drawing room?"
Candide uncurled her feet out from under her saying, "I can go upstairs."
Aaron waved dismissively again. "No, it's all right. Please stay. It's your house, after all." He scrubbed his hair, then smoothed it carefully, managing to make it look even better through this process. He clasped his hands between his knees and announced, "I uh, I asked Ginny to marry me."
"What!" Harry blurted, glad he had not fetched a drink for himself because he would have spilled it right then. "You did?"
Aaron sighed loudly. "I did."
Harry could not find any words. Candide eagerly asked, "What did she say?"
Soberly, Aaron replied. "She said she had to think about it."
"I would say," Harry managed. "What . . . what made you ask her?" he sputtered.
Aaron's brow twisted to perplexed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean . . ." Harry paused, regrouping. "I don't know. Just seems sudden."
Aaron pointed at him. "That's what she said."
"Well, it is, isn't it?" Harry returned.
Aaron shrugged his boney shoulders. "I don't know. I've never done this before."
They both turned to Candide, who glanced between them before laughing lightly. "Don't look at me."
"You're the only married one here," Harry pointed out.
"That does not make me an expert," she replied while marking her spot and setting her her book aside on the end-table. She clasped her hands over her knee and said, "If it feels right. Time isn't the issue. You can know someone for years and still not know everything about them. Until you see them in the right circumstances, some part of their personality may never come out."
You are about to learn a lot about Severus, Harry grimly thought.
Candide went on, speaking to Aaron. "If she didn't say "no", outright, you're still okay."
Aaron bleakly peered at the metal-railed staircase off to his right, eyes tracing up it to the balcony. A knock sounded on the door, and everyone stared at everyone else until Harry jumped up.
Ginny stood at the door, bundled haphazardly in her rough woolen cloak. "Can I talk to you, Harry?"
"Er, of course. Come on in."
Harry expected to find Aaron in the hall, but he was absent. Candide pointed surreptitiously toward the drawing room door, which was open just a crack.
"Want anything?" Harry asked Ginny while he tried to decide whether to reveal that Aaron was already here.
Ginny shook her head, gaze lost far beyond the stone walls surrounding them.
Harry tried for a normal voice, "So, what's going on?"
Ginny pulled her cloak tighter. "Uh, Aaron asked me to marry him."
"Did he?" Candide asked, not sounding very authentic, but Ginny failed to notice.
"Em . . . what did you say?" Harry asked.
Winky arrived in a sparkle bearing a cup of cocoa. Ginny accepted it and sipped it between sighs. "I told him I didn't know." Then a moment later. "Crazy." She shrugged off her cloak and fell back, slouching nearly horizontal with her fine-boned hands out before her, clutching the steaming mug.
Candide reassured her, "You can't make that sort of decision quickly."
"I really do like him and all," Ginny said.
Harry could see movement through the crack in the drawing room door and he disliked the deception of letting Aaron overhear. Fortunately, Candide seemed content to run the conversation.
"And he has money; that should make the decision easier."
Harry spun his head to look at her, wondering at her bluntness.
Ginny replied, "It doesn't really; it makes it harder. The money is . . . like a third person you have to get to know and figure out if you can live with. No, it would be easier to decide if he were poor. He thought he was, briefly, when he believed you'd used all his money to ransom him. Said he was glad he wasn't, otherwise he couldn't ask me." She shook her head again. "Crazy."
"And you would decide what in the case of his being poor?" Candide went on, like an interview.
Like watching Beater practice, Harry turned back to Ginny.
"Oh, I don't know. I just know it'd be easier." She bit her nails for second before dropping her hands to her lap. "I just hope he gives me some time to think about it."
"I'm certain he will," Harry said, loudly enough to carry across the hall. Harry stood. "I have to go Hogwarts, care to go along?"
Ginny stood as well, but because her head hung low, she did not see the shifting of the light through the drawing room door. "No, I should get home. I told mum I'd help with cooking more."
"She doesn't even have that many to cook for," Harry said.
"Yeah," Ginny said. "I'm getting the idea lately she thinks she's done enough cooking for a lifetime, and I need to learn better."
Candide from her relaxed seat said, "Not if you marry Aaron, you won't."
Ginny pondered that a second before saying, "All the more reason to learn. I don't want to rely on someone for literally everything."
Harry suppressed a smile and with a thanks, Ginny Disapparated. Aaron immediately slunk out of the drawing room with a guilty curve to his back. Harry did not have the heart to give his friend trouble, so he said, "You were saying?"
"Maybe it was a little sudden," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. With a sigh, he let his arm fall.
"Want to have a seat?" Harry asked, worried his friend was slipping into a funk.
"I don't want to take up any more of your time," Aaron politely replied.
"It's not a problem," Harry insisted.
Aaron appeared unconvinced. Candide said, "Have a seat. You can do Harry a favor. He needs to run an errand and wants me to have company."
Brightening slightly, Aaron said, "Cheers then. Thanks." He sat back and propped his hands daintily in his lap. "I could use the company too. Since my troubles with the date I picked up at my favorite club, I haven't much for going out."
Harry shot Candide a grateful look, fetched his cloak, and Apparated away as the conversation moved to Candide asking, "What does you mum say about your choice?" and Aaron flinching with a mumbled answer about him not informing her yet.
Harry landed on the railroad bridge, still shaking his head. Maybe Candide could sort Aaron out; Harry certainly had no chance at it.
With the wind tugging and ballooning his cloak, Harry peered along the mist-lit valley emerging from below the trestle at his feet. He needed to think things through before rushing into Hogwarts. He did not want Snape to know he was there so he should head directly to the library to speak with Madam Pince to inquire about the book. Harry had another book by the same anonymous author, but it was short and contained only theories, not any facts and certainly not instructions for a device to travel between worlds.
After settling his mind and drawing his uplifted cloak close around him, Harry slipped into the Dark Plane and directly into the Restricted Section of the library. The tall shelves towered over Harry as he stood and listened to see if his arrival had been noticed. Students whispered as they worked at the tables, vellum pages shushed as they slid over one another, a binding slapped closed and footsteps sounded far on the other side of the room. Harry peered up and down the nearby shelves. He had already once before checked all of these books for help with the Dark Plane, he doubted he would have missed the one Snape described. Harry slipped out of the row and through the gate, casually, as if he had every reason to be there and just had been hanging around for a while.
Madam Pince sat at her desk, holding her bifocals at just the right angle to read the tiny print on the verso of the book she held open. Whispers of surprise followed Harry across the room as the students noticed him. The room fell silent and attentive as he reached the desk.
"Uh, ah, Mr. Potter," Pince whispered in surprise. "What can I do for you?"
"I have question for you. Can we talk in your office?"
"Ah, yes, of course." She gave the library's student occupants a critical eyeing before retreating and inviting Harry into her office with a kind bow.
Inside the high-ceilinged, heavily shelved room, Harry said, "I'm looking for a special book. It's a thick one."
"Well, I do hope you have more description than that," she said scornfully. "You sound like a patron at the Wizard Public Library in London, I have to say."
"It has purple ink," Harry helpfully added.
Madam Pince's attitude changed. She gave Harry a piercing gaze. "Professor Snape was just looking around for a similar book early Sunday night. I'd forgotten my reading glasses and found him skulking around in the Restricted Section as though he weren't a professor here, or something, and free to come in any time."
Harry kept his face level. "Did he find the book?"
"Not that I know of. If he'd given me an author, I could have helped him. I sent him off and told him not to disturb the books any more than necessary. At midnight, of all times." She scoffed. She took a seat at her desk and adjusted her glasses. "So, purple ink, you say. Do you have the author's name?"
Harry shook his head. "How many thick, purple ink books could there be?" he asked, trying to stay hopeful. He imagined himself traveling endlessly from Plane to Plane, asking this of every single Madame Pince, and felt queasy in his stomach.
She removed her glasses and glanced around the rough wooden shelves sagging beside her under the weight of wide, shiny leather volumes. Harry took the cue and also glanced around, wishing Snape had not been able to Occlude his thoughts so that Harry could have glimpsed a vision of the book. When Harry's eyes came back to the desk, Madame Pince quickly shut the book she had out. It was bound like any other, in leather with marbled paper inside the cover, but the writing indicated it was being used like a notebook.
At Harry's curious attention, she said shyly, "Just a little story I've been working on." She put the book away in a drawer and shut it rather loudly for a librarian. "But you were saying . . .?"
Harry thought more and said, "Dumbledore maybe owned the book at one point. Did Severus mention that?"
Madame Pince raised a brow. "No, he did not." She slid her chair back to get to her feet again. "Let's check the Bereft Book room, then. Many of Professor Dumbledore's books ended up there," she said, reaching to open the corner book case that turned out to be a shelf-covered door, where the shelves were screwed directly into the stout, Hogwarts wood. The door did not open far before the shelves struck each other. Harry squeezed in behind the librarian, forced to duck to keep his shoulder getting stabbed by the wall shelf.
Sparse light filtered in through a window blocked by stacks of trunks. A long narrow desk occupied the other wall, with narrow drawers and shelves of materials like leather hides, large marbled paper sheets, threads on spools and heavy needles. A book lay open with its pages sewn together in bundles but not glued into a binding.
"Dumbledore's books needed repair?" Harry asked. "I guess they were probably all very old."
Pince waved her wand to shift the stack of trunks, saying, "Many of them needed repair because of some accident he had in his office." She popped open a trunk and used a spell to make the books hover in a nice display orientation, waved them back and went to the next. "He never would say what happened. It was just at the end of the school year a few years back." The trunks thunked together as she shifted them and popped the next open.
Harry's chest tightened. That had been him that had damaged the contents of the headmaster's office.
Pince saying brightly, "Ah, here it tis," broke Harry from his guilty revere. The books were flying back into the trunk . . . all but one, or . . . half of one. Pince reverently held out, with both hands, the limply bound, but still heavy, partial book. The flopping binding showed how very long the book had been before half the pages had been burned away. The border pages had scorched edges but the rest were bright and undamaged even by smoke, indicating spell damage rather than real fire.
Harry thumbed the pages, daunted by the small print and obscure diagrams contained within. "Thanks," he said, trying to sound bright. "Can I keep it?"
Pince perched her glasses farther down her nose and took the book back for examination. "If you want it. Bit of an odd duck, that author. Not sure why Professor Dumbledore kept it around at all."
Harry thanked her and said, "Please don't tell Severus I found it. I, er, want to surprise him with it as a present."
She waved him off as they exited the Bereft Book room, indicating that she cared little either way. Harry was so pleased to have the book, he nearly absentmindedly slipped into the Dark Plane from her office. He tripped over his feet when he turned for the door instead with a jerk of his limbs.
"Careful there, young man," she said in her patron-correcting voice.
"Yes, I will be," Harry said, adding to himself: as soon as I get everything set to rights.
Out in the corridor where the beveled glass wall to the library threw star-shaped bright shards of light into the shadows, Harry waited until the echoing voices and footsteps receded before slipping away.
Harry brought two more lamps into his bedroom to better read the tiny print of the book. At first he was dismayed by the missing the first half of the book but after straining to read just a page, he decided it was just as well to be spared the pain of having to make it through so very many pages.
Hours later, eyes heavy and his Auror books untouched, Harry considered what to do with the book. If he kept it here at home, it could easily be found. The same if he took it to any likely hiding place. Harry considered hiding it in his locker at the Ministry, but Snape may find his Evanescent Deputy badge and look even there, and he certainly had the stealth to get away with it. Harry stretched as he stood and took himself to the place Snape was least likely to expect Harry to hide it.
Stone-frames surrounded glistening black glass windows and the dip worn in the center of the corridor floor showed more obvious in the light of the low burning wall lamps. Hogwarts castle was the best place to hide the book. Harry stepped over to where the hump-backed statue of Grunhilda stood and put the book inside her. He could easily slip back to fetch the book for reading when he needed to and, in between, feel secure that Snape would never find it.
- 888 -
Tired from a tedious, late night, not to mention daunted by the task of absorbing so much obscure knowledge to rescue his adoptive father, Harry left the breakfast table immediately after Candide left for work. Foggy-headed, Harry had trouble pulling out his wand for his turn at drills.
Rodgers did not fail to note his clumsiness. "Your power isn't much either, Potter," he criticized. "Try again and leave your distractions at the training room door."
Harry did, but he could not even come up with anger to meet his trainer's mocking tone, let alone a better attacking spell.
"Potter hopes he won't be facing anything tougher than a five-year-old with a licorice wand. Sit down; Aaron, let's give you an easy chance to shine while topping that sad effort."
Sighing, Harry sat down, quickly slipping off into his greater problems while the drone of mixed grudging praise and advice was heaped on his fellow apprentice in his stead.
Anxious to take care of something after a long day of harassment from his trainer, Harry headed immediately off to see Belinda. At the Minister's office, Harry was informed that the staff had been allowed to go home early because they had to work late the previous evening. Not believing his break in luck, Harry stepped back into the corridor and around to the stairwell to slip away to right before the door to Belinda's flat.
As soon as he arrived, Harry pulled his wand, believing he heard something in the direction of the stairwell. He waited, tense and listening, before waving a tracer spell that direction. The spell, no brighter than a sun-ray glinting on a dust mote, wove a spiral path through the air and disappeared down the stairs. Harry waited, but it did not return, indicating it had found nothing.
Harry relaxed and knocked on the door but received no answer. He knocked again, louder, before deciding she must be out. He knocked on the neighboring doors, thinking to interview them the way they did on Auror duty, but those doors remained silent and closed as well.
Dismayed, Harry headed away directly for home, thinking it best not to be seen leaving Belinda's flat through the front door, not fancying having a picture of that show up beside Skeeter's gossip column. Harry arrived directly in his own room and had to pull his wand again in the face of finding Snape digging through the bottom trunk from the pile beside the window.
Composing himself, Harry asked, "Looking for something?"
Snape twitched in surprise, but turned with calculating calm. Their eyes locked. Harry wanted to get angry, but that dark instinct spilled out amusement instead at his servant's predictability.
"You don't need the book unless you are planning on going home voluntarily," Harry stated, finding power in simply locating the Mark in his mind, even as he held off on using it.
Snape glanced over Harry's face, thinking. Harry could not pick up his thoughts, so he took a guess. "You aren't going off somewhere far away to hide, either."
Snape raised a brow, recovering some of his obnoxiousness, indicating Harry had guessed wrong. "You think not?" he mocked.
Still the picture of calm, restrained power, Harry said, "You are going to stay here and take care of your wife and your counterpart's other affairs until I can arrange to send you home and get him back."
"Hm," Snape muttered, appearing to consider his options as he analyzed Harry additionally. He was going to test those boundaries, Harry could feel like a vibrating tug on an invisible leash and he wondered, given how clear that was, how Voldemort could have been fooled for so long.
Harry stepped closer and noted Snape consciously standing his ground. "If you try to leave . . . I will hunt you down, and drag you back here." At the derisive doubt that flickered over the black eyes, Harry added, "You can't hide from me. I can find you anywhere." He pushed on the Mark as he said this, making Snape contort with a jerk before overcoming the pain and standing firm, defiant. Part of him felt sympathy for this man, but another felt only annoyance and insult at his machinations.
"You are not capable of working out the spell," Snape snarled faintly.
"Then why are you looking for the book?" Harry asked brightly.
Snape breathed faster than before, gathering himself for something. He said, "I do not like leaving anything to chance."
"There is no chance you are not going home," Harry snapped. After a breath he added more calmly as a test: "Aren't you happy enough here for the moment?"
Snape lost his defiance and fell thoughtful. "This place is acceptable. Although you are an unexpected addition to it." He stared at Harry, gauging his reaction. "Since I prefer to remain alive, I certainly would prefer to not go back. No reason to lie about that."
"That's not under your control," Harry pointed out, and waited to see if Snape had given in.
Without Harry pushing on it, Snape rubbed his forearm. "Nothing ever is, it seems," he observed softly, making Harry's sympathetic sense win out.
"Go back to Hogwarts," Harry said, moving to let his pet out, who had been watching their exchange between bouts of grooming her fur. "And behave yourself."
"I suspect that is what my counterpart would be saying about now," Snape stated slyly.
Harry lifted Kali to his shoulder, trying to shake a twinge of confusing affection. "Don't pretend to be something you're not," Harry said stiffly, jerking his fingers out of reach of his pet's jaws, which had nipped at him.
Snape peered at Kali as though understanding she was projecting Harry's mood and said, "You must realize, I rarely ever have the opportunity to do otherwise." With a last glance at Harry, he swished out of the room, leaving Harry to disentangle from his pet, who was now aggressively chewing on his hair.
Tonks arrived after her shift, and Harry felt compelled to slip the book away when he rose to give her a perfunctory kiss. Mostly he hid the book because he did not have the energy to explain why he was reading the strange old half-burned thing. He needed to take out his Auror books for an hour anyway, or risk looking the fool again tomorrow at training.
Tonks read over Harry's shoulder for a while before curling up at his back to sleep. The meaning of what he was reading began to tip-toe out of reach, and Harry tried another book before giving that one up as well with a sharp closing of the hard cover. Tonks stirred and said, "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Harry muttered, his concerns rushing back in.
"Yeah, sounds like it," Tonks returned.
Not wanting to discuss Snape and knowing discussions about Belinda made her jealous, Harry propped himself up on a pillow and kept his mouth pressed closed.
With a faint huff, Tonks burrowed under the duvet and went back to sleep. After a time, lulled by the sound of her breathing, Harry did the same.
Harry woke in the middle of the night. He stared at the fuzzy grey ceiling for a while before slipping on his glasses and staring some more at the details of the white plaster bisected by dark, rough-cut timbers. When he closed his eyes and drifted with difficult-to-achieve calm, he could see the shadow of the impostor Snape floating in the midfield of his mind. The other Death Eaters were a distant knot of darkness that he had to strain to sense. He wished he could feel none of them.
Worried about his adoptive father, Harry rolled over gingerly to turn up the lamp and pull out the clunky book. The complicated words and abstract ideas made more sense on a second reading in the unchallenging stillness of the night, and that gave Harry hope. He had no choice but to understand the book before he could move on. His guardian would be able to help him some with it, but given the difficulty of talking at Grimmauld Place and how unsafe it was for Snape to leave, Harry needed to be down to just a few questions to have a chance at getting as much as possible resolved at the next visit, which Harry intended for the next weekend. He was placing a lot of faith, he knew, on being able to activate the existing Device. If that proved impossible, Harry dreaded imagining how long it may be before he could swap them to their proper places. Long before it came to that, Harry imagined he would break down and force the impostor to teach him how to do it, by dire threat if necessary. Sick feeling at the notion of losing himself to that mentality for the time required, Harry doubled his efforts at understanding the complicated Pinhole-Bridging spell diagram on the page open before him. He knew instinctively how this worked—he could do it by himself—so he certainly should be able to understand this crazy old author and his drawings.
- 888 -
To his relief, Harry did passably well at training the next day, implying that his mind was adapting to the rigors of studying, even short on sleep.
The door to the Minister's office was closed and when Harry knocked, the cleaning witch explained that the Minister had taken her staff out to a ribbon cutting at a new broom manufactory. Harry thanked the witch and the delicately carved door closed with a click. Harry stared at the stern faces peaking out from corners of squares defined by ivy. That dark instinct inside him told him to slip into her flat to investigate. When he resisted that invasive idea, the instinct pointed out that his enemies cared little about such niceties.
Deciding that it would be acceptable to take a peek since he had been invited in before and he only had her best interest at heart, he slipped into the Dark Plane and directly to her flat. He circled the main room, poking carefully into things after checking for spells, making satisfying use of his training. In the kitchen stacks of unclean dishes stood in piles that indicated either guests or long-term neglect. Harry considered skipping searching there, but heard Rodgers chastising him for sloppiness, so he stepped in and checked around and under things, finding little of interest. Despite the unwashed dishes, the floor was sparkling clean. The full sink gave off the odor of garlic-spiced food. Harry circled slowly around by the dusty-screened television, installed, he knew, at the Minister's insistence that her staff all keep abreast of Muggle events and opinions. The bookshelves were also faintly dusty in back. Harry pulled out every book, looking for anything hidden behind or inside before returning the dust with a spell.
When he finished the large shelf he began to feel silly for what he was doing and wished he had some idea what to look for. If Durumulna were troubling Belinda, what evidence would their be of that? The dishes in the sink were the strangest thing so far that he'd found, and that wasn't very specific. Harry gave up on thinking and let habit take over and returned to his methodical searching, wondering if he could hold onto that mode through a survey of her bedroom.
Following his trainer's absent voice urging him on, Harry crouched low, head to the floor, to see if anything interesting had fallen under the couch. As he did this, the lock clicked. Harry snapped straight and stepped into the nearby bathroom, caught momentarily by the sight of the men's shaving kit on the shelf above the sink. A glance through the crack at the door's edge, showed Belinda setting down her handbag and slipping her wand away. Harry slipped out of the bathroom and into the building corridor where he waited a count of fifty before knocking.
Belinda answered his knock promptly and expressed surprise at seeing him there.
"Hi," Harry said, expecting her to start where she left off on Diagon Alley the previous weekend.
Instead of asking for his help, she seemed vaguely annoyed. She said, "What are you doing here?" while glancing both ways along the corridor.
"I thought you wanted to talk."
Her brow lowered. "I did, but I got it straight now. It's okay."
"Really?" Harry blurted.
She glanced both ways again. "Yeah, really. Things are okay now."
Harry mimicked her glance. "Who are you expecting?"
"No one. Just didn't, er, notice you approach the door. You know, the alarm spells didn't go off."
Harry did not like this. She did not have alarm spells before. "Can I come in?"
At first, he was certain she would say no, but she stepped back and waved for him to enter.
When she turned, Harry wasted no time. "Look, I want to know what's going on."
His pushiness hardened her. "Nothing is going on."
"You were trying to hide from what I expect were Durumulna members just the other day on Diagon."
"Wouldn't you try to hide from them?"
Harry Legilimized her, and found nothing deceptive about this sentiment. "You worked everything out since then . . . the troubles you were having?"
She looked away. "Yes. It's fine."
She sounded honest, but Harry wished he could prove it.
"It's fine," she repeated. "And really, I'd rather not have you seen here. You aren't the only person in the world who can help people out, you know."
"Who's helping you?" Harry asked, intending to not leave until he knew at least this much. He dearly hoped she did not say "Percy".
"Why do you need to know?"
Harry fought a wave of frustration. He was starting to find keen appeal in using Veritaserum more judiciously, or one of several other tongue-loosening potions. That darker side of him reared up and mocked him as well for being too weak to simply force out the answers he wanted. He had an expert servant at his beck and call, free to help, how could he let her avoid explaining?
Harry took a step back, distracted by the notions he was having. Snape had become a tool in his mind, rather than an enemy, in just that instant, and the switch disconcerted him. Harry really needed his guardian back—the one who did not feel like a pawn to be moved around a personal chess board at his whim, then maybe these notions would lack such strength.
"Please tell me who's helping you, so I know you're in good hands."
She glanced around and said softly. "Alastor Moody." At his stare, she went on. "He comes by an evening or two a week to check on me. Has for a while, now."
Harry did relax at that. He dropped his hand from rubbing his head and straightened, bringing himself back to examining her. The flat's indirect light made her eyes appear poorly slept and her cheeks hollowed by strain. Through it, her eyes revealed worry for him overlaid with guilt and murky thoughts centered on someone insisting she do something, or face some undesirable outcome. She turned her head and Harry released a deep breath.
"If you are in too deep, you can ask for more help," Harry insisted. "Before you are cornered into doing something you may regret. Something that would threaten Bones for example."
Eyes on the floor, she mumbled, "I would never let anyone talk me into doing something that would put her at risk."
"I'd expect not." Harry needed some space to sort out his conflicting instincts, but he stayed put to gauge her better.
She repeated, "I don't want anyone to see you here."
"Like whom?" Harry asked, thinking he could corner her himself.
"Anyone. Skeeter, even Alastor."
Harry sighed. She had him there.
At home Tonks and Candide were both waiting at the table with a bowl of crisps between them, reduced to a few crumbs. Harry was glad to see Tonks, especially since it meant Candide was not alone while he was taking far too much time nosing around. Dinner sparkled in the moment he sat down.
"Didn't know you'd be late," Candide said.
"I, er, had some shopping to do," Harry said, thinking that an excellent excuse for his absence, given Christmas' fast approach, and the fact that it would be rude for them to ask more, in case the presents were for one of them.
"At least you try, Harry," Tonks said with a wink. "Blokes don't generally shop well."
Not wanting to get her expectations up too high, given that he could not foresee time to shop at all, he said, "I may not manage anything too fancy, but I do try." As he ate, he wondered with some dismay what in the world the impostor Snape may try to get for the two of them. That imagining made the luscious scented beef and gravy on his plate nearly inedible. It simply could not be allowed to come to that.
- 888 -
The next day at training, Harry barely registered the questions his trainer aimed their way.
"Potter, you're acting as lovesick as Wickem here. I can't handle two of you living on cloud nine. Snap out of it. The Minister is due down here for a surprise inspection with some of the Wizengamot and I intend to impress them with our sharp skills, not our tendency to have our collective thoughts wandering off."
"Yes, sir."
Vineet raised his hand and asked, "If it is a surprise inspection, how is it you are knowing about it ahead of time?"
Rodgers propped his fists on his hips and raised a depreciating brow. "If they did not at least give us a hint, they may be sadly disappointed in the outcome, which they do not wish to be."
"I am grasping this meaning," Vineet replied. "I think."
They broke for lunch and Harry went to his locker to collect what Winky had prepared for him. He was reminded about how unwise a hiding place this would have been for the purple-inked book by the presence there of Percy and Fudge's other two assistants. Harry did not want Percy to see him execute the protective spell negation on his locker, so he waited while his fellows opened theirs and filed out of the room, all but Aaron, who glanced between Harry and Percy as though expecting something to happen.
"No place else to wait?" Harry stated pointedly to the trio.
The other two assistants: one a man with a neck even longer than Percy's and the other a short-haired woman with a square head that would have fit better on a bulky body rather than her lithe, flowing one, made a move to leave. Percy sneered at them. "Oh yes, let's do whatever Boy Wonder wishes of us."
"It is our changing room," Aaron pointed out, plucking at his workout suit. "We would like to do some changing before lunch; we've been working hard this morning."
"Come on, Pers," the man said, heading for the door.
Harry whispered, "Purse?"
Percy took a step forward. "No, I'd like a word with Boy Lightning Bolt here." His companions rolled their eyes and the woman left, leaving the man hanging in the doorway uncertainly. Percy leaned close enough for Harry to note he had already had lunch, something with pickled onions. He said to Harry, "You're not going to fool them forever, you know. When they see what you really are, it'll be all over with." He gave Harry a small shove, and Harry tried for his wand but missed, as he had been lately, as though his fingers were still clumsy from the cold in-between or something. Percy swung his arm just as Harry got hold of it and his wand clattered to the floor and Percy kicked it out of reach under the bench before diving to make a grab for it. He stood swarthily and dangled it before Harry.
"Too bad this isn't Hogwarts. The things I could do to you. . ." Percy mocked.
Harry restrained his temper and held onto his dignity by not reaching for it. Aaron had his wand against Percy's temple less than a second later, complete with arm lock.
"You mean like the things we did to you, Percy?" Aaron mocked. "You remember Slytherin House, don't you?" He did not relinquish his hold until Percy gave over Harry's wand, even though he still had a hold of Harry's robe-front. Fudge's other assistant had approached but did not intervene.
Percy managed a smirk for Harry's fellow as he tossed his hair straight. "Yeah. You think you're everything too. Got everything you want, compliments of mummy."
Aaron required an unusual extra two beats to retort, "Compliments of your mummy, actually."
Percy's eyes turned dark. He pointed a long finger at Aaron. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Harry did not like the turn this was taking. He stepped between them, even though Percy's hold tried to keep him away. Harry said, "Percy, I'm going to use the most painful martial arts move I know on you if you don't let go of me and get the hell out of here. I will gladly go on a year's probation with your father just to put you in St. Mungo's with at least three things broken."
Percy said to Aaron, "If this has something to do with my sister. . ." he faded out and turned back to Harry, red in the face. "As for you . . ." He relinquished Harry with an ineffective toss of his wiry hands. "Some of us know what you really are. Remember that." He stalked off and his colleague followed with an apologetic glance back at them.
After lunch the official contingent poured into the training room. Pinned to the Minister's hip, Mr. Weasley was assuring Bones of the improvements in their department. Bones spoke over him, saying, "I was reminded the other day of how I had not arranged a surprise inspection since taking office, unlike the frequent ones arranged by my predecessor." She said this with a nod to Fudge, who gave her a simpering smile as he slid along the wall for a good observation spot, followed by his assistants.
Harry ignored them all and focused instead on what he had been told the demonstration would entail. His mind would churn out of control otherwise.
When the entourage had settled in, Rodgers announced, "We have been working of late on spell power. Vishnu, come up here for a demonstration."
A shuffle sounded from the wall and Fudge said, "No, let's see your star . . . Mr. Potter."
Rodgers took affront at this. "All of our apprentices shine. We don't allow stars here. At least I don't."
The apprentices nodded in agreement with this assessment. Pleased by this, as indicated by a crooked smirk, Rodgers relented and stepped back. "Potter, you and Vishnu."
Harry's spells had not been up to his usual level, so he approached the front of the room with dismay. Vineet exhibited the best control Harry had ever seen, and Harry held onto his blocks with only a little vibration of his wand. On attack he blotted out all other concerns and struck out, full force, surprising the room with the fireworks. The two of them traded off for Kerry Ann and Tridant, who did their best to appear to nearly kill each other, further impressing the visitors.
Soon enough, they were left to their training as Bones' contingent filed out with a rumble of commentary from those trying to convince the Minister of their view of how things looked.
The door snapped closed and Harry's shoulders fell in relief. He was apparently still too sensitive to having to prove himself to Fudge after all this time because the demonstration had left him agitated. Vineet slid over to him as they took their seats. Harry said, "You were trying to make me look good by holding back."
"I do not mind doing this," Vineet said, sounding fully at peace with the notion.
"I mind you doing it," Harry complained.
"Let's try to get something meaningful accomplished," Rodgers announced, louder than necessary. "And go over the readings for today."
Harry fetched the purple-inked book on the way home and curled up on the couch with it, determined to read it until he slept that night. Worry about his guardian kept his attention on the pages for many hours, and through painstakingly copying out the diagrams onto parchments to take with him that weekend. Harry ached to make another visit. This visit, he planned leave early in the morning, so as to have to time to help out a while if that would help keep Snape safe.
"Good to see you working on your books so religiously," Candide said when they curled back up with their respective work after dinner.
Harry nodded faintly. "I have to be prepared."
"Severus wanted me to keep an eye on your studies, but I don't know why he always insists that. You get to it fine on your own."
Harry nodded faintly again, wanting this ruse over with so badly it made his eyes hot.
author's note: I've started a new mailing list of people who want to be notified only when the entire story is finished (in addition to the one for chapter notices, which you can also sign up for). you can get on it by sending a message to darkirony at gmail (.) com
I'm on the road. Depending on how exciting Latvia is next week ;-) we'll see if we can get the chapter posting down to 10 days.
Next: Chapter 29 -- Descent
"I'll just drop my bag in my locker," Harry half asked, wanting to follow procedure to secure his lunch from tampering.
Mr. Weasley nodded and then led the way down to the tea room. Harry forced himself to exhale, wondering if somehow Percy's threats were already coming to fruition. The chair's metal feet squeaked gratingly across the floor when Harry pulled it out to sit. Mr. Weasley did not sit; he leaned on the back of the opposite chair.
"What did you do this last Tuesday, Harry? After you left training."
Chapter 29 — Descent
Harry arrived at the Ministry a little early, thoughts circling around his weekend plans. His fieldwork was scheduled for Friday afternoon, which would allow him to get a good night's sleep before going off to visit Snape early Saturday. By then he should have worked out what Device diagrams were likely the ones relevant from the book, and therefore which accompanying spells. It felt overly optimistic to hope he could fetch Snape so quickly, but the following week, when they were released for Christmas, there would be more opportunities. That would work well with the other Snape being home; Harry could be assured he would be nearby to step into the Device. That just left Candide to work around. At least Harry's disappearances, as needed, could be attributed to last minute shopping. As the lift doors opened, Harry vowed to have his guardian back for Christmas, even as difficult as that would be. It pained him too much to imagine celebrating Christmas with the impostor.
Distracted as he was, Harry did not immediately notice Mr. Weasley standing in the middle of the corridor, just beyond the training room door.
"Harry," Mr. Weasley, said, just as Harry's attention came to rest on his boss' solidly planted figure.
"Sir." Harry had been hoping to get a last glance at his unfinished readings before their session started, but Mr. Weasley's posture indicated that was not going to happen.
"Come in here, Harry," he said soberly. "We need a word with you."
"I'll just drop my bag in my locker," Harry half asked, wanting to follow procedure to secure his lunch from tampering.
Mr. Weasley nodded and then led the way down to the tea room. Harry forced himself to exhale, wondering if somehow Percy's threats were already coming to fruition. The chair's metal feet squeaked gratingly across the floor when Harry pulled it out to sit. Mr. Weasley did not sit; he leaned on the back of the opposite chair.
"What did you do this last Tuesday, Harry? After you left training."
Harry kept all reaction off his face, or he hoped he did. His investigations of the Minister of Magic's receptionist's flat would not sit well with many, he now realized. A flicker appeared at the edge of the door and Shacklebolt came into view. Harry returned his gaze to his boss. "I went to talk to Belinda, Bones' receptionist. At her flat," he added, trying to sound helpful, then stopping himself because they all operated under the notion that overly helpful was a red flag in an interview.
Sounding honestly mystified, Harry added, "What's going on?"
Shacklebolt's blue robes slipped away from the door. Mr. Weasley said in a patently reassuring voice that was not in the least reassuring, "We're not certain yet, Harry. But why don't you stay here for the time being."
"Here in the tea room you mean . . . not just here in the Department?"
"In the tea room." He departed and Harry blinked in the wake of it, mind flying faster than his best broom in a hopeless bid to work this out.
Harry's fellows arrived for training. Their voices came down the corridor, gossiping about the Falcon's captain and his being seen the night before with the girlfriend of the Harpies' captain. Tonks poked her head in, but it appeared to be simply a check that he was still there. By the time Harry opened his mouth to ask something, she was gone.
Harry sighed, wondering what the penalty was for illicit investigations. They HAD made them psuedo full Aurors and had not reversed it, as far as Harry knew. If he were a full Auror, he only needed to justify his actions, which seemed easy enough given what he had observed about Belinda.
Mr. Weasley returned long after the training room door had boomed closed and the corridor had fallen silent. He returned to his previous pose over the chair, leaning heavily on the back of it. Shacklebolt slipped in behind him and took a seat, long parchment and pen in hand.
Mr. Weasley said, "Harry, do you have a solicitor?"
Harry's heart fell as silent as the corridor outside the door. His mouth was too dry to speak immediately, but he managed to stammer, "I . . . not really. Hermione gave me a name once, but I don't have now." He patted his pockets for no good reason, really; the slip of paper had not been magical or anything and would not reappear after all this time.
Mr. Weasley nodded and turned to Tonks who had arrived, face thinned by strain. "Go up to the Minister's office and get a reference from Bones." With a toss of her brown hair, Tonks nodded briskly and slipped off.
Harry opened his mouth to ask something, he was not sure what may come out, but Mr. Weasley held up his hand. "No speaking, Harry, till the solicitor arrives."
Harry breathed instead, needing it badly.
Shacklebolt sat with his hands in his lap, the picture of calm, but Harry knew he always did that, no matter how bad the actions of the perpetrator they were interviewing. Harry reassured himself that if this were truly serious, they would use an interrogation room, so this must be something to do with his unauthorized search, which, apparently, was bad enough. Harry clasped his hands between his knees and wondered morosely if the French would still take him if he were kicked out of this program.
The lift bell sounded and Mr. Weasley went out and closed the door behind him. An argument sounded beyond the door, louder and softer as others came into the room—the whole department aside from Rogan, who must have been left manning the office.
Mr. Weasley was arguing with Fudge. "We will handle this internally. This is our jurisdiction."
"You are soft on that boy, always have been, I will not allow him to make a mockery of my authority again, look where it's got us." Fudge's voice rang with the strains of apoplexy, making Harry's whole body go on alert.
Mr. Weasley said, "You'll get your turn, but right now this is our matter." He came inside then and closed the door and held his hand in front of the handle a few seconds as if expecting it to pop open.
"All right," he said, sounding relieved. He took a seat too and no one moved until a knock sounded, which Mr. Weasley stood to answer.
A hulking, broad figure slid confidently around the full table to the empty seat on Harry's right. Harry gaped in surprise as deBenedictus, the vampire's legal counsel, crisply set down his brief case. Of Harry, he asked, "Said anything?"
Harry shook his head.
"Good." He sat his square frame in the undersized tea-room chair and popped the latches on his battered, but carefully polished, case to pull out a narrow roll of parchment and a gold stand. Harry got a glimpse inside the cavernous bag lined with tall shelves of oversized books and scrolls and even a shelf full of lamps and oil.
Harry wanted to ask something about whether the man held a grudge, but deBenedictus was rolling smoothly on. He set his miniature quill to record and surveyed the table while stating the date and getting the names of all present, including describing their appearance and where they were sitting, all of which the quill scratched dutifully out in a script too small to see without the lens attached to the arm of the stand.
Preliminaries finished, deBenedictus sat back ever so slightly, which did not make Harry feel any less dwarfed, and said, "You may proceed."
Mr. Weasley began, clumsily and Rodgers took over three words in. "Tuesday, Harry. Tell us what you did."
Harry's chest hurt, but before he could answer, deBenedictus rumbled, "You don't have to answer that."
Harry turned his neck to stare up at him. "I don't?"
"Have they arrested you?"
"No."
"Then you certainly don't have to answer that."
Harry wished his mouth had some saliva in it, talking would be so much easier then. "But I can answer that," he insisted, despite wishing he did not need to say anything.
In a darkly neutral tone, the solicitor said, "All I can do is advise."
Harry turned to the rest of the table. "I went to speak to Belinda." But before he could decide whether to skip over the part about searching her flat, Rodgers interrupted again.
"That was the first thing you did after leaving training?'
"Uh, no, I went up to the Minister's office to catch Belinda there. But the cleaning witch said they were off at a ribbon cutting. That they'd left early for that."
Mr. Weasley leaned forward. "What time was that?"
"I don't know. Right after training."
"Quarter past four," Rodgers supplied to Harry's relief.
Tonks confirmed, "You spoke to a cleaning witch?" At Harry's nod, Tonks left the room, making Harry miss her presence immediately.
"Then what?" Rodgers asked.
"I went to Belinda's flat to wait for her. I didn't want to miss her." That sounded good, and Harry invisibly patted himself on the back.
Rodgers again. "How did you get there?"
Without hesitating, Harry replied, "I Apparated."
The quill caught up during the follow-on pause. On a side parchment, deBenedictus' oversized hand was making notes in a curly, yet sparse, print Harry could not decipher.
"Did you speak to Belinda?" Rodgers asked.
Harry nodded. "She had asked me for help the other day, on Diagon Alley, but I didn't have time that day to talk to her." Harry hoped they did not ask what he had to do instead, as he did not relish having to make up yet another lie. "We talked for . . . a while," he stumbled, given that he had arrived home late for dinner.
"What did she say?"
"Nothing really. Insisted she'd straightened things out on her own, which I doubted, given how oddly she was behaving." Harry imagined mentioning the uncharacteristic dirty dishes but thought that would sound lame, even as strange as it seemed standing there in her flat.
"That's all?" Rodgers asked, sounding doubtful too.
Harry shrugged. "I kept trying to convince her to tell me what was going on, but she wouldn't. She said someone else was helping her."
"Who?"
"Alastor Moody."
A ripple went around the table, making Harry wonder if not everyone knew that the old Auror was really alive.
Mr. Weasley, with strange care, said, "What did she say about him, exactly?"
"That he checked in on her once or twice a week." Harry gave in and did what he should have done a long time ago. "I think she's been compromised, so I've been worried about her."
"But you haven't said anything," Rodgers followed on.
"I thought that if things were going that badly, I could convince her to say something herself. She always says how much she cares about the Ministry." He added quickly, "And I wasn't really certain. Am not really," he corrected. So far he felt okay with his performance and relaxed fractionally.
Tonks returned and handed a note to Mr Weasley before sitting with her head down. Harry wished her hair was not so plain.
Rodgers glanced at the note and asked Harry, "Do you have your wand?" When Harry pulled his wand out, holding the point because of the circumstances, his trainer went on, "You've had that with you all along, right?"
Harry glanced at the wand and shrugged. "Yeah."
"Didn't misplace it at some point?"
Harry shook his head.
"Can we check your wand for a spell, Harry?" Rodgers asked.
Harry began to reach out to hand him the wand, but deBenedictus clamped his bear paw-like hand over his wrist. "I strongly advise against that."
"Why? There's nothing on it."
"May I have a word with my client?" deBenedictus asked, in a rumbling, bear-like voice. When the assembled shuffled in their seats as if to stand, deBenedictus added, "It need not be in private." He made an failed effort to turn his body to face Harry. "Mr. Potter, despite your employment in this department, I feel obliged to explain some basic principles to you, so that you may better act in your own interest."
Harry set his wand so it would not roll away and clamped his hands between his knees again to listen.
"You need not cooperate at this stage as you are, and in fact it is highly unwise to." He paused.
Harry said, "But why shouldn't I?"
"Because you do not even know what you are suspected of."
That was quite true. Harry glanced around the table. "But if I don't and I'm suspected and can prove otherwise, nothing will happen."
Patiently, the man went on, "It is much harder to prove otherwise under such circumstances. If you simply hold back, and force them to appeal to the Wizengamot for a hearing, we will be on far better footing. They will have to inform us of the evidence against you, for example, which we can then prepare a rebuttal to. At the moment, we have nothing."
That all made sense, but Harry appealed to him, "But I didn't do anything."
"That does not matter. You are making their job too easy."
Harry considered that most people they brought in here did that, perhaps not knowing any better. But Harry could not imagine not cooperating as the solicitor suggested. It felt too alien. Arguing for helping, he drew on his experience in the office and said, "They might put me in the dungeon if I don't."
deBenedictus put his lower lip out slightly. "No matter."
"No matter?" Harry echoed. "I . . . er . . . I have things I need to do." The notion nearly panicked him. He had to return to Snape and get help with the diagram and spells, make sure the Device still worked, help out so Snape would be safe. And he wanted his guardian home for Christmas. Returning to his early tactic, he said, "I didn't do anything. There is nothing on my wand."
deBenedictus held up his great hands in a motion of giving in. "All I can do is advise."
Harry's mouth worked, then stopped. He studied his wand more, something he did frequently when he was in school, but rarely did now given that it acted as a natural extension of his arm. It was the wand he had ordered for himself, had fetched the feather for it and everything. "I haven't done anything," Harry repeated to himself, remembering the last time they went through this and Moody had tried to argue that Harry could have removed a firestarting spell, making the lack of one no proof of his innocence.
Harry handed the wand to his trainer, expecting some reaction from the solicitor, but the man sat still, pen poised over his notes, letting Harry relax.
The spells of the morning and then the previous evening came off, just a few ghosts of reheated tea and hovered books, then the demonstration from the morning before and their drills, endless, repeated drills that made Harry want to rest his head on his hand. Then some more minor spells, a dehovered Auror book, and then the room dimmed and a flicker of that noxious green emerged from the floor, swelling as it sucked in snaking spirals of itself. The color alone made Harry's soul quiver with revulsion. The spell unwound and the ghostly figure of MadEye Moody, caught by surprise rose up from a heap and turned away from the wand and stood straight before fading out.
Harry stared at where the apparition had disappeared, hands vibrating despite his clasping them tightly. "I didn't kill Moody," he insisted when things clicked into place in his head. He closed his eyes tightly while the last few minutes of conversation unwound in his brain like the spells had. He muttered to the man next to him. "I should have listened to you. It's a trap."
The others in the room fell matter of fact, which made Harry feel even more isolated. Tonks kept her head down.
Harry breathily repeated, "I didn't kill Moody. Someone else did and is pinning it on me."
"Not many people knew he was alive," Mr. Weasley pointed out kindly.
Harry opened his mouth to point out a choice suspect, but deBenedictus cut him off. "What is this?"
Shacklebolt crossed his long arms and explained, "Alastor Moody is officially dead."
deBenedictus scratched out an aggressive extra note. "Well, isn't that interesting," sounding almost upbeat. He correctly gestured again that Harry should remain quiet, just as Harry opened his mouth again.
Shacklebolt asked Harry, "You're certain your wand has been in your possession?"
Harry thought back, imagining Percy dangling it before him. But he had picked it up off the floor just a second before after Harry dropped it. He should mention it, though, despite that. "Percy knocked it out of my hand before the demonstration, in the changing room. Other than that I've had it as far as I know."
deBenedictus softly said, "I feel compelled to remind you, despite your clearly functioning memory, that you need not answer anything."
"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Harry glumly pointed out.
"It may."
"Well," Harry returned, feeling better for exercising some control over the situation, "in that case they will simply arrest me and then make me answer."
"Willing to submit to Veritaserum?" Rodgers asked. Unlike the others who were all leaning forward, he was sitting back confidently, one hand reaching out to tap out a random rhythm on the table.
deBenedictus gave a squeak, a noise that seemed impossible from one his size.
"Yes," Harry replied.
The solicitor's briefcase flapped open without his touching it and he rapidly pulled out a thick sheaf, which he shoved across the table's stained surface.
"What's that?" Harry asked, feeling life slipping away to the sound of paper sliding rampantly over a tabletop.
"Limitations they must agree to. You do not wish to let them ask you absolutely anything; do you?"
Harry shook his head, appalled by the thought.
The solicitor's calm was underlined now by aggressiveness, which Harry was grateful for, due to his losing all of his better sense somewhere along the way. To the Aurors the solicitor said, while handing over a pen, "State in the blanks on page twenty-seven exactly what you plan to ask him, including any expected followup questions, initial each question and sign page thirty four.
A tiny vial had been fetched and now sat beside a piece of dissolving blotter. Tonks handled putting the soaked square on Harry's tongue for him while he sat on his hands to keep from fidgeting madly. He then sat back and waited as passively as possible for it to work. The room grew melty and streaky immediately indicating it was a fine batch.
Rodgers handled the questioning with reassuring confidence. "Did you kill Alastor Moody."
Harry's mouth handled the answering as though submerged deep in water, "No."
"Have you ever wanted to kill Alastor Moody?"
"No."
"Have you ever been angry with Alastor Moody?"
"Yes."
"Angry enough to get even?"
"Yes." Harry remembered that vividly, even through the drug. Moody's shift from paranoid Order member helping against Voldemort to paranoid Harry-doubter felt like betrayal, and he had the magical powers to make Harry pay for his change in allegiance.
"Did you plot to get even at any time?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I assumed a chance would come along on its own some time. And he claimed that he helped out in the battle with Merton's associates."
"But he was following you around; he repeatedly told Fudge you were going dark."
Harry could not answer since there was no question.
Rodgers leaned forward, smearing across the left side of Harry's vision. "Are you going dark, Harry?"
Harry's remaining willful part of his mind wondered why that question was allowed. Shadowy pawns and masks swam before him. Dark marks sang in his gut, just below his heart, pressed in like burning marbles. He could touch them now and make them all suffer, no matter where they were. It did not feel very white-wizardy. "I don't know."
The room sat back, shifting in their seats.
Rodgers tried to concoct a followup, tugging the Limitations document over and reading it before sitting back with a frown. He grabbed up the document again and, reading off, asked, "Barring this interview, is your life in any way easier now that Alastor Moody is dead?"
"No."
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Yes."
"Anyone other than Voldemort and his followers?"
"Sirius Black," Harry heard his dream-voice say, like an announcement.
"Harry," Tonks blurted, voice going teary as she spoke. "Bellatrix killed Sirius. You can't possibly believe you're responsible for that."
Mr. Weasley had interlocked the fingers of his clasped hands and pressed them to his lips. He pulled back after several seconds and said, "I think we're done."
They gave Harry a sip of antidote, and he sat staring at his fingers holding the empty little glass vial, oddly thick sided and heavy relative to its size.
deBenedictus broke the silence. "So, you have a counterbalancing evidence here."
"Not as much as it looks," Rodgers said. "I'll do you a favor, Mr. deBenedictus and give you a heads up. There were no cleaning witches in the Minister's office until after eight; there is no record of anyone Apparating near Belinda's flat until she herself did—to a block away from originating from where the Minister was; and she also denies receiving a visit from Harry that day."
"What?!" Harry snapped.
"I will handle this, Mr. Potter," his solicitor said. "Sit back. Did you expect otherwise given the state of your wand?"
It occurred to Harry that he had not received his wand back. He crossed his arms and slouched, a spectator to the final paperwork of his own official demise. Dizziness washed through him, most likely the potions, but as the room wobbled, he wondered with a wrenchingly helpless alarm if he had not slipped into the wrong place, a place where his counterpart really had done away with Moody. Harry propped his forehead on his hands and found that a better place to listen to the official words pass over him.
Inside his own racing mind, Harry wondered with a icy chill if it had not been Snape who had framed him. Was it possible his guardian's impostor could have arranged such a thing, so quickly? Had Harry pushed him too far?
The paperwork passed in a blur interspersed with scratching pens. Tonks stood, and sounding plodding, said, "I'll take Harry."
Mr. Weasley stepped over beside her. "We'll both take him." They both turned. "Harry? Time to go."
Harry raised his head from his hands and stared at them. They had no idea how very important it was that he finish taking care of his guardian. Maybe he should have told Tonks what had happened with Snape. She certainly knew about his strange skills, but not about how much trouble they had caused. And he had been desperate to keep it a secret and secrets told too broadly were impossible to recapture later, so he had said nothing and now he had no help.
He considered simply slipping away, out of their grasp. He could go anywhere and they would not be able to track him. He could escape to the Plane where his adoptive father was trapped and help him stay alive until he could be brought home. That plan reverberated through him as entirely feasible.
Rogders grabbing up Harry's arm and hauling him to his feet, jarred him out of his plotting. Harry met each of their eyes, Tonks, Shacklebolt, Mr. Weasley, Blackpool. Their faces were full of duty and, surprisingly, affection. Each one met his gaze full-on, promising and reassuring him at many levels.
Harry let his feet carry him to the door, unable to willingly abandon these people and his own duty to them. deBenedictus followed close behind. He said to Harry, "It is unfortunate that you are not free to help prove your innocence, but all is not lost. I am quite certain the legal ramifications of killing someone already dead are murky at best."
Harry turned his head around the room again. "They don't believe I did it," he said with certainty.
This caught the solicitor by surprise. He took in each of the room's occupants one at a time. Upon concluding this survey, he said, "Ah, well then. I will see you before the Wizengamot and you should hear from me by owl before then."
Harry nodded vaguely and let himself be led away, unable to grasp anything more than putting one foot before the other as they went to Mr. Weasley's office to fetch the portkey that would transport them to L'île de Cachot Méfait—the French wizard prison.
Harry wanted nothing more than to yell for it all to stop. He swallowed hard while Mr. Weasley fiddled with the fleur-de-lis-shaped portkey. Tonks leaned close and said, "It's going to be all right Harry, we're more worried about you than anything. We decided if we take you away, you'll be safe."
Harry had only managed to invite that notion partially into his churning thoughts before his boss grabbed his arm and the world he knew jerked out of view and grey took over until the wave-swept quay of the prison spun up at them through a heavy mist.
Harry landed and held Tonks from stumbling. The monolithic entrance loomed over the end of the quay, the door a tiny notch in the bottom of it. Harry had faced this grim façade once before with very different intent. This time, he felt nothing but doom. But he could still get away, could still slip off and take care of his family. Harry swallowed hard, and blinked salt mist from his eyes. If he left, it would be an admittance of guilt and he would have lost this life here. His guardian would not be pleased by that.
Harry stumbled this time, in a bid to delay reaching the door. Tonks wrapped her lean fingers around his arms and waved Mr. Weasley away with a shout over the surf. In Harry's ear, she said, "Don't go. Don't escape unless your life is in direct danger, all right? Promise me. Trust us to take care of things. You won't be here long. We'll find Moody's real killer and fetch you home."
"For Christmas?" Harry asked, sounding difficult, a tone that did not survive over the crash and hiss of the foam on the quay. The waves ebbing over the edges made the solid quay seem to rock on the sea.
"Probably not for Christmas, but soon after. Harry, we don't want anything worse to happen. Durumulna wants to get even and we can't protect you, it seems. It will be loads easier if they believe we bought into their ruse. You'll be safe then."
Salt spray escorted them to the door, which opened just as they stepped on the great slate slab leading up to it. Harry knew that beyond the bridge in the atrium, he could not return, even by using the Dark Plane, and he hesitated again, until Tonks pulled him along. The guard, complete with fancifully feathered helmet and spike, led them mutely to the lift.
The air changed as they descended, growing chilly and thin. When the platform ground to a halt, the guard gestured for them to exit before impatiently poking at the lift controls to return to his post. Another pair of guards snapped to attention and led them to the brightest lit doorway on that corridor where warm air poured out.
Harry had been invited to come back to this place for a tour, so this was not at all how he envisioned returning. His face burned when the warden's office door opened and Mr. Weasley began introductions and explained that Harry was to be incarcerated.
The warden was strangely convivial. "Ah, Meester Pottar, such change in fortune you 'ave had. Well, we will see to it that the best is made of your situation."
Tonks, her hand clamped on Harry's elbow, said, "We are very concerned about Harry's safety. I noticed on the prison map you sent us that you have an outdated and unused cell block. We are . . . " Here she glanced uncertainly at Mr. Weasley, apparently not clearing this ahead of time. "We are hoping that Harry can be housed there, to eliminate any chance that he interact with the other prisoners. Many of the ones we sent here, Harry helped capture, and we are worried about what may happen if they can get access to him."
The warden nodded deeply, then gave a snug twist to his long mustache as if to straighten that too. "I assure you, things very carefully are run here, but nevertheless, given the celebrity of our guest, we can open old Section Bey, just for Meester Pottar."
Tonks gave Harry a meaningful look that he could not translate.
Harry took a seat across from the paperwork and sat, half-aware, through that, followed by the spells to register him. Strained by needing to go home and take care of things there and beyond, he barely perceived what was happening. He looked up at Tonks, ignoring the latest sheets placed before him. "You'll keep an eye on Severus and Candide, right?" he pleaded, wishing she knew what had happened, but it was impossible to explain now.
"Yes, Harry. We will. Extra guards and patrols and everything. Don't worry."
But Harry could not help but worry. The Ministry had said such things before and, even knowing from the inside how things worked, the promises did not feel reliable against real evil. Reading his face, Tonks insisted. "Really Harry. I'll see to it myself."
The warden himself announced he would escort Harry, Tonks, and Mr. Weasley to the cell. They took a second lift and followed along a corridor that resembled the dungeon under the the Ministry, only on a much larger scale. The prisoners they passed could not be seen—the barred windows were too high on the doors and the eye-level viewing slats were locked closed, but the occupants could be heard, reacting to the cluster of footfalls going by. Some pounded metal cups, resulting in a startling racket. Others whispered and muttered, audible through the cracks between the iron-reinforced planks. The noise in the first block made the subsequent quiet blocks, where only a whisper of movement sounded from within, all the more un-nerving.
At the end of the third block, they went around half a curved staircase and through another door. The warden shouted something in French and an office door flew open. More instructions followed before they continued on into the darkness.
The air grew colder. Torches fluttered weakly when commanded to by the warden. They reached a T intersection where the corridor widened into a real room, complete with chairs and a table supported only by magic, before crudely narrowing into crooked rows of hand-hewn cell doors. Stray newspapers and cigarette ends littered the area.
"Dis is sometimes used as a breaking room," the warden explained before unlocking a block of cells with a rattle and chatter of resistant metal and leading the way inside. Harry hoped that he had misspoken.
They stopped before a door about three quarters of the way along the block. Pounding footsteps preceded the breathless arrival of a guard carrying pads and blankets. With some ceremony the pads, less than an inch thick, were stacked upon the bench, which like everything else, was carved directly out of the unyielding rock. The opposite wall had tilted shelf of rock with a groove cut in the middle. Water trickled along this and down to a channel where it dropped away into a bottomless hole that also served as the facilities. The place was so grim, Harry did not move immediately, even after the explanatory tour ended. He tried to speak, but Tonks cut him off, saying to Mr. Weasley, "Let me talk to Harry alone, please."
Mr. Weasley sadly nodded his ascent and after bowing several times, the warden followed him out, gesturing to the uncomprehending guard to do the same. The door thudded closed and bounced slightly, unlatched.
"Harry," Tonks said with firm appeal and a tight grip on Harry's sleeves. "I had them put you in this cell block so you could escape if needed to. I expect you can."
Harry's mood brightened considerably, and it must have shown in his face because she sharply said, "I don't want you to use that route unless your life is in danger. Do you understand?" Her voice dropped to barely audible. "They'll know that a prisoner is gone the instant the cell is empty. Their magic is very good here. If you leave, and the press finds out, we're going to have a much harder time proving you innocent."
"What if you never do?" Harry said, heart sinking precipitously.
"Don't be daft, of course we will. Just give us a little time. Like you said, there is only a rather short list of people who knew Alastor was alive."
"Percy," Harry said, feeling darker just stating that name.
"I'll be on his case, Harry, if that's where you want me to focus my part of the investigations."
Harry thought that over. He could be wrong, but that did not feel wrong. "And Belinda. She's got in over her head in this. I'm not certain she meant to."
"She's a given for a closer look, Harry. And Transportation. They should have seen you Apparate."
Harry shook his head.
Tonks twisted her head and glared for an instant. "You're not making this easy, Harry."
"And if you tell them now . . . you know . . . how I get around."
"It's not going to help your case," she finished for him.
The stared at each other until Tonks pulled him down for a deep kiss. The door squeaked open and the Warden said, "Ah, such is a most important reason for delay."
Tonks stepped back and patted Harry on the cheek. "We're doing this for your own good, Harry. Behave, please." She sounded truly pleading. After another quick kiss, she joined Mr. Weasley in the corridor. The door closed again, this time with a clang and the rusty scratch of the bolt sliding into place. Footsteps scuffed on the floor and then receded.
"Please," Harry murmured to the dank, empty air. "Please, no one do anything for me for my own good."
- 888 -
"What did you do to Harry!" shot out over the crowd-murmured air, powerful enough it echoed around the high ceiling of the atrium before vanishing. An instant later Ginny collided hard with Aaron and grabbed hold of the front of his crisp designer robes.
Aaron stepped back to retain his balance, and glanced around at the atrium's full attention on them. He pulled her closer to quietly plead, "I didn't do anything to Harry."
Voice toned about halfway down, Ginny insisted, "I just read that you took him away, to prison."
"I didn't. Personally."
"Yeah, but you're in that department," Ginny said angrily, continuing to behave as rigid as a metal spring in resisting his attempts to shift them to a more delicate, and publically palatable dance. "I was just on my way to giving my dad what-for, for me and the twins and anyone else I know."
"Look," he said, glancing around the burgeoning lunch-time crowd. "Let's discuss this elsewhere, okay?" He Apparated her away to his flat.
When they arrived in the brightly lit sitting area, Ginny stepped back and propped her arms akimbo, her elbows as pointed as swords and looking just as dangerous if well-aimed. Aaron wondered if somehow her hair became redder when she was angry, or if it was just the light.
"Look," Aaron said, "I don't have any control over what the department does." He started to tell her more, then decided he best reseal the room from eavesdropping, which he proceeded to do, ignoring her complaints until that was finished.
Aaron ended up near the long leather couch. "Have a seat," he said, feeling drained all of a sudden.
Ginny strode over to the end of the couch and stood firm, arms crossed, face sharp.
"All right then, I'll sit." Aaron let the couch absorb him. It was the kind of couch where your bum nearly reached the floor by the time you finished sinking in. He waved over a foot stool and sat back, making a point about relaxing in the hopes of getting her to do so too. But this failed.
"How can you sit there like that?" she accused, eyes burning.
"Because there is nothing to be done. If you'd sit down and listen for half a second I can explain."
She pulled the footstool out from under his legs and sat there, looking ready to disbelieve everything.
Aaron propped his legs on the armrest instead. "Magical Law Enforcement put Harry in prison pending his hearing because they feared if they did not do so Durumulna would find some other means of getting even or simply getting Harry out of the way. They killed Moody. They went to all this trouble to set Harry up. They are serious about this."
Ginny did not budge from her stiff posture. "They set him up because they know they can't kill him."
Aaron had to concede that. "Possibly. But Harry has others around him who could be hurt. And some bad blokes are determined to get even with him. I'm sure by now they've discovered that they've been cheated. Those metal disks have started showing up in the shops and it's had the positive side effect of getting the shop keepers to talk." He crossed his hands behind his neck and stretched back. "Nothing like feeling cheated to loosen them up their tongues and get some cooperation."
Ginny fell thoughtful. "We just have to make sure nothing happens to Candide while Harry is away."
"She has a guard assigned now. You can sign up for double shifts if you like." His mouth twisted into a silly grin. "I can come serve them with you if I'm not on duty."
She flushed and stared at the ceiling.
Aaron went on, "Training has been cut to three hours so they can assign us all to the investigation. And Professor Snape will be home from school for the holidays shortly." He sat forward slightly. "But no one is to know that Harry is not considered to be the primary wizard of interest. Don't let that slip to anyone."
"I won't," she snapped, recovering from embarrassment with another dose of offended anger. "I know how these things work."
"You didn't sound like it two minutes ago," he pointed out, teasing with false exacerbation.
"Well . . ." she hemmed. "It just struck me as terribly unfair."
Aaron stared at her blushing, noticing it did not fade immediately. "You still like him, don't you?"
She looked away and shrugged. "Everyone likes Harry." But she could not hold her mouth still.
Aaron, sounding clever, said, "I like Harry just fine too, but there's a limit to my like." After a pause, he said more soberly, "Is that why you don't want to get married, because you are still hoping . . .?"
"That isn't it at all," she insisted. "Ask me in a year, all right?"
Sounding childlike, Aaron echoed, "A year?"
- 888 -
Harry sat pensively on the stone bench that served as a bed in his cell. The constant trickle of water was the only sound in the cool air beyond the range of his breathing, which he consciously had to keep slow. He had no idea what time it may be, only that the total time for which his current reality felt solid was much shorter than the total time he had occupied it.
He tried to believe he had fallen out of place, because it would wipe out all of his problems if true. But beyond his bad circumstances, nothing felt truly out of order. He was home, in his own Plane, albeit with the wrong man for a guardian.
Harry's thoughts seized up and then spun away in a mad review of the past week. What if he had pushed the intruder too far and he had arranged to get Harry out of the way? Perhaps Harry had underestimated this version of Severus Snape and his ability to scheme and play the double agent. What if Snape had played Harry the way he played Voldemort, pretending to be meek and cowed when in reality, working for his downfall?
Harry did not move, but the rhythm of his heartbeat changed, speeding his thoughts along faster. He should go, he thought, and challenge Snape, just in case his fears were correct and this Death Eater was all enemy and no friend. That was when Harry felt them; before that moment he had been too caught up in his own distress to properly perceive their presence. But there they were, dozens of Death Eaters, hovering so terribly close, in rows, even, like soldiers waiting for orders. Harry's hand twitched where it lay beside him on the bench, longing to hold a wand. But did he really need a wand? He had these followers; weren't they better than a wand?
At the moment, he was safely separate from them. They were in one area of the prison and he in another, and clearly they had not escaped before now and likely would not anytime soon. One of the shadows must be Voldemort himself, trapped as he was in a Muggle existence. He, certainly, represented no threat.
Harry's thoughts ran through this, then reeled back to concern about leaving a double-crossing Snape free to do more harm. He could not allow that. He gathered his wits, preparing to slip away in the long gap between regular corridor patrols. But the clacking noise of the viewing plate in the door sliding aside stopped Harry cold.
"Monsieur?" Came a startled sounding voice through the gap. Only a pair of eyes could be seen, hovering beyond the slot, moving constantly about to see around inside.
"Yeah?" Harry replied, thinking it silly now that he had not moved at all for hours. Although . . . what would he do, instead, really?
"Très bon . . . az you were," the voice said, and the slat closed with a slap.
Harry blinked at the wall across from him while he took that in. As a test, he stood and shook his robes straight. He thought of Snape at Hogwarts, of wanting to visit him for a serious talk. Nothing happened. He prepared to slip away. The slat clattered open again.
"You zink dere is escape, Monsieur Pottar?"
Harry scratched his head. "There is a way out of every prison," he replied, finding a jovial tone. "If one dreams hard enough of it."
"Ah, a poet!" The eyes widened with delight.
"Not really," Harry mumbled, acutely disappointed that as soon as he prepared to escape, someone would notice. Magically, he was being watched too closely to sneak off. As Tonks depressingly insisted, he should only go for an emergency. The slat closed again. Harry was not truly certain it was Snape who had arranged this, in fact, he wanted to believe otherwise.
Harry sat down, having nothing else to do. Even the three pads were not all that thick and his bum complained. Unable to contain the energy inside him, he slipped off his robes and proceeded to jog in place until his breath steamed the closed-in air, then he did push ups against the bench, then he did sit ups, then with muscles burning he repeated it all until he could barely move to flop on the bench and sleep, kept company by a forest of shifting shadows whispering promises.
- 888 -
Severus Snape re-read the first part of the letter he held. He had subconsciously moved closer to the stone-framed window to better see it, but the words remained the same the second time. Arthur Weasley's handwriting read straight and simple on the page, no flourishes marred his message. He had arrested Harry for the Murder of Alastor Moody, but . . . and here the letter grew careful . . . investigations are continuing and I will pay you a personal visit as soon as I can get away. The oath of the Order is still in force.
The foolish boy, or perhaps more accurately, young man, had walked into a trap that he should have foreseen. Snape shook his head. His cleaner-than-normal hair did not sway the way it normally did, part of keeping this ruse intact. He stared out the window. The Hufflepuffs were practicing on the pitch, earnest but barely competent, a description that fit the Harry he knew, and apparently this one as well, despite first impressions otherwise.
A whistle drifted over the lawn and the figures at the pitch gathered in a cluster again, one figure gesturing at the rest. It would be convenient to have Harry out of the way. He had kept Snape's secret until it was too late. Were he to attempt to reveal Snape's origins now, his accusations would sound shrill and too far-fetched to credit.
A fierce knock sounded on the door, and Snape instinctively crumpled up the letter and stuffed it away in his robes. The door opened without further pre-amble. Snape had been forced to leave it unsealed, a necessary vulnerability he would never grow accustomed to.
Hermione Granger burst into the room, wild hair appropriately framing her frenzied face, voice half an octave too high. "Did you hear what happened to Harry?"
What should his reaction be, he wondered. "Arthur sent me an owl." He needed her on his side; she was smart enough to catch him up, so he added, "One promising further explanation and action, presumably in Harry's best interest."
Hermione stopped in the middle of the floor, just at the edge of the worn rug and exhaled what sounded like the last of her strength. "We knew they'd get even, or try. But how could Harry be accused of killing Moody when he's already dead? I don't understand that."
"Presumably he was not."
She blew her fringe off her forehead with an overdone sigh. "Yes, presumably." Her gaze narrowed to his, heavy with sweet hope, something he viscerally disliked having aimed his way. "What are you going to do about it?" she asked.
Snape thought quickly, pulling out and smoothing the letter to gain time. "Arthur promises to visit when he had a spare moment, but I will turn my duties over to Professor Lupin and pay the Ministry a visit instead, right now."
Pleading pathetically, she said, "Let me know how it goes, will you? And get Harry's post address there, so I can send him a care package and have my students send him letters of support."
"Yes, I'm certain he will appreciate that," Snape managed to say, only because he should.
- 888 -
The Ministry's security had grown to be rather like that in Snape's world, surprisingly like it, except for the lack of Pureblood registration. Snape submitted to extra tests and questions, and in the end, his former house student, Aaron Wickem, came and fetched him because he required an escort.
As they walked briskly to the lifts, Aaron said, "I'm glad you're here, Professor. We need all the help we can get."
Snape's better instincts told him to stymy the investigation, if possible, but his promise to Dumbledore fought it down. Snape wondered if his pledge really should apply here, and tried to hold that thought, but it slipped away like an eel, leaving him resigned but unenthusiastic about his duty.
"Severus", Mr. Weasley said breathlessly when he turned and found him standing off his escort's elbow. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement hummed with overactivity, with personnel invading from other departments. "Let's go into my office," Mr. Weasley said, waving the others off.
Snape wasted no time after the door snapped closed. "You mentioned the Order Oath."
"It was the safest way to tell you we don't think Harry did this."
Snape nodded silently. He was mostly here because it was expected that he be here, although curiosity helped him along. "How long do you think?"
"Before we can realistically let him out?" Mr. Weasley took a seat and smoothed the wispy hair on top of his head. "I don't know. They've got him pretty good; I'll give them that."
Snape felt annoyance at this, just on principle, and used it to say sharply. "Come now, they cannot have left no holes in their plot. And you must have a suspect of your own."
Mr. Weasley grew agitated, making Snape wish he would look up so he had a chance of seeing why. He considered insulting him for his incompetence, but decided that he personally needed to retain this man as an ally, so he kept quiet, but it was a hard fight holding back. His own dismay came across clearly when he said, "Is there anything I can do?"
"Keep an extra layer of spells around your house, at a minimum. Although, we expect things to quiet down now that they believe their ploy successful."
"How are you proceeding from here, may I ask? This is my . . . family," he managed with a slight choke on the word. "Son" was right out. " . . . we are discussing here."
Mr. Weasley shuffled some files around. "Alastor was doing his own investigations for Fudge in the Department of Mysteries, so we are trying to track backwards what he was doing."
"What have you learned so far?"
Mr. Weasley's hands fell still, limp. "That he was investigating Harry. According to Fudge, that was his primary job."
"Ah," Snape uttered.
"Fudge is livid. Harry isn't going anywhere unless we have something rock solid to get him out with. We're going to delay the Wizengamot hearing as long as it takes to generate that evidence . . . that we have the political power to do, but not to pull him out of there until that time."
"What about the Ministry Dungeon. Why have you sent him so far away?"
"Because we aren't certain of keeping him safe here. I can't bear to think of him trapped in a cell without a wand to defend himself."
"He hardly needs a wand to defend himself," Snape pointed out, mostly to keep arguing, which he felt like doing after a week of being overly nice to everyone.
"True, but you'll recall he was poisoned right here in the Ministry."
Snape did not recall that, but he had no reason to doubt such a confession. After a gap, he said, "Seems you have more problems internally than you can cope with."
This made Mr. Weasley look up and now he revealed the side Snape was more familiar with: the lined and world-weary face of a man responsible for too many lives beyond his skills, a man whose adherence to principal gave him a naïve intrepidness that should be mockable, but Snape, who had no difficulty openly criticizing Dumbledore's attitudes, could never quite manage to.
"We can handle this, Severus," Mr. Weasley assured him.
Snape was not reassured, but one part of him hummed with strategic pleasure at that belief. While Mr. Weasley made more assurances, Snape began laying out his next moves. He should visit Candide at her office. He had seen the address on her papers, and such a visit would be expected. He escaped the Ministry with that excuse, and as predicted, it worked well to get him away.
Candide was far more distraught than Snape imagined.
"Look at the papers!" she shouted, seeming to have waited for his presence to vent this. The papers were scattered around her sizable desk, mangled and forlorn. Her office mates, bent over their work, flinched at her voice; outward emotion and cold numbers mix poorly.
A robustly bellied man in a waistcoat with two watch chains gestured behind Candide's back that Snape should vacate with the woman. It was late in the day in any event.
"Why don't we go?" Snape said.
This halted her tirade. She pushed her hair back and turned hopefully to her boss, who had the sense to smile graciously and gesture that she could depart.
Candide's harsh vocal complaints about the Ministry specifically and fate in general did not re-occur, fortunately. Once home, she took her overburdened body to the couch and sat back with undue care, leaving Snape standing nearby, uncertain what was expected of him. He decided it best to wait for a cue. As difficult as Harry was to handle, this part of his borrowed world left him feeling far more uncertain. Being pushed around and abused by a mad, powerful wizard Snape was accustomed to, even if he had gone to great lengths to escape it only to end up back in the thick of it. He knew well how to placate and lie and act appropriately and do even a bit better than survive. But facing the reality of a very pregnant wife and a veritable mile-deep snake pit of emotional expectations and responsibilities left him feeling inexpert and short of the willpower needed to sustain the needed artifice.
Candide tipped her head back and sighed, then sniffled. "Poor Harry. I can't imagine him there in prison. It's just awful." She dabbed her eyes and looked over at him. "You're just standing there."
"I'm thinking."
"Of how to get him out?"
Snape did not answer. The will to lie was gone, and he had no desire to reveal his torn emotions in this area.
She patted the couch beside her expectantly. "I assume you are staying a while since I don't have a guard yet. Home too early for once."
Trapped, Snape stepped that way and sat down, knowing if he behaved as stiffly as he instinctively wished to, he was going to have questions if not an argument. He brought his over practiced willpower to bear and brushed her shoulder. He intended to leave it at that, but she tugged her feet up and turned casually to lay in his arms. He fumbled while adjusting his hold, but this went by unnoticed. Snape tipped his head back and held perfectly still until his heart slowed. He silently shook his head, far too aware of the pressure on his arms and chest, and wondered with no little alarm how any version of himself could find this casually normal.
She sniffled again, but he did not even move to roll his eyes as he would have liked. Yes, truly this part of his borrowed world was the hardest to cope with.
She sighed for a fourth time and rubbed an eye, but Snape took little notice. The scent of her was impossible to ignore this close. She smelled of love potion brewing, overlaid by something strangely both sweet and animal-like, which could be the pregnancy. Then there was that. His child. Or essentially his. The pit under his feet widened so that he stood on air, suspended helplessly over a seething mass of impossible circumstance and expectation.
"Poor Harry," Candide said, breaking the spell of doom holding Snape captive.
"He'll survive," Snape murmured, far less certain of him own fate.
"Yes, but it's so unfair."
Snape could not censor himself. "Life is unfair."
She slapped him lightly on the arm. "You always say that. It isn't always true." But she was not angry, just teasing to lighten her own mood. Snape was surprised he could recognize that so easily.
She settled in better, head shifting to the crux of his shoulder. Snape's arms were aching he held them so rigid, so he was grateful for a chance to relax them. He had not felt he could move without her moving first.
"I hope the guard is late," she said. "They'll go to the office first so that will delay them somewhat."
The implication of that was clear, even as unbelievable as it seemed; she wanted to be alone with him like this as long as possible. There was only one person Snape had ever wanted to hold like this, but her haunting presence had never felt so distant as it did this moment. Something about that strange scent, the scent of a future faced with hope rather than constant fear and strategic panic, the scent of someone willingly desiring to share that future, sliced a gash in this festering pain. Some morbid instinct in him wanted to gather it up, to hold it from escaping, to cherish it. But with the weight of Candide compressing his chest and the scent of her making his thoughts flutter, he realized that he had only cherished that pain because there was nothing else to cherish.
Something of his inner turmoil must have shown, because she patted his arm and asked, "Are you going to be all right, Severus?"
Again, he could not lie. If she chose to ask the right questions, he would tell her anything. He was bleeding stagnant, poisonous pain and in its absence found that he was not empty without it, as he had feared he would be. He was perhaps lost and drifting, but not empty.
"I don't know. Possibly," he said softly. He was thinking for the first time that Lily was long enough dead that what used to feel like betrayal no longer did. He had sworn he would never do as she did and betray her in return after she had left him with an empty life. He let those old memories run through him, finding himself more like a stone in the stream of them than the tossed leaf he normally was. She had chosen his worst enemy, and that still burned, but in the end maybe his empty life had been his own doing, a thought that felt far safer in his current, cramp-armed position.
The patting on his arm continued, finding a rhythm. "Taking Harry on as a responsibility was a very noble thing to do."
He tried to imagine that without hope of comprehension. "Yes, so unlike me," he said, finding better footing and maybe even strength in self-depreciation. He still felt purposeless and did not particularly like it.
She hit him firmly, but in a philosophical tone, said, "I expect you thought it would get easier."
"I would never think that," Snape replied, absolutely certain, within and without.
- 888 -
Harry woke to the dimness of his cell, reminded firmly by the dank dungeon scent where he was. The shadows tried to follow him out of his dreams to hover around him there in the cell, but he firmly pressed them away. He sat up and slapped his face lightly to rouse himself better. The thin air made it difficult to come to quick awareness.
He sniffled and immediately blamed it on the musty air, rather than emotion. Needing a concrete task, he used the facilities and spent some time washing up as well as he could with a trickle of water, a chained metal cup, and only a faint fairylight to do it with. If he wanted company, he need only prepare to depart and the guard would appear. The magic of this place immediately gave away his escape, but that also made him feel less alone. At the moment, Harry wanted to be alone to think, so he folded his pads and his three ratty blankets and made a comfortable seat at one end of the bench. Then he propped his chin on his hands and did just that; he thought over the last few months of his neglected real life in as much detail as possible.
Clearly Belinda had fallen in with Durumulna, even as unlikely as Harry thought that to be before now. She had always been so positive about what the Ministry stood for and really believed it could accomplish things. Harry shook his head at the conundrum of that. Perhaps she was not involved willingly, but under an Imperius Curse. But for certain she had not shown symptoms of that during their last few meetings. Harry thought back farther when he would go visit her in the Minister's office and Percy always seemed to be lurking about. Had she shown symptoms then, he now wondered. That would implicate Percy. Then with giddy mockery, Harry considered that perhaps that was how Percy got her to date him in the first place. This cruel humor faded quickly as the possibility of that grew in plausibility and his stomach turned sour.
It was possible, Harry decided. Those times she had given Harry nothing but stiff responses, may have had nothing to do with her breaking up with him months before. But she had warmed up after that, so she must have been released from the Curse at some point. Balanced with her insistence that Moody was keeping an eye on her, Harry now wondered it that had not been the old Auror's doing. But if so, why had Moody not reported it? Or, maybe he had, to his boss, Fudge.
Harry pulled the knuckle of his thumb out of his mouth before he chewed it through to the bone. He needed paper to write a letter. And ink. And a pen. Some light would help too. They told him his post would have to be screened coming in, and he wondered if that meant they would have to be screened going out as well.
Harry sat thinking until breakfast arrived, and unlike lunch and dinner the previous day, which he had turned away, this tray he readily accepted through the slot in the door, to the guard's obvious delight.
"Très bon. Très bon," the man said. "Zee warden will be most plea-zed."
