Dealing with Danger
Chapter 9: Anger and Fear (Year 3)
By Anne B. Walsh
Chapter 9: Anger and Fear
Sirius closed the door of the training room behind him, grateful now that he had returned to the Auror Office when he did. Active Aurors were given the counter-charms to the security spells at the Ministry, since they might need to be there at any time. Which meant that now, at about nine o’clock at night, he could come here, to the Auror training center, without setting off alarms.
He pointed his wand at the practice dummy in the middle of the room and worked one spell on it that wouldn’t be part of a normal training session, then walked over to it and tapped it three times to activate it. "Level three," he told it.
The dummy whirred to life, bringing its false wand into starting position. Sirius took his own stance without bothering to use any of the calming exercises he usually performed when he was about to duel. Level three was well below where he usually worked out, and he didn’t particularly want to be calm right now. Instead, he looked at the face he had cast on the dummy and let that face work him into a rage.
You double-crossing, slimy, sneaky rat-bastard, he thought, blocking the dummy’s pathetically weak strikes and striking back at it with all his magic and all his anger. I gave you your life — I stood up and asked that jury to let you live — and this is how you pay me back? Trying to kidnap my daughter? You don’t dare face me, or Letha, or Remus and Danger — you have to go after a little girl who’s not even in school yet?
"Too scared to go after someone who might fight back," he growled, blasting a good portion of the dummy’s shoulder away. "You don’t even dare show your face, you work masked, and shoot from behind. And a teenage witch chased you off with a school book! Why the hell did we ever put up with you? Why didn’t we see what you were from the beginning?"
Someone cleared their throat from the doorway. Sirius shut off the dummy and turned around, trying to keep his face from turning too red. "’Lo, Tonks," he said.
"Wotcher, Sirius." Tonks leaned against the doorframe as if too tired to stand up straight, her hair a muddy brown. "I heard about Meghan. She’ll be all right, then?"
"She should be, she wasn’t hurt, just scared, and Letha’s with her now..." Sirius frowned. "Wait a second. How did you hear about her?"
"I was looking for you, but you weren’t home. I called the Weasleys, and Molly told me you’d gone to Hogwarts. So I headed there, and Letha told me what’d happened, and that you’d gone off to the Ministry. I thought you might be here."
Sirius nodded. "Looking for me specifically, or just for us?"
"You. I found something I think you might want to see." Tonks held up a slip of parchment with a gloved hand. "I would have given it straight to Letha, but I wasn’t sure if it might be dangerous or something. I know parchment holds poison well, but I don’t know how to check for it. I wanted to run it past you first."
"Sounds like a plan." Sirius conjured gloves for himself, pulled them on, and crossed to Tonks’ side to take the parchment from her. Two or three spells confirmed that it was nothing more than it seemed, just a scrap of parchment which seemed to have been torn from a larger piece.
"It’s all right," he said, leading the way out of the training room, turning back at the last moment to remove Wormtail’s face from the practice dummy. He didn’t want to have to explain that little detail in the morning when the other apprentices showed up. "You think Letha might want to see it?"
"It was Mum’s," said Tonks quietly, running her finger along the lines of ink. "I found it in the hall, just before I found her. I forgot about it until tonight. Found it in the pocket of the robes I was wearing that day."
"May I see it?" Sirius made it a request, rather than the order he, as a full Auror, was entitled to give an apprentice. Tonks was not just an apprentice, she was his cousin, and a grieving daughter who had just found something that had belonged to her mother. He shouldn’t take it from her without asking.
Tonks handed it to him, and Sirius sat down on one of the benches in the dressing room outside the practice arena. For the first time, he read what was written on the parchment rather than treating it as a potentially dangerous object. It seemed to have been torn from the left side of a scroll or page.
I have looked over the notes of Vilias’ last few ap
Minister was not entirely well beginning around t
were noticing it near the end of this past winter, but
and Rufus Scrimgeour, on the other hand, were per
Yet the same unusual compound was found in all
is never found in a normal witch or wizard, ill or heal
from these facts — all three of the subjects were delib
and Bones suddenly, but only Vilias succumbed com
Sirius felt a prickling along the back of his neck, a shivery feeling he hadn’t experienced in years. It meant something was happening, or had happened, that he needed to pay attention to.
