Surpassing Danger
Chapter 65: Cornerstone (Year 7)
By Anne B. Walsh
Author Notes:
If the previous chapters have been too sappy for you, this one will put you over the top, so be warned. If, on the other hand, you're loving the happiness, this chapter should give you even more pleasure than before. Most, if not all, of the secrets will be revealed, so please, sit back and enjoy!
"I can't help you."
The noises meant nothing. Feebly, he tried to demand, to shout, to threaten, but nothing emerged except frantic, mewling cries. Scabbed, stunted hands and feet scrabbled in the air, trying to catch hold of the tall form silhouetted against the light, to keep it nearby, to stave off what must surely be coming next.
"Like I said before, this isn't the kind of door someone else can open for you." The form sighed. "I wish it didn't have to be this way, but no one forced you into what you've done. You made your own decisions. This is where they've brought you." Hinges moaned in complaint as the light narrowed down to a crack. "And most likely, this is where you're going to stay."
A moment's pause, then: "Goodbye."
The door shut softly, and it was dark.
It would be dark for a long time.
He would be alone for a long time.
Harry Potter leaned his weight wearily against the wall of the corridor, then turned at the sound of quiet applause. Framed in the doorway of one of the rooms nearby, as hale and healthy as Harry had ever seen him, stood Albus Dumbledore, his hair fading back into white from the more youthful auburn with which he had appeared in the Great Hall.
"What a remarkable young man you have grown to be, Harry," he said, his voice reverberating with both pride and pain. "Now, if only I could claim the credit for that."
The quirk in lips and scent alike made the words into a joke, and Harry laughed. "The Pack may not have been your idea, sir, but you protected us once we got started," he said, pushing himself upright. "Not perfectly, but nobody's perfect. Though I might have liked to know…" He laid his fingers against his forehead.
"That you were yourself the final Horcrux?" Dumbledore finished. "I thought for a long time about telling you that very thing, Harry, and I fear I can offer you only the most Slytherin of reasons for concealing it from you instead."
"'It worked.'" Harry nodded. "But it only worked because I had the Pack and Pride to back me up. Because we had everyone who loved us, alive and dead, backing us up. And because I made that bargain with the Founders, and we all followed through on it." He paused, thinking. "But you knew we would, didn't you, sir? When we give our word on something, we keep it. No matter what it costs."
"So you were raised, and so you have grown," agreed Dumbledore. "I look back to my folly sixteen years past and tremble. To think what might have become of you…"
"I would have been okay, I think, sir." Harry shrugged. "If Danger hadn't 'spoiled' me, I would've got used to sleeping in a cupboard and dodging Dudley and his friends, the same way we all got used to changing our looks and using different names when we went out of the Den. That's just how kids are. Whatever's around them is normal, and they usually don't bother much with wondering why." He laughed again. "It would've been an awfully big shock to learn about Hogwarts, though!"
"Indeed, and an even greater one to discover that you were famous far and wide, to say nothing of the evil wizard who wanted to kill you." Dumbledore shook his head. "I had worried that growing up with that knowledge might twist your mind, turn you either fearful or prideful." He chuckled. "Though in a sense, the latter did come to pass."
Harry groaned at the pun. "Will you tell them I'll miss them, sir?" he asked, looking away. "When we're done here, I mean. I didn't have much of a chance."
"Now why, Harry, would you assume I could tell them anything?" Dumbledore's voice was gently teasing.
"Because I saw who you came in with." Harry glanced up to see, as he'd expected, Dumbledore's eyes a-twinkle behind the half-moon spectacles. "Moony and Danger's daughter, and mine and Ginny's, and Professor Snape. And none of them are dead…"
"Hello, Sev."
Severus Snape blinked away the afterimages of the brilliant light which had swept the Great Hall. He still stood in the same place he had been, but the rest of the occupants of the enormous room were gone, save one. A few paces distant, laughter warming her eyes, stood Lily Evans, her hands outstretched to him.
"Where are we?" asked Severus, after swallowing once or twice to try and be sure that his voice would not betray him (it trembled slightly, but neither skipped unexpectedly high nor cut out altogether in the middle of a word).
"In a place between." Lily lifted her face to the stars studding the ceiling above them. "Where on this night, despite everything, those who love can meet on equal ground." Bringing her eyes back to his, she smiled sadly. "And there was love between us, wasn't there? Perhaps not the kind the poets sing about, but there was still love."
"How can you say that?" The anger and pleading Severus had expected from this meeting was fast turning to bafflement. "I betrayed you. I turned away from everything that would have made me a fit companion for you, and served the man who killed you. I brought him the very prophecy that led him to your doorstep!"
"Yes, you did." Lily's voice was soft and level, without a trace of accusation. "And what did you do after that, Severus?"
"After that?" Severus snorted in chill amusement at his own expense. "I repented and wept bitter tears, and tried frantically to redeem my mistake, but no such chance was given to me. You died the death of a heroine, protecting your son, and I…" He trailed off, at a loss for once to find words.
"Yes, and you." Now the much-loved tones began to turn edged, as Lily folded her arms across her chest. "Why don't I tell you what you did, since you don't seem able to articulate it very well yourself? You moped, Severus."
"I beg your pardon," Severus snapped, stung. "I do not mope."
"And what else would you call closing yourself off from the world in your moldy old dungeon and making yourself unpleasant to everyone you couldn't avoid for precisely sixteen years?" Lily fired back. "Unless you'd rather I said you brooded. Does brooding sound better than moping?"
"Yes. Thank you." Severus tried to maintain a straight face, but Lily's eyes were dancing once more, and after a very few moments he was unable to keep his composure any longer. He began to laugh, weakly at first, then with more strength as the full absurdity of the situation struck him, and somewhere in the middle of their shared laughter he and Lily met in the center of the Great Hall, clasping hands as they had when they were children.
"Oh, Severus." Lily blinked away a tear of merriment and smiled up at him. "I do love you, but you frustrate me so incredibly sometimes. I know how it hurt you when I died, and how you've blamed and hated and punished yourself. But that's not what I wanted for you, Sev, not what I ever wanted, and not what I want now. Are you finally ready to listen to me?"
"I can try."