Even as the delicious scent of salt cod, bacon, eggs and hollandaise reached his nose from the tray, Harry found himself dismayed to imagine the warden taking an interest in his meal consumption.
The guard went on. "He wishes to invite you for dinnar zis even-ing. If you are will-ing. 'E does not wish to interrupt your five stay-jes, 'owever."
"My what?"
"Your five stay-jes of grief. All ze new prisoners, you know, zey 'ave to go through this."
"Ah," Harry said, finally understanding. But Harry was not staying here long term; he did not have any grief. In fact, what he had instead were quite a few captive followers willing to do just about anything for him. And he had letters to write, and really, he could leave anytime. Not a terribly grief-generating situation. "Yeah, tell him I'll be there for dinner."
Author's Note: No preview this time. Make something up, post it in the comments if you like. There will be some humor in the next chapter. I get to use my Monty Python Frenchmen a bit more extensively. Such fun!
Chapter 30 — Prison sans Bars
Harry paced most of the day, wishing for even just a foot more space to do it in. He worried about his guardian, who would not know why Harry did not come to assist him and would worry in turn; that was, assuming nothing bad happened to him in the meantime. Harry worried too that the impostor Snape could be at least partly responsible for framing him, even if Harry could not work out how he might have managed it.
Harry scuffed his feet to a stop and rested his forehead on the stone wall. A film of dank moisture came off onto his skin. He could go and take care of both Snapes, but it would mean throwing everything else away. He could do that; Tonks had seen to it that he could leave. What he would do after it was all straight was far less clear, but at least he would not be standing here in such a state, worrying.
Harry heaved a sigh that was eaten up by the imprisoned air. He really should stay and trust that others would take care of things. His guardian had made it clear he could take care of himself, even in that muddled place. From Harry's perspective, his guardian seemed to fall into his new, or perhaps old, role a bit too easily. He would be more than a little unhappy with Harry when he found out how much Harry had sacrificed just to help him with something for which he had spent a decade and half fine-tuning his skills. As to the impostor, well, he wanted to stay, which meant he would not do anything to harm his reputation, or he would not do so until his position was more secure, so for the moment, he was not a danger.
Despite being unable to piece together how the impostor might have managed to set up the evidence that led to his arrest, Harry imagined it to be well within his skills, even if he could not imagine him killing Moody. Although, another niggling part of his mind pointed out, he did kill Dumbledore.
Harry pounded his head lightly on the rough rock. He wanted a future, but he also wanted a present, and to have those two desires so viciously in conflict made him want to scream.
Harry sat down hard. If he had paper, at least he could be doing something. The guard who brought his meals insisted that his personal effects would take time to get through screening—days even. Harry growled and stretched his neck back to stare at the low ceiling. If he were susceptible to claustrophobia, he would have gone mad in this place already. As it was, his breathing occasionally faltered, especially if he thought too hard about the solid square miles of rock above him, poised to crush the cell and him into wet dust.
Harry rubbed his face and paced some more, trying hard to avoid looking inward at the army of shadows close by. Dwelling on their presence brought on that dark strategic thinking where he felt certain he could take over and control everyone, easily—the mode where his enemies would regret being his enemies in some fashion so gruesome his mind averted from the notion and blanked it out.
When the guard came to take him to the warden, Harry nearly leapt up off the bench with joy at the prospect of leaving his cell, even as badly as he had wanted to retain an air of detachment. The guard led Harry back down the long, uneven corridor. The carvers of this place had lacked not only the tools to work along a straight and level line, but apparently the desire to as well. The floor rose, fell and faintly corkscrewed.
They reached the wide area where the guards' unofficial break room had been set up. Another guard sat reading a ragged magazine. He stood and eagerly shook Harry's hand, spitting out a string of harsh French, at which Harry could only nod politely in turn. As they stepped away and the guard gave him a hearty, salute-like wave, Harry began to suspect he was currently being treated better than he would have been in Azkaban. This thought disturbed him with its implications and he mulled it over until reaching the warden's office.
Harry waited through a round of spells to verify he carried nothing dangerous before the door was opened. The warden waved off the guard, who did not even hesitate in departing. They know nothing about me, Harry thought in a kind a remote alarm. Or, maybe they did: Harry did in fact have zero intention of making trouble.
"Meester Pottar," the warden said warmly, leading Harry inside by the hand he pumped up and down, despite their having been introduced again just the day before.
A marble and iron cafe table had been set up in the warden's office, complete with gold-edged dishes that sparkled in the flickering lamplight.
"'Ave a seat. Please," the warden insisted.
"Thanks," Harry said, taking the more distant chair. Even though the office was not appreciably larger than his cell, the candles and the signs of normal life made if feel far more welcoming.
The wine poured itself and the warden raised his glass in a toast. "To you, Meester Pottar."
"To me?" Harry echoed wryly. "If you insist . . ." Harry drank up, figuring that if they wished to potion him, they would not have to go to this length to do it.
A knock sounded upon the door and a guard with a chef's hat stretched down over his unyielding helmet slipped in with a large pot of fish soup that filled the air with a heady simulation of an ocean breeze. Harry's thoughts tried to whirl far away with the scent.
When they were alone again, the warden put his elbow down beside his bowl and leaned forward eagerly. "Zo, I am dy-ing of curiosity. What was eet? A lov-er betrayed you?"
"What?" Harry responded, not following.
The warden paused to slurp soup before trying again. He held up one pinky and used it to point at Harry while also twisting his long curled mustache around between his fingers. "I am a-zuming that you, zo passion-ate, that you were driven to this by love betrayed, no?"
"No," Harry said. "I actually-"
"Ah! No, no, let me guess. I am close, though. I must be . . . I am zer-tain." This time he gestured with his oversized soup spoon. "No, it was a rival-ry and you stood up for your 'onor . . . or your lady's 'on-or. Yes, that would be more to your styling." He gave a great sigh. "This life it is zo full of trial for one such as you. Always so many wish to share in your spot-light and if they cross the line, you have but no choice but to crush them, am I right?"
Harry had abandoned eating for the moment. "I didn't do it."
The warden appeared not to hear. "Or . . . blackmail. Such fam-ous peoples make such easy targets." He leaned forward conspiratorially. "Or so zey think. But you showed zem, eh?"
Harry tried again. "I didn't do it."
The warden stared at Harry and sniffed sadly. "You still defend your own reputation, even so late in the game."
"I really didn't kill him," Harry said in his most honest and calm voice.
"Ah," the warden excitedly gasped in a breath. "Magnifique! You 'ave been framed!" He kissed his fingertips as if expressing delight for the soup. "Oh, I have not imagined this. It iz wonderful, zeez intrigues."
Harry had put his spoon down and now sat back, hand on chin, to stare at the man across from him.
The warden waved his fingers. "You have no worries about poisoning. My chef is most careful. He must eat 'alf before he brings the rest. Zee kitchen is all zee way at zee end of zee hall. If 'e makes it to the table wiz it . . . we are okay."
Harry, not wanting to be rude, picked up his spoon and continued eating. The soup was still boiling hot; the bowl must be charmed. The conversation fell off in the interest of eating, punctuated by noises of delight from his host that may or may not have been related to the food.
In the middle of the terrine course, which made Harry begin to worry seriously about how many courses might be forthcoming, the warden returned to his earlier topic. While tearing bread into chunks to eat with the terrine, he said, "Zo, what ees your strategy for re-solving your zituation?"
Harry sighed. "I don't know. I've been framed quite well, but the department is trying to prove I'm innocent."
"And your pink-haired lady-friend iz on your side for certain? If she is part of the con-spirazy you may be 'ere a loooong while." This prospect sounded pleasant to him.
"I don't think she is," Harry said.
"Ah, but it would be perfect if she were," the warden pointed out, clearly intrigued.
"Not for me it wouldn't," Harry replied glumly.
The warden noticed that Harry had stopped eating. "Oh, I 'ave taken your appetite. My apologizes."
"No, I think the previous six courses took my appetite," Harry stated, worried if he moved more than to breathe his stomach might rupture.
"Oh, but we are only 'alfway true zee meal. Perhaps you need some digestif." He rang a bell beside his plate and the guard in the chef's hat came hurrying in.
Harry slowly sipped the proffered liquor while his host ate the next courses alone. He wondered how in the world the man could more resemble Lupin for physique rather than his Uncle Vernon.
During the second dessert course, which Harry managed to nibble at, grateful that enough hours had passed that he had managed to digest some of the earlier courses, the warden reached over to his desk for a thick folder.
"Your file. Or a copy of ov eet," the warden explained.
Harry balked at how thick it was. "What . . . have they put my marks in there from school, even?"
The warden flipped some pages around. "Yes, your 'Ogwarts' file ees in here, of course." He read a bit. "You were quite fond of detention, I zee."
"It was fond of me."
The warden flipped some more, tugging out a familiar page. "And your adop-tion. Most interesting. Same professor as your detentions."
"Funny that," Harry said, just to say something. His stomach was making him sleepy and the wavering candles made the room seem to rock gently, like a moored boat. Through a haze of food fatigue, Harry felt a painful stab of worry about his adoptive father. Here he was having a twelve-course meal with a crazy Frenchman while Snape struggled to fight Voldemort. At this point, even if he could leave, Harry felt unfit to do more than drag himself slowly away to his bed, certainly not battle anyone. He rubbed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to fall flat on his poorly padded stone bench, but he resisted asking to go back to his dreary cell, so he held out . . . through the subsequent coffee course and follow-on cheese course. The chef, after all that, behaved disappointed in the news that they were finished. He hung his helmeted head and pulled off his starched hat, which he crumpled up as he shuffled off in a posture of defeat.
Harry thanked his host for the nice dinner and said, "I wonder if I can get parchment and pen and ink from you, rather than wait for it to arrive in my care package. I need to write some letters right away."
The warden spun a mustache and let it snap back into place, eyes glittering. "Ah, you wish to unwind zis mystery, no?"
Harry hated to admit it, but he said, "I don't think I can from here." He ached again, thinking of Snape, trapped so very far away. "But I want to warn my friends to be careful." That sounded safe since he did not want to give them any clues to help them decipher the double meanings he would be using should they be reading his post.
The warden pulled several sheets from his desk and found a pen and inkwell, which he bundled up with string for Harry to carry off.
"Thank you," Harry said, finding unusual gratitude in receiving something so ordinary.
The warden went to the door. "Your post will be slow, I'm afraid, we must trans-late it, you understand."
"Even going out?" Harry asked.
This stopped the man. "Ezspecially going out," he stated knowledgeably.
"Ah," Harry said, disappointed.
"I vill ask around the cell-block poetic if there is a bilingual prisoner who can 'elp speed dis up."
Harry faintly shook his head. "What? You have a cell block just of poets?"
"But ov course," the warden said, gesturing toward the door. "We cannot put zem with anyone else."
The warden called out in the corridor to one of the guards, whose helmet visor fell closed when he snapped to attention from stealing tidbits off a tray of un-served courses hovering beside the door.
"Take Meester Pottar back to 'is cell, Marcel."
When the guard bowed, his visor fell forward again, and he left it down as he marched off. Harry followed, thinking ahead so intently about whom he should write to first that it startled him when the guard stopped to disengage the long locking bar for his block of cells, not with his crystal-tipped spear, but with a wand from his pocket.
"'ere we are, Monsieur," the guard said with a bow when they reached the right doorway.
Not ready to be left to the solitary stillness of his cell yet, Harry asked, "Why did you have to arrest so many poets?"
"Zee poets? We 'ave to arrest zem," the guard blurted. "Zo much trouble." He slowly shook his helmeted head, making it rattle with each pass. "Zey had a war, you know, of words. You have no heard of zis?"
Harry shook his head.
The man sighed and scratched an invisible pattern on the floor with the handle of his pike. "It vas a terrible time. No one could open zere post, and everyone, zey took the zides. The poets, you zee, zey got jealous ov each ozer. Zey began to write poems zat were not zo much poems, but spells, zome quite nasty. And zey zend zeese to each ozer." He pointed at Harry accusingly, as though he may have been involved. "ZAT would have been ac-ceptable, but zey began also zending zeese poems to colleagues and family who came out in zupport of zere poet. Zoon, everyone was in-volv-ed."
"Poems that were spells," Harry repeated, working hard to hear through the accent.
"Exactamondo," the guard said, highly pleased Harry understood. "Zis is not allow-ed, zis magic is not. To let it continue . . . it would be zee end of ma-gic. Words 'ave such power, zey cannot be treated so lightly."
With a little bow that for once left his visor in place, the man closed the cell door and left Harry alone, to compose carefully worded letters in the cold, thin air, starting with his ersatz father. If he wrote carefully enough, perhaps his words would carry enough power to loosen his worry.
- 888 -
Severus Snape stood in the hallway outside the dining room of Grimmauld Place, observing Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom charming Christmas decorations onto the curtain rods and a crooked, two-foot high tree propped on the corner of the long table. Hermione directed and Neville obediently followed and soon the room glowed and sparkled with spell-generated gaiety. The scene threatened to roll over Snape like a great wave. For all his instinct to remain where he could be useful in aiding Potter in defeating Voldemort, a less well-cultivated instinct longed to be home, to be where the most serious redecorating issue was moving his oldest son to a different room to make space for his newest son. His oldest son . . . whatever had become of him.
Hermione glanced up and fell still and wary upon spying him there. Snape took advantage of that impetus to move on, upstairs, to check on Lupin . . . to do something.
He found Lupin bent to the task of carefully packing his one spare set of robes into a backpack that had extra straps sewn onto it to prevent him shedding it in wolf form. Without comment, Snape moved to mix a restorative potion with the honey and egg white he had just fetched from the kitchen. He poured this into a bottle spelled to be unbreakable and handed it to Lupin to add to the pack.
Lupin studied the bottle rather than put it away. Milky liquid strands swirled within as he turned it to study every side. "If you are here under false pretenses, Severus, you are doing an excellent job of hiding it." Before Snape could compose a response, Lupin added, "But then you must always have been good at that, fooling your master all those years."
Snape did not want to cast his mind back to that time in any detail. He said, "Do you have everything you need for tonight?" in as hard a tone as he could manage.
Lupin waggled a finger at him mockingly. "Dodging questions is one good way to avoid getting trapped into an unacceptable answer."
"I do not need to answer to you."
"No, funny that you only needed to answer to Dumbledore and we know what happened to him."
Snape ignored this, since it only stressed him more about the double who was living his life. "Where will you be at dawn? In the event that you need assistance returning . . ."
Lupin laughed, but his smile faded quickly. "If I keep arguing with you, I suspect I could get you to say anything, no matter how uncharacteristically kind-hearted." He cinched the pack closed and swung it over his fatigue-bent shoulder.
Flatly, Snape stated, "I will fetch you if you require it."
Lupin flinched, perhaps remembering the last time he needed to be fetched home. "I'll be on the Dartmoor, near the Bowerman's Nose."
"Fine," Snape snipped. His rancor for this man had faded, but he found it phenomenally easy to pretend it had not.
Lupin trudged over and opened the bedroom door, letting in a cry of "Harry's back!" from down below followed by pounding footsteps originating from all corners of the house. Reluctant to lose face, but as curious as the others where Harry had gone off to that morning, Snape followed Lupin downstairs at a discreet distance.
The dining room swelled into a hive of activity as everyone in the house gathered there. Fortunately for Snape, Ginny's approaching Harry with her arms crossed held everyone's attention, so they did not notice their unwelcome guest hanging in the doorway.
"Why didn't you tell me where you were going?" Ginny demanded.
"Because you would have followed me," Harry pointed out, trying to tease, but falling flat. He sat at the head of the table, beside the flickering tree, his heavy cloak still draped over one shoulder.
Ginny's hair caught the orange light from the hearth as she stretched her neck toward him. "Like we aren't all in this together," she mocked, rapping him on the shoulder.
Ginny's light touch made Harry's jaw tighten. He shifted carefully in his seat, holding his cloak around himself with one hand. Voice oddly bright, he tried again with, "I can only hide myself safely with the invisibility cloak. I wanted to check on something. I thought I'd figured out how to find the cup and I wanted to bring it back as a Christmas present for everyone."
Hermione leaned over the table in Harry's direction. "Did you get it?"
Harry smiled faintly. "No, but I know how we can get it." He glanced across the room and accurately out the door where Snape stood. Staring thusly, Harry fell pointedly silent.
Snape stepped away to the staircase. Lupin, almost as though pretending to the room that it was he who had halted Harry's story, waved faintly and said, "I have to be going."
This pulled Hermione out the door. "Got everything?" she asked. Lupin assured her that he did as she saw him to the door.
By the time the outside door was fully re-bolted, Snape was upstairs, standing far from the railing in a position where he could not be seen from below. He was certain Harry was injured and intended to hide it from his friends. He waited there, picking up the trickle of low conversation.
Down in the dining room Harry said, "With Bellatrix in hospital for the foreseeable future-"
"Thanks to Mr. Snape," Hermione pointed out.
"Yeah," Harry uttered. "With her out of commission, protecting the cup has fallen to the Malfoys, which means Draco. I realized that all we have to do is make Draco think we already have the cup and then we can follow him when he goes to check if it's really gone."
Ron said, "He's a pretty simple minded git, should be easy to fool."
Harry said, "And he's scared, which makes him easy to manipulate. Close the door, so I can tell you my plan."
Footsteps sounded and the door clicked closed. Snape remained where he was, staring at the soot-stained, gold and green fabric wall-covering across from him while the house creaked and settled for the night. He pulled aside the thick drapes beside him and looked out into the square. A solitary crooked streetlight cast a pittance of light over the cracked pavement, neither of which did the Muggles have the wherewithal to repair. Sirens wailed in the distance then faded. The orange city glow over the dark roof-line across the square could just as easily be the city burning. If tonight it was merely extra-low clouds picking up the myriad electric lights, then it was just putting off the inevitable. Dropping the curtain back into place, Snape went back to doing something concrete.
When the door opened after a sharp rap, Snape sat, hunched, on a battered old bar stool, mixing a general restorative. He looked up to find Harry standing in the doorway, cloak still covering his right shoulder.
"I have a question for you," Harry said, in the tone of making a demand.
Snape bowed faintly and continued stirring. Hermione and Ginny followed Harry inside, each standing just behind a shoulder.
Harry said, "The Malfoys have a secret hiding place in their house. I know this because I overheard Lucius describe it once. So don't try to claim they don't have one. Where is it and how do we get into it?"
Calmly, Snape said, "There is a dungeon hidden under the second and third to last floorboards on the wall opposite the hearth in the drawing room."
Hermione said, "A dungeon hidden under the floorboard?"
"It is a wide pair of floorboards," Snape commented, directly at the smartest of them. "And it is the most significantly warped piece of magical space I have ever observed. It exceeds the Tossfet Maximum Actual to Experienced Ratio by a factor of at least two."
Ron came up behind the trio, out of hiding. "Blimey, the Ministry's dug around their place completely at least twice and never found anything."
Retaining his patience with effort, Snape said, "That's because it is not really below the house, simply between two floor joists."
"How do you open it?" Harry asked. A scattering of sweat beads glittered on his upper lip, a symptom of fighting pain, Snape was certain, since the room was cool.
"I will tell only Potter. He can tell the rest of you if he trusts you enough." He glared at the lot of them in turn, pleased with this excuse.
Harry, with an abbreviated movement of his left hand, sent them out. "Hermione has his wand," he pointed out to Ginny to finally get her to depart.
With the door closed, Harry sat carefully on the bed. "So?" he asked impatiently after a gap.
"Precisely what I was going to say to you." Snape stared him down before turning to quench the burner. He took his time, giving the mixture one last stir. He turned back and asked, "How badly are you hurt?"
Harry's face lost its shape, unable to retain the ruse if it did not need to. "I don't know, really. Is it that obvious?"
"To me. Your little friends are even more dunderheaded than I ever gave them credit for if they cannot see it."
Harry lacked the strength to defend his friends, because he said, "They don't want to see it. And I don't want them to either. I'm barely holding them all together as it is." He wiped the sweat off his lip and stared at the moisture now glittering on his palm. "Compared to my scar, it's nothing."
"What'd you get hit with?"
Harry shook his head. "There wasn't an incantation."
Losing patience, Snape asked, "What color was it? Did it make a sound? Did it pulse or waver?"
"It was violet and red and it may have waved a little."
"Let me see it." When Harry failed to move, Snape said, "Going to check yourself into Mungo's instead? Get a bed beside Lestrange's perhaps?"
Harry moved ultra slowly to shed his cloak. Snape had to keep his hands fisted at his sides to resist helping, which would be too far out of character. The fabric of Harry's shirt had melted to the skin of his shoulder, and had to be tugged free, which Snape did help with, but since it made Harry gasp the action did not come across as solicitous.
"How deep does it go? Raise your elbow."
"I can't," Harry said.
"Because it refuses to move or because it hurts too much?"
Softly, Harry said, "Hurts too much." He studied his mottled shoulder. "What'd I get hit with?"
"I wasn't there; how should I know?" Snape said, venting his angst over Harry's condition in the only appropriate manner available, back at the young man.
"You can be a right bastard when you want to be, you know that?" Harry complained weakly.
Snape handed him a clear liquid in a small cup. "Drink this, then raise your arm."
Harry sighed even before he lowered the cup of Painaway. "That's good stuff."
"Arm," Snape insisted.
Harry obeyed, moving easily.
"You are very lucky your shoulder joint is not seized." He began digging through the cupboards and pulling out old clothing that given the pink frills and stains not even Lupin would wear.
Harry said, "But what was the spell? I know you know."
Snape, crouched beside the lowest cupboard under the window, looked up at Harry sitting on the bed. With no rancor, he prodded, "Do you now?"
"You're transparent, you know that?"
For a moment, Snape could not move—an intense homesickness paralyzed him there in that spot. He stood with effort and laid out an old flowered skirt on the bed. "Let me borrow your wand, or cut this into strips for me, if you can manage that difficult a bit of magic." He intended that to come out more mocking than it did, which twisted it into grudging affection.
Harry tossed the skirt on the floor and used a less-than-efficient cutting spell that also damaged the rug. Rather than bend, he gathered the strips up with a hover charm and handed them over like a bundle of dead snakes. Snape soaked them in an astringent potion and without comment began bandaging Harry's shoulder, reminded starkly of needing to do similarly to his Harry. With his pain taken away, Harry sat stoically through this process before pulling his damaged shirt and cloak back on.
"Leave that on at least two days," Snape said, turning to put things away.
"Yes, Professor." Sounding less than grateful, and perhaps even begrudging, Harry asked, "Where's your friend? I thought he'd be back before now."
Snape took care to set down the bottle he held. Harry, as usual, had hit a sore point, intended to, it seemed, as a means of putting proper distance between them again.
A knock sounded on the door and Hermione called out. Harry answered that everything was fine. Snape quickly whispered, "Twist the left horn on the goat's head under the mantelpiece and use the spell I will write down for you to open the floor itself.
Harry nodded as the door opened. Hermione said, "We wondered what was taking so long."
Harry replied, "I was just asking Snape here about his mysterious friend and why we haven't seen him back."
"Oh," Hermione said, in a tone that indicated she wished to know this too. She shifted to staring at Snape with interest rather than suspicion.
"Yeah," Harry said with quickly recovered bravado, "I was just asking how long Totten had been his boyfriend."
Snape nearly dropped the box of beetle carapaces he had just taken off the shelf. He glared at Harry in disbelief before turning to the mortar and pestle while broadly shaking his head.
"Well then, is he your cousin or great uncle or something?" Hermione asked.
Snape, pestle in hand, grumbled, "You would not in your entire miserable little lifetimes understand what he is. Go away."
Harry said, "Well, we thought he'd be back before now. He sounded worried about you." Hermione gave Harry a dissuading nudge, and he added, "You know, as unbelievable as that is." This garnered Harry a glare from Hermione.
Snape rolled his eyes and let his hair fall into his face. "I certainly knew you were listening in. What do you take me for?" He held up a finger. "No, don't answer that."
Harry was tenacious. "But aren't you worried that he hasn't been back?"
Snape stared at the other that looked so much like his own. In truth he was so worried that to dwell upon it would render him useless. "That is not your problem," Snape commented, low and threatening.
Hermione gave a tug on Harry's elbow, fortunately for Harry on his left elbow. "Come on, Harry."
But Harry stood his ground. "I want to know why, if he's not a dark wizard, this Totten didn't stay to help."
Snape was growing angry like he had not in a long while—driven into black rage by a helpless, gutting pain. He wanted this conversation finished before he did something he would regret. "There are other things in this universe to attend to; your little world isn't as big as you think it is."
Oddly, Harry did not appear to take this as an insult as intended; his eyes indicated that he took some kind of hope from it. This time when Hermione pulled on him, he relented and followed her out.
- 888 -
As the clanging footsteps of his morning guard approached, Harry jumped down off his bench and went to the food slot to receive his post. This guard did not speak any English and Harry did not know his name, so he had named him Steeltoe Pierre, due to the loud metal boots he wore.
"Thanks," Harry said, catching the string-bound bundle when it fell through the slot.
"Je t'en prie," the guard said, and then hesitated. He had tried several times already to speak to Harry in French on the previous day, but had finally given up. Harry suspected he wanted to try again, but he let the flap on the slot slide closed and a second later the latch clicked. Harry listened to him walk away, the crisp echoes making him sound like multiple guards.
Harry took his prized letters to the bench to sort out. Word had made it around and now every letter included a sheet of parchment for Harry's reply, well, the letters from friends did. At home when less-than-favorable news was printed about Harry, Candide used a charm to drop the nasty post outside as needed, but Harry did not have the benefit of that here. He could usually tell by how the address was written out that the letter was going to be an angry tirade. This certain wasn't the first time he had received hate mail, and he would prefer that it not bother him, but he had grown tentative about even glancing at these letters. When he had read one the previous day, out of sheer boredom and lack of other unopened post, the shadows had drifted in, whispering dark reassurances of revenge for the insolence.
So, Harry tossed aside the letters with dubious writing, although sometimes his judgment about the envelope was mistaken. One letter yesterday, where the address was slanted and the nib had torn the paper, was a tirade against the Ministry in Harry's favor, from someone he did not know. It had buoyed him quite a bit, that letter. His friends he expected to be on his side, but to have a stranger believe in him, despite all the evidence against him, made him feel rather hopeful and touched.
Harry sighed and tossed another letter on the questionable pile, despite the lavender hue to the envelope paper. The next was from Suze, and Harry dropped the packet and opened this one immediately.
Harry,
I hope you are doing alright. Do let me know if you need anything. I'm home for the holidays now and can go to Diagon Alley whenever I like. Just name it. I'm sure you could use loads of things to pass the time. The Prophet ran a special set of articles on the L'île de Cachot Méfait where you are being kept. It didn't seem like it could even have a place to get outside at all! You must be terribly cooped up. I tried to imagine what it must be like when we were having our last House Quidditch practice and it made me feel most sad for you.
You asked me to keep an eye on Professor Snape, which I have been doing. He is very suspicious lately, but I think he does not suspect I have been walking by his office several times a day checking who is there if the door is open. He is quite disturbed by your being arrested. He has been short with everyone and our House punishments have been stricter than anyone remembers. I hope he doesn't think you really did what they said and is trying to make up for it, somehow. I tried to ask him the other day if he thought you really did it, but he sent me off, and threatened me with detention. Ouch! Which my parents would be really unhappy about. I've stayed out of trouble all year so far.
I've tried to tell the other Slytherins that there is no chance you are guilty, but I don't think they believe me, but fortunately, they are too afraid of Professor Snape to say anything too loudly. I'm not even sure what my parents believe, I have to confess. I'm working on them too.
I will send you some sunshine if I can find a spell for capturing some,
Suze
Harry folded the letter up and put it under the foot of his mattresses with the others he wanted to keep. Imagining that somewhere up above in the real world people were playing Quidditch, with the breeze in their cloaks and the clouds dancing with the sunbeams, rendered him utterly depressed. He dropped the letter packet onto the floor, kicked the sorted out nasty ones aside, and lay down on his bench to try to think about nothing.
Harry had no idea how much time had passed, but did not wish for a clock. Watching the hands of a clock creak in a circle would push him over the edge, he was certain. Better to go by his stomach and when meals arrived. In between those events the uncertainty helped keep him grounded in his own head.
He wrote a letter back to Suze that he hoped would move quickly through the censors.
Thanks, but short of getting out of here, I have everything I need. Have an excellent Christmas.
The next letter was from Rita Skeeter and given the envelope:
The Formerly Illustrious Harry Potter
The Prison of Misdeeds, Dreariest Cell Block B
Relentlessly Pounded Island in the English Channel
Harry suspected she had used her Quick Quotes Quill to address it. He glanced rapidly through the letter. As always, she wanted an interview, and this time, she seemed to think Harry would fall victim to her dubious charms simply because he was bored and was allowed few visitors, of which she would of course be among the privileged few. She was not informed enough to include a blank sheet, so Harry used the back.
He wrote:
Fat chance.
P.S. Lucky for you the poets are in Cell Block M or this letter would be longer.
He addressed the envelope by crossing out his address and writing in hers, taking the high ground by resisting making an insulting version of her address in return. There were other, better, ways to deal with her, the shadows reminded him.
Since it would be opened by the prison staff anyway, Harry tucked the flap of the envelope in rather than re-wet the gum. Setting this one with Suze's letter, Harry took the next off the pile, from Neville, and read it slowly. Neville was confused, Harry could tell. He believed in him, but he also had a tendency to be influenced by others, and it showed in his letter. It reminded Harry that, trapped here like he was, he could not effectively argue his case, and that if this went on long enough, many would believe all kinds of untrue things.
The letter to Skeeter sat beside Harry, mocking him in this regard. Harry sighed and reconsidered his reply while tapping it on his thigh. But the shadows and he both agreed that she could not be trusted, so he put it back on the "out" pile, unaltered.
Harry flipped through the newly arrived letters and leaned back against the dank wall. The chilly damp soaked into his robes, waking him up and making him vaguely cross. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be somewhere there was noise, of any sort—the silence now threatened to crush him long before the solid rock did.
Harry found a letter from the twins and the resulting burst of affection sent his constant dark companions scurrying. With relish he pulled the letter out of the already unsealed envelope, hoping with a smirk that the censors got a little Weasley surprise when they opened it originally.
- 888 -
Severus Snape sat in a drawing room that was so quaint and pristine he still had not grown accustomed to it. He held Harry's letter, a couched affair full of so many trite phrases it seemed clear he knew there were censors on his post and as well, that he was practiced at coping with them.
I'm disappointed about missing Christmas at home and I hope you can make Candide's holiday happy enough alone. SHE deserves it, even if you do not think much of the holiday. I've told all my friends to all drop by, to make up for my absence. Please do manage some present shopping, even if you dislike doing so. Pick out something you hate, but think Candide will like, and put my name on it for me, if you would.
I want to believe you were not aware ahead of time that the Ministry would take this action to "protect" me, but I'm not certain of that. If you did know, or were involved in the planning, be aware it is something I intend to deal with when I do get out. There is not much I can do from here without serious repercussions later, as I'm certain you're aware. I'm used to suspecting the worst, but if I try hard enough, I can hope that you are free from involvement.
The letter went on with more disguised worry and suspicion, squeezed out through words unsuited for carrying proper force. Snape put down the letter after reading it through again. Harry requested extra parchment in the postscript, as much as could be wedged into the reply envelope. Snape pulled out the copious stash from his desk to count out ten sheets and something came out with the package and tumbled to his lap then the floor. He had carefully gone through every drawer to learn the contents, but he had not previously noticed this particular beribboned scroll, crushed as it was between unopened packages of parchment.
He scooped the roll up and untied the pastel velvet ribbon. It was a marriage certificate, with his name on it. Shaking his head faintly, he started to roll it back up again, but he stopped and rapidly unwound it again. The dratted and bizarre thing was signed by the Supreme Mugwump, of all people. He stared at that for over a minute, trying to conceive of that, before giving up and wrapping it up more tightly, so it could not be so easily damaged.
A figure moved in the doorway before knocking on the frame. "Are you going to change?" Candide asked.
Snape tossed the scroll away in the drawer where he had found it. "Do you think I should? he asked, unflappable in the face of little knowledge. His calendar had only read Dinner 7p.m., in overly slanted and heavily grooved writing.
"Well, my father usually wears dress robes when he comes, you know."
Ah, Snape thought, wondering what his counterpart would be thinking about now. The writing made him suspect disgust and annoyance. "I could change, but that would imply I was trying to please and that would be a distinct disadvantage."
Her brow went up. She was good at conveying a lot with just that. "Still," she said, sounding like one trying to cater to some harmless but persistent foible.
Snape bowed his head once. "All right, then. Something slightly more appropriate." It wasn't as if the closet lacked for robes. More frighteningly, its full state implied someone shopped regularly.
Dressed in the simplest dress robes he could find in the wardrobe, Snape returned to find Candide entertaining a middle aged man and woman in the main hall. They turned to him with the kind of expressions he was accustomed to: masked discomfort and wariness. He pointedly shook hands with the father and took a seat across from the portly man, feeling more in his element than he had since arriving.
"How IS Harry?" the woman asked.
Snape would presumably know her name if he had taken the time to read the witnesses at the end of the marriage certificate he had just found. Or, given the dubiously studious looks they were giving him, perhaps not.
Candide hesitated replying. "His letters are starting to come through now . . . they have to be read by someone at the prison first . . . but he sounds like he is coping well enough."
The man grunted, making his belly rock up and down. "So, did he do it?"
"NO, of course not," Candide snapped.
The man glanced at Snape and gruffly said, "Just had to ask, given the influences abroad in this house."
Snape held back a grin that came out in his voice as warm ego. "If I had assisted Harry, he would never have got caught."
Heads turned his way, but the man's thick brow furrowed thoughtfully. "I suppose there is that," he conceded, proving he was a typical bully that would back down if challenged on his assertions.
"Severus," Candide criticized. If she meant to say more it was interrupted by Winky bringing drinks before quickly disappearing again.
Snape rattled the ice in his glass before tasting it. "Harry is not the killing sort . . . at least not intentionally."
Candide sat back and huffed before sipping her butterbeer. "Forgive Severus, he has been in a mood since . . . well since Harry's troubles." Her brow furrowed too as if thinking over that ordering.
The older woman glanced around the hall. "No decorations, I noticed."
"It didn't seem right with Harry stuck in that awful place," Candide explained.
"Doesn't feel like Christmas without them, does it?" the woman asked wistfully, perhaps goading.
Candide, without losing her slouched, belly supporting posture, seemed to rise up. "It isn't Christmas without Harry here." She glanced at Snape for support. "You want us to celebrate without him?"
"I didn't mean that, dear," the woman said, getting huffy. "It is just so unfortunate, the whole thing."
Snape waited a beat before saying, "It wasn't unfortunate; it was planned." When everyone stared at him mutely, he said, "He was framed. That requires planning. Someone wished him to be out of the way and they succeeded. Fortunately for Harry, it merely resulted in relocation, not something worse."
"You sound so cold about it," the woman complained. She leaned across toward her daughter. "Is he always so cold, Candy?"
"Harry is safe at present, is he not?" Snape rhetorically asked, ignoring Candide's frown. "At the moment, there is nothing to be done." But as he said that, it rang untrue, and partly to mollify Candide, he said softly, "At least nothing I have thought of yet."
Candide patted Snape's arm before crossing hers and taking on an anxious posture. Her mother said, "Don't stress yourself too much, dear. It's a critical time for the baby."
"It's fine, Mother. I'm not overly stressed."
Snape said, "Indeed, she gets quite a bit of sleep."
The woman patted Candide's knee. "Well, that's good, dear."
Candide turned a sharp look at Snape and he innocently cut her comment off with, "Sleeping for two?"
Amusement relaxed her scrutinizing him. "Yes, actually. Tough to sleep while getting kicked repeatedly. Too bad wizards don't play football more. I think this one is working on trying out already."
"Well," the woman said brusquely, directly at Snape, "I do hope you warm up some before the baby arrives. You act far too cold to deal properly with a child."
"Comes from being part reptilian. Or so I'm told," Snape informed her calmly, and like most woman who saw themselves as proper, she sat back, properly disturbed.
Candide made an attempt at defending that with, "I'm confident Severus will do fine. But no more reptilian talk or he may have to show you his Animagus form."
This halted Snape's taking that thread further, since that was most certainly a skill he lacked. He managed an uncomfortable shared smile with Candide and changed the topic to one he had been holding in reserve. "I'm certain Candide would like to show you the baby's room."
This overly delighted the woman. "Oh, yes, we'd like that. Wouldn't we, dear?" she asked her husband.
Candide explained, "I was reluctant to finish off the room with Harry gone, since it IS his old room, but he said in his letter that it would be fine, that he wouldn't mind. So we moved his room to the other side."
"This room?" her mother asked, pointing to the first door off the balcony on the other side of the hall.
"No the last one, that one, well . . ."
Snape chimed in helpfully, "The first room is reserved for dark magic incantations, and Harry, being the hopelessly white wizard he is, expressed a preference for the unadulterated room on the end."
He gleefully accepted their gaping looks, which migrated questioningly over to Candide, who said, "Well, that's essentially true."
An uncomfortable silence followed before Candide levered herself to her feet, saying, "Maybe I should have Winky serve dinner."
"So early?" Snape asked with pointed innocence.
"It's not early," Candide insisted. She returned from the kitchen and said, "By the time I show you the nursery, dinner will be ready.
The baby's room was roundly declared too Spartan by Candide's mother, who insisted on dropping by that very week to decorate. Or, after further thought, perhaps the week after, when Hogwarts resumed . . . so as to not be in Snape's way.
Dinner passed even more awkwardly than the evening began, which was fine with Snape, since it gave him time to think. Candide frowned rather a lot, which he disregarded for the time being.
When they were alone again, Candide sat down on the opposite couch and patted her belly. "Well, that could have, maybe, gone worse."
Snape leaned back with a fresh drink and asked, "How is it possible you convinced me not to simply poison them?"
She stared at him, beyond him, then back at him. "You are really different tonight."
Certain it was safe to say, he countered, "Did you expect us all to get along?"
She frowned and flipped her hair out of her eyes. "Well, no, but . . . you were baiting them, making it worse."
"They do not matter," Snape stated as though it were obvious.
"Yeah, you've said that before, but it always seemed like a lie, or wishful thinking, until now. And it isn't quite true, for me, which normally would make it not quite true for you too."
Snape stared into his glass, at the crazed facets bisecting the ice cubes without actually breaking them apart, and wondered with a burst of introspective honesty if he wasn't really the boor Lily Potter insisted he was. But those people . . . there was zero chance he would ever in this lifetime submit to their judgment, to build around himself a prison of their expectations. Hers though, that was different, in a way he could not yet define.
"Have I offended you?" he asked.
She paused to consider her answer. "No. I'm just making an observation. I know that just the notion of trying to please them is abhorrent to you. You just weren't passive in your dismissal of them, I guess, like usual. You didn't have Harry here to use as a tool to make your point this time, I guess is why you behaved as you did." She pushed to her feet and gingerly stretched her back and flinched. "Well, we're good until sometime in February."
"You're certain I haven't offended you?" he asked again, wondering if that was the point he had missed with Lily: that he was supposed to change not for others directly but because she would prefer it. What an empty, trapped existence in that case.
"Severus," Candide said, starting out corrective. She shook her head and brushed her tired hair back, adopting a caressing tone. "I didn't expect better, tonight, really, but I don't know what is going on with you lately." She stared down at him, leaning slightly backwards still, hands reversed on her hips. "Want to give me a hint? I'm not so good at that mind reading you do."
"It's not really mind reading, exactly," he muttered, lecturing.
"Oh, that tone. Well, that's a "no"," she quipped with strange affection.
She stalled departing and they watched each other. She did not expect him to change, apparently, which surprised him with how much space it gave him. It left him nothing to fight back against. He had been left to define himself for the first time, without risk.
How much could he lose, truly, giving in to such small issues over dinner? When he arrived here, he would have sworn he had nothing whatsoever to lose. Was being polite to people he inherently disliked any different than what he was doing otherwise: adapting to survive by being a companion to her and serving McGonagall? He did not feel he had lost any of himself doing so, perhaps even the opposite. The fact that he even had a opportunity for introspection about these things spoke volumes.
Candide smiled wryly. "You've got a lot to work out, I see. I'll leave you alone to do it." She started to shuffle away.
Snape said, "And you claim no skill at Legilimency."
She snorted faintly and returned to kiss him. He realized too late that he was expected to raise his mouth, but she adjusted smoothly and kissed him on the cheek before heading upstairs. Snape propped his fist on his chin and pondered the unexpected power of raw acceptance as the hearth fire at the end of the hall burned down. Candide made it clear what she preferred and left it at that, his choice. Somehow he could not imagine Lily, with all her perfection and high-mindedness, ever leaving it at that, and the realization made him a bit queasy. He had not at all understood what he had been trying to obtain all those years ago.
- 888 -
"I'm glad you came," Aaron said, stepping back to open his flat's door wider for Ginny.
Ginny stepped inside and stuffed her mittens into her pockets. "So am I. I nearly got in a killer row with my dad. I needed to get out of the house."
"Well," he sighed dramatically. "I hope someday a visit to Chez Wickem Refuge and Emporium can be marginally better than mere escapism-"
"I didn't mean it like that," she said, giving him a one-armed hug as she passed. "You know that."
He closed the door and stood there expectantly. "I'm glad you're here because I have something for you." He pulled a small wrapped box out of his pocket and held it out.
She stepped back. "You can't give me my Christmas present yet, I didn't bring yours with me."
"This isn't your present; that is." He nodded over his shoulder toward the front corner of high-ceilinged sitting room.
Ginny choked on what she was going to say and gaped at the tall, multicolored box sitting where he indicated. "What's that?"
"Your Christmas present," he explained with bright quaintness. "That means you can take this now." He dangled the box enticingly.
"No, I mean, what's in it? It's huge!"
"Well, the present isn't quite that big, I find the biggest box I can so you can't tell what's inside, since the box would fit anything," he explained, clearly proud of his cleverness. "Here." He dangled the small box closer.
"Yeah, that would fit a giraffe," she said, still discussing the other one.
Aaron pulled the little present back and tucked it against his chest. "Did you want a giraffe?" he asked in all seriousness.
"No, I . . . wouldn't know where to keep it," she replied, hiding vague alarm.
"Ah, good. Now open this."
Ginny sighed again and took the box, which was rather heavy. Under the wrapping the box was covered in distinctive blue felt. "This isn't what I think it is, is it?"
He glanced from her to the box she held. "Probably."
"Aaron, really, you are nothing if not persistent," she complained while opening the box in a fit of curiosity that could not go unquenched. Inside was a smooth ring with seven red and white striped polished stones inset in it.
"What do you think?" he asked, leaning forward with hands elegantly clasped behind him.
"No diamond?" she teased.
He tilted his head knowingly. "Didn't seem like your style. Plus, this way you can wear it as an ordinary ring if you like, thus you cannot reject it outright on the grounds of refusing an engagement."
The ring was quite attractive in an elegant, understated way. She slid it from the holder and held it better in the light over the bar counter. "What are the stones?"
"Your birth stone, sardonyx."
"That's not my birthstone, it's peridot."
"Well, technically both are, and I had no interest in getting you a ring the color of my main rival's eyes." He stepped closer. "Here, try it on."
She frowned at mention of Harry. Any kind of fun seemed to make everyone think of Harry, stuck away, not able to have any. Everyone kept expecting he would be released soon, but it never seemed to happen. She sighed and returned to the present. The ring fit perfectly.
"You'll accept it?" he asked.
She spun the ring around to align the stones on top. "Aaron, if I said "yes" now, I might just be saying that because I feel sorry for you."
"That'd be all right."
She laughed and shook her head. "I don't know. I don't have an answer yet."
He lifted her fingers to kiss them passingly. "Well, wear the ring so it reminds you to think about it more often, in the hopes of speeding things up."
Her eyes fell on the tall present across the room, a box so big it gave little clue to the worth of what was inside, kind of like the ring.
"Thanks. I don't want to seem unappreciative."
"Do you like it, at least? I had Finicky Fitters design something I thought you would like to wear all the time."
She spun the ring again. "It's perfect. It won't get caught on things at the Wheezes when I am working."
He kissed her hand again and dropped it distractedly. "On that topic of the hourly shop clerk and the family scion, I have another favor to ask: Christmas dinner with my parents."
She glanced down at herself. "I may have to go shopping for some decent robes."
"Amazingly, I don't care what you will be wearing; I just need the moral support."
She dropped her hem and held up her hand, fingers waggling. "Shall I wear the ring?" she asked suggestively.
"Yes, why not. It matches your hair and It will keep the topic off me and put it firmly on you. It will be the best dinner with my mother ever."
She stared at the ring. "Did you get Harry a present? I tried but I received a note back saying the contents weren't allowed to prisoners. It was only a case of butterbeer."
"The glass would be right out. I read the rather lengthy rules and worked out something to send that should make it by the guards."
"But will he like it?"
"I expect. It has a griffin on it. I had to grit my teeth and close my eyes to buy it, but I managed."
Author notes: All I can say is if you know how busy life has been, the delay would be understandable. As of last week, in the last 7 and a half months I've been home 13 days. But things are getting saner now, so more writing. Yay!
Next: Chapter 31
Maybe he was dreaming, Harry considered. It felt like a dream with the door drifting open into the cold, dim corridor. As he stood there in the open doorway, glancing around in an effort to work out what was real, he heard banging and shouting from the exit end of the cell block.
Harry's soul woke up at this, his mind went from adrift to focused as his feet carried him along the uneven floor, from the cover of one cell door alcove to the next. He ducked fully out of sight just before he reached the wide join to the staircase where the break room was. A fight was in full swing, based on the sound of armor clattering against stone and Harry glanced out just in time to see a groddy robed figure smacking the guard, helmet and all over one of the couches and jumping on him.
Chapter 31 — The Eve of Something
In the days before Christmas a few presents trickled into Harry's cell via the post. One present from Aaron, a griffin banner, Harry spent over half an hour working out a method of hanging. In the end toothpicks hoarded from his dinner trays tied into a bundle with a loose thread from his robes, and jammed into a crack in the mortar served as a workable hook.
Harry sat back on his bench to appreciate the effect of brightening just part of one wall. Not that he did not appreciate the gesture, especially from a Slytherin, but the overall contrast was more depressing than uplifting. He sighed and forced himself to stop fidgeting, which he had been doing too much of lately.
Lunch arrived with his post and Harry turned it away, having only barely picked at his breakfast. Steeltoe Pierre did not argue because he could not. He did tsk excessively from beyond the slot before walking away. Harry took the newly arrived post and nearly tossed it aside on his not-to-open pile. Even correspondence held little interest now where before it had been a lifeline. He resisted opening even the ones from his friends, wary of the pleasant things that would escape to mock him. The letter from Snape, however, that one called to him when he found it in the stack.
Potter,
The Ministry has nothing meaningful to report. I wonder at your state of mind for even requesting that I enquire. Arthur tells me your solicitor filed for permission to meet with you and his visit may precede this letter, but if it does not, know that is in progress.
Harry read that through again, thinking that either the impostor sounded remarkably like his guardian, or his view of the world had skewed far enough to make a true Death Eater sound normal and well-adjusted.
Your friends have visited in droves as you warned they would. Most wished to know how to get your presents through to you, as the French have rejected most all of them as unsuitable.
Candide said to wish you well, in case this letter arrives before hers. She insists I inform you that there are no decorations and no parties here and will not be until you return. All is quiet here now that the in-law visits are dispensed with. There are no threats from within or without.
Snape
P.S. I do not shop for anything that cannot be put into a potion, period.
Harry marveled at the letter again. Was Snape somehow himself again? He would have inserted a clue, or ten, if that were the case, Harry was certain. He always was too good at kowtowing to power, a thread of acid thought pointed out, both impressed and annoyed with the letter.
Harry closed his eyes while still clutching the letter, trying hard to force the black wraiths away. It had grown increasingly difficult to do so. They were like Dementors in that way, requiring happy thoughts to combat. But unlike Dementors, the shadows did not suck him dry; they instead pumped him full of strategic notions and a sense of power.
Harry opened his eyes; the letter had fallen to the floor. Time had passed but he did not know how much. He stumbled to the other side of the cell to wash his face in the metallic water. Bent over the stone basin, with the water dripping off his nose, he breathed deeply, trying to find himself again. He disliked the flat, stale water. He disliked this claustrophobic place. He needn't be here, and he certainly needn't worry about the repercussions of escape. With his loyal followers from here and the easily warped Durumulna, he could do whatever he liked. Worrying about repercussions was silly if you had absolute power.
Harry bit his lip and dried his face on his robe sleeve, scrubbing hard. The slot on the door clacked open and dinner emerged through it. This startled him badly about how much time had passed when he had blacked out.
A concerned voice said, "You must eat, or we will 'ave to do zee force-feed-ing. Zat is not pleasant for anyone."
Distracted by his inner fears, Harry mutely took the tray and set it on the bench. His stomach growled painfully at the scent but he ignored it and took up a precious sheet of blank parchment and began a letter to Ginny.
Harry poked at his food enough to satisfy the guard when he returned for the tray, or at least enough that the guard did not mention it. He also accepted the letter, which Harry sent off alone in the hopes it would go out faster that way. Harry liked the guards, as much as one could, but he knew well that the shadows hated them and he did not want a confrontation that would exacerbate those conflicting feelings, even if it meant eating when he did not particularly want to.
Harry sat on his bench, stroking his face and nose with the backs of his knuckles, a behavior he had adopted without being aware of it. The cell air hung in absolute silence, leaving him alone with his heartbeat and the rush of his blood, which his ears used to fill the void. He felt marginally better knowing the letter was on its way; Ginny deserved to know what she faced.
As he usually did when boredom overwhelmed him and he did not know the time, Harry lay down for a nap. His major muscles ached from doing this too frequently, but the pain reminded him that was alive, so he did not mind, and sleeping passed the time better than any other activity. When he had first arrived he had frequently exercised as best as possible in the small space—endless pushups on the bench and jogging in place. Now it seemed a waste of time and he could not imagine bothering, even to relieve the aches.
As he lay there, in a half-sleep state where he led his shadow friends through a merry chase in the forest of his mind, Harry heard an unexpected noise.
He woke fully and wondered if he had imagined it. It sounded like the cell block locking rod shifting, but there were no footsteps approaching, so that seemed unlikely. Mostly because he had nothing else to do, Harry stood and went to the cell door, which to his surprise, yielded to his touch and swung open without effort.
Maybe he was dreaming; Harry considered. It felt like a dream with the door drifting open into the cold, dim corridor. As he stood there in the open doorway, glancing around in an effort to work out what was real, he heard banging and shouting from the exit end of the cell block.
Harry's soul woke up at this, his mind went from adrift to focused as his feet carried him along the uneven floor, from the cover of one cell door alcove to the next. He ducked fully out of sight just before he reached the wide join to the staircase containing the break room. A fight was in full swing, based on the sound of armor clattering against stone and Harry glanced out just in time to see a tattily robed figure smacking the guard, helmet and all, over one of the couches and jumping on him.
Harry rushed out as another punch fell. The attacking figure exhibited the maniacal violence Harry knew from field work, so he approached cautiously, ready to move at the first safe opening. The guard's hand flew out to the side and his wand tumbled and rolled to Harry's feet. The attacker sputtered something in French and when Harry stared at him incomprehensibly, the man said, "Grab 'is wand you eediot!"
Harry picked up the wand and felt a rush of magic, long absent and hungered for. Without hesitating, he raised it and hit the attacker with a mummy curse. The man toppled to the floor and rolled to a stop while Harry approached the guard. It was Steeltoe Pierre, and he appeared to be out cold, despite his head being incased in metal. Harry did a Revelatio on him and it sparkled healthy.
Footsteps and shouting trickled down the curved staircase connecting the cellblock to the rest of the prison. Harry did not think it wise to be caught there, holding a wand over a guard. He put the wand in Steeltoe's hand and pressed his fingers around it, hoping that would hold. He stepped back and was just considering whether it would save him a nasty spell strike if he crouched down with his hands on his head when the warden appeared behind his guards.
"Ah, Meestar Pottar," he said, clearly pleased.
Steeltoe sat up and straightened his helmet, and the arriving guards helped the mummified prisoner to his feet to unwrap him. No one was behaving properly, returning Harry to a dreamlike state.
A grey-haired man with an equally grey walrus mustache sweeping his collar emerged from the stairs. The fine material of his suit reflected the light, black pretending to be silver. He joined the warden in pondering Harry.
"Zee, as I tell you," the warden said, rocking up on his toes.
The grey-maned man tilted his head side to side.
"Meestar Pottar, zis is our Ministre des Affaires Magiques, César Morel."
The man gave a formal little bow. Harry looked between the two of them, mind blank.
The warden explained, "I wished to in-vite you to dine with zee two of us, but Monsieur le Ministre did not sink it wise—'e does not trust in you, you zee, so I arran-ged a little test to prove I was cor-rect." He rocked on his toes again, pleased.
Harry slowly exhaled, finding annoyance where there had been numbing adrenaline before. "I see."
The warden wiggled his mustache by twisting his face back and forth. "I 'ope you are not upset." When Harry declined to reply during an awkward pause, he went on. "Would you like to come to dinnar?"
"I think I'll pass," Harry said, trying to not let annoyance transform into the more potent betrayal.
This clearly was not expected. "Ah."
The Minister's hairy white brow raised in a kind of disdain. The shadows were very close here, surrounding them. In the corridor above, beyond the staircase, someone rattled a cell door, someone else joined in. The guards ceased their teasing conversation and rattled up the stairs in their armor, all but one, who remained to monitor Harry.
Glancing back at Harry, the warden said, "If you prefer your cell . . ."
"Tonight I do."
The cell door beyond rattled again followed by a spell flicker and raised voices. The commotion did not ruffle the Minister, but the warden colored.
"Take 'im to 'ees cell, Gaspard," the warden commanded, more perplexed than insulted.
Harry turned deliberately when the guard gestured for him to lead, and pushed his anger outward one more time, making the cell doors rattle again, even though the noise was cut off abruptly.
"Sacre bleu, what is 'appening up zere?!" The warden marched away, trailing the cool headed Minister whose eyes followed Harry until he was out of sight.
- 888 -
The next morning, as indicated by the guard arriving to wake him, Harry rose rigidly like one who has rested without sleeping. But the guard had not brought breakfast, he instead opened the door and gestured that Harry should leave his cell.
"Vite, vite," he said, smacking his spear on the floor. Harry did not recognize this guard. He definitely behaved stricter than the others. His stern attitude was accented by his coarse skin and the scar that bisected his jaw.
They strode quickly to the end of the cell block and through the next two and up several turns of stairs to an unfamiliar corridor where warm air flowed. The guard opened the third door on the right and Harry stepped in and stopped when a surge of rare joy startled him at the sight of Tonks. He approached her, arms raised, but a crystal-tipped pike swung between them with a magical sizzle, tossing Harry back and making his clothes crackle.
"No frater-neye-zing!" the guard ordered.
Harry righted himself with his fingertips caught on the doorframe, and turned a glare on the man. The guard stood unimpressed, his pike at ready.
"Harry?" Tonks said to get his attention. She sounded worried.
Harry, his precious happy mood shattered, had no interest in relenting on the darkness sinking around his mind. He put on a falsely dutiful attitude and took one of the heavy chairs at the small table, noticing only then that deBenedictus already sat at the end, notes piled beside him. He sat in stillness, watching Harry.
Harry gave him a nod and ducked his head to stare at his crossed arms. The shadows paced around him. Harry wished he could feed the guard to them. So did they.
"Harry?" Tonks prompted again, alarm creeping into her voice. She was leaning over the table, violating the yellow line painted down the middle of it. The pike tapped on the table top and Tonks stood straight to take up a chair, surprised wariness in every move.
The guard took up a position at the door as rigid as his pike, ready to level it along the barrier line. Harry raised his gaze and took in Tonks' wide worry. He did not relent. He was not happy about being here and he would not pretend otherwise.
Unnecessarily, Tonks said, "I, uh, brought your solicitor. I arranged to escort him." Her voice fell off and her hair drooped. With a sigh, and hanging of her head, she gestured that deBenedictus should start.
The man did after a hesitation. "Mister Potter, I have been preparing for your inevitable hearing, which the Department of Magical Law Enforcement informs me will be delayed for at least another week."
His calm droning about organized things drew Harry up out of the depths he was drowning in, perking him up to care about what was happening.
deBenedictus noted this, and went on. "Barring significant new evidence we have a number of options, the most obvious being the undisputed non-extant status of the victim. That creates both the opening for a technicality as well as grounds for a reduction in charges. It does not rise to the level of a dismissal, I'm afraid, but it is a start."
Harry abruptly turned to Tonks and asked, "Have you been following Percy?"
Tonks nodded. "But he's like a church mouse . . . barely does anything. Goes from work to home and back again. Except he slipped away from me once, right after I was certain he was too clueless to know I was there. I don't know if it was a coincidence or an astoundingly well orchestrated ploy to distract me. But other than that one time, I've got nothing but a sore back out of it." She held his eyes. "Are you sure about him, Harry?"
Harry scratched his chin. At one level it was hard to care at all. "I thought I was. He gives me a bad feeling when I'm around him. And he's such an annoying git."
deBenedictus shuffled his parchment around. "If only all the annoying gits were murderers, then we would no longer need tolerate them in polite society."
Harry did not know him well enough to read his tone and the darkness in him took umbrage at what could be mockery. Without being aware of it, Harry rose from his chair.
"Harry!" Tonks' sharp voice snapped at him, knocking him off of his anger. Harry lowered himself to his chair and sat slumped, glaring at her, seeing two worlds, the tiny meeting room and the forest of shadows.
Guards ran by on a crossing corridor, perhaps unrelated, but Harry suspected not.
"What's wrong with you?" Tonks asked, sharply panicked.
Harry wanted to say that he did not like it here, but some part that liked communing with shadows stopped him. With more time he would understand them utterly.
Tonks explained to the solicitor, "I don't know what's wrong with him." She swallowed hard and asked in a slow cadence, "Harry are you just trying to make a point or are you really this far gone?"
Harry blinked at her, wondering abstractly how he appeared to her. He could not explain, was barred from doing so by strategic instincts that had as full a hold on him as he had on the shadows.
"It's Christmas," Harry said, thinking that might explain. The grim statement of it summed up his mood nicely.
"Yeah, I know, Harry. I didn't think you'd still be here. I'm sorry."
In truth, he did not mean to worry her. Felt detachedly bad for doing so. He shrugged to try to dispel her concern.
deBenedictus' droning started up again, describing his legal maneuverings while Harry forced himself to listen and remain interested, which worked only for a few minutes at a time. Fortunately the solicitor repeated every major point he wanted Harry to grasp. In the end it was all only hopeful in the way knowing someone was working on it could be.
Eventually, deBenedictus wound down, closed the file before him, and asked, "Is that all clear to you? Do you have any questions?"
Harry sat back and with a forced level voice, said, "It doesn't sound very good."
They studied each other. The solicitor said, "It is a process, Mr. Potter, and it has not yet run its course, so its course is not yet fixed. Nor is the landscape fully revealed. I'm very good at this. Everything that can be done is being done. Trust in that, for now."
Harry pursed his lips, bit back on a retort, and turned to Tonks more sharply than he intended. "Did you bring the papers?"
Regret clear in her movements, she pulled out a rolled newspaper. "Just one. It's all they would let me bring in." She did not hold it out. "I'm loath to give it to you, given your mood."
"You aren't going to like my mood if I can't have it," Harry stated, flat and sober which lent it more force.
Tonks set the paper down and it partly unrolled itself. As he reached for it, Tonks carefully said, "I have to take it out with me again."
"I know," Harry snipped, reading quickly about his ruined home life. He felt he read about someone else. Some poor sap whose life was completely out of their own control. He stuffed the paper back at Tonks. "Someday I'll get even with her."
deBenedictus cleared his throat. "Perhaps best stated outside the presence of your legal representation?"
Harry slid his eyes that way, a faint smile relaxing his face. "Perhaps. Depends on whose side you are really on."
As Harry was led away to his cell, his solicitor remained sitting, carefully filing things away inside his case. Tonks waved at Harry one last time before the guard led him through the door at the end. She returned, closed the conference room door, and leaned back against the wall, spent and distressed.
deBenedictus said, "I'm contemplating filing a motion to have him removed to St. Mungo's."
Tonks rubbed her face and peered at him, considering that. "That would be a public motion." This was half a question. When the solicitor nodded, Tonks said, "That would be the end of his career as an Auror I expect."
Speaking frankly, he pointed out, "He demonstrated a rather drastic shift in personality between his arrest and just now."
"Well . . ." Tonks struggled to explain. "You haven't seen Harry angry before, I'm guessing."
Repacking abandoned, deBenedictus asked, "He gets like we saw just now frequently?"
Tonks tried to belittle that notion. "Not often, but sometimes." She pushed away from the wall and stepped closer. "You have to understand that Harry's been through a lot without breaking, but partly that's because . . . well . . . he has this hard edge to him that once it's loosed . . . well . . . you saw."
"You have seen him like that on a previous occasion?" deBenedictus asked, clearly aware of the specificity of his question.
Tonks grimaced faintly. "Not exactly like that, I'll admit."
The latches on deBenedictus' case snapped closed and he tugged it to the table edge, fingers around the handle. "You still believe him innocent?"
Tonks tossed her hand in the direction of the door. "That has nothing to do with that," she said dismissively.
"Interesting," deBenedictus muttered. He moved to heft his case, but only pulled it to the table edge. "Can I expect the prosecution to call witnesses to that sort of behavior?"
Tonks contemplated that. "If Fudge gets to lead the prosecution then probably, yes."
"I should not ask, but I am already extended beyond such concerns already here. What are the odds of that?"
Tonks huffed through her lips. "This has been the worst time for a Ministry turf battle, but we are fighting one anyway. I dearly hope Fudge isn't. But how about this, off the record . . . if Fudge is leading it, it means he managed to incapacitate me before I got to him."
Tonks escorted deBenedictus back to the Ministry, barely aware of the man's considerable presence. They had both fallen silent, including parting in the atrium. Tonks went straight to Mr. Weasley's office and closed the door, which had the advantage of giving her an excuse to tower over the boss because of the confined space. He held out his hand expectantly.
"I'm keeping the French Portkey a little longer," Tonks informed him, still a little breathless with alarm.
"Ah. Why is that?"
"I'm loaning it to Severus so he can pay Harry a visit. Someone needs to go talk to Harry, right now, and he's the best one for the job."
Mr. Weasley put his hand out again. "You're on duty. I can escort him there if you think it so important. He can't arrive alone."
Tonks resisted setting Harry up to be seen in his current state by this man, but on the other hand, sending Harry there was Mr. Weasley's idea.
"Harry isn't doing well," she explained.
"So I'm aware."
"You are . . . how?"
Mr. Weasley held up a sheet of crisp white parchment. "Memo from his solicitor. It arrived just before you did."
Tonks pointed behind her, then at the desk, befuddled. "How did it beat me down here?"
"The man writes a fast flying memo." Mr. Weasley pondered the sheet. "Wouldn't want him as an enemy."
"What did he say?"
"He said Harry is in a bad way, and if we don't take action, he will." Arthur tossed on his cloak from the hook behind Tonks. "Which I think you will agree, would not be best, since his actions would limit ours." He nodded to Tonks. "Give me the key; I'll take Severus to see him."
Tonks dropped the decorative charm into Mr. Weasley's palm, hoping for the best the way one would dropping a penny into a fountain.
- 888 -
"Hello, Arthur. Do come in," Candide's voice drifted out from the entryway.
Snape rose from where he reclined on the couch with one of many irresistible books from the house library. For him this was a rare and wonderful kind of Christmas Eve—one where nothing special happened.
Arthur clutched his pointed hat in his hands and bowed in greeting. "I'm afraid I need to draw Severus away on a bit of an errand . . . to the French wizard prison." He turned to Candide. "You could go visit Molly, if you like. The Burrow certainly wouldn't notice yet another guest. Unlike here, I'm afraid we're celebrating a bit at our place . . . but just a bit."
Snape turned to her. "Yes, why don't you do that. I'll fetch you when we are finished."
Candide asked. "What is happening? Is Harry all right?"
Mr. Weasley hesitated, crumpling his hat down smaller. "Harry is perhaps not coping as patiently as we hoped." He glanced around. "I don't know if you've run any debugging spells so we should perhaps not talk here. I'll tell you more on the way."
Candide went off to don her cloak and mittens while Snape wondered about Mr. Weasley's comment, which he was clearly expected to understand. He gave no indication of his confusion, and waited keenly for an opening to induce clarification. After Candide disappeared in the Floo, Snape, with a formal air, took put a finger on the gold charm Mr. Weasley held out and they were both jerked away.
Snape lost his balance in the brutal wash of wind that greeted them upon landing and had to put a hand and a knee down on the water-sloshed pier to steady himself. The sun reflected blindingly on the wave caps as the sea crashed onto the straight-edged rock on either side of them. Dizziness stole his breath as for a disconcerting moment it was the stone island that surged up and down in the surf rather than the opposite.
Mr. Weasley's hand felt warm when he used it to take Snape's wrist to help him up and lead him forward. At the end of the pier towered a great black monolith of solid rock, with a tiny door in the base of it. When they approached, the door itself loomed, several men high. It opened silently and the guard that appeared within gestured unmistakably for them to enter.
The lift plummeted for minutes on end and the air grew clinging, still as death and just as rarefied. Endless carved rock sailed by the platform, swooping far upward to a tiny square of darkness high above. Snape decided that remaining sane in such a place would qualify as a kind of insanity.
They were led to a room with a well-used clerk's counter where they both signed paperwork they could not read, led expeditiously through it by a guard practiced at flipping to and pointing out where they should sign. Then they were urged along a series of dreary, small doored corridors, some stained by a trickle of ocean that could not be denied, even by magic. Behind the doors, the inhabitants banged, rustled and moaned, all of it rolling together and building into a crescendo that surged and receded like a massive, barely discernible heartbeat and exhalation.
"You all right there, Severus?" Mr. Weasley asked when they had reached the top of a spiral staircase that curved away into darkness and Snape had paused to put a hand on the wall while trying not to visualize all that rock and water pressing in upon them.
Snape straightened. "Yes. Just needed . . . a breath. Air's a bit thin, don't you think?"
Mr. Weasley shook his head, not understanding, making Snape consider that possessing a simpler mind could sometimes be an advantage, at least in those few cases where the active imagination would otherwise run to distraction with monstrous possibility.
The guard returned up the stairs to fetch them before gesturing for them to wait in an area unexpectedly sporting couches, old magazines and an aura of bitter cigarette smoke.
He returned minutes later, leading Harry, who halted upon seeing Snape despite the metal clad arm continuing to urge him forward. Harry shook his guard's grip and slumped an approach at a wary pace. When he got close, his nostrils flared, perhaps breathing in the fresh sea air carried in with them.
"Hello, Harry," Mr. Weasley politely greeted the young man, as though at a picnic or a pub. His spray-darkened cloak hung heavy on his low shoulders, giving him even less presence than usual.
Harry's head jerked that way as if just noticing his boss that moment. "Hello, sir," he said flatly.
Mr. Weasley smiled pleasantly and paced away, making an opening for Snape, who would have preferred more time to observe from the side.
"Potter," Snape began, trying to sound imploring. He had some other meaningless words lined up behind that, but he was cut off from the bother.
"Why do you call me that?" Harry lashed out, causing Mr. Weasley to spin around.
Snape stepped rapidly closer to Harry, while the young man went on, clearly lacking a regular outlet for his anger.
"You make it sound like you're talking to my dad," Harry went on, seething with heat eager to boil over once it found an escape.
"Harry . . ." Snape said, face to face now. Heat sizzled over his Mark as Harry sized him up, looking for an excuse to rant more. Snape did not give him an opening. "Calm down, if you would, for just a moment."
It was most likely not his words that worked, but the tone—a soothing warmth he could only manage in a fit of true desperation. He shook his hand at his side, wanting to rub the pain from his Mark. The gesture drew a flicker of Harry's eyes in that direction and the pain faded.
Harry looked away, at the wall. Snape said, "I realize it is difficult here." That was the truth; just coming down here had unsettled him. "But you must be patient . . . restrain your instincts a little longer."
Harry's pose shifted to a cocky one so very reminiscent of his father that he could be a projection of his memory. He mockingly said, "I don't know why I can't enjoy myself here. I have so very many friends."
Snape felt something terribly disconcerting then—like hot water running under his skin. It made him dizzy with prickly sensation the way an overdose of Invigoration Draught would. A moment later, a cell door on the corridor above began to thud against its bolts. With an abrupt rattle of his armor, the guard started that way, stopped and reconsidered, then went up the stairs after a glance at Mr. Weasley.
"Po . . . Harry," Snape said, voice tightly controlled. Mr. Weasley wandered closer, orienting himself to face both the stairs and the two of them. Snape softly said, "Most of the inhabitants here will not make particularly good friends."
Harry's eyes narrowed. "You know, I bet they'd make particularly obedient ones."
A bit lighter, Snape quipped with a knowing attitude, "There you would be mistaken."
His more bantering tone worked, Harry backed down. He looked around at the floor and muttered, "I don't like it here, and I'm not convinced you didn't have anything to do with it."
"You are not supposed to like it here," Snape pointed out. Then, with voice pitched very low, added, "And you flatter me if you think I could have managed this."
Whispering too, Harry said, "I wouldn't put it past you."
Snape stepped closer, leaning almost to Harry's ear, "I don't even know who is alive or dead here, let alone have the allies required to set this up, certainly not this fast."
Accusingly, Harry said, "Having a nice Christmas with your lovely house and wife?"
Snape raised a brow. "Nice enough."
Voice almost too low to hear, Harry said, "Just nice enough? That's all? That should make it easier for you when you do go then. As soon as I'm out of this place . . ."
Harry paced away from Snape, sending him a glance full of lingering suspicion. "What am I being punished for?" He asked louder, taking both of them in with that question.
Mr. Weasley started to answer, but Snape cut him off. "For not paying sufficient attention to the details around you, so as to get caught up in such a thing."
While Harry frowned at Snape, Mr. Weasley said, "Oh, now I wouldn't go so far as that. We're trying to protect you, Harry."
Harry glared at him. "I don't need protection. If you kn-"
Snape stepped into Harry's line of vision to his boss and said in a tone that implied deeper meaning, "You need protection from yourself, I would say." He took Harry's shoulders and backed him farther out of earshot of Mr. Weasley, ignoring the prickling in his Mark as this gesture drew retribution.
Snape shot his hand out to the side in an attempt to shake the sensation. He leaned respectfully close, hands behind his back, and drew forth a tone he formerly reserved for the only other being who could pain him so. "It is understandable that you are displeased by this situation. Realize, if you will, that it will not go on much longer."
Harry raised his gaze, looking hopeful. He gestured in Mr. Weasley's direction. "They said they haven't made any headway with the . . ."
"Quieter, if you would," Snape pleaded, cutting him off.
Whispering, Harry said, "They said they haven't made any headway with the investigation. Tonks even admitted it."
"If we rely on that, you will be here rather a long time."
"What does that mean?" Harry asked.
The guard clanked back down the stairs and ordered them out with firm gestures. "We 'ave to go to lockdown on zees cell blocks," he said, partly out of breath.
Snape turned back to Harry and quickly said, "Do try to remember that you have more friends outside this place than in." He accented this with a intense look. The guard had drawn his staff, so Snape had to move that way, he glanced back and said, "If you remember nothing else . . ."
- 888 -
The portkey dropped Snape and Mr. Weasley back in Shrewsthorpe. Snape immediately paced the hall, glad for Candide's absence so he could think in silence rather than waste time recounting events. Mr. Weasley swung his arms and clapped his hands before him, his statement jarringly out of line with Snape's worries. "Well, as I expected, just feeling stubborn and out of sorts."
Snape stared at the table teetering with the presents Harry's friends had sent, gathering firm control around his reaction.
Mr. Weasley prodded at his reeling thoughts with, "Don't you think? Much ado about nothing."
Snape, facing the prospect of a burgeoning resurgence of the Dark Lord within a far more eclectically skilled Harry Potter, could only manage a shrug, a mocking one at that. "He should not be there," he managed to say with some levelness. He had to say something.
Mr. Weasley straightened his hat and put it on. "Well, yes. And that is at least partly our fault, I'll admit. Harry has a temper on him, but when he calms down I'm sure he'll understand."
Obliquely, Snape said, "There are many things Harry does not understand. Fortunately for you, power is one of those things."
Mr. Weasley puzzled that before shrugging his cloak straight in preparation for departing. "Well, we'll have things straightened out soon enough, I'm confident." He waited for some kind of response, and Snape half nodded, again mockingly, but this was again lost on his audience.
Awkwardly, Mr. Weasley asked, "Do you appreciate our position, Severus?"
Distantly, Snape replied, "I appreciate far more than you realize."
Again, this generated a puzzled expression before Mr. Weasley said, "Well, I'll be on my way. And I'll send Candide along."
"No rush," Snape muttered, mind elsewhere, plotting. "If she wishes for a nice holiday dinner, she should remain there."
- 888 -
"Aaron, dear. Do come in," the apparition that was Mrs. Weasley in her best unmatched flowered dress, robe, and apron invited.
Aaron hesitated at the sight, but made his feet move. The entire Weasley clan and many others filled the ground floor of the Burrow. Bill sat in a close circle with some cousins. Charlie's wife, starting to show a rounder belly herself, was deeply engaged in a conversation with Candide. There were so many people the lamps had a hard time spreading their light around the room.
The twins took the most interest in the new arrival. They teamed up on either side of the finely attired guest and asked, "How are you, then?"
"Getting on all right?"
"Smart robes."
"You look like you're sleeping well."
Aaron shifted his gaze back and forth between them, before waving them both to silence. "Are you looking for a favor?"
The twin on the right leaned in closer to say to the other, "Slytherins can always be counted on to catch on quickly, as needed."
"What is it you want?" Aaron asked, but the matriarch swooped in and swept the twins aside with an apology for their behavior.
When she returned, Aaron frankly said, "I do owe them."
She waved her finger before her face, denying that. "Ginny'll be down in a twinkle." She surveyed her magically stretched table, with too many seats to count in a glance. "It'll be the first Christmas Eve dinner she's missed."
"Er . . ." Aaron began, caught fast by her wistful tone.
Ginny appeared on the staircase and bound adeptly over the crowded floor and through two different games of Exploding Snap to stop just before him. "I'm ready."
"You're sure you can come?" Aaron asked.
Ginny's bright eyes narrowed. "Of course." With a dark glance at her mother, she pointedly stated, "It's better than risking sitting next to Percy, like I always seem to."
"Now, young lady, we're a family here and we will always be together as a family. Especially during the holidays."
Aaron gave Ginny a look that said see?
Ginny took his arm and, turning for the door, said, "I don't know what time I'll be home."
"Don't you now?" Mrs. Weasley called back.
Aaron stalled their progress and said to Mrs. Weasley. "It won't be late."
"Why not?" Ginny demanded.
"Because . . . there are only so many hours I can take my mother at a time . . ."
"Oh yeah. There is that."
Mrs. Weasley tut-tutted Aaron, which he ignored. "We'll come back here for afters," Aaron said, returning a wave hello from somewhere in the room before swooping Ginny out of the house.
- 888 -
A fine snow gritted on their cloaks as they walked up the drive to the Freelander Estate. Under the blindingly lit overhang supported by carved capitals, Aaron paused to properly order his overlapping collars, then inspected Ginny. He was biting his lip when he gestured for her to spin around.
"Are you sure I'm dressed all right?" she asked, working very hard not to sound hurt or exasperated. "I picked this out pretty carefully and borrowed a scarf from a friend with a much better wardrobe than mine."
Aaron had hold of her shoulders, thinking. "You look fine." But he did not move.
"What's the matter then? Shall we ring the bell?"
His voice sighed as he said, "I'm just thinking."
She waited. He bit his lip harder. She said, "Care to clue me in?"
Aaron dropped his hands. "My . . . father . . . is literally impossible to please. I'm just trying to brace myself for tonight." He sounded truly at sea.
"It'll be fine—" Ginny began, but the wide door with the big round brass handle in the middle creaked open then and the butler bowed them inside.
Ginny took up Aaron's hand and was able to hold it while a cavalcade of servants unhooked and took their cloaks and even bent to give their shoes one last polishing.
Ginny held up one shining black toe. "You weren't kidding."
Aaron pushed his shoulders back. "It's only one night," he whispered to himself.
They were led to the dining room, a mere four rooms away, beyond the grand ballroom which sat demurely this evening with only a tenth of the lamps lit in the massive chandeliers. The long table was set for four at one glittering end and a bouquet the size of a small car sat hulking in the center, many feet away.
The butler led them beyond to a small drawing room where Mrs. Wickem overflowed a sizable settee and Lord Freelander sat swirling a crystal glass filled with something dark. Lord Freelander stood as they approached.
"Aaron," the master of the house greeted him formally.
"Sir." Aaron, slightly breathless, started to say, "And this is . . . "
But Lord Freelander had Ginny's hand clutched between his own two coarse ones. Brightly, he said, "I am quite aware of who this is. How are you Ms. Weasley? It is good to see you again, I despaired at ever again having your natural charm grace this house. Do have a seat." He led her away and found her a chair beside the settee. "A drink for the lady," he commanded one of many vaguely penguin-like figures circumscribing the room. He bowed to his charge as a tray was offered. "And once you've settled in, I have taken some paintings out of storage after our conversation of last. I'd be delighted to give you a tour of them."
Aaron, abandoned in the center of the floor, gaped at this scene.
Mrs. Wickem raised herself from her chair. "If you aren't coming over to greet your mother, the mountain will have to come to her son." She gave him a hug. "How are you, Aaron?"
Aaron pondered her, then pondered Lord Freelander who was pouring on the charm with Ginny, explaining the origin and process that led to the liqueur she had just been served. "Uh, pretty good, all said," he uttered, still trying to accept what he was seeing. His mother pressed his hands around a drink, which he sipped at.
Another figure sailed in, draped in a long, simple dress. 'You are early," Mrs. Freelander said, sounding gracious.
"This is my wife, Beatrice," Freelander said, starting the introductions with Ginny before moving more awkwardly to Mrs. Wickem and Aaron. "And, uh, this is Aaron Wickem."
Aaron felt himself coloring, even though he had promised himself he would not. "Madam," he said, greeting the woman who was studying him most closely, as if looking for some sign in his face.
"Charmed, I'm sure," she said before accepting a drink from a servant who had followed her since she entered the room. "Alfred tells me you are training to be an Auror . . ."
Aaron nodded. "Doing my best at it, I suppose." He felt unexpectedly shy with her, pressured by the awkwardness of it all.