"You’ve looked at this?" he asked Tonks.
"Only a little." She sat down across from him. "Just enough to know that Mum wrote it. Why?"
"These words." Sirius tapped the jagged right edge of the scrap. "If we can figure out what they were supposed to be, we’ll have a better idea of what this means. I’ll be right back, I’m going to grab some parchment and a couple of quills."
"Aren’t you supposed to send the apprentice to do that?"
"The apprentice doesn’t know the password to turn off the office security charms," Sirius reminded her. "For that matter, how did you get in here without setting everything off?"
"You turned it all off when you came in."
Oh. "All right. I’ll be back in a second." Sirius hurried down the hall to the cubicles, flicking off the security charms absently as he went, and turned unerringly into his own cubicle. He scooped up quills, an ink bottle, and some spare parchment from his desk with his right hand, holding his lit wand in his left. Somewhere between battling the dummy and this new enigma Tonks had provided, his fear-fueled anger had drained out of him, leaving only interest and excitement.
This scrap of parchment was going to be important, he knew it.
xXxXx
"Important is an understatement," said Aletha, shaking her head. "How the hell did I forget? How did we all forget? Andy was working on two projects. Not just the Longbottoms, but on Vilias and Bones and Scrimgeour. And the notes on the Longbottoms were covered in potion, but the other notes were just gone. Gone so thoroughly, no one even thought to look for them."
"Tonks found this in the hall," said Sirius, tapping the small piece of parchment, which lay between them on the table. "And she remembers hearing a loud noise just after she called out. I think that might have been whoever killed Andy, Apparating out."
"And taking the notes they didn’t want us to have. Except that they dropped a piece." Aletha’s smile had a touch of the sardonic about it. "Not the most informative piece, but informative enough. This line with the letters delib. You came up with deliberate, or deliberately. All three of the subjects were deliberately... something. Put that together with unusual compound and never found in a normal witch or wizard, ill or healthy, and what do you get?"
"Poison." Sirius nodded grimly. "They were poisoned."
"And here, these top lines." Aletha pointed to them. "She seems to be saying that the reason Vilias died from it was because he hadn’t been well previously."
"That’s right, I remember Arthur noticing he wasn’t coming to work as much," Sirius recalled.
"But Bones and Scrimgeour were healthy to begin with, so it just made them ill." Aletha scowled. "It makes too much sense for my liking. This goes to work with me on Monday, I’ll give it to their primary Healers. Knowing they were deliberately poisoned might help speed their recovery."
"Unfortunately, it tells me nothing new," said Sirius. "Nothing about who might have done this, or why."
"That seems obvious enough," said Aletha. "Who would want Fudge back in power? Other than Fudge himself, of course?"
Sirius growled softly. "The man Fudge once insisted was innocent. The man who could probably still manipulate Fudge, if he had enough money."
"That’s what I think." Aletha grinned. "Good thing he doesn’t have enough money. He only has whatever he pulled out that first time."
"Remind me to thank Amy," said Sirius. "If she hadn’t thought of that, who knows what Lucius would’ve done with that money?"
"Nothing good," said Aletha quietly. "That’s all we can be sure of."
As if that weren’t enough.
xXxXx
Even Neville avoided the hospital wing for a few days after Halloween. After Meghan’s initial and understandable reaction of fear to her near-kidnapping, she progressed, in some way known only to herself, to irritability with the entire world. No one could say even the most innocuous thing to her without her snapping back at them, and it was only Madam Pomfrey’s threat to stop her lessons until her bedside manner improved that started calming her down.
The first Combat Club competition brought Meghan back to normal entirely. No one saw any reason to bar her from the club, since real wands were never used, and she could swing the false ones around as well as anyone. She was her father’s daughter, after all, and it seemed that mock violence was just what she needed to work off some of her emotions.
For purposes of play, Meghan was designated an honorary Gryffindor. Two Hufflepuffs who had thought she would be an easy "kill" found out the hard way that she was both fast on the draw and never far from Neville, who came charging in at her scream and "killed" the Hufflepuff who had just "killed" her.