"I want you to forgive yourself." Lily squeezed his hand tightly, forestalling his mechanical protest. "No, hear me out first. I know all the arguments, how no amount of forgiveness changes what happened, how you'd feel disloyal or wrong or like you were forgetting me. But I'm standing here, Severus, and I'm telling you that it hurts me to see you hurting. Hatred, grudges, blame, none of them matter where I am now, but friendship and love still do. Please, for my sake if nothing else, try to forgive yourself."
"It was never my own forgiveness I needed." Severus looked away. "Never that of anyone living."
"Whose, then? Mine?" Lily's other hand rose to touch his cheek, bringing his head back around so that he faced her again. "It's yours. It always has been. And you would have known that, if you'd thought about it from my point of view. But that's never been easy for you, has it? To set aside how you think about things, and try to see them through someone else's eyes. Can you believe me when I tell you that I've forgiven you long since, and that I want you to do the same for yourself?" Her smile held a trace of wickedness. "You did say I had that right."
"I most certainly—" Severus stopped short, remembering a moment in his workroom at Malfoy Manor, a face and form both like and unlike the one before him now, a silvery voice which moved effortlessly from intoning lines of prophecy to asking an impossible question. "Did," he finished with a sigh. "I did say that. Though I never thought I would be held to it!"
"I know you didn't." Lily chuckled. "But that doesn't change your answer. Are you going to stand by it?"
Severus scowled. "What else can I do?"
"Are you asking?" Lily tilted her head to one side. "Because I do have one other suggestion. Not an order, not a command. Just an answer to a question I know you must be asking yourself." She laid her fingers for a moment on his left forearm, where the Dark Mark no longer resided. "What you're going to do now that it's all over. Now that you've survived the war, which I know is something you never expected."
"How did you know th—" Severus pulled his unruly tongue to a halt once more as Lily's wicked smile resurfaced. "Never mind. Forget I asked. I'm listening."
"Then, go." Lily waved her hand towards the door of the Great Hall, towards the great oak doors leading to the outside world. "Right now, right away, or as soon as we're finished here. Before anyone looks for you, before they know for sure what's happened to you, even whether you lived or died." She chuckled again. "Every good battle should have at least one mystery."
"Where should I go?" Severus found himself smiling as well, drawn into the spirit of the game. "To the Continent, to America or Canada, Australia or the wilds of Africa?"
"Yes. To all of them. Though not all at once, obviously." Lily caught his other hand in hers, cradling them between their two bodies. "Go out and explore the world, Severus. Do all the things we promised each other we'd do together someday. See the sights. Meet the people. Enjoy each day, for as long as you have, to the fullest extent you can. That's what I want for you, what I always have wanted. That you live every day you're your own sake, Sev, and for mine." For the first time, her glorious eyes held a trace of sadness. "I only wish I could go with you."
"But you will be with me." Gently, Severus drew their clasped hands towards him, and laid them against his heart. "Always."
Lily laughed in wonder and threw her arms around him, and for one eternal moment they embraced beneath the stars. Then Severus Snape awakened, lying at the base of the empty tomb which stood by the Hogwarts lake, his cheek still warm from Lily's farewell kiss and her whisper humming in his ear.
"I hear Sarajevo is lovely in the springtime."
Getting to his feet, his heart lighter than he could ever recall its being before, he started on his way. Only once he paused, at the shattered remains of the gates, to look back at the towers of Hogwarts and think of those who dwelt within.
"Take care of yourselves," he murmured. "Goodbye."
Crossing into the world beyond, he turned in place and was gone.
"Well-spotted, Harry." Dumbledore beamed as though Harry had answered a question correctly in class. "Now, do you know why?"
"Probably for the same reason we played out our little masquerade in the Forest. To keep Voldemort guessing." Harry jerked his thumb at the door behind which the grotesque figure which had once been the most feared wizard in a hundred years lay and shivered in the darkness. "Like we discussed that one time, he judged us by himself, and the Death Eaters would've fallen to pieces without him. So he thought we'd do the same without you, and by the time he realized he was wrong, if he ever did, we already had him down by sixteen goals."
"That is one reason, yes." Dumbledore nodded. "Another was that Aletha told you no more nor less than the truth that night in June. My magic was greatly taxed by helping your brother to break free from his captivity, and my health had been none too good for some months before that. Even with good Healing, I had only a short time left to live. But I had a great desire, childish as it might be, to see your triumph with my own eyes. And if I could discomfit our mutual enemy by appearing to return from the dead, thus playing on his fears and weaknesses, so much the better. So your un-godmother, with magic borrowed from the castle as well as some donated by Fawkes, worked on me a variation of a certain runic spell." He smiled. "You may recall it from your third year."
Harry laughed aloud. "Wherever Malfoy is these days, he must be steamed," he said. "Everything he tried to use against us keeps coming back to help us!"
"And you will help to perpetrate what he would have considered the ultimate sacrilege," Dumbledore agreed. "The installment in his home of a motley crew of ruffians, bent on further eroding the walls between the Muggle and magical worlds rather than building them higher, and on finding a balance of dignity and fun, ritual and free spirit, past and present and future."
"I suppose I will help, somehow." Harry sighed, his high spirits dissipating. "Even if I can't exactly be there. Maybe Dad and Mum can teach me how to keep an eye on things…"
Sirius lowered the arm he'd flung up to try to shield his face from the light (it hadn't helped) and looked around. He was still hand-linked with Aletha, and still standing in the Great Hall, but now only one other person was present—
Well, two. Strictly speaking.
"And what the hell do you want?" he demanded of James Potter, packing as much exaggerated annoyance into his voice as possible. "Haven't you played around with my life enough yet?"
"Never." James imbued the word with an overly posh drawl, making Marcus, riding in the carrier on his back, clap his hands and laugh. "As for what I want, we're waiting on the decision from the big shots for that one." He nodded towards the small antechamber to his right, from which the sound of disputative voices could now be heard. "And I wasn't supposed to be here alone—"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," said Lily's exasperated voice as the light of the candles overhead took shape beside James and solidified into her form, hands already on her hips. "This may be hard for you to believe, James Tiberius, but I occasionally have something to do which does not concern you…"
"What was it Andy said to Meghan on our way in here?" Aletha murmured to Sirius as their friends embarked on an amiable session of bickering. "'Death is only a doorway', wasn't it?"
"'It changes where you are, not who.'" Sirius shook his head. "Truer words. Now if they'd just get around to telling us what's going on, I'd be a lot happier."