Freelander said, "I'll let you get aquainted," and stepped back with a bow.
Mrs. Freelander's wizening face smiled reassuringly. Voice lower than needed, she said, "I'll confess I did not know Alfred in his younger days to know if you resemble him or not."
Aaron could merely shrug. His mother sized him up while brushing a lock of his hair back. "He's got a lot of my father in him. It's hard to see much else."
Aaron snipped, "Let me know when the Best of Show portion of the competition starts, I'm really hoping to win that."
While his mother rolled his eyes and Mrs. Freelander nodded that they were perhaps out of line, Aaron slid over to Ginny and Lord Freelander. "I didn't realize you two knew each other . . ." he began.
Ginny explained, "Oh, yes, I escorted Harry here one day when he had an appointment. Back when he always had a guard."
Lord Freelander took a healthy swig of his drink. "Turns out he continued to need one."
Ginny's face fell. "Yeah . . . Yes," she corrected herself. "Maybe if he'd had a witness that said he'd been somewhere else that day."
Lord Freelander took a nearby chair, but remained on the edge of it, leaning forward. A servant filled his glass without his notice. "I read that he has exceptional legal representation already, or I would have offered someone I have on retainer." He glanced up at Aaron, and voice cheery with alcohol said, "Do sit down, my boy. Unless you are too thin and hungry to wait for dinner and are hoping to move that way."
Aaron took the chair beside Ginny's. Pointedly, Freelander asked, "How is the investigation progressing?"
"I'm not authorized to say, I'm afraid," Aaron said, noticing the others coming close to listen. "We've had some horrible leaks already, no one knows where from."
"Yes, you have," Mrs. Wickem accused. "That poor boy. After everything he's done, too."
Authoritatively, Lord Freelander stated, "In the court of public opinion, that does not help. It makes it worse. Too many are too eager to see heroes, or great men or women, brought low. And that paper of ours. It's enough to make me want to buy it out and fire them all."
Ginny straightened. "Why don't you?"
Freelander sat back and dismissively said, "Terrible investment. It's run at a loss already."
Aaron said, "It's half adverts. How can that be?"
"That's what the accountants tell me."
Sounding like one treading carefully, Aaron said, "Are you certain they weren't lying to you? Maybe to keep you from being too interested?"
Freelander huffed and thought that over.
Ginny said, "I'd love to see Skeeter fired. The article she printed today, I couldn't even finish reading it. I threw the paper in the fire instead."
Mrs. Wickem waved her hanky, which she had pulled out upon lamenting Harry, but had yet to put it to use. "Yes, the one where she claimed his family was happy enough without him. Where does she get the nerve?"
"Where does she get the quotes?" Ginny asked. "Professor Snape is usually really careful. And I can't imagine him saying those things."
Mrs. Wickem sniffled. "If the boy is not wanted at home, he can come live with me, anytime."
Aaron raised a disturbed brow, but let it go when Ginny squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt.
They moved to the table and a feast was conducted in as if on cue to the last of them sitting down. The conversation lagged into trivialities while everyone ate. With the rest of the lamps in the area extinguished, the servants moved in and out of the light, shifting from shadow puppet to solid and back again as they moved around the table, trained into silence when there should be noise. The massive silver branching candelabra looming over the roast platter glowed so brightly, Ginny had to squint across at Aaron. But he could see her merely picking at her food, because he said, "Not hungry?"
Ginny's shoulders drooped. "It's a lovely dinner," she said in the direction of their host. "I'm just thinking about Harry. Makes it hard to enjoy celebrating." She set her fork down and took up her glass, but only sipped at that too.
Aaron bit his lip for an instant, before taking up a more rigid posture. But his face remained doleful and his eating stopped as well.
Ginny sighed and clasped her hands together in her lap, where her fingers encountered the ring. Straightening up, she raised her hand and said, "I should show you the ring Aaron gave to me."
"A ring?" Freelander echoed with heavy meaning and a glance at Aaron.
Ginny held her hand out so he could better see, and continued to hold it steady while he pulled out his glasses.
Freelander observed, "That's a unique ring. What is that, seven stones?"
"Seven is a very lucky number," Mrs. Wickem proclaimed, while waving to the waiter that she would like a top up on her soup.
"It didn't feel lucky growing up," Ginny said. "That's too many older brothers for one person to have to take." She held the ring out for the lady of the house as well, who winked at her knowingly.
Freelander folded his glasses away, "Nothing the matter with that many guaranteed allies, my dear."
"They weren't allies, though. They were always telling me what was best, and never letting me do much of anything." She spun the ring to straighten it, and added quietly, "By the time you get to seven no one gets around to asking you what you want."
Aaron's eyes had narrowed thoughtfully through this and his face did not hang quite as long now.
Mrs. Freelander said to Aaron, "You have plans perhaps we should know of?"
Sounding too neutral, he replied, "I will when Ginny puts enough thought into it. She's taking her time."
"Someone should," Freelander said. He turned to Ginny, his face looking far older highlighted by the stark candlelight. "But, someone should also inherit this place. Otherwise who knows what the state will do with it."
Ginny froze, blinking rapidly. "Inherit this place?"
"Well, yes." Freelander said, sitting back to let his stack of bowl and plate be taken away. "Aaron, now that he has shown promise at making something of himself, will inherit this estate, of course."
"Ah . . . I hadn't thought of that."
Freelander sent a hard-to-interpret look at Aaron, one that appeared dubious, perhaps. Ginny bristled and said, "I do understand how these things work, of course, I just hadn't thought about it." She uneasily glanced around the grand dining room. The entire Burrow would fit inside just this one room if you cut it up and arranged it right.
Freelander patted her hand and signaled for more wine to be added to everyone's glass, even those who had not drunk much yet, like Ginny. "I wasn't implying you were slow my dear. It's that your comment seemed to indicate that you had a stunning case of irreproachable motive. A rare thing." He raised his glass casually before drinking from it.
"Can't see yourself living here?" Aaron asked, the flickering light on his angular face giving no clue to his thoughts.
"It's hard to imagine living like this. No offense, I hope. It's just, uh, too much of everything, I guess. Too far from what I'm used to."
Freelander smiled faintly. "You have plenty of time to get used to the idea. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon."
"I certainly hope not," Ginny said.
"In the meantime, we'll have to teach you how to spend money," Aaron teased.
Mrs. Wickem sat forward energetically. "We can do some shopping my dear. That would be divine, just us girls."
Ginny shifted her shoulders uneasily, and managed to say, "I'd like that."
Aaron scratched his ear and leaned toward his mother beside him. "She's not a very good liar."
Mrs. Wickem grinned as though they shared a long-standing joke. "So I noticed. Not the worst quality in a wife."
"I am so a good liar," Ginny argued, then came to awareness of what she was saying. "Ehem. Right," she muttered, glancing around the table.
- 888 -
Snape paced the quiet house, his movements startling the candles as he passed. He had the outline of a plan and itched to begin executing it. But there were too many things he did not know, the most curious one was Mr. Weasley's comment about bugs or bugging. That was a distinctly Muggle notion involving electronics, which despite his deepest desire to understand, Mr. Weasley was hopeless at, so why would he use that word?
Snape distinctly disliked this state where important things were obscured from him and not others and he did not have an ally to ask for clarification. He could have asked Harry, but there had not been an opportunity, and now post would take days back and forth, at best. Snape passed the side table where the newspapers had been tossed, the day's paper still rolled up from delivery. The angry-letter conveying owls were sorted out with a spell that often caught the news owl, given the content of the paper. This particular one had made it through. Turning the roll revealed the headline: Harry's "Family" Thinks Prison Will Do Good for Wizard "Hero".
Snape slid the string off the paper and began reading the article.
This reporter has heard from a most reliable source that Harry Potter's household has not only moved him out of his own bedroom, but they profess that he is better off as a jailbird. For one thing, his incarceration has restricted his access to the dark magic that normally occupies his free time. He is now kept company by the far more wholesome, prison-censored correspondence of his friends rather than by the gruesome illicit books and device experimentation of his uncontrolled home life.
Snape tossed the paper aside, behaving uninterested in it. They were clearly being watched, in a way his nightly spell reinforcing was not blocking. Given that, he had to assume he was being watched right that moment. Still moving casually, which nicely focused his emotions into plotting, Snape went up to Harry's new room in the far upper corner of the house. He let Hedwig out of her cage. She gave a trembling shrug and stretched her wings while he wrote quickly on a small card curled in the palm of his hand. He folded it up without opening his hand, wrote Tonks on it, and gave it to the bird, who hopped on his shoulder to wait for the window to be opened.
The rarely used window stuck open and had to be closed with a spell. During the delay, the room's air frosted from the cold wind. In the ensuing silence, a plaintive chirp drew Snape to the other cage in the room. The Chimrian put a tiny paw through the cage bars and clawed in Snape's direction with a long-needled foot. Snape had instructed Winky to care for Harry's pets, since he himself had no interest in wrestling with something so nasty only Hagrid could love. Even Winky had seemed reluctant to accept the care duties, but the cage was clean and the water dish full, implying she had followed instructions. The Chimrian chirped again and clawed more frantically. Snape stepped closer, but well out of reach. Such a creature would viciously attack anyone but its blood master, Snape well knew. The fact that Harry had such a thing attested to some truth to Skeeter's article. But this one was less than healthy, most likely from the long absence of her master. Tufts of her bright fur littered the cage, and where it had gone missing, the black, leathery skin of her lithe body showed through.
The chirping grew more frantic as Snape stood there, and he found himself reaching for the cage door. Chimrians reflected their master's mood, but what if that worked both ways? Could calming this creature improve Harry's dark demeanor, buying Snape some much needed time? The creature scuttled like lightning to the door when his hand reached it and he instinctively jerked back. The next cry from the creature was gratingly plaintive. It certainly was not behaving like a murderous protector of one master, unless it played far more coy than expected.
Curious more than anything else, Snape unhooked the cage door, and pulled his hand back. The Chimrian balanced on the threshold bar an instant before leaping at Snape, who only had time to tuck his hands away. The violet, four legged bat latched onto his robe front and held tight, burrowing into him with it's fox-like nose.
Snape exhaled and slowly raised a hand to touch the tiny form. What fur it had left was stunningly soft. Snape petted it additionally, just in surprise at that. Was it possible that he was this thing's master as well as Harry? He did not know such a thing was possible; there must have been a rather interesting extra spell involved if so. The creature responded to his petting by burrowing into his breast pocket and curling up inside it.
Tentatively, because he still feared losing a lot of blood should the creature decide to turn the flesh of his hand into ribbons, Snape lifted the thing out to put it in his side pocket, where the lump of it rested more conveniently. A muffled chirp sounded through the layers when it was safely away—a far less frantic sound. Presumably the creature had a name. Snape found himself wondering what it may be.
Next: Chapter 32
Ginny repeated herself. "I'm not staying here with people who think it's fair sticking Harry in prison for his own good." Gesturing downstairs through the floor, she added, "He won't take me to see him. He doesn't even know when he's going to let him out. Harry's going mad and Dad doesn't care!"
"Harry's not going mad, Dear, he used to live in a cupboard, I'm sure he's doing fine."
Ginny gaped at her mother. "I don't believe you said that. Isn't he always your favorite when he's here?" Ginny stopped to catch her breath from shouting, the prophecy felt like a heavy, sodden blanket over her, making it hard get air. If it was Harry in the prophecy, what were they all going to do? Realizing that she held her broom, and her trunk was at her feet and the window wide open, she said, "I'm going now." She tore down the decorative sash from the curtain rod and tethered her hovered trunk to the broom with it, glad she would not have to use her scarf because she needed it to keep warm. "Don't tell Dad goodbye for me," she said as she climbed onto the window sill.
Chapter 32 — Corruption
Christmas day passed like every other day in the house in Shrewsthorpe. The piles of presents went untouched until Snape had an idea and went to sort through them. Kali crawled up onto his shoulder to better observer these doings, reminding him that her claws could again use a trimming. Snape found what he was looking for and tucked the beating-heart-covered box under his arm and went to the library where Candide rested in a belly relieving, twisted position on the divan, listening to the wizard wireless on low.
"Merry Christmas, Severus."
Nodding awkwardly, Snape said flatly, "And to you."
"What's that?" She coyly asked. "We aren't opening presents until Harry's back, you know."
"I am quite aware," Snape said with no little relief, since he had not purchased anything for her. "I need to deliver this elsewhere on Harry's orders."
She sat up with some effort. "Ah," she said knowingly. "I can go visit my mum and dad while you're gone. Unless you don't mind my coming along?"
"Ms. Tonks is on duty today-"
"Christmas day? Her guilt must be running quite deep, in that case."
Snape paused, not having considered that. "In any event, I may have some difficulty in catching up with her, so perhaps it would be best if I go alone."
Amiably, she said, "I'll visit mum and dad, then." More sadly, she added, "Give Tonks a Happy Christmas for me."
"Of course," Snape said, nearly nauseated by how truthful he sounded.
- 888 -
Snape set the present aside and waited in a heavy gloom cracked into slices by sunlight slanting between the rotted boards on the windows. His exhalations chased dust through the air to swirl in the knives of light. Kali tried to crawl out of his pocket, but he gently dissuaded her, not wishing to chase her down should she decide to investigate too far afield. Snape had arrived early to assure himself the place still existed and was still secure. Nevertheless, when Tonks arrived, he gestured for her to remain silent, and said, "I ran some protective spells but I want to be certain . . . if you would do me the favor of running them again?"
Tonks paced around the old Order safehouse, an abandoned rowhouse in Newcastle under Lyme. She ran the same spells, but finished up with one to force Animagi to reveal themselves.
Not wishing to risk revealing his ignorance, Snape suppressed his curiosity and moved on. "I saw Harry yesterday, as you probably know."
"How is he, do you think?" Tonks blurted. "Arthur dismissed my concerns after the visit."
Snape said, "I believe your concerns are well founded. Arthur did not comprehend Harry's mood."
Tonks' shoulders fell, drooping as much as her murky brown hair. "I thought so." She sounded strained and her face looked sleepless.
Snape said, "My concerns are why I asked you to come here."
Tonks paced, looking up to study the cracking and peeling paint surrounded by water stains on the ceiling. "Yeah, and it needs to be quick. I'm on duty."
"I will be as brief as possible, but I must be complete. I do not want any more contact between us than is absolutely necessary."
Her curious gaze fell over to him, and he went on, "Harry must be removed from prison as soon as possible and that can be arranged straightforwardly enough, but I need your assistance."
Her gaze grew more puzzled. "Harry can leave anytime he wants . . ."
"Not without repercussions he is clearly unwilling to face."
She paced again, kicking up dust. "Well, true . . ."
"I want to have him cleanly removed, with no unnecessary baggage. To that end I need something from you."
He waited while she decided to take that bait. "And what might that be?"
"I need to you to deliver a Durumulna member to me. Someone freshly captured, whom no one knows you have captured."
She shook her head as if to clear it. "Huh?"
Testily, Snape, his voice emanating from the stark, dusty shadows, returned, "I'm quite certain you heard me."
Voice raised, she said, "You want me capture someone and rather than taking this person to the Ministry dungeon, you want me to give him to you?"
"Or her, I am not choosy."
"Or her," Tonks echoed quietly.
"The only criterion I require is that this person harbor some kind of major guilt. Beyond that I don't care who it is."
Wary of the answer, Tonks asked, "What are you going to do?"
Brightly, Snape said, "Get Harry out of prison. I presume you wish that to happen as well, no?" He was mocking her by the end of this, and backed off to pace as well.
"Yes, but-"
He spun, feet gritting on the grey-dusted floor. "But what? How difficult could this be? I don't require a member of the leadership, whom you've presumably been unable to locate. I assume at any rate. I need one of the lackeys I am certain you are leaving free to track in hopes of catching someone higher up."
Tonks swayed as though in a trance. "Yeah, we are . . . but, I don't think-"
"Don't think," Snape stated crisply. "That is not what is required of you in this instance." When she continued to hesitate, he said, "Perhaps I was mistaken and you do not understand Harry's state of mind."
"No, I do," she sadly said.
"No, I do not think you do, or you would not be hesitating. Perhaps you failed to notice how his anger made the Death Eater's restless in their cells, making them bang on their doors."
"He what?" She fell far away again. "Is that what happened? The guards, they ran by for something, just as Harry was at his worst."
"Most likely."
She tipped her head back and let it hang with a nearly broken looseness.
Snape softly said, "I am not certain what he is turning into, but I know it must be stopped. You are aware of the full range of his skills, I assume? How very dangerous he would be if he finally decided he had had enough of being a proper wizard?" He let that sink in. "He needs to be free of the influences of that place and steeped again in the company of his friends who can provide a badly needed moderating effect on any dark instincts he has picked up. He responds well to that, I have observed. If that isn't sufficient, something else can be tried."
Tonks looked up. "He responds well to you."
Snape let that pass. Tonks paced to the hearth, brushed the dust off, and rested her head on the mantelpiece, only then noticing the box there wrapped in paper covered in pulsing heart shapes. "What's that?"
Mildly, Snape said, "Harry's present to you."
Tonks shoved away from the mantelpiece. "I just can't . . . what? Let you frame someone for the crime?"
In his favorite speaking-to-a-daft-First-Year voice he said, "Then make it someone whom you feel deserves to be in prison. I don't care." When she merely stared at him from her tilted head position, lost in thought, Snape added, "I assumed you cared about Harry enough to help, but perhaps I was mistaken."
Face twisted in pain, she turned away and pounded the mantelpiece once. Staring at the present, which in the poor light appeared to be spotted with spreading blood, she said, "There has to be another way."
"Yes, and when you think of it, I'll be happy to assist in kind, but in the meantime . . ."
She swung her arms in unison and paced the bare floor. "I just don't know, Severus."
"You don't know what? You don't know what is happening to Harry? I suggest you visit him again, every day, until you are convinced. Unless you are blind and deaf I expect you will come around in, say, two visits, at most. And during that delay, we may lose him irrevocably." He waited. "Shall I map the rest out for you? How he will not stay put in that place. How you will be hunting him down for deeds he really did commit. How you will be unable to capture and hold him, forcing you to resort to-"
"Stop it!" she snapped at him, pained. Taking up the present, which she gently turned in her hands, she said, "I get it already."
He held back on appearing smug. "In that case, when you have this person—and I suggest you not dally given the circumstances—leave them at the ruins of the Shrieking Shack and send me a post owl from another location with the message I finally have a Christmas present for Harry. I will take care of the rest." He paused and watched her breathing heavily. "Clear enough?"
She stalked off without a word, leaving only her restless footprints in the dust on the floor.
- 888 -
Snape returned home and immediately ran an Animagus revealing spell, but it generated nothing of interest. Glad to be alone, he went to the divan in the library and reclined there, thinking. The wireless was still on, he noticed once his head was close enough to the gold filigreed speaker. A holiday tune drifted out extolling the vapid joys of the season. In his world such lyrics could only be perceived as mocking and satirical, describing that which existed only in the mists of time. Disturbed by its unrealistic call to virtue and sentimentality, he tweaked the knob so the wooden box fell silent.
That night as he lay down, still distracted by finalizing his plots, Candide leaned close and said, "Not much of a Christmas."
"It was lovely," he deadpanned.
She cocked a smile. "You have managed the impossible—becoming less romantic."
Snape continued to stare at the ceiling. As one might expect when sharing a bed, she lay so that they touched all along one side of him. By concentrating he relaxed into it. Her fingers began playing with the hair at his forehead, which distracted him terribly from plotting. He could feel her breath when she said, "You've been pretty standoffish."
She played with his hair longer before asking, "Did I finally get too huge to be alluring?"
His mind had been elsewhere. "What?" Contrary to what he would have expected of himself before all this, he found her quite appealing. Her blatant acceptance, the powdery scent of her, and the knowledge that she already carried, essentially, his child added up to rather a lot of allure.
She continued to curl his long fringe around her fingers. "Not feeling guilty about Harry, are you?"
"Certainly not."
He sat up and grabbed his wand up from the night stand to run an Animagus revealing spell. The room stood as before.
"Great Merlin, you don't think she'd be in the bedroom at a time like this?"
He gazed at her, eyes peering about, looking ready to do battle against an unseen enemy, and he found himself amused.
"Are you laughing at me?" she demanded, quick to take offense.
"No," he replied, easily finding a soothing tone. He set his wand back aside. "I would hope Skeeter would not be here, but I do not trust her."
"And why would you?"
She lay back down, turned slightly away as if giving up. He felt a stab like regret. He did not want her to give up. He considered her a moment, then rested a hand on her upper arm. "You are not displeasing."
Sounding moody, she said, "You're just saying that."
Snape needed a moment to recover. "You truly think I would just say that?"
She rolled toward him, onto her back, and scoffed with light humor. "Eh, no, maybe not."
He stroked the fleshy arm under his hand, trying hard to seem casual about it. Her skin felt too soft to be real. He let the backs of his fingers drift over her neck, along the lace collar, to the buttons of her nightgown. She made a noise that he added to the list of things that made her alluring and bent to follow his fingers with his lips.
- 888 -
- 888 -
In Grimmauld Place, the distinctive atmosphere of a feast—silverware clattering, serving dishes thudding, chairs moving, accompanied by the drifting odor of roasting meats—greeted Snape as he moved along the balcony. He had not eaten all day and felt dizzy with the scent alone.
Closer in, the voices revealed attitudes of forced gaiety that tempered his separateness somewhat. He stepped into the chaotic dining room just long enough to toss an unwanted overcooked turkey wing and potatoes on a plate. Glances rose sharply, then disregarded him, an improvement over the norm.
Back in the bedroom he shared in shifts with Lupin, Snape set the plate on the brewing counter and buried his nose in a stained and holy Potions book. If he did not focus on something his mind would head off to imagining his counterpart, eating his food, off his plates, sitting at table with his family. Had he not been famished, the thought might have made him lose his appetite. As it was, he ate as slowly as he could bear to to best relish it all. House meals at Grimmauld Place had grown paltry in the days of hoarding leading up to the feast. The previous day the meals were so unsatisfying that Snape suspected Hermione had simply magicked them into being out of desperation.
The object of his suspicion knocked on the open door just then, her other hand buried in her pocket, looking strangely guilty. "There's more to eat," she said. "You should have seconds." She hesitated, but started forward while drawing her hand out. "And I brought you-"
"What are you doing up here?" Harry asked, slipping in from behind.
Hermione put her hand back away. Something square glittered in her grip before she released it to gesture. "I'm just telling Mr. Snape there is plenty of food tonight."
"He can figure that out for himself," Harry stated flatly.
Hermione shrugged broadly. "What are you doing up here?"
"I want to talk to Snape. Shut the door."
"Can I stay?" Hermione asked, clearly challenging.
"Yeah, okay." Harry pulled over a battered chair and turned it backward before straddling it. Facing Snape, he said, "Ravenclaw's diadem. Do you know where it is?"
Snape shook his head while he resumed eating.
"I don't believe you," Harry stated.
Snape stared at him for effect. "I can only guess, and those guesses will waste your time and patience, I am certain." When Harry rested his chin on his hands curled around the chair back, Snape added, "I would tell you if I knew."
"I was going to check the library," Hermione reassured Harry. "Just haven't had a chance."
"You think that will work?" Harry mocked.
"Yes, why not?" Huffy, she went to the door. To Snape she said, "You should come downstairs to eat."
When she was gone, Harry grumbled in annoyance. Between nibbles on the paltry but tender meat between the wing bones, Snape said, "May I offer you some advice, which you are dearly in need of?"
"I doubt it will help," Harry mumbled. "But you can try."
Snape set his empty plate aside. "You are misusing your people. Ms. Granger should have no task but researching what you seek. She is singularly suited for that task and she must not be distracted from it."
"But we need to eat," Harry said, standing up and putting the chair aside.
"Others can procure food."
"Not as well."
"That does not matter; they can do it."
"An army marches on its stomach," Harry quoted, sounding miffed and defensive.
"This one will falter for lack of information long before it starves bodily." Snape bundled up his napkin and considered his decimated plate.
"There is more food," Harry grudgingly muttered.
Unable to deny that idea, Snape followed Harry downstairs. Perhaps because he clearly accompanied Harry inside, the room disregarded Snape's entry. He eagerly helped himself to the copious leftovers and stood in the corner of the room to observe.
Lavender sat discussing the latest rumors with Ginny, who was the only one to frequently eye Snape as he stood in the shadow of the curtain, relishing filling his stomach.
A bang! brought silence to the room. Harry, closest to the door, was the first one out of it to investigate. Snape set his plate down and reached futilely for his wand, cursing under his breath and balling his empty fists at his side. Ginny stopped in the doorway, gesturing authoritatively for the others to remain where they were. Snape considered it a telling measure of his situation that he found reassurance in the confident way she held her wand.
The others returned, carrying what appeared to be a dead goose sporting a red ribbon around its neck.
"What is it?" Someone asked, sounding appalled.
"A message, I presume," Harry said, tossing the animal aside. "And not from a friend." By the limp way it moved and the lack of rotted scent, it must have just died.
When it hit the floor, something golden rolled free of it—rolled unpredictably, like an egg.
"Don't touch it," Snape and Harry both said when a few bystanders moved toward it.
Harry bent over the egg, wand at ready, and nudged it with his foot.
"What is it, do you think?" Harry asked.
At this, it cracked open, making him twitch back. Clattering started and a ticker tape emerged straight up from the egg, fell over itself and piled onto the floor. When it abruptly stopped, Harry bent and ran his fingers along it to read the flowing writing stamped out in holes on it.
"It really is a message," he said. He ran his fingers along it and found the beginning. "You have something I want. I have something you want. I propose an equitable trade: Sword of Gryffindor for Hufflepuff's Cup. Meet at the Three Broomsticks at 9pm tonight. Draco Malfoy." Harry dropped the tape.
Hermione said, "You DID get the cup?"
"Not exactly," Harry said. "Or I wasn't certain I had, but I guess I did. Turned out there were a thousand cups or so. Every time I took some, more appeared. I took as many as I could and stashed them away somewhere safe to see what happened." He grinned. "Apparently the real one is in the stash."
He went to the bookshelf and hunted around behind the books, eventually pulling out a golden cup.
"Is that it?" Ginny blurted hungrily.
Harry shook his head. "Odds are not. It's just one I grabbed from the stash to show everyone. The spell ran its course after creating like a million of them. They nearly crushed me." He held it up. "Merry Christmas."
Hermione took the cup from him and held it this way and that. "We'll have to come up with a way to find the real one. Where are they?"
Harry did not glance around, he just said quietly. "I'll tell you later."
Hermione nodded like one suddenly remembering herself. "But someone could go trade this one for the sword," she said.
Harry peered at the cup. "I could go do that."
"Not wise," Snape intoned, stepping out of the shadows of the tight-knit gathering, but not so close as to seem challenging. "It is undoubtedly a trap."
"So?" Harry asked, scoffing.
"So? That is the best you can offer in return?" Snape mocked. He had an uneasy sense of altering things, of standing where he could force the rivulets of time and event to diverge off course. Without him there, the young man would go off and do as he wished. He breathed deeply, plunging in. "It is undoubtedly a trap specifically for you, that makes it imperative you do not go. You can always rescue others later, but who will be there to rescue you?"
Harry frowned while thinking. Hermione said, "I'll go."
Harry turned to her. "No. You research how to tell the cups apart and how to find the diadem. I don't want you doing anything else. Let someone else take care of everything else; you do only that, okay? From now on."
Hermione, ever pragmatic, did not argue, just frowned, appearing strained. Ginny, beside her, said, "I'll go. I can deal with the little blonde snake."
"I'll go with you," Neville said. "You shouldn't go alone. We'll take the cloak."
Harry glanced between his friends, hesitating. Snape took advantage of this and said, "The cloak can only hide one of you and both of you are wanted. No one will be expecting me, so I should go, and the other of you can use the cloak." He glared directly at Harry. "That will be far safer."
Harry stared back, but actually focused beyond Snape. The room stood in stillness, barely breathing, waiting for Harry.
Snape calmly added, "I believe I can best handle Mr. Malfoy, having been in a position of authority over him for years." He held up his hands. "But it is your decision, Potter."
"I don't trust you," Harry said, stepping close to get right in his face. The others backed up to make way. Snape noted that he had to rock up on his toes to get to his own Harry's height. "Realize that if anything happens to my friends because of you I will take it out on your skin as slowly and painfully as I can muster the patience to do so."
The threat felt like half show, half real. Snape nodded. "I would expect nothing less," he quipped.
Harry searched his face seconds longer. "Fine." He spun and glanced between his friends. "You two draw straws . . . Or maybe not. Neville you tend to get too nervous around Snape. Maybe you should go, Ginny. Or maybe I should, after all." He spun on Snape again, looking for a reaction.
"And if I refuse because I can see you RE-injured your shoulder . . . ?" Snape innocently asked.
Harry colored. A few in the room burst into questions and the rest looked at the floor. Harry overrode them. "I'm fine. I'm just bruised from having ten thousand cups fall on top of me is all."
Lupin, previously unnoticed in the corner, said in a weak voice, "Then perhaps you should be on the injured list and stay, as Severus suggests."
"Whose side are you on?" Harry demanded of him.
Sounding inordinately tired, Lupin replied, "I'm on the side that argues that the Prophecized One should be reserved for the key task only he can complete." Lupin shuffled forward and leaned heavily on a chair back, appearing small inside the thick robes he wore against the chill. "Harry, you have much to do yet. No one is going to accuse you of shirking. I know you dislike sending your friends off into danger, and that's noble, but they want to do it for you because they can't finish this in the end like you can."
"However I'm supposed to do that," Harry grumbled.
Lupin tilted his head back and forth. "One thing at a time. The critical thing is that only you can do this last thing. Everyone here knows that and is willing to sacrifice so you can reach that point. Even Severus here is, which just shows how important it is."
Snape shot him a look of dismay, but let it go. That had not exactly been his thinking. His thinking had more been along the lines of shaking his oppressive helplessness with a bout of recklessness. And he was tired of being trapped in his dead enemy's house.
Harry paced in the space left by the group watching him. "Given it's a holiday, it should be a temporary armistice day. So, Ginny, why don't you go. I think it should be safe enough. I hope." He sounded bold at the beginning, but by the end his eyes rested sadly on her.
Snape pointed out, "I'll need my wand. At least for the evening."
Glaring at him, Harry gestured for Hermione to give it up to him. It gave Snape less reassurance than he wished as he slipped it into his pocket.
Harry puffed up then and marched from the room, pausing only to say to Snape, "Bring her back safely or I'll kill you." He did not look back to see Snape's reaction.
Snape found Ginny as the crowd dissipated. "We don't have much time," he said.
Without a word, she went to get ready, returning minutes later bundled warmly and carrying two broomsticks. Snape joined her at the map on the wall which marked the paths people had taken last to travel to various common places. Circles and colored arrows marked landing areas and Apparition points. She said, "We should start southward, to throw them off. I know we don't have much time to get there by nine, but can't risk getting predictable."
With his eyes, Snape followed the course she plotted and nodded, eager to leave this place for any reason. Ginny found him a cloak, flying gloves and a scarf from a trunk by the door. She carefully brushed off the dark plaid scarf before handing it over, muttering sadly, "We didn't use to have so much extra stuff, but . . . we've lost so many people . . ."
Snape wrapped the anonymous dead man's scarf twice around his neck and tucked it firmly into his robes. Harry stepped over and gave Ginny a kiss. "Be careful," he said to her before striding away again, ignoring Snape.
"Ready, sir?" Ginny asked, eyes far away and determined.
They Apparated, then flew some before Apparating again and flying some more. Snape took charge of the last Apparition, taking them into Shrewsthorpe in the fields behind his house. He stopped there, transfixed by the gaping windows and bowing roof marred with holes.
"Sir?" Ginny prompted as she rewrapped her scarf in preparation for flight.
Snape dropped his borrowed broom while saying "Up," and let it bump his leg as it hovered beside him. He resisted going. He wanted to simply step back into his house the way it should be. Ginny was already twenty feet in the air. Keeping his face averted from the decaying visage of his house, Snape followed.
They landed on the hilltop overlooking Hogsmeade. The rutted street was busy enough that the snow had been trampled down to mud and warm light shown from every window.
"Everyone's taking advantage to get out," Ginny said, tossing the cloak over her head and disappearing.
Snape led the way down to the alley beside the Three Broomsticks. The scent of stew and rotting beer permeated even the snow-covered ground. Snape could track Ginny by her footsteps in the snow and he made a half-blind grab for her shoulder when he heard cries of dismay from the roadway ahead. Ginny willingly backed up behind him as the walls iced over more and gloom descended on them. Snape pushed his charge behind him, between stacks of empty barrels. "Don't move, no matter what happens," he commanded, then released her.
Torn wraiths flickered by on the road outside their hiding place and for a moment, dread released them. But the gloom crept back and hooded shadows peered around the crumbling brick edge of the building.
Snape looked away, not wanting to look inside the approaching tattered hood. The Dementor both creaked and slithered closer. Snape could not run because there was no point in running. There was nowhere safe to run to. This place, this world, was an endless kingdom of doom and chaos. There would never be any real hope here. His bright house and wife and son were nothing but a cruel dream. He would never see them again. His Harry would never return and he would be trapped in this place forever, lucky only to survive, or perhaps not so lucky.
Snape clutched his wand, yearning to cast a Patronus to send the demon off, but it increased the risk of their being investigated. He ducked low, trying to shut down the flow of despair, the flow of all his emotion, in the hopes it would lose interest. The earthy, decayed odor of the Dementor's ragged robes wafted around them as a hooded head passed close, sniffing like a predator. The air hummed with perverted joy at his pain. He worried for Ginny crouched nearby and ducked lower into his arms trying to find any small hope inside himself, but there was nothing but bleak expectation of permanent emptiness. Torn robes brushed Snape like dried leaves one came so close, and then a whistle sounded and the Dementor jerked back and turned. The whistle repeated and the ghastly pair slipped away without a sound.
Snape rested his head more firmly in the crook of his arm, leaning heavily on a barrel, trying to school his rampant grief. He could not grab hold of it, let alone wrestle it out of the way, it permeated every fiber of his being.
"Sir?" Ginny said, then fell silent. By the sound of it, she took a seat on one of the barrels to wait. She sounded like she fared better than he, which annoyed him as much as it relieved him.
He had a task; Snape reminded himself from the absolute darkness of his robes. If he had a task, there was hope. He had lived exactly this way for an awfully long time, and it should be possible to return to that mentality, but somehow the past made it harder, not easier.
Snape raised his head, rubbing his forehead, trying to focus on the task, the purpose.
"Sir?" the invisible voice came from beside him again.
Snape stared down at the barrel he leaned on. Ice crystals had formed on the lid. Sharp, clear shards of the kind that accompanied Harry through the Planes. Harry would come. He had to come. Snape straightened, grabbing at that hope like a lifeline.
Sounding apologetic Ginny said, "I was about to scare the Dementor away even though I knew I wasn't supposed to reveal that I was here. They didn't seem to notice me under here."
"No, you did right," Snape managed to say, voice as unsteady as his heart.
Even though they were late, Snape took care putting on a disguise. Just taking any action released him from the debilitating effects of his grief, which made the spells work better, so he did them over twice. He bolstered his shoulders and neck with added muscle, greyed his hair, and fattened his face, spells minor enough that they might go undetected by a disguise-revealing device.
"Let's go. Stay close to me so I do not have to move as one being trailed. If Dementors cannot see you, that is not an ordinary invisibility cloak, but I do not want to push our luck, as thin as it is."
They transformed their brooms into barrels, stacked them with the others, tossed snow on them, and walked around to the front door.
As expected, the pub was full of revelers making the most of the holiday. Snape scanned the room for Malfoy but did not see him. He moved to the bar for a butterbeer and asked Madam Rosmerta if she had any rooms free for the night, just to get a chance to look at the register when she pulled it out. She did not need to; she nodded towards the empty key rack behind her and said, "Nah, been booked solid since a month ago."
Snape took his drink and stood against the wall with it, careful to always leave space for his companion to follow without bumping anyone.
The bright, borderline cheery voices filling the air were a balm and Snape began to feel himself again. He sipped his drink for show and froze when he heard one voice that vibrated through him as if his heart were a drum struck by a mallet. Snape peered desperately around the smoky haze. He found his mark with difficulty because her back was turned and her hair was different. She sat at a table with her officemates and her boss. The person beside her got up and disappeared down the corridor where the toilets were. Snape could take the chair—if only until her companion returned and demanded it back. It would be something, even as small as it was.
Snape began to move without thinking, drawn, then hesitated. In the end, the decision was made for him. The side door down the corridor beside the bar banged open and figures in Death Eater hoods slipped inside, wands in hand, but lowered. Snape slipped over to the seat and moved it closer to Candide to make room for his transparent shadow to crouch beside.
Candide turned to him in amused surprise. "Hello?"
"Greetings," Snape intoned, feeling strangely at ease.
"You look familiar," Candide's boss said.
Snape drew his gaze away from Candide's thinner than expected face and introduced himself. "Phineus Polstar, I used to play for the Wasps." He was saved from having to worry if this man were an ardent fan who would see through this lie by the room falling silent as the Death Eaters spread through the room.
Candide started and moved as if to stand. Snape leaned close. "Doing anything at all will get you singled out," he hissed at her before backing up and putting on a grin. "Someday we'll be playing Quidditch again," he said, giving a mock toast before pretending to just then notice the invaders.
Ginny bumped his leg as she crawled fully under the table and near disaster happened— The man on Snape's right shuffled his feet and ducked slightly to look under at what had brushed him. Snape leaned closer to Candide to say, "Just stay calm," but it was really an excuse to move his legs and give Ginny more room. His grim humor suspected she was debating which was worse: hugging his shins like she was or giving herself up. The man thankfully decided to ignore what was under the table and his movement went unnoticed, but it was dumb luck.
The room fell utterly still as the hooded but unmasked figures moved through, gazing challengingly at everyone in turn. Snarling at some for no reason, shoving others. They circled the room using their bulk to bully their way around, then as quick as they had arrived, they were gone.
Beside him, Candide deflated in relief. "They had to ruin a decent night, didn't they?" she complained. She sucked at her beer and said, "Thanks," to Snape. "You'd think I'd be used to them."
"You should never get used to them."
Candide's friend returned and cleared his throat. Snape stood, in a rude, body blocking way that gave Ginny space to get out too.
"'Scuse me," the man snipped in false pleasantry.
Snape bowed to both of them with overdone graciousness and with one fleeting glance back at Candide, returned to the wall to watch the room where his back was protected.
Over at the bar, Rosmerta, with suspiciously mechanical movements, handed a key from below the bar to a figure that had just entered, hooded as well, but smaller than the others who had just departed. Snape turned away before the figure could look his way, trusting that with his alterations he would not be recognized from behind. When the figure moved off, Snape whispered to his shadow, "Follow him."
He himself wandered casually behind examining the sporting photographs lining the corridor that led to the alley and the stairs to the rooms. At the foot of the stairs, he heard a disembodied voice breathless with excitement say, "Room four."
Snape led the way up the stairs and intending to not give Draco any time to prepare, burst into the room. He caught the young man exchanging his scratchy Death Eater robes for a richly woven dressing gown. Snape knocked the young man's wand away and snagged it for safe keeping. He then moved to a chair and sat crosslegged, as if he owned the place. "There, now we can talk."
Draco stood still with his robes half over his head. He came to himself and tossed them aside and slipped on the gown.
Miffed, Draco asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I have what you want."
Draco blinked at that.
Snape had no interest in giving away who he was working with. "Your message was ridiculously easy to intercept."
Draco fell relieved. "Then at least you understand that I have to get the cup back. You really have it?"
Snape reached into his pocket and gave Draco a glance of just the lip before securing it away again. "But I want the sword."
Draco paced while straightening his collar. He stopped before the free-standing, snake-edged mirror to brush his hair in place before facing Snape again. "Why? What good will it do you? You certainly aren't a Gryffindor, so it will be of no use."
Finding snootiness from somewhere, Snape replied, "The cup is nothing to me, but with the sword I can torment others. With the cup I can only torment you, which is a paltry game, really."
"You're awfully confident for a man literally everyone would like to kill."
Airily, he said, "No one seems to actually have the time to bother. Other priorities, I suppose." They stared at each other. "The sword?" Snape demanded.
With a rumble on the rough wooden floor, Draco pulled a trunk over from under the bed and opened it from his side of the table. He pulled the sword out of it and set it out. It was tethered with a chain to the trunk. Draco re-closed the trunk and gestured that Snape could inspect the sword.
Snape inspected Draco instead, looking for any deception, but there did not seem to be any, just wariness and certainty that he could pull off this transaction and that once he did, all would be well again. The sword certainly looked authentic to Snape. He touched it, but it felt like ordinary cold metal.
"The cup," Draco demanded.
Snape set the cup on his side of the table. Draco waved a spell at it, the complex motion of which Snape committed to memory as best he could.
"That's not the cup! That's a copy," Draco snarled.
"Is it, then?" Snape said, laying a hand on the sword hilt, wondering if he could break the thin, decorative-looking chain. Draco was wandless, so he had an advantage there. "Understandable, you must admit, given how very many cups there were in your secret cellar."
Draco kicked the trunk and an answering thud echoed from inside it. A second later a Bludger broke free and flew straight through the flimsy plastered wall, dragging the sword behind it and painfully out of Snape's grasp. Snape ran to the window to look out, feeling a breeze behind him as Ginny joined him there.
"Ha!" Draco said. "You think I'm that stupid."
"Where is it going?" Snape asked, Ginny perhaps, but she was smart enough not to answer. The Bludger had been heading in a straight line, toward the castle. And if it were a Hogwart's Bludger, it might just head to the changing rooms where it was normally stored . . . eventually, anyway.
Snape ran for the door, Draco yelling, "Give me my wand back!" followed them out.
Two sets of feet pounded down the stairs, Snape tried to get the two of them in sync so they would sound like one. They burst out the side door of the pub into the alley and, as if trained to it, efficiently transformed their brooms back to normal. Shouting followed them out of the pub and running feet approached from several sides. Snape pointed straight up and took off, hoping Ginny would follow. He got a glimpse of her feet poking out from the fluttering cloak before the night sky blotted everything out, and knowing she followed, he accelerated for the school grounds.
Snape slowed high over the lake, something had disturbed the pristine snowy surface. A bursting line in the shape of a comet bisected the plane of icy snow and at the end of it, cracks radiated out. Snape turned and dropped down to hover over that spot. He flew farther out where the ice was thicker and landed. Another set of footprints appeared beside him.
"Why not just Accio it out?" A voice asked.
"That particular sword will not come that way. But you may try if you wish."
She did so, but nothing happened. A party of Death Eaters gathered on the shore near the village. They were slow to muster and organize and he must put that time to good use. He put a featherlight charm on Ginny and had her do the same to him. Then they both slip-walked over the crunching ice to where the cracks started.
"Stay back. I'm lighter," Ginny said, and started inside the real danger zone.
Snape said, "Give me the cloak. You do not wish to lose that."
She bundled it up and tossed it to him. He wrapped it around his neck like a scarf. More shouting drifted over the flat surface. "They're coming," Ginny said.
"They are in trouble if they come that way. The ice is thinnest near the village where the sewers dump in."
Ginny, who was on all fours, inspecting the hole said, "Oh, wonderful." Her weight caused the ice to darken and water to slip over the top. She backed up by crawling and began quickly removing her cloak.
"What are you doing?" Snape asked.
"Fetching the sword. I think I can see it. Does it glow?"
"Not that I know of, but it is hardly ordinary, and you are a Gryffindor. Perhaps it wants you to fetch it." Snape looked up at the approaching mob of Death Eaters. A spell sizzled across the ice but Snape had plenty of time for a Counter. "Perhaps you should hurry."
Ginny was already stripped down to her shirt and trousers. She slipped off her shoes with vicious tugs and tossed them toward Snape's feet. With just one deep breath, and perhaps before she could think too hard about her actions, she dove in, shattering the ice more. She bobbed to the surface an instant later, gasping like a death rattle and flailing. "Merlin! It's cold!" She grabbed for the edge of the ice, but it simply broke it off to float about her in jagged pieces.
Snape used Draco's wand in his other hand to fetch her clothes closer to him out of reach of the spreading stain of water.
"Do hurry," Snape said.
"You think I'm not?" she weakly gasped, her eyes tightly closed as freezing lake water rivuletted from her hair over her face. With great effort and a thrown back head, she took three hoarse breaths, and ducked under the liquid slate surface again.
She was gone much longer this time. Their pursuers split up; some came over the ice and others came along the edge of the lake to get closer. Once they were tossing spells from both of those angles, defense would become difficult if not impossible.
Snape was just about to Accio Ginny herself from the depths when something burst from the water—a pale hand clutching a sword. The sword and hand crashed down on the ice as Ginny emerged. Snape had to back up as the surface gave way across a large area, staining with water and tilting ominously. One crack extended to the nearest pursuers taking the short path and cursing sounded as they fell through in the shallows.
With a careful whip charm, Snape dragged Ginny from the hole and up a thicker sheet of ice that groaned under her weight, but did not crack more. On his knees, Snape backed up to firmer ice, pulling her and her dry clothes along. She had gone limp beyond clutching the sword but because of the cold he had more time to revive her, so he moved carefully, rather than rush and potentially send them both into the freezing arms of the lake.
Their pursuers were extricating themselves from the water and coming around where the ice was sounder. A whistle sounded and Dementors emerged from the bare-limbed forest and floated along the snow down to the ice. The gathered Death Eaters stumbled back to let them pass. Snape tugged the chilled Ginny close and tossed the cloak over both of them.
Ginny's shallow breath reassuringly moved over Snape's neck, and she struggled blindly until he whispered that she should stop. Under the invisibility cloak, he unfolded her woolen cloak and helped her slip it around her neck, resisting simply wrapping her in his arms as would be reasonable, but completely out of character. She began to shiver so violently her teeth rattled together. In the small space, her jumper and robes could only be bundled around her from the front. Her shirt began freezing solid.
Above them the Dementors swirled in confusion. Their pursuers had found a boat and were pushing it out onto the loose ice chunks.
"We have to make a dash for it," Snape said.
Ginny nodded amidst her violent shaking. Even in the dim light, her face was ghostly pale.
"Can you keep ahold of the sword?" Snape gently asked. "I'm not certain it will accept me."
She nodded again and used her robes to protect her hand to grab hold of the blade with one hand while tangling the fingers of her other hand in the guard on the hilt.
"Now," Snape warned her. He lifted the cloak behind him and Accioed the broomsticks over. The brooms slammed into them with stinging speed. Ignoring the pain, Snape bundled them together, and hovered them with a painful jerk on his shoulder. With one arm under Ginny, and one leg barely over the broomsticks, he launched the two of them into the air with bone jarring acceleration, and skin freezing speed.
They flew so fast, the grief of the Dementors merely brushed them as they blasted up through them. But the creatures were in pursuit immediately, and Snape had no hand to spare for a spell. His cold hand clad in a worn borrowed glove, cramped from holding two broomsticks and his other arm could barely hold Ginny over the the wood and his lap and she had no hand to hold on either.
Ginny began to slip. Snape halted their rise fast enough that for an instant she became weightless. He adjusted his leg grip on the paired brooms and while keeping a grip on her, better caught her in front of him so they were flying normally. Her loose robes and jumper fluttered in the wind as they gained speed. Snape was not going to fly far; they would be far better off Apparating away despite how easily it could be traced. He landed them in the forest beyond the Apparition block and took her away in a sidealong.
"Quickly now," he said, unfolding her jumper so she could don it, but she was too numb to move and she refused to release the sword.
A noise made the both jump, so Snape Apparated them away again. In the alley of a small Muggle town Ginny swayed while he slipped her robes over her head and arms, and tied her jumper around her neck.
"We need to fly a little bit more to make it hard to trace. Can you make it?"
Her lips were blue, but she nodded.
"Never mind; let's just get you home."
She nodded again.
Snape took them through two more Apparition rounds before landing them on the stoop at Grimmauld place, where he had to hold her up to keep her from falling. The door opened immediately and many hands came out to take Ginny inside.
In the painful light of the usually dim front hall, Harry got a look at Ginny and demanded of Snape, "What happened?" He grabbed hold of Snape's robe front with his fist.
Snape grabbed Harry's arm in self defense. "What did not happen? would be an easier question to answer."
Ginny struggled with her arms caught inside her robes. "I have it. I have it," she muttered deliriously. Harry paused in his attack on Snape to hear her out.
Her struggles loosened her robes by raising them up enough for her to toss them back like a large hood. She held the sword out for Harry, who, stunned at the glittering, glowing sight, still held Snape.
"You have the sword," Harry whispered, finally letting go to take it by the hilt. He peered along its length while giving her a one-armed hug. "You're brilliant, Ginny. But you're soaked and freezing!"
She laughed with effort. "Well, yes . . ."
Harry released his awkward hug reluctantly as Hermione and others hustled Ginny away for a hot bath. The hallway fell quiet and Snape exhaled. "I don't think she is seriously injured. She just jumped into the lake for the sword."
Harry rested the point on the floor, looking like a statue of a knight. "The lake in Hogsmeade? It must be ice right now."
"Most definitely."
"How did it end up there?"
"Long story. The short explanation would be something like: it wanted to be there since its magic requires that it be earned." Snape felt in his pockets. "I lost the cup. But Draco believed it wasn't the real one. Let's hope he was correct and that we did not fool each other."
"Odds are it wasn't."
Snape smiled faintly, which felt good. "And better yet, I saw the spell he used to test it."
Harry's eyes glowed. "Excellent," he breathed. "Things may finally be turning around for us." He squinted up the darkened stairs, where the sounds of hurried bath preparations issued forth. Then he looked down at the sword he held, biting his lower lip while adjusting to grasp it in a proper two-handed grip. "It's her sword now, I suppose. She earned it."
"Perhaps," Snape softly said and felt compelled to add, "I suspect it will honor your will as well."
Harry slipped one hand free of the guard and stepped lightly forward to thrust out in the direction of the stairs, blade flashing unnaturally in the low light. He smiled. "Yes, I suppose it will. But it is hers." He stared along the blade's length again and as though sharply compelled, said, "And I should take it up to her."
He ran lightly up the stairs, leaving Snape alone to worry that he had changed something significant.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Boxing Day, Tonks rested her head heavily on her palm as she filled out a report. She took extra time now filling out reports since going out on duty with her magic unpredictable just strained her nerves more and they were close to fraying away to nothing.
Rogan stood at the log book, going over assignment slips. He scooped one off the floor and said, "Disturbance at the warehouse in Scunthorpe . . . did someone take this one?"
"I did," Tonks lied without hesitation.
Rogan hesitated. "You took it alone?"
As reluctant as she was to get involved in what Snape planned, the lies flowed easily. "It was just an old charm hanging around confusing the Muggles. Even I could handle it."
Rogan tossed the slip in the finished box and went on with sorting.
Tonks waited ten minutes, just long enough to deflect suspicion. She moved without will, watching herself travel along a path she despised but could not change. "I'm going to grab a late dinner," she said to Rogan.
He gently said, "Good idea."
She slipped her gloves on before Apparating away. His sympathy did not help. They were all worried about her and at this point did not bother to hide it, nor could they hide the accommodations they were making for her.
She Apparated to the perimeter of the site where they had found the rogue elf guarding what must have been a Durumulna meeting place. As she walked closer in, wand barely glowing for light, she hoped the call was a real one as much as she hoped her lie was closer to the truth.
Her detection spells revealed someone was inside. Tossing out the glow on her wand, she spelled and slipped inside the back door. Taking positive action to help Harry, even as morally dubious as the action was, made her feel much stronger and her magic worked as it should, propelling her more surely along this bad path. She changed her face and hair and clothes to mottled grey and tip-toed along the rows of metal racks. As usually happened when she got confident, her clumsiness got the better of her and her sleeve caught a long metal rod. But fortunately, it rattled on the far end, not near her. A spell shot out of the darkness, along the parallel row, and Tonks immediately shot a chain binding where the spell had originated. Someone grunted followed by the rattle of heavy links hitting the cement floor.
Tonks scuffed her feet before approaching, overcome by a rabid and paranoid tumble of thoughts about how she should proceed. She changed her appearance again, to make herself taller and to make it look like she wore a black mask. She marched over to the victim with unreal confidence. By the light of her Lumos, she examined the young man, probably mid twenties, shiny dark hair sticking straight off his head. He tried to spit on her and she found herself laughing out of nerves at what she was about to do.
The stranger fell silent and fearfully watchful; her laughter echoing around the warehouse did sound unnerving.
Tonks stood above the perpetrator, wand aimed, wondering how in the world she could tell if the man harbored any guilt. Snape may be able to do that with a man pinned under his spell like this, but she certainly could not. What did he expect her to do, take him out for drinks and chat him up until he opened up a bit?
A large dog broke out into fierce barking just on on the other side of the metal wall, making them both jump. Tonks scoffed and quelled the adrenaline quake coursing in her limbs. With a silencing and a hooding spell, she took her charge away, but not directly away. There could be no traceable trail. Fortunately, she knew how to do this without thought given how many times she had worked the other side of the procedure.
Tonks propped her hands on her hips and surveyed the scene. She had the ramshackle room soundproofed, the house propped up somewhat because it looked beyond ready to collapse, and the man bound with ample water in reach. The anonymous wizard had sat, half sentient due to repeated spells, watching her make the preparations for his prison. His puzzled and worried brow never relaxed.
Yup, Tonks had thought to herself more than once, you count on us playing fair, but not this time, I'm afraid.
She resisted wishing an honest good luck to the young man as she departed, wondering how long his confused gaze would haunt her memory. Maybe it would not matter, she thought as she put a snowshoe charm on her feet to leave no trail out of the ruin of the Shrieking Shack. Maybe Snape would wipe this all the next time they met. She kind of hoped he would because just the chance gave her a depressing kind of hope for herself.
Author's Notes:
Well, this almost happened before but I managed to prevent it by making a super-long chapter, but that wasn't feasible this time, so the previewed scene did not get in. It's been pushed into the next one. So, you get another preview scene. A two-fer.
On another note, I have to give the betas their due. They work really hard and man the last two chapters have really needed some serious help. I don't know where I'd be without you guys. A million, gazillion thanks!!!
Next: Chapter 33
"I think there is more to it than that," Ginny said, but stopped because Harry's letter had been clear on how little she should say, to anyone. Growing angry, she said, "I wonder if the Prophet isn't correct, that you aren't happier with him gone."
"Is that what you think?" Snape asked, putting his hand in his pocket, which was strangely full.
Thinking he was going for his wand, Ginny pulled hers out. "I beat you in a duel once, I can do it again."
Chapter 33 — Ace in the Hole
Harry paced across stone cage, turning in one corner on a toe before marching three steps to the opposite corner and turning again. His thoughts flitted onto a notion and off again without landing anywhere solid for long. Keeping his thoughts unraveled seemed to be the best way of avoiding plots involving dark, sniveling servants. It did not make him feel more like himself, but it did keep him from feeling like someone else entirely.
Harry tired of the repetition and stopped, breathing hard in the poor air, staring down at his meager excuse for a bed. Shoving the blankets aside he pulled out his most recent letters again and wished for more news, wished for a newspaper, even one full of Skeeter's lies, anything to tell him what was happening. Neville, perhaps because he had trouble thinking of things to write about, tended to ramble on about trivial things, which to Harry served as welcome news. Harry read his letter again. Madam Malkin's shop had been cursed so that their stock of wizard cloaks had turned pink and all their witches' robe's had grown needle spikes all over. And a gang of broom riders in leather cloaks had been reported harassing the elderly coven of the Solstice Sisters during their moonrise rituals just before Christmas.
When Harry started to think that this was a pathetic use of such an organization, and that there were much more profitable ventures, he put the letters away and went back to pacing.
The rhythmic padding of his footsteps became maddening rather than meditative, so he stopped again. His eyes felt heavy and that gave him hope for some good, solid time-killing sleep.
The blankets piled on his bench were tattered and full of holes. Harry methodically picked each one up and held it by the corners, turning the next one so the holes would not line up and increase the draft. Finished with this neatening, he climbed under the scratchy things and Occluded his mind, something he had been unable to do previous days.
Harry curled up more for warmth, finding the bench strangely comfortable, as if he floated above it on a softer, cradling bed. His sense of where he was drifted loose as if sucked away by the security of the weighty blankets and he sank into a blissful, dead sleep.
- 888 -
Mrs. Weasley called up the worn and rickety staircase for her daughter to come down. Ginny emerged from upstairs, one deliberate step at a time, nose in a book entitled Barrier Blocking Basics.
Mrs. Weasley, expression pleased and anticipative, held out a letter from Harry. It had two decorative, swirling postmarks on it: one from the prison showing a tower island with water flowing around it and one from the French magical post office showing a woman in a limp pointed cap, her hair flowing into the water of the mark beside her.
Ginny took the letter and turned back to the stairs.
"Oh, read it here dear. I'd like to hear it."
Ginny groaned and tore open the envelope. It was a good thing she read ahead two lines before reading aloud.
Dear Ginny,
Do not discuss this letter with anyone else, if you would, unless you have no other choice. I have something that is very difficult to tell you at the best of times and would be hard to explain even if I did not have to write it in the white space between the lines of another letter.
"Um, it's kinda personal, mum," Ginny said, shuffling away with the missive folded over her thumbs for safety.
Her mother had waved the dishes to begin rinsing and had to shout over the sound of the water. "I'm surprised he did that given the censors."
"Me too," Ginny said, heart thrumming fast. She slipped away to her room and put an Imperturbable charm on the door and the window before sitting where the sunlight made reading easier. Lack of light was not the problem in understanding the letter. She quickly began to wonder if Harry had lost his grip.
There exists another place, like ours, but where things have been going along much better, much happier—my parents aren't dead there, for example. In this other place there is another Trelawney with a habit of telling people things they maybe don't want to hear. She's been telling people things, and it isn't supposed to be for us, but I fear it has become ours. I'm not sure if this is my fault. I suppose it has to be since it was me who carried these words from that place to this one.
Anyway, she warns of a wizard (not a particularly nice one), taking command of idle dark servants, and peace being shattered. I don't want to believe this warning. Trouble is, I'm not feeling so stellar in here in the company of You-Know-Who's old friends. Actually, that's not quite true. Sometimes I feel very good here, and that's worse. I rarely feel much myself at all now, and so I thought I should write and tell you, just in case. See, the warning says that only the "seventh son who is not" can properly bring an end to the bad goings on and overcome this not particularly nice wizard.
I'm sorry I can't be more straightforward. I hope this letter doesn't take too long to reach you. Please stoke your fire with it, if you would.
Harry
Ginny read the letter again, faster, then again slower. Was he really implying that he was the dark wizard who needed warning about? Was he really talking about a prophecy? What was this about his parents being alive still? She had about a hundred questions and no way to ask them. She stared at the walls of her room, not seeing them, before starting for the door, letter in hand.
Huffing, she stopped and tossed it on the fire after one more quick read-thru.
Downstairs she looked around for her father. "Where's dad?"
Her mother did not look up from where she was bent over a plate that refused to mend, even with a spell. Ginny suspected it had been broken one time too many for even magic to repair. "Outside in the shed, dear."
Ginny headed out the door, ignoring her mother saying, "He said he was working on a surprise and didn't want to be interrupted."
At the shed, she knocked and did not wait for a summons. The wind blew brisk and cold and she wished she had put on a scarf, at least, before marching out of the house. She slipped inside the shed where her father was quickly trying to hide a rounded metal box surrounded by piles of gears and wires and curved metal pieces.
"Yes?" He composed himself, but went on rambling too fast, "I don't have much time, I'm afraid. I thought I'd have this working before Christmas . . . just a little surprise, the Muggles are quite good at . . . well, spells don't work so well for bread . . . anyway, what is it?"
"You have to take me to talk to Harry." She spoke with clear, calm determination, holding her father's gaze through the steam her speech poured into her face.
He turned back to his project, giving up on hiding it. He held a little panel with buttons like "Stop", "Start", and "Timer" on printed on them; wires dangled off the back of it like thick hair. "That's not really possible, Ginny."
"Why not?"
"You have to apply for permission, or fill out rather a lot of paperwork, and really it is only immediate family or representation who are allowed outside of law enforcement."
He put down the little panel and picked up a tiny screw, which promptly flicked off his fingers onto the floor. He ducked under the little workbench and not seeing it, waved his wand, causing a hundred little screws to fly up and pummel the tabletop, mixing with the screws already there.
"Blasted," he muttered, then sighed.
Ginny crossed her arms against the cold air. "It's really important, Dad."
"Many things are really important."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "This is more important than everything else. Someone has to talk to Harry . . . I have to talk to Harry."
"People have been talking to Harry," he said in overly soothing tones. "I, myself, talked to him. Severus talked to him. His solicitor, even, had a meeting with him." He fell quiet at the last as if losing certainty.
Ginny crossed her arms. "But I haven't. And I don't trust the lot of you."
He shook his head and blew on his cupped fingers. "Well, I suppose I'll leave this for tomorrow." He stared at the disarray of pieces. "Doesn't look likely to be finished today, anyhow."
"What is it?"
"It's, uh . . . don't spoil it for your mum . . . a breadmaking machine." Brightening, he said, "See, here's the paddle, it goes here, and it kneads all by itself and then bakes. Does everything. Really very clever."
It looked like a pile of shiny metal rubbish to Ginny. "What will it take to get you to listen to me?" she asked, disliking the squeak rising into her voice.
"I am listening to you, Pumpkin." He gestured that she should back out the door.
"Not very well," Ginny criticized, stalking to the house. At the door, she said, "If you were listening better, you'd take me to see Harry."
Mrs. Weasley opened the door for them, and closed it quickly behind them, pushing against a gust. Glancing from one face to the other, she asked, "What's this?"
"I need to go see Harry," Ginny insisted.
Confused, Mrs. Weasley said, "He's in that Caché de . . . well, he's in prison."
"I KNOW that," Ginny retorted. "If he weren't, I'd just pop off and go see him myself. I don't know why he's there. He hasn't done anything, but for some reason, Dad, and others, thought it a brilliant plan." She exhaled hard, wishing she could avoid falling back into arguing with them as a teen rather than an adult. It would help if they would actually treat her as an adult.
Mr. Weasley beat the snow off his winter cap and hung it up. Firmly, he said, "You can't go, Ginny. And that's final, I'm afraid."
Ginny had just returned to calm, but it broke with a long growl of frustration and to accompany that she had to stamp off. The stairs were good for this, given their hollow state and long history of others doing the same, which long since loosened all the nails.
Ginny paced her room, feeling trapped. She had to do something; she could not bear to just remain in place. She tugged the trunk down from her wardrobe without magic, so it would bang onto the floor more satisfactorily, opened it, and began filling it with the contents of the shelf behind the bed, including some old stuffed animals: a dragon, a griffin, a winged sheep that when its magic was new would sing her to sleep. The sight of them there in the deep box of the trunk depressed her, and besides she did not need them. She tossed them away onto the floor and ignored them.
She wanted to hurry to make a point, but decided, given the limited space in her un-magical trunk, to sort out and take only the nice clothes, her Auror study books, and her favorite photo album. Trunk latched, she looked about the shambles of the room and smirked at the mess that she did not care about now. She pulled out her warmest, oversized jumper and her heaviest cloak. The weight of them made her feel invulnerable.
Ginny grabbed her broom up from where it stood propped on the wardrobe and was prying open the window while standing on the cracked lid of another trunk when a knock came on the door.
"Yeah?" she asked rudely while working at unjamming the crooked window.
Her mother opened the door. "Ginny dear, what are you doing?"
Ginny paused to come up with something better, but in the end just mockingly said, "I'm leaving?" The air blowing in took a bitter bite of her exposed fingers, making her grateful to find her old Quidditch practice gloves in the pocket of her cloak.
The window sash finally yielded fully to a spell and flew open hard enough to crack a pane. Mrs. Weasley shuffled closer while taking in the state of the room.
Ginny repeated herself. "I'm not staying here with people who think it's fair sticking Harry in prison for his own good." Gesturing downstairs through the floor, she added, "He won't take me to see him. He doesn't even know when he's going to let him out. Harry's going mad and Dad doesn't care!"
"Harry's not going mad, dear, he used to live in a cupboard, I'm sure he's doing fine."
Ginny gaped at her mother. "I don't believe you said that. Isn't he always your favorite when he's here?" Ginny stopped to catch her breath from shouting—and sounding jealous. The prophecy felt like a heavy, sodden blanket over her, making it hard to get air. If it was Harry in the prophecy, what were they all going to do? Realizing that she held her broom, and her trunk was at her feet and the window wide open, she said, "I'm going now." She tore down the decorative sash from the curtain rod and tethered her hovered trunk to the broom with it, glad she would not have to use her scarf because she needed it to keep warm. "Don't tell Dad goodbye for me," she said as she climbed onto the window sill.
Mr. Weasley stepped into the doorway of the room and frowned deeply at the scene. Ginny wanted to stiffly wave goodbye, but needed both hands to get on her broomstick as it floated half out the window. She ducked under the sash and kicked off the wall of the house to get her and her luggage moving.
Before Ginny could pick a direction, which she needed to do because towing a heavy trunk required careful and deliberate maneuvering, her mother came to the window and leaned out, ignoring the cold air.
"Ginny," she said, sounding disappointed.
Her tone reminded Ginny of being a child and that made her more angry. "Give it up, Mum," she snapped, and pushed the end of her broom down just enough to take the slack out of the sash cord, then pushed harder to tug the trunk along behind.
Back in her bedroom, her father gazed grimly through the window with its crack like a lazy path through fields beyond. He had his wand out. "Where do you think she will go, or shall I put a Tracer on her?"
"What do you mean: where will she go? And put that away . . . she's feeling betrayed enough as it is." She tapped the stubborn sash with her wand and closed it easily.
With a sigh, Mrs. Weasley said, "Trying too hard to keep them only sends them off faster. She is too old to placate."
"What was her reason for leaving? She must know I truly cannot take her to see Harry." Mr. Weasley said.
"It must have been the letter. He must send very different letters to his friends than to me. The last one I received from him sounded rather reassuring." She pulled it out of her dressing gown pocket. "He said he was enjoying the holiday from his duties. Sounded rather pleased that so much was being done to get him out. Almost did not sound like him, at all, actually, sort of poetic, in fact." She frowned.
"May I see that?" Mr. Weasley asked.
She handed the letter over and, after a squinting glance out the window to check on his daughter's progress, he pulled the lamp closer to read the letter. "Hm," he muttered, quickly closing the letter along the worn fold.
"What is it?"
"Do you mind if I take this?" he asked, already putting it away into his pocket while peering out the window again.
"Not at all."
They continued to watch the speck fade in the sky, veering in spirals because of the load. Mr. Weasley asked, "Are her friends close enough for her to fly to like that, do you think?"
Mrs. Weasley turned from examining the cracked pane to stare at her husband. "You really don't know where she is going?"
"No . . . do you?"
"I have a pretty good guess," she replied knowingly while stepping by him out of the room, leaving the window broken.
Ginny flew toward no where in particular, the broom straining out ahead of the trunk like a leashed animal. Taking great care not to allow the trunk to slide sideways out beside her, she turned gently while gaining altitude. She tapped her own head with a Obsfucation Charm then slowed slightly so the trunk drifted closer to tap it too, satisfied with its appearing to melt into the sky.
She considered going to Shrewsthorpe where Candide might be in need of a live-in guard, but with the Christmas holiday Professor Snape would be home and Ginny did not fancy trying to move in with him present. It would be an all night flight in any event. Ginny sighed and turned a little more toward London.
Two hours later, bodily exhausted from flying while steering something heavy in tow, Ginny sat down on her trunk in the corridor outside the door to Aaron's flat. Only two flats led off the outside door and someone had gone to great effort decorating even here, with dark-stained carved wood framing carefully sculpted plaster. Ginny let her eyes trace the polished, ridged wood as it arched and branched over the narrow ceiling, giving one the impression of sitting beneath a copse of young trees in winter.
She had not knocked but the door opened and Aaron stood there in his velvety dressing gown, wine glass casually in hand, projecting himself as a cross between Adonis and Bacchus. Ginny did not remove her head from where it was propped on her hands because looking up at him made the effect stronger, and it was not a bad effect. Everything about him screamed a lack of want for anything. Although . . . Ginny was learning that was not entirely true. She sat up and brushed off her robes. "Hey," she said, trying to sound casual. "Can I stay for a bit?"
Aaron gestured skillfully with his half-full glass and stepped back to make room in the doorway. When she had first met him much of what he was thinking made it to his face, but since the kidnapping, he often pulled a flat mask over his thoughts, which gave him more an air of mystery than previously.
He pulled out his amber-colored wand and waved her trunk in behind her, letting it come to rest against the wall opposite the bar.
Ginny resisted sitting without being directly invited to. "You haven't asked why I'm here, or teased me about being here unannounced or . . ."
"Have a glass of wine," he said, pushing a freshly poured one into her hand.
She stared down at the glittering liquid like thinned honey and realized with a stab that she was going to have to sort out whether she loved him or just loved his lifestyle. How would one go about sorting that out, anyway? She took the cool leather seat he steered her to and drank down half the wine in one go.
"Better?" he asked.
"Yes," she admitted, sinking farther into the couch.
"Good," he said, sounding pleased. He put his arm up on the couch back and leaned in her direction.
Swallowing hard, Ginny said, "Something's wrong with Harry. We have to get him out of prison, like fast." While Aaron considered that with little clue to his mood, she went on, needing to talk, "I got angry with my dad because he wouldn't listen to me about Harry. I stormed out when he refused to take me to see him. But I have to see him; he's not well."
Aaron stiffened. "What do you mean: he's not well?"
"I got this letter from him. Well, he didn't want me to tell anyone some things in it, but . . . it scared me. He's talking crazy stuff."
"Do you have it . . . the letter?"
"I burned it."
Aaron rubbed his chin, which made a scratching sound that Ginny sort of liked, and made her wish she had sat down closer to him. Moving over now would send a stronger signal than she wanted to send. "Can you tell me anything in it?" he asked.
"Well . . . " She hesitated, dearly wanting to protect Harry, but her need for help made her say, "He has this problem where if he is too close to the Death Eaters, he starts to think more like . . . well . . ."
"Voldemort, you mean?" Aaron finished for her. "He's had that trouble for a while now."
Ginny was stunned. "You know about that?"
Aaron nodded. "Harry's told me . . . warned me is perhaps the better word." He scratched his chin additionally. "And there is no shortage of Death Eaters where he is."
"No, there isn't," Ginny agreed emphatically. "What are we going to do? Poor Harry."
Aaron pulled down the hand he had put across the couch-back, withdrawing slightly, and Ginny realized she had made him jealous.
Aaron fell serious. "Other than finding out who really killed Alastor Moody, I don't have any brilliant ideas. We've been working at that non-stop and haven't come up with much of anything. Whoever killed him knew how to hide their own trail while leaving us only one, leading to Harry." He clasped his hands and leaned over his legs. "The department's a mess. Tonks is at the breaking point, especially. I've never seen her like she is now, her magic's got so bad the department can't send her out without a full Auror partner." He shook his head.
They sat in silence, cradling their empty glasses. Ginny looked around and said, "You don't mind if I stay here, do you?"
Aaron's face scrunched up comically, more like his old self. "I asked you to marry me, and I think I just heard you ask if I mind you staying. Which of us is plastered drunk because it's gotta be one of us?" He peered into his glass in abject curiosity.
Ginny smiled. "Must be you, I've only had one."
Aaron produced the bottle from nearly thin air by sweeping it up from the floor beside the couch. "We can remedy that."
Ginny accepted a refill and thought she maybe should not finish it if she hoped to come up with a plan. She sat forward and set the wine on the low glass table at their feet. "I should go talk to Professor Snape."
Aaron sighed and leaned forward to match.
Pleading for understanding, she said, "I don't think I can rest without doing something." She stood, torn a bit by knowing Aaron would feel jealous and may in fact feel she was choosing between him and Harry. But even with that risk, she could not sit still. Softly, she promised, "I'll be back as soon as I can."
He stood with her, seeming overly casual. "Want me to come along? You know, so you don't have to face my tetchy old Head of House alone?"
"I can face him alone. Thanks though."
Since Ginny visited often, she tried to take the Floo into Harry's house, but got redirected to the node in the nearby train station. The walk cleared her head in one way, but also gave it time to color in with more shades of worry.
Moving the innocuous crooked wooden gate aside to enter the garden sent a sparkle of spell energy along her arm. Ginny paused to see if anything worse happened but the dormant vines shrouding the garden walls sat in frosted stillness. Winky answered the door.
"Don't get up," Ginny quickly said to Candide, who was propping herself up in preparation for standing from the couch in the main hall. "I just need a word with Professor Snape."
"He's in the library. Go on in."
Ginny knocked on the door frame. The figure in the corner straightened and turned in one fluid motion. Snape had been bent over an open book, head nearly touching the bookshelf in a pose of benediction.
Sounding doubtful, he said, "Ms. Weasley."
Ginny slipped inside and slowly shut the door so as to not seem rude. "Can I speak with you, sir?"
He did not put the book down. "If you must."
"I'm worried about Harry. He sent me a letter that makes me think he's over the edge. I have to find out if there's anything I can do to help get him out of there."
"I sincerely doubt there is anything you can do . . ."
Rambling in frustration, she said, "There must be something. I'll go mad if there isn't anything I can do. I'll do anything."
Snape closed the book and set it on a small writing desk. While staring at the ceiling he abstractly asked, "Do you feel guilty about anything?"
Taken by surprise she stuttered, "Well . . . no. Should I?"
"It was just a question. I have others, such as do you know why he is there?"
Ginny stared at him, noticing a few things she had not before, like the fact that he had bursts of stress lines around his eyes and that his temples were scattered with grey. It was eerily difficult to distinguish the pupils of his eyes, lending unneeded intensity to his unwavering stare.
"Some reason other than the one my dad gives, I'm assuming? No, I don't."
She felt relief from his scrutiny when he turned away to peruse the shelves. "This is difficult to navigate, Ms. Weasley. There are people whom, even still I believe, Harry wishes to protect."
She interrupted. "He's losing his mind. Do you think any of that matters?"
He made it to the end of one shelf and started back, reading the spines on the next row above. "Incarceration does strange things to some people. Harry is apparently one of them."
"I think there's more to it than that," she said, but stopped because Harry's letter had been clear on how little she should say, to anyone. Growing angry, she said, "I wonder if the Prophet isn't correct, that you aren't happier with him gone."
"Is that what you think?" he asked, putting his hand in his pocket, which was strangely full.
Thinking he was going for his wand, Ginny pulled hers out. "I beat you in a duel once, I can do it again."
"You think?" He did not have his wand out, but a blink later he did. Then it was gone again. "Put it away, Ms. Weasley," he said in such a tiresome voice that she blushed as she obeyed. He said, "I want Harry removed from there more than your tiny mind can imagine."
She ducked her head, "Of course, sir. Sorry."
"Note also there is very little I won't sacrifice to achieve that."
Ginny swallowed. That sounded more like a warning than a pledge. "That include me?" she asked, head swimming.
"Smart girl."
Ginny, with some effort, drew in a breath. "I don't think Harry would like that very much," she said, trying to laugh lightly while saying it. She thought farther. "But, that's assuming he found out." That eerie gaze was back again. She drew in a better breath and her thinking cleared. "If I might say, Professor, I don't think anyone really understands what you are."
He had not moved. "A distinct advantage, no?"
"That's my motto," she commented weakly.
Silence fell until Snape asked more lightly, "Still wish to assist?"
"Yes. But I don't particularly want to be sacrificed," she added forcefully.
He nodded like a twitch, seeming amused. Speaking in a hypnotic tone, he said, "I will let you know if there is anything you can do. It may be as simple as being a more regular companion to Candide, as I have some things I must attend to at a moment's notice. It may be something more that I ask of you."
She swallowed again, wishing she did not have to since it gave away how nervous she was. "Thanks." The door beckoned and she stepped to it, but stopped before opening it. "Does Harry know what you are?" she asked, feeling dizzy with how bold the question was.
"Most definitely."
"Well, okay, good," Ginny muttered, then shook her head to clear it.
Before she could turn the knob, he said, "Given your reaction to Harry's letter, I assume you know that action is imperative. Once things are imperative, understand clearly that I do not flinch. If you are to assist, I expect the same of you."
"Yes, sir," she said, staring down at her hand clenching the door knob.
"In which case, keep your wand in your pocket for just a moment." He took his out and ran three anti-animagus spells. "Good," he breathed in clear relief before resuming his intense posture. "Why do you think I needed to do that?" he asked, sounding the perfect teacher reviewing the reading for the week.
"Er, because Skeeter has been sneaking in again?" she asked, thinking that a stupid answer.
"Go on," he invited.
Ginny shrugged, confused what answer could possibly be meaningful here. "She's a bug, so she sneaks in easily?"
"Do you like her?"
"Bloody Merlin, no," Ginny blurted, then remembered her manners. "Not in the least."
"Good," Snape muttered. "You may go."
Ginny departed, spending far less time chatting with Candide on the way out than she expected to on the way in. She found the contrast between Snape's inscrutable strategizing and his wife's cheery demeanor intolerably bizarre.
Back at Aaron's flat, Ginny dropped onto the couch, wondering if she were way too far over her head or just utterly drowning. Aaron handed her another drink, frowning sadly.
"Thanks," she said. "After talking with Professor Snape, I could use a whole bottle. Maybe you should have come along. Next time would you?"
He sat back, making no move to close the gap between them. "That bad?" When she mutely shook her head, he said, "He was a Death Eater."
"Yeah," she agreed wholeheartedly. They fell silently into their respective thoughts. Aaron finished his glass and topped it up again.
"Do you believe in prophecies?" she asked suddenly.
"I try not to," Aaron quipped. He finally slipped over closer. "Not unless they say something magnificent will imminently happen to me."
She raised a dubious brow in his direction, glad to see him lighten up.
Aaron walked a pair of fingers over Ginny's shoulder and played with her collar. "Do you have a prophecy that says anything like that?"
"I may," she said, blushing.
"Mm," he said, but his fingers stopped and he put his arm back up on the couch back. "But you were saying something important, I think . . ."
Ginny shook her head. Apologetically, she said, "There's too much I don't understand, so I can't explain."
His fingers found the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. "Well, in that case . . . I personally always find that actions speak louder than words."
- 888 -
Snape circled the dim upstairs bedroom of the shrieking shack. The slitted mask covering his face caught the moist heat of his exhalations and quickly became uncomfortably sticky inside his hood. The Durumulna-mimicking costume felt too familiar and he shrugged inside of it, trying to shake the sense of entrapment by reminding himself of the power and liberty of anonymity.