The rest of the Pride also acquitted themselves well, forming a small unit of their own within the larger "army" of the combined Houses they fought for. Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were "killed," Ron and Ginny while running a mission into enemy territory, Hermione, to her chagrin, because she’d forgotten that if she could see the enemy, the enemy could see her. The "last man standing" battle was a narrow victory for Gryffindor and Ravenclaw over Slytherin and Hufflepuff.
Harry, Ron, Draco, and Ginny had a different sort of battle on their minds. Wood was being deliberately cagy about who he planned to field for the first Quidditch match, against Hufflepuff, so the three reserves were flying just as hard as the first-string team. Finally, two days before the match, Wood made his announcement. Ginny and Ron, but not Draco, would take the field.
"It’s not because you’re no good, Black," he told Draco after practice. "It’s the other way around. You’re good enough that I don’t have to season you. Weasley still freezes up if he makes a mistake. The only way to correct that is to let him play."
"He’s trying to help, but it doesn’t help," Draco said in frustration the night before the match, kicking at the leg of the bed from where he lay on the blue carpet. "And I know it’s stupid and babyish and everything, but I want to play! I want to be out there and score points for the team, not sit in the stands and watch and not be able to do anything!"
"You can’t help wanting what you want," said Hermione from the bed. "And you’re not yelling at him, or demanding he let you play. I think you’re doing right."
"Knowing it’s right doesn’t make it any easier."
"No?"
Draco grumbled. "Maybe a little."
"Good for you, then."
Draco reached up to where several brown tendrils stuck over the edge of the bed and batted at one. Hermione squeaked. "Stop that!"
"Wasn’t me," said Draco with a straight face. "Crookshanks did it."
"No, he didn’t."
"Yes, he did."
"No, he didn’t, because he isn’t even here. He’s asleep on my bed in the dormitory, so there!"
Crookshanks had returned from the Forest on Halloween alive and well but covered in burrs and scratches. The girls had petted him for hours, gently pulling the seeds from his fur, and treated his scratches with an ointment Madam Pomfrey had given them. He was still on edge, though, looking here and there vigilantly as if Wormtail might suddenly appear out of a hole in the wall and allow himself to be chased down and caught.
There had been no further sign of Wormtail, or of Lucius Malfoy, and no one could figure out how Wormtail had gotten onto Hogwarts grounds. The wards, specially designed to keep out even something as small as a rat, showed no signs of tampering, and Filch swore up and down that no one but authorized students and teachers had entered or left the grounds all day. Students were now forbidden to leave the castle after dark unless in the company of a teacher.
"Going to be stormy tomorrow," said Draco thoughtfully, squirming around until his feet were under the bed. "Lots of rain and wind, even lightning. Maybe it’s just as well I’m not flying."
"You still don’t like storms, do you?"
"No."
"I think they’re interesting."
"I know you do. You’ll probably be watching the storm as much as the match."
"There’s nothing wrong with that."
Draco groaned. "Girls," he said to the ceiling, which disdained to reply.
xXxXx
Harry looked up at the ceiling of the Great Hall, which was a morass of swirling gray. "Lovely day," he remarked to Ron.
"Worse for you than me," said Ron, taking another bite of toast. "The Snitch’ll be near impossible to see in this weather. And Diggory’s bigger than you, so he won’t get blown around near as much."
"I’ve got a good broom, and I’m good," said Harry with as much confidence as he could muster. "I’ll be fine."
"You’ve got glasses, too," said Luna from across the table.
"You’re only noticing this now?" inquired Ron.
"Glasses get all smeary in the rain. Harry might have trouble seeing through them."
"I didn’t think of that," said Harry, taking off his glasses to look at them. "She’s right."
"She’s almost always right," said Draco. "You just have to get past the obvious bits."
"I have an idea," said Hermione from down the table. "Harry, can I see your glasses?"
Harry passed them to the red-topped blur which was Ron and watched him turn to the brown-topped one which was Hermione. A few blurry movements and an "Impervius!" later, Hermione handed them back to Ron. "Try pouring something on them," she directed him. "Pumpkin juice is fine."
Ron set the glasses carefully on the table and was about to upend his goblet over them when Ginny held her hand out to stop him. "Hold on," she said, picking the glasses up and setting them on a clean plate. "Just because we don’t do the laundry is no reason to make more work for the house-elves."
"Girls," Ron muttered to Harry. "Shall I?"
"Be my guest."