"Whatever it is, it involves…" Aletha frowned, staring intently at the half-closed door of the antechamber. "Alex, and that must be his wife, and the Fates. All three of them."
"Not a combination designed to strike confidence into the heart," Sirius said a moment before the door swung open wide.
"…highly irregular," said Brenna Ravenclaw's voice stridently, as that witch exited the room a few steps ahead of her sisters. "Not to mention what kind of precedent it's setting."
"But they have good points as well," said Sophia, waving her hand towards Alex and Anne, who had followed them from the room. "And this situation isn't precisely a usual one."
Margaret sighed. "None of them are, are they? So." She nodded once to James and Lily, then started across the expanse of floor towards Sirius and Aletha, as Alex escorted Anne out through a side entrance, tossing a wave towards the Blacks before he shut the door behind himself. "We'll leave it up to them."
"Up to us?" muttered Sirius. "That's never good."
Aletha favored him with a withering look. "Stop being defeatist."
"I'm not, I'm being realistic—" Sirius shut his mouth firmly as the three younger Ravenclaw women stopped directly in front of them.
"You have fought faithfully through this time of trial, and weathered many ordeals, both separately and together," said Brenna in careful, ritual tones. "And still, here you stand before us, your oaths unbroken and your aims achieved."
"From those who have much to give, much is demanded," Sophia took over. "It seems fitting that those who meet the demands with honor should have much given back to them."
"And since your Heir and mine gave up her powers at our demand, to save lives and further your cause, it has been argued—very movingly, I think—that an heir should be restored to you." Margaret smiled a little. "If you want him."
"If we want—" Sirius felt Aletha's hand tighten on his an instant before the answer came to him as well. "But I thought you couldn't—that there wasn't any way—"
"There are a great many technicalities involved, but it comes down to the same thing." Sophia held up a finger. "In this one case, we can."
"But at what price?" Aletha's voice held equal parts longing and fear, a combination Sirius had no trouble understanding. The story Harry had told of his experience at the Department of Mysteries kept coming to mind, all the more easily when James and Lily were standing only a little ways distant, the latter hiding behind her streaming hair for Marcus to find her. "We were told, at the time, that our friends would care for our son as we had cared for theirs. Is that bargain now at an end?"
"It is, but that has no bearing on this decision." Margaret's face was carefully blank of all emotion. "Whatever you decide in this instance will change no other price which has been paid tonight."
"Some lives end, others begin." Brenna's eyes flashed with a brief instant of sorrow. "It is how things must be, in this world we watch over."
Sirius allowed his first wave of worry and grief to rise, crest, then subside, and tapped his little finger against the back of Aletha's hand to ask her opinion, though he knew before she sent it her answer of two quick squeezes. "We want him," he said, dropping Aletha's hand so that she could hold out her arms. "Chuck him over here."
Lily beamed and scooped Marcus out of his carrier, zooming him in circles as though he were riding an invisible broomstick, then fetching up beside Aletha, into whose eager grasp she ceremoniously lowered him. James followed a pace or two behind, absently removing the no-longer-needed carrier, and Sirius seized the opportunity to beckon his friend aside. "Come on, Prongs, give me a hint," he said, dropping his voice below the level where the women could hear it. "What the hell's going on here?"
"You ought to know better than that, Padfoot." James tossed the baby carrier into the air, where it vanished before it could collide with any of the candles floating overhead. "What did McGonagall tell you about trying to cheat off me back in third year?"
"You mean that thing about at least picking somebody who had an outside possibility of knowing the right answer?"
James winced. "Not actually the time I was referring to, but sure, we'll go with that one. They don't tell us everything, you know."
"No, I didn't, but now I do. And what time did you mean, then?"
"I was thinking of the time she told you cheap tricks designed to fool Muggles wouldn't get anywhere with her." James's eyes were studiously fixed on Marcus as he nestled into Aletha's arms, exploring her face with curious fingers and giggling helplessly as she pretended to eat his hand. "And did you know she's only a little bit older than Voldemort? Whole lot smarter, though…"
About to demand what Voldemort's age had to do with anything, Sirius stopped, as certain pieces of James's artless conversation rearranged themselves to shed a blinding new light on what he'd seen only moments before. "No. No way. Merlin's b—irthday cake," he finished just in time, remembering that he would now have to confine himself to innocuous cursewords for another twelve years or so.
And possibly longer than that, depending on what everyone else gets up to.
"Merlin's birthday cake?" repeated James, snickering. "Did they really fall for that?"
"Long enough that I could claim their friends taught them anything else." Sirius exhaled slowly. "This is going to be one hell of a new world we're building here."
"There's nobody I'd rather trust it to." James clapped Sirius on the shoulder, and the friends exchanged one last, rib-cracking hug. "Take care of yourself, Padfoot."
"You too, Prongs." Sirius stepped back, towards his wife and son, as Lily and Aletha exchanged a kiss and parted ways. "G'bye."
"Yes, as to James and Lily—" Dumbledore glanced towards the front door of the house. "But if you will excuse me, Harry."
"Of course, sir, but—" Harry broke off as the sound of pounding footsteps reached his ears, and the door flew open, admitting the two people he'd been half-expecting from the first. His mother reached him first, but his father was only a step behind, and their arms went around him as though they would never let him go.
"You've been so brave," Lily whispered to him, laughing through her tears. "Such a perfect little Gryffindor. Or should that be big Gryffindor now?" she finished with a smile, reaching up to lay a hand on Harry's messy black hair and one on James's, her two palms resting precisely the same distance above the ground. "I hoped and hoped you wouldn't inherit my height…"
"No, he got your temperament instead." James leaned over to kiss Lily's hair. "Fire-eater. Not literally, though," he added quickly. "No hidden Heirs anywhere in your background, right?"
"Purest Muggle, through and through. Right up until me. And then you." Lily went to her tiptoes to kiss Harry on the cheek. "Harry James Potter. My half-blood prince, if not the Half-Blood Prince. Aletha did tell you who he was?"
Harry shook his head. "He told us himself. Right before he left to be a full-time spy, he asked for that Potions text back, if we survived the war. I gave it to him yesterday, so he's got it now, wherever he is."
"Observe that smile, Harry." James pointed to Lily, who was indeed smirking ever so faintly. "That is a dangerous type of smile. It signifies that she knows something, and that she has absolutely no intention of ever telling us poor slobs anything about it. Though given who we're talking about, I'm pretty sure I don't want to know in any case."