He paced to stand over the wizard Tonks had chosen. If Snape timed the potion right, the man would awaken momentarily, but just now he lay on the bare floor, one arm outstretched from under the rude heavy blanket Tonks had provided.
Snape turned away from the scene, robes swishing, hood making the room seem even darker than it was. He pulled the mask loose to dry a bit before resettling it, trying to wait with patience. The costume cast him back to other unsavory but necessary tasks—some Dumbledore himself had pressed upon him—and his mind came into clear, unhesitant focus just as the man on the floor stirred.
Snape stood unmoving in the corner by the window, waiting to verify what state his victim had been rendered into. Durumulna had done part of his task for him by removing much of the man's identity already. Through a potioned session of hypnosis the previous day, he had found what he needed, a youthful mistake that had festered into adulthood pain. By leaving it as one of the few vestiges of the man's ego, Durumulna's leaders left the man highly susceptible to what Snape intended to do.
Snape stepped out of the shadows, careful not to make a sound beyond the creak of the wide old boards. The man turned at the noise and started upon seeing the masked figure peering down at him. He quickly fell resigned and passive. After a pause where Snape did not move, the man said in a lilting accent, "I . . . I don't know what I did wrong."
Snape turned away to pace a few steps. Casting his voice deeper and layering on an ambiguous accent, he said, "Yes, you do."
The man, strain showing in his posture, appeared to think harder. He rubbed his eyes and head with a clumsy hand. The potion would make it difficult for him to reach any conclusions on his own, which is exactly what Snape wanted. Conclusions were something for him to deliver.
"You claim to not know, when Armando's ghost tells us otherwise?"
The man, alarmed, glanced around the decrepit room, with its peeling faded wallpaper, still marked with dingy halos where the furniture had previously been placed. "Wha . . . What do you mean?" He recovered some bravado, as much as the potion would allow. It would have been considerable bravado otherwise, given how strong the potion's will was. "I've never seen his ghost." He frowned, puzzled, and looked to want to say more, but the drugging kept him from coming to any useful suspicion about why his overseer might actually care.
"I've seen him," Snape assured him. Which was true; he had seen him in his mind. An overly eager boy, trying with all his small might to keep up with his older brother and his brother's best friend, to the point of taking on a task too difficult for him to complete. And when he balked and failed, the punishment was too spontaneous and fierce for one so young. His last plea for mercy had been deeply engraved on the man's memory, one of the few memories that still was, conveniently enough.
Snape intoned, "Armando still does not understand."
The man looked away, annoyed, but he lost the battle and fell passive. "I didn't mean it," he explained defensively, but the potion won again and he repeated the phrase with great regret.
"You do not have to live tormented by this guilt. You can escape and travel beyond it."
The man's mouth worked. Too many questions vied for too little awareness, so nothing came out.
"You are trying to ask why, are you not?" Snape said. "You were left with this memory for a reason, it shapes you into something useful, but now it is time for it to serve in a new way. Would you be living this life now if those events had not happened?"
The man gave the barest shake of his head. Snape gave him space to think, a slow process given the chemicals working on him. Sounding vastly saddened and stung, the man said, "I didn't mean to . . . we were just sick of him tagging along. And he wanted to. Begged . . ." He stared off into space, and Snape assumed he was remembering again. Without much else to remember, it seemed a safe assumption.
The man, his accent growing harsh, said, "They never forget, do they?"
Behind his borrowed mask, Snape fell dumb with the truth of that statement. His victim, went on more angrily, "Never a second chance, even if you regret what you did."
"I'm going to give you one. Of a sort." Snape held out a potion bottle inside of which swirled in the colors of ink and silver. "Drink that."
The man stared at the proffered bottle without moving, perhaps without comprehending. Offering it was a test more than anything; Snape could easily knock him senseless and force it upon him. Snape patiently said, "Which weighs heavier: the guilt or your grim future?"
- 888 -
Harry sat with his letters in his lap. Elizabeth had sent him a rather long and heartfelt message which practically bled faith in his innocence. He read it through twice. She also spent inordinate time talking about a future hinging on the assumption he would be out very soon—she insisted he come over for dinner now that she had a flat of her own, gave him a menu even. Her letter came across as naive, but he needed naïveté about now. The postmark was the day after his arrest; the length of the missive must have slowed it down. The pale pink stationary was well worn as was the envelope, hinting at extensive handling before it was delivered to him. Harry frowned at that, thinking he had not properly appreciated having his post to himself before this happened. The times back in Hogwarts when he had to mask his messages to Sirius felt like a childhood game compared to this.
Harry slipped that letter to the back of the pile and reread the next one from Ron. He did not feel like responding to any of them. A kind of grey lethargy had overcome him and within its dispassionate confines he could maintain a wall that kept the whispering shadows at bay.
Footsteps approached, heavy boots gritting on the stone floor, and Harry set the letters aside under the mattress. He did not go to the door since it was not time for post or meal delivery. He waited instead to see what the guard would do.
The door swung open with a protest of unoiled metal and the guard, the steelier guard, who had taken him to meet Tonks and his solicitor, gestured with his gauntleted hand that Harry should come out.
Unsure why he was being removed, Harry took his time, standing slowly to approach the door. He must have pushed the thin patience of his guard too far because he was given a shove down the corridor that made him skin his hands on the wall when he tried to slow his careening. Harry spun into a natural fighting stance, but turned to find a crystal tipped spear pointing at his heart. The spear smacked him on the shoulder.
"Allons-y!"
"Right," Harry said, rubbing his shoulder while he started down the corridor. "Don't suppose you could tell me where we are going . . . ?"
He did not get an answer and he did not like walking with his back to the guard; it felt horribly exposed. He should not have to worry about guarding his back—he had followers plenty for that.
The corridor was long. Harry slowed and started to turn, but his guard was faster. The pike tangled Harry's feet and he fell, headlong. Re-abraded hands stinging, Harry pushed himself halfway up and turned, glaring. "What do you want? I'm going," he snarled, inordinately angry, not just at the guard, but at the entire world.
The pike leveled at his eyes. Harry deliberately raised himself up fully and pressing his raw hands to his robes for some relief from the stinging in them. He did not feel like going anywhere; the pain, even as small as it was, cut through him, releasing deep-seated stubbornness. When he resisted the next clearly gestured instruction, another spell came at him. But this one was a curse. Grinning faintly, Harry squelched it, and the guard dropped his pike with an exclamation of, "Calice!" Well trained, he had it picked up again in an instant and made ready to use it as a club.
Harry gauged him an instant and walked on before the man had an excuse to do more, but Harry went only a few steps before he slipped away into the Dark Plane. The wide open quiet of the place blew through him, loosening every nerve, but he could not stay. He counted to five and returned, just behind the guard, who as expected, had grown alarmed at losing track of his prisoner.
Harry tapped the man on his chain-mail-covered shoulder. "Looking for me?"
The guard turned, but he was not one of the stupid ones. He stared at Harry from the inside of his helmet for almost a minute, thinking. With a small gesture of his pike, he indicated Harry should continue on, in the lead. Harry did so, turning to walk backwards every so often, feeling pleased, like some kind of equality had been reached between them.
The guard did not harass Harry any more, and when they reached the warden's office, the guard stood inside the door, even after it was clear the warden expected him to wait outside. The guard eventually relented after repeated commands interspersed with reassurances—all very clear just from the tone. The guard gave Harry a last threatening glare before the door closed.
"'Ave a seat, Mr. Pottar," the warden said. He casually went through the file before him before looking up and saying, "I 'ave zee sense zat your Ministry did not eggspect you to still be 'ere at sis late date, Mr. Pottar."
"I like to think they didn't," Harry agreed.
"Would you like tea?"
Harry would very much like tea, so he nodded. Moments later Steeltoe Pierre came through the door with a tray. He smiled at Harry and handed him a cup and saucer before handing one to the warden. He looked like he wanted to stay, but the warden shooed him off with, "C'est bien," and went back to perusing the file, which had been fattened even more with newspaper clippings.
"It is curious, Mr. Pottar, I sought I understood zis situation." He sat back and closed the file.
Harry rapidly sipped his tea, wondering if he could get a refill. Realizing that a reply was expected, he put his cup down and put on an attentive expression.
The warden casually said, "You know, we 'ave quite a bit of security 'ere."
"It is a prison," Harry said, just to say something.
"Hm. You are not fully understanding." The warden picked up a folding frame that held a mirror, one of a row of them that sat on a low shelf behind his desk. He run his finger along the side of the frame before setting it on the edge of his desk where Harry could watch it. The mirror, which was not reflective when viewed head on, showed a fuzzy oval view of the corridor outside Harry's cell. He and the guard moved into the frame and the events of his being led played out on it.
Harry's heart froze. It was true, that he was not fully understanding the security. He met the warden's gaze without shirking, part of him glad for the revelation, for the challenge to the warden that it represented.
The warden put the frame back on the shelf and held his finger up to stall Harry from speaking. "It ees no matter at one level. You are only 'ere at the convenience of your ministry. At another level . . . I do prefer to run zis place without mistakes." He interlocked his fingers and set them on the desk, in a pose much like McGonagall's. "But I am curious. I was curious, zat is why I 'ad you brought 'ere. But now I am extrem-ely curious." He leaned forward. "Why 'az your ministry inzisted that you be placed here in a manner that spezifically will allow you to ezcape?"
Harry pondered how to answer that, wondering if he could just skip doing so. He did not want the warden to pass on what he had seen.
The warden sighed. "Well, I do not know what to be making of zis."
He sounded disappointed and Harry found himself regretting what he had done because it had not been particularly well-mannered. The regret made him feel far more like himself.
"You 'ave nozzin to say?" the man asked, even more disappointed.
Harry wished he were angry; that he could work with. "I don't want to be here. I have things I need to do. Very important things. And I don't like that guard much."
"Ah, yes, 'e provokes you." He sounded amused, which made Harry frown. The warden went on, "Of course, you are tired of being wissout power. Zees is understandable, especially wis what I saw." He gestured over his shoulder at the mirrors.
Harry raised his head to look down along the row of them, but could not see anything in them.
Sounding strangely pleased, the warden said, "You 'ave solved one mystery for me, which I am plea-zed about. I see now how you captured zee the vampire, alone, no less."
Harry dropped his gaze. "Yep."
A long pause, and then, "Your history here, she does not have this detail."
Softly, Harry admitted, "They don't know."
The warden's hand smacked the table, making Harry jump. Then the warden held a finger up, excited more than anything. "Interesting," he said, sitting back again and lacing his fingers together.
They pondered each other until Harry said, "I don't think I understand you much either."
Eyes twinkling, the warden said, "Keeping zee magically powerful criminal mind in check is my role. It is one I enjoy. And I like to keep learning." He paused. "Would you like more tea?"
Harry nodded and Steeltoe returned just long enough to pour him more. Harry thanked him and the guard bowed.
"Zee, you are quite civilized, even when cornered. Not at all typical. One wishing to learn everysing about a topic, must closely examine zee eggszeptions, not zee norms." While monitoring Harry, he reached into a desk drawer for a flask out of which he poured a shot into his own teacup. "Not in zee rules to offer you any, I am afraid, unless wis a meal."
Harry shrugged, quite happy with a decent cup of tea.
The warden grinned crookedly. "Interesting. See zis here, even. I observe zat you are capable of escape, of defeating my guards, but I find, surprisingly, zat I trust you. Zis is also a first." He toasted Harry with his teacup.
Harry sipped his tea, unable to return the toast, undone by wanting to be trusted, even here.
"'Opefully your ministry returns you home soon, no?"
Harry nodded, tired in the wake of losing his anger, which safely put aside that other self, that part that seemed to have all the fire. He wondered how long this mood would last. He felt powerless, like he were twelve again, and he did not really like it. It gave him control over himself, but not of much else.
The warden drained his teacup. "Shall I assign Gaspard to take you back?" He gestured at the door. "My tea brewer? He does not provoke you, I sink."
Harry felt even younger to be offered such consideration. He took a deep breath and nodded. "Thanks."
- 888 -
- 888 -
Snape stretched for his notes while continuing to stir a cauldron. It all would be much easier if he put a spell on the metal stirring stick to free up his hands. He felt at his robe-front where the stolen wand lay flat against his chest in his most inner pocket. He turned to Lupin, who had been reading, to ask him for a spell, but found the man sleeping, the book pushed aside, pages providing a crumpled backdrop to his ragged hair.
Pulling out the wand, Snape put a spell on the stick himself. The wand felt greasy in his hand, not something he would have expected from someone as meticulous as Draco Malfoy. Checking again that Lupin slept soundly, Snape blocked the lamplight with his body and turned the wick up. The wand felt waxy because it was covered in something like shoe polish, rendering it mutely grey, but some rubbing with a brewing rag revealed pale wood underneath. A noise made Snape stop his investigations and quickly put the wand away again. He grabbed the stirrer, letting it guide his hand in circles.
Footsteps creaked by the door and went on their way. Snape let go and returned to his notes until the potion finished. With care he decanted the Noble Nod Sleeping Draught into a metal tin to cool and extinguished the burner.
In the bed Lupin snored softly, in need of no such potion. Finished for now and not wishing to disturb the usually poorly rested Lupin, Snape slipped out of the room and downstairs to see if the day's newspapers had arrived.
"You have to do better," Lavender insisted as Snape approached the dining room. "I can see what you have without even trying."
Angelina Johnson laughed heartily. "Come on, let me deal this time."
The two young ladies and Neville were clumped around a table corner, playing cards. Snape stopped with his hands on the newspapers stacked beside the door and watched. Neville neutralized his expression and picked up his cards, his face remained mostly blank.
"Better . . ." Angelina said. "But I bet that's a middling hand."
Neville frowned and put the cards down flat.
Lavender looked up at Snape. "We're trying to give Neville poker face lessons."
Angelina laughed again. "Yeah, he's pants at it."
Snape, finding it easy to play his part said. "Do not ruin him for that; it is convenient for me to know what you are all thinking."
Angelina, who might have had more than the one beer that sat open beside her patted the table and said. "Is that a challenge, then? Got any money?"
Snape glanced down at the top newspaper, which had an article about expanded city cordons and security checkpoints. It went on to warn that witches and wizards must apply for Muggle papers or risk arrest. He had little desire to read the article. "No, I'm afraid I haven't."
Angelina measured off a stack of knuts before her and shuttled them closer to the empty chair across from her. "Here, I'll spot you a sickle's worth. Neville needs the practice."
Willing to take any distraction from his worries both worldly and personal, Snape slipped into the offered seat. For his own amusement, he gave Neville a sharp glance, making the young man's face pickle up.
Lavender giggled at Neville and gave him a half-hug. "I'll deal ya' a good hand. I promise."
"But, but, I'll just give it away," Neville muttered, nervously taking up his cards one at a time as they were dealt.
"What are we playing?" Angelina asked, sounding impatient.
"Just five-card stud. Keep it simple." She glanced at her hand and put it down. "You bet first," she said to Angelina.
Ten minutes later, Snape had quite a bit more money in front of him.
"I think 'e cheats," Angelina said.
"'Ar 'Ar 'Arry said he reads minds," Neville managed to say, face scrunching up at the sight of his cards, which he folded up and put down. "I pass."
"It's not your turn," Lavender said. "You dealt."
"I still pass," Neville insisted with a sigh.
"What's this about mind reading?" Angelina demanded.
Snape looked at his cards, which only had strength if he drew to an inside straight. "It's less about me, and more about what astoundingly slow learners you are." He put his cards down and called Angelina's bet of two knuts.
"Yeah, well, pay me back what I loaned you," Angelina insisted.
Snape pushed a stack of knuts to her. "Gladly. And in that case I raise you two."
"What's this?" Ginny said from the doorway. She tugged off her hat and scarf, flashing flushed cheeks.
"Well," Angelina began in the mode of telling a long story, "we were innocently giving Neville lessons in keeping his thoughts to himself, when this, this, punter came along and insisted on joining us."
Snape stared at her, blinking a few times for good measure. "Oh, is that how you remember it?"
Harry stepped up behind Ginny, interested in the scene, but moving around the table to pour out glasses of water from a pitcher.
"No," Neville said, sounding confused and sincere. "You asked him to play." When Angelina rolled her eyes, Neville said, "Oh." Then a second later: "Did I already say I folded?"
Snape leaned toward him. "Longbottom, a losing hand is just as valuable as a winning one, or it can be. You must only make your opponent believe in what you hold. That is all that matters. In fact, a winning hand often is not, for exactly that reason. If you give away that you have unbeatable cards . . . as you did two rounds ago . . . no one will call your bet and the pot will contain nothing for you to collect. You recall that little incident, correct? It was just moments ago."
Neville's puzzled expression went through a variety of transitions. "A losing hand is just as good?"
Trying to sound gentle rather than exasperated, Snape replied, "Yes. In this game, and in many areas of life for that matter, you seek not to control the available riches." Here he gestured at the thick deck sitting in the middle of the table. "But to control others by misleading them, to direct their behavior to your advantage."
"But if they know you are doing that . . .?"
Snape held up a long finger. "Ah. You do not let them know that."
Neville stared at his cards. "So, if I had a good hand, I might . . . actually pretend that I had a bad hand because you . . . any of you . . . would expect me to give away that I did, and then if I bet, you would call, or even raise and then when I revealed my great hand, I'd actually win? For once."
"Correct," Snape said, relieved more than anything to be getting through.
Neville sat up straighter. "In that case I raise you ten."
"Neville! You already folded," Lavender blurted.
Angelina patted her arm. "No, no, let him go. I need to win some back." She glared at Snape. "Someone's taken half my money."
Snape called as well. "So Longbottom," he said, when the young man simply sat there. "You have to show your hand."
Neville laid his cards down. "Three kings!" Lavender shouted. "Why in the heck were you folding?"
Neville grinned and sat back as Angelina shoved the pot in his direction. "I wanted to win, and it worked. Thanks for the lesson, Professor."
Snape stared at the boy, then shook his head while reminding himself not to underestimate any of them.
Harry pulled out the chair beside Angelina. "I'll play," he said eagerly. "Kreacher, bring us some butterbeers!" he shouted to the ceiling.
Kreacher appeared with an armful of dusty bottles. He gave Snape one first with a deep bow. "Master is saying Kreacher must serve the Mudbloods, but Kreacher will serve the ones his old Mistress would have preferred first."
Harry stood to grab up Snape's bottle. He sat down, opened it with a spell and took a relishing sip of it. Kreacher shot Harry a dirty glance and graciously gave Snape another after dusting it off on his tea towel.
Smirking, Harry said to Snape, "Yeah, old woman Black was your sort, wasn't she?"
"Deal me in too," Ginny said, sitting down beside Harry, which put her far down the table.
Lavender, who was dealing, said with playful seriousness, "Get yer money out if you want in. Threes're wild."
Harry and Ginny dug in their pockets and dumped a cascade of small coins out on the table, some of which they had to catch from rolling away. Ginny giggled when the two of them hit heads trying to catch an errant sickle.
Rubbing her head, Ginny asked, "What's the bet up to?"
"Give me a chance here," Angelina said, rearranging her cards. Snape gauged her expression and decided she had a promising hand. Hermione stepped in and walked behind each person on the other side, giving Snape another evaluation of the hands on that side. Her brow furrowed just faintly upon seeing Harry's cards.
Snape's own hand was a natural flush. Behaving with the slightest edge of disgust he put the cards face down and looked to Harry, and found his stare hard upon him. Snape raised a brow.
"You've been cheating all along, haven't you?" Harry asked, disgusted.
Snape crossed his arms and sat back. "You state that so judgmentally. It isn't cheating if your life is on the line, which mine very often is, I'll have you know. But no, I haven't been. It has hardly been necessary."
Harry looked at his cards and called the bet of three Knuts before putting his cards down and avoiding meeting Snape's gaze after that. Ginny folded. Snape bet five. Neville raised him to seven.
With an overly broad smile, Neville said, "I think I'm getting the hang of this game."
Snape gazed at him and tiredly said, "Perhaps you are. I have actually no idea whether you have a bad hand and are pleased to realize you can pretend it's a good one or whether you realize that by pretending you have a good one we will automatically assume you have a bad one."
Neville paused and said, "What?"
Snape held up a hand. "Never mind."
The betting went around until only Harry and Snape were still in. Harry leaned forward to count Snape's remaining coins and deliberately put down a Knut more than that.
"Classy of you, Potter. But I should not be surprised." He folded his hand into his fist and rapped it on the table. Angelina said, "I can spot you one." She glanced between them, dreadlocks swinging. "Well, if you're going to win that is. Otherwise I'm not spotting you nothin'."
Harry taunted, "Come on, don't you have a watch or a ring you can put in the pot?"
"I have the robes on my body, that is it, Potter. Pleased to hear that?"
"He has the wand," Ginny said, as if just thinking of it.
Harry's face shifted from mocking to serious. "What wand?"
Snape froze as well, surprised that she remembered, or that she was choosing to reveal him now after saying nothing. He gave her a dark look.
Explained Ginny, "I don't trust you any more than Harry does."
"Remind me of that before I save your life next time, will you?" Snape retorted.
Harry had his wand on his own wand pocket. "What wand are we talking about?"
Ginny said, "Draco's wand. Mr. Snape took it from him at the Three Broomsticks when his Blond Highness' hands were busy . . . you know slipping into something more comfortable."
"What a nauseating thought," Lavender complained.
Harry faced Snape plainly. "You have Draco's wand? You gave your wand back to Hermione but kept Draco's?"
"You think me a fool? Of course I kept it." Snape pulled the wand out and set it on the table before him. "You are going to take it from me anyway, so I'll put it on the pot to raise you, certainly."
Harry frowned at the funny colored wand. "Ew, Draco's filthy wand. Yeah, I'll spot you a Knut for that."
Keeping his hand on the wand, Snape said, "If I win this hand, I get to keep the wand." Under his hand, the wand felt warmer than it should, like it resisted being released.
"Yeah, sure," Harry said, and put down his cards, revealing a straight flush using two wild cards. He reached out for the pot, and Snape shoved the wand in his direction. "Don't like losing?" Harry taunted.
"I do not like being defenseless," he sneered, angry. "A perfectly reasonable motive for wanting a wand. Especially in the middle of a war."
Harry picked the wand up and instinctively rubbed his fingers on his robes. Snape relished saying, "It's been finished with shoe polish it appears."
"That doesn't sound like Draco," Ginny said.
"It's not the wand he used at school; it's pale colored," Harry said, holding it up to show the clean edge he had revealed.
Hermione grabbed up the wand and cleaned it by putting a spell on a napkin then passing it over the wood. Holding the wand this way and that in the light, she exclaimed, "This looks like Dumbledore's wand!"
Harry turned in his chair and said, "He was entombed with his wand. It can't be."
Hermione shrugged and gave it back. "I'm just saying." Her eyes found Snape's. "Mr. Snape would recognize it for certain."
Harry hesitated handing the wand back over, but did so with a sudden gesture as though battling with himself over doing so. Snape took in the subtle carving on the handle, now standing out starkly with the stain filling the recesses.
Mystified, Snape said, "It does look like his. Which would imply someone has opened his tomb."
"Lucius, I bet," Neville said. "He's always been a real winner, pretending to be all refined. I can see 'im grave robbin'."
Harry said, "And as headmaster it'd be easy for him to do it whenever he liked."
Hermione borrowed the wand again to look at it in the light of a lamp. "Why would Lucius want it?"
"He didn't want it," Lavender pointed out. "Draco had it."
Hermione gave a shrug and handed the wand back to Snape. Snape turned the wand in his hand and held it out to Harry, handle first. "Yours now, I believe."
Next: Chapter 34
Snape pondered that. So easy to sound rude with, "Such as?"
They had grown immune to his rough side, unfortunately. She ignored his tone and remained kind sounding. "Well, that old wizard, you know. If something bad has happened. I was just thinking . . . do you want help looking for him . . . that wizard Harry calls your boyfriend?"
"Harry should not call him that," Snape stated while trying to figure out her motivation. Was she truly simply being nice? "Why the offer?"
Chapter 34 — Guilty Conscience
Professor Snape strode along in a shuffling cluster of other shoppers bundled heavily against the cold. At the door sporting three overlapping, gold edged Ws, he stopped to pull his scarf down, which sent his next breath in a blinding cloud against his face. The door chime clanged dully, the sound made by a bell that has been smashed and reformed too many times.
Five Slytherin students stood bent conspiratorially over an overflowing barrel of Bagshot Bombs: every color of the rainbow and then some! They went silent at Snape's approach and fell away, hands slipping casually behind their backs. Their faces tried for neutral, but their eyes remained revealingly wide. One whispered hoarsely to another, "Is this a bust?"
The Weasley twin restocking the nearby rack glanced up at the students curiously; then his eyes alighted on Snape. His mouth formed an "O" before he bit his lips, and systematically set the precariously stacked crates aside. He recovered his self-assured attitude and slid over to Snape to smoothly ask, "Something I can do for you, Professor?"
Snape glanced around and found Ginny paging through a ragged stack of papers in the cramped area behind the till. He announced, "Just taking the opportunity to survey exactly what you intend to unleash upon our unsuspecting school in the new year."
His narrow-eyed glare at the students brought them up straight. The students shoved their full little hands into other barrels, onto shelves, dropping everything they held. They then shuffled sideways by him and out, their small bodies barely forcing the door open enough to make it chime.
The twin beside Snape sighed. "Good thing you weren't hanging around ruining the Christmas shopping season." He tiredly looked Snape up and down. "You joining the shakedown operation? I admit we did not foresee this particular kind of blackmail threat."
Voice low, Snape said, "I need a word with Ms. Weasley."
Ginny, who had been listening in, put a broken brick chunk on each crinkled stack before her and started to lift the hinged counter to come out.
Snape restrained her with a gesture. "In private. We'll use your back staircase." With one last glance at the empty shop and the passing, disinterested shoppers out on the alley, Snape slipped by the other curious twin and gestured for Ginny to open the door in the far wall.
Ginny went up a step to make room and flicked a Lumos out of her wand as Snape pulled the door shut. The staircase was colder than expected. Snape shrugged his cloak fully around himself and pulled out his wand to put several privacy spells on the door, one of which caused someone on the other side to shout, "Ow!" and stumble into something that fell with a cascade of noise. Snape's next spell blocked out that noise too.
By the light of her wand, Ginny's face appeared gaunt and uncertain, but she stood with her shoulders firmly back, determined.
"I'll be quick," Snape said. He reached into his pocket for a ribbon-tied bundle of letters and handed them over to her. When she began to examine them, bringing the tip of her wand close, he said, "Do not untie them; they are quite particularly arranged."
She moved her wand high to the side where it could provide more general light.
Snape said, "I want you to visit my house this evening, ostensibly to keep Candide company. Bring this packet of letters with you, stored in a way that the lump of them is not visible. I'm certain your brothers can assist you with a pocket spell for that. When I give you this signal . . ." Here he scratched his right temple. "I will excuse myself to go to the drawing room. You will follow, saying that you wish to discuss something with me in private."
The light of her wand dimmed as she slipped the letters away in her inner robe pocket. She remained dutifully quiet while Snape went on.
"I want you to say exactly the following to me: I don't know what to do. I was given some things to hide, but I don't know if I can keep them safe." He stared at her. "Can you remember all this?"
Ginny's intent eyes blinked rapidly. "Yeah . . ." she said, sounding intrigued.
Snape went on. "You must be precise in your words. I want you to clearly hesitate as you say all this, by the way. Pace and fidget and such. I want you to tell me that someone wishes you to hide these letters for her, but you have no good place to do that. I will ask you why she does not simply destroy them, and you are to reply that she wants to have them as mementos. They are important to her, even though they are very dangerous. Still following?"
Ginny nodded, taking out the packet again to examine it, turning it this way and that. The addresses were bundled inward, so nothing showed.
"Good. You will then ask me to hide them for you. I will resist the idea as an annoying inconvenience-"
"Sounds like you," Ginny quipped while pondering the parchment, which appeared blue-grey by the light of the wand.
"Yes . . ." Snape growled, but let it slide. "But I will give in. I will put them in my desk drawer with the promise that I will take them elsewhere later that evening."
A breeze whispered through the bowels of the ramshackle building, taking their breath off in rapidly dissipating wisps. Snape said, "If I do not give you the signal tonight, you are to visit each night, until I do." He paused. "I assume you can manage all this?"
She slipped the bundle away again. "Yep. This is nothing. I worried you were going to ask me to harm someone."
"Oh, I am asking you to harm someone . . . or, more accurately, asking you to help someone to do harm to themself."
"As long as they deserve it. Anyone I know?" she asked knowingly.
Snape could see in her eyes that her suspicion was spot on. "No questions. Just do as you are told."
- 888 -
- 888 -
Snape stared out the window of Grimmauld Place. Bare tree branches swayed silently in and out of the streetlights across the square, distant skeletal hands waving. He had the room to himself as Lupin had been sent out on a mission. He stared blankly out at the night in an effort to keep from wondering what had happened to Harry. It was not working. And there were no other useful distractions remaining; the potions were completed and every one of them and the leftover ingredients were meticulously organized behind him on freshly dusted shelves.
He had spent many evenings in the dungeon of Hogwarts meditating just like this, first on whether the Dark Lord was truly dead and then later on worrying what the machinations between his two masters would next demand of him. This involuntary return to a helpless past mode of existence was not welcome.
At the moment, the only thing he felt truly grateful for was the loss of his Mark. Were it not for that, his life would be a constant, grinding misery. Sitting in this place, perched on a crooked stool before a wind-leeching window, looking out over the sleeping, battered city, he felt for the first time that he may actually have earned the loss of his Mark. That made him feel slightly better, in a way that bought him no additional future hope, just more satisfaction with the past.
A soft knock came on the door and Ginny entered, slipping inside after a last glance back at the balcony and stairs.
"It's late," she said after groping for words.
"Does Lupin need rescuing again?" Snape asked derisively. He had no idea what mission the man had gone out on, and half hoped for an excuse for action as little as he wished more difficulty on his previous nemesis.
Ginny shook her head. "No, he's not due back for a while." She stepped further in, glancing around. "I just wondered, well, if you needed anything."
Snape pondered that. So easy to sound rude with, "Such as?"
They had grown immune to his rough side, unfortunately. She ignored his tone and remained kind sounding. "Well, that old wizard, you know. If something bad has happened. I was just thinking . . . do you want help looking for him . . . that wizard Harry calls your boyfriend?"
"Harry should not call him that," Snape stated while trying to figure out her motivation. Was she truly simply being nice? "Why the offer?"
She shrugged awkwardly with her hands anchored in her back pockets. "We think he could help. Too. I'll admit."
"He undoubtedly could. But apparently he has insurmountable difficulties of his own to navigate at the moment."
She touched the book of potion notes on the counter beside the neatly lined up cold cauldrons. "Where is he? I mean, do you know where he is?"
This conversation was not helping Snape's state of mind; helplessness was leeching into him along with the cold draft from the window. "In a sense," he said, sounding dismayed even to himself. "But I cannot follow. Not without more knowledge." Not without the book, which he had not been able to locate.
Her red brow furrowed. She was not as silly as she acted even scant years before, as indicated by puzzling that answer rather than coming back with another question.
"Well," she said, sounding more nervous. "Just thought I'd ask."
"Does Harry know you are asking?" Snape inquired, wanting the upper hand again.
She smiled nervously, coyly. "He's planning on coming and asking you, himself."
He considered her standing there in jeans and a blouse, clean, but worn to threads around the cuffs and collar. "Why don't you have the sword?"
"What do you mean? Carry it around the house?"
"Yes. Given the age of this place, there is undoubtedly a scabbard or a dozen stashed somewhere."
She stared at him. "There is one in the decorative set over the hearth in the sitting room."
Speaking frankly, he said, "The sword is a powerful magical object with properties no one has fully documented. It has a habit of disappearing. You should keep it on your person."
She smiled like he had thought of a quaint game that sounded fun to play. "Okay."
When she opened the door Harry was standing there, poised to knock. "Oh."
"Just asking Mr. Snape something about the sword," Ginny quickly said, and slipped away.
Her light footsteps pattered down the stairs and faded out. Harry shut the door and wandered to the window. Despite clearly having a mission there in the room, he said nothing, so Snape said, "At the risk of sounding the spy trolling for information, how are things with the diadem progressing?"
"Hermione is off looking up information tonight."
"Ah, sneaking into the London Magical Library is she? I hope you gave her the cloak."
Harry frowned wryly. "That obvious?"
"Even in your reflection I can see that in your thoughts. As ghastly as the idea sounds to me, I am willing to give you more lessons in Occlumency."
Harry's mouth worked. "Maybe we could try that."
Snape saw his next thoughts too. "Then the dreams would ease."
Harry quickly looked away from the window. "Sometimes the dreams are helpful." He flipped open the potion manual and notes. "The potions you brewed us worked well. The Insentience Draught is really good to use on guards. They don't even realize later that anything happened."
Snape paced the shelves once and stood with his hands clasped behind him. "Depending upon what other restricted ingredients we can procure and how much, there are many other potions and some rather clever delivery mechanisms."
Speaking jokingly, Harry said, "Can we knock out the Ministry for a day?"
Snape stepped over to join him again by the window, glad the young man was opening up. "With enough material, we could give them a good nap."
This brought Harry's chin up to face him. "I'll keep that in mind." He sighed and looked down again; this time he straightened the cauldrons, rubbing his finger over the rainbow edge to the tarnish on a brass one.
The flash came before the noise, like a dream where the mind has to catch up and justify an errant vision. The sound approached as the shifting of countless stone blocks. It came up through the floor, cracking the plaster. They both froze in place and stared out the window, blinking through spotted vision at the flickering red rising up between the roofs, perhaps five streets away. Harry grabbed hold of the window sill and leaned closer to the glass. Smoke poured up, billowing as if trapped in a giant sack before catching on the wind and drifting, limned by the burgeoning fire. Another flash came, farther away and to the left. This rumble delayed and muted by distance.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs and shouting could be heard both within and without. Snape leaned close to the window also, trying to see what Voldemort's guards outside on the square were doing. But the power flickered to the street lamps and went out.
By the light of the oil lamp beside the cauldrons, Harry rested his head on the window, face scrunched up in pain. His hair pressed into the fresh fug as he rocked his head back and forth.
Footsteps pounded closer to the room and Harry suddenly backed into the corner beside the door hinge waving "no" at Snape. The door opened and Neville breathlessly asked, "Seen Harry?"
Snape shook his head and the door snapped closed again and the footsteps stumbled off.
Harry had sunk back into the corner between the door and the book shelves as if he wished to be swallowed up. "Go ahead and say it," he muttered, voice wavering. "I haven't done what I was supposed to. If I had, none of this would be happening. All those people would be alive, instead of dead."
"Potter," Snape said, stepping closer, wanting to lift the burden, or at least the heaviest sense of it. He stopped. There was so little he could do here.
Harry pressed himself back harder, hunched over with his hands on his head, breath coming in heaves: the picture of agony. Snape could not remain where he was. He stepped closer and reached out to brush Harry's arm, just a feather-light touch. "Potter," he said, more firmly, succor clear in his voice.
This vastly unexpected gesture shocked Harry out of his self-inflicted pain, as hoped. Harry, hand cupped over his nose and mouth, peered at him.
Snape, working to keep his tone level, said, "You're making progress, Potter. Don't give in to despair now, of all times."
Harry rubbed one eye and lowered his hand. He glanced out the window where sirens sang out and flickered in concert with the smoky glow. Strained and low, he said, "Sometimes I can't imagine how he thought I could possibly do this."
A knock sounded on the door and Harry quickly swept both eyes and straightened his shoulders. The door opened and Hermione rushed in, arms around books that looked too big to hold let alone carry.
Harry drew out of himself. "You all right?" he asked her sharply.
"Yeah. Fine." She put the books down on the bed. "With all the commotion I decided to bring things back to read."
"Good idea." He glanced at the top book. "Great Wands of History," he read out.
"Yeah, sorry. I got distracted a bit with wondering why Lucius or Draco would want Dumbledore's wand." She quickly scooped the books back up. "But I'll do some reading and let you handle other things." She glanced out the window and said sadly, "Doesn't look good; does it?"
Harry shook his head, face long.
She exhaled hard. "Hang in there, Harry," she said gently. "Things really will get better." And with that she hefted the load of books in her arms and tottered out under their weight.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Tonks let Rogan go on ahead as they circled the building to which they had been called. Like the surrounding Muggle office blocks, the windows of this one gleamed deep black from their decorative stone surrounds. Night reversed the shadows on the carved decorations making the color-washed world of London appear in negative.
Tonks shuffled along in the disguise of a night watchman. Laughter drew her attention across the wide boulevard, where two leggy women in skirts far too insubstantial for the season stumbled along, aided by one man in a suit, tie askew. They stumbled when they saw Tonks there.
"Aw, not a bobby," the man slurred, urging his friends along while they all laughed.
When the echo of high heels clattering faded around the bend, a voice made Tonks stop.
"Not exactly a bobby."
Tonks stopped. Wedged at the uneven bevelled edge of a building stood a shadow in a cloak, only discernible once he spoke.
"Severus."
At the end of the pavement, Rogan had stopped. Tonks swung her nightstick, the signal that he should go on.
Tired, Tonks said, "Did you make this call?"
"Yes."
Tonks rolled her eyes into the cold clinging air. "We're pretty busy, you know. We have another kidnapping to deal with. We would've ignored this call, but it was strange enough we thought it could be related."
Snape ignored her complaints. "This is important. I need to know what information about Moody's murder was never released to the public." A faint breeze lifted the corners of his cloak, merging his form with the oscillating shadow of the tree growing beside the nearest streetlamp.
Tonks breathed out heavily, adding to the mist. "He was hit from the front first, not in the back as we told the press. It was definitely someone he knew since his wand wasn't actually in his hand as we said. Mad Eye was wearing a leather cloak, not a woolen one. A heavy thing I don't think he could have carried if his leg hadn't been fixed.
"You adjusted quite a few details."
She huffed. "Yeah, we get a lot of crazies confessing to this kind of thing, or trying to turn in a brother in law, so that makes it easy to sort them out."
Tonks could not see Snape's face, so his voice floated out, disembodied. She shifted from foot to foot, hoping Rogan kept going around rather than come back. Snape asked, "Anything else? What spell was used?"
"We don't know for certain. He had burn marks on his clothes, in a large star pattern, almost. Strange."
"Excellent," the deep voice breathed with pleasure, sending a chill down Tonks' spine. "Give me two more days and I will be ready. Unless you receive a message from me otherwise, I will drop him where you picked him up. I want you to arrange for Fudge to be involved in the arrest."
"You aren't asking a lot or anything," Tonks snipped. "Fudge?"
"You'll manage something; I have every confidence."
"That all?" she asked, annoyed and eager to go.
"Yes. Your unhesitant cooperation is refreshing."
Tonks stared at her feet. Her shadow showed her hair had drooped without her knowing it. Stressed, she said, "The French Prison warden sent a message; he suggests moving Harry to a more secure area. Says he cannot guarantee he can hold him otherwise."
When there was no response, Tonks looked up, but the dark figure was gone. After a quick glance around, she hurried on to catch up to her partner to convince him there was nothing here worth bothering about.
- 888 -
Arthur Weasley shuffled down the corridor of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, head bent over the stack of letters he had collected. They were all letters from Harry sent to various people around the Ministry, or Weasley family members. He shuffled each letter to the back of the pile, examining the addresses, pausing at the ones written straighter than the others.
At the corner, he ran headlong into Tonks and the letters scattered.
"Sorry, Arthur." Both of them bent to scoop up the envelopes. Tonks straightened while staring at what she held. "What's this? Harry's?"
"Yes."
She held out what she had retrieved. "Are you monitoring his post?"
"Not exactly," Mr. Weasley said, bunching the letters together again. He flipped through the pile and held an envelope up for her. "Look like Harry's writing?" When Tonks nodded, he held up another, where the lines were straight. "This?"
Tonks nodded again. Mr. Weasley said, "Written a bit too neat for someone without a desk to write on."
"What are you saying?" Tonks asked, hackles raised.
Mr. Weasley put his finger to his lips. "Not a word. I have to do some more investigating." And with that he shuffled into the Aurors' office, Tonks close on his heels.
Mr. Weasley went straight to the senior Auror. "Kingsley, a call went out before Christmas for translators to help the censors at the French wizard prison. Do you happen to know who volunteered?"
Shacklebolt put up his hands in surrender. Arthur turned to Tonks and got a similar shrug. Kingsley said, "Maybe try the Foreign Liaison office in IMC?"
Mr. Weasley snapped his fingers. "Brilliant. Of course." He stashed the letters into his pocket and strode away.
Shacklebolt turned curiously to Tonks, who had dropped into her chair, legs splayed and lifeless. "I can't take much more of this," she said.
"Maybe you should arrange a breakout for Harry," he teased gently. "It would give you something to do."
"Maybe I will," she said, sounding defiant.
Shacklebolt smirked faintly. "Don't tell me the details if you do. I might have to ruin it for you."
"Oh, I won't," Tonks said, feeling slightly better for joking about it.
- 888 -
Down on the fifth floor of the Ministry, Mr. Weasley smiled sweetly at the receptionist, an ancient wizard whose curly beard hid all but his eyes and nose. "Who would I speak to about a French translation?"
The wizard reached under his desk and pulled out a form and pushed it across the desk. It was an official Document Language Alteration Request Form. Mr. Weasley pushed it back. "I just want a minute of this person's time."
The wizard pushed the form back at Mr. Weasley. If he had an expression on his face it was buried in his beard.
"No, you don't understand," Mr. Weasley said. "I don't want something translated, I just want speak to the translator."
The wizard peered dubiously at him. "In what language?"
"English," Mr. Weasley replied after a beat, a little baffled. "It's the only one I know."
The man pointed his thumb back over his broad, rounded shoulder. "You'll be wanting Mrs. Wraithwright, then. Office's on the right."
Mr. Weasley found a portly witch in faded pink robes, surrounded by shelves full of dictionaries and style manuals. She greeted him with a broad smile and went back to penning something with a peacock quill. "Hello, and what can I do for you?"
Mr. Weasley shut the door to the office and slipped up to the desk. "I'm wondering if you happen to know who has been assisting the French prison with translating Harry Potter's post?"
"You mean L'île de Cachot Méfait?" she asked lilting heavily, but let him off by smiling again and not waiting for a reply. "I have been helping. As has another staff member."
"Someone from this office?"
She shook her broad head. "No, no, someone from the Department of Which We Don't Speak."
Mr. Weasley stood straighter. "Do you know who?"
"Yes, of course. I frequently see him there."
"At the prison?" Mr. Weasley said. "I thought Magical Law Enforcement had the only two keys."
She spoke soothingly. "I'm certain you do. They send an escort for us." Leaning in conspiratorially, she said, "One of these days I'm going to talk the guard into a quick diversion to a Parisian café for lunch. You'll see." Smiling to herself, she sat up and said, "Yes, he's a bit brusque, young Percy is. Could use a tad more personality, but as long as he keeps quiet so I can work without unneeded distraction-"
"Percy? Where did he learn French?" Mr. Weasley blurted.
Chuckling, Wraithwright said, "Why don't you have a seat? Your feet might not hurt, but mine do just imagining standing that long. Name's Wilimina, by the way. Call me Winnie."
"Arthur. Pleased to meet you." Mr. Weasley tugged a chair over and sat upon it, thoughts moving through his head too quickly to amount to anything. They settled into an official groove and he said, "I'd like to ask you not to discuss our conversation with Percy, if you would. It's sort of important that he not know we talked."
"If you wish. As to your question, Percy told me he learned his French because he had an eye on a girl at school one year. Took a correspondence course, aided by some memory sweets his brothers cooked up." She crossed her broad arms and clearly enjoying herself added, "I asked him if it worked out with girl and he finally admitted he never got the nerve to talk to her even once. Just as well, his pronunciation leaves, shall we say, a bit to be desired."
Mr. Weasley slipped fully into professional mode. "When you and Percy are at the prison, are you given access to any areas beyond your work area?"
"We can go to the tea room, of course, whenever we like. Percy does insist on fetching the tea. Someone taught him his manners, I must say, to a fault, perhaps, even."
He narrowed his question. "If you wanted to go into the areas where the prisoners were housed, would you be able to do that?"
"I've not had the notion to try," she exclaimed. "The very thought. All manner of humanity and beyond in that place."
- 888 -
"I'm going to teach you a very nice spell," Snape said, bending over the foreign wizard sitting on the floor. The morning's doping left the man slow and passive, safe to hand a wand to. Because Snape need not concern himself with damaging other memories, he could employ rather brutal, identity-weakening potions. Normally this sort of reprogramming required delicacy and a great deal of time to wear down resistance.
With typical slow movements, the man examined the wand he held, fascinated by it.
"The incantation is Stellifera. It has a rather nasty result if used with enough force, so I think you will like it."
Crouching and taking the man's pliant hand, Snape repeated the motion several times while whispering the incantation in his ear. Using an accent he had adapted to match his victim's, Snape said soothingly, "You've been using violence to paper over the guilt of that first uncontrolled act, trying to overcome it by making it part of you. You've failed at that . . . it's only become worse. But you no longer need pretend. You will be purified from that old act very soon. You wish to be, don't you?"
The man nodded sadly, eyes fixed on the floor as though too ashamed to even look up. When first brought there, his hair had been shiny and would have bounced as he nodded, but now it lay around his face, dull and flat.
Snape lifted the wand out of the man's fingers. When he reached shakily for it, Snape said, "You may have it back presently. Very soon, in fact. But first a bit of sleep, so you remember the spell."
He did not actually put the man to sleep; he put him under hypnosis. On top of the psycho-tropic potions, this resulted in a dreamy, drool-inducing state.
Snape waited ten minutes before rapping the man on the shoulder to rouse him. He put a Lumos Charm on his wand and moved it before the man's sagging eyelids to hold his attention. In the manner of a soporific chant, he said, "Remember, the guilt will wash clean away the moment you confess what you did to someone in high authority. The higher the authority the purer you will become. Nothing will matter after that. You will be serene and safe from your own conscience."
Snape waited again for that to worm its way in, biting his jaw to keep from rushing. One last test, and everything would be ready. The man's eyes blinked slowly, but erratically, almost a code. Careful to keep all eagerness out of his voice, Snape chanted on. "When you come face to face with this authority figure, what will you do?"
The man swallowed, reluctantly, which was fine, as it would add to the realism. "I'll tell them what I did."
"And what did you do?"
"I killed the Auror."
"Why?"
"Because I was told to."
"By whom?"
The man struggled for an answer, finally stressfully admitting, "I don't know."
No Durumulna foot soldier ever knew the answer to that, which made this all so very easy. Snape slipped the man's wand into his hand and said, "And you did it with the spell you learned just for this job."
The man nodded sagely and thought it all over. Snape, with the aid of a hallucinatory potion, had given the man his own imaginings of the scene of Moody's death using a pensieve. Only in snippets, though, and only disjointed. He had then led the man to perform walkthroughs of the event to smooth over the edges of the fake memories, to connect them to the man's muscle memory.
Snape hovered the ratty old blanket into the air against the blackened hearth and said, "Why don't you show me the spell you used?"
Moving dreamlike, which gave the spell very little force, the man curved and swished the wand. He skipped speaking the incantation, but it did not matter; a ripple like a heat wave emitted from the wand and when it encountered the blanket it bunched up on itself and flared white hot, leaving behind a star pattern burned into the fabric.
"Hm," Snape mused softly. "Silent even. No wonder they hired you for the job."
- 888 -
Mr. Weasley sat at his dining room table, wearing his index finger raw rubbing the chipped edge of the tea cup he held.
"Something the matter, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley asked. When she did not receive a reply, she looked up from her embroidery.
"I don't know yet," Mr. Weasley replied. "Not for certain, at any rate."
He sat awhile longer, trying to overcome base instinct to think only the best of his son. Rather than thinking, he should be taking action to find out the answer—treat it like any other investigation. He noted that Molly had her wand in hand for her needlework, mostly for undoing parts of it. She worked at adding a pattern of daffodils to the tablecloth . . . while it was on the table. It was pretty much the only thing left in the house unadorned.
He stood. "I'll return in a bit."
"It's getting late. Are you off to the office?"
"I just need some fresh air," he reassured her, not wanting to give anything away, lest they be monitored somehow. Harry's warnings about Legilimency made it easier to be extra careful.
Moments later Mr. Weasley knocked upon the heavy door to Aaron's flat. The young man uncharacteristically stuttered upon seeing him, "M- Mr. Weasley, sir." But he recovered his usual gallant style and bowed him in.
"Dad?" Ginny said in surprise, standing up from the couch where she had been reading Aaron's Auror books.
Mr. Weasley cut off her questions, by taking her shoulders. "No time. Do me a favor and go keep your mum company. Both of you, if you would, Aaron, my boy. I have something I need to do and I may be out a while." When she tried to interrupt, he ignored her and said, "Don't say I sent you. Pretend you went spur of the moment."
Aaron sidled over. "We can say we came to see you, even."
Mr. Weasley pointed at him. "Good thought. And whatever you do, do not let Molly give you any of Harry's letters to read. Well, gotta run." With that he Disapparated.
"What-?" Ginny began, but she was asking the empty air. "What in Merlin's name is that about?"
"Let's go see your mum," Aaron eagerly said. He scooped up her books and tossed them in his satchel before heading to the cupboard for their cloaks.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" Ginny complained lightly. "You want to get grilled by my mother about how we are getting on? As if I want to talk to her, anyway." She huffed.
Aaron hooked her cloak around her neck and attractively bit his lip while hooking it. "I'll admit, I'd like to get it out of the way. Not so much that I'm looking forward to it, exactly." He patted her shoulders. "Come along. Duty calls."
She stretched her shoulders back. "Yep, I suppose it does. Are your assignments always this mysterious?"
He grinned as he said, "Do they treat us like mushrooms all the time . . . you are asking? Absolutely."
Molly Weasley was thrilled enough to see them that she asked no difficult questions at all and in return Ginny held her tongue about Harry. Her mother hooked her arms through one each of theirs and led them to the table. "So good to see you both. Have a seat."
The two of them joined her around the daffodils blooming along the edge of the cloth piled up on the table top.
"Found something else to decorate, I see," Ginny said. "Flowers are good."
Aaron bent down and blinked in alarm at the bright yellow and green congregation already crowding his side of the table.
"A bit nicer than gnomes," Ginny added firmly, mostly to keep Aaron's commentary in line.
He nodded sideways in agreement with that.
Mrs. Weasley grinned at them in turn. "I have a surprise for you. Something I'm working on. Just practicing on mine first." From a bag at her feet she pulled out a brand new shimmering tablecloth and with frantic movements to contain the slippery fabric, lined up the edge along above she was working. "Nice fabric, don't you think? I'm going to use the shiny thread to match. I'm sure it will look lovely at Aaron's place."
Ginny swallowed. "Er . . ."
"You know," Aaron said, jumping up to look at things from her angle. "Do you have thread with, er, more muted colors?"
"Muted? Why on earth would one use that?" But she dug around in her basket as she spoke.
Aaron's jaw worked a second before he recovered. "It would go better with the existing décor." He reached around her and slid the cloth over. "Here, put a single daffodil. But in, ah, these shades of green." He rummaged through her collection. "And this yellow."
"That's grey."
"No, that's got a tinge of yellow. And put a vertical bar of a warm grey. Like this one. Here." He held up a spool of thread to show her.
"A grey bar?" Mrs. Weasley repeated, mystified.
"Yes, beside the flower, extending up and down." He drew with his finger on the fabric as he spoke, as though seeing it already. "One here and just one other on the other corner. I have some tall square vases and the combination will be divine."
"Sounds quite plain," Mrs. Weasley said. "But if that's what you like."
Aaron make an okay shape with his fingers. "Minimalist, is the word you are looking for. Minimalist."
"Ahhhh..." she said, picking up the grey thread for the needle, and winking at him.
As Aaron settled back beside her, Ginny grinned and mouthed, "Good job." Remembering herself, she sat up and said, "So, where is Dad?"
"Went for a walk, or a little broom flight or something. Wanted some air." She sounded down. "Don't know why."
"Huh," Ginny said, sounding mystified, which expressed how she felt. This felt too much like Harry sending her to guard Candide. Who did her dad think could get through the Burrow's protective charms anyway?
At the French Wizard prison, Mr. Weasley found that the night warden did not speak enough English to answer his questions about the translators. The best he could communicate, with lots of sign language, was that he wished to speak with Harry.
The guard, who made rather a lot of noise when he walked, fetched Harry to the break room area at the end of the cell block. Harry crossed his arms upon seeing Mr. Weasley there, and blinked in the lamplight like one woken up moments ago.
"Sir," Harry said after a sniffle.
Mr. Weasley turned to the guard. "If we may speak alone?" But the guard simply stared at him.
Harry said, "We are alone . . . he doesn't speak English."
"Ah. Yes." He stepped closer. Harry appeared gaunt on top of poorly slept. "Are they feeding you all right?"
"Is that what you came to ask in the middle of the night?"
Mr. Weasley held up his hands to ward off his anger. "No. But I'm asking anyway, after getting a look at you."
Harry shrugged. "I'm not always hungry. Believe me, they regularly try to stuff me full of fancy French food."
"Well, good, at least you aren't being abused."
- 888 -
Harry resisted answering Mr. Weasley just to be difficult. This whole situation felt, if not abusive, then at least lacking in consideration of his rights. But honesty won out, and he said, "No. Not for the most part. One guard here doesn't particularly like me, but the warden said he wouldn't assign him to me anymore."
Mr. Weasley contemplated him. "In that case, you are being treated extremely well given how these places are normally run. But as you implied with your biting question, that is not why I am here. I'm here because someone has been sending poetic letters in your name. Molly even received one."
"Poetic letters?" Harry echoed, sleepy mind slow to comprehend, but it snapped in place. "From the poets here?" Mr. Weasley nodded, and Harry added, "Well, it wasn't me."
"I know that, Harry. They are being sent to your biggest allies, to mute their complaint about your situation." Mr. Weasley began to pace. "So I asked around and discovered that one of the two translators that come here every few days to help censor your post, is my son, Percy."
Harry felt heat course through his arms and neck. A cell door rattled, but he pulled back on his anger and it stopped.
Mr. Weasley paced back the other way. "I'm trying to understand what is happening here."
"No, you aren't," Harry heard himself say. That energy had filled him again, and it gave him clarity and no desire to withhold his thoughts. "You aren't trying to understand; you are unwilling to suspect him of anything. You always think the best of people until it is too late." From the back of Harry's mind came the wry notion that Mr. Weasley gave him exactly the same benefit.
Mr. Weasley did not reply right away. "Do you have anything besides suspicion, Harry?"
"Do you?" Harry returned immediately.
"I'm close," Mr. Weasley admitted.
"You won't find any proof if you don't want to find it," Harry calmly pointed out, feeling victory in that small cruelty. The shadows hummed in the air, but apparently only he could feel it, based on Mr. Weasley's lack of reaction. It was as if Harry stood at the center of a circle of power, and could draw on it at will, if only he wished to. If he kept it narrowly focused he remained in control; more than that and it would overtake him.
Mr. Weasley must be sensing something because he was watching him now, with curiosity and wariness. Harry remained silent and saw in Mr. Weasley's eyes that his thoughts returned to worrying about Percy and how to approach him. Harry said, "It would be foolish to confront him directly, since it would tip your hand."
Mr. Weasley turned abruptly on his toes and resumed pacing. "I believe I better understand Ginny's concerns about you," he said without looking up. "I would move you, Harry, to the dungeon at the Ministry, if I did not fear it would constitute the perfect trap for someone wishing to do you harm. Many, many people have access to the dungeon.
"You needn't to worry about me," Harry said mockingly. He did not mean to but the power hungered to be on top.
Mr. Weasley finally met Harry's gaze, because he forgot not to. "That's not true. You remain my responsibility, in more ways than one."
"I'm tired of being everyone's responsibility," Harry snapped. "You, the warden, Severus. . . I can take care of myself."
Mr. Weasley frowned and let that go. "If Percy is involved, then we-"
"If Percy is responsible, you mean."
"Involved. Then we are much closer to getting you out."
"Because the investigation is at a dead end otherwise," Harry supplied, mocking again. "I won't wait in this place forever."
"It's not even been two weeks," Mr. Weasley countered, finding some sharpness.
Harry sighed lightly. "It may feel like it to you. It feels like months to me."
"I know, Harry. And I am sorry for that. It was all supposed to be straight by now."
He did sound sorry, which sucked the thickest darkness out of Harry. But thinking of Snape, trapped in that miserable world made him say, "Another week is all I will stay."
Mr. Weasley glanced around, assessing the walls. "I'm not certain what you think you are going to do, but your timeline is duly noted."
"Fine," Harry said, crossing his arms. "Just so you're informed."
Mr. Weasley exhaled and swung his arms once. "On another topic. My daughter is rather cross with me for not bringing her here to see you. You sent her a letter that sent her on a mission of sorts." When Harry did not reply, he went on. "Can I take her a message from you. Something that might perhaps get me off her Worst Dad in the World list?"
Harry felt for the shadows around him. He could no longer discern where he ended and they began. "Tell her to be careful. Do her readings."
Mr. Weasley complained, "She's going to think I made that up."
Harry smiled faintly and felt like himself again in a rush. "Tell her she needn't panic but just stay alert."
"That will have to do, I suppose," Mr. Weasley tiredly said. "I believe the warden is looking out for you, above and beyond what we expected, but if there is anything you need, do let us know. I wish you would be more patient with us, Harry."
"You don't know how hard it has been to stay here even this long," Harry said. "You don't understand much of anything."
Mr. Weasley put his hat back on out of his pocket, covering the uncombed hair flying away off the top of his head. "I don't think you've kept us well informed."
Harry, fully charged again, stated clearly, as though he were the one in charge, "The things I did tell you, you refused to believe. You would not believe any of the rest."
- 888 -
Despite it not being her shift, Tonks sat in the Aurors' office, pretending to work on paperwork, when in reality, she frantically schemed how to arrange things that evening per Snape's demands.
There was a meeting that afternoon with the Minister and the department heads, and she intended to wheedle her way into it. Odds were that Fudge, who could not leave his nose out of anything, would also have worked out an invitation. It was her only chance.
Shacklebolt sat at a nearby desk, plucking lint from his robes as he dictated to his quill. Tonks waited for a break in his transcription to ask, "You're going to the meeting today, right?"
Shacklebolt rolled his eyes and grumbled. "Yes, I suppose."
"You sound thrilled."
"Waste of time," he muttered.
Tonks shrugged, and hunched over in his direction, hands clasped before her. "I could go to it instead so you could work. I haven't been feeling terribly useful lately." It was easy to sound strained. She did feel useless, in more ways than they knew.
"If Arthur will have you along, that'd be just grand with me." He shook his head. "He just wants someone to help back him up and take notes."
Tonks sat considering how to approach Mr. Weasley when the man wandered in. Shacklebolt grabbed up his quill off the parchment and said stiffly, "Take Tonks with you. I have too much to do to waste time in a meeting."
Mr. Weasley said, "Well, if I had any delusions about being in charge, Harry and now you, are doing well at convincing me otherwise."
Shacklebolt stood and canceled his quill before dropping it on his desk. "Sorry, Arthur. Just a bit stretched thin."
Mr. Weasley regained his warmth. "I'll take Tonks along, Kingsley, don't interrupt what you are doing."
Tonks followed him out. He walked to the stairs instead of the lift. On the way, he said, "I saw Harry last night."
Tonks was watching her light blue boots walk along the floor, but this brought her attention up. "You did?"
"Yes. He seemed all right. But . . . not quite himself."
"He shouldn't be there, Arthur. It's not good for him."
They had reached the next floor, so the conversation stopped. Tonks and Mr. Weasley slipped by the group gathered around the Minister's doorway, making goodbyes. Inside the Minister's office, Fudge and Percy, as well as the head of International Magical Cooperation were waiting.
Tonks took the seat beside Mr. Weasley and sat quietly, hoping she could pull this off without raising suspicion. Bones swept into the room and opened the meeting with her usual grand manners, intended to draw everyone present to her way of thinking.
"All right then, reports from the last week, if you will." Parchments were pushed her way, which she redirected to an assistant. "Summarize if you will."
Mr. Weasley began by explaining that earlier outreach efforts were paying off in increased tips of suspicious activities. Fudge scoffed through most of his summary. He concluded with: "We're still waiting on assistance from our colleagues in Portugal."
Bones said, "Even though that is a lead in for a report from IMC, I sense you would like to go next Cornelius."
Fudge leaned forward, elbow out on the table, and said to Mr. Weasley. "You neglected to mention that your crime activity statistics slipped again this week, all but your precious anonymous tips, most of which will amount to nothing."
He went on in this vein, until Tonks, tired of it and seeing her chance, interrupted his red-faced diatribe. "If you think this is so easy, why don't you try patrol for a night or two."
Mr. Weasley put a hand on her arm. "It's all right, Tonks."
This was going to be the best chance of arranging what Snape wanted, and like Shacklebolt she had stress as an excuse for losing control. She shook his hand off. "It's not all right. We're supposed to be working together, but all Fudge ever does is blame, not help. If he wants to help he can do a few rounds of patrol." She sat back and crossed her arms.
Mr. Weasley too must have tired of Fudge, because rather than get short tempered with her as Tonks expected, he wryly said, "I'm not sure which of you I could possibly convince to partner with him."
"I'll take him out," Tonks angrily said, "if it will shut him up."
The table fell silent. "Ridiculous," Fudge scoffed. "I have far more important things to be doing." To demonstrate this, he began rearranging the many notes before him.
Bones said, "I think it's a wonderful idea."
"What?" Fudge blurted, turning redder.
"I think we all lack appreciation for the difficult job the Aurors' office does." She waved to her assistant to take a note. "I think several department heads would benefit from tagging along on patrol for an evening."
Tonks glanced at Mr. Weasley's alarmed face. "We don't have to make a project out of this," she said.
"Nonsense," Bones countered. "It's a great idea."
Tonks sat back again and in a mode of apology to her boss muttered. "I didn't mean to have a great idea. Really, I didn't."
But Tonks had arranged what she needed to, and that evening Fudge stood before the log book, getting a tour of it from Rogan.
Tonks took small satisfaction from Fudge asking, "All these calls are just yesterday's?"
Rogan turned out to be a natural at the task he had been given. "Oh, that was a quiet day," he said dismissively.
A Magical Disturbance call came in from Wiltshire, and everyone turned to Tonks questioningly. "Want that one?" Rogan asked. "Shouldn't be a tough one."
Tonks had to wait for the call from Scunthorpe that she felt confident Snape would arrange. She fingered the slip. "It's probably just the local coven, disturbing the Muggles by racing modified broomsticks again. I don't think Mr. Fudge would get much out of that."
Rogan, trying not to smile, said, "Unless Durumulna decides to weasel in on the established bookmakers, no, probably not."
Fudge took the slip. "They may decide to do just that."
"Least of our problems if they do," Rogan said, taking a seat and putting his hands behind his head. Sounding lazy, he said, "Pass it on to Reversal. Probably their purview anyway."
Tonks would have pointed out that he wasn't making a great impression, were he not inadvertently helping her. She sat down to wait again, pulling out an old report and pretending to look diligent. Rogan followed her example and did the same. Fudge prowled the room, finally settling on the task of auditing their temporary filing practices, something Shacklebolt had been harping on for a while, so everyone left him to it, on the condition he not complain aloud, but take down notes about his concerns.
Finally, the call arrived. "Aye," Rogan muttered as he read the slip. "Not again."
Tonks joined him at the log book, half on instinct, and Fudge naturally followed.
"What is it?" Fudge asked.
Tonks replied, "A warehouse Durumulna had been using." She glanced at Rogan. He would be easy to convince. "I could take this one," she said, sounding vaguely reluctant. "At least it has some connection to the organization most of interest to Mr. Fudge." She passed the slip over and held her breath. This was going well, and she feared mucking it up.
Fudge rocked back on his heels, which made his belly more pronounced. "I've found this evening to be nothing but a waste of time, so I will take any call, just for a change of scenery."
Tonks took up her cloak. "Probably nothing, but it's a familiar locale, so we can case it quickly if it's a false alarm."
The long, low roof of the warehouse stood quietly in the late evening light that brightened the sky in a way so as to render everything else darker by comparison. Tonks crept alongside a rack holding square metal rods and nearly tripped when she tread upon something fleshy that gave a squeak of complaint. She regained her footing and held up a hand to stop Fudge from stepping on it also.
A Lumos Charm revealed a dog, curled tightly upon itself, mouth closed with a curse.
"That's telling," Fudge whispered.
"We'll free it when we're through," Tonks said. "We don't want it barking either."
At the door to the warehouse, Tonks knocked off the lock, distracted and assuming somehow that their prey would be an easy catch. She assumed wrong. A spell sizzled just over their heads as the door swung open. Without thinking, Tonks shoved Fudge back out the door and dived for cover between the racks inside. She sent a shower of movement inhibiting spells through the gaps and things fell silent.
Tonks quelled her breathing. She might have him, or she might not. Snape did a good job to leave this much fight in the man, she thought. She was just about to send out a Doppelgänger when Fudge pulled on the door from the outside, which brought on another barrage of spells. It instinctively felt like covering fire. Tonks ducked down and slipped through the rods on the lowest rack, just as a Blasting Curse sparkled from behind her, along the row.
Tonks rolled, and despite painful scuffing on her hands, knees and shoulder, slipped again through the next rack and got to her feet. There were two of them, apparently. A spell shot out low, knocking her legs out from under her. Tonks threw a Grappling Charm upwards, which found purchase on the open framed ceiling, and whispered the reeling trigger. She flew upward, just as the racks smashed together.
Tonks canceled the grapple and surveyed the scene from her perch on a crossbeam. A figure moved below, too thin to be Fudge. She struck it straight down with a heavy Net Charm and jumped onto the closet rack, but the pipes on it had been upset by the collision moments before, and they began to roll en masse off one side. Tonks threw herself to the other side and grabbed hold as they rolled under her. "Look out!" she shouted, having no idea where Fudge was.
The deafening crash died out only after long seconds of echo and reverberation.
"Mr. Fudge?" Tonks called, climbing in a panic down the end of the rack. Being well practiced at upsetting things had probably saved her life.
"Over here." He sounded strained.
She bent to check the figure under the net and found him out cold. It was not the man she expected to find. With a wave the net became a Mummification Curse that she hovered behind her. Banging sounded on the nearby the door as well as shouting. The door must have been magically barred because it shook against the loose latch without yielding.
Tonks stepped quickly over the piles of pipe to where Fudge stood over another figure. There was no time. The other door was wide open and it would not take long for the Muggles to go around.
"We have to go. Ministry. Now," Tonks said, grabbing hold of her charge.
She arrived in the Atrium, in the only area they could Apparate into. She counted to three, prepared to return, but Fudge appeared just as she began to hover her prisoner over where he could not Apparate away again without help or breaking his bonds. Relief flooded her bruised limbs upon seeing Snape's "project" hanging from Fudge's fat-fingered grip.
Curious onlookers gathered. Fudge, hand grasping his prisoner's cloak instead, said, "You need a better area to Apparate into."
"We've been saying that a long time," Tonks smartly pointed out, while pushing her way through the small throng. "We'd happily use the large cupboard off the dungeon. But someone accused us of a power grab by virtue of controlling office space, or some such nonsense."
They were ushered through the gates by the receptionist.
"Ah," Fudge said.
At the lifts, Tonks couldn't resist saying, "That was you, wasn't it?"
Fudge hemmed a bit. "I'd have to check my notes to be certain."
Tonks bit down on a smile and roughly shoved her prisoner into the corner of the lift cage. She observed Fudge's prisoner was also having a difficult time with breathing given Fudge's grip. "Not a bad haul," Tonks said.
Fudge said, "You seemed rather blasé in how you approached that facility."
That had been a mistake, from many angles; one undoubtedly brought on by exhaustion. "We've been there many times where it's come to naught," she explained.
He nodded, accepting that to her relief.
They assigned each of the prisoners to an interrogation room and Tonks went to wash up and get some bruise salve out of her desk.
Mr. Weasley sauntered in. "What is this Fudge is saying about a good catch?"
Tonks looked up from dabbing gel on her elbow. She smarted everywhere. "We found two Durumulna members at the warehouse in Scunthorpe. And on that topic, Reversal should make sure the scene is clear. There is a dog to uncurse if not some memory charms to be distributed."
"So you failed, then?" Mr. Weasley asked. At her confused gaze, he explained, lightly teasing, "You are giving Cornelius the impression that what we do is easy."
Tonks sat down to treat her skinned knee with a spell and some gel. "Given the fight they put up, I hope he didn't get that impression."
Shacklebolt came in. "Fudge wants to interrogate his prisoner."
Mr. Weasley straightened from helping Tonks to say, "That's our responsibility. Put a stop to it."
Tonks held in her reaction. Shacklebolt crossed his arms and said, "Perhaps that should come from someone of his rank."
Mr. Weasley stalked off. Tonks, hoping to stall him, put her gel down and followed him, limping faintly.
"He's more on our side at the moment," she said, speaking rapidly. "Maybe don't rub him the wrong way?"
"Cornelius has no right way to be rubbed," Mr. Weasley stated and opened the door to the interrogation room.
The prisoner sat in the corner, legs pulled up to his chest as a bulwark against the tirade Fudge was putting out.
"You are despicable, you know that? Living off other people's labors like you deserve it. Threatening people, ruining their livelihoods when they resist you," Fudge said, pointing directly in the man's face. "When I was Minister of Magic, this sort of thing did not happen, I'll tell you."
Mildly, Mr. Weasley said, "Yes, we just had Voldemort to contend with."
In a small voice, the prisoner asked, "You were Minister of Magic?"
Fudge straightened proudly and pushed his girth out before him. "I certainly was. For seven years. Some of the best years Wizarding Britain has ever had."
Tonks held her tongue with effort. Mr. Weasley said, "I would appreciate you leaving the interrogation to us, Cornelius."
"He's my prisoner," Fudge countered. "By all rights I can simply take him down the Department of Mysteries."
Tonks could not hold back. "Why in the world would you want to do that?"
Fudge blustered. "I am just saying." He rubbed his hands together and lorded over the prisoner. "This department seems to capture all kinds but not to get much out of them."
Mr. Weasley said, "That's because they don't know much, or have you not been reading our memos?"
Fudge ignored this. "Get a transcribing quill and we'll see what we can do, eh?"
Mr. Weasley slipped by Tonks, saying, "Keep an eye on him, would you?"
Tonks' heart rate was about double normal. She gratefully sat on the stool Fudge was ignoring and held her wand out at ready. Watching Fudge rant, she wondered with no small amazement at Snape's scheming. He must have known that once the former Minister had their plant in his hands, he would not let him go, walking merrily into the trap they had set.
Mr. Weasley returned with an Autoquill and a roll of parchment. He set the Autoquill going and gave the date and time and those present. He then gestured at Fudge to continue.
Fudge bowed faintly and turned to the perpetrator. "So, young man, happy with what you have wrought?"
Mr. Weasley rolled his eyes and Tonks put her hand to her forehead in dismay. Fudge cleared his throat and tried again. "Why were you there in that place? That place where we found you?"
"I was hiding," the man said, as though speaking to an idiot.
"Now we are getting somewhere," Fudge said, clasping his hands before him. "How long have you been this country?" When the man did not reply, Fudge kicked the bottom of his sole with his toe. "Well, perhaps some Veritaserum will get us somewhere."
Mr. Weasley said, "It won't. He doesn't know the answer to that. He knows very little, Cornelius, believe me."
Tonks began to fear that Fudge would so bungle this that the confession Snape presumably had him ready to give, would never come out, but she absolutely did not want to raise even a hair of suspicion by seeming to manipulate what was happening. She grasped for another option. "We have a standard procedure we follow," she began, thinking of the list of normal questions and that one would likely trigger something.
Fudge turned on her, his temper flaring. "Maybe your standard procedures are the problem. It's time for something creative around here."
Mr. Weasley calmly said, "They serve us quite well, but go ahead as you were if you wish. But I'll have to ask you to not to strike the prisoner again."
"I didn't strike him," Fudge said, flabbergasted.
"You did. And if you do it again I will throw you out of here."
Fudge rose up and said, "You think they'd treat you equally well? I read the report of what they did to that apprentice of yours."
Mr. Weasley replied, "Precisely why I refuse to stoop to their level. I consider us to be better than them." He let that sit and said, "This is my department Cornelius. I'll have you removed if I see fit to, and I will keep the prisoner."
The Autoquill finished writing all that out during the lull. Tonks said, "Should we restart that?"
Mr. Weasley waved her off. "No. Leave it." He moved to stand in the corner opposite Tonks, leaning heavily on the wall, head drooped with exhaustion. Tonks stared at him, waiting for him to look her way. When he did, she gave him a proud smile. He barely acknowledged it and looked away, down at the prisoner in the adjacent corner, mind and focus elsewhere.
Fudge leaned close to the man, making a point of not touching him. "So, you were hiding, were you? Hiding from what?"
The man struggled, in an odd way, Tonks thought. He did not hesitate, exactly, more that he could not put his thoughts together. He wanted to confess, she thought with a chill, but Fudge was not setting it up right.
Finally, the man repeated, "Hiding."
Fudge stood. "Where do they get these blokes? They're not smart enough to lace their boots."
Mr. Weasley, from his corner, said, "If you'd lost as much of your memories as this one has, you would have about as much to say. We imagine they are perpetrating crimes against us, but they also do grievous injury to their own."
Tonks frowned, feeling guilty about what was almost certainly more injury caused to this one . . . with her assistance.
"What is your role in Durumulna?" Fudge asked the man.
Tonks did not think he would answer, but the man said, "I do what I'm told."
"Ah." Fudge paced, and muttered, "We could use a few of you around here."
Tonks rolled her eyes again, and glanced at Mr. Weasley, expecting commiseration, but found him lost in thought and looking saddened.
"And what were you told to do lately? Anything you remember?"
The man's jaw moved, then stopped. Fudge went on, cajoling. "Come one, we haven't all day. We have things to do. Cleaning up the mess you people have made, for one thing."
Fudge was about to launch into another question, when the man softly said, "I didn't want to kill him."
Everyone froze, Tonks with her heart racing again, and Mr. Weasley rising back to awareness of his immediate surroundings.
The man on the floor swallowed hard. "I didn't mean . . . I didn't want to." He seemed confused, and shook his head like a dog would after running headlong into something.
"Who?" Fudge prompted, fortunately losing his overbearing mode.
"The Auror," the man replied, then shuddered faintly as though struck by something invisible. "I was told to," he added, sounding almost eager to speak.
Tonks swallowed too, and sat on her hands to keep them from shaking. She felt nauseated and faintly dizzy.
Fudge needed time to recover, but he finally asked, "You killed which Auror?"
"The one . . . " The man had to think about that, and Tonks held her breath, fearing that he did not have an answer supplied by his programming. After much apparent digging through his memories the man replied, "The one with the machine eye."
Mr. Weasley pushed out of the corner, shifting quickly into action. He re-read the transcript and looked up at Tonks. She drew on his innocent excitement, and let her limbs relax.
Fudge said, "Alastor Moody?" Turned to glance between Tonks and Mr. Weasley, looking for help.
Mr. Weasley whispered, "Ask him what spell."
"What spell did you use, you, you worthless ruffian?"
The man raised his wandless hand and ran through a spell. "Stellifera," he said. "I learned it . . . just for the job." He sounded far away, happy almost. It gave Tonks the quivers.
"Heard of it?" Mr. Weasley asked her. When Tonks shook her head, he said, "Go look it up."
Tonks rushed down to the Aurors' office and thumbed through the Compleat Encyclopædia of Spells, hand shaking too badly to find the right page.
Shacklebolt came up behind her and took the book away. He kindly asked, "What are you looking for?"
"Stellifera." She should tell him the prisoner confessed, but could not bring herself to do it.
Looking at her, Shacklebolt closed the book on his thumb at the right page and said, "Stay here. I'll go down."
She held her hands out for the book. "No, I'll go."
He opened the book for her and gently handed it over. "There in the right column." Tonks hoped that soon, their extra consideration would not be needed.
She took the book and rushed back, hoping she felt better about all this when she had Harry safely home, but feared she may not.
Mr. Weasley read the spell description. "As the name indicates, leaves a distinctive star-shaped marking of burns." He levered the heavy book closed and again looked at Tonks, as though needing confirmation.
"Can I go get Harry?" She pleaded, desperate to leave, to escape, to reach the ends before guilt about the means overwhelmed her.
He glanced at the transcript one more time then looked at Fudge, who put up his hands in surrender.
Mr. Weasley said, "Let's go and get him. I expect they'll let us straighten out our part of the paperwork later."
Author Note: I've started using double breaks (- 888 -) to denote jumps between universes. Been doing that for a few chapters, but I thought I'd point it out.
Next: Chapter 35
As they rose in the lift, the air grew colder and fresher. Harry tipped his head back and breathed deeply. The shadows grew distant and he instinctively grabbed for them, pulling them along. The lift stopped, throwing them up onto their toes, and Harry lost his grip on them and his package.
He picked it up slowly, stalling to see if he could recapture that fortifying sense of power. Tonks, thinking he needed help, picked it up for him and hooked it under her own arm while taking his. Something was going on behind her eyes, something easy to use. But she turned to lead him off before he could delve into it.
Chapter 35 — Free Bird
The clanging footsteps reached a crescendo just before they stopped on the other side of the iron door. The bolts slid back and Harry, thinking he had another late evening visitor, stood up from his stone bench. And indeed, Steeltoe Pierre gestured with the riveted, rusty bucket he held for Harry to come out into the corridor. A sparkle of metallic confetti fluttered off the guard's armor as he left Harry there and efficiently swept back through the cell and tossed everything in the bucket, including the things Harry had stashed under the mattress.
Harry started to ask what was going on, but remembered he would not get an answer and, with his face-guard down, Harry could not gather a clue from the guard's expression either. Following gestures eager enough to make Harry worry that Steeltoe might become impatient with him, Harry led the way down the uneven, poorly lit corridor.
The warden's office contained a surprise: Tonks, standing before the desk, hair fluttering between brown and spiky pink like an agitated sea creature.
"Tonks," Harry managed breathily. He dearly needed to see a friendly face. Mr. Weasley stood off to the side, looking chagrined.
"Your pape-airs," the warden said, holding out a stack to Tonks, eyeing Harry keenly the whole while. He too had metallic confetti glittering on his robes.
Tonks turned the stack around to glance at them before reaching back for a pen from the well on the desk. "Here, Harry, sign this," she said.
They had decided to move him to the securest area of the prison, Harry thought, heart thudding as though a Bludger had become lodged in his chest. He should have exercised more control. Now he was going to be in with the worst, with the Vampires and who knew what else. But maybe he deserved that.