Ron dumped his pumpkin juice out over Harry’s glasses. The juice flowed around the glasses as though they had a shield spell on them. Harry picked them up — they were completely dry. He put them back on and grinned down at Hermione. "You’re a lifesaver, Neenie."
"Thanks," said Hermione, her cheeks turning pink.
xXxXx
Playing Quidditch in the rain wasn’t high on Harry’s list of favorite things to do — he was soaked through, and his hands were starting to go numb — but thanks to Hermione’s spell, at least he could see. He could hear only scraps and snatches of the commentary, and didn’t bother trying to keep track of it, instead watching the game.
Fred Weasley and a Hufflepuff Beater sent a Bludger steadily back and forth between them for nearly three minutes straight, until Ginny flew past with the Quaffle and the Bludger detoured to chase her. George intercepted it and slammed it towards the Hufflepuff Keeper, allowing Ginny to score, and the Gryffindors cheered, their voices almost drowned out by a huge clap of thunder. Harry joined them, pumping his fist in the air as Ginny flew past him, then resuming his high circles, searching the pitch for any sign of a tiny, golden, winged ball.
Gryffindor scored twice more and Hufflepuff once before Harry found himself hovering near the teachers’ seats. Danger and Moony waved to him, and he waved back. After one more quick look for the Snitch, he turned back to them and opened his right hand, one finger at a time, then mimed a questioning shrug.
What’s the score?
Moony tapped himself on the chest, pointed upwards, then held up his right hand with all the fingers extended.
We’re up by fifty, Harry interpreted. He tossed a thanks in their direction, then turned his broom to keep looking. Katie had the Quaffle; she was being ganged up on by two Hufflepuff Chasers, but Alicia and Ginny were coming in at two different angles, so she’d be able to pass to one of them soon. Ron was watching the tangle anxiously, with one of the twins hovering beside him and the other flying beside Ginny.
A flash of yellow caught Harry’s eye — Diggory, flying up the field as though his broom-tail were on fire...
He must have seen the Snitch!
Harry leaned so far forward on his Nimbus he was practically lying on the handle, urging it to greater and greater speed. "Come on, come on," he whispered to it. "Come on, you can do it..."
He was catching up to Diggory, but something had changed. Something was unreal about this moment, this place, this action. His hands were still stiff with cold, his face lashed by rain, but the screams of the crowd and the roar of the wind were gone, replaced by an uncanny silence.
Harry gasped as a wave of cold worse than any he had felt before this rushed suddenly over him and into him, chilling him from the inside out. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t even think. All he could do was cling to his broom handle and try to breathe as his chest constricted, his muscles seizing up in the cold...
And then the screaming started.
xXxXx
Dripping water and a whining little-girl voice echoing in his ears, Ron sped up the pitch, headed for a motionless red-robed figure high above him. He was shivering, whether from the dementors’ chill or his pendants’ he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.
Harry passed out the last time, and that was just with one — there’s got to be a hundred of them down there. He’ll fall for sure.
I sat there and let him almost die last year. I’m not going to do it again!
He leaned forward more, silently begging his old, broken-down broomstick for more speed, his eyes fixed on Harry’s unmoving form. But no, he wasn’t unmoving — he was starting to tilt to one side with the limp motion that meant he couldn’t be conscious —
Ron altered course, swerving to one side and down, and released his broom handle with one hand. As he came level with Harry’s falling body, he caught his friend’s wrist and pulled him onto the broomstick, then carefully eased out of the steep dive and headed back towards the ground.
His landing was not all that could have been desired. A charitable person would have described it as "not very gentle" or "a little rocky," while someone less polite but more accurate would have said that Ron crashed into the middle of the Ravenclaw stands.
But a good landing is one you walk away from, he thought dizzily as the Ravenclaws helped him up and a seventh year conjured a stretcher for Harry. And a great landing is one where you can reuse the broom.
By that standard, his landing had definitely been good. The jury was still out on whether or not it had been great.
But I need a new broom anyway.
xXxXx
"Lucky you remembered what happened on the train."
"What were those things doing on the grounds anyway?"
"Are they why it got so dark, so fast?"
Dark, he remembered dark. Dark, with only the one source of light, and even that mostly blocked by the shape of a person. The screaming was coming from the person, and it was aimed at him, and he hated it. But as much as he hated it, he wanted it to keep going, because as soon as it was over, the light would be gone too, and he would be alone, trapped in the dark.