"He isn't so bad," Harry objected. "I mean, I wouldn't want to have him over for Christmas dinner or anything, but he was on our side, even if he wasn't always nice about it, and he did save Meghan's life. Besides, it was really kind of childish the way he was always trying to get a rise out of anyone he didn't like. As long as you could keep your sense of humor about it, and remember to be the adult in the situation, you could handle him…" He trailed off, suddenly aware of a stunned look being bestowed upon him from a pair of hazel eyes. "What?"
"Are you absolutely positive that blood-bond with Moony only went as far as the locket?" James ran his fingers through his hair in bemusement. "Except that wasn't even him talking. He hated Snape as much as the rest of us. He just had to be more careful about it, because Snape had dirt on him. Where you learned to be so, so, so sensible, and reasonable, and grown-up…"
"Letha," said Lily and Harry at the same moment, glanced at each other in surprise, then burst out laughing. James joined in, tapping the side of his head ruefully, before scooping them both into another tight hug.
Harry closed his eyes, willing his heart to calm. It was always meant to happen like this, he reminded himself. Danger's very first prophecy said so. "And peace comes to the Man Who Won". I'd never have had any real peace if I'd lived—I'd just have had to keep on fighting, to live a normal life, to stay out of the spotlight, to keep from being dragged into other people's battles every third week! No, this was the right way. The only way.
All the same, he couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like to wage that particular war, with his Pack and his Pride fighting alongside him as they always had.
It would have been exhausting, and maddening, and ridiculous. But it would have been an awful lot of fun sometimes, too…
"All right, enough self-indulgence." Lily detached herself carefully from the hug, James following her lead, and the Potters seated themselves on the floor, close enough to touch, although they didn't. "Harry, you do still have one choice left to make. Where you want to go now."
"That oath you swore, because you meant it and you've kept it, gives you an interesting possibility," James took over seamlessly. "Moony took advantage of it already, while he was temporarily dead. So'd Dumbledore, though I still say that was cheating."
"Since it was cheating for us, why do you care?" Lily produced a dainty wand from up her sleeve, outlining a square in front of her, then filling it with color. "But before you decide anything, Harry love, you need to watch what happened. Carefully." Her eyes crinkled at the corners. "I have to say, your Ginny is a young lady after my own heart…"
Hermione Granger-Lupin sat up with a gasp. She was back in her body, back in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and her Pack and Pride lay around her in the circle where they'd battled Voldemort. Of the Dark Lord himself there was no sign, though she could see and smell shattered stone and scorched wood here and there around the Hall (clearly the witches and wizards who had witnessed the battle had been forced to direct some of the excess energies into the walls and ceiling). Eleven Marauders and Warriors, including herself, were starting to stir, taking deep breaths, sitting up.
The twelfth would never stir again.
"Harry," she whispered, looking at the familiar, messy-haired form across the circle, feeling the tears begin to flow hot and harsh into her eyes. "Oh, Harry…"
"Hey." Ron sat up beside her, putting his arm around her. "Don't cry. It's going to be okay."
"How can you say that?" Hermione shoved at his shoulder, trying to pull herself away. "When Harry's—"
"Do you trust me?" Ron interrupted.
"What kind of question is that?" Hermione scowled. "Of course I trust you."
"Then trust me now." Ron looked at her levelly, taking one of her hands in his free one. "Everything is going to be all right."
"But—" Hermione began again, when a fresh wave of gasps from the direction of the door caught her attention. Just as he had a few moments before, but this time alone and wearing his very-much-alive body, Albus Dumbledore walked unhurriedly through the astonished crowd which surrounded the circle of Pack and Pride, kneeling down beside Harry when he arrived there.
"Let us see," he said, grasping Harry's shoulder gently and starting to turn him onto his back, "what we shall see…"
"Aaah-choo!"
Dumbledore dodged neatly to one side, away from the main force of the sneeze. "God bless you, Harry," he said, producing a handkerchief.
"You know, sir, I think he does." Sitting up, Harry accepted the proffered bit of cloth and blotted his streaming eyes. "I really think he does." He glanced at Ginny over the handkerchief's folds. "Thanks, partner."
"I wasn't about to raise this baby by myself." Ginny laid a hand against her midriff, tone and demeanor nicely nonchalant, Hermione thought, for anyone who couldn't smell the ragged edges to her emotions. "So I found a way I wouldn't have to."
It was the last coherent thing which got said for quite a while.
Harry thought the first person to reach him had been Danger, but it might have been Hermione, and he didn't see a reason to try and work it out. Familiar faces, voices, scents surrounded him as the Pack satisfied themselves that he truly was alive, Padfoot's arms around him, Letha's lips against his forehead, Moony's fingers disarranging his hair, Fox's eyes shining as they clasped hands in their own personal shake. Meghan had pounced on him only a few seconds behind the Granger-Lupin sisters, and was now firmly ensconced in his lap, glowering at anyone who got too close to him. Since the rest of the crowd in the Great Hall all seemed to have the same idea as the Pack, she was doing a fair bit of glowering.
"Yes, it's over," he said again and again as new clusters of people fought their way out of the seething mass to ask him, pitching his voice to carry over the cacophonic babble of near-hysterical relief. "Voldemort's dead, for keeps this time."
"But how?" came the universal question, one Harry could hear Dumbledore answering on his own behalf with unfailing patience a short distance away. He wondered, in the back of his mind, if his Headmaster had chosen the path he had with an eye to this exact eventuality, limiting the inevitable hero-worship Harry would have to face by taking some of it on himself.
It's the sort of thing he'd do. And is doing, whether or not it was planned that way.
"It was a trick," he answered for what felt like the thousandth time, glancing over at Ginny, wrapped in her mother's arms and with her brothers surrounding her, rather like the Pack had spread out around Harry. "Muggle magic, sleight of hand. Ginny and I've been partners at it for years, and it's all about misdirection, leading your audience to what you want them to see and think, rather than what's really there. Only this time, our most important audience was Voldemort, and we couldn't warn any of you that it wasn't real without warning him as well."