Tonks forced the pen into his hand. While he hesitated, the pen scattered ink on the pages she held up, arms propped up as a desk. "Don't look so glum, you're going home."
The pen slipped off the parchment, dividing the dense text with a wide, shiny line. "What?"
Tonks seemed unable to say more. Her face moved but her lips remained mute. Mr. Weasley stepped up and said, "We caught the real killer."
Harry's mind engaged on this news and the room snapped into clarity. "Who?" he demanded.
"Just a hired wand. A foreigner brought in by Durumulna to do the job."
Harry could not stop his shoulders falling in disappointment. He wanted to hear the name Percy quite badly. He rubbed his hair and scratched the back of his neck, trying to take in this new reality—he did not have to go back to his cell. He did not feel elation, just quivering relief.
Sounding strangely pained, Tonks flipped the page and said, "Sign here too, Harry."
After a firm handshake from the warden, who still had a knowing glint in his eye, a paper-wrapped package of his possessions was pressed into his hands by the guard. Steeltoe bowed them out of the office, inadvertently shutting his face guard, which he left down while he escorted them back up to the surface.
As they rose in the lift, the air grew fresher. Harry tipped his head back and breathed deeply. The shadows grew distant and he instinctively grabbed for them, pulling them along. The lift stopped, throwing them up onto their toes, and Harry lost his grip on them and his package. He picked it up slowly, stalling to see if he could recapture that fortifying sense of power. Tonks, thinking he needed help, picked it up for him and hooked it under her own arm while taking his. Something was going on behind her eyes, something easy to use. But she turned to lead him off before he could delve into it.
Reluctant, but given no choice, Harry followed them out into the towering entry hall. The sea sloshed angrily in the slots along the walls, spitting foam onto the floor and up onto the walls.
Mr. Weasley pulled out a Portkey from his robes and lifted it to dangle before them on its chain while he fumbled for his wand. Tonks shifted her grip on Harry's arm to lift his hand to touch the body-warmed gold. Harry turned back to their escort and with a clack! audible over the noise of the sea, Steeltoe saluted, and the prison spun away.
They dropped into the Ministry, in the corridor of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement outside Mr. Weasley's office. Tonks, who still had hold of Harry, pulled him down for a hug. Others flowed from around the corner, far more people than would normally be there for a late evening shift.
Aaron patted Harry painfully on the arm. "Happy New Year, Harry," he said. "You're coming to my party, right?"
"I forgot it was New Year's Eve," Harry said while accepting a hug from Blackpool. "I didn't have a calendar."
Tridant teasingly said, "Didn't you make marks on the wall to keep track?"
Harry replied, "If you tried that, one of the bricks'd give you a bloody nose." He finished greeting everyone, feeling raw relief radiating off his colleagues.
When Aaron again urged Harry to come to his flat, Tonks stepped in. "I think Harry should go home." She took Harry's hand. "I'll take him."
Harry did not argue, he longed for his own room and his own bed. The world felt disjointed; one minute he was stuck in a tiny stone cell and the next he was free to do as he pleased. "I have to go home," Harry confirmed with Aaron.
"Well, Ginny's annoyance with me will be on your head, then," Aaron said.
"Don't worry," Mr. Weasley said, "it's already on mine."
"Come by the house, then," Harry invited Aaron.
Vineet spoke up. "Hermione too, wishes to visit."
Tonks said, "News travels fast."
"Party at Harry's house," Kerry Ann cheered faintly.
"Not sure what Severus will think of that," Harry said, mind casting out to worry about the impostor.
Mysteriously, Tonks said, "He'll be fine with it. Come on, Harry."
They Disapparated, but did not re-appear in Shrewsthorpe as Harry expected. They arrived at Tonks' flat.
Tonks pushed Harry to arm's length, face distraught. "I have to tell you something." But she fell silent, head dipped between her bony shoulders.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, trying to see beyond the unchained lightness of unexpected freedom. At some point her hair had changed back to brown and he had not noticed when. Upon arriving at the Ministry it had been as bright as ever. "Tonks?"
She paced her flat, running protective spells. "You're going to be angry," she said, stopping before the window and keeping her back to him. Sounding angry herself she added, "But we aren't as perfect as you . . . you know. You have to understand that."
"What are you on about?" Harry blurted. He would have found her statement funny if she were not so distressed. "I'm turning into Voldemort and you think I'm perfect?"
This made her turn. Through her stress, her lips tried to smile. "You don't seem much like Voldemort right now."
Out on the street revelers were shouting. Harry said, "Helps to get away from that place."
"That was exactly the point of it all," she said sadly.
She turned away from him again and parted the curtain to look out. Lights flashed on the adjacent building. Harry approached and peered down at where a car was parked with its hazard lights on. The driver leaned out the window to speak with someone walking along the pavement.
Tonks' dark flat felt small and closed up. Harry wanted nothing more than to be home. "The point of what? Come on. We're going to be missed."
"Severus arranged for someone to confess to the murder . . . to get you out."
Prickles ran over Harry's arms. "Arranged? What do you mean?"
Tonks spun on him, grabbing up his robes with her hands. "See, the killer is still free; you have to be careful. Durumulna will know they were cheated, not only out of framing you, but out of one of their own, who will take the fall."
Raising his voice, Harry blurted, "Severus framed someone else?"
Tonks exhaled audibly. "Yes. I didn't imagine he could do that . . . get someone to confess like that to something he hadn't done." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't like thinking about it, even. He's rather a dangerous chap when he wants to be."
"He is," Harry agreed. Then hoping to downplay it, reassured her, "He mostly behaves himself."
"I hope so." She tugged on his robe front and gave him a kiss. "It's good to have you out no matter the means," she said, but she sounded like someone trying to convince herself.
She tasted good, but he resisted pulling her closer. "We should go."
At the house, Hermione and Vineet were sitting on the couch beside Candide. Snape glided over from where he stood talking to Aaron and Ginny. "Welcome home," he said, in such an oddly convincing tone, that Harry needed a pause to say, "Thanks."
Candide levered herself up to greet him. Harry rushed over to meet her halfway for a hug. The motherly scent of home on her skin called to Harry's insides from unsettlingly far in the past. "Good to have you back, Harry. Really too bad this all had to happen."
Harry helped her sit back down and said, "It's all right."
Harry looked around the room at his friends, and their anxious expressions. He did not want their concerns right now. He had plans well concocted from his copious idle time and he was itching to get them in motion. He spun on Snape. "I want to talk to you, alone."
Snape gestured to the drawing room, but Harry went to the stairs. At the top, he had to fight his instinct to go to the right. Snape passed him and led the way around to the left, to where Harry's new room lay.
Farther down the balcony from the room that still gave off a chill of dark magic, Snape stopped. Harry glanced down into the main hall, where his friends were looking up, watching them.
"Candide has been busy in here," Snape stated, opening the door on the end.
Harry slowed as he entered. Indeed, the formerly neglected room had been transformed with mutely patterned curtains and matching bed drapes, and a new rug covered the middle of the floor, artfully turned diagonal to keep it distant from the embers of the corner fireplace. Even his old wardrobe glowed with fresh polish.
Harry went to the cages by the window, but they were both empty. "Where's Kali?" he asked sharply.
Snape stepped closer and reached into his pocket, out of which he plucked Harry's furry, bat-like pet. Harry lifted the sleeping creature from Snape's hand, eyeing him in surprise, which quickly became tainted with suspicion at being manipulated so. Harry cradled his pet in the crook of his arm and rubbed her fur. She creakily stretched her wings, one at a time, batting Harry's hand.
Snape said, "I realize you do not wish to like me."
Harry glanced up at the man who looked too much like his adoptive father. Pet now in hand, Harry's concerns about Snape handling her as a means of handling him slipped into unimportance. He said, "You helped me get out, even if it was to your benefit to keep me locked away."
"It was to no one's benefit to have you remain there."
"Not even yours?"
Smugly, Snape said, "Especially not mine. I understand to a degree unmatched by no one else exactly what is at stake."
Harry bent back to his pet, who was trying to crawl up his arm. "So you also understand what is at stake if I don't get my adoptive father back."
Voice low, Snape replied, "I resist understanding it, but if pressed . . ."
Harry felt the siren of the shadow hovering before him and said, "I'm grateful for your help, as dubiously moral as it is, but I'm still upset with your invading my home. I'll give you a day to prepare, but even if you put up a fight, you're going back."
"Put up a fight . . ." Snape echoed, sounding sarcastic, "to keep this perfect house? This perfect little family?"
"You sound jealous," Harry said.
Snape tossed his head and ignored the comment. "I have learned too much the last few weeks, too much about the power of chance and possibility."
Harry finally let Kali crawl up to his shoulder where she commenced chewing on his hair. He knew a lot about those alternative paths. "Learn too much about yourself?" he prodded.
Snape spun away on his heel. "You are undoubtedly expected downstairs."
Harry halted him before he reached the door, like tugging on a string. "Severus . . ." The air between them hummed. Harry could sense the shadow inside the other as an extension of his will. How easy it would be to reach out and make a firmer point about his power over him.
Kali took flight, clawing Harry as she shoved away. Snape's eyes tracked her progress back to the roof of the cage, where she landed, ungainly extending her wings for balance. Harry stepped over and picked her up again. She chewed lightly on his fingers, but remained in his grip. He turned to Snape and considered him and the connection that allowed him to stay his departure. Harry would miss having a dark servant this close as much as he wanted his family properly reassembled.
Snape's hand slipped from the door latch. "If you force me to, I will bow to you. But I somehow cannot imagine Lily Potter's son resorting to that." His voice grew drier. "Not without his temper riled, that is."
They stared at each other, Harry limited himself to a hard look, leaving the shadow untouched. Without breaking eye contact, Snape reached to open the door and gestured that Harry should lead the way out.
Downstairs, even more of Harry's friends had gathered. Many wore sparkling pointed hats and glaringly bright robes, as if coming from other parties. Harry accepted a fizzing glass, the best seat on the couch, and tried to insist that, really, there was nothing of interest to tell about the French wizard prison.
Aaron sat across from him, looking older than Harry remembered him. He leaned toward Harry to ask, "Looking forward to stretching the ol' wand out in training on Monday?"
Harry did not answer right away. He had been anticipating using his liberty to take care of the imposter and investigate Durumulna himself, and not much beyond that. In fact, he would prefer to have more time for those things.
His silence did not go unnoticed. Tonks, from her perch on the couch arm, speaking with Ginny, quieted and turned to listen.
"I don't know," Harry said.
Aaron bent his head down. "I'd understand if you didn't come back."
Tonks bumped Harry with the back of her hand. "What's this?"
"I have to think about things," Harry announced, sitting back and sipping from his glass. The bubbles fizzing inside it were not spherical, but starburst shaped. They careened off the inside surface of the glass and each other, sometimes combining in little explosions.
The surrounding conversations remained muted a minute before starting up again.
The last of the spontaneous partygoers departed in the wee hours of the morning and a tired Harry glanced around the main hall. He thought he was alone, but Snape stood in shadow near the merrily fluttering hearth, watching him. His wand moved in the familiar arcs describing the usual anti-eavesdropping spells before he stepped into the orange light.
Snape examined his hands before saying, "I submit to you that tomorrow, Saturday, is not the best day to arrange the switch."
"Why's that?" Harry calmly asked, knowing he could gain the upper hand in an instant.
"Candide will be here. I suggest that Monday, when she will be at work all day, would be a better choice." His starkly lit chiseled gaze came up. "I assume you still wish her to remain incognizant of the situation?"
Harry wanted to fetch his guardian as soon as possible, but perhaps this would work out for the better. He could go tomorrow and warn Snape to be ready, and to make sure the notes were complete enough to execute the spell, then go back on Monday to assist with activating the Device. That would give him a chance to attend to some other things first, while he had the leeway to do so, a thought that appealed to him a little too much.
Sounding lightly disdainful, Snape said, "So, that meets with your approval? I have been led to believe that I can pass my teaching duties on to Lupin for stunningly weak pretenses."
Harry nodded. "We can do it Monday, unless there is no choice but to do it sooner." Harry strode away, turning on the stairs to say, "Don't enjoy your last two days too much."
Harry settled into a familiar bed in an unfamiliar room. Hedwig scratched at the window and he stood up to let her in, having lost the habit of using his wand. Hedwig had a bundle of letters for him. The top one was from Elizabeth. Harry put both of his pets in their cages and took the letters to bed to peruse.
As he read Elizabeth's letter, he felt relieved that she was isolated from the troubles in the magical world and would not lose faith in him since she was outside the normal wizarding world gossip. Her letter was written before she knew he had been released and her sympathy baldly reminded him of how much his living conditions had changed in mere hours. Harry sniffed the chilling air in the room and rubbed his eye. Despite exhaustion, notions of sleep eluded him.
The door cracked open, and a light rap sounded. Harry set the letters aside and shrugged to a sitting position just as the door creaked open. Snape glanced behind him before slipping inside.
Sounding wry and tired, Snape said, "It was suggested that I check on you."
Harry forced down a smile. "Yeah," he said, putting on an attitude for no really good reason. "So, now you have."
Meeting Harry's attitude with his own, Snape returned, "You're trying, but Slytherin does not fit you, truly. Your heart is not really in it."
"What does my heart have to do with it?" Harry smoothly asked.
Snape did not reply to this right away. He examined the wall and, putting his hand on the door handle, said to the ceiling, "Perhaps it is time to pass this whole thing on to someone better suited to it." In contrast to his words, he sounded disdainful.
"Oh, it is definitely time." Harry made as if he was bedding down to sleep and ignoring his visitor, but inside he worried what his Snape was going to think. If he found out. But he always seemed to find out.
The door clicked closed and Harry reached an arm out to crank down the wick on his bedside lamp.
Harry was woken by Candide peeking in the door and calling in a sing-song. "Harry, there are guests for breakfast, and we have been waiting on you. Winky will undoubtedly serve them another round of pomegranate Knut buns shortly, but they are hoping to see you."
Harry blinked painfully into the grey light from the window and scrubbed his eyes. Really, he must have just shut them and he wondered that his friends weren't all still abed themselves. "Be right there," he said, immediately thinking of all the things he needed to do that day, which got his blood moving nicely.
In the dining room he found his cousin, Pamela, accompanied by Lupin, settled in at the breakfast table. Pamela leaped up to greet him.
"Harry! So terrible what the wizards have put you through!"
"It was a misunderstanding," Harry said, returning her quick hug. "Well, not exactly . . . someone wanted it that way. But it will be straight soon enough."
"Soon enough?" Lupin echoed in surprise as Harry pulled out the chair across from him. A wondrous breakfast appeared, wondrous for being exactly what Harry normally had before he had been sent off.
As he sat there, Harry's curse sense bothered him in strange little surges. After the plain walls of his cell, the normal world felt confusing and busy, including the magic of it. Harry glanced casually around but the feeling came from directly across from him. Harry's eyes fell on Lupin's unnaturally long nails and hairy fingers. Perhaps it was Lupin himself that he sensed with his over-keyed perception.
Candide took a seat beside him and studied her plate and then Harry's. "At least I'm not the one getting overfed this morning. I swear Winky thinks I'm eating for four, not two."
"How are you doing?" Harry thought to ask.
She was concentrating on picking up her fork and knife as she replied, "Ready to be not pregnant anymore."
Across from her Pamela dropped her hands into her lap to adjust her napkin.
Harry was just wondering how to ask what was wrong when Snape slipped silently in, but declined to join them. Flatly, he said to Lupin, "I will be staying here on Monday, if you will see to things at Hogwarts."
"That will be fine," Lupin said, eyes flickering to Harry. "I'm expect you want to spend some time . . . at home."
Snape hesitated before replying, "Yes. Of course," in a tone that conflicted with his words.
Harry gave attention to his plate. Some weaker part of him wanted to feel sorry for the man, but he refused to allow it.
"Joining us?" Candide asked, sounding concerned.
"I think not," Snape replied. "Just fetching the paper." He slipped around to the sideboard.
"Is that a wizard newspaper?" Pamela asked.
Snape untied the distinctly edged scroll of the Daily Prophet, and glanced at the headline, before turning it over with acute interest. "Yes," he replied, distractedly.
"May I see it?" Pamela brightly asked. "Remus didn't think he should bring me a copy, something about avoiding charmed devices in Muggle houses."
Snape's eyes scanned the page back and forth before he held the paper out to her, expression unchanged. With a faint nod at Candide, he slipped out again, as silently as he had arrived.
Pamela held the newspaper up before her. "Look at that. The people are moving. And what silly hats everyone wears in the cold!"
Harry smiled faintly at her reaction and reached to serve himself more sausages. They were the super greasy kind that became solid and pasty once they cooled even a little. Even a French prison chef would not deign to serve such a thing. As he forked a few more, he glanced at the back of the Prophet, at Skeeter's column.
Exclusive Exposé! it read in bold letters. Distinguished & untarnished old moneyed wizard family's sordid past history . . .
A chill passed over Harry. "Can I see that?" he asked his cousin.
"What? Oh yeah." She quickly glanced through the other pages, even as she handed it over.
"You can have it back," Harry reassured her as he laid the paper out beside his plate where the edge soaked up oil from the remains of his forgotten breakfast.
In muted letters after the gigantic title, it read: " . . . to be revealed in a special supplement to the Prophet tomorrow. Unveiled . . . a tawdry tale told through letters obtained by our intrepid reporter, Rita Skeeter. Infidelity! Deception! Do not miss the Sunday Prophet containing Part One of this five-part special investigation into the philandering past of a wizard many currently, and erroneously, believe to be above reproach."
Harry handed the newspaper back, wondering whose life Skeeter was planning on ruining now. While he was in prison, she found herself another topic, apparently. He wouldn't mind ruining it for her, if possible.
Breakfast wound down. Harry sat back and patted his full stomach. Winky would most likely get her way and return him to his normal self in short order. Lupin slipped out, saying he needed to ask Snape a few things about the Seventh-Year syllabus, and Harry saw his chance.
"You should come see my new room," Harry said to his cousin. "Candide did a wonderful job decorating."
Harry waved that Candide should stay put. She misunderstood that he believed her physically challenged. "I can make it, Harry. I'm pregnant, not lame."
Harry wanted to give her the Auror gesture for I want to talk to this person alone, but she would not understand it. He sighed and led the way.
In the bedroom, Kali set off a series of chimes as she climbed around in her cage.
"I like the rug," Pamela said, rocking up and down on her toes. "Squishy and it looks less like a dungeon in here with it."
Harry finished the quick tour, and asked his cousin, "Something wrong?"
"With me?" she blurted in surprise. "No."
Candide drifted toward the door sending an apologetic smile back at Harry. Harry decided he would prefer she stay and gestured for her to return. She hung near the door.
Harry shrugged broadly, falling into a disinterested mode. "I only ask because I thought you looked unhappy at breakfast."
"Oh." A regretful ripple went through her pose and she looked away. "It's not something you should be worrying about, really."
Harry waited. It was what his old man persona would have done. Pamela fidgeted more and spoke anyway. "It's just that . . . " Her voice dropped. "I want to marry Remus and he's having none of it. He pushes away, a lot, at the merest suggestion and . . ." She drifted off, strained. "I don't know."
From the doorway, Candide sighed. "I know how that goes."
Pamela laughed nervously and, after another pause, said to Harry, "I really don't know. I'm ready to give up. You've known Remus longer, but I don't get the sense you've really been close, or anything. So I hadn't bothered asking what you thought, even though I've been dying to ask someone." After another gap she added more harshly. "Maybe no one has."
Harry turned to Candide for help. Candide visibly took a deep breath and came back to them. "I admit that I don't know Remus all that well. And I don't want to seem insulting by guessing, so maybe we should have you over for a long dinner . . . ah, some night after Severus has returned to school, I wouldn't mind his input, but I've sensed a new animosity with him aimed at Remus . . ."
"Next Saturday would be good," Harry interjected. "I'll talk to Severus about behaving himself," he promised.
Candide sounded unconvinced. "You really think . . ."
"Yes."
Pamela snorted lightly. "You really don't have to get involved. It's not really your problem."
"Nonsense," Candide said, sounding chummy. "Things are quiet here and we could use a challenge."
Harry, stunned by her assertion of household peace, watched them depart. Before they could get out of earshot, Harry shook himself and said, "I'm going out."
Candide, arm now around Pamela's shoulder, turned outside the doorway. "Given how things have been going, I feel I should ask where you are going."
Harry bristled inwardly, but calmly said, "Just to say hi to some friends. I won't be long."
Alone in his room, Harry gathered up his nice cloak, which hung comfortably light on his shoulders. He also grabbed up his other cloak, the one from his father. Harry needed to check on his guardian, but before he knocked himself silly with the bone grinding and chilling transition between the Planes, he wanted to check on a few other things first. And since he was in a hurry, he was not going to be polite about it.
Under his invisibility cloak, Harry slipped in and out of the Dark Plane, directly into Belinda's flat. She had lied to the Auror's office about his visit the night of the murder and he wanted to discuss that with her, if not snoop around more.
Belinda was not home, but the flat was occupied. Two wizards sat before the television, sharing a bag of crisps. Their hair and features had the flat generic look of Durumulna. With food-flecked mouths, they laughed at the man talking on the screen, even though the scene was not amusing. A pile of plates and empty crisp wrappers littered the area around the base of the television stand. Harry listened to the incomprehensible commentary one offered the other about the program, while he decided how to proceed.
Tip toeing, Harry moved into place, noting where each of the men's wands were. Under the cloak he reached out and grabbed up one wand out of a back pocket. The man twisted and reached back in question, the cue for Harry to knock the other one into chain binding, and take up his wand from the floor where it fell. He used another chain binding charm on the first man and with one broad pull tugged the cloak off to reveal himself.
Confused motion turned to startled stillness as the pair recognized him. One of them expressed what must be a profanity as his eyes tracked Harry moving in closer to search them both. There was not much on them. Some pounds, and little note cards Harry could not read.
"Speak English?" Harry asked the nearest one. When there was no reply, he put his wand point just below his throat, where the bones formed a notch, and asked again.
"Yes," came the eager reply.
"Using this flat as a safehouse, are you?" Harry guessed. When he got a nod in reply, Harry narrowed his gaze. "You better not be bothering Belinda," Harry said, mind leaping to worst case scenarios.
The man rapidly shook his head. "No, no, no. She is not to be touched. We are clear on that."
"Who made you clear on that?" Harry asked. There was no reply, and Harry could see in his gaze only a murky figure bleeding through damaged memories.
Harry swore lightly himself and wondered what he should do with them. He did not want to turn them in, just yet, nor did he want them to tell anyone he had been there, talking to them.
Harry smiled faintly as he thought of a plan. Pressing his wand into the man's solar plexus, which made him shrink away, Harry said, "So, you've been shaking down the shopkeepers on Diagon Alley, eh?"
The man glanced at his cohort before saying, "Mostly Knockturn Alley."
"How much have you collected?" Harry demanded. "I want to know how profitable this venture is."
"Profitable?" came the dull echo.
"I want to know if it's worth my cutting in," Harry impatiently explained.
The man's tone did not come back into focus. "You want in? Harry Potter wants in?"
"What else you think I'm goin' to do? They sent me to prison, the Ministry did. I didn't like that so much," he added, thinking he should probably try to sound less like a film villain.
"Oh. Yeah." The man agreed.
Harry made the point of his wand clear again. "I want a cut of what you're getting."
"A cut? You want part of our share?" the other man exploded. "You think we get to keep much ourselves?"
"I don't care," Harry snapped. "I'm getting in on this, or I haul you both into the Ministry."
The man shut his mouth which had remained hanging open. Harry spoke more calmly. "Or you can do something more for me. You can introduce me to someone who can get me in where the money is a little better. I expect I'm worth it."
The two men stared at each other. "What'll it be?" Harry asked. "Ministry? Money? Or an introduction to your contact?"
"Yer, yer, going to have to prove yourself, you know," the man said, suddenly exhibiting a stutter. His face had turned red and bloated from lying on the floor in a tight binding, reminding Harry of Neville.
"I don't have any problem with that," Harry said pleasantly. "None at all." He aimed his wand back and forth at each of them while toying with their wands in his other hand. "I'll come back on . . . Wednesday, noon. I expect an introduction to be set up by then. If not, your trip to the Ministry dungeon will be long and roundabout and you will be very grateful when you finally arrive. Got it?" He stared hard at each of them. Not surprisingly, neither had decided quite what to do. "Got it?" Harry nearly shouted, thinking a little unbalanced craziness would play in his favor, and frankly, he needed the chance to vent.
They both nodded rapidly. Harry stepped back and said, "You owe me now," and released their bindings. He tossed their wands behind him near the bedroom door, pulled the cloak over his head and slipped into the Dark Plane, leaving them to concoct their own explanations about how he had departed.
Feeling good about how that turned out, Harry Apparated and slipped back into the real world on a narrow lane, beneath a decoratively written, crossed sign designating Heatherlick Lane and Battle Bridge Approach. At the end of the canyon-like lane with its crooked gas lamps, Muggle traffic hummed past, unaware.
Still invisible, Harry fell into step behind a witch pushing a pram, hoping she turned in at Number 55, a soot stained brick structure with heavy rusty bars on the ground floor windows. In contrast to the rundown building, the doors were thick glass protected by swirl-patterned brass, polished to a glitter. The first pair of doors parted for the woman and Harry followed, mincing to keep from getting pinched by the doors closing behind him.
The squeaky wheels of the pram were quickly drowned out by the noise of the front offices of the Daily Prophet. Clacking and humming filled the air as visitors queued at various windows for placing adverts, ordering bronzed back copies and collecting post from their Which Match Secret Admirer boxes. Beneath the chattering noise of the hall an incessant thrum came up through the floor. The glass walls around the wickets allowed Harry to see everything, but he did not see a way into the rest of the building. He wanted to check his suspicions about Skeeter's article and, given his skills, this should be easy, but while patrol had brought him around the outside of the building many times, he had never been inside.
Beneath his cloak, Harry frowned, frustrated. He would have to try something else. He followed a dallying young couple to the doors. They leaned heavily on each other, even resting their heads together. A glance showed they had wandered over from the Announcements: Births, Deaths, Weddings, Elf Ownership window. They were so dreamy, Harry himself had to give them a light shove to get the second set of doors to trigger open. Rolling his eyes inside his cloaked world, Harry took off to pace around the building, intending to finding a way inside.
As he strolled, passing one painted-over window after another, something flickered from the second floor, like a curtain fluttering out an open window. Smiling to himself, Harry slipped away to his room intending to collect his broomstick, but he forgot which room was his, and he silently inverted into the baby's room. The pale greens and grey-checkered matching ruffles on the basinet and curtains brought Harry to a halt, feet rocking on the edge of the thickly corded spiral of the muted green rug.
Harry took a deep breath, starkly reminded that all was not well at home and that he needed to get his Snape back again. Torn between his desire to get even with Skeeter and his desire to check on his guardian, Harry hung there on the rug edge for half a minute. If he waited, his guardian's influence might make him forgo using all his powers to snoop around without warrant. Harry bit his lip. He would give it just one quick try, then he would be off. In any event, arriving with the sun higher would be better for his recovery on the other side, if he could not think of a safe hearth to land at.
Feeling better about that excuse than the other, Harry presently returned to the alley beside the Prophet building. He rode his broom up to the second floor and found the source of the thrumming. Occupying the entire rear half of the building was a massive, complicated, steam-belching, printing press. The familiar newspaper parchments were shuttled, flipped, and sent flying around the space before settling down and arranging themselves in a neat column that drifted down into the dark depths of the basement.
A figure in a sweat-stained, white shirt hunched over the controls of a great lever arm shuttling at a blinding pace over a broad roller. His hovering chair drifted dangerously close to the cranking metal. The man wiped his brow with an ink stained rag and tweaked a control.
Not spying any Apparation landing spots inside, Harry maneuvered into position to raise the window far enough to slip through, but it would not budge. From under his cloak he pulled out his wand and rather than risk setting off a spell alarm on the window, sent a heating charm at the man. The man appeared to heave a great groan, inaudible over the din, and sopped his forehead again. He hooked a stretched rubber band over the largest control knob, and pushed his chair to fly over to the window. There was a metallic clack as he unbarred it, then with Harry's invisible help, the window shot up, fully open.
Harry had to grab his broom with a jerking motion and veer away as the man leaned out to catch the cool winter air in fish-like gasps. Inside, the rhythm of the machine changed ominously, a teeth rattling vibration threatened, and the man heaved up and pushed away, leaving the opening clear.
Harry sailed inside, skillfully weaving through the streams of parchment shooting in all directions, to come to rest on a high landing beside a lift. He stopped at each floor, hoping no one noticed the empty lift moving about, sometimes cramming himself back into the cage's corner and sucking in his breath to stay out of the way. He found Skeeter's office on the second-to-the-top floor. The walls everywhere were glass, but the blinds on her office were drawn firmly closed on the inside, and based on the dim light, the office was most likely empty. The massive gaudy gold door lock that must have needed a key only Hagrid could pocket, did not yield to the first spell Harry tried and merely attempting it set off his curse sense, so he minced off to the next office area and waited to be certain he had not set off any alarms. When nothing happened, Harry slid back along the corridor, peeking around the edges of the slats. He could just make out a narrow office with crowded, bowing bookshelves stuffed with leaning stacks of papers and a small desk, equally buried.
When he had a good enough vision of the office, Harry slipped inside using the Dark Plane, and stood perfectly still, nerves keyed up in case of attack from a protective spell. Just below the ceiling, all around, hung a long row of stoic, stone masks that set Harry's teeth on edge. The eyeholes of the faces stood empty, revealing the shadowed wall behind, but they did not feel empty.
Keeping his cloak close around him, Harry carefully circled the desk. Skeeter's familiar, narrow, ringed notebooks littered the area, stacked meticulously front to back. Heart beating in time with the thrumming in the floor, Harry tediously searched with just his eyes. On a low shelf beside the desk, he finally spotted a draft proof of the article from that morning's paper. It lay curled on something smaller underneath. Using the cloak, he tugged that aside, letting it drift to the floor. Under it lay a bundle of letters, secured with a great golden clip sporting a jewel-winged dragonfly. Harry again, through the cloak, picked up the bundle and his curse sense went wild, making him duck instinctively, which was limited by his closely held broomstick. A mad buzzing filled the air, the bundle tried to take flight from his hand and Harry slipped through the floor and away, tugging the bundle through with him only by gripping it with all his strength.
In the grey stillness of the underworld, Harry examined the bundle, torn clean in half where the charmed clip had kept hold. It was a collection of love letters, written in a stunningly fine hand, and addressed and signed in pet names. They were dated more than thirty years ago, and postmarked from various places around England, but mostly the village near where Lord Freelander had his estate.
Harry held his broom tight and slipped back home, directly into the main hall. He tossed off his invisibility cloak, set his broom against the couch and paced once, thinking rapidly about what he should do. Skeeter's article was probably running on the presses right that instant. Should he go back and break the works to delay publication? He really did not have time to deal with this; he yearned to see to his guardian.
"I have yet to get used to your method of ingress and egress," a distressingly familiar voice intoned from the door to the library.
Harry stopped pacing and waited while Snape approached, gracing him with intent scrutiny before seeming disinterested, that was, until he saw what Harry held in his hand.
"Where did you get those?" Snape asked, sounding vaguely stunned.
Harry waved the broken packet. "Skeeter's office. I feared I knew whose life she was trying to ruin and I think I was right."
There was an odd pause. "And why would you care?"
"Lord Freelander is my benefactor. He's offered me help in the past."
"Ah." Snape said, clasping his hands before him, which brought his broad sleeves to a deep point. "The letters are fake. I planted them on Ms. Skeeter to damage her standing in the wizard community and with her employer."
Harry stared down at the letters. "But Freelander was having an affair . . ."
"Well, not with this witch . . . who never actually existed."
"You think Skeeter'd fall for that?"
Snape's sounded smug. "I believe she already has."
Harry huffed. "I should have grabbed hold of a copy of tomorrow's paper while I was there. The presses were running and I didn't even think of it."
"That is most likely the evening edition, in any event," Snape said, holding out his hand for the letters.
Harry stared at Snape's elegant, open hand, which conflicted so strongly with the scruffy rest of him. Harry held the ragged bundle in reach and let go of it. "I didn't mean to ruin your plans," he said, feeling torn about the situation.
Snape thumbed through the letter halves. "Oh, you have not. This is a far better outcome that I did not think could be arranged. Her office is considered impenetrable, protected by artifacts she reputedly purchased from an illegal dealer in Tazmanian talismanic objects." He put the letters in his pocket. Sounding almost pleasant, he added, "Now she has no evidence, which makes her position all the more precarious."
Harry said, "I'm all for Skeeter getting her due. But I don't like you messing with the lives of people I care about. You have an annoying habit that way."
"I did not realize. I thought him a safe target. My former colleagues knew the blackmail possibilities on every significantly rich or powerful witch and wizard, and I believed him blameless and able to take the scrutiny. But you tell me he cannot."
"Aaron's his son, in fact."
"Really?" Snape said, sounding amused by this gossip.
Harry said, "I just hope Skeeter isn't onto the real truth."
"He can withstand it if she is," Snape drawled, sounding bored.
"You could have told me what you were doing."
"I was getting even as part of a personal battle, well out of your purview, or so I believed. In any event, including this in a letter would have been problematic . . . you and I do not share any code I could utilize. "
"We share all kinds of codes, you just don't trust that we do," Harry snipped. "And on that topic, I'm going to check on my adoptive father. Cover for me if you would." Harry started to turn away to fetch a sweet snack, which he hoped would make it easer to recover from the cold on arrival. But he stepped back to ask, "Where's Candide?"
"Napping," Snape replied smoothly.
"Behave yourself," Harry said, tempted to reinforce the point.
"Please," Snape breathed, insulted sounding.
"And get ready to leave, because you're going back soon."
At that, Snape lost his annoyance and a haunted something drifted into his gaze.
"You don't look ready," Harry said, trying not to feel anything.
"There is little hope in that place, you must admit."
"It's better than when you left, for what it's worth. You're living at Grimmauld Place now."
Snape crossed his arms and smirked. "With Potter and his Merry Band I suppose."
"Yes. It's safer than before, for you. Don't complain." Harry pointed rudely in Snape's face. "Pretend you deserve the assistance, because if you want a place like this one, you have to earn it."
Snape pushed Harry's hand away, but gently. Voice low, he said, "If you don't think I've been sacrificing for longer than you've been alive, you are badly mistaken."
Harry stepped back, remembered he could use a wand, and Accioed the treat jar from the kitchen. He took a handful out before leaving the jar on the nearest end table. "Your journey's not over yet," Harry said, then feeling a stab of regret, added, "That's just the way it is. I'm sorry."
Mouth full of biscuit, Harry Apparated to his room to fetch his notes, which he found in the bottom of his trunk where he had left them, folded into the back of his first Potions text book. With these firmly secured in his breast pocket, he finished the last of his snack and slipped away for greyer surroundings.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Harry checked the age spell on his hands, and brushed his beard out as he stood before the door at Grimmauld Place. Cold to the bone and with his joints as stiff as if they were full of treacle, he leaned on the railing, like an old man would. The transition between the Planes had been the worst yet. Something odd had caught his attention just as the crushing of the In Between reached its peak, and that distraction drew him back, lengthening the agony. Shaking off uncertain impressions of dark human figures, Harry breathed in the welcome reality of the quiet square boxed in by smoggy air. It was more than smoggy, the breeze smelled scorched, like hot concrete and burned plastic. But the square appeared the same, albeit more decrepit in the hazy light. Harry sensed the usual handful of Death Eaters hiding nearby, ever watchful. The door cranked open before Harry could decide if he had the strength for some mischief in the Death Eaters' direction. Hermione stood in the doorway, brushing the hair out of her face. She smiled at him in welcome, just like normal. "Hey, it's you. Come on in."
Harry bowed, and found it difficult to re-straighten his painful back. At least he need not worry about forgetting to act his part. Hermione led the way inside to the dining room, where the scent of bread overwhelmed the mildewed drapes. Hermione bit her lip once, as if in anticipation, but that made little sense.
"Mr. Snape, someone to see you."
Snape stood by the sideboard, explaining something to Neville while drawing on a well-used parchment. He turned and caught Harry's gaze and his expression fell away into blank relief. Neville moved aside and Snape met Harry halfway along the table. "You made it," he said, sounding as emotional as Harry had ever heard him. Snape's eyes took in his bent posture. "Have a seat, you must . . . have traveled a long way."
Harry gratefully lowered his sore body into the offered chair. Snape did not release his shoulder as he sat beside him.
"What happened?" Snape sharply asked.
The others in the room gathered closer. Harry managed a small smile for his guardian and decided it was safe to say, "Sorry I'm late. I ended up in L'île de Cachot Méfait." His voice sounded hoarser than he intended.
"You ended up where?" Snape said, hand gripping harder.
"Where's that?" Ron asked, and Hermione whispered, "It's the French magical prison."
Snape did not wait for a response. "Dare I ask how that came to pass?"
Harry read the double meaning to the question and nodded. "I was framed for murder, but some friends arranged for my removal with some, shall we say, dubious counteractions of their own."
Snape said, "So, we have some straightening up to do."
"Just a bit," Harry said, so pleased to be there speaking with his guardian, he imagined everything would be set to right soon enough.
Hermione approached. "Would you like a bite of something, or tea? We haven't cleaned up from lunch yet."
Harry held up his hand. What he really wanted was a scorching hot bath, but asking for that felt awkward. "I'm fine, young lady. Really. They treated me rather well in prison, all things considered. Twelve course dinners with the warden and such."
Ginny, still leaning against the wall nibbling on the remains of the heels left on the bread tray, made a painful noise and said, "Can we get arrested by the French?"
Harry turned back to Snape. "I just came to check on you. To make sure you were all right."
Snape finally released him and knitted his fingers together. "I am quite all right. The situation with the Muggle rebellion groups has grown worse of late, but we are still quite safe here. And how are things where you came from? Are they holding up despite your not being there to look after them, having fallen into disreputation the way you did."
It had been a while since Harry had been teased. He smiled faintly and voice weaker than he would like, said, "Things are holding up fine. But, I should get back."
"You are leaving again already?" Snape blurted. A few of the others also expressed surprise.
"I have things I have to do, Severus," Harry said.
"Not in your condition you do not."
Harry stretched his neck. "It's true that the journey here was . . . more difficult than expected. But I didn't intend to be gone long. I didn't leave things set for that. I'll return tomorrow or the next day, I promise."
Snape insisted on remaining in charge. "You should simply remain until then. Rest yourself."
Harry had not considered that. He had been in too much of a rush to check on his guardian and bring the notes. "I have things to attend to. No one is expecting my absence."
"What did you tell others before departing?"
"Er, I said I had things to think over, given recent events."
Sounding unusually fraught, Snape leaned closer and said, "Then you can easily claim you simply took more time to do your thinking. Stay, Ha-Aaron."
The way Snape botched his name, it came out "Heron" like the bird.
Harry put aside the issue of his staying or not. He felt for the spell notes in his pocket and hesitated speaking.
Snape, ever perceptive, said, "Something you would like to discuss in private?"
Harry nodded and assumed the two of them would depart, but everyone else quickly took the hint and left them alone. When the door clicked closed, Harry observed, "You are getting along here, Severus."
"Things have improved," Snape admitted. "Desperation leaves them little choice." Then more quietly added, "And me as well."
Harry pulled out the bundle of notes and smoothed them on the table between them. "I copied everything out of the book that seemed relevant to executing the spell. If it isn't everything, I can try bringing the book itself, but I didn't want to risk losing it."
Snape read the notes, flipping each page behind the others.
Harry remembered being marked on his essays, and hoped this one passed more than any before. He said, "I expect I can help, since I do this all the time."
Snape nodded distractedly and read through the pages again. "There are only two sections that are not clear to me. I assume you transcribed this exactly?" He pointed at a diagram, where a dome of spell energy rose out of the Device. Harry had been forced to verbatim copy out ink-faded symbols he did not recognize, some kind of modified zodiac signs.
Harry nodded. Snape found a pen. "Could it have been this instead?" Snape wrote out something in the margin.
"It could. It wasn't clear."
"That's an alchemial symbol. This whole string is. It may be the spell incantation. I cannot think what else it may be." Beneath each one, Snape wrote out phonetics, then held the parchment out to examine it. He shrugged lightly, a surprisingly easy-going response to the situation. He glanced sideways at Harry. "We may be relying on you a bit."
"I'll manage," Harry said, determined.
Snape put the parchments away and set the quill on the edge of a stray plate, even though the table was already stained and burned. "Stay, Aaron. You will need your strength for the spell."
"Afraid I won't come back?" Harry tried to tease, but he was too worn down, so it just came out hopeless.
"I spent the last weeks trying to imagine arranging a life here. I do not wish to do so. I am too soft for this place, too tired of the fight, not to mention too involved elsewhere."
Harry bent over his hands. "And there are new problems too. I'm in trouble with people who don't play nice."
"My duty is to be there helping you. I think I've earned that right." Snape stood and offered Harry a hand up. "I am not going to allow you to depart, so why don't you rest and recover while I research a few things from your notes in the rather interesting book collection Ms. Granger has been slowly pilfering from the London Wizard Library."
Harry accepted the offered hand and winced as his knees complained, chasing away his last stubborn thoughts of leaving. "All right."
"Thank you for coming back," Snape said, deeply sincere.
Harry snorted lightly. "Like I could stay away."
Next: Chapter 36
Hermione saw what he held and put her hands out. "I was just coming for . . ."
Snape rolled the things into her arms. She smiled sheepishly and headed downstairs. Snape closed the door with a satisfying snap and ran a series of anti-snooping spells before returning to Harry's side. His manic energy waned and he deliberately placed Harry's wand under his pillow, sticking out an inch for easy reach.
Sounding wry, Snape said, "Given their theories about us, I would hope they would not eavesdrop, but I wished to be certain." He felt Harry's forehead. "It is a good thing you did not try to return immediately; who knows what would have happened to you."
Harry closed his eyes, staying carefully within himself this time, and tried not to laugh aloud.
Author's Notes: Yup, huge break. Life just got to be too much and this had to give. Back on track again.
Chapter 36 — Substitute Heroes
Upstairs in Grimmauld Place, in the room Snape shared with Lupin, Harry sat on the end of the bed, hunched in the enveloping folds of his charm-warmed cloak. The cold spiking his marrow was slow to ease, and it perniciously drained his strength.
"No ill effects from prison?" Snape asked. He moved about the room pulling potion bottles from the shelves and mixing in a cold cauldron. "You truly were treated well?"
Harry shrugged and nodded reassuringly. Voice still rough, he said, "They were perfectly polite — well, one guard was a bit of an arse . . ." He shrugged again to dismiss this complaint. He had lots of things he wanted to say, but they were undoubtedly being watched if not listened in on. He waited and took his cue from Snape for what to discuss.
Snape used a match to light the burner under a cauldron. Harry blinked at that. "Want to borrow my wand?"
Snape shook his stringy hair. "It's all right. I've learned to live without."
Harry laughed in a bark. "Ha! Have you now? No more mocking me for my Muggle ways, Severus."
Snape's warm gaze slid over to him, nearly obscured by his unkempt hair.
More soberly, Harry said, "You look like a Potions Master again."
"You make that sound like it's a bad thing," Snape drawled.
Harry hunched over and better wrapped his cloak around himself, wondering if he should renew the charm. Perhaps the room itself was cold.
"The hearth's not lit," Harry commented.
Snape drew out the stirring stick several times, testing the viscosity. He said, "We have to ration wood."
"Why?"
"There is a shortage of just about everything. Partly it is the chaos outside, partly poor organization inside exacerbated by a shifting of roles. Procurement of supplies is gradually improving, but this is a rather large house, with many hearths to feed. The logs there on the grate are for the early morning. Someone usually comes in and warm the walls and floor with a spell after breakfast. That helps."
"They need to get Kreacher on their side," Harry observed. He pulled out his wand and warmed the walls himself, thinking it wise to skip the wall covered in potion-laden shelves. He then sat, hunched more, waiting for the brewing to complete on what he hoped was a Bone-Toasting Draught, if there was such a thing.
Snape's hand endlessly circled, alternately stirring and testing the potion. Harry closed his eyes and, like he had done so many times in prison, reached out in his inward world and . . . stopped cold, stunned silly.
The forest of Harry's mind hummed with Death Eaters, hundreds of them, perhaps a thousand or more. In his inner vision he huddled, small, amidst this dark star-scape, fixed in place by his own amazement. The few dozen servants that bolstered him in prison were a club team in comparison. Wanting to better know, to better feel, he stretched out to touch the shadows, and was over-swept by a headlong surge of potential strength. As his mind latched onto a few shadows here, it slipped away from others there, only to slip free again and rush in another direction, wave tossed, unable to find anchor, at the same time taunted and overwhelmed by the aura of obscene power. Harry had no defenses against the rush and retreat of this extra-sensory onslaught. He lost track of his physical self and slumped to the floor, inert.
Harry was dimly aware of Snape lifting him up and resting him on the bed, of hurried motion and quiet, adamant words. A hand brushing his hair back gave him the sensory harbor he needed to let go of that other world.
Snapped back to his senses, Harry opened his eyes. "It's all right," he insisted. Snape had taken up Harry's wand and currently sat with it aimed at Harry's heart. "I'm all right."
With a sudden motion, Snape stood and went about the room, picking up seemingly random objects: a crystal ball, a conch shell, a figurine of a girl with dog. With these bundled in the crook of his arm, he opened the door and stopped short because Hermione stood there.
Hermione saw what he held and put her hands out. "I was just coming for . . ."
Snape rolled the things into her arms. She smiled sheepishly and headed downstairs. Snape closed the door with a satisfying snap and ran a series of anti-snooping spells before returning to Harry's side. His manic energy waned and he deliberately placed Harry's wand under his pillow, sticking out an inch for easy reach.
Sounding wry, Snape said, "Given their theories about us, I would hope they would not eavesdrop, but I wished to be certain." He felt Harry's forehead. "It is a good thing you did not try to return immediately; who knows what would have happened to you."
Harry closed his eyes, staying within himself this time, and tried not to laugh aloud. He rested that way, wishing the cold would finish easing, and wondering what it would feel like to connect thoroughly to such a legion of servants. It seemed too much really. How would one keep track of them all?
The bed rocked straight as Snape stood to tend the potion, which bubbled noisily. Harry opened his eyes and peered around the room, vigorously resisting reaching out to test the closest shadows. Snape returned with a cup of watery violet liquid that glowed faintly and gave off a metallic odor. "Try to drink that as hot as you are able," Snape said.
Harry had to switch hands quickly on the hot cup to hold it by the handle. All he could manage was one searing sip at a time, but his limbs warmed nicely.
Snape watched him drink before saying, "I'm going to fetch some books from Ms. Granger."
Minutes later, Hermione followed Snape back into the room, accompanied by a hovered stack of odorous leather-bound, monstrous volumes. Hermione was saying, "I don't think you'll find much on advanced diagramming in those. I can go search the collection for others, if you like." She gave disguised Harry an embarrassed smile when she saw him reclining there on the bed. Harry immediately put his feet down on the floor and sat up.
Snape said, "The library is open?"
"I have a key," Hermione said. "Technically, the library is only open two hours a week now and the time always changes. My library card shows the time for each week Sunday at midnight." She put her hands in her pockets and rocked up on her toes. "If you told me a bit more, I could probably help . . ."
Snape opened and bent over the top book, hair obscuring his face. Harry said, "I can go along to the library."
"Feeling up to it?" Snape asked.
Harry nodded, and stroked his beard, constantly worried it might have faded away. "You look through those and I'll accompany Her- Ms. Granger." Harry stood creakily, and fetched his wand from under the pillow in a quick motion. This also embarrassed Hermione, who stepped to the door.
"I'll be downstairs when you're ready to go."
"I'm ready now," Harry said, reminding himself to make his voice hoarser. Hermione shrugged and departed the room. To his guardian, Harry said, "I'll be back."
"Do be careful."
Harry hesitated, thinking that very good advice, but not at all in the way he suspected Snape intended it.
"I'll try."
- 888 -
The London Wizard Library stood like an oversized Victorian shanty in an apparently large open courtyard of a boring glass office block. Hermione stopped in the dimness of the portal leading in and examined the area, wand twitching in her fingertips. The low clouds rendered the scene mute and of indeterminate time of day. Harry's curse sense buzzed in the back of his rib cage. He focused on that, rather than the shadows dancing around him. He closed his eyes for just an instant, just long enough to swallow a charged flutter of breath-sucking reach and power. None flitted too near to them so he had no good excuse to remain in their tantalizing presence. Really, he could not risk getting overwhelmed again. If his disguise should fade when he could not renew it or use a memory charm on Hermione, things would get quite complicated.
Harry must have made a strange noise when he reached inward because Hermione patted his arm and said, "You going to make it?"
At Harry's nod, she turned back to waiting for an employee towing a dust bin to finish rumbling it off through the opposite portal, where it echoed louder momentarily before fading.
"Clear?" Harry asked. He wanted to say that he thought it was clear, but deferred to her familiarity with this errand.
Hermione nodded, causing her hair to bob in the usual manner. She marched across the grey courtyard that was dotted with concrete benches and concrete planters. But instead of heading for the carved double doors of the entrance, she paced around to the back, fishing in her pocket as she went. With practiced ease she pulled out the oversized key and let them both in a large battered door with smaller owl doors mounted in the face of it.
Harry was glad her practiced movements continued and the lamps came up quickly, because his curse sense was setting his back painfully straight. They stood in an over filled storage room. Thousands of books teetered in piles growing out of crates. Crates had been tipped sideways to form makeshift shelves beside real metal shelves. Owl cages hung crooked and empty from the wall over the door, cobwebs between them.
Hermione bent to the crate placed beside the door. "These are the ones I'm supposed to take next," she said.
"Take?" Harry said, feet glued to the spot by his instinctive alarm.
"I'm a member of Friends Of Obscure Libraries. That's why I have a key. With things getting bad, the libraries have been trying to disperse the collections to save them from destruction. So, the next lot to be taken to a safe place are put in this crate." She tapped her hand on the splintery wood.
Harry peered into the crate. "Several of these are cursed," he said, preferring if she did not take those.
Hermione stood on tiptoe to better see inside. "They are?"
Harry glanced around the room, making his feet move in what had to be a dangerous direction. "Lots of these are. This whole shelf is," he added, peering along a line of especially rugged bindings that nonetheless had taken a long-term beating.
Hermione, coming up beside him, gasped and grabbed Harry's sleeve in her fingertips. "What are these doing here?" she whispered. One of the books shuffled on the shelf and fell still. More quietly, she said, "These are supposed to be in the vault. Actually, in the special vault in the vault." Her hair swung as she glanced around. "It's not safe like that."
Harry gave the shelf a good eying, like he would the creatures in the Dark Plane, insisting they behave.
"It's a trap," Hermione murmured, tugging Harry backwards by the small corner of robe she still pinched.
"It's all right, stand over there," Harry commanded. "Keep your wand up." He scavenged around the room until he found an unused metal shelf. This he mounted across the front of the dangerous row of books. While the hot metal from his welding spell pinged and the glow faded, Harry blew across his wand and gave Hermione a satisfied grin, which, since she did not know him, made her dubious rather than amused.
Harry said, "You are correct that it isn't safe here. I would guess the scheme of your Library Friends has been compromised."
"Fools," she said.
"That's a little harsh," Harry said. "Things are tough."
"No, I mean F.O.O.L.s. That's our acronym."
"Ah," Harry said, not having anything to add. He shook himself. "I still want to look for the books we need. If you want to go, that would be fine," Harry added, thinking he could more easily slip out alone than with her.
Rattled, but as brave as expected, she said, "No, I'll help you look." She started in on the crate by the door, gingerly pulling out a book and opening it. "Just warn me if anything cursed is going to try to take my face off."
"It won't while I'm here," Harry said, trying to reassure her.
She studied him, too closely, such that a flicker of strange recognition crossed the lines around her eyes. "That's interesting. Why is that?"
"Just an effect I have on them," Harry assured her, quickly bending over a book away from her.
Two hours later, Hermione stretched her neck and blew her fringe clear of her eyes. "I don't have a key into the main library, but we could probably get in. Most of the good books have been dispersed already or are in here waiting to be." She gave the dangerous shelf a worried glance.
Harry stepped over a makeshift pile that formed a wall in the middle of the room. "We found three; that's more than I thought we would." Worried about his disguise holding out, he said, "We should go. Given that your Friends have been found out, we are pushing our luck staying this long." He faced her, putting his hands on her arms. "Don't come back here again. This is a trap." He gestured at the trunks. "Take what you must, now and don't return."
Cobwebs clung to the hair she pushed back out of her eyes. "That would be all of them."
Harry smirked. "Try to be more choosy than that."
The two of them ferried books to the attic of Grimmauld Place for three quarters of an hour, until upon returning to the office block after one overburdened run, Harry's sense of shadows advancing made him grab Hermione before she could step out into the courtyard. He pulled her backwards into an alcove of the concrete portal and waved a spell to obscure their hiding place.
"What-?"
"Shh," Harry said, arm tight around Hermione's smaller frame. Her back moved against him as she breathed, rapidly. Footsteps approached, the kind made by hard leather soles of business shoes. A Muggle.
Harry did not like the turn this was taking. He waved a darkening charm, which sucked the daylight out of the open entryway to the expansive courtyard. He then transfigured the dead leaves collected in the corners into hand-sized spiders and sent them scurrying out to the pavement.
"Gah!" came the expression of horror followed by running feet.
Harry hoped the man slipped away before what must be a dragnet closed around them. So many shadows approached, Harry worried that a broad Apparition barrier may already be in place.
In a very quiet voice, Hermione asked, "What are we waiting for?"
"I suspect we cannot Apparate away, and-" He stopped as she made a delicate series of movements in the cramped space. The resulting spell gave off a puff of smoke that swirled in a tetrahedron. She shook her head. Harry held her more firmly, and said to her, "Whatever happens, do not let go of me."
She nodded and sucked in a breath that may have been a sniffle. Harry bent to her ear. "I am curious what they are doing. I can't imagine all this trouble just for us."
"All what trouble?" But before Hermione's whisper faded, she jerked back against Harry in surprise. Out of thin air, Portkeying into the courtyard, appeared legions of Death Eaters. Harry's gasp of dizzy mental surprise was fortunately completely excusable.
The hooded figures, long cloaks flowing around them and snapping when they moved, paid no attention to the alcove behind them. Harry quickly added a series of masking spells to their hiding place, easy to add because he could bridge them across the concrete edges boxing them in.
Without any coordination the figures threw spells at the library, causing it to glow at the edges of every board and window pane. The spells hiding it from Muggle eyes failed in a burst that shattered the windows on the library and some on the office block. Glass rained like hail. The spells changed and the glow tightened, narrowed, until, with an ear-splitting creak and crash the building imploded.
The crowd of Death Eaters expressed only one or two notes of victory. A smaller group formed near the rubble and set fire to it. The dry wood caught easily and soon the grey evening sky fell darker in comparison to the rising inferno. The Death Eaters backed away. Some departed. More windows on the office building shattered.
Muggle sirens trickled out of the distance and the Death Eaters began leaving en masse. Harry waited until the fire personnel pushed their way through the crowd gawking from the relative safety of the portal's overhang, their hosepipes keeping a path clear behind them. He cancelled the spells keeping the two of them boxed in, and they slipped away in the crowded confusion and dazzling firelight.
"You were gone quite a while," Snape said when they finally returned to the Grimmauld Place dining room, empty handed for that round.
"We pushed our luck too far," Harry amiably said, trying not to feel anything. He could not afford to care about this place. It would overwhelm him.
Hermione remained quiet upon their return. She went to the tea service and with calm hands made herself a cup and sat down to cradle it, not drinking. Neville tracked her doing this and said, "What happened?"
This drew everyone else's attention.
Hermione cleared her throat. "They destroyed the library."
Lupin turned from helping Lavender put a spell on her mittens. "They did? Guess it was just a matter of time."
Hermione raised her worn gaze to futilely seek hope in every other face in the room, one at a time. Unconsoled, she returned to studying her teacup.
Harry tipped his head subtly toward the door, indicating he wanted to talk to Snape alone. Snape followed him up to the room, where Harry dropped tiredly onto the bed. "Things really are a mess here," he said. "I saw more Death Eaters this afternoon in one place than I believed existed before."
Snape turned to peer out the window, not replying. "What are you thinking?" Harry asked. When he received no reply, he added, "I want to get . . . can we talk safely?"
Without turning around, Snape replied, "I removed all the spying devices. Go ahead."
"I want to get you out of here," Harry said. "It's going to be difficult waiting until Monday when Candide won't be around to notice."
Snape nodded, but did not turn. From below, scents of dinner wafted up, making Harry's insides churn needfully. He stroked his beard and found it felt thinner. "Can you check my disguise?"
Snape approached, thoughts clearly far away. But he renewed Harry's wrinkles and his beard. Harry took his wand back and redid his own hands. He said, "You aren't having second thoughts . . . ?"
Snape shook his head. "I am trying to find hope, any assurance that the odds of success are better than zero . . . I have not yet managed it. This place well exceeds my inadequate aptitude for finding a bright spot."
Harry put his hands in his pockets to protect them against the chill and gave Snape a wry smile. "Mine too, I'm afraid."
- 888 -
- 888 -
Snape peered across the nightly feast filling the dinner table at his "wife". Her normally conversational demeanor had taken a holiday, making Snape wonder if she was beginning to suspect something was amiss. An newly emerging spoiled part of him wished her to know the truth, but his agreement with Harry kept that idea firmly in check. The young man would not be pleased, and Snape had little desire to cross him so blatantly. He did not fear Harry, exactly—only true cruelty was worth fearing, and Harry was not that. But his quick temper, previously impotent at being expressed in any significant manner, had found a dangerous conduit in this place.
Snape contemplated an appropriate comment for many minutes before saying. "May I ask what is troubling you?"
"What? Oh. I'm just worried about Harry."
Snape hoped that was the extent of it. Perhaps it was the majority of it. Reassuringly, he said, "He told me he needed to think things through. I am certain this is merely his quandary over whether to continue on at the Ministry." He made a point of returning to eating, trying hard not to feel jealous of this moment ahead of time. Such meals would become extremely rare very shortly, and the memories of them painful.
"Why can't he think here?" Candide asked, piqued.
Snape put the quick emotion down to hormones and replied, "Perhaps he grew accustomed to being alone." He gestured at the hall behind her. "You saw how many of his friends were here and how many continue to stop by."
"Including Tonks, who should know where he is," Candide insisted.
Snape shrugged dramatically, truly wanting her to let it drop so he could better have her attention. "Possibly he is rethinking that too," he insinuated. "Harry is fine. I am certain. He is more than capable of taking care of himself."
"True. The way he flits in and out of places, without even bothering to Apparate," she murmured, arguing with herself it sounded like.
"That and other things," Snape agreed.
She finally picked up her knife and started in on the main dish. "I wish someone in our office had Curse Nose. Especially around the time Ministry Revenue sends out the crows with the audit notices."
Candide remained quietly introspective through dinner. Snape wished otherwise, but knew of no means to draw her out. He did wonder why the boy wonder delayed so long in returning.
Candide arranged the pillows just so and settled back on the couch to relax with an empty sigh. Snape thought of and discarded many possible things to say before settling on, "Is there something you would like to do?"
Candide sat up enough to peer at the clock. "Oh, well at eight the Flying Gorgeouso Brothers comes on the wireless."
Snape wanted to utter the what? but held back on the assumption that he should already know. "Nothing else you might prefer?"
"They are re-enacting the magical version of Hamlet tonight. Not interested?"
"I think not."
She pulled a small book from her robe pocket. "I feel like listening to a story. You could read to me." Snape fetched the book from her outstretched hand and returned to the opposing couch as she tipped her head back and said, "I like listening to your voice."
The book cover showed a rider hauling hard to turn the head of his black horse. His white sleeves leaked out of his ill-fitting rough brown robes. The horse's head filled the foreground with flared nostrils and defiant protruding eyes, banded neck muscles arcing away, countering the tug of the bit. "The Fiery Friar," Snape read. "You truly intend to read this?"
Without opening her eyes, she said, "I'm halfway through. You can start at the bookmark."
Snape parted the book at the diminutive strip of yellow ribbon and backed up a page to the start of the previous paragraph. "Forks of lightening cracked the seething sky and torrents of rainwater consumed the surface of the already poor road. Behind him, the monastery's stalwart walls stood firm against the onslaught, tiny windows shining beacons against the night. Somewhere ahead on the fast-dissolving road, obscured by the foggy mist sent up by the battering rain, was the Green Rooster Inn, where the Duke undoubtedly harbored from the storm on his trip to the port. It would be harder to guard his daughter in such a place should she finally be driven into mutiny by his stubborn insistence that she be sent off, exiled really, to the colonies."
Snape stopped. "Why?" he asked.
"Why is she being sent off? To be married, because the Duke fears-"
"I meant why any of it? Why are you reading this?"
She laughed, reminding Snape again how easily she let criticism wash around her, unlike Lily. "It's just easy entertainment. I like the books that way. I don't want to think at all when I'm relaxing."
Snape flipped ahead a few pages. "No risk of that. I'll agree."
"Don't you sometimes ever like to imagine a different place, where different rules apply?"
Snape hesitated replying. "I find such thoughts to be unproductive, or . . . counterproductive even."
"Well, unlike you I don't want to get home from work and curl up with the latest Potions research newsletter." She peered over at him discriminatingly. "Well, you'd probably break if you tried to curl up, but you get the idea. Couches are for relaxing, Severus, in case you missed the memo on that."
Snape sat straighter in response. He held the delicate book up higher, moved his thumb out of the way of the words, and read, "Scarletta slipped from the horse's quivering haunches and landed lightly on her dainty boots. The rain had eased into a gentle caress with the touch of dawn upon the land. She tossed her blonde tresses out of her eyes and held them back with one milk-white hand. 'But, you cannot go,' she insisted, troubled eyes reinforcing her unsteady tone. 'I don't even know these people or this place.'"
Candide interrupted, "He's leaving her? What page are you on?"
"Fifty two," Snape assured her. "Which would be . . ." he flipped ahead. "Precisely the middle." He paged back. "I did skip over some," he said, tempted painfully again to tell her the truth. He shut the book, forgetting the bookmark and having to find the page again to rectify that. "I'm sure he is going to tell her he has larger responsibilities . . . promises he cannot break," he said, thinking the author would have an entire run-on flowery sentence about how much effort he put into saying that with no inflection.
With a surge of selfishness, he pushed to his feet and went over to her and changed himself for one of her many pillows, so that she lay across his lap. He felt defiant given how little time he had remaining. Harry's mysterious absence notwithstanding, he harbored no hope that the unpredictable young man would not hold up his promise to send him home, on schedule. Executing the obscure spell of a long dead insane wizard had been Snape's last best chance, borne of homeless desperation. But fate had pushed back and now he had been drained of all desire to tempt it again.
While he considered his fate, Candide's breathing fell slow and steady and he assumed she slept. Her unremarkable face was canted away from him, so he could not be certain. His hand hovered over her shoulder, tempted to touch, but not willing to disturb her if she did sleep.
Snape took a deep breath and remained still, considering his situation. Even if he could not escape fate, escape retribution, it seemed more avenues were open if he would only escape himself and seek them. Candide presumably had a counterpart in his world. And his illicit understanding of her would work greatly to his advantage in approaching her. He may not have a future, but he certainly had a present and he intended to work out how to optimize the quality of it. There was literally nothing to lose, except the dusty past.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Harry had no hope of sleeping that night. Snape's reassuring presence helped, but the room's underlying haze of stale potions and the foot-powdery scent of his borrowed pyjamas distracted him from relaxing. That and every time he closed his eyes, the shadows loomed into view, teasing him with hard-to-define promises.
Harry would have tossed and turned, had there been space to do it in. As it was, he bumped Snape with his elbow and expected that if the other were not awake before that he would be now. Indeed, Snape shifted and asked, "Difficulty sleeping?"
Harry did not feel this was the best time to explain about his latest penchant for gathering a personal psychic army. "Yeah," he said, intending to leave it at that. But he could not, the wraiths teased at him, and the closest shadows bothered him the most. Harry pulled his wand out from under his pillow and sat up in the grey light.
As he sat there thinking, Snape shifted again. "What is it?"
Harry slipped out of the heavy covers and down to the cold floor. "I have to take care of something." With his toes, he found his shoes and grabbed up his cloak off the hook by the door. He could just make out Snape's outline, sitting up in bed.
"I'll be right back," Harry said, and slipped away.
He reinverted on the far side of the square in the center of Grimmauld Place. Relaxing his mind for just an instant, he detected that there was one Death Eater off to his left, near the corner of the fence, and another three huddled directly across from the house. Without even bothering to tie his shoes, Harry marched along the trampled grass beside the curb, preparing a spell in his head and rolling his wand in his fingers in anticipation.
The Death Eater guard was so inept, he caused a rustle of dead leaves as Harry approached, but Harry had a Silencing Charm applied just before the man let out a bird call. Harry jumped the short metal fence meant to preserve the grass from walkers cutting off the corner and sliced out with one of the few invisible spells at his disposal, a Choking Curse. It took two tries, but his quarry fell through the shrubbery at his feet in a futile effort to escape the spell. Harry disarmed the hooded figure and added a heavy chain binding before releasing the man to breathe again. Harry yanked the hood free to reveal Montague, a Slytherin Harry knew from Hogwarts. The surprised look he got in return made Harry realize that he was operating without a disguise.
Harry hesitated only a second before tugging Montegue's hood back down and slipping off across the grass, angling away from his next targets a bit to come in directly from behind.
Harry had two of them bound up before the third even thought to turn. The figure's mask was in place, but his voice sounded like Jugson's when it said, "Potter?" and looked him up and down. Harry assumed he made quite a picture, standing in the night air in his pyjamas and cloak, shivering faintly despite the lovely adrenalin warming his blood in its course.
"I want you to leave me alone," Harry said. "I want you to go away."
"Go away?" Jugson echoed, as dull as ever. The mask made Jugson's breathing louder. He huffed and raised his wand. Harry easily waved out the counter to the Blasting Curse that came his way.
"What is this?" Harry mocked. "Aren't you listening? Take your friends and go!"
Another curse. Harry blocked that one too. "What does it take?" He sent a Spinning Hex at Jugson, toying with him. It spun his robes up tight and when it released him he continued spinning until he fell in the cold mud. "Go!" Harry commanded again, reaching inward this time to reinforce his will.
Harry could not see well, but thought that Jugson convulsed once in a great heave before shakily rising. Shoulders rising and falling, he peered at Harry, eyes glittering through the holes in his crooked mask. He raised his wand threateningly, but then lowered it and Disapparated.
Harry stepped over, grabbed each of his companions by whatever he could and took them away as well, to the first place he thought of that was harmlessly out of the way: the Quidditch pitch overlooking the port at Falmouth. He dropped his packages on the center line, also muddy, and went back for the last of the four.
Montague he took to the field outside of London where he had battled with Merton's associates. He dropped him backwards onto the windbroken straw and stared around them. The night made the fields stretch away to an impossible distance. There were no cars, no lights except the hazy glow that must be London central to the northeast. The closest houses were dark, roofs ragged, uninhabited looking.
"Happy with this?" Harry demanded of his confused captive. Part of him felt terror at this world, at what his own could have become if he had not succeeded. It all felt so fragile and slippery and Harry hated that feeling; he was strong enough that he should never feel that helpless, ever.
Harry brought his breathing under control. He longed to lash out, somehow, take any action against the impossible. A great spring threatened to uncoil inside him and if he did not let it loose, it would shred him from the inside. He tossed a Lumos out of his wand and held it low, glaring at Montague.
"You didn't have to become this," Harry said.
Montague cleared his throat, but still croaked as he said, "I did, really. There's nothing else."
"There's death," Harry said pleasantly. "That's always an option."
Montague's face stretched in dismay at that thought and he uselessly shuffled the thick links of the chain binding before falling still again, wary.
His old classmate lay like a black carpet before him, leaching poison into Harry . . . sweet poison. Harry licked his lips and in one sudden and violent movement crouched low, jerked Montague's arm free of the chain and pressed his hand over the Dark Mark. Desperately, fighting his own base instinct to do the opposite, Harry pressed the curse away. He pressed it away from himself, away from Montague's clammy flesh.
Montague screamed and Harry had to hold his knobbly wrist with all his strength to keep him from pulling free. Ash gritted under Harry's hand as he let go. With a small smirk he brushed the ash away to reveal a clean arm and said, "Explain that to your master."
Harry stood, unsteady in the dark field that provided little discernable reference for upright. He brushed his forehead, then had to rub it clean of the ash from his hand. Dismissively, he waved the chain binding off and Disapparated away so he could slip into the Dark Plane unseen, and from there return to Snape's room.
The field outside had not seemed bright, but the room was even darker. Harry's eyes finally landed on a figure standing in the window, when it turned.
"There you are," Snape said in relief.
"Yep, I'm here," Harry said, trying to act normal. He kicked off his shoes, shed his cloak to the floor on top of them, and slipped gratefully back into bed.
Snape joined him a minute later. Sitting on the other edge for a time, thinking, apparently. "We will discuss later what you were doing."
Harry's brows raised, unseen. "Right," he said amiably. "I just needed to stretch out a bit so I could sleep."
"Not wise doing that here."
Harry rolled away and curled up against the cold so far that his knees hung off the side of the bed. "Yeah, I know."
Snape gave him and settled in beside him. "Don't do it again."
Harry, enjoying the lonely near-field of his mind, and sucked down by exhaustion, could not reply.
He dreamed he stared into a mirror. He and his reflection considered one another, blinking and twitching. Harry reached up to touch the silvered glass and found that his reflection did not follow this movement, nor was there any glass.
Harry snapped awake, gasping. Again, he was glad to have Snape's nearly painful grasp on his arm as an anchor to bring him out of the forest. The square outside, and thus Harry's inner vision, hummed with scores of Death Eaters.
"Guess that didn't work," Harry mumbled.
"What?"
Harry rubbed his gritty eyes and explained, "I chased away the handful of guards out in the square earlier and now there are about fifty." With a heart surging start of worry for the counterparts of his friends, Harry asked, "They can't get in here, can they?"
Snape released Harry's arm and reached for his cloak. "If an all out assault could be effective, I expect they would have done it long ago."
Harry calmed his heart. "Good point."
The air in the room bit at Harry's nose and fingers and a gauzy greyness crept around the objects in the room. "Can I light the hearth? What time is it?"
"You may light it if you wish. Heating the walls is almost as effective."
Harry did both and scooted forward on the bed to better enjoy the firelight. Snape still peered out the window, moving slowly side to side, sometimes leaning close. "You really don't think they can get in?" Harry asked again.
Snape shook his head. Harry tapped his wand on his blanket covered knee. "I should renew my spells," he said. "Return to Dumbledore mode."
After a pause, Snape said, "You are nearly as frustrating as Dumbledore, so you do have that going for you."
"Thanks."
It was a good thing Harry had put on his disguise as early as possible. Just as dawn came on in earnest, Hermione knocked faintly on the door.
"Just thought I'd come and warn you to be extra careful coming and going. Looks like we have an invading force down in the square." She minced over to the window and leaned on the brewing shelf to peer out. "Look at them all. They aren't even hiding." She sounded rattled and worried.
Harry felt a bit guilty and then thought he should reserve his energy for keeping inside his own head.
At the door, Hermione stopped and said, "I have some books spread out on the table downstairs, if you want to come down before we have to move things aside for breakfast . . ."
Snape nodded. Hermione glanced stressfully at the window again before pulling the door closed behind her and leaving them alone.
Harry could not read Snape's expression. He said, "I don't need a lecture."
"I was not intending to give you one." He shook his stringy hair. "I have given up understanding the cause and effect of this place. A sign, I suppose, that I am more than ready to abandon it." He raised a finger in Harry's direction. "Back home, however . . ." and he left it at that.
Downstairs, a loud discussion could be heard even through the door to the room. Neville 's voice and Lavender's came through the clearest. They were debating how best to counter the force outside. Ron made proclamations like he had been pushed by frustration into a daylight counter-assault.
Harry closed his eyes and carefully, most carefully, reached not for the shadows, exactly, but for the heart of where they connected to him. He pushed discordant energy into that, making their Marks burn. Seconds later the sound of mass Disapparation could be heard clearly, like a bundle of marbles thrown at a wall in the distance.
"Did you do that?" Snape asked.
Harry nodded and stood up. "They'll think they were summoned."
"That should be interesting for them to sort out," Snape said.
"I didn't want Ron doing anything stupid for my mistake," Harry explained. "Come on, let's go do some reading so we can get out of here."
Next Chapter - 37
Hermione kept her hand over the book, visibly struggling with what she wanted to say. "This may seem a little mad, but I'm trying to piece something together and I hope you can help. What do you know about Dumbledore's wand?"
"Just that the Malfoy's are not above grave robbing, which is no great surprise upon deeper reflection."
res3_37new
Chapter 37 — Fateful Escape, Part I
The entire household had crammed into the entry hall of the house, arguing and whispering. "I think they've gone," Ron said, squinting through the wavy glass set high in the door.
Unusually forceful, Neville demanded, "That many . . . just disappear?"
"I heard them go, I think," Susan said. "Sounded like a whole load of them."
"Why would they just go?" Harry asked.
"Who knows?" Hermione said, exacerbated, "Why did they come in the first place?"
Ron took the door handle in hand. "Maybe I'll go check."
Disguised Harry, standing several steps up on the stairs, cast his voice over the lot of them. "The Death Eaters have departed."
After a pause, someone asked, "They have?" Ron dropped his hand off the door handle, shoulders falling in relief.
Before they could demand more information, Harry picked Hermione out with his eyes. "You said there were some books?"
Another pause, and then Hermione pushed her way free to lead the way into the dining room. Whispering closed in behind them and a few gathered in the doorway to watch what they did.
Hermione had an array of books open on the large table. "I found a few that might interest you. They're on that side." Hermione's voice modulated as she turned from her friends to her books and back again, gesturing that they should leave them be.
Harry and Snape followed along the row, stopping at one diagram that struck Harry as eerily familiar. Snape lifted the heavy vellum to read the next few pages of the book from where it had been left open. There was no publication date in the front of the book, but the cloud of fine dust, and deep groan of the leather spoke of great age. Quietly, Snape said, "I did not think our mysterious author could have invented everything he wrote."
"This is a much clearer version."
"Than your notes, certainly," Snape teased as he angled his nose down to better peruse the broad pages.
Hermione closed the door to the dining room after a quick argument with Ron. She stood with her back to it a second before pushing away and joining them. "Anything useful?"
Snape moved on to the next book in a mode of browsing, apparently not wanting to give too much away. "They are interesting enough. We'll take them upstairs if we may."
Harry quickly marked the open pages on each and stacked them together for easy hovering. Hermione stepped over to glance into the quiet kitchen before intercepting Harry on his way out. "My friends insist that I ask if you did something to the DE outside." She bit her lip momentarily. "I mean, if you wanted to say, you would and if not, I didn't think I should bother you by asking, but they insist."
Harry was reminded again of how very intimidating he must seem. No wonder Dumbledore put on such kindly airs at every opportunity. He said, "I tricked them. I don't know how long it will last."
"How did you do that?"
Harry turned back to the stack of lead-backed books, far too heavy to carry without a charm. "I'd rather not say. It's not something even you'd be able to replicate."
"Oh," she said, shoulders falling. She appeared drained by his response.
Harry frowned faintly and glanced at his guardian, who moved to join him in leaving. Hermione stopped them both by saying, "Can I ask you about something, Profes- Mr. Snape?"
When they did not reply, she hurried down to a book on the end and rapidly turned the pages. Snape slid down beside her, but she put her hand down on the text, covering it. "Can I assume you will not tell anyone this?" she asked, eyes jumping between the two of them. She frowned wryly. "Mr. Totten, can I speak to Mr. Snape alone?"
Harry shrugged and went to the door, startling the group crowded around the other side of it. Harry used several anti snooping spells on the outside of the door, gave each of those lingering near challenging glances and walked away, nearly running headlong into his counterpart at the base of the stairs. Native Harry stood with his arms crossed, defiant. Disguised Harry explained, "Ms. Granger wished to speak to Severus alone."
Native Harry stepped aside to let him pass, saying nothing.
Hermione kept her hand over the book, visibly struggling with what she wanted to say. "This may seem a big mad, but I'm trying to piece something together and I hope you can help. What do you know about Professor Dumbledore's wand?"
"Just that the Malfoys are not above grave robbing, which upon deeper reflection is no great surprise."
"No, I mean where he got it." She pursed her lips. "Unless you knew that and you're being difficult." She huffed and turned to the book. Scanning back and forth, she found what she wanted. "Read starting from here."
Snape followed her finger and obliged. "Hm," was his only reaction. "And?"
Hermione brushed her hair back and leaned over the book. "Gregorovitch is a famous Bulgarian wand maker. Have you heard of him?" At Snape's nod, she went on, "Earlier in the century, he claimed to possess an undefeatable wand and that he would sell a copy of it to the highest bidder. This is according to an advert in an old magazine I found in the attic here. But according to this wand historian, Gregorovitch never produced the wand for the auction and later claimed the original was stolen before he could work out how to copy it. This author assumes Gregorovitch was lying about having such a wand in the first place." She slid down to the next book and flipped it open, raising a cloud of dust. "But this author, Antecedent Tummifus, claims that stories of such a wand—she calls it the Wand of Destiny—are too consistent to be entirely myth. And she says she's collected the tales together and in fact there is a plausible lineage for the wand's legacy, one wizard winning it off the previous one.."
Snape stared at her. "How does one win away an undefeatable wand?"
Hermione shrugged. "Through carelessness, as far as I can suss out." She put one book away and pawed quickly through another, stopping only to glance at the clock. "This is the thing . . . it's possible that Gregorovitch really had the Wand of Destiny and that it was stolen by someone who put it to rather infamous use." She had pulled a book closer, but did not open it, just rubbed the pattern hammered into the leather and fingered the cracked half gem decorating the corner. "So, my question for you . . . Professor . . . is quite simple. Do you know if Albus Dumbledore was using Gellert Grindelwald's wand?"
Snape considered the question, both in this world and his own, pawing back through his memories for clues. She looked away and he caught a glimpse that she did not entirely trust him, and disliked being trapped into asking the very man who had ended Dumbledore's life. Annoyed with his position, Snape said, "It's a bit insulting of the old wizard's memory, isn't it, to imply he needed that much help?"