His hands quested outward, but found no confining bars, nothing but the edge of a bed, and empty space beyond. That was good, or at least he thought it was.
"Look! He’s moving... Harry? Harry, are you awake?"
"Er..." Harry gave the question serious consideration. "Yeah. I think." Another moment’s thought reminded him of how his eyes opened. He put that knowledge into use and felt a rush of relief at the light surrounding him. Once he could see it past all the people, that was. Almost the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team was standing around his bed, plus the Pride and the Pack, which added up to...
Wood’s not here, so the team minus him and me is five. Pride without me is seven, Pack-parents are four. Five, seven, twelve, sixteen.
Something about the simple addition calmed him, and the screaming and the darkness faded further into his memory. "What happened?" he asked, sitting up.
"Dementors happened," said Padfoot grimly. "Every single one of them left their posts to come feed off the match. Lucky Ron thought fast enough to fly up and catch you when you passed out — we were all so busy trying to fend them off, we might not have noticed you were falling until too late to do anything."
"I knew Quidditch was a high-injury sport, but you seem to take it to new levels, Harry," added Danger. "This is what, the third time you’ve ended up in hospital after a Quidditch game, out of a grand total of five you’ve ever played in?"
"This wasn’t actually related to the game, though," Harry objected. "Why do they do that to me?"
"We’re not sure," said Moony, moving forward a little so that Harry could see his hands, carefully placed in the signal for Later. "We’ll be looking into it."
"I’m double glad I wasn’t flying," added Draco. "One incapacitated player is enough."
Harry dredged up a little smile at this, since it was obviously meant to be humorous. "What happened with the match, then? Did they call it off, or are we going to continue later?"
Everyone suddenly found somewhere else to look. Harry’s insides chilled again, and added twisting to their repertoire. Diggory had been going after the Snitch when the dementors had showed up...
"Did we — lose?" He hated his voice. It sounded so weak, so timid, like a little kid unwilling to believe that because of one bad shot, all his best Gobstones suddenly belong to his friend.
Ginny nodded. "Diggory got the Snitch right before Madam Hooch called time-out," she said, then tried a smile which didn’t quite work. "What she called it for was actually Ron leaving the goal area, not for the dementors. She hadn’t noticed them yet. So she was about to give Hufflepuff a penalty shot."
"But they didn’t need one," said George. "They won by a hundred."
Angelina sighed at the look on Harry’s face. "This wasn’t your fault," she said, pushing him lightly on the shoulder. "You can’t help what those things do to you. And we’re not out of the running yet — if Ravenclaw beats Hufflepuff, and then we beat Ravenclaw..."
"But Ravenclaw’d have to win by a huge margin," said Alicia. "At least two hundred."
"That’s not so big," said Katie. "That’s just fifty up, and then the Snitch, we’ve done that before."
"But I don’t think Ravenclaw’s going to be thinking about our chances when they play..."
"No, but they’ll be thinking about theirs. The more points they get, the better for them. It just happens to be better for us, too."
Harry wasn’t really listening to this, it was just falling into his ears. They had lost. He had lost. He’d fallen down on the job, literally, and now Gryffindor’s chances of winning the Quidditch Cup were all but gone. Wood would never hold the Cup high as was the winning captain’s right...
"Where’s Wood, anyway?" he asked.
"Showers," said Fred. "We’ll have to check on him, make sure he hasn’t drowned... come on, Harry, don’t do this to yourself. We had to lose sometime."
"And we still have a chance," added George. "We’ll come back from this, you watch. No trouble at all."
Harry nodded a little without really paying attention to what had been said, and lay down on the bed again, closing his eyes. He didn’t want to think, because thinking would mean acknowledging what had happened. Acknowledging loss, and his own weakness... what must the team think of him, fainting when dementors came near? At least only the Pride had been there to see his collapse on the train. This one had been in front of the whole school, and there was no good trying to hide it, not when it had decided the Quidditch game.
When he next looked up, the room was clearer than it had been. The team, except for Ginny and Ron, had left. The Pack-parents were at the other end of the room talking with Madam Pomfrey and Professor Dumbledore. The Pride was spread out over the beds immediately next to Harry’s own, talking quietly or watching him.