"I borrowed some real magic from our friends to make it look better," Ginny added, as she'd been doing since a suspicious-eyed witch had insisted on poking Harry all over with the tip of her wand to make certain he was solid. "You saw how we were all connected together in the circle? That meant I could reach out to Neville and borrow some of his power, to make people see what they expect to see. Voldemort expected to see Harry become a ghost when he cut through that cord, so that's what he did see. It made him panic, Voldemort, I mean, and that panic meant he broke the bond between the two of them."
"And because that bond was the last thing keeping him alive, he's dead." Harry rubbed his fingers across the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. His every muscle was sore, and a large number of bruises were beginning to make themselves known, but the shooting pains he'd associated with his scar for years were conspicuous by their absence, which couldn't have suited him better. "Him and all his Death Eaters, at least all the ones he'd Marked."
"How can you be sure of that?" demanded one of the members of this latest group, a middle-aged wizard with his wand arm bandaged and in a sling. Harry wondered why the wizard hadn't gone to see the Healers, who had finished their list of critical cases some time ago and were now circulating through the Hall, dealing with the less urgent injuries, but squelched the words before they could escape him.
Probably because this way he gets sympathy from everyone around him, and he can hang about and rack up points in his own personal status game. I wonder if he sees himself on a Chocolate Frog card already, as "one of the first wizards to speak with Harry Potter after his heroic duel with Lord Voldemort"?
The image of said card brought a smile to Harry's face, a smile which lingered even after the thought of what he'd witnessed in the Forest, though it gained a twist to one side which brought a trace of uneasiness into the older wizard's scent.
There wasn't any time, while it was happening, to appreciate how horrible it was, what Voldemort did to them. To the people he supposedly trusted, and who definitely trusted him. Way, way too much. His smile twisted even further, in sympathy with his stomach, and the wizard edged away from him half a step. Which means it's going to be all the worse, once I really do get around to thinking about it…
"The Dark Mark wasn't just on the Death Eaters' bodies," he said quietly, almost to himself, and the noise of the people around him started to lessen as his voice reached them. "It was on their souls. Where their magic lived. And Voldemort needed that magic if he was going to keep himself together without his body, if he was going to confront us and have any chance of winning. So he tore their magic out of them, and shredded their souls into little tiny pieces while he was doing it, to be sure they couldn't fight back against him. Almost like the Dementor's Kiss, except it started from inside them. Everything they feared, everything they hated, everything they'd ever tried to deny in themselves, all rising up at once and driving them mad."
He noticed without surprise that Fox had taken refuge in his four-legged form and was curled into a neat ball on Danger's lap, ears flat, tail fluffed out. Meghan shuddered and tightened her grip on him, and Harry squeezed her gently in a side-hug before continuing. "I don't know if their bodies are still alive, out there in the Forest. But I do know their souls are gone, just as thoroughly as if they'd been Kissed. So I don't think they'll be making trouble any time too soon."
"Er, no," the wizard agreed weakly, glancing from side to side. "Pardon me, but I see the Healers are free now, I really should have this tended to…"
As he vanished into the swirling crowd, Luna muttered an insult under her breath in Parseltongue, or so Harry assumed. The breathy, half-growled hiss meant no more to him now than the quick finger-flicks of Pride-sign would mean to someone not a Warrior, and the loss ached even as it comforted him. His only abilities in that direction had been because of the link between him and Voldemort, he knew, so it ought to make him deliriously happy that he no longer understood the language of snakes—
But it means I'll never be able to talk to Sangre again, not directly. I'll never be able to listen to a story about what life is like in between the blades of grass, or know what a boa constrictor is thinking when it stares at a human outside its zoo exhibit.
Maybe it wasn't ever truly mine, but I'm still going to miss it now that it's gone.
He let his eyes rove back towards his Pack-parents, Padfoot whispering something in Letha's ear, Moony stroking between Fox's ears where he lay in Danger's lap. Behind them, Professors Sprout and Flitwick were splitting the crowd along precise lines so that Professor McGonagall could restore the House tables to their usual places.
Of course, I could say that about more things than one…
Danger slid her fingers through Fox's thick coat until she found his skin and mentally tapped for admittance, feeling his mind open to hers just enough for speech. Feeling better? she inquired. There's a question I'd like to ask someone, but if you still need me here—
No, I'm all right now. Fox nudged her hand with his nose, then uncoiled and flowed off her lap, turning back to renew the contact with a paw to her wrist. I'll be with Luna if you need me.
Thank God for her, Remus commented privately, as the fear he'd had so much practice at hiding shuddered along the corridors of his bond with Danger. If she hadn't been able, or willing, to go with him, to take on what he took, even more than that in some regards… The chill of fear faded, chased off by warmth and light. But then, she's not the only one.
Stop that, Danger scolded, flicking the tip of her husband's ear. I don't need to conduct this particular conversation with my face bright red, thank you very much. Come to think of it, why don't you just stay out of my personal business altogether?
Anyone who couldn't see Remus Lupin's thoughts would probably have assumed that his slow smile was caused by innocent rejoicing at the ending of the war and the survival of his family. His wife was under no such handicap, and her cheeks flamed a brilliant shade of crimson at the memory of the previous night he had called up for her perusal. That's not what I meant and you know it!
Oh really? Remus raised an eyebrow. So it's no longer your personal business just how many times you and I—
That will be quite enough, Danger snapped, slamming the link shut and shooting to her feet. Remus's soft chuckle, Sirius's barking laugh, and Aletha's rueful sigh followed her between the crowds of people now thronging the Great Hall (larger than ever now that some enterprising soul had thought to relieve the fears of the inhabitants of Sanctuary by escorting them upstairs en masse) until she emerged a few feet away from Albus Dumbledore. He had seated himself near the end of what would ordinarily have been the Slytherin table, and was recounting the story of his bespelling at the hands of "a very clever Healer" to an audience of awestruck children a little too young even to be first years.
But if they're here, either they're magical themselves or they'll be Muggles who know about magic. The more people like that who learn the truth, here and now, firsthand, the better off we'll be as we go forward into the future…
To one side, she caught a glimpse of Arthur Weasley listening to several worried-looking wizards all talking at once, Percy a step or two behind his father muttering into a DictaQuill. A small eddy in the crowd near them was briefly revealed as Crystal Huley forging determinedly towards them with Molly, Bill, and Charlie in her wake, Fleur Delacour (or was it Weasley now, Danger wondered) and Tonks a step or two behind them.