"I didn't intend that implication," Hermione snapped lightly. "You know I didn't." She fingered the book before her. "Maybe I'm trying too hard," she said, sounding strung out once the excitement of solving a puzzle left her voice. "If it is the wand. Then you got it from Draco, and Harry took it from you, so he now has it and should be its master. He hasn't been using it . . . I think it bothers him a little to think of Dumbledore that much. I mean, sometimes I think Harry feels a little abandoned . . ." She moved quickly to put the books away, triggered by some internal clock. "I just thought if you knew for certain, then I could convince Harry to try using it more. We could use any help. Although I sort of don't want Harry to know; he acts recklessly enough as it is."
Snape stacked two of the books before putting his hands in his pockets and letting her shelve with her wand. "Are you suggesting that I had this Wand of Destiny in my possession and did not know it?"
"I, uh, yeah, I suppose I'm saying that." She stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. "Sorry," she said with a shrug. "I know how you feel. I'd hate to know I had that much power and lost it given how things are." She finished up and moved to open the door, saying, "I'm holding up breakfast."
Snape caught her arm as she went by, still lost in memories. He said, "Dumbledore's original wand had a Phoenix Feather in it. If that wand does not, then it may very well be Grindelwald's old one."
Hermione's bright gaze bored into his. "How did Dumbledore defeat him? No one has ever said."
Snape released her arm. "He never explained that to me. He never explained much of anything."
She ducked her head. "And now we get to sort it all out without him."
Hermione moved to exit and bumped her nose on the door when she tried, but she smoothly backed up and cancelled all the spells and charged through it. Snape followed her out, and the breakfast cooking crew glared at them before hurrying inside. Snape continued following Hermione, drawn to this mystery by clinging tendrils of the unresolved past. Hermione went up to the door of Harry and Ginny's room. It stood ajar and Harry glared at Snape behind Hermione as she said, "Harry, can I see that wand we got from Draco?"
Harry kept his wary gaze on Snape as he fetched the wand out of a hollowed out book and handed it over. "You're not getting it back," Harry said.
"Oh, I realize that," Snape stated dryly.
Hermione examined the wand for a long time before turning the handle to slip out the delicate mount for the core. "What is that?"
She turned to Snape, who leaned over it for a closer look. All four of them did, bumping heads. "Notice the scales at the root. Thestral hair," Snape proclaimed.
"Odd core," Ginny said. "Ollivander never sold any with that core, did he?"
Hermione gingerly turned the handle in and handed it back to Harry for a test. The curtains obediently opened fully. When he tried to put it away again, Hermione said, "I think you should use that one instead of your other."
Harry stood with the book open, ready to drop the wand in. "Why?"
"Well . . ." Hermione struggled.
Snape said, "Your usual wand locks spells with Voldemort's, does it not? If you wish to defeat him you will need one with a non-matching core. That one appears to work at least as well for you . . ."
Ginny dismissively said, "Just carry both. That way if you lose one, you have the other. No one expects that anymore because wands are getting so rare."
Harry shrugged and put the new wand away in his back pocket with his other.
Disguised Harry came up behind Snape with a look of question. Snape gestured with his head that they should return to their room. Once there, Snape said, "We are discovering some things Dumbledore did not explain."
"Such as?"
"His wand appears to have a rather storied history, including formerly belonging to Grindelwald."
"Huh," Harry said, finding that a bit disturbing but not important. "And?"
"Potter now has it. Malfoy took it from Albus' grave, it seems, and it made its way to Potter, of course," he added, sounding annoyed. "The implications of this are not yet clear. And on top of it, Granger does not want Potter to understand the power he may now possess."
Harry replayed in his mind Snape's comments to Hermione about understanding too well. He pursed his lips and said, "And do you think he can handle knowing?"
Snape raised his chin and replied, "Yes. If he remains careful . . . ongoing."
- 888 -
- 888 -
Tonks coughed and brushed the soot from her clothes. "You tightened the Apparition block," she said to Snape, who sat at the table, a cup of tea under his nose.
Candide said, "Arthur suggested it."
"Ah," Tonks said. "I've been looking for Harry rather than reading my memos." She dropped into a chair. "You really don't know where he's gone?" She gave each of them a pleading look. "I'm starting to think he's headed off to one of those other parallel places."
Snape started faintly. "He told you about that?"
Tonks nodded. "I figure that's really the only way for him to get away from everything to think."
Snape tapped his teacup with his long index finger. "Perhaps."
A knock came on the door and moments later Winky led Aaron and Ginny in. "Any news? Well, besides this news . . . " Aaron said, indicating the newspaper out flat on the table beside the tea service.
Ginny gave Snape a meaningful glance, which he ignored, so she took on a more casual attitude. Candide reached for the paper and said, "You mean Skeeter's article, I assume."
Aaron accepted the chair Candide gestured at and settled in, hands clasped in his lap. "Where'd she get this stuff? Lord Freelander says it's entirely made up. He's had his solicitor subpoena for her notes and evidence . . . these letters she refers to."
Ginny sat straighter, swallowed hard and tried for a proper tone. "And he sent them an . . . injunction . . . right?"
"That too, of course," Aaron said. He tossed the paper into the fire. "Better to be a pauper with a life kept private."
Placatingly, Ginny said, "You aren't even mentioned."
"I expect I will be. Even though her dates are all wrong. How could she be so right and so wrong at the same time?" he demanded of the room.
Snape and Ginny shared a passing glance.
"Your father should just buy the paper and fire her," Ginny suggested.
"Excellent idea," Candide agreed, toasting Ginny with her teacup.
Aaron shook himself. "But this is all silly stuff. What is going on with Harry?" He turned from his former Head of House to stare at Tonks, who helplessly shook her head.
Candide asked Snape as if just thinking of it, "Did you owl Finland? That shaman he stayed with?"
Snape shook his head. "Would it help? If he is there he will return in his own time."
Aaron leaned toward his former teacher and asked, "Do you think he's coming back to the program? I don't know what we'll do without him." He sounded unexpectedly sad.
Snape, biting with his words, said, "Perhaps they should have been nicer to him if they wanted him to stay."
- 888 -
- 888 -
Speaking quietly, despite believing they were no longer overheard here in their borrowed room, Snape said, "You will have to bridge some hazy sections of the spell instructions with your implicit knowledge." He rolled their edited diagrams up and pocketed them.
"The Device is still there, Severus. I don't think we'll have a problem."
"The physical diagram is. A Device exists in magical dimensions as well. The chalk lines are a reference to focus the magic. And this particular Device bridges dimensions of possibility as well." He did not sound terribly optimistic of their success. "We will have most of the day tomorrow to work out the execution."
"Poor choice of words," Harry said. He tapped his fingers on the book open on the brewing counter, impatient with sitting still. "I could have gone home and returned before morning," Harry complained for the second time.
"I expect this task will require you to be better rested than that. And on that note, you would do best to remain in tonight."
Harry pushed back the stool and stood to pace. "Grounding me?" he taunted lightly. A quick check of his inner mind indicated there was only one Death Eater outside on the square. Harry leaned toward the frosted window and used his fingertips to melt away a spot to look through. A surprising number of figures sat on the four benches on the square. Non Death Eaters, perhaps. Harry expected he could ignore the lone true servant assigned if that's all there would be through the night. He wondered idly and with amusement what Voldemort thought of his army being summoned by someone other than himself.
Harry pondered the thousand servants Voldemort had and said, "How is this place going to fare?" His question fogged over the round clear spot, quickly turning back to crystal ice.
"It isn't our problem," Snape said.
Harry watched him put the inkwells away and wipe the pen nibs clean with a heavily stained rag. "You really feel that way?" Harry asked.
"I'm trying to," came the reply. Snape gently lined up the quills in a writing box and latching it. It had the Black family crest on the lid.
"I could just kill him like last time," Harry said, tracing five-pointed diagrams in the window frost. One particular one felt active, so he huffed on it quickly to wipe it out.
"Be careful there. You've created Devices in glass before when you were out of sorts."
Harry sat straight, tucking his hands safely away. "I forgot about that."
"If any of the Horcruces are intact Voldemort's departure will only be temporary."
"But they can keep looking for them with him gone. Wouldn't that be easier?"
Snape nodded. "If they don't lose interest in the task."
Harry said, "You think they could lose interest . . . after all that's happened here?"
Snape shrugged and went to the potions shelves. "I do not know what will happen. Destiny is a difficult thing to interfere with."
Harry spun on the stool to track him. "You don't want me to kill him."
Snape straightened a few bottles before replying, "I think you will pay a price for your actions and I intend to protect you from that if I can. You are my responsibility."
"What about the Harry downstairs?"
"You are my responsibility. My counterpart can fulfill his own promises."
Harry half wished he could feel as straightforward as that. This house was full of the same friends he had at home. They would hurt just as badly when things went wrong.
"Maybe you should leave him a note," Harry said, half joking.
Snape's brow rose and after a pause he retrieved the writing box and systematically removed things from it. He took up the Potion notebook and flipped it upside down and over, before starting in with the quill on this reverse page one. He scratched out words, pausing frequently with his long fingered hand poised over the next blank spot. Harry leaned over Snape's shoulder to read and said, "Those are brewing instructions."
"I am writing a code of sorts. I used this method to take all kinds of notes through the years. So far it has not been broken, although it has earned me mockery for the mud it will brew if followed."
With the sound of the scratching quill to lull him, Harry lay down for a nap. He was woken some time later by a soft knock on the door. Snape opened it to reveal Hermione, who glanced behind her once before slipping inside.
"Can I show you something?"
Snape used the excuse of clearing a space for the book she carried to close up the notes he had been working on. She glanced with concern at Harry sitting there in his old wizard disguise. Snape said, "It is safe to speak in his presence."
Hermione opened the book to her mark. The page margins were crowded with drawings and the parchment exceptionally brown and crinkly.
"The Wand of Destiny had some companions," she said, then pointed where Snape should start reading.
Harry remained where he was, assuming Snape would fill him in later. He used the opportunity to study Hermione in detail and imagine letting go of the people in this place. It did not work out well, but the exercise did push the shadows into the distance.
Snape raised his head. "You will have to find the ring."
Hermione's voice was pitched higher as she whispered, "So you think the cloak . . . ?"
Snape nodded. "There are more than few odd things about that particular cloak that could be explained by this. You need to find the ring and you will know for certain."
Hermione closed the book and clutched it to her chest. Soberly, swallowing hard, she said, "You think we should?"
"I don't think you have a choice."
"But . . . you don't worry that . . . you know . . . Harry? You don't think he might-"
"That is always a concern," Snape said, cutting her off.
Hermione's gaze was bright. "You know what I mean, right?"
Voice low, Snape replied, "Better than you can know."
"I wish we could ask someone who would know for certain about the ring."
Snape's gaze had the glint of Legilimency, even though he probably did not need it. "You refer to the former headmaster, I assume."
Hermione nodded, clutching the book to her front. Snape fell silent and held up his hand when Hermione turned to go. "What became of Dumbledore's painting, do you know?"
Harry sat straighter. Hermione searched Snape's face and said, "Lucius Malfoy is reported to have tried to be rid of it."
"He cannot have removed it from the school. Not with any ease," Snape said.
Hermione nodded again. "Right. We heard he had another painting done, and tried to trick Dumbledore's image into getting trapped in it so it could be removed instead. But it didn't work." Hermione ducked her head. "We tried to steal it once, but we lost both we sent and several students who helped us were punished severely as an example before they too disappeared."
Snape turned to Harry. There was an edge to his gaze that Harry read as determination, and Harry was glad to see it. Despite his insistence otherwise, Snape could not leave here without trying to help as much as possible. "Care to fetch it for them?"
Hermione stepped in Harry's direction just as he pushed off the bed, too energetically for his persona. "I don't want anyone to get hurt-"
Snape held up his hand. "Not to worry." Then to Harry, "Do not be long."
Harry Disapparated, glad to have something to do to make the day go by faster. Since he could slip away from anywhere else, untraced, he simply Apparated into a London alleyway and away again.
It was the Sunday before school resumed, and the sweeping castle grounds sat with a fresh blush of untrampled snow. Harry had slipped in under the Whomping Willow and stood staring up at the sheer stone wall. He felt better, more himself. The fresh air and concern for his friends' counterparts pushed the shadows away, and he wanted to stay that way for a while so he did not reach inward, but remained acutely aware of his physical senses, and they hummed with the brisk fresh air. His breath fogged the air in front of him and his fingers grew cold so he buried them in his pockets. The tower windows above him showed dark, so he decided that he might as well start his search in the headmaster's office.
As Harry silently arrived on the thick overlapping rugs, a painting snorted. Most of the headmasters hung in their expected places, but some had been rearranged. A clock ticked and chimed the quarter hour. The room smelled of rare wood and the overly sweet aftershave of the current occupant. Dumbledore was not among those on the wall, even the covered ones near the floor, which Harry had to peek under one at a time, not wanting to waken them. Harry moved about, looking over the documents on the desk. A few eyes watched him do this, curious. Harry moved to open a drawer, but pulled back out of a sense of curse—a reminder that he had to remember what he came for and not dally.
To the paintings, he said, "Anyone know where Dumbledore was taken?"
The awake paintings shook their heads or scratched something, a chin or their scalp. A voice from the second level of the office said, "Who in Merlin's cursed realm wishes to know?"
Harry turned to face Lucius Malfoy, who had his wand aimed down at him.
Casting his voice rougher, Harry said, "No one you would know."
Malfoy's eyes narrowed and he held out his other hand for the railing to slowly approach down the metal stairs. Harry watched him do this, wand at his side.
"How did you get in here?"
Harry took on an attitude of amusement, propped his hand on the desk and leaned on it. "You believe you know every secret of this place? You always were obnoxiously conceited."
Malfoy's wand twitched and his lips moved but he held back on the curse. His eyes took in the room and the paintings. "Why do you want Dumbledore's painting?"
"Who wouldn't want it?" Harry tossed out with a silly flair. "I haven't had a good conversation with anyone since the old buzzard kicked off."
As expected this knocked Malfoy back a bit. Finally recovering, he asked, "Who are you?" trying to overcome confusion with menace.
Harry remembered being alarmed by this man. Now Harry felt deliciously ecstatic at how foolish Malfoy was. "Harry Potter . . . who do I look like?"
The wand homed in on Harry's nose, too far away to grab, but close enough that a normal counter would be difficult to cast, even if Harry had his wand up. "I can make you tell me," Malfoy threatened, sounding utterly confident.
Harry crossed his arms, and grinned. "Oh, I'd be amused to see you try."
The curse came, a Crucio. Malfoy fell. His wand tumbled to the base of the desk. Gasping, he thrashed his cloak-tangled legs and finally managed to claw himself up on one elbow to stare at Harry in surprise.
"You lack all subtlety," Harry said. "You couldn't work your way up from, say, a Spasm Hex?"
Panic seeped into Malfoy's gaze. Harry stepped over and picked up his wand and pocketed it. Malfoy pulled another out of his pocket and aimed it up at Harry, but not steadily.
"How many graves did you rob?" Harry blurted, indicating the second wand.
"Too many!" came a particularly exasperated and elderly former headmaster.
Harry finally took out his own wand and before he could aim it, Malfoy tried again. This time the blowback from the blocked Blasting Curse tossed Malfoy flat on his back and his wand sailed away to clatter off the bookshelves. Harry Accioed it to himself and took the three others from Malfoy's pocket. He used a Mummy Hex on him and stood over him, thinking.
"Getting in my way was a mistake," Harry tiredly said, which ratcheted up the alarm in Malfoy's eyes. "I want to know where Dumbledore's painting went."
Malfoy sneered but Harry got the strangest image of the Mirror of Erised from his icy eyes, so he smiled faintly back and said, "There are far too many of you—so many that eliminating even half of you would do little good. I think we'd be better off letting you drag things down for a while. Yes," Harry said, thinking upon it more. "I think your pride will keep you from revealing what's happened to you."
Harry struck out with the well-practiced Memory Charm they used on duty, then once that settled in and Malfoy's face relaxed, he used a Charm he had only read of before, in one of the books Snape disposed of to clear out the upstairs rooms. The book had labeled it a Serpent Memory Charm and promised that it would do random selective damage to what someone knew, leaving them functional but inept.
The air seethed and coiled around Harry's wand as he worked the motion. The spell lacked an incantation, which was what attracted Harry to studying the diagrams. As the air flowed around his hand and arm, tendrils reached up from the Dark Plane, seeking his wand. The spell was nearly finished, the coils solidifying and falling off the point of this wand to sniff out their victim. But the Dark Plane refused to close beneath him, despite Harry's best efforts. It was like trying to close a door while standing in the way of it. It grew apparent that as the spell reached completion, the tendrils would reach him, connecting like an electric circuit, to who knew what result.
With a shout of dismay, Harry tossed his hand to the side, cutting the spell off. The tendrils sank away. Harry growled to himself. He should be able to do this spell. It was the perfect spell for what he wanted to accomplish. Perhaps the trouble was less the idea than the execution. The spell clearly unleashed something to do the damage and that was what made it dark. Harry knew how to adjust a standard Memory Charm for depth rather than breadth of interference. He would simply have to use twenty or so narrow, deep spells to get the same result.
After a dozen spells at the helpless, dazed man lying before him, Harry stopped and breathed in and out, feeling badly, but then he remembered everything that had happened here and he added on another ten, even narrower ones. He wanted Malfoy to make mistakes, major ones. Killing him would simply lead to him being replaced. This was better, even as mechanically cold as he felt hitting him with one spell after another, making his head rock from side to side with the impact.
Satisfied that he had struck the right balance between mercy and crippling, Harry released the Mummy Hex, gave the paintings a shushing gesture, in response to which several winked, and slipped away to the school attic.
Harry wandered the entire L-shaped length of one attic and had moved to the other when he stopped, hearing something. The noise faded, and Harry stood, breath held, listening, while he raised his wand and tried a Sentient Locator Spell. The spell fizzled, something Harry had never before had happen.
"Who's there?" Harry asked, certain someone was, but if they were hiding, perhaps they were not foes, so he did not want to try anything more violent than that.
A long ear peaked out, and then a large-eyed head. "Dobby?" Harry whispered.
The elf fully emerged. "Please, Master, Dobby is not harming anything. Dobby is being careful is all Dobby is being. Not knowing your wizardness, Dobby isn't."
More elves peeked out before ducking into hiding again behind Dobby.
"What are you doing up here?" Harry asked.
Dobby rolled his hands over one another. "Dobby is helping his friends. Dobby is not bound to Hogwarts but his friends are. Dobby can just manage to convince them to stay up here, rather than be hurt by their cruel masters, Master."
"Ah," Harry said. "Do you want help freeing them? Do you want me to bring them clothes?" When the other elves squeaked and backed into the furniture-walled hiding place, Harry gave up on that idea. "Do you know where Dumbledore's portrait is?"
Dobby took a little leap forward, making his ears swing. "Dobby can be helping with this, Master." He led Harry by the hand a few paces and pointed at a small window at the end.
Harry gestured him away and thanked him, which made Dobby tug on his ears, embarrassed. At the end of the gabled space, bathed in the dust-riding light leaching in the window, sat the Mirror of Erised and facing it, on a chair missing a leg, sat the painting Harry sought, it's figure snoring lightly.
"Professor?" Harry prodded to wake it.
The painting started, and blinked tired eyes. "What? Oh?" The painting's gaze was taken in by the mirror and grew misty-eyed.
Harry stepped around behind the chair and looked in the mirror, half expecting to see what Dumbledore saw. Instead he saw himself, bright-eyed and smiling. "What do you see?" Harry asked.
"Ah . . . nothing I wish to share, I'm afraid."
"But it works for you?" Harry went on.
"Apparently," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "I can no longer visit the other paintings in the school. I had the elves move me here, so that I might have someone to look at." Only because you asked it of me, will I do the same. "What do you see?"
Harry considered his reflection. "I see someone freed of someone else's instinct for evil deeds. Someone able, finally, to move on without being dragged back into the past."
Dumbledore pondered that and said, "I changed my mind. That is my answer as well, and there is no reason not to tell you that since it was yours."
"We have to go," Harry said, aware of fleeting time.
"I cannot leave," Dumbledore said. "The school holds me in. But I am quite astoundingly bored and very much desire to know where it is you would like to go, just so I can imagine it."
"To where you can do some good."
The spells for the castle's paintings were in Ravenclaw's book, near the front, so Harry had read them too many times over. He cast the spell to link Dumbledore's painting to the rest in the school, thinking that would be useful later. Dumbledore skipped back from the frame as the curling sparkles from the magic sank into the gilded wood. "Ah, thank you. It took Mr. Malfoy months to remove that spell. He thought to lure me into a single other picture where the paint had been tainted with Widow's Ink and then destroy the original. A transparent ploy. Really, he believes himself to be far more clever than he actually is," Dumbledore added, right eye glittering even in the low light.
"Well, it's good he didn't succeed," Harry said picking up the painting to examine the frame with its cloth portrait nailed up against the back of it. In Ravenclaw's book the portrait canvas and frame were a enchanted as a unit so he did not want to simply pull out the painting and leave the frame. Despite wanting to hurry, Harry took his time to think a bit. Ravenclaw had included how to bind a headmaster's portraits to the castle, with a kind of widespread Boomerang Charm that returned the painting to the headmaster's tower by whatever means necessary as soon as it exited a door, window, or tunnel. The book did not contain a cancellation for the spell, so Harry hoped that his means of egress would not engage the spell. If that failed, he would think of something else.
Harry took up a drop cloth from a nearby chair and wrapped the painting in it. "We're going to give it a try. But I don't want you to see how we travel," he explained. Holding tight, Harry inverted himself into the netherworld. The painting gave a shudder and resisted, yanking his arms hard at his shoulder sockets, but as his feet settled to the grey earth, the frame fell still in his hands. Fearing he might have left the painting's subject behind, Harry peaked under the cloth and found Dumbledore smoothing his comically frazzled beard. "That was rather strange. Where are we?"
"You don't want to know." Harry said, unceremoniously tightening the wrap again before slipping back into the normal world, right to the doorstep of Grimmauld Place so as to leave no Apparition trace. He again almost lost his grip on the painting, making him think the resistance was merely the drag of any large object being pulled through the interstice, rather than a vestige of the binding spell.
Upstairs, he found Hermione, Ginny and this world's Harry waiting with Snape. Snape said, "I did not think that would require so much time."
Harry checked his beard with one hand and propped the painting up on the brewing shelf, still wrapped tight. "It had been removed to storage. I had to find it."
Snape stepped in a half circle around the shrouded painting. "They must have broken some of the spells on it, in that case." He turned to this world's Harry. "If I may have a word with the portrait alone?"
"No," this place's Harry said. "I don't trust you." He stepped up and with determined movements, quickly unwrapped the painting, slowing to reverent as Dumbledore's visage appeared to blink in the light. "Professor Dumbledore," he said, carefully propping the painting back up. With visible effort, he stepped back and invited Snape to step forward with a gesture. "Whatever you want to say, say it." Harry, believing himself a fair judge of his counterpart imagined the other was stalling to gather his emotions. Snape sighed faintly and stepped before the painting.
"Ah, Severus," the painting said, showing real joy. "I had overheard that you were found out and worried what had become of you."
Snape waved this topic off and turned the painting a bit when it started to say hello to everyone else. "You must listen to me, Albus. Things are rather dire and you cannot hold anything back any longer." Dumbledore gave Snape a dissuading expression. "No," Snape said. "There is no longer anything to lose."
"I am aware of what is happening, Severus," the painting stated, sounding unusually patient.
Snape turned the painting back to the room and Dumbledore addressed the native Harry. "You've grown a bit, young man."
"Professor," Harry said, half looking at the floor.
"I suppose I deserve such a greeting."
Harry shrugged. "We need help."
Dumbledore nodded, stroking his beard. "And Ms. Granger, good to see you. Ah, and my rescuer. I don't think we've had the pleasure."
Hermione's head snapped over, her whole body going on alert. "You . . . said you were an old friend of Professor Dumbledore," she said to Harry.
Beside him, Snape half uncrossed his arms and held them hovered around each other, ready to move. Harry said, "A headmaster's portrait does not include every memory, or even a fraction of them. Just what he leaves behind in the pensieve." This world's Harry had pulled his wand, but held it hidden in his sleeve and watched him with acute suspicion.
Harry let the rough mask on his voice fade. "I've known Albus from when I was very young. I think he just doesn't remember."
Hermione stuttered and asked the painting, "You . . . you don't know Aaron Totten?"
Harry directly faced the painting, moving with more confidence than he felt. He adjusted his hat just briefly when the eyes in the room turned to wait for Dumbledore's reaction to this question, revealing his scar.
Dumbledore's reaction was swift and sharp. He actually leaned forward in the frame as if to escape it. "Wait a moment. I . . . do remember you. But, I . . . am quite surprised to see you . . . here. I never would have expected you . . . to take such an enormous risk. What has brought you . . . back?"
Harry realized Dumbledore misunderstood, believing him to be his future self. "I take less of a risk than you realize," Harry said. "Much less. But even so, the situation here calls for drastic action. As Severus insists, you cannot afford to hold anything back."
Dumbledore's eyes remained wide with shock as he stared at Harry. "I need to speak with . . . Aaron alone, if you all would leave us."
"And Severus," Harry added. "We're here together . . . at the moment."
Dumbledore's face went wanky at this revelation. "You are? I don't believe I understand."
"I know you don't," Harry replied.
The room's legitimate Harry stepped into their circle. "I'm tired of secrets. Hermione has questions for you, Professor. Anything else can wait."
Hermione shuffled over and said, "We need to know where the ring is."
"Do you?" Dumbledore returned, clearly a challenge.
"Yes, sir," Hermione humbly replied, dropping her gaze.
"You do know what you are asking for?" Dumbledore queried, like an examination question.
Hermione nodded, shaking her hair which had fallen before her face. "We have the other two things."
Dumbledore straightened at this news. "Interesting." He looked her over before turning to disguised Harry. "And you agree with this?" When Harry replied in the affirmative, Dumbledore asked the same of Snape, who nodded.
"I see that I have failed utterly." Dumbledore took off his hat to brush his hair back, before replacing it again. "Harry," he said, "step a little closer so I can see you properly. You know what Ms. Granger is referring to, correct?"
Harry shook his head. "She keeps me as much in the dark as you used to."
Dumbledore's head pulled back from the frame and he had to straighten his hat. "Well, good to know someone is looking out for you."
"I don't particularly see it that way," Harry mumbled.
Dumbledore sighed loudly. "If even half of what I've overheard is true, things are quite dire indeed." After pausing for a sniffle, he contemplated Harry, eyes oozing affection to the point where the paint composing him appeared fresh again. "I'm sorry for this, Harry. Everything I've ever done, I did to protect you because I loved you. But this one will not be that way. If I tell Ms. Granger what she wants to know, and yes, I know where the ring is . . ." Hermione stood straight, eager to hear.
Dumbledore sniffled again. "If I tell her, I fear I will be sacrificing you to this cause more thoroughly than I ever thought possible."
Harry's scarred brow wrinkled. "Haven't I already been?" he asked.
"Not like this," Dumbledore said quietly. "Not at all like this." He sighed the loudest yet, making the picture frame vibrate on the shelf. He tapped his finger on his crossed arms and said, "In a way I would rather see you . . . well, I suppose that is not fair to the rest of the wizarding world."
"Rather see me what?" Harry asked.
"Dead," Snape bluntly provided from his perch on the shelf a few feet beyond the painting.
Harry glanced between Snape and the painting. "You can't really mean that," he snapped.
Dumbledore said, "I do indeed. Harry, you have to promise me something. When this is war is over. When you have won-"
"What makes you think that's going to happen?" Harry came back.
"Oh, you will. Your friends are asking me to help you become invincible."
Harry gave Hermione a doubtful glance.
Dumbledore went on, "Remember Binn's lessons of how Grindelwald roared across Europe, unstoppable? He only had one of the Hallows and you will have all three. Ah!" he said, cutting off Harry's leap into a question. "Before I say another word, I must have your promise that you will heed me when this war has ended."
Harry stared at the painting. "Invincible?"
"Yes." The painting's voice reverberated now, growing in strength. "Restrained only by your conscience, your love for your friends, and absolutely nothing else. Imagine it well, and then promise me you will do whatever I say, no matter how much you wish to do otherwise."
"You're saying I can just destroy Voldemort and his followers and free us all from the war?"
"Not necessarily in that order. And it will require care, Harry. And some patience to avoid extending the carnage. I would like to guide you in that as well, but that is less a requirement than your final loyalty."
Hermione stepped in, grasping Harry by the arm. "Harry, I don't like the sound of this. He wishes you dead rather than this; you don't know what he's going to ask of you."
Snape too, had stood away from the shelf as if to approach and offer a warning.
Harry pushed her hand away. "It's all right. We don't have any choice. I promise I'll do whatever you say," he pledged to Dumbledore.
"I am going to have you make that promise to your mother as well, if you don't mind."
Harry blinked at him. "How's that?"
Disguised Harry shared an alarmed and curious glance with Snape.
Dumbledore's painting settled back in its seat. "You will see."
The Order spent the day holed up in the dining room, plotting, leaving displaced Harry and Snape in their room to complete their own planning. Harry kept his thoughts away from Death Eaters, even the two assigned out on the square that flickered constantly at the edge of his senses. He would be leaving here soon, and they did not matter.
A knock finally interrupted their scheming. Hermione informed them that lunch was almost ready and that Dumbledore's painting demanded to speak with Aaron, alone. "He's up in the attic," Hermione informed him. "He said he preferred it there."
Harry climbed up to the attic, brushing cobwebs out of his hair and sneezing.
"Bless you," the painting said.
Harry closed the door and cast as many spells as he could to assure they were alone before sitting on a trunk facing the painting, which had been propped in the opened drawer of a battered dresser. "You wanted to see me," Harry said.
"I want to make certain you are leaving immediately, before you destroy everything."
"I am. As soon as I can arrange it."
"And you stated that Severus was with you . . .? He is badly needed here."
"He is. I'm taking him with me, but he'll be here," Harry said, delighting in confusing even the portrait of his old mentor.
The painting hesitated. "I am not certain I understand."
"Just as well," Harry said. "About time I got the chance to leave you with only opaque hints to work with." Harry stood. "I am not risking anything in this place. Not really." He started to leave and said, "Severus will need help, since he will not know what has happened here for the last few weeks. Do give him your assistance if you will . . ."
The painting pondered this, finally settling on: "I will assist Severus with whatever he needs."
"We left him notes in the back of the Potions notebook. Tell him that, in case he doesn't find them."
The painting spent even more time considering this. "Certainly." Then: "You are leaving when?"
"Tomorrow. But tell this to no one."
Dumbledore's visage nodded. "Interesting making your acquaintance; it lets me know far too much about what you may survive, I'll confess."
Harry leaned close all of a sudden. "It tells you nothing of the sort. I'm nineteen." Harry stood, ignoring the painting's confounded expression. "Good day, Professor."
- 888 -
That night, Harry lay fitfully, afraid to sink completely into sleep. The two shadows hovering close on the square needled him. He could not remain neutral about them and their more distant, but plentiful peers—both servants and enemies—could not be denied. Each time he closed his eyes to relax, they vacillated between these two roles, taunting him to defeat them or take control.
Despite this inner battle Harry tried hard to seem outwardly at peace. He lay half curled as much as possible in the small space on the shared bed, head buried against his bent arm, as if he could block out the psychic impressions.
Harry remained cautiously still, despite the turmoil within. Perhaps he lay too still because Snape raised his head and put a hand on Harry's shoulder. His resonating voice came out of the grey murk, saying, "You are rather agitated. And I am uncertain why." When Harry did not respond after many seconds he went on, "Do stay, Harry. There is nothing for you to do here."
"I'm not going anywhere," Harry said through his robe sleeve. But it was almost a lie. His entire being hummed, keyed up to take some kind of action, be it offensive or defensive. He longed to be alone, home away from the shadows, as badly as he feared losing them.
Snape's hand brushed the hair over Harry's ear before re-gripping his shoulder. "If you were any more tense, you could serve as a tuning fork. What is wrong?"
Harry shook his head.
Snape sighed faintly and dropped back on his own pillow. "When we get home, we will discuss it.
Some purer core of Harry flinched at what it feared would be a long and tedious lecture. "If we must," Harry said, feeling suddenly better despite his grim response. He held onto that old, familiar loathing of detention. It felt nostalgic and wholly alien to the corrupting power teasing just within reach. With it he found a balance, and shallow rest.
The early grey-blue light had barely given form to the objects in the room when Snape shook Harry awake. Stiffly, Harry roused with a yawn and lit the hearth, intending to warm himself before sliding out into the cold air.
"We should go," Snape said, prompting Harry to groan and brave the chill.
As he tugged himself into his robes, Harry quietly said, "Do you feel all right about going?"
Snape halted in pouring out the dregs from a cold teapot left from the night before. He set the pot down, stared into the cup and said, "Dumbledore has things well in hand. And he seemed most eager for you to depart."
"That's because he doesn't understand . . ." Harry dropped his voice lower still. " . . . that I'm not from the future."
"He's a painting. There are limits to what it can grasp."
Harry dropped his arms and made ready to Disapparate. They had used the house travel map the night before and had already plotted out a misdirection route. "That's just it. How much help can he be?"
"All he has to do is help them complete this triumvirate of objects and I believe the odds will be about even."
"Lots for them to do, even if they win," Harry said, feeling reluctant to leave, and worried about the source.
"That is always true. It is true for us as well."
"Not like this."
"Nevertheless."
Shrewsthorpe stood with the same willful stillness as Grimmauld Place. The fat, sagging candles and chalk lines of the Device had collected a light coating of dust but otherwise remained as before. Harry rubbed his neck and stood before it, sensing its dormant connections to the netherworld and beyond, chilled and heartened by it at the same time. Snape came beside him and unrolled the notes where they could both see them.
Harry had been optimistic about the spell, but faced with so many complicated execution diagrams, one after another, he felt daunted by what they needed to do. "Good thing we're getting started early."
Snape's eyes slid over to him before he shook his head and paced around the pentagram's broad borders. "I am hopeful that because it was used before it will reopen more easily than an original construction."
"We have to make certain it's closed utterly this time," Harry said. "If what you say is true, it will reopen even easier after this." Harry sighed and rubbed his itching scar. Snape observed his, but continued without comment. Harry, realizing he was being watched too closely, said, "What's the first step?"
"Clean up the lines, straighten the candles—the Black family was gracious enough to loan us a few-"
"They aren't in a position to notice," Harry pointed out.
"Or more accurately: too dead to notice. Then we create the power arcs between the nodes-"
"You're getting punchy," Harry criticized.
Snape stood with his arms hanging loose. "I admit, I am less than hopeful. Perhaps I have been in this place too long."
"I'm going to get you home, Severus. Let's get to work." Harry bent and used the corner of his robe to clean up the smudges around the nearest vertex.
When it came time to work the first spell, the pair stared at each other until Harry said, "You should do this part."
Snape held the notes out to Harry. "I was wondering if you should. Then the magic all through would be yours when it comes time to work through the gaps in what we have."
Harry pushed the notes back. "But the spell is already yours. Or essentially," he added quietly.
Snape pulled the notes back and held them out, angled to the sparse light. "True, I'll admit. And the has the hallmarks of dark magic. At this point, perhaps I have more leeway . . ."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked.
Snape shook his head, lowered the paper and began to point at each vertex while reciting the complicated spell from memory, then repeating, like a mantra, until Harry had it memorized too.
Harry's bored and over-keyed mind was certain an hour had passed. The sky impinged earnestly now through the cracks in the boards over the windows. Finally, glowing arcs connected each of the vertices to each of the others. At the end of one round, Snape simply stopped and rubbed his arm. The arcs continued to hum, flowing and oscillating as if attracted and repelled by each other.
"Now it must be inverted into the netherworld," Snape said. Squinting at the notes, he tried a spell several times, but the arcs merely deformed before bouncing back.
Harry said, "I can open the gateway wider."
Snape stepped back. "Be careful not to impose your will upon the Device. My counterpart formed a gate without your skills and I am loath to venture too far from his methodology." He sighed. "That stated . . . go ahead. I'll give you a count."
Snape counted to five and Harry cracked open the Plane. The arcs contorted and sizzled against the floor before disappearing. Harry released the opening and reasserted the barrier. "I think I may have been holding it closed on you. It's just a habit."
"A good one to possess." Without further comment he began the same spell again, recreating the arcs on their side.
It required just as long again. Harry paced, feeling uneasy and keeping his wand in hand. He felt watched despite their alarm spells remaining silent. He roamed farther this time, around the room's edge, to find Tidgy's ghost hovering in the dining room doorway. The elf's oversized eyes watched him pass, blinking without disturbing the air.
The second set of arcs finished, Snape paged ahead, studying his amended notes before moving on to building a dome on the arcs. Harry came aside and read along, needing to do something.
Snape, lecturing, said, "During this step, the arcs are stretched upward until they connect back to themselves, linking the Planes." He pointed at the instruction list, which ended in an infinity symbol. "Done correctly, the arcs will straighten perfectly upward and thin infinitely."
"What? You mean they will stretch the entire length of the universe? Seems doubtful."
Snape raised his wand. "As long as they stretch far enough for the spell, I'll put aside the astronomical implications."
It took several attempts. Fortunately the arcs proved resilient upon failure and always jumped back, bright as ever. But Snape finally mastered the motion to wave them ever upward, until they stretched so thin they disappeared and the device fell dark again, but to Harry, it hummed strangely, making the hair on his arms tingle.
"What now?" Harry asked.
"That was going to be my question," an unexpected voice said.
Harry spun on his heel, bringing his wand up to aim at Draco Malfoy, standing just inside the back door.
Malfoy shifted his shoulders and keeping his wand trained back on disguised Harry, circled closer to study the device. "Took me a while to get through all the alarms on this place." He stopped near the front corner of the hall. "What are you doing? What is this spell?"
Harry cast his voice into old and wavering and said. "Nothing of interest to you. You would best be served by getting out of the way." Harry felt for the young man's Mark, intending to bring him down with that rather than cast a spell that may disturb the Device.
"I want my wand back."
"I don't have your wand."
Pointing with his chin at Snape, Draco snarled as if to an idiot, "HE took it."
Snape said, "It wasn't yours to begin with. Are wands so difficult to obtain that you resorted to taking Dumbledore's from his dead hands?"
Draco cringed, as if at a memory. "My father took it."
"Why?" Snape demanded, full force Head of House.
Draco withered under the assault. "Because the Dark Lord wanted it. My father took it and forced Ollivander to make a duplicate of it to trick him with."
"But why give it to you?" Snape demanded again.
Draco raised his chin. "Father wanted to keep me safe, that's why. He figured if the Dark Lord wanted the wand so badly that it must be special."
"How did you find us?" Harry asked.
"I followed Potter," Draco said. "I have access to Transportation's records if I need them. He was easy to follow, he jumped around so much in a short span of time."
"Too bad for you," came another new voice from the other corner of the hall. An invisibility cloak slipped aside and this world's Harry stepped into the fray, wand out.
"That's my wand," Draco snapped. "I want it back."
"It's mine now," Harry proclaimed and spells rang out, tangled, and Draco turned a limb-splayed somersault before landing in a heap.
"I like this wand," Harry quipped happily, stepping over to lightly kick Draco's inert form with his toe. Draco's hand shot out and tried to trip him. Harry jumped lightly back and used a Jelly Limbs Curse to get his ankle freed up.
Disguised Harry stepped closer to the Device, trying to sense if it had been damaged. It felt untouched, and he slouched in relief, more than even his persona required.
Draco pushed himself up with his hands, only to fall on his face again. "I want my wand!" he whined plaintively.
"You'll be lucky if I don't take this one too," Harry said, picking Draco's wand up off the floor where his limp hand had dropped it. "Disgusting of you taking Dumbledore's wand. Now, what to do with you." He aimed his wand between Draco's eyes and cast a Memory Charm, and a sense of Cursedness made disguised Harry shout a warning, but too late.
A golden pendant dangling around Draco's neck flashed yellow-hot and bounced the Charm back. A counter flashed out of Harry's wand at the same instant, swallowing the curse. He stepped back, staring at the wand in surprise.
Draco pushed to his feet and Disapparated while Harry mused, distracted. Harry pocketed Draco's other wand and said, "Good riddance to that," and turned to the others.
"You should not be here either," Snape stated.
"I wanted to know what you were concocting. You left traces on the route planning map, which records every touch, compliments of Hermione," Harry said, glancing at the now quiet Device while his counterpart considered their options. "What are you working on?"
- 888 -
Draco landed outside Malfoy Manor in the cold gravel, tossed there by the spells protecting the porch, which already that morning must have been reinforced for the day. Hands stinging, he crunched to his feet and strode inside. The Carrows stood in the hall with heads bent toward each other, whispering, as Draco plowed by, intent upon his destination. His father had gradually pulled away from wholeheartedly supporting their master, satisfied with running his fiefdom at Hogwarts, putting Draco in an increasingly untenuous position. Draco did not know what he would be satisfied with in the long run, but in the short run, a little revenge and bolstering of his own position would be fulfilling enough.
With Bellatrix in hospital, MacNair and Mulciber were given the task of keeping guard over Voldemort's appropriated suite. Draco attempted to simply walk between them, to knock on the door, but he was bodily lifted and set aside rather than allowed to reach his goal.
Draco, bit his lip and brushed himself off. The nasty look that would have withered his classmates, drew smirks here.
"I have to speak with the Dark Lord," Draco pronounced. "I have news."
"Yeah? What for? You have somethin' to tell 'im . . . we'll pass it on for you," Mulciber drawled. His mask had been slid up onto his head, under his hood, which made him appear to be wearing a funny cap. It did not make him look any more friendly.
Draco had no intention of losing the influence his news would lend him. "As if I would tell you something only our Lord should hear," Draco snarled as derisive as possible.
The pair shifted from their spots beside the door and approached. Draco backed up. He had lost his wand, both his wands, and could not physically best them. A full retreat to rethink seemed the best option until the door sucked open with a smoky whoosh and revealed Voldemort standing in the center of the room.
"Let the boy in. I wish to speak with him as well."
The guards stood aside and bowed him forward. Draco swallowed hard, now faced with what he had wanted: access to the murky room that formerly served as his mother's brightly lit dressing room. Draco found the ego to stride inside, but he jumped faintly when the door rushed closed behind him.
Voldemort paced to the fire, the light from which failed to make it into the room except to further confuse the eye about what was real and what was shadow. The Dark Lord held something in his bony fingers, the wand, the fake wand, so carefully aged by a terrified Ollivander that it and the original could barely be distinguished. Draco took the opportunity to collect his rampant thoughts, to have a chance of hiding them.
Voldemort's terrible voice sounded even worse when it took on an air of casual calm. But he did not look up as he asked, "Tell me again what happened on the tower, young Malfoy."
In that instant, Draco was painfully grateful he no longer had the wand. To be revealed to have it here and now would mean an incomprehensibly miserable end. He stuttered through the beginnings of his carefully modified tale, and Voldemort raised his hand, which shoved him back into an armchair that slid over to meet his back. "I have no patience for your nerves, Malfoy. What did Severus Snape do, exactly?" Now his eyes bored into Draco's and the scene in the tower, of Dumbledore begging and Snape finally giving him release, played out.
Draco closed his eyes, cutting it all off. He covered his loss of control by saying petulantly, "He used a killing curse which threw the headmaster off the tower. What else is there to tell?" Ollivander had pulled Draco aside and strongly suggested, with the disingenuous air of a truly caring uncle, that Draco not tell anyone he had disarmed Dumbledore. Draco never understood why not, but sitting there now, pinned to a chair by magic far beyond him even with a wand, he pledged to bring the old wizard a feast and a stack of blankets to improve his poor prison in gratitude.
Draco risked opening his eyes. Voldemort stared down at the wand in his fingers, studying its intricate carving in the firelight. He did this for over a minute before saying, "You insisted to my guards that you must see me. What for?" in a voice that could not be denied, perhaps even in death.
Chapter 38 — Fateful Escape, Part II
"How long have you been here watching?" Snape asked the figure exploring the edges of the room.
This world's Harry crossed his arms, wand dangling at his side with confident ease. "Long enough to wonder what you're doing." When they did not reply to this, he added, "I doubt I could repeat the spell, if that's your concern. Without knowing what it does, I probably wouldn't try."
Harry thought his counterpart to be lying, but there was nothing for it. To Snape he said, "What's next?"
Snape gestured for him to come closer, then whispered, "We are almost finished. The candles must be lit, simultaneously, and the Device anchored. That is it." He reached as if to pull out the notes, but did not open them again. "The procedure is unclear from here. The anchoring instructions are repeated, and I am not certain why. But I expect either the Device will activate, or not. If it does not, we shall repeat as necessary." Snape turned his body and leaned closer to better hide his voice. "What do you propose we do with your counterpart?"
Harry shrugged. "What can we do? Who am I to insist someone not visit other worlds? If we remove the anchor from our own, he will most likely not make it to ours."
"Odds are, he won't, but I am still uneasy."
"I'd hate to damage his memory with a spell. He's got enough to worry about."
Snape sighed. "I agree with that. That said, the anchoring in the instructions is vague on another point. How do you choose where you wish to go?"
"I just think about the key features of the place and people and I get taken there."
"And you can return to that place again, with some reliability," Snape added, half a question.
"Well, yes. I think."
"Then we shall leave that step to you." Shielded by his body, he held out the notes.
Harry said, "If we are leaving it to me, I don't need the notes."
Without turning to look, he gave a snapping wave of his wand arm that lit the candles, adding, "It is yours then. Perhaps you can keep the incantations quiet enough to not be heard." Snape backed off, sober face limned by warm candlelight.
Harry glanced at the notes and, while imagining himself poised to travel home, began the last stage of the spell. The Device crackled, the candles popped. Harry glanced back at his guardian and began again, only to have the same result, worse yet, he had a sense of the interstice warping in some stomach lurching way he had never felt before.
Snape joined him again, whispering, "You are enforcing your will upon the Device, I believe. What are you visualizing?"
"I'm imaging Candide at home, waiting."
"But she is not."
"But she will be if we don't make it."
"Perhaps Candide does not make a good anchor, since we do not actually know for certain what she imagines about what is happening." Snape held his hands out for the notes. "Perhaps I should continue the spell."
"What are you going to visualize?"
"I will think of something," Snape said, turning to face the Device. "Perhaps you should attempt to convince our visitant to depart or, failing that, at least distract him, "
Harry slowly moved away while Snape intoned the spell just under his breath. His eyes closed, face intent as the dead language flowed out. The candle flames rose and fell rather than sputtering, breathing with a life of their own. The flames stretched longer, reaching for some distant satellite, tracked its course over the house, then returned to straining straight up. Harry wished he knew whether to view this as a positive sign or not.
With a quick check of his beard, Harry retreated from the candles' warmth and sidled over to his counterpart, whose mesmerized gaze remained fixed on Snape and the Device.
Harry said, "You really should go."
The other bit his lip momentarily before turning to Harry. "Tell me what you are doing, first if you want me to go."
"It is a spell that allows me to go home."
"You're leaving?" the young man asked, sharply. "You're letting some old portrait tell you what to do?"
"Aren't you?" Harry prodded with a gentleness that made him cringe with his own memories of where else he had heard it.
His counterpart smirked as he returned to observing the incantation. "I guess you did know Dumbledore."
"He is correct that it is my time to go. He is mistaken about the reason, but he is only a portrait, and cannot understand."
They both observed the spell execution. Harry sensed movement under his feet, like sand sifting out with a receding wave. He dearly wanted this over with. He considered what argument might convince himself to leave under such circumstances, finally settling on: "Harry, this does not involve you. It involves something I must do to make right the unexpected consequences of my own lack of magical control. Your being here puts that at risk. I will send Severus back to you just as soon as we are finished here."
Reaching for snide and setting his shoulders more confidently, the other Harry said, "You don't want to keep him?"
"Severus is my family. And the answer is too complicated to explain right now. I'll say that I do expect you to protect him."
The other Harry turned to lock gazes again. Reflected glowing pentagrams shimmered in his eyes. "Do I answer to you if I fail at that?"
"Fair enough question," Harry said, thinking hard, knowing his answer mattered greatly to the impostor, for whom it would actually apply. "I realize your task is overwhelmingly important, but you will need Severus to guide you after it is all over. That I know. Your friends are not strong enough for this task. For your own good, you need to protect him. But I realize that may prove impossible, so I will certainly not exact revenge if you fail to do so." Harry's voice wavered, struck weak by bad possibility.
His counterpart appeared to notice, because he quickly looked away again.
Harry went on. "You will need Severus close by to avoid becoming a hazard to your friends and wizarddom. I know that seems impossible now, but it isn't."
The other Harry dropped his gaze, which had the effect of making his eyes dim, no longer reflecting the Device. In the darkness their piercing green failed to make up the difference.
After a space, jaw tight, the young man said, "It won't matter for long. I think Dumbledore is going to insist I kill myself at the end of this." When he received no response, he went on, jaw tight, "Don't you think so?"
Harry had difficulty contemplating that, had difficulty pulling in a full breath. "I don't know what he will ask of you. I certainly hope it isn't that." Harry meant it, and it came through clearly in his voice. He raised a hand and brushed his counterpart's arm, and the other young man moved casually to get out of reach.
Harry withdrew his hand, but immediately raised it to his forehead, which felt needled. His counterpart gasped at the same time and ducked, pressing his fist against his scar.
"Severus, hide!" Harry shouted across the hall, and dragged his counterpart toward the closest doorway, that to the library.
His counterpart, with a tight-lipped moan, tossed his invisibility cloak over both of them, just as the candles fluttered and a dark, swirling form landed in the center of the hall. Harry gripped the sleeves of his counterpart to hold him up, and held stock still, leaning around the door frame to observe from under the cloak's protection.
Voldemort prowled the room, his muted face turning this way and that as he stalked around the Device. Harry held his wand at ready, prepared to distract him should he make a move toward the drawing room where Snape must have hidden. But Voldemort strode to the center of the hall and called out, "I know you are here, Potter. Save us both a lot of pain and come out and face your short future."
With a swish, the white skinned face turned one way, then the other, as if sniffing out two possible enemies. Harry pushed fully into the library and whispered, "I'll keep him distracted while you get away."
This world's Harry stared at him, flinching again with the pain in his scar. Harry said, "I can distract him long enough for you to get at Nagini. Go on. Take the cloak and go." Harry tossed the cloak off and untangled himself from the hem of it.
The other gathered the cloak around his shoulders, head floating disembodied. He grabbed Harry's robes and whispered, "You can't stay."
Out in the hall, a stalking Voldemort, called out, "I don't know what kind of childish magic you are attempting here, but it will not work. You cannot leave this place except through me."
Harry, fearing for the Device, quickly canceled his disguise, and with a wave of Ravenclaw's spells, opened a broken arched doorway in the outer stone wall. "GO!" he commanded in as harsh a whisper as he dared.
His counterpart gaped at him, eyes roving his face. "He . . . he won't be fooled by that."
"GO," Harry tried again and gave a forceful shove on his counterpart's arm.
The other stumbled and tossed his cloak over his head, but raised it up like an anti-cave to warn: "He'll know you're not me!"
Harry turned and marched out the library door to find Voldemort standing before the Device. Harry said, "You're looking for me?"
The figure turned, wand extended toward Harry, pinched with queer delicacy between alabaster fingers. "Ah, Potter. So, you are here. My servants often fail me, but not this time, it seems."
"You didn't bring any of those friends?" Harry asked, stalling, hoping his counterpart had departed, but fearing he had not.
Smug now, in the terrifying way only he could be, Voldemort said, "I can bring them at any time."
Harry dropped his shoulders and shifted his feet, pretending boredom in the face of what felt like a churning dark hole in the fabric of his inner mind.
Voldemort said, "It is past time for you to die, but only after I learn what game you are playing at here."
Harry shrugged, dragging things out as long as possible. He had to assume his counterpart was taking advantage as he advised. Voldemort swept his arms wide and stepped to the side to glance back at the Device. Harry wondered if he felt it instinctively the same way he did.
"A First-Year's silly project, it looks like," Voldemort sneered, and Harry hoped he honestly believed that. Perhaps he was unaware of grey worlds overlaying this one, even as he caused such a violent wrinkle in them. Harry pushed those musings away, lest they be snagged from him in a moment of weakness.
Voldemort aimed his wand directly at Harry's head. His cloak fluttered oddly around him, at once weightless and infinitely heavy. "What is this, Potter?"
"What does it look like?" Harry mocked back.
"Dark Magic. Which your former mentor would be most saddened to hear you are attempting." His wand lowered, aiming at Harry's knees now. "Perhaps you can be turned. Does the power of this thing call to you?"
Reluctant to reply, but eager to stall, Harry nodded.
Voldemort laughed with a chuffing sound. "Yes, I can see it making your eyes glow, even from here." Voldemort considered him as the candles fluttered in a draft before stilling again. "Why don't you join me, Potter? It would be so much easier. I'll make certain your little friends are safe. Isn't that what you want?"
Voldemort tried for reassuring, but the treacly flow of his voice made Harry's skin creep up his arms. Harry rubbed his scar, half without thinking. Voldemort's voice dropped, "If you accept me, that will hurt less." He gestured at the Device behind him. "Forget these infantile attempts at schoolbook Dark Magic. I can show you things you never imagined."
Yeah, right, Harry thought. "Like what?" he asked, unable to not sound derisive.
"You doubt me?" Voldemort asked. His chest and shoulders inflated, making him appear to swell and float above the floor. His wand arm struck out, but Harry was right with him, throwing up a counter to the Snake Conjuration Curse. The spells exploded between them, sending pink and yellow streamers swimming through the hall, hissing.
Voldemort hesitated, surprised. Harry took one breath and came back with the most forceful Chain Binding he could. His most practiced spell worked for half a second before the links melted. A Blasting Curse came back. Harry threw a Rubber Shield over it, but it still shifted the stones in the walls around them as it dissipated.
Intense instinct pumped through Harry's limbs. He half spun, light footed and ecstatically alive, to literally throw a Cutting Curse across the hall. Voldemort managed a block, but he needed two steps to keep his feet. Harry did not let him recover, he followed up with a Whip Charm, aimed at Voldemort's ankles. But Voldemort had a better Counter than Harry knew existed, and Harry's wand tried to jerk out of his hand, and he hung on, getting tugged halfway across the room and dropped hard on the floor.
Harry struggled to draw a breath into flattened lungs. Voldemort strode closer. Harry sucked in a small fractional breath and worried that Snape may intervene. Between gasps, Harry squelched, mostly, the oncoming Crucio. Voldemort cried out faintly and staggered. Harry pushed himself to sit up, limbs singing with pain, gripping his wet and gritty wand. Voldemort's wand flashed with another Blasting Curse and Harry squelched this one right on time. Voldemort went airborne, met the wall beside the library door, and slid down it, stunned.
Harry stood up and brushed himself off. "I see you have a new wand," he said, indicating the elder wood wand Voldemort held.
Voldemort blinked, still returning to his senses. He held his wand up to examine it dazedly. Harry used a Expelliarmus to knock the wand away and it clattered along the wall where came to rest, glowing out of the shadows. As much as his distorted face would allow, Voldemort's expression grew sly and Harry felt a shifting in his inner vision, a flutter like birds changing direction in flight. In that instant, Harry sensed them, all the servant shadows, all at once. Breathless again, he teetered on his feet. He knew how to send a disturbance into that connection to irritate their Marks, but he had not known how to Summon. Summoning was not dissonance, it was more like song, tuned strings vibrating in the presence of a matching tone of music, rising and falling, calling all of them.
Harry cut it off. He threw his mental weight against the siren vibrato coursing through his inner mind, deadening it utterly. The room remained still.
Voldemort, growing wary, began to stand by clawing his way backwards up the wall. He tugged another more familiar wand out of his robes and aimed it at Harry.
"Sure you want to use that one?" Harry asked. "The one Dumbledore wanted you to have?" Harry bit his lip and gestured at himself with his fingers. "Come on. Want to show me what you can do with that one?"
Voldemort glanced at Harry's wand. Harry with vicious helpfulness said, "I can change to that one, if you'd like," indicating the fallen one across the room.
Voldemort's eyes flickered to the other wand and blinked, giving away that realization struck, and it was not a pleasant realization. His eyes were caught then by something else across the room that made his lip curl. Harry assumed he had spotted Snape, but did not risk turning to check.
Harry set his shoulders and drew his attention back at himself. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you killing my friends of you tormenting Muggles and wizards you don't approve of. I'm tired of this war."
Voldemort spelled a Curse, something that threatened to balloon to fill the entire hall. Harry did not even take the time to resister what it was beyond that, squashed down, the backlash was sufficient to knock Voldemort down again and force him to scrabble for his second wand. His hand shook before he got it aimed again, shoulder wedged against the wall to hold himself upright with his feet trying to find purchase.
Harry aimed his wand between Voldemort's scarlet eyes, yearning to finish this. His breath came in heaves as he fought the instinct not to just crush the darkness slithering before him, but to slip into its place and Summon his followers, to breath in not air, but unfathomable power and reach. Harry bit his lip hard, hunched over with the effort of resisting. So easy to just climb into the center of the web shimmering smokily right before him.
Weak with tormented effort and suddenly damp and cold in his clothes, Harry managed to hoarsely mock, "I've decided to take your advice and I'm not playing around any more, Tom. This is the beginning of the end for everything you've wanted."
This was not his place, Harry adamantly reminded himself. Snape waited. Candide waited. His friends would suffer. He could not risk killing this Voldemort. This world's Harry would have to fulfill his role. He himself could only escape this place, at best.
Voldemort lowered his wand, and Harry's jerked, triggered by the movement to ready a Counter. A ruffle shook Harry's robes and, with a burst of inky smoke, the other wizard vanished.
Harry turned to check the room and found Snape in the doorway to the drawing room, wand drawn. For a second he seemed to consider keeping it up against Harry, but he lowered it.
Harry was still catching his breath when Snape joined him, simple air no longer felt sufficient.
Snape considered their project for several breaths, mind elsewhere based on his expression. He finally said, "I was going to have you check the anchoring on the Device, but I think it is sufficient, given your state."
Harry stumbled up beside him. "No, I'll see if I can check."
Ignoring Snape's hand of assistance, Harry stood unsteadily before the Device, calmed by the glow of its ever breathing tapers. Snape took Harry's shoulders and tugged him aside. "Why don't you rest a moment?"
"I don't know how much time we have," Harry argued, desperate to go, to escape his rampant instincts to reach out and grab what should not be his. With a great swallow and forced calm, Harry asked, "How long do you think he'll be gone?"
Snape shook his head, hands still clasped on Harry's arms as if fearing he may slip free. "I have never seen him run like that, so I do not know." He patted Harry's sleeve and turned him more away from the Device. "Better yet, why don't you talk to me a bit."
Harry could not possibly describe what he felt. A dreamy sense of skirting above everything, untouchable warred with feeling bound into intimate contact with an entire army, if he just would let it be true. "We should go, Severus."
Snape gazed at him narrowly before saying, "Whatever you are going through . . . will it end when we leave this place?"
Through a haze of willful deceit, Harry managed to faintly shake his head.
Snape's fingers now hurt where they gripped. "Will it improve, at least?"
"Yes." Harry repeated. "Yes."
Snape turned him to the Device and held him there by the arms as they both gazed into it. Harry moved his toe to avoid bumping the closest candle, Snape forcefully stepped him back, like a puppet. Harry did not think he needed so much help. "I'm fine," he said, raising his arms to shake free of help.
"If you are certain," Snape said, remaining close, but letting go.
"I didn't kill him," Harry argued his case. "I wanted to."
"I noted that," Snape said. "But you do not seem quite yourself."
Harry brushed his hair back. "I'm the same self I always am," he muttered sadly, and felt better for admitting that. They stood side by side in silence, woven into their own thoughts until Harry said, "Let's get you home."
Snape took his arm again, grip hard as ever. "You will follow?"
Harry, who had not contemplated otherwise, blinked back at him in surprise. "Of course."
This calmed Snape considerably. "All right." Harry restrained him from entering the device, saying "Let me check it first."
Snape allowed himself to be pushed back out of the candles' immediate light. Harry drew in a deep well of air and relaxed his mind, pushing aside the cloying web of power that tried to smother him as he did so. The Device sat like an immovable island in a universe of chaos, and within it, Harry read peace, or at least relative peace: a place unstalked by Voldemort, where a few struggled to straighten out the Ministry of Magic after many battles, both for power and otherwise. Harry sensed himself, struggling with things beyond his maturity and innate coping skills, wishing for guidance from someone too far away to provide it. The candle flames veered and righted as he returned to the here and now. Smiling wryly, Harry stepped back and gestured like an invitation to Snape. "Feels okay. Better than here, for certain."
Snape uncrossed his arms and after handing Harry the instructions, held up his robes to step safely into the star-shaped void. "You are right that we must hurry. But that said, do be mindful of what you are doing."
With care to avoid igniting his robes or his hair, Snape crouched and uncurled himself, reaching out to align each limb along an arm of the pentagram before resting his head back on the unyielding floor. Harry dropped his eyes away from the sacrificial vision before him to squint at the phonetic notations beneath the original obscure alchemal codes. On the next sheet, the anchoring process was indeed repeated. Harry puzzled over this, wondering if he should try to execute that part. Haste weighed on him, and he began reading, figuring he could do that section if the spell failed without it.
Harry's voice sounded stilted and meaningless as he read, but the Device hummed to life, gathering a halo more substantial than the candles could account for. The last words of the incantation fell from his lips and he lifted his wand to copy the complex tracing in the air, trying very hard not to shape what was happening with his innate skill, but it was near impossible to hold back. He could feel the gateway contorting as it yawned wide, could sense possibilities stacking to infinity, making his knees weak. He wanted that peaceful place where the only enemy was his own weakness and his largest need for help from the one who, through atonement, had allowed him to find himself. In such a place he could imagine successfully overcoming what remained of Voldemort's legacy, and he ached with hope to get there.
The Device latched firmly and dilated open, making Harry hold his breath, steering without trying, but fearing to hold back. A rush of wind threatened the candle flames, sending them seeking outward from the Device in all directions. Visions shot along the flat edges of the pentagram then the wind rushed inward. Then silence.
Harry blinked at the still candles. Snape was gone. For an instant Harry stood there on his toes, startled by the sudden cessation of shifting Planes, but then alarm took over: Snape's counterpart had not arrived in his stead.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Having been mangled and shunted through an impossibly narrow and acid-cold gap in reality, Severus Snape found breathable air and a hard floor to be an almost insultingly mundane conclusion to his experience. The inconceivable faded and the paralyzing cold took over. His limbs barely obeyed his will, shaking violently when he tried to pull out his wand. His fingers refused to work properly, and he had to wedge the wand against a knot in the floorboards to hold it steady while spelling a Heating Charm into the wood beside him. Gradually, the blessed heat spread under him and eventually, the tremors eased enough that he could breathe normally and sit up.
Snape was in his house, but not. Dust carpeted the floor, disturbed by his struggles. Joints protesting, he stood and out of paranoid habit wiped clean the evidence of his arrival by returning the dust to a smooth sheen. He added another spell to his feet to continue masking his presence.
The house stood empty, but unlike the one he just exited, it remained undamaged, and smelled of nothing but old wood and mold, long unoccupied. Where was he? he wondered, flinching at a random pain when he turned to study the un-boarded upper windows. Someone had seen fit to only protect the house from casual marauders.
Snape sat down cross-legged beside the invisible Device to wait for Harry. His charge would be hurrying to straighten things out, in that Snape had faith. How long it would take him to work things out remained a looming question, but Snape would not make things more difficult by straying away.
A cloud moved across the sun, muting twin four-squares of light beaming down from the upper windows. Despite being intact, the house was not warm. At risk of chills, Snape stood to warm himself by moving about. He circled the hall, glancing into each room, finding fleeting familiarity with how the house had been when he had bought it. Perhaps it was not actually his, just an unsold property. At least he could be assured by its state that no one would be arriving home from work. If their steering of the spell was of any reliability, Voldemort should not be a threat either. Only Harry was of any concern, back in that other dark world, working frantically to rectify things.
Snape circled around to the library and found his best books stacked with apparent haste on the lower shelves and floor. The dust around them had been disturbed recently. Snape backed out of the room and crossed to the hearth, where he could evaluate the hall floor with the advantage of the backlight of the upper windows. Old footprints wandered everywhere, dust filled, so of no immediate concern, but still mysterious.
Snape puzzled this before giving up and returning to occupying himself in a book entitled Transient Concoctions, a primer on brewing short-lived potions. The house had no chairs, so Snape sat on a stack of the largest books, precariously resting the one he was reading on a narrower tower. He was passing into the second chapter when the sound of Apparition brought his wand to hand without thought.
Snape peered around the doorframe into the hall and stopped in surprise. A figure resembling Harry stood with his back to the library, hand on the decorative metalwork supporting the stairway banister. Snape stepped fully into the doorway, subconsciously thinking to call out, but his better instincts prevailed and he remained there, motionless.
The figure dropped his arm and moved to the mirror under the stairs. He trailed a finger over the Celtic knots weaving around the frame of it, looked up, and stood unmoving, fixed on Snape's reflection in the doorway opposite. In slow motion, his hand came off the mirror and he took a half step back, but did not turn. He hung there, his pure green eyes apparent even at a distance. His hand reached for the frame again, running his hand along the side of it, as if expecting it to trigger something.
Snape crossed his arms, and this caused the other to spin, his expression revealing that he believed the reflection to have no real counterpart. Seeing no way to back out gracefully now that he had missed that chance, Snape stepped forward.
"Pr . . . Professor?" Harry stammered, growing more stunned, not less. He swallowed hard and teetered between stepping closer and falling back against the mirror.
Snape dryly stated the obvious as the best opening. "I take it you weren't expecting me."
Harry's mouth tried to smile but uncertainty overcame it. "I'd say," he said, and swallowed hard. Ever finding some inner well under pressure, he said more solidly, "I realize it's your house, but still."
From behind Harry's eyes, Snape gained a fuzzy impression of fatal violence involving himself, but it was pushed aside too quickly to perceive in detail.
"To what do I owe the visit?" Snape asked.
"What? Oh." Harry reached back to touch the banister again, explaining, "I come here to think. The spells on this place are really good, and no one, not even an owl, can find me. It's nearly impossible, otherwise, to get a break from things," he explained, sounding tired. He began to pace, falling into his complaint, but alarm reasserted itself and he spun to face Snape again. "You don't look like a ghost." He indicated the floor. "You aren't leaving any footprints, but . . ." He came closer, raising a hand, but withdrawing it before it got halfway to Snape's sleeve.
"What are you?" Harry asked.
"Not a ghost, fortunately."
"That's good," Harry said, clearly relieved.
"More an echo," Snape explained.
"An echo?" Harry pondered.
Snape shrugged and paced away, towards the Device, worrying now that his Harry might choose that moment to come through.
Laughing nervously, which made him look much younger, Harry said, "It's true I didn't expect to find you here."
"I imagine not," Snape nebulously replied.
Harry paced him at a distance, like an eager student, saying, "I didn't expect it, but I've wanted to talk to you."
The obvious underlying pain in that statement made Snape stop and return his full attention to the immediate. "Have you? I can't imagine," he said, falling easily into his old self, the one he estimated was expected.
"I did what you said," Harry obliquely stated.
Snape tried to catch the young man's thoughts but they were running roughshod over each other, and it was impossible beyond the bizarre sense of welcoming the enveloping green of a Killing Curse.
Harry went on, "I'm sorry I didn't understand."
Snape now wished he did. There may be something to learn here for his Harry.
"I saw all the memories you left and I did what you said," Harry repeated earnestly, clearly needing to unburden himself of these words. Again, his thoughts were chaotic: Lily as a child, Dumbledore, the green light again. While Snape pondered the inexplicableness, Harry plowed on, gathering strength from confessing. "And I feel bad that we didn't try harder save you," he helplessly admitted, arms falling loose at his sides.
Snape got a crystal clear picture that time, of Nagini's evil coils, of his own death.
Harry swallowed hard, clearly saddened, but then his eyes narrowed, ever slow on the uptake but guaranteed to get there. "Your neck . . ." He leaned in and down to better see before straightening. Suspicion bled into his movements.
Snape tipped his head back and forward, bluffing. "Your point? I'm not a ghost, as we have already established."
"You're an echo," Harry stated. "Whatever that is."
Snape shrugged. "I am dead, but I am here. Call it what you will."
Harry crossed his arms, and tapped one foot. "Tell me something only you would know."
Snape longed to steer Harry back to the previous conversation. He made a tiresome, in character noise. "Such as?"
Harry bit his lip and gathering determination said, "Tell me what memory of yours I saw that made you quit giving me Occlumency lessons."
Snape topped Harry's standoffish pose with a raised chin. "Oh, the indignity of death and now the indignity of your father's miserable treatment of me. Thank you."
Harry deflated. "Sorry."
Snape gave him now time. "Apologizing for your father now?
Harry gave a useless arm movement. "I suppose. Yes. Now that I understand better. It's the best I can do. I didn't expect to get the chance, really." He turned to pace alone now. "All I can ever manage is to do my best. It's not always enough, I realize. But I am sorry . . . for everything."
Again, there was too much pain. Snape came back like a whip. "Potter, stop apologizing."
Harry froze and stared at him, derailed from his circling thoughts. Snape did not give him a chance to recover. "You defeated Voldemort, correct?"
"Yes," Harry confirmed with that cloying earnestness Snape had gratefully forgotten about. "I did as you said. It wasn't easy, but I did."
Since Harry's thoughts were singular this time, they came through clearer. Snape demanded, "You stood still for a Killing Curse and believe you have anything to apologize for?"
Harry's mouth moved but he gave up and fell silent.
Snape stepped closer. "May I give you some advice? Give up on the self pity, it gets you nowhere." He waved to indicate the house surrounding them, growing more forceful. "Give up on the past, you owe it nothing."
Harry gaped at him now. "But . . ."
"No buts, Potter," Snape chastised him.
In mild wonderment, Harry said, "No one talks to me like this."
Snape put up a finger to accent his point. "That may be your problem."
"Maybe. Well . . . they all smile and nod, but getting them to actually change things at the Ministry is bloody well impossible."
Snape sighed. "You're nineteen, Potter. Leadership takes time to learn, and to earn."
"So, I'm realizing."
"You cannot singlehandedly fix things," Snape pointed out, guessing at the trouble. "And leading your little friends about is sorry preparation for long entrenched political powers."
"I know that," Harry replied, defensive now. "But what else can I do? Things still aren't back to how they were before, even as sloppy as that used to be. Wizarddom can still self-destruct if the Ministry doesn't get back to normal soon."
Snape suggested, "Perhaps a Muggle course in management?"
Harry laughed. "Are you being facetious?"
"Do I sound facetious?"
Harry fell sober. "I can't tell. I don't understand you, really. Didn't," he corrected, falling sad and introspective.
"Potter, move on," Snape insisted. "It is all well and good to take responsibility for things, but clearly you are letting the past hold you back."
Harry stared at him, eyes unveiled, drinking that in.
"And learn some Occlumency," Snape added. "You are a political liability as open as your thoughts are."
Harry turned away, chagrined. "It's been suggested, but I didn't want to. I remembered how badly it went-"
"Potter!"
"Yes, yes, let go of the past," Harry chanted, pacing a short way. He slowed to examine the room with what may be new eyes. His face went through some expressive transitions before he said, "I found this place in the records at the Ministry. I got curious about you. I wanted to understand." He touched the railing again as he passed. "The other place seemed to be where you were living, rather than here. It was like you were saving this place for a better time." He turned his gaze to the ceiling. "Like you had hopes, plans, for the future."
Snape swallowed, having nothing to add to that.
Earnest again, and almost shy, Harry asked, "Have you seen them, her, my mum, beyond the veil?"
Snape shrugged. Oddly enough, he had. "Yes, of course."
"Oh, well, that's good." Whatever he had been leading up to, Harry let it drop, and stuck his hands in his back pockets and hunched over like a teenager.
Snape jerked his nose at a familiar scent, a whiff of the dry rotted earth that accompanied Harry's gateways to the underworld. Nonchalant, Snape turned to where the Device had dropped him off. The dust was disturbed again, in the pattern of a pentagram. And now Snape felt a tug, akin to a Portkey, drawing him that way.
His Harry was not going to come through himself. He was reversing the spell. Snape wandered that way, retaining his posture despite a rush of absolute relief.
His silence let Harry build up to another confession. "I AM sorry for what happened."
Dredging up some semblance of his stricter self, Snape snapped, "Stop apologizing."
Harry glared at him. "NO."
Snape tried to estimate where he stood without glancing down and drawing attention to the floor. He tipped his head from side to side. "That's better."
His praise derailed Harry again. Harry regrouped and said softly, cathartically, "I needed to tell you. I didn't imagine I'd get to."
Snape feared he would be unceremoniously sucked away at any moment. He ignored his bones wincing at the thought and urging him to jump clear. He said, "Well, you have. And I have to go, now."
Harry pulled his head back. "What? Go where?"
Snape let out a pent up breath and glanced up to where, in his world, Candide had hung a small abstract weaving. "To a place like this, but full of light, and color, and a family."
"Is there such a place?"
"I hope so," Snape replied. A rush of something circled his feet, tracing the lines of the Device without leaving a mark. When Harry took a step forward, Snape raised his hand and commanded, "Stay back."
Harry circled sideways and away, giving the spell more space. "I am sorry," Harry insisted over the faint sizzle of the spell, sounding more stubborn and less pained.
Snape crossed his arms. "I heard you the first time." And then the world collapsed around him.
- 888 -
- 888 -
Snape came to in the glare of candlelight, with Harry shaking him lightly, saying, "Sorry."
"Ach," Snape uttered in exasperation.
Harry jerked aside, patting down his smoldering trouser leg and the scent of burned cloth drifted in the air. He crouched more carefully and adjusted the warmed cloak over Snape, explaining, "I figured out what the second anchoring is for; it's to lock the spell to a person, rather than just a place."
Snape could barely think let alone move. "Ah," he managed.
"I can execute it again, but I think you need time to recover."
Snape nodded weakly. "As much as I'd like to hurry . . . perhaps . . ."
Harry lifted the cloak off, reheated it and settled it over Snape again, then rested his hand on Snape's chest. "Let me know when you're ready."
"In a minute. Or ten."
Harry smiled painfully. "Where did you go?"
Snape shook his head rather than reply.
"You're all right, though?"
"Yes."
Harry's sigh of relief joined the collective hiss of the candles. He patted Snape and stood, wand out, on guard.
- 888 -
Snape signaled that he was ready, and Harry, worried, asked him twice if he was certain.
Snape lifted his head with obvious effort. "We don't have much time here, nor at home."
"Right," Harry agreed and raised the wand to repeat the spell properly.
This time, the candles drew inward, almost to the center of the Device and their flames appeared to fish up a nearly identical form before fluttering back to normal. Harry let the fitful energy ease out of his shoulders and stepped forward with a warmed cloak.
The other Snape, an impostor no longer, lay senseless, and Harry was loath to leave him alone and unprotected. He tucked the cloak up around Snape's neck to better warm his blood and began to count to sixty. His own Snape lay unaided at home and he could not wait beyond that.
Before the count ran out, Snape stirred and raised an arm. "Don't ignite your sleeve," Harry warned, tugging his hand to safety and helping him sit up.
"Wonderful. Home," he drawled.
"Go to Grimmauld Place. They'll take care of you there."
"Bloody likely," Snape slurred with a shiver.
"I wouldn't lie to you. My adoptive father has been laying the groundwork for you to help the Order, and you are badly needed. Dumbledore's portrait somewhat understands the situation and will help you."
Snape stared at him. "Dumbledore," he uttered. "I am safe from no one."
Harry stepped back. "I have to go. Get yourself to safety," he said, nearly pleading. "Voldemort was just here."
Hand buried in his hair, Snape took that in. "Where is he now?"
"I scared him off."
Snape let his arm fall, breathing, "Of course you did."
"Good luck," Harry said. Snape gave a half wave full of derision, and Harry slipped away through the floor.
Harry wasted no time imagining home and falling away into it. Again a clinging shadow seemed to follow him, but this time he expected it, and willfully ignored it.
On the shiny clean floor of their own main hall, Harry struggled to his half-numb feet, which refused to move exactly how he commanded them to. He staggered across to where Snape lay, spread out as he had been in the corresponding hall in the other Plane. Harry dropped to his knees beside him, willing his own body to function despite every fiber of him resisting.
Harry breathed deeply several times as though preparing to dive into deep water. This at least cleared his head, even if it did not give him any strength. With clumsy hands, he grabbed hold under Snape's arms and hauled him up.
"Candide will be home soon," Harry said, as a kind of apology for the manhandling.
Snape's head lolled, and Harry believed him unconscious until Harry muttered, "I should just hover you . . ." And received a firm, "NO."
Harry laughed, and they staggered together to the stairs. "Come on then. We have to get you to bed; pretend you have the flu or something."
Halfway up, with Harry needing one hand to keep them from falling forward onto the stairs, Snape said, "I have raised you with a properly devious mind. That makes it all worthwhile."
Harry shook his head and led him to his bedroom. Movement seemed to be helping more than warm blankets. Snape almost stood on his own when they arrived.
Harry applied heating charms to the bed and the extra duvet from the trunk in the corner. Snape tugged off his shoes with difficulty while Harry worked at warming everything nearby.
"I can get those for you," Harry said, but Snape shook his head. His second shoe thudded to the floor and he fell back.
Moving quickly, Harry covered him firmly. "You'll be all right in a few minutes," he assured him. "I usually am."
"You are much younger than I," Snape pointed out peevishly.
"And I don't usually do three in a row. Sorry about that."
Snape raised a long index finger into the air. "Please don't . . ." he began, but the Floo roared downstairs.
Harry stood, glancing quickly about the room to make sure everything was as it should be. Downstairs he slowed to what he hoped was a normal pace. Candide stood at the table, sorting her post. She jumped upon seeing him there, as if, in Harry's overtired imagination, he did not belong.
"Harry, you're home," she said with great emotion and a hug. "Were you able to figure things out for yourself?"
Harry shrugged. He had not had time to figure anything out, at all, and felt daunted by the creeping concerns of his own reality.
Harry took a silent, much needed breath and easily let slip, "Severus has a touch of the flu, I think."
"He does?" Candide asked, alarm clear. "Where is he?"
"In bed."
Candide slid by him to the door. "Did a Healer look in on him?"
Harry shook his head, safe with the lie: "He doesn't want one." She grumbled and started up the stairs with purpose. On her heels, Harry quietly said, "I told him that if he wasn't feeling better by midnight, we'd contact one, no matter what he wanted."
"Good," she said, businesslike.
Harry hung in the doorway while she entered and directly went to sit on the bed. She brushed Snape's hair back even though it was not in his face. Harry thought he probably needed that more than the warmed duvet.