Harry looked at Ron. "Thanks," he said, brushing two fingers against his cheek and holding out his hand.
"You’re welcome." Ron started to grasp Harry’s hand, then, remembering, brushed his own fingers against his cheek before shaking hands.
"Same thing as before?" asked Draco.
"What?"
"Did you hear the same thing this time that you did before, on the train?"
Why do you want to know that? "I don’t remember. How come?"
Draco shrugged. "No reason. Just, I heard something different this time. I wondered if you did too."
Harry made a noncommittal noise. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard the same thing. Both times had involved screaming, was all that he was sure of. He cast about for a different, safer conversational topic. "You didn’t grab my broom while you were up there, did you?" he asked Ron.
"Er, no, sorry," said Ron, looking suddenly stricken. "Harry, about your broom..."
"It blew away when you fell off," said Neville. "The wind carried it right out of the stadium. Right over to..." He squirmed a little. "To the Whomping Willow."
"My broomstick blew into the Whomping Willow?" repeated Harry numbly. This was turning out to be the worst Quidditch match ever. He knew all about the Whomping Willow from stories of Marauder days at Hogwarts. Padfoot had avoided the tree religiously during his year as a teacher, claiming it remembered him and knew exactly where to hit. "Did it... is it bad?"
Hermione picked up a small bag sitting on the floor and handed it to Harry. "I’m sorry," she said, gesturing to it. "That was all we could find."
Harry emptied the bag onto the bedspread. There was no piece there longer than his hand, and all traces of the once smooth, glossy finish of the handle and the fine sheen of the twigs had vanished. The only thing his Nimbus Two Thousand could possibly be good for now was starting a fire.
For a moment or two, he wanted to cry. It was stupid, it was just a broomstick, but it was his broomstick, the one he’d had ever since he was a first year, the one he’d flown every Quidditch game on, and now it was just a pile of kindling.
Then something came to mind. A promise, made half in jest, before the year started. A promise owing from the Pack-parents to him.
"If you need a new broom while you’re in school..."
Harry sat up a little straighter. Maybe this wasn’t such a total loss after all.
"You remember what Moony said at Diagon Alley?" he asked Draco. "When I was saying I never get anything new?"
"No — wait, yes." Draco grimaced. "You lucky little... did you know this was coming?"
"No! If I’d known, don’t you think I would have tried to catch the Snitch before the dementors showed up?"
"I’m missing something here," said Ron.
"At Diagon Alley, when I got Morpheus, Harry was complaining about how he got the old owl, and the old broomstick," Draco explained. "Moony promised him that if he needed a new broom while he was still in school, he could get the very best and newest thing."
Ron’s eyes widened. "No. No way. You’re not getting..."
Harry nodded. "If they live up to it, I am."
"Can I have a go?"
"Of course. Once I get it. Probably for Christmas, we don’t have a game until after then, and I can ride a school broom for practice."
"Maybe we should put a seat belt on it," said Draco. "Just in case the dementors crash the next match too."
Harry picked up the longest piece of his Nimbus and hit Draco on the head with it. "Try it. Just try it. I’ll hex you so hard you can’t even walk."
"I’ll hex you back so you can’t sit down."
"I’ll hex you back so you can’t eat."
"I’ll hex you back so you can’t see."
"I’ll hex you both so you can’t talk if you don’t stop it!" snapped Hermione from the next bed over.
But Draco had a point, Harry thought. What if the dementors did come to the next Quidditch match? What if they came onto the grounds at some other time? He needed some way to defend himself against them, something he could do to ward them off, or keep himself protected from their effects.
He knew that the only charm effective against them was called a Patronus, and that it was tricky, advanced magic. He knew full well that Letha could do one — the story of the day she had chased one away from Padfoot when it was just about to Kiss him was standard den-night material — and he assumed Moony could as well, since he had chased out the one which had entered their compartment on the Hogwarts Express. He didn’t know about Padfoot or Danger.
He also didn’t know what a Patronus really looked like, other than silvery and some kind of animal, or how to cast one. Was it the spell itself which was complicated, or was it just that it required so much power and concentration that it would be hard for a young wizard or witch to do?
I can at least try. Anything’s better than just sitting there and letting them knock me flat on my arse.