Probably trouble at the Ministry. Voldemort would be just the sort to rig up dead-man spells, to make sure that if we ever did manage to bring him down, we'd have a huge unholy mess to clean up afterwards. But if there's anyone I'd trust to deal with it, it'd be that little crew right there. Plus it will keep them too busy to get bogged down with grief over Fred until things are calm enough that they can afford it…
"…until tonight," Dumbledore's voice broke into her musings, "when a good friend of the Healer's came to my resting place and used the counterspell to awaken me. And so, here I am." He drew a wand from his pocket and conjured a bunch of flowers from the air, handing them to the little girl in the front of the group, who cuddled them to her wide-eyed. "Now, I believe this lady needs a few words with me, so if you will excuse us?"
"A good friend?" Danger asked, sitting down on the bench beside Dumbledore as the children scurried off.
"Was Severus anything else to you, in the final analysis?" Dumbledore turned to smile at her. "As you yourself once predicted, he has taken his place with honor. If also with his own inimitable flair."
"Who'd want to imitate it?" Danger held out her hand. "May I see that, please?"
"This? Of course you may." Dumbledore laid the wand across her palm. "I found it beside me when Severus awakened me. With which, I might add, he had an easier time than he thought he would. Not only was Fawkes present to help him with the awakening process, but some helpful person had already split open the stone of the tomb, relieving Severus of the necessity to perform such a powerful spell with an unfamiliar wand."
"Would that be the same helpful person who left this behind for you to use?" Danger sniffed daintily at the wand, wrinkling her nose at the bitter, snakelike musk emanating from it. "To cast whatever spells you cast that let you come walking in here in spirit-form, with my daughter in your arms—" She had to stop, to let the shiver of delight run up and down her back. "My daughter. Remus's daughter. Our little girl. I've dreamed of her for so long, and now she's real, she's here, and she's helped us save the world before she's even been born—"
Cutting herself off with a brisk headshake before she could become completely maudlin, she returned the yew wand to Dumbledore, holding it between two fingers. "I did actually have a question for you which isn't related to most of this," she said, gesturing around at the joyous madness all around them. "Did you know about the Horcrux Vivens bond the night you stopped me from killing Igor Karkaroff?"
"I cannot say I knew, but certainly I strongly suspected." Dumbledore returned the wand to his pocket, his eyes grave. "If you had killed him as you then wanted to do, in revenge for your mother's death, while you held him at your mercy…"
"That would have been murder, which would have torn my soul." Danger twisted one hand inside the other. "And it would have torn at its weakest point. The place where we're joined together, the root of our bond. We would have been ripped apart then and there, and we probably couldn't ever have healed from it, assuming either of us survived it with our sanity intact." She shivered again, for a different reason this time, and leaned over to embrace Dumbledore. "You saved us that night. All of us. Thank you."
"It was most truly my pleasure." Dumbledore returned the embrace. "Now, I have a question in my turn." He let his hand rest briefly against Danger's midriff. "What price did you pay for this? I know our mutual friends too well to think otherwise."
Danger sighed. "Don't go spreading it around, all right? We haven't even told the rest of the Pack yet. And it's not so much a price as a natural consequence. We strained the bond terribly by using it to keep Remus from going on, especially with my life running out as fast as it was. It held, it's still holding, but it's been weakened quite a lot, so we had to choose." She spread her hands wide, then brought them together, cupping a tiny volume of air between her palms. "To have it the vast majority of the time, or only one night a month. The night that matters."
"Your taming power." Dumbledore nodded. "In reality, little more than your mind and soul taking on an equal share in Remus's curse of lycanthropy, diluting its strength to the point where it can affect neither of you, and your own wild magic producing compounds similar to those of the Wolfsbane Potion to compliment it. But if the bond by which you are joined is not strong enough to withstand so violent an eruption of magic—"
"We could be torn apart, and leave him an uncontrolled werewolf and me unconscious at best, mind-blasted at worst." Danger exhaled a brief laugh. "Not that it would matter either way, since the first thing he'd do in those circumstances would be to kill me very dead. And the only way to avoid that, to be certain the bond would always be strong enough to bear that load, was to put it into abeyance all the rest of the time, the way I once did to go looking for Sirius and Letha. To be separate, alone in our own minds, as we were before this ever began. Every day and every night, except for full moons."
"And your choice?" Dumbledore asked after a few moments of silence.
Danger looked up and smiled, her eyes deeply blue. "'I would go through an uncontrolled transformation every night,'" she quoted in a warm tenor, "'if I knew I would see you in the morning.'"
"As I thought." Dumbledore turned to regard the entrance to the Great Hall, where a small commotion was arising. "Now I wonder…"
A silver streak wove its way through the crowd to coalesce into a feline form in front of the two. "Albus, if you have a moment," said the Patronus-messenger in Minerva McGonagall's worried voice. "You should see this."
"That sounds moderately ominous." Dumbledore got to his feet, moving with care. "Would you care to join me, and see what is troubling Minerva? Since you have something of a stake in the knowledge."
"Yes, and I'll want an explanation about that later on, if you'd be so kind," said Remus through Danger, attempting to administer a stern look to Dumbledore, though Danger knew she was spoiling it with her incipient fit of giggles over the helpless amusement at the vagaries of fate she could feel in the back of her husband's mind. "I'm quite sure I remember you saying something different a few years ago from what you're saying now."
"As Harry has already said himself, the object of this exercise was misdirection of the audience, and my most important audience was Voldemort." Dumbledore made his way towards the door at a leisurely pace, wizards and Muggles alike moving aside to let him pass. "Not necessarily to trick him, in this case, but to lead him to believe that we had been tricked. That we did not know the truth he had so laboriously uncovered." His scent spiked with equal parts pride and shame. "If there had been some way for me to tell you without altering your behavior, without changing the way you thought about yourself, about Harry, about the war in general…"
"Is it really worth our while to argue the point now?" Danger slipped forward to take control of her own voice. "Whatever we were or weren't told, whatever we did or didn't believe, it's brought us here, and we've won. We're together, we're free, we're alive. Yes, we'll carry some scars from it all." Inwardly, she brushed fingertips with Remus, and felt his mental kiss land softly on her cheek. "But we know how to live with scars."
"So you do." Dumbledore stepped into the entrance hall and held up his arm for Fawkes, who came soaring down from the railing of the indoor balcony to land as lightly as any owl. "So you all do."