"Sure you don't want a Healer?" she asked.
Snape replied, "Don't be preposterous. Of course I don't."
Continuing to brush his hair back, despite how difficult the impostor had been recently, she said, "You'd insist on calling one for Harry in an eye-blink."
"That's different."
"My mum insists on taking me shopping this evening and I'm sure she will insist on a visit home, but I can stay."
"Do not do so. It is unnecessary."
Harry could see her frown even from where he was. "You do feel slightly feverish," she said, which reduced Harry's concern that Snape might not be warming up. "If I leave right after dinner, I expect I'll be back by eleven."
Snape grabbed hold of her hand as she moved to stand. "If you do not return by midnight, I will send Harry to apprehend you."
She laughed lightly. "My mum couldn't argue with him; that's for certain." She sent Harry a glowing grin. This time Snape let her stand. She said, "We'll let you rest."
The two of them had a quiet dinner. Candide finished quickly and departed in the Floo after checking in on Snape. Harry pretended to be arranging his books and notes before him on the table, but as soon as her feet spun out of view, he went upstairs.
Snape appeared to be sleeping when Harry approached the bed. With the bedside lamp tweaked up, Snape's face appeared deeply lined by stress. Harry sat on the bed, wanting to speak to Snape, but not willing to wake him.
Winky appeared with a bowl surrounded by the overpowering aroma of chicken broth. Harry set the tray on the side table for later, but Snape roused from the steamy scent. He gingerly rubbed his eyes and forehead and sat up partway. Harry quickly shifted his pillows for him, which startled Snape slightly.
"Winky brought soup," Harry said solicitously.
"Yes, I noticed." He leaned his prominent nose in the direction of the tray and Harry carefully handed it over.
Snape ate ravenously once he started, making Harry ache. "Do you want something more substantial?"
Snape shook his head between bites. "Winky is spot on, as usual."
Finished, he handed the service back to Harry, who set it on the floor. He looked Snape over, wanting to do something more. He said, "I'm glad you're home."
"Not as glad as I am."
"No, I think so," Harry countered, pained.
Snape shifted forward to lie flat again. He stared beyond the ceiling in silence before saying, "You said something to me once, quite wisely, regarding my faith being your home. I did not realize how true the reverse of that was at the time."
Harry patted his arm through the duvet. "You must really be exhausted, talking like that."
Snape shook his head in amusement and doggedly went on, "I have learned a great deal from you, Harry. Having to force myself to behave as I used to I now fully appreciate just how much. " He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose before continuing. "One must give oneself up to truly discover oneself. You have to give yourself away, totally. It requires enormous faith in those around you to manage it. I know now it was fear that prevented my doing it before; fear borne on lack of trust. You have been wise enough all this time to know what it has taken me this long to learn."
Harry dropped his gaze. "You really will regret this later," he insisted, in a light sing-song.
Snape punched him lightly on the arm and slowly went on, "I didn't know who I was before. And I was so terribly certain of it at the time. How very delusional of me." He paused again before saying, "I owe you quite a lot."
Harry smiled teasingly. "You still haven't learned, really," he criticized. "If you think there is accounting in this."
Snape's hand clumsily found Harry's sleeve. "We have some things to discuss, I think. But later."
"After you've seen a Healer, you mean?" Harry prodded.
"I'll be fine in the morning," Snape insisted, eyes falling closed. "We can talk after your training tomorrow."
"I'm not going," Harry said, finding that statement very easy.
Snape cracked an eye open. "We will definitely be talking in the morning, then." He studied Harry with slitted eyes before saying, "Feeling better?"
"Yes," he said. He had not tried reach out to the shadows here, and did not know how tempting it would be to grab hold if he tried. He wanted Snape to rest and not worry. "Much better."
Snape, as usual, seemed unconvinced. "Tomorrow," he insisted, patting Harry on the arm.
Next: Chapter 39
"I don't know," Harry said. "Had to be someone who knew he was alive. Oh, that's another thing . . ." Harry, hemmed, "Tonks told me you arranged for someone to confess to my crime, to get me out of prison."
"I did that," Snape stated, half questioning.
"Yup."
"Remind me in the future not to be replaced by an impostor."
Chapter 39 — Precipitous Plots
Harry sat at the dining room table, penning a letter to Tonks, one pet on his shoulder and the other watching and winking from the chair-back opposite. Harry held the letter out for Hedwig and took down the canister of Floo powder. She nipped at him, but accepted the journey, leaving behind a tail feather that quickly burned up in the fire when it returned to yellow.
Tonks appeared minutes later, and stood awkwardly beside the table.
"Did you bring Hedwig back?" Harry asked, wanting to send more letters.
"She wanted out of my window, so I let her. Probably off collecting your post."
Harry gestured that she should sit. He wished that nothing hovered between them, but could not shove the issues completely aside. He took her hand and sat down, holding it. "Want to stay?" he asked, missing her acutely from his time in prison.
"You aren't angry with me?" she asked. "About everything."
Harry thought she seemed angry with herself. A breath escaped him and he shook his head. Kali crawled once around his collar before settling in again.
"Coming into the Ministry tomorrow?" she asked.
Harry shook his head again. Partly, he was thinking he could better find Moody's killer if he had more time to do it. Partly, he wanted to punish the Ministry.
She pulled free of his hand and sat back, elbows out. Winky sparkled in and poured her a cup of hot mead, which she concentrated on while sipping it. She did not meet his eyes as she whispered, "We need to find who really killed Moody."
"That's what I was thinking," Harry said. "And I have an idea how to go about it."
Her tired eyes grew interested. "How's that?"
Harry was not ready yet to explain his plan to infiltrate Durumulna. "Let me try this week to see if it will work, then I'll let you in on it."
"Just be careful, Harry. Promise?"
A little recklessness would be required, but these people were nowhere near Voldemort's level, which Harry had just faced down yet again. He shrugged vaguely.
She pulled out her little chalkboard and scratched something out on it. Harry said, "Are you on duty?"
She avoided his eyes. "I've been taking extra shifts . . . just for something to do. I'm taking myself off for a few hours." She held the board up. "Kingsley says no problem." As she slipped the board back into her pocket, she said, "Arthur will want to talk to you."
"Fine," Harry said flatly.
It was not terribly late, but Harry had not rested well in days. He stood to lead the way to his room. In the main hall, Tonks said, "You never opened your Christmas presents."
Harry glanced over at the pile that Winky must be keeping neat and dusted. "Want me to open them now?"
Tonks headed that way, and sorted through the pile. "You have a lot of friends, Harry," she observed.
Harry took up the present from Candide and tore off the paper. Inside was a new quill set, gold tipped in six colors of feather. "I could have used that in prison," he said, remembering having to beg a quill from the warden.
"Posh," Tonks said. "Can I have the bright pink one?"
"Yeah, help yourself to it," Harry adamantly said, reaching for the next gift.
Tonks happily pocketed the quill and said quietly, "I caught Arthur in the file room the other day . . ." She stopped until Harry put down a small box that held what appeared to be a snow globe with the Hogwarts castle inside. But shaking it did not make any snow appear. "He was adding pages to Percy's file."
Harry fixed his gaze on the castle. "What was on them?"
"You assume I sneaked back to read them?" she said with false insult, raising herself up on her toes.
Harry waited, prodding the boxed globe to no avail. Voice low, she said, "He's opened an internal investigation. Just our department. He isn't telling anyone about it, even the Minister. Kingsley's assigned to it. I told him what I'd learned following Percy around at your request." She sighed. "The department would probably not be pleased to know I'm telling you this."
Harry nodded and held back a smile. It was a better present than any on the table.
Tonks helped dispose of wrappings while Harry stacked opened gifts. Halfway through the pile, she asked, "Where did you go?"
Harry turned the box he held one way, then another, trying to read all the small print. Set a Spell it read. Better than a Rememspeller! Harry opened the box, to find a small black pyramid inside. "It's hard to explain," he said.
Tonks took up the pyramid. "My dad has one of these. You can have someone record a spell you can't do yourself on each corner, and then replay it when you need it."
"Does it work?" Harry said, thinking that a bit dangerous if used the right way.
Tonks shrugged. "Only for weak spells and some charms. His refuses to record hexes or curses." She dropped it back in Harry's hand. "His mending spells are bollox, so he uses it for that to avoid asking Mum." After a beat, she said, "What's hard to explain?"
Harry thought of that other place and how tangled things had become with his guardian misplaced. He huffed and laughed lightly. "Everything."
Sadly, she said, "You won't say. I thought maybe you'd gone off to one of those other places."
"I needed to work some things out," Harry insisted vaguely, not wanting to lie outright. He dropped the next wrapped box he had held and took her by the arm. "Come on, let's finish this later."
The next morning, Harry woke late, and alone—Tonks had slipped out while he slept, to return to duty. Harry found Snape in the drawing room, still in his dressing gown, well enough rested that his eyes were clear and keen.
"Feeling better?" Harry asked.
"Well enough. Candide wished to remain home from work for my sake, but I convinced her to go. I feel recovered but I do wonder if it is possible to ever feel truly warm again." He sipped his steaming tea with unusual reverence.
The door knocker sounded, and Harry went to open it, finding Ginny and Fred on the stoop. Ginny said, "Aaron owled this morning to say you were back, but not at training."
Harry nodded and invited them inside. Fred gave him a hard slap, "Welcome back to the Red Haired Anti-Ministry League, my man. Good to have you back on the safe side."
Harry said, "You only say that because I've seen too much of what you're doing. And my hair's not red."
Fred made himself comfortable on the couch. "That can be fixed. Permanently, even."
Ginny scuffed to a stop upon spying Snape in the drawing room. "Oh, you're still home, sir. Sorry, Harry, I need to talk to Professor Snape, alone, if you don't mind." She slipped into the drawing room with too much familiarity, and closed the door.
"What's with that?" Harry asked the room, which only contained Fred, who replied with a shrug.
Harry worried acutely about Snape also not knowing. "Maybe I'll crash this meeting. I'll be right back." He waved Fred to sit back down and after a quick rap, slipped inside.
Snape was standing behind his desk, wearing that thoughtful look on his face that implied he was trying to catch a hint beyond someone's eyes. Ginny stopped speaking upon Harry's entry, trailing off from, " . . . I don't feel comfortable . . ."
"It's all right, go on," Harry urged.
Ginny frowned, and with a half glance at Snape informed him, "I'm not supposed to tell anyone."
Snape gave a small sideways nod that Harry interpreted to mean he was grateful for the help. Harry wished he had some idea what this was about in order to help.
Snape cued Ginny for Harry's sake, "You were saying something about Lord Freelander, if I'm not mistaken."
Ginny glowered. "Oh, so now I can say something."
Snape's expression did not obviously change, but clearly he disliked this immensely.
Harry took a guess and asked, "You're not happy about the letters?"
"You know about that?" Ginny asked, sounding relieved.
"Yes," Harry assured her.
Ginny's shoulders fell. "I feel terribly about the trouble." She paused to give Snape a deserved glare before turning back to Harry. "I don't like having this kind of secret from Aaron, and I worry I should tell him before the letters come to light and can be traced to my handling them. I've seen my brothers at work; I know that can be done."
"Severus has the letters again," Harry said, finding amusement in Snape's attempts to appear that he followed this conversation. Harry turned to Snape. "I'm sure he's hidden them safely away."
Snape gave a mechanical nod. Fortunately, his usual annoyed detachment worked as cover.
Harry tried to console her. "Look, when this all blows over for the better, Aaron will be happy Skeeter got what she deserved."
Ginny argued, "If we got at her any other way, I'd believe that. But this is too close to the truth. I would never hang Aaron's personal life out there like this. Not if I'd known." She gave Snape another glance and stood up. "Never mind. I promised I wouldn't shirk." Her voice fell softer and she addressed Snape with, "I just feel like I sacrificed myself, even though you said that wasn't part of the plan."
Ginny departed, closing the door behind her. After a moment, Snape said, "Clearly, I returned home just in time. Hopefully." He pulled out the center drawer on his desk. "I suppose I should locate these letters, as good at hiding things from myself as I seem to be . . ." He closed that drawer and opened another. "What do they look like?"
"They are torn in half." Harry said helpfully. "Should be easy to spot."
Snape sat down to rummage in a lower drawer. "And that happened, how?"
"They had some kind of magical alarm clip on them, and when I slipped into the Dark Plane it refused to go along."
Snape shook his head. "I don't see them."
"Did you run all the eavesdropping spells?" Harry asked, pulling his wand to check now that he remembered.
"Of course," Snape said, still looking around. He found some other papers that were of momentary interest. "And these letters were to what purpose?"
"Revenge on Rita Skeeter."
"Did it work?"
"Yes."
Snape dropped the papers back into the drawer and closed it. "Long overdue."
Harry explained, "Well, she was tricked by it. What will come of it, is yet to be seen."
Snape stood and surveyed the room. "Is it possible I would have simply burned them?" he asked.
"That would have been the best thing."
They both stared into the hearth, where lean, blackened logs fluttered with orange tongues. "I'll look some more here and at Hogwarts, but if they do not turn up, I may assume I simply did that. But I do wonder if more action is required on my part."
Harry laughed. "You want to finish what your counterpart started?"
Snape gazed thoughtfully back at him. "You always do." He resumed his chair and gestured at the door. "Why don't you see your friends out and come back for our talk."
Harry felt a flutter of reluctance at getting a lecture, but did as requested. Ginny sent her brother on ahead and took Harry's sleeves. "Will you help me with Aaron if I tell him?"
"Yes, of course. You didn't mean any harm to him, right?"
"I didn't even know he would get involved. I didn't ask any questions; I just followed instructions. After your letter, I told Professor Snape I wanted to help you, and delivering those love letters was what he told me to do."
"You were a mule," Harry said, then explained. "What the criminal gangs call someone who does the legwork but knows nothing about what they are carrying."
"Wonderful. I've joined the Gang of Slytherin."
Trying to cheer her up, he quipped, "You'll enjoy it. They get away with everything you never dared try."
"Didn't stop my brothers."
"Your brothers always got caught, as I recall."
"Not as often as you think," she said. Then feel more serious. "I haven't asked you again about that crazy letter you sent me. Did you mean it?"
"I meant it, but I don't know if it matters," Harry said. "That's a bad answer to be going on with, I know. Keep up with your studies and don't trust me. I could be an evil wizard in disguise, you know."
She gave him a shove on the arm, "Harry, not trusting you would include not trusting the letter you sent."
A more wily instinct inside of him said, "And maybe you shouldn't."
"Uhhhn," she groaned in playful annoyance. "I don't want a prophecy. But I'll admit just the threat of one makes it easier to pick up my books when I'd rather do something else."
Harry considered delaying her longer, to delay getting the talk, but she said, "I have to get back to the shop. Aaron is coming to take me out to lunch." She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, "Glad you're home, Harry."
"So am I," He said, happy to gain some distance from the shadows calling to him. It gave him room to think about broader things.
"If you think of sending a letter again, come and find me instead!" Ginny said, before borrowing a handful of Floo powder.
Harry waited for the last of the loosened ash to settle on the grate in her wake before returning to the drawing room. Snape sat with his fingers on his forehead, reading his pre-opened post.
"Anything else I've been doing that I should be made aware of?" he asked, flipping each letter over to scan the next.
Harry took the seat before the desk and tossed his hands. "I wasn't here either, remember?"
Snape's focus drifted off. "The next few weeks should be excessively interesting, in that case."
"We're doing better than they are. Back there," Harry said, silently wishing them well.
"I've been thinking over those events. You appeared to win the Wand of Destiny off Voldemort, tipping your counterpart's hand, so to speak. Except that you already signaled your superiority before that. That may work in that Order's favor, by driving Voldemort into a defensive posture."
"That would be better?"
"It will give the Order some time to get better organized. . . Potter to get a sufficient graps of his powers. . ."
Silence ruled, until Harry said, "Do you think they'll manage?"
"I still gauge the odds at fifty-fifty." He put his letters aside and put his eyes squarely on Harry. "Thinking of going back to assist?"
Harry faintly shook his head. "I shouldn't go back there."
Snape's mannerisms lightened, indicating this was his preferred answer. "One of several things we need to discuss."
Harry frowned and took a deep breath. Snape closed his dressing gown tighter around his chest and settled back in his chair, hands in his pockets.
"Still cold?" Harry asked.
"No matter. Let's back up to the critical issues I missed. You were arrested for what?" he asked, in the mode of one making a list.
"Killing Alastor Moody."
Snape breathed in slowly. "I did not realize that."
"I didn't want to risk telling you in front of everyone."
"Valid concern. Who did kill him?"
"I don't know," Harry said. "Had to be someone who knew he was alive. Oh, that's another thing . . ." Harry, hemmed, "Tonks told me you arranged for someone to confess to my crime, to get me out of prison."
"I did that," Snape stated, half questioning.
"Yup."
"Remind me in the future not to be replaced by an impostor."
"What?" Harry countered, half teasing. "You'd have left me there in the lock up?"
"I would have thought of something."
Harry let that go, otherwise he may need to explain what precisely had motivated the other Snape to take such drastic action. Harry appreciated, with a tremor in his raw nerves at imagining otherwise, having a guardian who was not also a shadow and therefore a tempting tool. He felt badly now remembering how he had treated the other. He had not been able to help himself, and that bothered him the most.
Snape resumed a businesslike attitude. "So, you were framed for Moody's murder, how?"
Harry pulled out his wand and held it out before him. "Well, I went to talk to Belinda, that evening, and she gave me the brush off about needing help, which she previously told me she needed, but later said I was not there at her place that night. I made the mistake of using the Dark Plane to get there—I know, I know, I should not be using it at all—and so there were no records in the Department of Transportation to back me up." He held the wand up higher. "That and Moody's murder was on my wand," he added, feeling faintly nauseated at that thought.
Snape sat forward, thoughtful for many seconds. "They reversed the spells in front of you?"
Harry nodded, holding the wand out so Snape could take it. "deBenedictus was there and he told me not to let them do it. But I didn't see the risk."
Snape looked the wand over and handed it back. "And it is your wand."
"Yes." Harry sighed, turning it between his fingers, finding nothing odd about it.
"Give me the timeline in detail. When did they reverse the spells?"
Harry held the wand in hands clasped between his knees. "Two days after the murder, when I first came into the Ministry for training."
"And you recognized the spells preceding . . . actually sequentially after . . . the curse in question?"
Harry shrugged. "Other than drills, they weren't anything special."
"And the spells right before the curse?"
Harry paused. "They didn't go back any farther than that."
"They should have. Who performed the reversal?"
Harry's mind was speeding up, remembering. "Rodgers ran the reversal. But Mr. Weasley was in charge."
"I'm disappointed in them, then. I would expect them to be more thorough."
Harry shook his head. "They may not have wanted to prove me innocent. Tonks told me later they wanted temporarily to do what Durumulna intended, to keep me safe."
"And your wand was in your possession the entire time when the murder is reputed to have been committed?"
Harry wondered fleetingly how dinner with both his guardian and his solicitor would go. Tediously, most likely. "Yes."
"You are certain?" Snape stated with clear enunciation.
"Well, the day before my arrest, Percy knocked it out of my hand and fetched it up. Dangled it before me."
"Did he now?"
"Well, but he just knocked it under the bench in the changing room."
"But you lost sight of it in that moment?"
"Yes. But, what could he have done with it in that second and a half?" Harry asked, letting his frustration get out.
"He does not have to do anything but switch it," Snape pointed out, also rising in agitation.
"Severus," Harry insisted, not liking the implied chastisement. "I had my wand before that. I would know if I had lost my wand. It's kind of a rare one, you know."
"Harry," Snape said, backing off on his Head of House voice and moderating into something more gentle, "it isn't so very rare. You had another, before."
A tingle, like ice crystals forming, migrated up Harry's back. He thought frantically backward in time. "I . . . I was having trouble getting my wand out of my pocket. Like it would fall in too far." He slid this one into his front wand pocket and out again, feeling colder still. "Someone switched my wand for my old one. Severus, I had Winky extend all my wand pockets, and several times, I couldn't get at my wand." Harry thought back, trying to remember when that had started, exactly. "I don't remember the first time that happened . . ."
"Think back instead to another time your wand was out of your sight."
Harry did so, unable to remember, so he gestured helplessly.
Snape, unrelenting, said, "It could have been while you slept . . . it could have been while you ate lunch, it could have been a pickpocket."
Harry thought back, but shook his head again.
"Think, Potter. Did you ever loan it out?" When Harry indicated not, Snape went on, "Were you out on a busy street in the days preceding?"
"In the days preceding, I came to see if you were all right, in that other place. Surely no one there switched the wands."
"I would think not. Other than that?"
"I went down to Diagon Alley, to buy a small animal to try taking In Between." Harry felt another chill, remembering the desiccated creature.
"And did anyone bump into you, physically?"
"Belinda," Harry replied.
"Could she have switched your wand?"
Harry remembered that day. He remembered Belinda taking his lapels and waltzing him around the animal cages. He had not been watching her, but instead the suspected Durumulna walking by. "Yes." He scratched his chin with his knuckles. "She had been so eager to talk, to go out for tea or something, and after that, she gave me the brush off. Told me she'd taken care of things."
"She probably had," Snape stated knowingly.
"They told her to take my wand," Harry said.
Snape accepted the fresh tea Winky brought in and poured out two cups. "She was probably not the only one assigned that task, if they were at all competent about it." He gestured for Harry to come fetch the other cup from the tray, and blowing over his own, said, "They left the plan tight for Percy to change the wands back. They had to know he could reasonably get that close to you."
"It was a surprise inspection." Harry warmed his hands on his cup. "You think that's what happened?" he sadly asked, regretting the discovery that Belinda had grown so involved. "You think that's how the spell got on my wand?"
"Not for certain. But lacking more evidence, we will operate on the assumption that it is correct. It is critical to recognize your enemies, especially the ones closest to you. In this case, we already know she lied, so the rest is safer to assume."
Harry turned his cup and drank off the end of it. "So, Percy probably knows who really killed Moody."
"Or did it himself," Snape stated, raising Harry's eyes in surprise. "You do not think him capable? Possibly. In such plots, the fewer involved the more likely the success, and since they succeeded, until foiled at a later time, I would assume there is only one other involved, at most."
"You could lecture our apprentices on criminal plotting, Severus."
"Our apprentices?" Snape prodded.
Harry dropped his gaze to his cup, which was empty. "I might go back. I haven't decided."
"I would prefer it." At Harry's curious glance, Snape went on, "You are still at an age where structure is important. And you have a great deal to learn."
"Yeah, plus you'd prefer I at least pretend I'm on the good side." He eyed Snape knowingly at the tail of this.
"Pretending to be on the bad side does gain one some personal leeway, but I don't recommend it, in general. In any event, you will most likely receive some concession for returning. Perhaps that will assuage your ego regarding it." His voice fell off and he regarded Harry in silence
Harry hoped that Snape would be finished with their talk for now, that he would leave some things for later, but this was not to be.
"On another topic. You were having peculiar difficulties in that other place. What exactly was the problem?"
Harry met Snape's eyes, and only upon finding them shuttered realized he had tried to get a hint of what Snape suspected. "I didn't like having so many shadows around. That's all. They bothered me."
Snape sat with his chin resting on his closed fist. "Bothered you, how?"
Harry shrugged, reluctant to give away everything. Those other instincts to plot had grown less alien and now felt like a reasonable advisor.
Snape asked, "Why did Voldemort fail to Summon his followers?"
Harry shrugged again; it was by far the easiest answer.
Snape did not speak for several breaths. "I consider it crucial to remain in your good graces, Harry. So, I do not wish to appear to betray you by entrapping you with my questions. Are you certain that's your answer?" Snape asked. Too level.
Harry swallowed. In a rush, he said, "I don't like what is happening to me. But I can't stop it."
Snape knitted his fingers before him and said, "Now we are getting somewhere. My counterpart left me a most interesting letter, one I find hard to believe."
"You were tricking me," Harry complained.
"I was simply asking you for information. Then when you resisted, I was merely assessing you. Both differ from trickery. I am now treating you as an equal by informing you of what he wrote, so you are aware of what I know. Or would you prefer I not?"
Harry dropped his eyes, fluttery inside again, he said, "He set me off. I couldn't stop myself. I was angry with him invading this house."
"Understandable. But despite that, I think you crossed a line. One that I am personally familiar with, so please do not think it a mere lecture when I warn you that it is difficult to remain behind this line after breaching it."
"I do feel better," Harry insisted without thinking. "Here. At home."
"I fear, merely a reprieve," Snape said. Adding upon Harry's change of expression, "I am never delusional, no matter how much I wish a situation to be otherwise. I would think you knew that by now."
The door knocker sounded. Moments later, Winky interrupted with immense shyness to announce Mr. Weasley. Mr. Weasley pushed the door open a tad more than Winky had to stick her nose inside. "I hope I'm not interrupting?"
Snape stood. "No, do come in. I assume you wish to speak with Harry."
Mr. Weasley slipped his hat off and folded it into his pocket. Scratching his head, he said, "If I could have a moment alone with you first, Severus, I'd prefer that."
Harry stood and, glad for the interruption, went out to the main hall where, with distracted attention, he opened the rest of his Christmas gifts. He stacked a pair of sparkling socks from Dobby on top of a box of Telescope Vision Sweets from the twins. For the first time he understood how his cousin could care so little for each gift. They felt terribly meaningless to Harry at that moment.
In the drawing room, Mr. Weasley tugged the chair so it better centered on the desk. He still had his cloak on and he stood halfway to flip this back over his shoulders before sitting again. "I just wanted to know where you stand before I approach Harry. We do want him back and I want to go about convincing him to do so the best way possible."
Snape sat back and stared at Mr. Weasley over the tips of his steepled fingers.
Mr. Weasley looked away and went on, "Ehem, I wanted to know where you stood on his continuing his apprenticeship before I-"
"I am for it," Snape interrupted.
"Ah. Good. Fine then." Mr. Weasley sat forward in his chair. "How best do you think that can be accomplished?"
"Give him time. Let him make up for his incarceration by enjoying some extra freedom. I honestly think, given enough time, he will grow bored."
Mr. Weasley straightened his hair and better tucked his hat away. "Can I count on you to convince him?"
"I will do no such thing." At Mr. Weasley's surprise, Snape added, "This is his decision, alone. I have expressed my preference to him, but I will not attempt to coerce or even nag him. He is perfectly capable of deciding for himself."
Mr. Weasley's shoulders fell forward. "I was hoping for more help than that. Minister Bones insisted in no uncertain terms that Harry must return. Perhaps she can convince him."
"May I say," Snape said, "that I understand Harry's low estimation of loyalty from your organization."
"The threat to him was not to be underestimated, Severus."
"There has always been a threat to him," Snape pointed out.
"We have leaks-" Mr. Weasley stopped when Snape abruptly held up his hand, took up his wand and reran the spells to block eavesdropping and to force Animagi to unmorph, then he set it back on the desk.
"Do go on."
Mr. Weasley huffed. "Same problem we have. We have a traitor, or perhaps two or three, in our midst at the Ministry. We feared—we being myself, Reggie and Kingsley, that the goal behind framing Harry was not to have him prosecuted for the crime, but merely to have him held in the Ministry dungeon awaiting a hearing, where he would be an easy mark indeed." His face fell. "We cannot fail to detain someone once we have that much evidence. Doesn't matter if it's the Minister herself." He threw up his hands, which then landed on his thighs. "We brought in the very best to advise him, but dear Harry, with his overflowing faith in his own innocence, did not abide by his advice. Placing him with the French was our only workable fall back plan. Fortunately the new Azkaban will not be finished for another half a year; otherwise, we'd have had to come up with a rather singular excuse to not send him there."
The two sat in silence, until Mr. Weasley said, "Really, Severus, we are merely doing our best to protect him. He doesn't make that terribly easy, you know. But he's more than worth the trouble he attracts. I hope he knows that."
"He will if you tell him." Snape fluidly rose to his feet. "I'll fetch him, unless there is something else . . . ?"
Frowning, Mr. Weasley shook his head.
Harry looked up when Snape opened the drawing room door. He was playing with the Set a Spell, trying to trick it into recording a simple Hedgehog Hex. As Harry passed Snape in the doorway, and Snape turned to leave, Mr. Weasley said, "Do you want to sit in?"
Snape shook his head and closed the door. Harry's opened presents sat in a disarrayed pile on the table, the top packages off kilter and threatening to tumble. He took a seat on the couch, hands clasped, appearing more pained as he became more thoughtful.
Mr. Weasley pulled another chair away from the far wall—one in need of upholstery repair. He set it facing Harry and leaned forward anxiously.
"Harry. I'm glad you didn't spend too much time away. We were quite worried, given that not even your family knew where you had gone off to."
Harry rubbed his nose and waited for something easier to address.
Mr. Weasley spread his hand placatingly. "You are well aware of what the limits are of our office. The rules we have to work within. They are part of what keep us from falling into treachery, from the Ministry becoming part of the problem." He sat back and muttered to himself, "Perhaps that's the wrong way to go about this."
Given the terrible situation he had just escaped, Harry had more understanding than Mr. Weasley probably suspected. "I understand, Mr. Weasley, but I'm not ready to come back."
"Ah, but you do intend to."
"I don't know," Harry said with a shrug. "I don't know what I want."
Mr. Weasley gave him a pained frown that might be sympathetic. "Don't take too long to decide or you may fall too far behind. Not that we wouldn't make some accommodation," he added quickly. "We didn't believe you did it, Harry. But we have to do things a certain way, you understand."
An owl scratched at the window. One of the small grey and silver fast ones the twins owned. Harry went and let it in, taking the letter that had his name scrawled on it in a small and furtive, but familiar, hand. Harry opened the letter as he returned to his seat. It was short and from Ginny. She said that Skeeter was snooping around the shop in disguise and wondered if Harry had any ideas what they best do.
Harry tossed the letter on the fire on the way back to his chair.
"That looked like my one of my sons' owls," Mr. Weasley said, in a manner that expected further information.
Harry shrugged. "You were saying?"
"Ehem, yes, I was saying that you are always welcome back. Amel- Minister Bones told me that she is willing to go to rather great lengths to make things up to you."
Harry's brow furrowed. "By doing what?"
Mr. Weasley grew remote. "Er, I think it was something like declaring a Harry Potter Winter Fun Day or some such, but . . . that's not the point, Harry. The point is she's willing to smooth things over, whatever it takes."
Part of Harry thrilled faintly at the notion of being owed a favor he could save for later, but most of him did not want anything. "I'll think about it."
Mr. Weasley leaned closer. "She's willing to place you elsewhere in the Ministry, if that's what you'd prefer. I'd rather not tell you that, because we'd rather you stay with us. And I told Minister Bones that I doubted you would want to be anywhere else . . ." He faded out, eyes searching out Harry's.
Harry stood. "I'll think about it," he said again.
Mr. Weasley patted Harry on the arm, looked as if he wished to say more, but made it to the door before saying, "If you need anything, Harry. Let me know."
"A bit of leeway," Harry said.
Mr. Weasley asked, "With what?"
Harry shrugged again and saw him out. Snape stood in the hall when Harry returned, face unreadable.
Harry slipped his warmest cloak over his shoulders.
"You are going where?" Snape asked evenly.
Harry paused to look at him. He could make a battle out of that. He ignored that instinct and replied, "Diagon Alley. Skeeter is snooping around Ginny."
"Do you want help?"
Harry shook his cloak to drape it forward over his shoulders and memories of what they had just gone through cleared his head. He laughed lightly. "We are unfortunately both equally ignorant about things. I don't even know how Ginny got involved in this. I'm hoping to get her to explain. At least I'm supposed to not know."
"Her cryptic remark about being sacrificed also begs for illumination."
Harry paused in fishing out his gloves. "Right."
"You will be back to guard Candide when she returns home from work?" Snape asked. "If not I will remain."
Harry felt a warmth rush through him at that expression of trust. "I'll be back. You need to get back to Hogwarts, don't you?"
Snape nodded, studied Harry's eyes a moment longer than necessary, then turned to retreat to the drawing room.
- 888 -
The bells on the shop door cheerfully chimed out a dirge as Harry slipped inside Weasley Wizard Wheezes. His stroll along the alley had attracted a level of attention unmatched in a long time. A few congratulated him on proving his innocence, but most just stopped and stared in confusion.
Harry walked slowly and peered around the shop, thinking Skeeter may be hiding among the piles of colorful boxes. She would have come in disguise in order to ask questions, which she could not do as a bug. Undoubtedly, she hoped to get the letters back, and would not give up until she had.
"Harry," Ginny said in surprise, causing the pair of customers in the corner to look over. Fred, who was assisting them astutely led them to the farthest corner of the shop. As Harry approached the counter, Ginny said quietly, "You still haven't gone into the Ministry today. . ."
Out of the corner of his eyes Harry saw movement on the top edge of a framed Wizarding Yen note on the wall above the counter. Something insect-like with long antenna was crawling along the top of the glittering, gem-inlaid frame. Fixing his eyes on Ginny so as not to give away that he had spotted Skeeter, Harry stated clearly, "No, I'm not planning on going back at all."
Ginny's lips pursed. "Oh."
"I don't want you to give up trying," Harry added quickly. "Just because I have. You wanting to be an Auror shouldn't have anything to do with me."
She came around the counter and leaned on the front of it, peering up at him. This was better for Harry, as his eyes kept wanting to dance up to stare at Skeeter. Ginny said, "Dad's treated you really badly."
Harry gave the faintest shrug. He wanted certain things to make it into the evening edition, but others could be left unprinted. He thought about how he would like an article to read. "The department had to do what they had to do. But so do I. I'm doing what I want now."
"If you say so, Harry," she said, sounding dubious, but not so much as to tip off Skeeter. She sighed, and said in real sadness, "It just would have been nice to train with you . . . if I do get in. It'd be like old times." She glanced along the front windows before leaning closer. "As to the other thing. Are you certain that . . ."
Harry could see in her gaze what she was about to say. With Skeeter hanging over his shoulder, his options were quite limited. He bent down and kissed her to shut her up. It was a quick kiss, but she stood rail straight and stunned when he released her. Before she could speak, Harry grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the door. "I want to show you something."
Fred appeared beside him, seemingly out of nowhere, a perturbed expression on his face. "What's this then?"
Harry gave him a glance that he hoped conveyed he had bigger things to worry about. But the twin followed behind, head cocked amusingly. Ginny's feet caught up, and she said, "Fred, I'll be back in a bit."
Fred slowed down, giving Harry time to pull out his wand and whisper an Imperturbable Charm at the door while pushing it closed with his wand hand. Fred ran into the door and shook the handle. He gave Harry a raised eyebrow and a shaken finger and disappeared back inside the shop.
Harry tugged Ginny down to Eyelops, which had a construction fence around it, made up of half burned boards from the old shop. Based on the sound, work was going apace. Harry shook off Ginny's hand, ignored her sharp gaze, and waved an Animagus revealing spell around them. Nothing happened.
"I wasn't certain we'd beat her to the door. Let's go somewhere we can talk."
Ginny relaxed and let him take her arm. Harry Disapparated them to Weaver's End. Ginny crossed her arms against the cold wind whipping along the road and said, "Where are we?"
"Someplace easy to protect from eavesdropping. Come on." Harry led the way into Snape's old house after layering on a few spells to the outside of the ramshackle structure.
Harry warmed the walls and floor and Ginny waved a repair spell on the couch that caused the sparse remaining stuffing to collect on the seats, almost comfortable.
"This is a nasty place Harry." She glanced around at the bookshelves and the ajar shelf that led to the passage up. "Old Order safehouse?"
"Something like that." Harry adjusted his posture to half face her. "Sorry about what happened at the shop. I didn't want you to say anything with Skeeter there."
Rising quickly in frustration, Ginny countered, "I assumed Skeeter wasn't there because you were talking so freely." She rolled her eyes and sat back, faintly licking her lips, but remaining stubborn in expression. "What's she going to print about that?"
"She didn't have her photographer. And I'm okay right now with a reputation as someone willing to be reckless."
"You are?" She shook herself and brushed her hair back. "What's Aaron going to say?"
"Talk to him. I'll talk to him, too, if needed. Don't worry about it."
She gaped at him the way people in those other worlds often did, so Harry moved on. "I need you to tell me how you got involved with the letters."
"Reheat things, if you will," she said, rubbing her arms and shivering. "Unless you want the highly abridged version." While Harry complied, she said, "I told Professor Snape that I wanted to help you and that's what he gave me to do. He gave me those letters and had me bring them back to him, telling him I needed someone to hide them for a friend. They were love letters he'd forged, it turns out. Fakes to trap Skeeter, who he must have known was spying on him." She grabbed up Harry's sleeve. "I didn't know Aaron's family would end up involved. I really didn't." Heaving a helpless sigh, she sat back and stared at the ceiling.
"What was that comment about being sacrificed?" Harry asked.
A ripple went through her as she composed a reply. "Professor Snape is a scary bloke, Harry. Maybe you know that already well enough. I mean, we all used to think that, but somewhere along the line, we forgot. After I volunteered to help he grew, I don't know how to say it, aggressive. No, that's not quite right. Over-determined, maybe. Said I couldn't shirk . . . " She closed her eyes. "Don't tell him I told you this, okay?"
"I won't," Harry assured her. "Now that I'm back, it's all right again."
"I had the sense he had some plot idea he wanted to use me for. Something right awful. He warned me he would sacrifice anyone to get you out, and I said, even me? And he said 'bright girl'." She shook herself and behaved cold again. "I have to tell you, Harry. He scares me again."
Harry reran the warming spells and then the eavesdropping ones. "I stole the letters back from Skeeter. Partly because I didn't know what was going on. I would not have let Severus involve Freelander if I had been around to stop it."
Ginny laughed. "It's like Professor Snape knew we'd been trying to convince Lord Freelander to buy the Prophet and fire Skeeter."
"What?" Harry blurted. "You were?"
Ginny laughed harder, partly as a release from stress, and punched Harry on the arm. "That's what's happening now. He's trying to convince his wife to run it. Says he's tired of her running off far away to work on her charity stuff and this would keep her at home."
"Does Skeeter know the paper's being bought out?" Harry asked.
Ginny shook her head. "I doubt it. Freelander hasn't made an official offer yet." Ginny clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh Merlin, I almost said something to you in the shop! Thank goodness you stopped me." She blushed faintly before grabbing her hair and pulling it back from her face and holding it there. "Oh, what is Aaron going to say. Do you think she'll print that?"
Harry thought he would not mind a good fight, was in the mood for one. He found himself anticipating Aaron's anger with a kind of happy warmth. "Probably."
"Maybe I can head him off. Catch him as he leaves the Ministry. Tell him it was part of some plot you have going." She turned to him. "It is, isn't it?"
"It is now."
Next: Chapter 40
"Where is Harry this evening?" Candide asked as she draped herself across the couch in a position that was presumably more comfortable than it looked.
"Out," Snape replied. He pondered Candide there, considered making room beside her, but remembered Harry's words about behaving more coldly, and sat on the opposite couch. He took up the latest issue of Potion Portions Quarterly, even though he had no interest in anything except in getting reacquainted with his much missed home life. It pained him, but he managed a disinterested air for nearly ten minutes.
"When you are done with that, why don't you finish reading to me where you left off?"
Snape lowered the journal. He had no idea what she was referring to and clearly he should.
Chapter 40 — Bad Press
Harry's evening started out quiet, a welcome relief, just Candide and himself resting after dinner. The quiet was broken by Hermione arriving for an unannounced visit. She eyed the pile of opened presents on the table while loosening her gloves then smiled and gave Harry a hug.
"How are you, Harry?" she asked, not a meaningless greeting, but a serious question.
"I don't know," Harry replied, unable to be less than honest with his old friend.
This reply brought Candide's attention up from the letter she was writing. Harry stared at Hermione's feet, considering suggesting they move out of earshot.
Hermione patted him on the arms and moved to take a seat. "Professor Snape suggested I make a visit." She shrugged apologetically. "He even assigned one of his Seventh-Year Slytherins to do the marking I was working on when I hesitated." Grinning a bit, she added, "He assured me she would mark the essays even more brutally than I do." She looked Harry over. "So, you are not going back to the Ministry?"
Harry ran his best Animagus-detection spell before approaching to sit across from his friend. Hermione reached into her pocketbook for a copy of the Prophet. At Harry's noise of curiosity, she asked, "You didn't see this?"
Candide leaned over to look as Harry opened it, explaining to Hermione, "I added a Hate-Owl blocking Charm on the windows. It sometimes means we don't get a paper."
Harry could not be more pleased with the article that made the evening edition. Potter and Ministry in Splitsville the tall headline read. He hoped whomever he met with in Durumulna tomorrow had a subscription to the paper as well. He suspected he or she would have. Rodgers always asserted that half of what a gang did was aimed at getting to read about it later.
Skeeter had written exactly what Harry had said at the shop, then chased down various Ministry officials for comment. The inset photograph was of Bones waving the camera away like an insect. The caption stated she would not comment until she had met with Harry herself. There was nothing in the article about the kiss.
Harry, hiding a grin, held the paper out for Candide when she reached for it. Hermione gazed wistfully at Harry. "I thought being an Auror was what you wanted." The comment made Harry wonder if they now knew each other about as poorly as he and the alternative Hermione did.
When Harry did not respond, Candide, nose buried in the paper, asked, "What are you hoping to get from them?"
Hermione replied for him. "Harry doesn't want anything. Do you Harry?"
Candide stated philosophically, "Everyone has a price."
"You only say that because you're an accountant," Harry pointed out, surprised to hear her being so cynical.
"It doesn't have to be money." Candide raised her head, handing the paper back. "Rita Skeeter is looking for validation. That's her currency of trade: notoriety for knowing things others don't. She can be bought off with that currency . . . for a while at least."
"You still think I should grant her an interview," Harry lightly accused.
"It's her price for being nice."
"For a little while," Hermione muttered. "Also works to simply get the better of her."
"Right. For a little while," Harry echoed, and the two of them shared a knowing look about the past.
Winky arrived with mulled wine. Hermione took a glass and sat back with a sigh. "This is nice . . . having an evening off."
"Sounds like you work too hard," Candide said, reading the back page.
"Look who's talking," Harry said.
Candide rubbed her mounded belly before resting her hand atop it. "That will end soon. Boss was reluctant to let me go to half time, but I think I will, starting next week. Already can barely tolerate the Floo." She held the paper out and changed the topic. "So, who's the new flame, Harry?"
"What?"
Candide tapped the back page of the paper in Harry's hands, open before him, but unread. "That."
Harry read Skeeter's gossip column and found that his arresting Ginny's speech had not gone unprinted.
Potter has not only moved on from duties at the Ministry, he has also (just in time!) moved on from dating one of the Ministry Aurors. Rumors too hot to ignore reached the ears of your intrepid reporter and I am merely dutifully passing them on to you, my loyal reader.
Candide read the blurb aloud and added, "Did you break up with Tonks without my noticing?" she asked, stunned.
"No. Skeeter's mistaken."
Hermione said, "Harry, you better find Tonks then and explain."
Harry sat back, thinking that seeking Tonks out would put him at a disadvantage, somehow. "She'll come to me."
"Harry! What is wrong with you. Go find her."
Just the tone of her voice made Harry sit up. He could not deny her argument, really. "Right." Brushing his hair back, he said, "You'll stay here?"
"I don't need a guard," Candide argued. "If that's what you're thinking."
"Yes, you do," both Harry and Hermione said in unison.
Harry tried Tonks' flat, but found it quiet and empty. Her copy of the newspaper lay on the ledge outside, rotting with a few older editions. Perhaps she had not even seen it. But anyone else who had would not neglect to mention it.
Worried he may no longer be authorized to enter the Ministry after hours and not willing to submit to the night guard's scrutiny, Harry used the Dark Plane to slip inside the Ministry, into the stairwell just outside the door to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Rogan and Rodgers were on evening duty and they both stared when Harry put his head inside the office.
"Potter," Rodgers said. "To what do we owe the visit?"
"I was looking for Tonks."
Rogan, wide-eyed, averted his gaze back to his reports. Rodgers appeared amused. "She's not here. Said she was going out for a nip, isn't that what she said, Tristan?"
Rogan appeared uncomfortable with having to answer. He muttered, "Something."
"Did she see the paper?" Harry asked.
Rodgers leaned on his desk and nodded, evaluating Harry more than conversing.
"Why didn't she just come see me? How long ago did she leave?"
"Few hours," Rodgers said, seeming to enjoy stringing Harry along, which shifted Harry into a different mood.
Rogan, burrowing farther into his report work, muttered, "She needed a night off anyway . . . needed to unwind a bit."
When Harry started to duck out of the doorway, Rodgers asked, "How are you doing, Potter?" His posture remained aloof and his voice calculating.
"Good to be home, sir," Harry said, clearly sounding artificially pleasant.
Harry Apparated away to search the wizard pubs. He found Tonks in Grimsby at a pub wedged into an alley between two small shops. It was so old the magic to make it larger on the inside than the out no longer could be made to work. Harry squeezed his way through the smoky brown murk to where Tonks sat, arguing with someone whose bright golden curls made prickles crawl on Harry's arms.
Harry stopped just within earshot and listened in. In the gloom, with her attention elsewhere, Tonks did not notice Harry's approach.
"Look, why don't you go bother someone else?" Tonks was saying. Her face showed red strain, even in the poor light. Harry thought it unfortunate that she did not just haul out her wand and use one of a hundred repelling spells Harry knew she could perform without thought.
Ingratiatingly, Skeeter said, "My dear, don't you want to get it all off your chest? You will feel sooo much better for it . . ." She leaned closer, making her bejeweled handbag sway off her shoulder. She smoothly hitched it up again. "It always goes without saying for the famous . . . they think they are above the usual polite rules."
"Like someone else we could mention," Harry offered loudly.
Skeeter spun on Harry. "Well, Mr. Potter. This is delicious." She gestured at someone farther along the long, narrow pub. Harry subtly waved a Freezing Curse at the photographer who tried to stand up from his table.
Skeeter's eyes flashed with anger. "What's the meaning of that. Ministry rules prohibit employees to interfer-"
"I'm not with the Ministry," Harry smartly pointed out. "Why don't you move along? Make something up, like you usually do."
"Oh ho, I didn't make this one up, and you know it. I saw you locking sweet red ones with the youngest Weasley." She pounded her fist into her other hand, adding to herself, "If only I'd had my photographer with me."
"You were sneaking around in Animagus form, a strict violation of Ministry regulations."
"Ah ha," Skeeter said, shining red lips stretched wide. "So, you admit it's true?"
Tonks' gaze took on a new distance and she pulled her mug close.
Voice low, Harry said to Skeeter, "Go away."
Skeeter glanced at her photographer, still frozen, half standing from his table below a crooked hanging of a dragon circling over a tower. "Are you threatening me, Mr. Potter?"
Her supercilious mockery made Harry reach for the shadows, but he was like a man grabbing a robe hanging just out of reach. He teetered and closed his eyes to recover. When he opened them again he found the room much dimmer.
Tonks drunkenly pushed her chair back. "Harry . . ." her concerned voice came from the right side of Harry's tunnel vision.
Skeeter had moved to her photographer and was repeatedly waving an Unencumber Charm at him. Harry took Tonks' hand, clammy from her mug, and Apparated them away.
In the hall in Shrewsthorpe, Tonks shook off his hand and stared at her feet, hiding her face from the room. She gave a faint wave to Hermione when the other greeted her warmly.
Harry took Tonks' shoulders and said, "Let me explain, please. We've been setting Skeeter up for a fall. Ginny didn't know Skeeter was spying on us at the shop and was about to let slip that Freelander is about to buy the Prophet."
Tonks shook her shaggy brown mane, having trouble catching up with that after so much alcohol. "What's this?"
Candide interjected, "Freelander is making a secret offer to buy the paper expressly to fire Skeeter."
Tonks' red-rimmed eyes brightened. "Oh."
Harry said, "If Skeeter finds out, she will make a stink and the deal will be much harder." He released Tonks to shrug helplessly. "I didn't know how else to quiet Ginny without letting Skeeter know I knew she was there."
Tonks sniffed and wavered on her feet.
"Tonks, why can't you trust me?" he began, shaking her lightly, but she was limp. "Never mind. Let me mix you up some of the house remedy. Have a seat."
Harry placed Tonks beside Hermione and went off. When he returned with the potion, the room fell awkwardly silent. Harry tried very hard to avoid taking offense or growing suspicious, either of which would make him lose control.
Tonks accepted the glass, complaining, "But I was trying to get flat-on-my-face pissed."
"Would you like a shot of something instead?" Candide offered innocently.
Tonks gingerly rubbed her eyes. "No," she said, and drank down the glass.
Hermione sat forward. "I should get back."
"Why?" Harry asked. "You said everything was being taken care of. Why don't you stay?" Behind her, Harry spied the piles of opened presents. "I got a few games for Christmas, let's play one. We could all use an evening off. Especially Tonks, who has lost her senses."
Tonks stared sadly into her glass and did not argue.
They settled around a deep box and proceeded to unpack a complicated game board that unfolded with a charm into various combinations of terrain with a long, winding dirt path on it. Hermione read the instructions, "Gambling Castles is a game of resource strategy. You build houses and villages with the eventual goal of installing castles or casinos, depending upon whether you adopt a strategy of defending the gold you have or attracting more of it." She reached into the box. "I want to be the unicorn."
Tonks reached in and took out a pig. Peering closely at it, she said, "Funny, he's wearing a waistcoat with a little pocket watch on a chain."
Candide took it from her. "I'll be that one. That's about how I feel."
"I'll be the juggler then, and Harry can be the last." She took out a little figure of a bent over wizard leaning on a tall knobbly staff. She withdrew it momentarily to glance at the bottom before plonking it down before Harry. "The Wandering Sage."
"I don't feel much like a wandering sage," Harry said, adjusting his piece to his starting arrow. The figure saluted him with his staff and shuffled his feet.
Hermione rubbed her hands together gleefully. "This is great. I haven't had a chance to beat everyone at a game in months."
Candide, leaning sideways to reach all the way across the board said, "You think you're going to win that easily? First you have to know who else is playing."
- 888 -
Harry arrived in Belinda's flat promptly at noon. He slipped silently in under his cloak and tossed it off.
"See?" one of the underlings Harry had dealt with before said to the bulky masked figure standing between them. The two Harry knew stood round-shouldered, letting the larger man dominate even more than he would have otherwise.
"You really are Potter," came a raspy voice from the masked figure. The accent sounded West Country, making Harry believe he was not foreign. He fiddled with something in his wand hand, something glittery. Harry suspected it was a Portkey for a quick escape.
"It is. The same." Harry stated, sounding as bored as possible.
The figure nodded to the side. "They said you wanted to cut in, or something mad like that."
Harry tried for disdain. "I do, but not at their level."
Fingers flipped the shiny thing faster. "I don't buy it. Prove it."
Harry trusted that Snape was correct about Moody's killer acting with few accomplices. "I really killed Moody. I had a mate frame your man to get out again."
The flipping coin froze. Harry continued, "Come on. Word going around your organization must be that he didn't do it."
The figure's jaw moved behind the mask, folds of skin filled and shrank beneath it. The coin resumed turning, slowly. "All right then. I have something for you to do. Prove yourself and I'll take you to someone else."
"I want to meet your contact, now," Harry said. "No games."
"Not until you do something for me."
The two of them stared at each other. The underlings barely moved, waiting. Harry contemplated putting the man on the floor and threatening him. It would feel good to do that—lack of drills left him itching for some serious casting. He resisted the instinct. He may need an ally or two later, and he was not certain how many layers there were.
"I want to hear what it is first," Harry said. "If it's not worth my time, I don't want to bother."
A snort came from behind the mask. "Yeah, you would be the snooty type."
"Look at it this way: you need something done you don't have anyone to do, and I can skip a level or two when I succeed. I'm an impatient man."
"Yeah, all right. Wait here, then." He Disapparated and Harry was left to bide the time with the two others.
One of them studied his fingernails then said, "Must be nice."
The other said, "How do you do that trick? Apparating without a sound?"
Harry lied, not wanting them to suspect the depth of his skills, "It's easy. I send a Silencing Charm ahead of me."
The two thought that over. "Huh. Must be one hell of a charm."
Eventually the masked man returned with a loud pop. "I have a job for you. There're some things we want from a house in Harrogate."
Harry exhaled, glad it was not something he could not undo later, if needed. "What?"
"A tea set and a pillow."
Harry scratched his bristly upper lip. He wondered if he was being toyed with or insulted and how best to respond. Asking "why" was not going to be acceptable. Soldiers in gangs did not have the luxury of getting answers or understanding the larger picture.
Harry said, "There must be a catch. Otherwise someone else would already have done it."
"The catch is that the place has Aurors stopping by on patrol twenty four-seven. Here's the address and a description of the items. Bring them Sunday, same time." He waited while Harry perused the little slip of torn newspaper edge used for the note. The scrawled lines vanished as he read them. The man went on, now insulting for certain, "Unless His Highness needs more time."
"No. I'll bring them then."
Harry found his curiosity nearly too much to bear. He had been out of the office too long to know what was happening in Harrogate. He needed to go home and look at the atlas before casing the house. Mind leaping ahead with plans to avoid asking questions, he said, "Then I expect to meet with someone with some real power."
The man shrugged. "I can bring you to my contact. That's what I can do—I don't know anyone else."
"So you must be new to be so low in the organization. Is it worthwhile?"
The man shifted his shoulders back. "Good people always move up. And I get respect now when I'm out on the street."
"Not in that mask, you wouldn't."
The man snorted again. "I don't need the mask all the time. Power shows even without it."
"Right," Harry said.
"You have loads of power already. Why do you want in?"
Harry crumpled up the bit of blank paper and tossed it on the floor. "I want a different kind. The unlimited kind." As he said this, what was to be meaningless words to someone he needed to fool, a rush resonated up through his core. Distracted by this, he moved to toss his cloak over his head, but at the last moment saw the man's wand moving and stopped. He bundled up the cloak under his arm and exited through the door instead, shutting it quietly.
Greeted by the empty house in Shrewsthorpe, Harry found himself grateful for any task to occupy himself. In the library he pulled out the atlas and eventually located Harrogate—after shooing the drawing of a snoring dragon off it. He would have to take a broom from Kirkby Overblow, the closest place he knew from field work.
Thinking about field work gave him a pang of loss. He had psyched himself through his time in prison by dreaming of returning to previous activities, and it sent him more adrift to lack them. As tedious as patrol often was, he did miss it.
Well, Harry thought, he would have to reconsider things when Durumulna was straightened out. He closed the large atlas with a thud and Accioed his broom down from his room.
The weather alternated between bitter and pleasant depending upon the clouds. From high above the hills, the patches of sun glowed golden as they crept across the rippled earth. His strange task still felt insulting, but that made it simply a test he must pass, rather than anything to think about.
Harry located the town that matched the map and tilted the broom handle to plummet. He landed upon the unbroken roofline of the houses two streets away and scanned the area, keeping the broom hovering beside him. With the Obsfucation spell renewed because his invisibility cloak blew off his legs in the wind, Harry took his time observing. He fished a Telescoping Vision sweet out of his pocket and chewed it thoughtfully.
It was a good thing he kept a tight hold on his broomstick. As soon as the sweet took hold, filling his vision with the surging view of the brickwork of a distant house, he lost his balance and would have toppled backward off the roof otherwise. Grasping the broomstick in both hands, Harry carefully found his footing on the tiled roof peak and let his eyes wander wildly over the distant surfaces that threatened to bump his nose. He should have only eaten half a sweet, a nibble, or even just a lick.
Growing dizzy, he closed his eyes, but dared not leave them that way in such a vulnerable locaiton. He carefully traced the roofline opposite, down to the spotty soot stains left there by the rain. He squinted into the windows beyond, checking each in turn. The only one with open curtains revealed a stairway with a white banister and a pale blue runner. He estimated by the window count that it should be the correct house. His vision began to recover. Blinking rapidly, he spied a wavering like an invisibility cloak in the air above the next roof over, then lost it as his eyes returned to entirely to normal.
The world seemed ridiculously small now and he could not locate the disturbance. It was most likely someone watching the house. But from whose side, he did not know.
Harry slipped away to stash his broom back in his bedroom. Now that he knew the area, he could return without it. Cloaked, he slipped directly onto the stairs of the house in Harrogate and stood, listening. Voices droned somewhere, rooms away. Harry sneaked slowly up the thick runner, uneasy about even a muted squeak. In the master suite he found a distinctively lacy pillow propped neatly in a place of honor before an army of other pillows. It matched the description well enough, so wrestling a bit, he rolled it up and stuffed it in his sack. Then he had to spend time tugging the bedspread back to pristine.
Downstairs, in the back of the house, he found the kitchens. That put him closer to the voices, and he could hear Kerry Ann talking, intermittent with an older, complaining voice.
"Look, Ms. Auror, or Aurorette or whatever you call yourself . . . honestly, I can't believe they'd allow someone so young anything like the kind of responsibility you've clearly been handed . . ."
Harry sighed and began searching the bastion of stainless steel for a blue and white teapot. The idea that he might actually find the things he had been sent for brought his curiosity back full force. He slowed his search to listen more.
" . . . but I don't have even a lamb's lick of faith in the Ministry let alone a little girl, even one as tall as you. What happened to that quiet black man who was here last time?"
"He's out searching for your husband, madam-"
"And that other man, the red-headed one who's balding . . . they have potions for that you know. Merlin knows why any sensible wizard would not avail themselves of the magic available . . ."
Harry resumed searching more expediently, carefully opening the top part of a tall cupboard and standing on tip toe to look inside. Something bumped his leg and he jerked back, wand extended, heart thumping. But it was only a small grey cat. Undisturbed, it bumped its bony spine against his half-cloaked leg again, purring fiercely.
"I've a mind to write Minister Bones again. What do we have leadership for except to lead?"
The voice was starting to make Harry's nerves itch. He ducked low to search under the long metal counter, but that was full of mixing bowls.
"Drat it all! Where is that calendar of mine? Godfried has been missing for almost three weeks, Ms. Auror."
"You can call me Kerry Ann, really."
The cat batted at the cloak, catching it in arced claws.
"Hey!" Harry whispered. Not wanting to tug and risk damaging the precious thing, he had to unpluck the cat's paw one transparent, hooked claw at a time. "Shoo!"
Standing from freeing himself, Harry spotted a blue and white flowered tea set on a silver cart by the door.
"It wasn't like this in my day, I'll have you know. . ."
It was a tall teapot, chipped along the spout. Harry lifted the cloak to grab up a neat stack of delicate little cups and slip them into his deepest robe pocket. The creamer was fortunately empty, and this filled his other pocket by itself. The cat jumped up on a nearby counter and curiously cocked its head at him before washing a paw. Harry hefted the heavy teapot and, grabbing his cloak with his free hand, slipped away into the Dark Plane.
As he feet ground into the grey dirt, Harry put his hand on top of the pot and found the lid missing. He imagined it left behind, hovering just an instant, before falling to shatter on the floor. He stood there for just a breath before setting the pot down and slipping back into kitchen. The lid lay scattered in a thousand pieces, except for the rooster-figure handle. That survived whole. The grating voice had ceased and footsteps approached. Harry waved a Reparo and with a telltale rattle of his pockets, scooped up the lid, and slipped away again.
Harry tossed off the cloak and huffed at the crazing in the glaze from his sub-par repair. He pocketed the lid, shook out the half lobster-, half salamander-like creatures that had crawled into the teapot to investigate, and slipped away for home.
He placed the pillow and tea set on the floor just beside the door to his room. Unlike, say, a diamond necklace or something meaningful for a real thief, Harry felt no need to hide his haul. He studied the cracked lid again before returning it to his pocket.
The quiet house nearly did Harry in over the course of the afternoon. Given the copious opportunity his mind had to wander, he repeatedly reverted to imagining fighting Voldemort in that other place, and had to remind himself that was not the case here. Well, not exactly the case.
When an owl scratched at the window, Harry jumped up, eager to fetch any letter. This one, written on a torn paper bag corner, was from Ginny.
Monday the deal is done. We're celebrating at the Three Broomsticks tonight.
Harry smiled, savoring the thought that Skeeter would shortly be out of a job.
Humming to himself, he returned to shelving his Auror books in the library, alphabetically in a manner that implied he did not intend to touch them for a while. On the top shelf above that sat an interesting row dark magic books, antique ones in excellent condition that Snape had not been able to part with when he cleaned out upstairs. Harry hesitated, fingers gripping the spine of one titled Odyous Okkult. It stood out from the others by the black suede cover, tooled in silver.
Harry hesitated, remembering how he had been forced to cancel the Serpent Memory Charm against Malfoy. He worried that learning more spells he not dare use would only lead to more frustration. Curiosity won out and he pulled the book down. As usual for the era, the bookbinder was more skilled at binding than spelling or typesetting. As he entered the main hall to make himself comfortable while he read, Franklin dropped a letter on the side table with his name on it before taking off again. For a second, Harry imagined his taking the book down had triggered a letter from Snape. Shaking this notion off, Harry set the book aside and opened the letter.
Stop by my office for a visit this evening, if you would was all it said. Harry pocketed it and contemplated the book, not opening it, but running his finger in the curly, silver grooves. It was not clear what he wanted. He wanted to get even with a few people, that much he knew. But beyond that his plans were vague. For the first time his life lacked all structure and he did not know what to replace it with.
Harry opened the book to a random page in the middle and began paging forward.
Candide arrived home and Harry informed her of the visit to Hogwarts just as she settled on the couch with a heavy groan.
"You're implying I'm supposed to go along?"
"I can't leave you alone here." Harry said.
She raised an eyebrow. "What about that little knitting woman who wrestles dragons?"
"She was assigned by the Ministry because I was busy doing stuff for them."
Candide rubbed her rounded robe front. "I'm not taking the Floo again today. Maybe not again until after the birth."
Harry imagined that to be reasonable.
"I can stay here," she offered.
Harry shook his head. "You have your orders and I have mine."
"How do you know I have orders."
"Severus always gives you some," Harry said.
She sighed again. Harry said, "I can take you so you don't need the Floo. My friends are going to be in Hogsmeade tonight. Wouldn't you like to get out?"
She waved an ottoman over and propped her feet on it. Hands emerged out of it and untied her shoes and began a massage. She moved her feet around, making faces. "Going out wasn't high on my list, I'll confess. Watching people drink . . ." She stared into space a moment. "I could just about kill for a beer."
Harry broke out into a laugh and put his book away on the side table.
She sobered quickly, saying, "I wouldn't mind talking to Severus too. He's been out of sorts. I assume it's the impending third party, but I don't really know. He seemed to be overcompensating yesterday morning."
"Severus isn't always easy to figure out."
"At least he is always intriguing in his own strange way." She sat up and the cloth hands sank away. "Well, shall we go for dinner?"
"Brilliant plan." Harry felt the lid in his pocket. "Oh, before I forget, can you repair this better than I did?"
She puzzled over the lid, but shrugged and waved a repair spell at it. The pieces flew apart, hovered a moment above her hand, then with a tiny clatter, reformed without any sign of cracks.
"Thanks," Harry said, moving to take it back upstairs. "Put on something warm," he called over his shoulder.
"We're not going by broomstick, I hope," she called up as he went along the balcony.
"No, of course not," Harry replied, amused by her subsequent expression of relief.
When he came back down, he said, "We'll take my bike."
Harry's friends had not arrived at the pub yet, but Hagrid occupied the largest table in the corner, sitting with Hornisham.
"'Ello, 'Arry!" Hagrid roared. "Was that Sirius' bike I saw go by out there? Ah, he'd be pleased to know yer on 'er." He immediately grew soft as his eyes fell on Candide.
"And how is the little fella?" he asked, giving Candide a kind of pat, perhaps more an envelopment, on the belly.
"After that ride, ready to order his own drinks," Candide said, accepting the offered chair. "He'll have to settle for a hot cocoa, or three."
Harry shook hands with Hornisham, who had to bundle her knitting against her to free a hand. The silvery limbs of her project spilled onto the floor at her feet.
Hagrid returned to roar level. "We were jus' discussing the finer points of tusk care. 'ave a seat, Harry."
After dinner, Harry left his friends to head to the castle. He walked carefully over the treacherous frozen ruts that made up the road, but stopped suddenly before Honeydukes to stare at the boarded over windows. Around the boards, large splinters stood out of the frames in all directions, prickly looking. The scent of burnt chocolate drifted on the crisp air.
Harry stopped the next person walking along the other way. "What happened to Honeydukes?"
The witch pulled her stringy hair back and stopped to consider the shop in question. "Someone attacked it. Broad daylight. Cheeky bastards, they were." She sniffed loudly. "Eh." With that succinct assessment, she moved on.
Harry did not like this. His purpose in infiltrating Durumulna was to get proof that Percy was involved with them as well as a party to Moody's death. He also hoped to relieve Belinda of their machinations, believing her a victim. But the damaged shop solidified for him that more was at stake. The crooked shop sign reminded him of bright-eyed, school-day trips for sweets, and for once those other, darker, instincts had no opinion. Harry sensed them biding their time, though, and walked on.
The students milling in the Entrance Hall after dinner greeted Harry warmly and welcomed him home—he assumed out of prison, not so much back to Hogwarts, but either was fine.
A dash of flowing white and green joined him on the stairs. "Harry!" Suze Zepher said breathlessly. Harry slowed so she could catch her breath.
"Good thing they caught the real killer. I thought you might be stuck there for good and we'd have to break you out."
"Really, I'd have broken myself out before it came to that," he said, drawing a laugh from many listening in as they passed.
She followed him to the door to Snape's office. "What are you going to do now? You aren't an Auror."
"I'll find something."
"Coming to the next match then? We're playing Ravenclaw. They have a new Seeker this year—a visiting student from Morocco who is quite good."
"I do have lots more time now," Harry admitted.
She smiled awkwardly and clasped her hands behind her. "Well, if you can. I could use the support. He's going to be tough. He has this non-reg Algerian broom that the headmistress is letting him use anyway." She nodded at the door. "And despite that Professor Snape, you know, always expects a win."
"A challenge is good for you," Harry pronounced.
Her face wrinkled up. "You sound like an adult."
"Well," Harry waved his arm in apology. "I'm getting there, they tell me."
"Sad," she said, shifting her impossibly long white hair as she shook her head. She brightened nervously again. "Don't forget: Ravenclaw match."
"I won't."
Harry watched her walk away. That inconvenient instinct was assessing her potential loyalties with cold calculation. Harry knocked on the door to have something else to think about.
Snape sat with a student, whom he told to finish serving detention with Lupin. The student left with no little expression of relief. When the door clicked closed, Snape said, "I arranged rather a large number of detentions, it seems. Sit down, Harry."
Harry took the vacated desk. The seat was still warm.
Snape paced to the window, then back to his desk. "Still feeling better?" he asked.
"Me? I suppose," Harry said.
Snape's gaze came around before his head. "Not much of an answer."
Harry gestured at his seating. "I'm back in a desk. You're a teacher. What can I say?"
This drew a faint smile and the strategic instinct inside Harry smiled too. Snape said, "It's been interesting adjusting back. I had forgotten how much we've gained."
"On that note, you're being too nice at home," Harry said, further diverging from the topic.
"Truly a first."
"Really. You need to ease back into you again. Try for old you for a little while."
Snape sighed and stared at the ceiling briefly. "Candide doesn't suspect, does she?"
Harry shook his head. "You've been excused for it due to the kid's near arrival."
"A fine excuse," Snape stated. He leaned back against the desk. "And yours?"
"Do I need one?"
Snape stared him down. "Are you going to remain behind the line you crossed?"
"I'm trying." Harry considered that Snape would most definitely like to hear about his meeting with Durumulna. But he found no desire to mention it.
Snape continued studying him, saying, "I suppose until an opportunity to cross it presents itself, it will be difficult to determine, for certain, how successful you will be." He reached behind himself and handed over a folded parchment. Harry breathed in deeply and unfolded it halfway, stalling. Snape said, "I find it interesting the contrast between your treatment of him and your treatment of me."
"You aren't one of them," Harry said, holding his gaze on the letter, noticing it had no salutation, just a date. Harry reckoned that addressing it to Other Self might have felt too awkward.
"Is that the only difference?" Snape softly asked.
Harry did not look up, but he also did not read the letter. The closest lamp was on the desk, so all Harry had to do was tip the letter slightly to make it too dim to read. "There are lots of differences."
"Of the ones that matter."
"Lots of them matter," Harry said, not understanding this line of questioning and wanting to be difficult.
"I'm curious what they are." When Harry shrugged, Snape went on. "It matters greatly if it means the difference between your treating me as a guardian or an underling." After a pause: "It is not like you to cause others pain. Even those you do not like."
Harry remembered making the other Snape's Mark burn. At the time, he had not cared about the pain beyond its use as a tool. That other part of him had ruled over their interactions so he could not recall any real reasoning he may have had.
Snape asked, "If I had a Mark again, would our relationship revert to the one in that letter? That is the essence of my question."
Harry did not have an answer, so Snape went on. "I seem to recall that during the incident with the cane, when you convinced me against all better judgment to return to twenty years of age, that I did set you off, not dissimilar to the events described there."
Harry folded the letter up without reading it and held it in his hands. "It did," he agreed, remembering that with a similar distorted mix of regret and satisfaction.
"What is happening to you, Harry?" Snape asked. Level, calm—a tone that made it far easier to answer.
Harry closed his eyes and held them that way, seeing the shadows in the distance, a mirage, almost. "He left a vacancy behind."
"Voldemort did?"
"Yes." In a surge, Harry found the explanation bottled up again. By talking, he was giving away power, and doing that felt wildly unwise. But one glance at Snape looking down at him with level interest and perhaps affection let him keep talking. "I can feel his followers like I used to, but now I can also manipulate them. Easily. So easily, it's hard to avoid it."
"You, yourself, pushed Voldemort out of place," Snape stated. "You created this vacancy."
"I did," Harry agreed, feeling unseemly pleasure in remembering that moment when he carved Lockhart magically into pieces, removing the threat of him, the rivalry of him, it now felt like. Harry licked his lips.
Snape had to call his name twice to draw his attention to the present. "Would you rather be free of this influence?"
Harry glanced down at his hands. "I know I should want to."
"That wasn't the question."
Harry felt woozy. "I don't know." Then he felt fearful, worried that he had created an enemy out of Snape by revealing too much. The cords on the backs of his hands popped out. The letter crinkled.
"Harry," Snape said after a pause. "I do know what you are going through. Truly I do." When Harry's face expressed doubt, Snape went on, "Shall I prove it? You are thinking now that I may be untrustworthy because I know too much. That is correct, is it not?"
Harry looked up, beating down the wings of alarm trying to take flight in his chest.
"This is important, Harry. I want you to always remember that I am on your side, no matter what. I do not want you to ever doubt that. Do you understand me?"
Harry chewed on his lips, trying to reach equilibrium between his riled instincts.
"Harry?" Snape prompted.
"You've said that before," Harry said. "But you must have some limit."
"No," Snape said. "I never have if need be." He shifted to sit back on the desk after setting one of the lamps aside. "All I ask in return is that you trust me. Which should not be much to ask, really."
Before he could change his mind or find new resistance, Harry said, "I've decided to infiltrate Durumulna."
Snape considered that before replying, "You are uniquely well positioned to do so right now."
"That's what I thought," Harry said, feeling relieved to have confessed.
"Dangerous occupation, however."
"More so than before?" Harry asked with light sarcasm.
"The danger will perhaps not increase for you, true. But for others close to you, it will."
Harry dropped his gaze, considering that. He had acted on the opportunity, listening to that voice that assured him it would be so easy. "I'll know what they're up to. That will help."
Snape lightly shook his head. "People like this will not hesitate to use family as leverage, or as a target for retribution."
Harry bit his lip, feeling vaguely unwell. "I didn't intend to put anyone else at risk. I didn't think about it that way."
"Your power makes you too confident, I believe." Snape did not sound angry, surprisingly, just thoughtful. "If I strongly suggest that you do otherwise, what would be your response?"
"It's too late?"
Snape blinked and reached his long neck out forward. "You managed to get in over your head in a day?"
Flinching faintly, Harry said, "I'm good at that?"
Snape shook his stringy hair. "We will have to take even more precautions than we already are. Perhaps invite Minerva to help respell the house."
"You aren't angry?" Harry asked.
"I don't believe you are thinking quite clearly, Harry. Through no real fault of your own."
"You're going easy on me all of a sudden," Harry criticized, to take the sting out of being treated as if he were helpless.
Snape stepped forward and leaned on Harry's desk, bringing their noses to within inches. "Much larger things are at stake," he stated clearly.
Harry blinked at him, for a wild second imagining he had the wrong guardian yet again. This close, Harry could see the distinction between Snape's black irises and his pupils, the texture of his skin, as well as the sprinkling of grey in his brows.
Snape went on, continuing to speak slowly like one insisting upon being understood, "I am quite familiar with what you are becoming. And I am doing what is necessary to retain your trust in me. I am even telling you all this so as to encourage you to trust me additionally."
Harry had pressed back in his seat, and relaxed only when Snape pushed straight again, rocking the desk. He turned away and went to the window, where the grey sky no longer competed successfully with the lamp flames reflecting off the glass.
Undone, Harry asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to not lose yourself. This thing you harbor previously clashed with your mindset, causing you pain. An adult mind and greater power has allowed it to make a better home."
"Being trapped there in prison with all his followers didn't help," Harry said, remembering how good it felt to reach out for even that small cadre. Just as well he could not reach them now in quite that intimate a way.
"Your battle with Voldemort in that other place involved fighting for his followers, I now suspect. That is why they did not come to his aid, and he instead fled." It wasn't quite a question.
Snape did not turn as he spoke, so Harry had to do more than nod and that drew out another confession. "Yes. You wouldn't believe what that kind of powerful reach feels like."
Snape fell silent a while, his reflection in the window backlit by the lamps. "Back in that other place my counterpart is coping with a Harry just now arming with unimaginable power."
"So you have the same problem as him," Harry tried to quip, but it fell flat.
"No." Snape finally turned. "He has it worse. You are quite manageable as long as I have your trust."
Harry huffed. "We're talking about me as if I'm not here."
"That's because we are talking about the part of you that does not belong."
"I've had this other part a long time. It sorta is a part of me."
"I am hoping that is true only if you yield to it."
Harry swallowed and rubbed his hands along the well-worn edges of the desk. "And if not? Then what? We ask Dumbledore's painting what it suggests?" Despite his level voice, Harry's heart rate leap up as he asked this.
"Never that." With only the lamplight now, Snape's face fell in shadow. "We will think of something else," he stated with certainty. With a sigh, his tone shifted to the practical. "Tell Candide what you are doing with Durumulna. I do not want her in the dark about the dangers. And make sure she is always guarded as you are already doing. Take her to the Burrow if there is any question, it is nearly as safe as Hogwarts as long as Percy is not there."
Harry stared at his hands, feeling sorrowful. "I didn't mean to make trouble for your family, Severus."
"You are my family, Harry. Do not forget that."
"Still," Harry said, sliding out of the desk at what sounded like a parting tone from Snape. "I'm still sorry."
Snape returned to casually leaning back against his desk, exuding confidence of all things. "You may hold that thought. It is most likely a safe one for you."
Harry half grinned, half frowned. Snape did understand. "Still," he said again.
"Harry," Snape began, losing his level tone in exchange for a reassuring one. "I have always assumed that my past would come back to haunt any kind of life I attempted to establish."
"This isn't your past, it's mine."
"How so?" Snape returned sharply. "As I recall, the events leading up to your obtaining this rather inconvenient piece of Voldemort were not without my participation."
"True," Harry said, scrubbing his head. He felt even more confused and undone at remembering that.
"Do keep me informed, as well as Candide as necessary for her to be on alert for trouble. Not too much detail, however, as that puts her at yet more risk."
Harry cut him off. "You sound so casual about it."
Snape crossed his arms and rose up a bit. "I have seen you in action and am confident that you can protect her as long as you are aware what is happening. I will be home soon enough on leave as well."
"That will be nice," Harry said, imagining them all home together, which made him feel utterly himself.
"Be careful, Harry. That is paramount." Snape said, as Harry went to the door.
"I thought not losing myself was paramount," Harry said, teasing a bit.
"Same thing."
- 888 -
Back at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry was pulled out of his circling thoughts by Aaron, greeting him roughly just as he stepped inside. He pushed Harry back through the door out into the road.
"I want a word a second," Aaron insisted.
Harry was still gathering his bearings and nearly tripped on the uneven hard mud.
Ginny came out behind Aaron. "What are you doing?"
With false pleasantness, Aaron said, "Just having a chat with Harry. We'll be right there."
Harry glanced around the road, which was filling with interested bystanders. He found his balance and stepped closer so his friends would perhaps not talk so loudly. Ginny was demanding of Aaron, "I told you there was nothing to it. What are you doing?"
"This is between me and him," Aaron insisted.
Harry put up a hand to encourage Ginny to calm down. "It's all right. I'll talk to him."
Ginny said, "It's not just between the two of you. How does that work again?"
Harry saw Skeeter's photographer approaching, stealthily low but still on tip toe, so he walked rather oddly which made him immediately obvious. Harry closed his eyes to work up the right attitude. He grabbed up the front of Aaron's robes and tugged him off balance. Despite Aaron starting the physical battle, this caught him off guard and he swung an arm in a futile attempt to break Harry's grip.
"What do you think you're doing?" Harry demanded loudly. Close to Aaron's face he muttered quietly but affectionately. "There is nothing going on and now we both look like fools."
The photographer's flash went off and Harry let go. He smoothed Aaron's robes for him, even though Aaron batted his hand away, confusion in his movements.
Ginny covered her face in dismay, but recovered to pull her wand on the photographer, who squeaked and slipped back into the crowd. Trying not to grin, Harry patted Aaron's shoulder. "Let's settle this like civilized men: with a drinking contest."
Aaron straightened his collar with a rough tug. "You're on."
"Ugh," Ginny sighed, following them inside.
The crowd chuckled and muttered as it dispersed. Harry, happily envisioning yet more effective press for the next day, ordered a round for the table.
- 888 -
Snape returned home earlier than usual on Friday evening. He wished to assess Harry yet again, an instinctive need that would most likely not diminish any time soon. The house creaked faintly in the wind as he sorted his post.
"You're home," Harry's voice came from the doorway.
Snape turned, glad he had let his correspondence distract him from immediately seeking out his charge. It allowed events to fall into a normal, healthy pattern.
"Yes," Snape said, returning to the envelopes long enough to pull out the ones requiring attention that day. "Hogwarts, specifically Slytherin House, is quiet for a change."
"Maybe all those detentions . . ." Harry suggested.
"Something I'll have to remember," Snape distractedly returned. He tucked the letters at his side and gave Harry his full attention. "I couldn't help but notice you were in the papers today, tussling with an Auror Apprentice of all things. Anything I need worry about?"