I have to be mad. I’ve got classes, Quidditch, Combat Club, Animagus training, and now I want to add something else?
But this is important. I need it. What if this happens again?
I’ll ask Moony about it tomorrow.
xXxXx
"You want to learn to do a Patronus?" Moony repeated. "I suppose it’s not a bad idea, but it’s very difficult, Harry. You might not be able to get the hang of it for a long time. And even if you do, it’s draining. Unless you can cast a corporeal Patronus — and most wizards can’t — you have to keep feeding it energy to keep it alive."
"Big word," said Harry. "Corp... something."
"Corporeal? Bodily, having a body. A corporeal Patronus is more than mist or vapor, it’s a shape, detached from the wizard or witch who cast it. It is the most advanced stage of the spell."
"Can you do one?"
"Yes."
"Can I see?"
"If you like." Moony drew his wand. "Expecto Patronum!"
Harry watched as silver mist fountained from the wand and formed itself into a life-sized silver wolf, which frisked once around the room, then sat down at Moony’s feet and wagged its tail before fading away. "Would mine be a wolf?" he asked.
"I don’t know. It’s different for everyone, you see, depending on what or whom you see as protecting you. Sirius’ was a dog when he was a young man, and even through our first years as the Pack, but these days it’s a winged horse, and Aletha’s is the dog."
"Is yours a wolf for Danger, then?"
"You’re not to repeat this, but yes."
Harry grinned to see Moony’s embarrassed flush. "I won’t. Is hers a lion?"
"It should be, if the pattern holds true. She’s never had occasion to try one out, and I’d rather she not. She’s never been easy with wand-using magic."
"Can I try it?" Harry drew his own wand.
"The Patronus? No, Harry, not right now. I don’t have time today to show you how to do it properly — not that it’s hard, but I’d rather teach you right the first time. Spells improperly used can backfire and have all kinds of bad effects. Also, you’ll need to be sure you’re not under any spells that might interfere."
"Under any spells? You mean, spells someone else put on me?"
"Yes."
"Why would someone else put a spell on me?"
"Maybe because they wanted to keep track of you?"
"Keep track... do you have a spell on me?"
"Yes. Or rather, Danger has a spell on you. All eight of you."
"What for?"
Moony gave him a penetrating look. "Considering your past history, we wanted to be absolutely sure you wouldn’t try any of the Animagus spells on your own. The spell lets us keep track of your progress magically, without interfering with any of your own magic. So it shouldn’t get in the way of you learning to do a Patronus, but you always need to ask around before you learn something new and powerful, just in case."
"Just in case somebody’s spying on me," muttered Harry.
"Nobody’s spying on you, Harry. The spell works below your conscious level, so there’s no way we could tap into any of your thoughts. It would only alert us if you tried magic you weren’t supposed to."
Harry still didn’t like it, but he had to admit, the Pride did have a history of getting into places they weren’t supposed to be. So far, at least, they always got out again, but that might not last. "What’s the spell?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Just so I can tell Hermione. She’ll want to know all about it."
Moony chuckled. "She does like to know things. The incantation is actually sex-linked, so it had to be cast separately on the boys and the girls. Expositium tiro for the boys, and tira for the girls. You can tell her that."
"Expositium ira?" Harry repeated.
"No, tira. Ira would be something completely different..." Moony trailed off. Apparently he’d just had a riveting thought. Then he came back to the moment with a little shake of his head. "Speaking of Animagus, how are you all coming?"
"I really think we might be done this time," said Harry. "Neville found the spell to give his form its magical properties at den-night, and everyone else was already finished."
Moony raised an eyebrow, and Harry suddenly realized he’d said more than he meant to.
Did I just give away about the Hogwarts Den?
But all Moony said was, "I’ll arrange for a meeting Monday evening. Bring your lists, and we’ll double-check. If you really are all finished, then you can start actually doing the spells. One at a time, and you’re not to practice any of them on your own until we’ve seen you successfully do and undo the change. Understood?"
"Yes, sir." Harry saluted briskly.
"Watch the attitude, Greeneyes," Moony warned, and Harry ducked as a fireball zipped around his head. "You never know what your adversary may do."
xXxXx
Once Harry was gone, Remus sat back in his chair and checked in the back of his head. Danger’s mental tie hummed with quiet busyness. She was probably reading or knitting, or both. That was good. He didn’t want to be disturbed doing this.