Together, they descended the steps outdoors, crossing the lawns to join the small cluster of people gazing up at Hogwarts castle where it loomed against the starlit sky. Danger's nose twitched as a breeze blew past her, bringing her scents she knew and some she didn't, all laden with worry, chagrin, even fear. What in the world—
It'd have to be fairly drastic to have Alice Longbottom this upset, Remus murmured. And I have a feeling I may know what it is…
"We have a problem."
Startled, Harry turned to look at Moony. His Pack-father and fellow alpha was sitting very still, eyes closed, a position which usually indicated he was sharing Danger's mind more actively than usual, but the tone in which he'd spoken made his words the flat and uncompromising statement of a most unwelcome fact.
"What kind of problem?" asked Letha, turning from her murmured conversation with Ginny and Meghan. "What do you see?"
"We just finished working several feats of powerful magic in and around a castle which is more than a thousand years old." Moony had his hands planted flat against the stones on which he was sitting, as though he were trying to hold the floor in place. "And our enemy, although his ancestors were banished, still did have a viable tie to Hogwarts. Not to mention a vindictive streak broader than a Quidditch pitch." Now his eyes opened, brown swirls darting in and out of the blue as he communed silently with Danger. "What better way to ensure any victory of ours would be empty than to take advantage of the strain we've just put on Hogwarts's magic, and leave behind a spell meant to bring the castle crashing down on top of us?"
"You're kidding, right?" Padfoot glanced up at the ceiling of the Great Hall, showing as usual the star-laden sky above them. Then his eyes narrowed. "That would be a no."
Harry followed his godfather's gaze and swore under his breath. Though the night-black background made it difficult to see, a definite pattern of warping was beginning to show against the vaulting of the ceiling above them.
And we can't even do any spells to hold it together, because everyone is watching us, and people will be just as dead trampled in a panic as they will be if the roof collapses on them…
"There has to be something we can do." Meghan looked uncertainly around the small circle of Pack and Pride. "Right?"
"There is." Luna was sitting in a pose similar to Moony's, hands flat, eyes closed, head tipped back, but instead of the worry his face was showing, hers was serene, even slightly smug. "Harry and Hermione know about it already. So does Professor Dumbledore, and he'll show the rest of us. But it will mean something has to be spoken aloud, something that's been hidden for a long, long time." Her eyes opened, and focused first on Harry, then on Moony. "Are you ready?"
"I had better be, hadn't I?" Moony started to get to his feet, then stopped and braced himself. An instant later, the floor rippled lightly beneath them, sending cries of surprise and shock through the Great Hall. "That doesn't feel like we have much time to waste."
Hermione glanced over at Harry and held up a hand, first closing her fingers around her thumb, then making a proper fist with the thumb outside. What in the world is she talking about?
Harry shrugged, circling a finger in midair and landing it on his left wrist. Search me. Suppose we'll find out in a minute. Then an idea struck him, and he drew his wand and began to sketch in the air, doodling a four-cornered outline with tiny stick figures of various colors surrounding it. Do you think—
A smile of understanding broke out on Hermione's face, and she leaned up to whisper a word in Ron's ear. Harry murmured what he assumed was the same word into his wand's tip and shot a Patronus-messenger towards the grouping of Letha, Meghan, and Ginny, as the now nervous crowd moved back from the doorway, revealing Dumbledore, Neville, and Danger hurrying up the aisle between the middle House tables.
Getting to his feet, Harry spotted Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Longbottom conferring in the doorway, before each witch threw three of her own Patronus-messengers into the crowd and disappeared out the door again, to be followed by the people they'd summoned. Getting ready to try and hold things together, in case this doesn't work…
"Everyone, please, be calm," said Dumbledore, stopping in what Harry estimated was the center of the Hall and beckoning Pack and Pride forward to stand with him. "The Founders of Hogwarts foresaw this very eventuality, and left behind a magical tool with which the castle may be safely restored to itself."
He swirled his wand three times over the section of floor in front of him, and with a creak and a groan, a segment of stones about four feet square began to rise. People in the far corners of the Hall conjured boxes, or climbed onto benches and tables, in order to see better. On one side of the stone, Padfoot flicked his wand, slicing a neat triangular piece from the table beside him to create a path around the pillar. Moony, opposite him, added a graceful inward curve to his side's bench to do the same.
"You were right," Hermione murmured into Harry's ear as the six-foot-tall pillar settled into place with a rumble, echoed ominously by the walls and ceiling around them. "It's the cornerstone of Hogwarts, just like Professor Jones showed us…"
Dumbledore waved his wand in a wide circle, and a line of carving glowed golden around the top of the pillar, above the square metal plates with their inset handprints which adorned each side. "Let those with whom we share our blood," he read aloud into the thick silence, the lettering rising up into the air as he spoke so that everyone could see it, "with Consorts loved and Champions good, come lay their hands where ours have lain, to make our home itself again."
"What is it with these people and their bloody awful iambic tetrameter?" Danger asked Letha in a clearly audible stage whisper, sending ripples of nervous laughter throughout the Hall.
"I'm more interested in why they can't come up with a decent rhyme for anything," was Letha's equally audible answer, and the laughter redoubled and lost a bit of its anxious edge. Dumbledore waited patiently until his audience had calmed down, then stepped up to the closest side of the pillar, ornamented with a silver plate.
"Let the Heir and Consort of Slytherin come forward," he said, "and name the Champion who will stand beside them."
Luna came to Dumbledore's side and curtsied slightly, Fox leaping from her arms and retransforming beside her with a bow, so that it seemed part of a choreographed dance. "I call upon my friend Ginny Potter to stand with me as my Champion," proclaimed the Heir of Slytherin. "Who could be more worthy of that title than the witch who tricked my foolish cousin into defeating himself?"
Another round of laughter filled the Great Hall, and a brief spatter of applause, as Ginny stepped up and hugged first Fox, then Luna, before they arranged themselves along the side of the pillar, Luna in the center, Fox to her right, Ginny to her left. Dumbledore nodded once and stepped behind Ginny to round the corner of the pillar, facing a new sheet of stone, this one hung with a plate of black iron. "Let the Heir and Consort of Hufflepuff come forward," he said, "and name the Champion who will stand beside them."