Harry shook his head.
"You are certain?"
"Just more posing for my undercover operation."
This stopped Snape, who had not expected that answer. "You are doing well in that case. You have been converted from pristine hero to bad boy in record time."
Harry slipped his hands into his back pockets and shifted to a jaunty stance. "I'm sorta liking it. It's much less effort to maintain." He resembled his father standing that way.
Snape said, "And your next contact with them is?"
"Sunday."
"Do be careful. Perhaps I should remain here until you return."
Cheekily, Harry said, "Candide would like that, so certainly."
"Hm," Snape said, passing Harry on the way to the drawing room. "I knew you two would gang up on me eventually."
Harry followed. "Remember, not too nice."
Snape waved him off, still having difficulty hearing such an unlikely thing.
Harry waited in the doorway of the drawing room while Snape set out his writing set. Harry said, "Since you're home early, I'm going to meet up with Tonks early. I have some make up time to spend with her."
Snape began opening his mail. "Don't be late," he said automatically.
Disbelievingly, Harry retorted, "And that would be what time?"
Snape shook himself. "I'll expect you at breakfast."
"That I can work with."
Snape worked on correspondence until Candide returned from work. She leaned on the doorframe Harry had vacated earlier and said breathlessly, "That's definitely my last trip in the Floo . . ."
Snape forgot his letter and put the pen down on the blotter. "Do you need anything? A Healer, the Witchwife?"
She waved him off and set her well-worn bag of files down inside the door. "No, no. But I will if I try one more time."
Snape stood and took her things from her. "Ask Harry to take you. He has no trouble Apparating that distance if you do not mind Siding Along."
She rubbed her back while making a face. "I'll do that."
"Or I can simply insist he do so. Whichever."
She shook him off and headed for the seating area.
"Where is Harry this evening?" Candide asked as she draped herself across the couch in a position that was presumably more comfortable than it looked.
"Out," Snape replied. He pondered her there, considered making room beside her, but remembered Harry's words about behaving more coldly, and sat on the opposite couch. He took up the latest issue of Potion Portions Quarterly, even though he had no interest in anything except in getting reacquainted with his much missed home life. It pained him, but he managed a disinterested air for nearly ten minutes.
"When you are done with that, why don't you finish reading to me where you left off?"
Snape lowered the journal. He had no idea what she was referring to and clearly he should. "If you wish," he said to cover. As he pretended to finish that article, he glanced around at possible reading material. Certainly she did not mean one of the Witch Weekly or Enchanted Life magazines stacked under the side table.
Eventually, he had no choice but to try a bluff. He set the journal down and made a point of glancing around.
"It's just there, by the vase."
Snape had disregarded the little book sitting there right before him. He picked it up, grateful it had a bookmark, at least. He tried to stare properly at the action-packed cover but he should presumably be familiar with it already. Continuing the bluff, he said, "Ah the Fiery Friar," in a pleasant tone that betrayed none of the horror he felt at the prospect of reading such a questionable volume, even silently.
Snape stared at the words and felt a cold chill. This was a test. It had to be. She suspected the switch and was using this ruse of his counterpart reading aloud from this . . . this . . . novel . . . to snare him.
"We left off where the man is arranging to send a carriage to pick up the woman and her niece who is disguised as a maid," Candide prompted helpfully. She was clearly a better actor than he gave her credit for.
"Must we read this . . . particular . . . enchiridion?" he asked, using the only middle ground that did not give him away.
"You seemed to be enjoying it last time."
Snape stared at her. "You must have been mistaken."
She chuckled. "I'm pretty certain you read it. I'm willing to believe I mistook your lack of annoyance for enjoyment."
Snape turned to the book again. Perhaps this wasn't a trap, after all. Or, if it were, it was of a far more complicated variety. That his coarser counterpart fell for it too was small consolation.
Pulling the small book closer so he would not have to squint, Snape began, "The mule's breath clouded the still air around him as he pulled tight the last loop of the harness. The animal stood, stalwart, throughout, only flicking an ear occasionally to follow the sound of the rooks gathering in the hedgerows, lost in the dawn mist, all sound and no fury. . . ."
Author's Notes: I had three huge work deadlines in the last two months and as an independent contractor that basically means I've been living, sleeping, eating and breathing work. The last of those project deadlines was yesterday, so I finally got a chance to give the chapter some much needed attention. The betas were champs this round, given what a wreck the chapter was when I sent it to them. Special thanks to them!
Next Chapter: 41
Harry's attention was caught on the muddled diagrams in a book on hex deconstruction, so he did not notice Snape standing in the doorway until the other cleared his throat.
Harry said, "All the good books are gone."
Snape replied, "'Good' being a relative term in this instance."
Chapter 41 -- An Offer You Can't Refuse
"What would you like to do?" Harry asked brightly when Tonks came out of her bedroom. He was relishing his freedom this evening and wanted Tonks to join in.
"You seem very chipper," she complained. When Harry shrugged, she added, "I expected you to still be angry about getting stuck in prison."
Harry had lost track of that anger while working to recover his guardian from a much worse place. The touch of absolute power he had experienced through Voldemorts' army of followers there had dwarfed what he had felt in prison, rendering that experience smaller yet.
Just for something to say, Harry half-jokingly said, "They've learned not to take me for granted since I quit."
She came around to where he sat and placed her hands on his shoulders. "The recriminations keep flying about that."
The tips of her fingers hurt him where they pressed against unyielding muscle. He tried to relax into her ministrations. but failed and shook loose by standing up.
"Come on, let's go out. I don't care where." Indeed, in this world, everywhere was safe, the whole place a playground.
Glumly, she insisted, "Somewhere Skeeter won't be."
Harry put an arm around her narrow waist, gathering her thick winter robes under his hand. Whatever scent she had put on was overwhelming so close. "Nah, let's go find her."
"Are you mad?"
Harry grinned. "One last setup . . . come on."
She shook her head. "You're really certain about her getting made redu-" Tonks glanced around.
Harry replied, "I am."
Tonks took up her small silver-blue handbag on a silver chain. "How about, we don't go looking for her, but if she shows up, I get to tell her to bugger off?"
"All right," he agreed.
Tonks hesitated departing. Finally she asked, "You couldn't shut Ginny up any other way?" She sounded doubtful, but fortunately not like she did when questioning a suspect. "It really didn't mean anything?"
"I couldn't think of anything else on the spot. And it didn't mean anything more than that I didn't expect she'd resist."
Tonks glared at him full on. "Did she?"
Harry shrugged yet again. "No. Not really."
"Wonderful."
Harry had considered finding his friends that evening, and instead said, "Where do your friends usually go?"
Tonks took them to a place where a vast space danced with colored lights but everyone sat on high stools around the shadowed fringe. Harry followed along the perimeter, flinching at the noise pummeling his head and making his heart vibrate but glad for the anonymity of the lighting.
Tonks leaned attractively over the bar to shout their order to the barman. Harry scanned the crowd and checked that his wand remained easy to reach. Tonks handed him a glowing red drink and clinked their plastic glasses together.
The drink tasted sickeningly of artificial cherries, and Harry pretended to sip it, not in the mood to mute his concentration, at least not by drinking this particular substance. Tonks insisted on dancing, but while they did so, Harry remained steadfastly off the floor where they would be the center of attention. The lights and the brain-penetrating noise blissfully let him forget where he was and what he needed to do. He must have relaxed his grip on Tonks as they danced because she suddenly slipped closer and they fitted together much better, turning there in the waves of sound and color.
Tonks ordered a second drink after finishing Harry's. When he suggested she slow down, she couldn't hear him even with him shouting directly in her ear. Once she had her drink, Harry tugged her away from the blasting curtain of sound and back into the recesses of the nightclub.
"What?" Tonks asked when they entered an area of cheaply black-painted walls and random thin curtains.
Harry tugged her drink away to take a sip of it--at least this one was clear--and said, "I was trying to suggest you slow down."
"It's my night off," she pointed out, not understanding.
The speed with which she had put down two and headed into a third implied she had taken on a regular habit of more.
Harry took another symbolic sip of her drink and kept it at his side, held by the lip. "I'll help you with this one."
She screwed her face up to complain, but it did not hold. She leaned against him, slipping a shoulder under his arm. Harry led the way further from the thrumming of the dance floor and around a corridor lined with curtained alcoves. Elegant feet with high heels stuck out from under one, shifting slowly. Tonks halted and backed up to pretend to trip over them.
The person let out a yelp and sat up, fighting with the curtain to do so. Other feet appeared, clad in dark men's shoes and pinstripe flared trousers.
Giggling, Tonks yanked Harry away. Her outfit and hair turned jet black, the better to blend in with the surroundings. She shoved Harry through an unlocked door and they stumbled into the stairwell, which held far more lounging bodies than expected.
No one moved. Harry at first assumed this was from surprise, but it was not. The figures sat or reclined on the stairs as if overcome by some kind of lethargy. A robed figure sitting halfway up the flight raised his head and peered at Harry, eyes blinking in wonderment. As though living in a thick soup, Justin Finch-Fletchly's lips moved, forming the word "Harry". Then he raised his arm, ever so slowly, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
"Laudinasia, looks like," Tonks said, snapping Harry back from an acute sense of unreality.
"What?" Harry asked.
Tonks nudged the closest body with her foot, moving far flung robes off the stained floor. She walked around doing this, finally bending down to pick up a plastic baggy. This she held to the light filtering down from the floor above. "Red crystals," she said. She moved about, lifting heads this time.
"Recognize a few?" she asked Harry.
Harry nodded, noting several former students from Hogwarts.
She came back to Harry, and slipped the bag into her pocket.
"This party's a drag; let's go somewhere else," Tonks announced and led the way out of the stairwell. Harry followed, hurrying to keep up.
"Aren't you going to do anything . . . take them to St. Mungo's or something?"
Tonks did not slow down. "I don't want them getting any cures. I want their headaches splitting their heads open when I go around and interview them tomorrow."
They were off by Apparition to a quieter spot before Harry could ask more. "But what is that stuff?"
"Laudinasia is a crystallized potion making the rounds of the party set. The stuff with red crystals comes in from St. Petersburg, and that's usually made pretty well. The local stuff isn't brewed as well, and can have all sorts of awful side effects." She pulled out the packet and rolled it more carefully. "Looks like first timers since they were only splitting a single satchel of it. We'd like to get a line on the local brewers, since they are causing the most casualties, but the demand is created by the good imported stuff, so it's a problem too."
Harry, worried about his old schoolmates, asked, "Addictive?"
"Psychologically mostly." She clapped Harry on the shoulder. "You've been missing out being gone, Harry."
"Apparently."
"Come on, I'm famished. Let's get some dinner. Somewhere nice."
Tonks provided grooming charms for both of them before she let Harry open the door to the Middle Inn. The waiter led them to a central table and remained just long enough to snap Tonks' napkin into her lap.
"So, things are getting tougher at the Ministry," Harry said, feeling left out, as well as digging for information.
"We're always understaffed. Are you coming back?"
Concerned who might be overhearing, Harry had no trouble saying, "I don't know."
She frowned, deepening the already noticeable lines of her face. Around them, dining room chatter ebbed and flowed, relaxing the mood. "Rodgers says he's now glad we're together because he thinks he can recruit you back through me."
"I need some time," Harry said, sipping his expensive fizzing water. A vision of Finch-Fletchly mouthing his name dogged at him. "I was surprised to see Justin among those in the stairway at the club."
Tonks shrugged. "Sometimes straights get pulled in. Especially when friends insist you can't get hurt and you don't want to get left out. Bones is about to launch an informational campaign about it." She scratched her ear, thoughtful. "Were any in the stairwell Muggles that you could tell?"
Harry thought back before shaking his head. There had been Muggles in the club, but not there on the stairs.
"Good. We've had reports the stuff is getting sold on the Muggle market too. That we really want to stop. It has magical properties and the Muggle authorities will be asking some serious questions once they get a hold of some."
"Serious questions of the Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked.
"Serious questions about how the stuff works. Bloody inconvenient having to Obliviate entire departments in secure Muggle government bureaus. They tend to ask questions about that too, unlike most Muggles who just shrug and write off everyone forgetting a whole day. Like they'll assume the calendars were all wrong or something. Muggle bureaucrats don't do that. They get more tenacious."
As the meal progressed and conversation fell off, Harry's mind began to fixate on his meeting Sunday. He had no idea how it would go, and expected he would have to give way to that other mode of thinking to best maximize the encounter, or perhaps even to survive it. He was lost in these musings while picking at his ice cream with a fork when a familiar voice jarred his attention away.
"The riffraff even in the nicest places is just unbelievable," Draco Malfoy sniffed.
Harry looked up. This Draco actually looked older than the alternative world Draco, which did not match most of the other schoolmates Harry had seen there.
Harry, taking Draco's put on attitude as just that, put his toe down on Tonks' foot before she could say anything. Before he could come up with a unperturbed rejoiner, his eye was caught by the vision in heavy black robes standing just behind and to the side of Draco. Pansy's belly bulged as much as Candide's did. Unlike Candide, who seemed to glow a bit, even through the discomfort, Pansy appeared hopelessly weighed down. She stood bent forward, hanging on Draco's hand. Make-up failed to mask her puffy eyes, which fixed on Harry with a curious but wary look.
Aware of the diners around them halting and turning, Harry stood up and gave a nod in Pansy's direction. Wanting to do the unexpected, Harry graciously said, "Mr. Malfoy, I think your wife looks quite ready to be home, with her feet up."
Oddly, Draco appeared to make a decision and relaxed into a grim, quieter attitude. "Come, Pansy," he said, leading her away by the hand.
Pansy put her head down and followed. Harry watched them depart, as did most of the restaurant.
Tonks picked up her drink and said between swigs, "Not exactly the happy couple."
* * *
Bleary-eyed, Harry returned home for second breakfast, glad when Snape gave him only a cursory looking over that could easily have been attracted by Harry's ruffled personal state.
Harry sniffled, wishing his head did not pound lightly and his ears did not buzz.
"Did you make things up to Tonks?" Candide asked.
Harry grunted noncommittally, taking great care to evenly coat his toast with marmalade. As nice a time as he and Tonks had had, things still felt unresolved. Maybe things just always felt that way.
Candide, working her breakfast with both hands, paused to add, "She's easily upset, it seems. Not self-confident."
"She is with magic," Harry said, not certain if he was defending her or just clarifying.
"I meant with relationships."
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I don't know how to reassure her. What should I do?"
"It's not you, I don't think, Harry. But I'm not impartial."
Snape lowered the paper he was reading to glance between the two of them.
"You were saying?" Candide prompted him.
"I was just thinking that this was the same topic that I must submit to overhearing from my students."
"And you'll get more of it this evening, with Lupin and Harry's cousin coming for dinner."
Snape gave Harry a gaze of dismay that said, yet another thing I must bear, and lifted the paper to ignore them through the rest of breakfast.
Harry, bored just minutes after breakfast concluded, decided to take a run. He had not done so in months and once the idea took hold his limbs refused to remain sedentary.
The brisk air burned Harry's lungs, making him cough, but after stopping to clear them, he powered on, He ran in a single direction, limbs cycling, mind blissfully blank until he passed the gate where he had encountered Moody spying on him one night last autumn. Harry slowed, crunching gravel underfoot as he leaned on a gate post to stretch his legs. He did wish to avenge Moody, even as annoying as the old Auror's paranoia had grown in the end. Moody had been following someone else besides Harry, at the end. He had been watching out for Belinda too, and now there was no one to do that except Harry, who did not understand as much as Moody presumably did at the time. Maybe if the old Auror had trusted anyone, he would have told someone what he knew. Perhaps he had only ever really trusted Dumbledore.
Properly stretched, Harry ran on.
Lagging sooner than he had hoped, Harry pushed himself several times to go on, but he had lost too much capacity for athletic activity between prison and winter's dissuasion from venturing out. Coughing again, Harry stumbled away from the road along a muddy field path bordered on two sides by overgrown stone walls. When the car noise faded and the wind took over, he transformed and took flight for home, flapping slowly and relishing the air on all sides of him, hoping to be mistaken for a kite if his luck did not hold.
Back at home, Harry had at least shed his anxious energy, if not his mental boredom. He wandered to the library, thinking perhaps of pulling down one of his Auror books. Once there, he felt doing so would imply giving in. He instead perused the top shelf of far more interesting bindings, turning his head to read each title in turn, looking for any gems he might have missed the last time. He pulled each down and paged through them, pausing to study the etchings and woodcuts, which frequently contained something in the background, a little mouse in the corner or a little walled city on a hill.
Harry's attention was so caught by the muddled, arrow-filled diagrams in a book on hex deconstruction, that he did not notice Snape standing in the doorway until the other cleared his throat.
Harry said, "All the good books are gone."
Snape replied, "'Good' being a relative term in this instance."
Harry put that book back and took down the next. Like most of them, it had no index or table of contents, so it had to be perused to understand its scope.
"Looking for something in particular?" Snape asked.
Harry shrugged. "I'm just reading."
Snape dropped his voice. "Increasing temptation as well, I expect."
"Maybe."
Harry read in peace for a page. Snape said, "Do you feel lacking, magically?"
"Do you mean, do I feel like someone who's been living on porridge and dry toast and just discovered a book on desserts?"
"Something of that nature."
"A little," Harry admitted. He shrugged helplessly. "I feel incomplete. I want something, but I don't know what it is."
"I think everyone experiences that at your age, Harry."
Harry looked up from the book, finger on an incantation for cursing someone with a parroting affliction. "Did you?"
"Yes."
"What did you do about it?" Harry asked, hopeful for a decent suggestion.
Snape's gaze drifted off. "I made rather a large number of serious mistakes."
"Oh," Harry said, returning to his book.
Voice harder, Snape said, "That makes me more useful to you, not less; I'll have you know."
Harry grinned. "Figures you'd say that." When Snape continued to ponder him, Harry said, "What?"
"Nothing. Let me know if you require anything of me."
The arrival of their guests broke the monotony of the house. Harry greeted his cousin and led her inside, Lupin trailing, brushing his hair back nervously. "I have to keep it an early evening," he said, sounding strangely false while apologizing.
Harry's curse sense was making his skin itch again, confirming that Lupin himself set him off. He resisted the urge to step backward rather than shake hands.
Candide, with a teasing glance at Snape, said, "Shall we send Severus in your place so you can stay later?"
Speaking softly, Lupin grinned weakly while saying, "No, that's all right."
Lupin said, "Minerva asks after you, Harry, and wanted me to insist that you stop by for a visit now and then." He smiled more as he added, "She doesn't trust Severus to pass on social invitations, I don't think."
"I'll do that, thanks," Harry said, instinctively pondering what useful information she may have that he could appear to innocently weasel out of her. She did sit on the Wizengamot. Harry shook off these thoughts and helped Winky hand out fruit juices all around. Pamela gazed curiously at the glass she had been handed, and suddenly said, "Where's your pet, Harry?"
"Up in her cage." Harry waved an Unlatch Spell in that direction and moments later his Chimrian came flapping over the rail before settling on the edge of an unlit lamp, claws ringing painfully as they scraped on the glass.
Harry plucked her off and put her on his shoulder and took a seat beside his cousin.
"Can I hold her?" Pamela asked.
"She eats strangers, you know," Candide warned her.
Kali gave a warning hiss just then in the direction of Pamela's outstretched hand. She intelligently pulled it back slowly, rather risk a quick movement.
Harry patted his pet on the head and she began cleaning her wing membranes by running the edge along her foot in between nibbling frenetically on them.
"Look at those teeth. She doesn't hurt herself doing that?" Pamela asked, leaning in closer than she really should. "Is that how she got those wounds?"
Harry took his pet off his shoulder and tugged on one wing to pull the black membrane taut. He no longer noticed the ragged scars even as much as they distorted the sheen of his pet's wings. She had been injured defending Snape from the demons Harry had let loose.
"No, that was something else," Harry replied. "She got in a fight with something nasty," he hedged, not wanting to explain, really, but knowing he had to say something. He found Snape's gauging gaze on him when he looked up.
"Did she win?"
"It was a draw," Harry said, clipping his speech in the hopes that she would drop the questions.
Pamela sat back with her arms crossed. "More mysterious magical stuff that isn't fit for Muggle ears I suppose."
"It isn't that you're a Muggle," Harry said, remembering those painful helpless hours while Snape slipped away from him. "I just don't feel like talking about it." In the end he had taken care of things himself, like he always needed to do. And probably always would, a notion that bolstered him for tomorrow.
Snape stood and fetched Harry's pet from him and held her on one bent arm. He stood beside Candide's chair, holding Kali down by stroking her back. Harry sensed he was watching him through his hair.
"Likes you well enough," Pamela lightly complained.
"You will have to let her drink your blood if you wish to make peace with her." Snape coolly stated.
"Oh," Pamela said, mouth holding an 'O' shape.
"There is no shortage of monsters in the wizarding world," Lupin said between sips of his drink, frowning a bit.
Harry observed Candide glance at each face around her in turn. "Shall we go to the table?" As she scooted forward to more easily lever out of her chair, she said, "If I were being honest, I would say, I don't care about anyone else, I'm hungry. Let's go eat."
Pamela laughed loudest at this and gave her a hand, since Snape's hands were full of Harry's pet, who had decided she did not want to fly off when urged to.
As toast with olive spread appeared on the table, Candide said to their guests, "You two are still very cute together. Any additional plans on that front?"
Harry thought this diving in a tad blunt, so he picked a side, saying, "I'm glad you don't start in on Tonks and me like that."
Snape's stern voice emerged from the shadowy head of the table where the hearth burned high behind him. "She had best not."
After a gap where she studied the slightly rusty wooden-handled knife by her plate, Pamela said, "No. No plans."
Candide shrugged, fully appearing to make this a casual conversation. "You seem well matched is all."
Lupin's grey gaze flicked to her, then to the truly disinterested Snape, before returning to the black smeared bread abandoned on his plate.
Into the silence that followed, Pamela said with pretend brightness, "Remus insists he's not the marrying type."
Harry watched Lupin's hairy, pointy-nailed fingers rotate the toast on his plate, and sensed the man bristling. To fill the gap, Harry said, "Severus insisted that too, but look where he is."
Candide turned that way, bit her lip and said, "He hasn't been entirely happy lately."
Harry rose immediately to defense. "He's adjusting all right." He and Snape shared a glance and Harry frowned lightly. He hoped Candide was being overly forthcoming solely to distract Lupin from what could be construed as a grilling.
"Where's your ladyfriend, Harry?" Pamela asked.
"You mean, why am I spared?" He paused while they chuckled. "Tonks is on duty. As usual." He took another square of toast. "As far as I can tell, married people want to make certain everyone is equally miserable and so try to sell it to everyone else."
"Kindly leave me out of this," Snape intoned, accepting a drink from the tray Winky sparkled in with. He swirled the liquid around in the bulbous glass a few circles and Harry knew he was going to say more from the way the muscles of his face tightened. "I honestly don't care what anyone else does. I don't care if your cousin feels out of sorts for lacking a ring . . ." He have a small gesture in her direction. "Nor that Remus feels unworthy, for reasons entirely outside his control, of giving one over."
Harry, for a second, was certain Lupin was going to stand up and storm out. But instead the air went out of him, and his fingers fidgeted more. In his best self-depreciating manner, he defensively said, "Easy for you to say."
"You think?" Snape said. "Really?"
Harry did not believe this the best tack, but part of him was relieved they would not play the earlier game all through dinner, but would instead get it settled quickly. Leave it to Snape to dispense with niceties.
Lupin stared at Snape before sitting back and tossing his napkin onto the table beside his plate. "I don't know," he breathed.
"If you are looking for pity, you are looking in the wrong place," Snape stated.
"I'm not looking for pity. I'm not looking for anything," Lupin said.
"Why not?" Candide asked.
"What?" Lupin uttered.
"Why not?" Candide began gesturing with her knife, but set it down. "Why aren't you looking for something. Isn't that the state everyone is supposed to be in?"
"I . . . I never thought of it quite like that." Lupin glanced around at them all and returned to hunching over his plate, which had the unfortunate effect of making it clear his spine bent a bit unusually. Pleading a bit, he came back with, "I'm not right for a husband, for anyone. Or fatherhood, or anything of the sort. It surprises me that anyone could think I was." He relaxed then and finally ate his toast.
Pamela leaned forward to partly face him, "If no one else cares, why do you?"
Lupin finally turned to her. "If they don't care, then they don't understand," he stated with finality.
"Well," Pamela said, voice unsteady. "As long as we've established that all of us are hopelessly daft, that's fine."
Lupin rolled his eyes and shook his head. He held his hands up. "Can you imagine these hands holding a child, taking care of a child. What if the child turns out like this?"
"Curses, in general, rarely pass along father to child," Snape stated.
"And how would you know?" Lupin returned.
"Copious reading. Minerva would be a better source of informed opinion on the matter. But again, no real concern of mine, so do as you wish."
The table fell silent aside from small fidgeting movements. Dinner sparkled in, a great crispy roast duck.
"Are house elves hard to get?" Pamela asked.
"It's complicated," Candide replied.
"Involves a creepy spell," Harry added, partly glad to change the topic.
Pamela paused holding a spoonful of potatoes staring across the table at Harry. "Creepy how?"
Harry tried to explain, "It involves . . . uh . . . magical bondage, er, something."
"Yuck," Pamela offered.
In a voice of dismay, Candide said, "Some wizard weddings do the same."
Pamela swallowed hard. "Really? Yours didn't, did it?"
"No," Snape and Candide replied together.
Kali choose that moment to stick her nose out of Snape's pocket and creep over the landscape of his robes toward his plate. Snape plucked her up by her fur and dangled her out to the side. "Your pet, Potter."
"Yeah," Harry said, pushing his chair out. "I'll take her upstairs." He stopped back at his plate for a slice of duck and nearly lost two fingers giving it over to his pet. Her teeth flashed in the firelight, seeming to lengthen before they were embedded in duck breast.
"Quite a pet," Pamela said with a hint of sarcasm.
Lupin said, "That's why wanting to marry something a hundred times as big and ten times as nasty makes no sense." He sounded victorious pulling out that argument.
"You're really that bad?"
Lupin dropped his assertiveness as fast as he had put it on. He returned to hulking over his plate and eating.
"Why don't you let me see for once and judge for myself?" Pamela demanded.
This deflated Lupin more. Harry hesitated in the doorway. He gave his pet a toss toward his room instead of escorting her. She flapped madly to cope with the weight of her meal, but gained altitude in time to make it up to the railing.
"I'd rather not," Lupin said, rather calmly.
Harry only saw it because he had not yet returned to his seat, but Candide tapped Snape on the shin with her toe. Harry settled back in at his place, hoping his pet did not decide to use his pillow as a dinner napkin. Snape put his utensils down and propped his clasped hands over his plate. "It could be safely arranged," he said in a bored tone.
Harry pretended interest in smearing an unwanted third piece of toast when Lupin's accusatory gaze made it around to him.
"Fine," Lupin mumbled, as if that won the argument.
Harry looked up and asked, "Fine what?"
"Just fine," he said, sounding fatigued.
Pamela contemplated the beaten old wooden handled fork they were using that evening. Despite a brutal shining by Winky, rust spots still showed on the tines. "Should I be serving food with something more like these, or plastic even?"
"There isn't much silver in your silverware," Lupin mumbled.
"But there's probably some. Why didn't you point that out? I tossed out all my silver jewelry, but I didn't think of this."
"It's not important," Lupin insisted. "I've learned to tolerate it. It happens frequently enough."
Pamela scrutinized Lupin beside her, giving a small huff of exasperation, but remaining silent.
Snape said, "It has been my observation that Remus cannot bear anyone making accommodation for him. Even when it is in everyone's best interest."
Softly, but with finality, Lupin said, "I said fine."
"Two weeks, Friday, then. I believe we have a date," Snape stated, in the manner of closing out a meeting. Candide suppressed a small smile.
* * *
With the distinctive chiming rustle of fine china, Harry scooped up his stolen goods and Disapparated for Belinda's flat. He had decided that showing off his silent transportation skills too much was an unnecessary risk. Belinda blinked at him from the couch where she sat curled up with a magazine. When she did start to move, she moved rapidly, dropping her reading on the floor and jumping to her feet.
"Harry?"
Harry placed the china on the table and the pillow on a chair. "Good evening," he casually greeted her.
She put her hands on her hips, challenging him. Behind her, in the window, her owl fluffed itself and pecked at the side of his wing. "What are you doing here?"
"I have a meeting," he informed her.
"A meeting?" she echoed dully.
At that moment, Harry's Durumulna contact arrived, flanked by his two lackeys. He adjusted his mask and peered at Harry, ignoring Belinda. "You have the stuff." It was not a question.
Harry waved an inviting hand at his cache and reached to pick up the teapot.
"Leave it on the table." With a toss of his round shoulder, the man sent a lackey over to run a hex detection spell on each item.
The underling stood aside so his boss could study the pile. "This the stuff they asked for?"
The man nodded. "Pick it up, and let's go."
The lackey had to do as Harry had, and load his pockets with rattling teacups in order to comply. Another gesture from the masked wizard and the other lackey came forward, pulling a black sack from his pocket. He was not intending to help carry, but instead moved to put it over Harry's head.
"Your wand too."
Harry hesitated at that one, but assumed that he could escape from any situation, and so complied. He gave Belinda one last glance before letting himself be blinded. She stood stunned, even when he winked at her.
The hood pulled free of Harry's face and he glanced around a wood paneled room with no doors or windows. They had Apparated twice, then walked for many minutes, and somewhere along the line had lost the two lackeys. Harry studied the room, memorizing it for later, uncertain how they could have walked into it from elsewhere. His escort had already moved to a steep ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling, the only visible exit. "Boss is this way," he said, sounding threatening.
Harry followed, feeling stiffness in his legs from his run as he climbed. They emerged near the ceiling of a modern industrial building and followed along a catwalk stretching the length of the building. Sunlight came through the skylights, but black cloth had been hung around the catwalk, obscuring the view. Harry could hear voices echoing, and a shout, a pounding like a hand on a table, and then a sharp hearty laugh.
As they walked, they approached closer to the noise. Harry's ears strained to follow what sounded like a card game. A whiff of pungent cigar odor drifted by.
The catwalk came to an end hanging out into space. The man stopped and waited, tossing a small ivory box in his hand. The goods Harry had collected were not visible, and Harry thought it best to hold off on his questions.
Time passed. Back along their path, from somewhere down on the floor of the building the distinctive sound of shuffling against solid wood drifted up. Suddenly, Harry noticed the catwalk now continued on in three directions. Still the man waited. The catwalk creaked and an elf with wiry hair-covered ears crept up and beckoned from the branch to the right. Harry's escort batted him on the shoulder and gestured for him to lead.
They reached an ordinary, heavy door, which the elf stood on tiptoe to open. With more long fingered beckoning, he led the way into a heavily decorated office lined with plush furniture. The scent of cigar smoke grew pervasive.
A minute passed before the wall at the far end jumped away, doubling the size of the room. Someone sat at a wide desk, feet up on the blotter. A female elf, dressed in a lacy red placemat, lounged on the corner of the desk. Her ears drooped with rows of gold hoops.
"Special delivery?" a voice asked in a light accent Harry could not identify.
"Insisted on an introduction in exchange for the goods," Harry's escort explained.
The feet slipped away and a short man wearing an oversized hat emerged from around the desk. His long pointed chin moved side to side as he talked.
"Well, the infamous Harry Potter pays us a visit." He put his cigar to his mouth and his jaw worked all the more.
Harry gave a deep nod. He did not trust himself to not ask questions if he spoke. The man snapped his fingers and Harry's escort scrambled to take a chair. Before Harry could turn back, the boss shouted in a slightly insane manner, "I said, take a seat!"
Harry did so, startled more than anything. The elf's red painted toes bounced at the end of her crossed legs. She grinned back at him mockingly. Harry looked away from the queer sight of her and studied his surroundings. The room contained a few mildly cursed things, but there were too many objects in the room to identify the cursed ones from where he sat.
The boss paced his perfectly creased trousers to his desk and picked up an issue of the Prophet. "My people tell me you want in. Give me the stuff, Ursie."
Harry blinked in confusion. But his escort tossed the boss the little ivory box, from which the pillow and each part of the tea set emerged, one at a time. "Take these down to our guest. Mr. Potter and I will have a little chat alone."
Harry's heavyset contact moved like a sprite to comply, gathering up the things on a tea tray and shuffling out, a vision of unlikely maid service.
After the door closed, the boss flipped his cigar around his mouth a full circuit and said, "Give me just one measly excuse not to kill you here on the spot, Potter."
Harry sat straighter and despite resisting, glanced around himself in quickening alarm. The deep maroon curtains and knickknack-filled shelves could harbor all sorts of things.
The boss waved his cigar, leaving smoke like spell trails from his fingers. "There are about a hundred ways to do it where you are there. No sense wondering what they all might be since you can't count them."
Harry sat back and forced himself to relax, just for show. "One reason only? Okay, how about you can't really afford to waste the opportunity?"
The boss snorted. "The opportunity to be hulled, you mean? By an inside job?"
Harry could honestly peer back in confusion about this. He had lost control already and needed to cease playing this as himself. He closed his eyes a second and felt for the shadows, dredged up the hunger that still lingered from losing so very many followers. Immediately, a sense of outrage and derision flowed into him. The room transformed before his eyes from a showpiece into an insultingly superficial trap.
"Look," Harry said, keeping a tight binding on the scornful tone wanting to get out. "I'm here to make an offer of my services. You can accept them or not. I'm still exploring potential opportunities. I have loyalty to no one right now and I may decide to just keep it that way. Your organization is certainly giving the Ministry a good run, so I thought I'd shop my services to you, see what my options may be."
The cigar bounced around again, shaking the ash from the end, which fell and disappeared as it struck the shag rug on the floor, revealing the room to be an illusion. Harry may not even know enough about this place to slip in via the Dark Plane, unless he departed via it, and marked the location.
The boss leaned back against his desk, which barely came up to his armpits. He turned the folded newspaper to better glance over it. "What do you think of one Rita Skeeter?"
Harry saw enormous hazard in this question. He worried that if he informed the man of his bitter feelings, he may be assigned to assassinate her. He instead saw a chance to bolster his dark credentials and replied, "She has an annoying habit of following me around."
"Potter's out of control, says adoptive father." The boss read off, clearly from an old edition. He pulled another over and flipped it around. "This same adoptive father . . . interesting vitae, himself. I wouldn't mind recruiting him . . ." He stared Harry down with intense eyes that gave Harry the sense that the only real thing in his surroundings was that pair of dark blue eyes. "How did he escape getting sent off prison? Every one of his colleagues got the shaft."
Harry felt on better ground arguing for his own corruption based on Snape's. "This time, or the previous time?"
The boss's lips curled momentarily. "Both, if you are so eager to tell me the story." His strange accent, mostly hidden, flared as he spoke this.
"Dumbledore staked his on reputation on Severus Snape's loyalty the first time. He was influential enough to keep him out of prison. The second time around, I've been defending him."
"Staking your reputation . . ." the boss taunted.
"I wasn't putting it to other use," Harry casually tossed out. "It was going to waste."
"So, how did you like prison?" came the next flatly conversational question.
"It was . . . informative," Harry said, making himself forget his distress and depression in projecting a thoroughly different outward memory of events. For a minute he could almost believe the experience had made him stronger. "Too much time to think, though," he complained.
The boss took a long, cloudy puff on his cigar and smashed it violently out on the pristine surface of the mahogany desk, adding the scent of burnt wood to the tobacco odor. The elf leaned over and waved the smoke away, removing the mar from the desk, which must be real, even if the floor was not.
A knock came on the door and Harry's escort entered and groveled his way to the middle of the rug. "I did as you instructed."
"Is our guest pleased?" the boss asked, sounding something far less than pleased himself.
"Yes, sir."
He gave a toss of his hand, and the man jumped over to gesture rapidly that Harry should get up and follow him. The boss turned away, then back. "Take Potter down to our guest, why don't you. He'll be tickled to meet him."
Harry followed out of the room and walked backward down the catwalk a few steps. The door disappeared just after it closed, leaving the gangway swinging out over empty space. They took a different path back and halted at a ladder down that vanished into a black fog before it reached bottom.
Harry's escort insisted Harry lead. Harry turned around and, with some trepidation because he had to bend down and step blindly over the edge, finally got both hands and feet on the ladder.
They reached the floor and more branching black-cloth corridors, lit by hovering fairylights. Harry could hear the card game clearly now, and a more acrid cigar smoke stung his eyes. They emerged from the tunnel of cloth into a room with no apparent ceiling, but with lots of woodwork and a mirrored bar along one wall where another exotic elf patiently shined glasses. The tea set sat on the bar, clashing brightly with the wood and glass.
A feeble-looking, grey haired man tossed a card down with surprising authority, his partly closed hand pounding the table as he did so. "Ha!" he said. The other three much younger players had the usual generic Durumulna look to them as they scrutinized their full hands of cards.
Harry's escort chose a moment to step forward and interrupt. "Mr. McCurdy, the boss thought you'd like to meet . . ." He did not get a chance to finish.
Mr. McCurdy caught sight of Harry and stumbled out of his chair, still safely holding his fan of cards. "You better not be here to take me back!" the man growled at Harry, one eye popping out, long fingered wagging accusingly at Harry.
"No," Harry denied. "I had no such idea."
Mr. McCurdy went limp with relief. "Ach," he uttered, and showed his age as he slipped creakily back into his seat. "Yangzy get me a refill," he cried out in the direction of the bar. Then as he patted his chest, added, "I need something to recover from that shock."
He dedicated his attention to his cards long moments before turning back to Harry. "Nice to meet you, my boy. Just paying a social call, then? Do me a favor, tell my wife I'm being tortured horribly . . . argh!" he shouted as one of the others collected that trick.
The elf delivered his drink on a tiny silver platter. "Any of those little snacks left? Maybe Mr. Potter would like something?" He said all this without taking his eyes off his cards. When the play came around to him, he tossed off something small. "Pull up a chair, Mr. Potter. We'll deal you in."
Harry's escort shook his head. Harry said, "I don't know this game."
"That's because I invented it. I call it five-deck shooter."
"Four-deck," one of his tablemates corrected.
"It'll be five if we get him to play too," McCurdy pointed out knowingly, then laughed. "Ah, I haven't had such a fine time since . . . nineteen fifty two when my father dragged me out of the club by my ear and forced me down the aisle. "Your lay, Pitface. You're leading toward me, so you might as well just hand them all over now." He laughed heartily again, not a noise one would expect from such a sunken chested man.
Harry's escort rapped him painfully on the arm and nodded back the way they had come in. Harry said, "Nice meeting you all," before retreating with his escort into the smoke-hazy tunnel.
Harry withstood the black hood again, and expected to be back in Belinda's flat when it was tugged free, but instead, they stood in an overgrown lot strewn with abandoned cars sporting tail fins.
"Don't call us," his escort growled, tossing Harry's wand so that it clattered at the base of a flat tire with hazy white walls, the rusty wheel rim protruding viciously from the warped mass. He Disapparated away before Harry could fetch it up.
Harry checked his wand for damage and sighed. The sun wanly crept out from behind the clouds and slipped away again. Harry had no idea where he was, but at least it was warm with the wind so low. He walked a bit along the gravel, thinking. Having no real information, he came to no real conclusions and decided he should get home so Snape could get to Hogwarts.
Based on how much aim he needed at the end of his Apparition, Harry decided that he must have been a very long way from home, farther than London, for certain. He found Snape in the drawing room and closed the door when instructed to do so with a gesture.
"How did it go?"
"They don't trust me."
"Not a surprise," Snape smugly said, opening a small trunk to wave the contents of his desk into.
"They wouldn't mind recruiting you."
This made Snape pause. He lightly shook his head and snapped the trunk closed.
Harry pleasantly added, "If they end up trusting me, it will be because of you."
"Hm," Snape uttered. "I expect that won't be the only reason." He picked up his trunk and walked by Harry, pausing to say, "I assume you are on hold?"
"Yep. How'd you know?"
"Really, Potter. I've seen more people initiated into a far more demanding organization than this one probably has in total. Keep in mind most newcomers fail." He turned at the door to add, "Spectacularly, I might add. Although, a few would just slink away and disappear. The lucky ones I suppose."
Harry followed him to the dining room. "You've made your point."
Snape set his trunk on the table and took down the Floo Powder canister. "No, I don't think I have, but it will have to do." With a handful of grit clutched in one hand, he touched Harry fleetingly on the shoulder with his other before hefting the trunk. "Do be careful, and do keep me informed."
"Right," Harry said.
Chapter 42 — Out with the Old
"Thanks Harry," Candide said as she released his arm from Siding Along. The shuffling and tapping sounds of an awakening office drifted into the cold stairwell when she opened the door to the accountancy.
"No trouble, really," Harry assured her. "You're off at noon?"
Candide nodded and put her hand protectively around her coat-covered abdomen to maneuver through the door.
Back down on the Alley, only a handful of shoppers plied the storefronts. Half the shops sat dormant, but activity could be seen through the window of Weasley Wizard Wheezes. Harry rapped on the window since the door was locked and the carved sign resting against the display case window read Shuttered ~ please try us again at a more holy hour.
Ginny pressed her nose to the glass of the door before working the locks, both mechanical and magical, to open it. "Are you coming along?" she said, right out.
"Er . . ."
Ginny waved behind her and scooped her cloak over her shoulders, pausing only to free her hair from her collar. "Freelander is buying the Daily Prophet this morning."
"I'd love to," Harry said, happy to have something to occupy his time.
Ginny was off before he could say more, muttering, "Frankly, we may need more security."
When Harry and Ginny rounded the corner of the Prophet's blocky building, they came upon Freelander and his wife standing outside the gold and glass doors surrounded by a small phalanx of solicitors wearing serious faces along with their tweed.
"Mr. Potter," Freelander greeted Harry warmly, accompanied by a hearty handshake that made Harry have to hide a surprised wince. As soon as he released Harry, Freelander's attention shifted immediately back to the trophy-like doors before them.
"Shall we gentlemen? And ladies . . . of course."
Inside the bright room, they stopped in the center of the well-worn wooden floor and took in the activity at the surrounding array of wickets and counters. Gradually, the office rattle, hooting owls, and voices shouting to those hard of hearing died out and attention turned to the waiting group.
A section of the ceiling cracked open and a lift floated down beyond the glass wall before them. A round man on rapidly moving legs approached as soon as the lift touched down. He shooed the desk clerks aside and opened a door, wicket and all, in the wall.
"Lord Freelander, it is a pleasure . . ." the man gushed in a voice pitched too high for a grown man, making him sound like a performer or a ventriloquist. Freelander introduced him as Pierrepont Walpole, the newspaper's owner. This introduction was followed by that of the Editor in Chief, Barnabas Cuffe, whose long countenance did not imply he was pleased with events. Three harried assistants crowded him, arms full.
"And you brought . . . quite a crew here . . ." Walpole said to Freelander, falling uncertain as his eyes counted the lawyers and then landed on Harry. "Mr. Potter," the man said, reaching into the group to single Harry out for a handshake. His hands were small and clammy and heavily stained with ink.
Walpole adjusted his glasses and waved a writing desk out of the parquet floor. "Shall we dispense with the formalities, then, and retire to my office for tea?" Scrambling suddenly, he pulled out a pocket watch, then checked one of the many wall clocks. "Ah, still time to make a Lazyeye Monday Edition. It will have to do."
One of the less dour solicitors sensed that he should bring forth papers. A stack of exceedingly long parchments were draped over the desk to unroll to the floor and half way to the entrance. Around them, the clerks and staff were gathering at the windows or kneeling on their desks to hear over the glass wall.
With a serial flourish of long quills the contracts were completed. In the meantime, the lift had made two more trips from the ceiling and this time Harry spotted Skeeter's tight golden curls in the crowd. He waited with rising anticipation as her head bobbed closer, moving back and forth impatiently when the bodies thickened and slowed.
"Well!" Skeeter said, voice as sharp as the snap of her high heels on the floor. "What have we here?"
Skeeter had been barreling straight for Harry, but Freelander turned his bulky self and intercepted her. He tugged a folded paper from his breast pocket and presented it to her with a slight bow, just as Skeeter came to a stop. He did not let go of it, however, as she took hold and tugged.
"We have had a change in management, as you are perhaps aware . . . or perhaps not?" Freelander drawled. Then he raised his voice over the drone of gossip flowing around the hall. "And I'm sure you are all eager to learn what other changes we will be making. As far as redundancies are concerned, please all rest assured that nearly everything and everyone will be remaining the same. We have just one." And with that he released the paper, which moments before Skeeter had been battling for, but now made a distasteful face as she gained full control of it.
Skeeter snapped open the letter and with a glance over it, crushed it down. "On what grounds?"
"Oh, Ms. Skeeter, let's not make this more tedious than is already required. You concocted stories about me, whole cloth, and, most astoundedly of all, expected to be immune to any negative outcome as a result."
Skeeter adjusted her jeweled glasses and leaned closer to Freelander. "I did not make up a single thing I wrote. I had the very letters you sent. I had them verified, in fact."
"And these letters would be, where?" he asked politely. "You refused to produce them for my legal team, as requested." Freelander began putting his things away, clearly dismissing Skeeter. "Until you do so, there is nothing to discuss, I'm afraid." He sounded bored now, which only made Skeeter's face redden.
"I DID have them," she insisted weakly. Harry was glad she did not glance at him, which meant she did not suspect him.
Walpole gestured at someone in the distance, then said to Skeeter, "You'll have to clear out your office."
Skeeter appeared far more prepared to do battle than pack boxes. She glared down domineeringly at the former owner, but he simply shrugged in return. A large figure rose up in the far corner beyond the windows. It brushed off what appeared to be straw and lumbered toward them. Harry had not imagined a half troll might exist but this character did a good impression of one. He wasn't as large as Hagrid, but he was ten times as ugly and he lightly hefted a massive granite club. Everyone turned to watch him approach.
"Thug, take Ms. Skeeter to her office. She's to pack it up," Walpole said.
The half-Troll gave no indication he understood, but he moved aside to let Skeeter pass. Freelander gestured surreptitiously with his chin in the same direction and Harry stepped forward. "I'll come along."
Skeeter's sideways glances evaluated Harry as they walked in the vibrating wake of the half-troll's footsteps. The crowd parted for them as they approached the lift, scooting backward, gazes wide and curious.
The troll took up most of the lift platform. He stood in the very center, club resting on the marble floor.
Skeeter leaned around the troll's rag-wrapped belly and said, "I can't figure out how you're involved in this, but there must be a connection."
They were almost to the ceiling now. The floor looked much farther down than the ceiling appeared from below. Ginny waved up at Harry, even though Freelander's wife was trying to get her attention.
Harry waited until the channel of the lift surrounded them to ask, "Why would I have anything to do with this?"
"You've got your fingers in everywhere from what I hear," she said, then leaned farther over. "Care to comment?"
Harry laughed. "And you'll print my comment where?"
Skeeter huffed. The troll shifted from foot to foot, making the lift rattle unnervingly in the shaft. Finally the door opened and Skeeter stalked out, rushing, Harry thought, to get inside her office and lock them out. But she left the door open behind her. Harry remained in the corridor, looking in. He did not like the masks any better in full light.
"What are those?" Harry asked.
"The masks? If I had my way, my former colleagues," she quipped without stopping what she was doing.
The troll lumbered off to a cupboard down the corridor and rummaged inside it with giant, deliberate movements.
Harry laughed. "What do you do to your enemies if you treat your fellow journalists like that?"
Skeeter stood straight from stacking things. "My enemies are my most prized and lucrative possessions. My colleagues just get in my way."
"I actually can understand that," Harry said. He leaned on the doorframe and watched her work.
"You're not going to help?" she criticized.
"You don't want me to."
Upon further reflection, she said, "Yeah, you're right about that."
When all the boxes had been heaved out, ten at a time by the troll, and nothing remained but scraps and broken things, Harry stepped inside. The office still felt cursed, despite the masks having been carted off in an iron trunk that had been chained closed for good measure. He wandered slowly around the bare shelves, trying to determine what bothered him so. He stopped and backed up below the clock, which had 27 hands on it, all in different colors. "Leaving that for your colleague?" Harry suggestively asked.
Skeeter used a hand to primp her hair. "Sure. Why?
"It's cursed," Harry said.
"Of course it's cursed. It's a World Time Deadline Clock. I challenge you to find me one that's not cursed." She propped her hands on her narrow hips, thumbs forward. "What's your game, Potter."
"I wanted to make sure you removed everything dangerous."
"That's not what I meant." She sounded hard now, like a teacher.
"Whatever it is, I'd hardly tell you, of all people."
She exhaled, looking him up and down, enticing now. "I'd pay well."
Harry's darker instincts screamed at him to string her along, to leave open the possibility of using her later. "I'll think about it."
Strangely, he sensed that she saw through his answer. She strode to the door and waved an extinguishing hex at the one remaining lamp. She primped her hair and touched up her lipstick in the reflection of the glass in the office door. "Time for me to make my final hysterical scene before departing."
"You are one to talk about games," Harry commented as they re-entered the lift. The troll must have grown weary because he dragged his club now, and it rumbled deafeningly on the floor, forcing them to shout.
They rode down in silence until just before they touched down when Skeeter said, "As long as you can remain an enemy, dear Harry Potter, we can continue to be friends." With that, she screwed up her shoulders and veritably marched across the floor, taller all of a sudden and well visible to all the flash lamps going off, homing in on her as she closed in on the old and new management still chatting in the middle of the floor.
Someone touched Harry on the arm, making him jump. Ginny said, "Guess what?" Her face glowed with raw intensity as she went on. "Beatrice wants me to be her assistant here at the Prophet!"
"That's great, Ginny!" Harry said, suddenly removed from his well of troubles. "What are your brothers going to say?"
"Hopefully a lot. I've been working for Knuts over there, and do you think they ever say, "good job, Ginny" or "good to have you here, Ginny", no . . ." Her face took on annoyance, but it slid back into a grin as she watched the people milling in the Prophet's service hall. "This is going to be fun. A ton of work, but fun," she said, rubbing her hands together. Skeeter had just giving up her loud arguing and was marching out. "I'd better go," Ginny said, and with a flutter of her short cloak, wove back into the crowd.
Harry watched Freelander and Beatrice introducing themselves to a few of the staff. Beatrice took Ginny aside for a chat involving lots of arm motion. A little man floating a cart full of boxes stopped upon seeing Harry there and stared at him sideways along his crooked nose.
"Hm," he grunted and resumed directing the cart, mumbling as he passed, "Everything's changing, everything's changing."
"It is," Harry echoed to no one in particular.
The staff had thinned out and returned to work, quieter and more diligent than when they had been interrupted that morning. Harry made his goodbyes to Lord Freelander and the others and strode out with purpose, but standing on the pavement outside he realized he had no where in particular he needed to be. Harry could go home and read. Or he could take himself for a run and a long flight. Neither of these sounded terribly appealing. Few of his friends would be home during the day, just Elizabeth, who should still be home between terms.
Elizabeth answered the door in a yellow dressing gown and fuzzy white slippers. "Harry!" she greeted him. She clasped her dressing gown closed over her pyjamas and said, "I didn't expect you to call. Hang on, let me get something on. Have a seat."
She was off into her bedroom, leaving Harry to ponder calculatingly how very much he was trusted. He was still in that spot when she returned. "Really, sit down," she admonished, pointing at one overstuffed chair while taking the other. "How are you doing? You getting over being locked up? Have you given the Ministry of Magic hell for what happened?"
Harry had opened his mouth at each of these, but only got a chance to speak at the end. "Doing all right," he said, finding himself with little to say. He was happier to see her than he expected to be. Her hair was mussed and down and falling around her oversized pullover.
"The Ministry of Magic strikes me as a frighteningly arcane bureaucracy," she pronounced, sitting back and crossing her arms. Her overly exacting attitude came across differently when it was in Harry's own defense. "I'm glad you're out, now. Any prison sounds awful. I can't imagine a magical one."
"It wasn't that bad," Harry said.
She leaned over the side of her chair to pick up a Witch Weekly.
Harry commented, "I didn't know you read that."
She leaned over to flip through the magazine, treating the pages with more care than most would. "I've been trying to be more like a real witch." She had flipped all the way through and started again from the beginning, letting the pages flap out from under her thumb more slowly this time.
"Is it working?" Harry asked.
She shook her tresses, making them hide her bent face. "Mostly I just laugh at this stuff. Which is funny because as a girl I would have killed to do more of it. Imagine! A Charm to do your hair any way you like and change the color of your dress." She stood and set the magazine in Harry's lap. "They did an article about the prison you were in." Then she loped off to the kitchenette, saying, "I skipped breakie and need some nosh. And I'll make tea," she added, holding up her wand in a pose of casual victory.
Harry skimmed the article, not really reading it, but taking in the animated diagrams showing the layout of the cell blocks. The Extremely Dangerous Criminal Block was not far from the warden's office. Harry wished a chance had come up to visit Lockhart/Voldemort while he was there, and he wondered if the warden might still be open to that earlier tour offer. Harry also would not mind a chance to stick his tongue out at Lucius Malfoy one more time. He was grinning at this thought when Elizabeth emerged with a tray.
"I'm still bollocks at Heating Charms," she said. "Sorry it took so long. I keep meaning to find a tutor for wand waving, but term is starting in another week so it won't be until after that's over."
"Want me to show you?" Harry asked.
"I think I'd be such a terrible student I would bore you to tears." But she sat forward on her chair, belying her answer.
Harry did not think spending more time with her would bore him at all. And he had nothing else to do.
"Here, get out your wand. If you are going to be a witch there are a few spells you just have to know."
- 888 -
Harry's week dragged by. Evenings he spent hoping Tonks would find time for him, but she managed to slip in only once for a few hours and she was too tired to do anything but nap. Mornings, after Harry dropped Candide at work, he spent tutoring Elizabeth. Somewhere between getting away from her parents and going to school she had lost the harder edge to her critical personality and he rather enjoyed her company. He steadfastly refused to consider returning to training, despite the painful boredom of his afternoons and an ongoing desire to return to normalcy. He heard nothing from Durumulna and considered visiting Belinda's flat a number of times, but he had been specifically instructed to wait for them and he did want to seem the diligent type about following orders, so he held off. He sent Belinda an owl at her office, which generated a terse, plain reply that told him nothing.
Harry began to feel envious of his friends who had regular things to occupy their days. Elizabeth was soon returning to classes. Ginny worked all day and evenings even at her new job, growing quickly ragged from the long hours but no less enthusiastic. Ron was free evenings, but he mostly talked about his job, which did not improve Harry's outlook. Friday when an owl arrived from Hermione inviting him for a visit, he dropped it on the floor and left it there in his rush to leave.
Harry arrived in a cupboard on Hermione's corridor and listened at the door with cupped hands before opening it a crack to check that the way was clear. She called out immediately in response to the knock on her door.
"You're here already!" Hermione exclaimed, flipping back the hair that had fallen loose from the clip on the back of her head. She pushed back from her desk and came around to greet him. "That's right, you don't have to bother with the Floo . . ." she said, remembering.
Harry touched his finger to his lips, but Hermione rolled her eyes and hugged him.
The sun poured generously into the room at this hour of the day, making it feel less like Hogwarts than Harry remembered. Hermione asked, "How are you adjusting to life outside prison? Everything all right?"
He gestured at her uncharacteristically disarrayed office. "About the same as you're adjusting to life in this prison," he teased.
"Yeah," she huffed, surveying the scene. "Come on, I'll skip lunch and let's go for a walk. I need a change of scenery before I tackle another essay that asserts that hexes are a special class of charms."
"They are if you do them right," Harry jested, garnering another friendly chastisement.
The corridors were crowded with clumps of chattering students, who quieted and turned to greet them or just stared in surprise. Harry had once hoped that by this time in his life, he would be treated more or less normally, but that was not to be.
One of the Creavy brothers broke from a group huddled in a window alcove and kept in pace with them. "Wotcher, Harry!"
"Hello Dennis, studying hard?" When Dennis stretched his face disturbingly. Harry explained secretively, "I have to keep up appearances for Professor Granger here."
"Oh, good. Thought you meant that. Swotting would cut into my training too much. I'm determined to make Seeker next year."
"Speaking of which, what do you think of the Ravenclaw Seeker?" Harry asked, mostly to make conversation as they followed along with the flow down the staircases.
"Tanzir, you mean?" Dennis said. "He looked pretty good in their first game." He shrugged. "But everyone looks good playing Hufflepuff."
Hermione leaned closer as they rounded the landing to say, "If they'd pay as much attention to lectures as they do at the matches .. ."
Dennis stopped suddenly and Harry nearly ran him over. Dennis was used to this and stepped quickly aside, pointing. "He's over there."
Harry turned and found the aforementioned boy hanging onto the banister, rocking back and forth while chatting with another Ravenclaw. He was a wisp of a boy with bowl-cropped black hair. Perhaps sensing the attention, he turned, displaying chiseled features. He pushed himself straight as recognition softened his face.
Harry stepped over and introduced himself. The boy closed his hanging-open mouth, and responded, "My name is Aylal, How are you? Pleased to meet you," like practiced phrases.
Hermione leaned in and said, "His French is better."
Upon which, Harry received a string of French that he halted by holding up his hands. "My only time in France was in prison, and I didn't pick up much there."
The boy's face fell and he laughed nervously. "But you are out, now."
Looking for a better topic, Harry said, "I'm going to come watch your match against Slytherin."
"But no pressure," Hermione quipped.
"I am honored," the boy proclaimed, beaming.
Other students making their way to lunch stopped to listen in. Harry made his goodbyes because they were blocking the staircase.
Dennis slithered in between them when they continued on. "Who're your Galleons on, Harry?" he whispered.
Harry stopped, trying to figure out a reply, but Hermione sent her student off with a sharp wave of her hand. "No gambling on school grounds."
Dennis laughed as he slipped off. "Shouldn't have Quidditch then."
"He has a point," Harry conceded.
Hermione tugged Harry off the landing before he could take the next set of stairs down. "I remember that I wanted you to show me something." She started back upward.
"I thought you wanted a change of scenery."
"The library at lunchtime is a change of scenery . . . no students."
Madame Pince must have already gone to the Great Hall because the library was completely unoccupied. Hermione headed straight for the gate to the restricted section. "Speaking of Ravenclaw, I want you to show me her book."
Harry followed Hermione in, turning to make certain the gate latched properly behind them. The stacks sat in a waiting silence, reminding Harry of another library and another Hermione. He lowered his voice. "I don't know if it will let me open it with you here, you know."
"Give it a try." She stopped beside the podium against the rear wall, hanging on the edge of it with her fingertips.
Harry opened the grate in the wall, and the book lay inside as it always did, sporting a light coating of dust. Hermione narrated while Harry carefully removed it. "Amazing to think all these centuries, that's been sitting there. The actual notes of the Founders . . ."
The book's stone covers rattled and ground together and Hermione fell silent. "If that's all it takes to quiet Professor Granger . . ." Harry teased.
"Hey!" she whispered harshly, "You know how hard it is to fill a double class period sometimes?"
"I remember how hard it was to sit through a double class period . . ."
Harry tried to open the book, but the covers would not budge, the entire thing a single block of stone. "It doesn't like you," Harry said.
Hermione moved in beside Harry, facing the book. "Why not?"
Harry shrugged and gestured for her to move away instead. He took on an attitude of superior calm. The restricted section fell quieter yet; every last rustle and creak ceased. He imagined facing down the nastiest of creatures from the Dark Plane, making it back down and retreat, head bowed.
Harry touched the cover and lifted with his thumb. It released and let him heft it open to reveal the warning letter. Hermione, crouching, slipped closer to peak around at it from behind Harry. The book vibrated, and Harry again forced it to submit and still.
"Wow." Hermione whispered as she read, "Knowledge should never be mistaken for learning, information, or insight. Oh," she said with passion. "This is amazing. . . . take only pure knowledge away. Yes, yes, I will." she said, sounding childishly excited. "Can you turn the page?"
Harry tried to, but the book rumbled. "Back up," he said, determined, but not wanting Hermione in harm's way. Slowly, he reached up and rested his left hand on the edge of the front cover, not so much to hold it open, which he could not physically do, but to keep track of it. With his other hand, he delicately lifted the corner of the next page. The book shook on the lectern, which resonated and amplified the sound. But Harry, though sheer force of will, compelled the book to remain open. Hermione's hand wrapped around his arm, gripping tighter as the book sang louder in a rumble through the wood of the lectern.
"Harry, maybe you shouldn't," Hermione shouted over the noise.
Harry did not want to lose this battle. He did not want to retreat. He pressed his will harder, and reached for the next page, just to see if he could turn it. The vibration eased but now smoke swept out from between the page edges.
"Harry!" She shook his arm back and forth now. "Don't make it destroy itself. Let it go!"
Harry calmly pulled his hands clear and reluctantly gave in. The book slammed closed, covers flying vertical before tilting neatly and thundering down onto the lectern and falling still as stone once again.
Hermione's pent up breath came out in a wheeze, and she still held Harry's sleeve for support. "You were right. It doesn't want me to see it, I guess."
"It might not be so happy with me any longer, either" Harry said.
"Well, that'd be a shame, Harry. I'm sorry for asking."
Harry shrugged. "I've learned loads of spells from it already." He tossed a shoulder, which pulled against her grip on his robes. "Go out beyond the gate and I'll put it away."
"You're sure you'll be okay left alone with it? McGonagall mentioned what it has done in the past."
"Yeah," he replied, sounding amused, but it was to mask his uncertainty. Her footsteps retreated, the gate squeaked up the scale then down, and finally the latch fell into place again.
Harry stared down at the chiseled cover of the book, at each of the house seals in turn. Part of him suspected that it wasn't Hermione that was entirely the trouble. But like the letter from the other Snape, he did not want to find out for certain what was inside, so he left it a mystery. Calmly, gathering a certainty of power to compel his actions, he lifted the book and put it away.
Both of them wandering in their own thoughts, he and Hermione walked together down to the Entrance Hall. The dull crowd-roar of lunchtime in the Great Hall washed like a balm around their mood, and Harry opened the castle's front door with extra grace and bowed Hermione out ahead of him.
The lawn lay in a mat of mostly dead tangle. Coarse snow hugged the low spots and cowered under the benches. Harry led the way around to the rose garden and warmed a bench for them to sit on. Hermione breathed into her mittens and surveyed the winter ruin of the plants.
Harry took his mind away from what happened in the library and said, "Has there been any trouble with crystal potions here at all?"
Hermione sat back on her mittened hands. "You mean that mood altering stuff? Haven't seen it yet."
"Keep an eye out."
She crossed her legs and bounced her foot, looking more the student than the professor. "What am I looking for?"
"Students going out of their head."
"Like that doesn't happen normally."
Harry smiled. "This is farther out than normal."
"You've seen it?" When Harry nodded, she asked, "Tried it?"
"No," Harry replied, laughing lightly. "I have a hard enough time with the realities I already have access to."
They sat quietly for long minutes. A mistle thrush worked its way from one bare branch to another, browsing for dried berries.
Hermione patted Harry's leg with her broad mittened hand. "How are you doing, Harry?"
"I've been better," Harry said, and immediately felt a pit open beneath him. His keener senses went on alert against further confessions.
"At least I got an honest answer. Still mad at the Ministry?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't care about the Ministry."
"Oh," she replied. "That's not like you."
Harry sighed. He remembered that other place and wondered what they were all doing there, whether they had succeeded in collecting any more Horcruxes and whether that Harry had obtained the power his friends were going to arrange for him. He wondered how long it would take for him to reach full power, and whether he should risk going back to test himself against himself, just for fun.
"Harry?" Hermione prompted. She was sitting forward to better look at his face.
"Yeah?"
"You're not having nightmares or anything from prison, or anything like that are you?"
"No," he answered in a tone meant to calm her concerns.
After another gap, she asked, "Are you going back to the Auror program?"
"When I feel like it," he said, and liked the sound of that.
She tugged her mittens up one at a time and tucked them into her sleeves. "Aren't you bored?"
"Terribly. But I'm getting ideas."
"Oh, that's not good," she said, snorting faintly.
Inside, he parted ways with himself, half was insulted and angry and half leapt back to the past, to being much better understood. He tilted his head back and stared at the flat grey sky. "I don't know if it is or not."
"Harry, you're really worrying me."
Her turned to look at her and watched her studying his eyes, like many of his old friends did, unfamiliar with their pale color, expecting them to always be they way they used to.
Part of him wanted to tell her he wasn't the same and that he was a bit worried about that, but he did not have access to his faculties of speech to say it, so he simply stared at her. He broke their locked gazes by standing up. "You have class, don't you?"
She stood too and took his arms. "Harry?" She sounded far younger, fearful for him.
He needed to take care of that. He took her shoulders in turn. "It's fine. I'm just working through some things." All true.
"I don't know." She glanced up at the school. A bell rang inside just as she did. "Are you going to be home this weekend?" At his nod, she said, "I'll come for a visit, all right? I'm not sure when, but I will. Take care until then, all right?"
She started to go, but waited with a hand on his arm for him to nod before actually doing so. When she turned back before reaching the doors, the rose garden stood empty, the only movement a dead rose branch, set rocking by the thrush landing upon it.
- 888 -
That evening after dinner, Hermione knocked on the door to the Defense Against the Dark Arts Office. Footsteps approached before Professor Snape jerked open the door.
"Ms. Granger," he said, in his usual dismissive tone before contrastingly gesturing for her to enter.
Hermione frowned at finding a student sitting by the window, writing diligently by the light from a lamp perched on the sill. She recognized Mthunzi, shaking his hand out between lines, face obscured by hair so tangled it may have been intended as one of those Caribbean hair styles.
"I wanted to talk to you about a student, in private," Hermione said to Snape when she noticed his questioning glance.
Snape diverted over to the window and, without ceremony, slid the parchment out from under his detainee's hands, examined it, and stuffed it back in place, crinkling it. "Two more formulas and you are finished for now."
The boy positively glowed at this news, white teeth well displayed, prompting a dark look from Snape who said, "But if I catch you dueling one more time . . . "
"But, I made sure this time it was someone two years head of me," the rhythmic yet mousey voice came back.
"I don't care if I catch you dueling one of the Seventh-Year Prefects, I will send you home."
Mthunzi frowned expressively and bent back to his task. Snape shook his head. And as the boy handed him his parchment, Snape gave him a searingly stern glare that sent him scurrying out of the office.
After the door closed, Snape spent a moment checking the parchment. "He'll be school champion by the end of the year," Snape muttered, dropping the lines into the bin beside the desk.
Hermione grinned faintly. "And that's a problem?"
Snape took a seat and said, "Since he isn't in Slytherin, that is most a definitely a problem." He pushed the things directly in front of him aside to make room to steeple his hands. "You were saying something about a student . . . ?"
Hermione began pulling the desk over, only to run into the straight backed chair Snape hovered over from the other wall. She dropped the desk with a clunk, and took the chair, unable to find a place for her hands. "It's about Harry, actually." And with that her stomach flipped strangely.
She waited, but Snape gave no reaction to her statement. "Is he all right?" she asked.
Snape ran a rather complex privacy spell Hermione had never managed to get right, and returned his wand to his pocket. She hoped that meant he was going to say something, but he remained quiet, studying his fingers.
Finally, Snape said, "Harry is not well."
Hermione dropped her head. Even though it felt twice as heavy as usual, she lifted it again. "He didn't seem quite himself. Prison seems to have . . . I don't know . . ."
Snape explained, "It wasn't prison exactly. It was close exposure to Voldemort's servants. Harry's connection to them continues to deepen." His eyes moved as if he read something out of the air. "And I fear . . ." He stopped, breathed deeply. Starting again, he said, "Harry disposed of Voldemort's power in the Dark Plane. And he keeps . . . crossing . . . through that place."
Hermione's chest froze from the inside out. "You think he's picking up more of Voldemort?" The thought made the rest of her mind seize up, helpless.
Snape's gaze was dangerously level. "I'm only informing you of my suspicions because I knew once you suspected something you would not let it drop. That, and, once properly informed, I trust you will tell no one else," he said, sustaining the "S". He added, "I also expect that you can assist with him."
"Doing what?" she blurted, too discombobulated to imagine anything at all useful.
"My research into possible solutions has turned up nothing that does not entail additional extreme risk, to all involved. I would appreciate assistance with said research. I can give you a list of sources I have not yet checked or that deserve a second reading." Snape rubbed his hair back, appearing exhausted. His voice lowered to almost inaudible. "My main new concern right now is that Harry does not appear to be fighting this other self any longer."
"The Muggles have treatments for that."
"It's not like that." Snape waved his hand dismissively. "Perhaps just as well he is psychologically sound as far as I can discern." Once he had started talking, Snape seemed in need in of fully unburdening himself. He gazed pointedly at Hermione and said, "Just so you understand the situation . . . I am going to inform Harry that we spoke of this. My primary goal right now is to remain steadfastly on his side, at all costs. I hope you will do the same. I will be easier for you, since you always have been."
Hermione gathered her scattered thoughts long enough to say, "But . . . you leave him home alone with Candide?"
Snape pushed to his feet. "Harry isn't dangerous. He just isn't himself. And the self that isn't him isn't one I particularly want to see more of."
"I would say not," Hermione blurted. She glanced around the room, finding it alien. Nothing was in the right place: the papers on the desk, the lamp on the window ledge, the desk abandoned a few feet away.
Snape was speaking. "Whenever you see Harry, try to remind him what he used to be. How he used to think. What he valued. Previously, he was incorruptible. That core of him seems to be smothered of late. It takes a lot with it when it goes."
Hermione sat rigid, watching him speak, observing everything from outside herself. She remembered the rose garden, how distant Harry became without warning and even how differently he moved. "I'll do that." She swallowed hard. "I told him I'd come for a visit. I was going to bring Vishnu along."
Snape nodded. "Good. Do try not to look as panicked as you do now. That won't do," he criticized. "Harry is still Harry." He crossed his arms and huffed. "But we are losing him, I fear. Something will need to be done. I just have no idea right now what in Merlin's Realm it may be."
Hermione's thoughts found a landing spot. "Do you know what spell he used to cut Voldemort's magic out of Gilderoy Lockhart? Did you see it?"
Snape nodded. "Harry begged me, in fact, to let him use that spell on himself when he realized what he was, realized that he was the last vessel for the Dark Lord. I would not allow him to attempt it."
Hermione swallowed hard again, wondering if that was the right decision now.
Snape answered her unvoiced question, saying, "In the first place, I could not imagine it would succeed, given that he would have to execute it on himself, using magic to remove his own magic, while simultaneously needing that magic to complete the spell. In the second place, failure would have been catastrophic, like the spells Riddle used to cut himself up to achieve immortality. The ones that made him as truly evil as he was. The risk was too great, given the powers Harry already had then, let alone the ones he has now."
Snape leaned back against his desk, deflated. "I was not intending to tell you so much all at once. I did not expect you to notice for a while yet. That concerns me too."
Hermione wanted to reassure him."I could have excused it on a lot of things. But he admitted he wasn't doing well when I asked."
Snape rose up at this. "That's reassuring. Do let me know when he begins to deny to you that anything at all is wrong."
"I will. I definitely will." She stood and glanced sadly around the office again, wishing she did not know what she did and knowing it would be tied to this place from now on. "Do you think Harry would be better off back in his apprenticeship, or not?" she asked.
"I think he would be better off," Snape replied, sorting through the paperwork stacked on his desk. "For one thing it would occupy him. He has been using his copious spare time to get into trouble, doing things outside his purview best left to someone else."
"That sounds like Harry," Hermione said.
- 888 -
Ginny held fast to her broomstick when a gust came up, billowing her cloak like a sail and trying to spin her around upside down. Beneath her, a low fog smeared the lights of a town. Chains of twin eyes of white and red snaked along a major roadway. Away from the city lights, the land sank away into distant blackness, scattered with houselights like outposts.
Every night that week had been a late one. Tonight Ginny had been sent off to chase down a missing shipment of wizard ink. She could easily have Apparated to the Burrow, but needed the time alone with nothing to think about after a week of too much to think about. Even now as she steered down toward the field behind her parents' house, she wished the flight had been longer.
Broom propped on her shoulder, Ginny trudged over the winter-beaten meadow toward the warm lights of the kitchen. She was just passing by the long shadow of the shed when she heard voices near the tree-line, heated but lowered to a stage whisper.
Ginny approached the voices, using the shed as a shield from view. She peeked around and recognized her father by the wispy hair standing up from his head. He spoke forcefully with someone who, at the moment, was looking away and down.
Mr. Weasley was saying, "You will not come here unannounced, henceforth."
"And you think Mum won't notice if I'm missing for Sunday dinner?" the other figure said, giving away that it was Percy. He turned to face Mr. Weasley, which made the spare light catch in his hair, igniting it.
Mr. Weasley poked Percy in the chest. "You may come for Sunday dinners, but that is it. If I catch you here any other time, or hear of you visiting, you will answer for it."
"Right," Percy said, sounding bored. "All proper and everything all of a sudden. When I wanted rules around here, there was no chance of it."
"We aren't discussing the past . . . we are discussing the present," Mr. Weasley said. "Molly wouldn't hear of my banning you from this house outright, but I've a mind to."
In the muddy light, Ginny could not discern Percy's hands clearly. She slipped her wand out of her pocket and held it at ready. Percy's posture spoke of grave anger as he faced off with his father, and it seemed reasonable that he may snap and try something. Ginny half-wished he would.
"This family isn't much to brag about, really," Percy said. "Something about everyone's simpering attitude . . . really drags one back from true success."
"Then restricting your visits should be easy, in that case," Arthur stated crisply. Ginny smirked from her hiding place. She considered tossing something invisible, and well-deserved, at her brother, but decided that playing impromptu guard was far more important. She next wondered that Percy had come alone, then felt a chill despite her heavy robes that maybe he had not. She checked over her shoulder frequently while the argument went on.
"Do you intend to toss me out of the house if I happen to forget and drop in for tea? It'd be amusing to watch the attempt," Percy scoffed.
"Don't try me, Percy."
"Or you'll toss me out on my ear? Oh, but we can't have any scandal can we? Of course not. This is a proper sort of family, not one to make trouble, or perhaps, horror of horrors, make a bit of money."
Ginny imagined that her father now held a wand in his hand, but it was difficult to tell for certain. She gripped hers tighter.
"You may leave now on your own, or I will send you off. Your choice." Her father sounded more serious than Ginny had ever heard him, but he also sounded regretful, which really took the power out of it.
"Fine," Percy said sounding like his lips were too tight to really speak, and Disapparated.
Ginny's shoulders fell, but then she came to herself and ran the barrier status spells on the lawn, just in case Percy had brought someone with him inside the barriers. The trees sparkling drew Mr. Weasley's aim that way and he glanced around, pose tense.
"It's just me, Dad," Ginny called out as she came out from the shadows.
"Oh, Pumpkin, you startled me."
"Pumpkin?" Ginny sputtered. "You haven't called me that since I was four. Percy didn't hit you with something when I wasn't looking did he?"
Closer in, Mr. Weasley appeared strained. His voice fell low. "Don't tell your mother what you heard, if you would."
"Why not? Doesn't she need to know Percy is a first order git?"
Mr. Weasley put an arm around her shoulders and started toward the house. "She won't ever accept that, so, no. Speaking of accepting things, to what do we owe this visit?"
"I want some more of my things from my room," Ginny said. "If you think I've forgiven you for Harry, you're wrong."
He patted her shoulder and released her. "Won't be the first time."
Ginny kept her voice down as they reached the side door. "You shouldn't confront him alone, you know."
"I didn't expect to confront him at all."
Mrs. Weasley threw open the door from the inside, putting an end to the conversation. Ginny put up with a hug and insisted she just needed to ferry a trunk-full of things away. "And, um, can I borrow a trunk?"
"You may, Dear. I'm sure there's a spare in the attic." Mrs. Weasley lifted her robes to troop up the stairs. "But why don't you stay the night? It's awfully late to be towing anything by broomstick." She started up the next set, her voice echoing down the narrow opening, "The Wireless Foretellcaster said it may rain tonight."
"Doesn't he say that every night?" Ginny called up behind her, but there was no reply.
Ginny played with the flimsy bannister and waited. Mr. Weasley said, "She misses having you children around."
"We were all going to leave sometime. Don't try to make me feel guilty."
Mr. Weasley put up his hands. "I wasn't."
After a gap, Ginny said, "Really, Dad, if you need help with Percy, just send an owl or a silver bird. I'll happily help."
Mr. Weasley crossed his arms and considered her, the strained lines in his face shifting to amused. "I have an entire department of Aurors at my disposal, Pumpkin."
"Don't call me that."
"Your new living arrangements are working, it seems?" Mr. Weasley asked after another space, vaguely uncomfortable.
"I've only been there to sleep this week, and barely that," Ginny complained.
"I'm proud of you getting a better job than looking after your twin brothers' shop."
"So am I," Ginny agreed. "But don't think that doesn't mean I haven't already filled out another Auror Apprenticeship application for this year, Dad."
"I wouldn't dream of assuming that," he said airily.
Disarmed from this line of aggression, Ginny said, "Well, good," rather more lamely than she preferred. She sighed, "Where IS Mum?" and began to stomp up the stairs.
They found Mrs. Weasley beside a half emptied trunk, sitting upon a broken basket full of old Witch Weekly issues, her head bent over a photo album.
"Oh!" she said, upon seeing them there. She started to close the album, then turned back a few crackling pages. "I was just remembering when we still had all of you home." She flipped back another page, then closed the album and resumed emptying the trunk into a neat stack on the floor with a shuffling movement of her wand. "I do hope everyone can make it on Sunday."
Ginny and her father shared a frown.
Author Notes: My dream that I was going to get around to the making the edits to this chapter while visiting family for Easter was only that. Don't know what I was thinking, there.
Second, "wicket," you may not know that word in this context, but despite beta advice to the contrary I left it in. It is the perfect word, officially defined to describe exactly what I envision here, and I've seen it in use in England in this situation, albeit, mid-1990s.
Next: Chapter 43
Tonks shook her head, not in denial, but in dismay. "We have no leads on this kidnapping. It's been a month and we have nothing." She sighed again and swigged her beer. "I shouldn't be talking about it, but what the heck does it matter after this much time and money . . . the family has forked over, I don't know how much. I think the McCurdys have been lying to us about how much." Once she got rolling, she grew more animated. "And no one wants to go over there to guard the wife anymore, she's intolerable. The apprentices think we are punishing them when we send them instead."
Harry held back on his reaction. "Maybe he's happy to be away," he forced out so it sounded the jest.
"Right," Tonks said, but then laughed. "Maybe."
She drank her beer, sitting glumly. Harry made himself take a deep breath. "No idea where he is, though?"