We have been fighting more than could really be explained by just stress. Little things, but they keep flaring into actual fights rather than just smoothing down like they used to.
Might there be a reason?
Harry’s slip of the tongue had shown Remus just how easy such a slip could be. What if Danger had slipped in that way? What if she had, all unknowing, cast a misspoken spell on herself?
The spell as it stands means approximately "show the beginner." Meaning, show me what the beginner is doing, tell me if the beginner does something inappropriate. But with a slip like Harry made, it would mean "show the anger." And if Danger miscast it that way, it would have backfired, and taken effect on her instead — and she would likely have thought it just went away, since she never studied magical theory.
And anything that affects her, affects me.
Remus got up and went to the mirror. Pointing his wand at it, he spoke the incantation which would turn it into a scrying tool for magic. It went black for a moment, as though it had been suddenly covered with crape, and then his image was in it again, but overlaid with sparkling traces. His bond with Danger, stretching off into the distance — the magic of his Animagus form, with him always thanks to the potion he’d drunk — the fading traces of the Patronus he’d cast to show Harry — a few other minor spells —
And, in the background and hard to see but definitely there, something which should not be. A twisted, misshapen spell, lying deep within his mind, subtly warping his responses to situations more towards anger than towards his normal polite conciliation. He could even see the faint track of it in their bond, where it had become stronger over the past few months.
At least I know it wasn’t an enemy doing this to us. It was just an accident, a slip of the tongue.
And, thank goodness, easy enough to fix.
He removed the charm from the mirror and went in search of Danger.
Time to get things back to normal.
xXxXx
"I doubt it was all the fault of the spell," said Danger, after it had been removed and the Lupins were sitting together. "You probably would have hit Snape for saying what he said even without it."
"And you would still have been angry with me for that, and rightfully so." Remus nodded. "But I wouldn’t have overreacted afterwards the way I did."
"And I wouldn’t have been so touchy when you asked me for what is really just common courtesy, asking before I come into your mind." Danger laid her head against his shoulder. "I’m so sorry. I never knew this would happen."
"Just... tell me from now on if a spell goes bad on you, all right? I’d rather not find out something like this is affecting us in the middle of a battle, or on a stake-out."
"Pack honor." Danger lifted her right hand. "Tell you the instant anything goes wrong."
Remus grinned. "Dear God, I’ll never get any work done again."
Danger squealed with indignation and slapped him. Remus captured her hands between his own and took full advantage of the situation.
Letha was right. The best part of fighting is the making up.
xXxXx
Aletha set down her quill with a satisfied sigh. She’d have to check her maths later, but for now, she rather thought she was finished. The proportions had all worked out, creating a potion which might not be entirely pleasant to drink, but wouldn’t be actively harmful either. More to the point, it would begin to do what needed to be done.
If anything can. What kind of power will be needed to heal the effects of twelve years of madness?
She pushed that thought aside. Her job was to brew the potion, make sure it wouldn’t harm the Longbottoms, then see if it would help them. After that...
Why don’t we deal with "after that," after that.
The Floo chimed. Aletha got to her feet and went out into the music room to greet Sirius with a kiss. Her love looked somewhat annoyed, she noticed. "What’s wrong?" she asked.
"You had to be all goody-goody-Healer and tell Scrimgeour’s Healers he’d been poisoned, didn’t you?" Sirius flopped down on the couch. "He’s back, and he’s a bloody pain to work with. Robards was a hell of a lot easier."
"Robards was so overworked, you never saw him."
"Exactly. Plus, Robards didn’t have some kind of personal vendetta against me. I have no idea why Scrimgeour doesn’t like me, but he doesn’t. He keeps ‘dropping by’ and just standing in my doorway and staring at me. Three times today. It’s starting to really bother me."
Aletha thought of everything she could say at this point and decided to go for the path of least resistance. "I have only one request."
"What?"
"Don’t do anything he can trace to you."
Sirius snickered. "We really have corrupted you, haven’t we?"
"You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to."
"I know." Sirius moved in for a kiss of his own. "I know."
Having the Den to themselves had some definite perks, Aletha decided.