Neville stopped partway to Dumbledore's side to kiss Meghan's hand, which gesture she received as her due, though the curtsy she made Dumbledore, like Neville's bow, was perfectly correct. "I call upon my friend Ron Weasley to stand with me as my Champion," declared the Heir of Hufflepuff. "No one would suit me better than the wizard who would rather be last with his friends than first with his enemies."
"You notice he didn't say I wasn't last," was Ron's muttered comment to Hermione, but he was grinning through the words, and Hermione only sighed and gave him a gentle shove forward, blowing a kiss after him as he hugged Meghan and shook Neville's hand. Heir, Consort, and Champion arranged themselves as before, and Dumbledore proceeded around the next corner to face a plate of bronze. "Let the Heir and Consort of Ravenclaw come forward," he said, "and name the Champion who will stand beside them."
Letha and Padfoot stepped forward, hand in hand, and made their reverence to Dumbledore, Padfoot wearing his smug Marauder's smile, Letha with an extra glow about her which made Harry wonder if Danger and Ginny might have company on the journey they would shortly be sharing. "I call upon my Pack-daughter Hermione Granger-Lupin to stand with me as my Champion," announced the Heir of Ravenclaw. "Her thirst for knowledge and her skill in learning are rivaled only by her burning desire to uphold the truth."
"She did that on purpose," Hermione grumbled under her breath to Harry, before squaring her shoulders and going forward to embrace her Pack-parents, then taking her place on Letha's left. Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling at Letha's unobtrusive pun, slid behind Hermione and smiled in satisfaction at the sight of the pillar's final side, hung with its plate of gold.
"Let the Heir and Consort of Gryffindor come forward," he said, "and name the Champion who will stand beside them."
Baffled murmuring broke out in several portions of the Hall, some of which Harry could catch, though he didn't bother listening very hard. He had a good idea what most of the onlookers would be saying.
"I know what you're thinking," he said conversationally, stepping up onto one of the benches and bringing all the other talk in the room to a halt. "You think it ought to be me." He shrugged. "Can't blame you. I thought that too, for quite a while. But then I started finding out more about what happened here at Hogwarts a thousand years ago. And it wasn't Godric Gryffindor, or his wife or children, who killed Salazar Slytherin. It was one of his students, a Muggleborn kid named William, who was fighting both to defend his friends and to avenge his parents. Decent, ordinary people, who loved each other and made a family together, and the Bloody Baron killed them just because they were in his way." He grinned. "Some things really never do change."
The rumble of laughter which filled the Hall had its ominous counterpart in the walls around him, and Harry stepped onto the table, gaining silence once again. Part of him wanted to hurry up and tell his audience the truth already, but he knew better. Things like this had their own particular order and rhythm.
Magic is belief. If they don't believe me right now, if I can't convince them what I say is true, that'll end our chances just as fast as Fox stepping out of the circle would have…
"So once I found that out, I wanted to know even more," he said, gazing back and forth across the sea of faces, moving slowly enough that he knew most of the people watching him would swear he'd looked for a moment directly at them. "I asked Hermione if she could tell me anything else about William, like what his parents did for a living. And she searched through a lot of old stories until she found the answer." He turned to look across the pillar at Hermione, to hold her mildly baffled eyes for one second. "She told me William's parents worked with clay."
Since most people will accept "my sister found it in a book" much better than "my brother heard it from a woman who's been dead a thousand years", even if the second one is true and the first one's not…
"There's a word for a person who works with clay," said Harry, watching the realization dawn on the faces of Marauders and Warriors, on the silent spectators around them. "And back then, whatever your parents did, you'd probably do too, and that's how a lot of people got their surnames. So that wizard who killed Bloody Baron Slytherin on the battlefield here at Hogwarts? Pretty good bet his whole name was William Potter. I may not know for sure if I'm descended from him by blood, but I'm proud to be today who and what he was back then. Champion of Gryffindor, in loyal service to the Heir and his Consort." He leapt down from the table to land lightly before the people he meant. "Now and always," he said, and went to one knee.
Remus Lupin, Heir of Gryffindor, and his Consort Gertrude, known as Danger, reached down together to lift their Champion to his feet, as somewhere in the rear of the Great Hall the cheering started. It only grew as the three embraced, and as they stepped forward to the golden plate, Harry on Remus's left, Danger on his right.
"Heirs at the ready," said Dumbledore softly, under the sounds of celebration. "Three—two—one—now."
Four palms pressed against four metal plates.
Once more, the Great Hall of Hogwarts filled with brilliant white light.
Author Notes:
Strange as it may seem, Harry is not making this up. Go read "Anne's Story" again. And while you're there, take a moment to note the name of Maura Gryffindor's son. Then pull out your copy of PoA and turn to the dementor attack on the train. What is Professor R. J. Lupin holding in his hand the first time we ever see him awake and aware?
Sorry about the unexpected hiatus, O readers. This is what happens when an author already undergoing a fair bit of stress gets double-teamed by a head cold and a headache of the migraine variety. But I am well again now, and I do still intend to post the second-to-last chapter of the main Dangerverse on the tenth anniversary of posting the very first one (that would be the twenty-sixth of October) and the very last chapter, Chapter 70, the Epilogue, "That They Lived", on Halloween. How does that suit everyone?
No, I haven't forgotten the bits and pieces you've all been quoting back and forth at each other on the Dangerverse Facebook group, and on my Facebook page (facebook.com/annebwalsh.page), to try and prove that Harry's the Heir. They'll all be coming around next chapter, as will the fulfillment of a certain dream from a long, long time ago…
The chapters in between this one and 70, in case you're wondering, will be titled as follows:
Chapter 66: The Lion and the Queen
Chapter 67: Hail and Farewell
Chapter 68: Let's Go Home
Chapter 69: August 8, 1998, Hogwarts
And yes, we honestly are that close to the end. Doesn't quite seem real, does it? Trust me, O readers, however strange it is for you to be reading these chapters, it's doubly and triply so for me to be writing them!
Thank you again for reading, and for staying with me for so very long. I hope I have made the journey worth it for you, and here's hoping I can take you on many more story-trips in the future! Hang in there, since we do have five more chapters to go, and don't forget to visit my website, annebwalsh.com, to read my blog Anne's Randomness, learn more about my originals, and find out how you will soon be able to buy them at a discounted price, or maybe even win them for free…