7th Year: Harry Potter and the Snares of Fate

Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing! I really do appreciate it! I'm really looking forward to writing the next chapter where I get Ron, Neville, Luna, and Ginny back (yes, you'll see Ginny again!)

HARRY

The sultry Nile breezes had kicked up a windstorm that flung blistering-hot granules sand into their eyes as they wended their way through the crowded marketplace and now, as Harry and Hermione sat in the sweltering Café Hatshepsut, they sat skimming sand from their complimentary mugs of lukewarm tea and discussing the developments of the past two days and the loyalties of their tardy dinner companion.

“He worries me, Harry,” Hermione said in an undertone, glancing over her shoulder for eavesdroppers. “What does he want with us?”

Harry drained his tea and gazed absently down at the formless dregs of tea leaves in the bottom. “I was hoping you could tell me where to begin -- once he shows up, you know. What do we tell him and why?” He wished she held all the answers - that she could conjure one of those heavily-bound books from thin air and could flip through to the Index…to Dearborn comma Caradoc. Subheading: Egypt.

She couldn't.

She stared down at her own empty teacup and let out a soft, ironic chuckle. “Did you ever set any store by Trelawney's words?”

“You mean, the Prophecy? I don't have much of a choice about that, Hermione. You know that, as long as Voldemort adheres to it - I'm—” Whatever he was, doomed or damned, he didn't say.

Hermione flinched but continued on, “No, the little things: Binky and Neville breaking teacups, and early deaths?”

“Nah,” Harry replied, asserting a confidence he did not quite feel. “She was a right old fraud with one or two real Prophecies and a load of pigswill.”

“Of course,” she chided herself. “Just being silly.”

“Is Trelawney really gone?” Harry asked haltingly. “So much was happening and it was all so long ago…I can't seem to remember.”

Hermione confirmed the worst with a curt nod, “She's gone and it follows logically that the Death Eaters captured her during the raid, but as to her condition - her whereabouts - no one seems to know.”

“How can someone just disappear without a trace?”

“A question you could very well ask me, Mr. Potter.”

Harry jumped about a foot in the air -- Dearborn was lounging against the bar and -- by the look of him -- he had been listening into their conversation undetected for quite some time.

“How does one vanish without leaving a trace - and why?” Dearborn continued as though he had not noticed the fright he had caused. “Might I advise that we relocate to a more secluded table? Wouldn't want to be overheard.”

Dearborn guided them to table in a dark and dingy corner of the café where the air was so heavily perfumed with incense that left Harry feeling opiated. The space around them was stacked floor-to-ceiling with spices.

“Better to sit here with only the cinnamon and cardamom to spy on us,” Dearborn said genially, pulling out a chair for Hermione and settling himself opposite her at the table. He waved one of the roving waiters over to their table, “seeing as the two of you haven't yet managed the art of moneychanging.” He laughed. “Travel is galling, isn't it? Not that I've had much experience of the late - but of course, our meal awaits.”

And indeed, the waiter was hovering expectantly, a faltering smile on his face.

“See here, I've spent the last sixteen years as a dead or dying man but life flows again and a good wine is in order and more tea for my young dinner companions, please, and three platters of the day's special.

“Sixteen years of locusts and honey in the wilderness,” he rambled as the waiter rounded the tower of spices and disappeared from sight, “until the great Harry Potter arrived. If this is not the hour for merriment--but enough about me. I say, I have quite abandoned my manners and lost touch with my more refined side. As for you two, I trust you found what it was you were looking for?”

“Pardon?” Harry stammered, taken aback. They had certainly not mentioned looking for anything here in Egypt.

“Too direct? Must everything progress in that roundabout British manner? It tires me; it tires me…sixteen years I've had to wait and brood, brood and wait. Not a moment more!” He banged his fist on the table, making the waiter - who had returned with three trays fully-laden with Egyptian food - jump and nearly drop one of the platters. The waiter distributed the food without comment and fled back to the kitchen with a final, fleeting glance at Dearborn.

“Let us drop all pretenses, so that we might speak a little more freely amongst ourselves,” Dearborn suggested, the anger gone from his voice and replaced by annoyingly preternatural calmness. “Sixteen years ago marked the fall of Lord Voldemort and the transmission of some crucial information to the Order of the Phoenix by the hand of Severus Snape. I can never begin to describe to you what those months were like, after the downfall. We'd been so long without peace, you've no idea the relief people felt, but Dumbledore and old Mad-Eye—” at the mention of Moody, Dearborn shook his head and gave a fond chuckle -- an obvious jab at the older man's famous fanaticism in the face of the Dark Arts - “kept the Order on its toes. We were on the look-out for anything out of the ordinary. Now Snape had kept in touch with a few of the Death Eaters who were still walking free: Lucius Malfoy, Walden Macnair, Ludo Bagman…and trust me, it took a lot of bribing to keep Moody from snatching them up and throwing them into Azkaban. It's lucky that we let them roam about or we never would have known what was coming…not that we managed to thwart it… but again, I am getting ahead of myself! As I was saying, in late 1981, Severus Snape approached the Longbottoms and I with evidence that a certain troupe of rogue Death Eaters were planning a raid on a Muggle house in Little Hangleton, and intelligence suggested that reviving Voldemort was the ultimate goal. We had no idea what we were getting in to, though talk of Horcruxes - er, one Horcrux - a goblet of some sort, speculation had it - was abuzz.”

Hermione shot Harry a fleeting glance and Harry choked on his tea.

“We'd cased the house before, searching for anything of interest. It was Voldemort's grandparents' house, after all. Worth searching, no doubt. Most unfortunately, we didn't know just what we were looking for and when we ran into trouble, we retreated…if only we'd done the gruesome task then, when that cup was still within our clutches…and none can know where it has gone or what has become of it. The only person who knows just what went on that night was but a toddler—”

“—Neville,” Harry said hoarsely.

Hermione gasped and Dearborn confirmed Harry's speculation with a nod.

“When I found out what had become of Frank and Alice…I couldn't possibly go back. I'd failed them, you see?” Dearborn's voice was suddenly abrasive with the effort of suppressing his emotions. Harry too felt a certain scratchiness at the back of his throat, but excused it as a result of the all-intrusive sand.

“You said yourself you couldn't have made it,” Hermione said consolingly, reaching out to pat his weathered hand even as it clenched tightly around his mug of tea.

“I was ashamed…ashamed to walk out without a scratch. Your parents lived and died for this Harry, and Frank and Alice Longbottom surrendered their sanity, and little Neville Longbottom his parents. I too was prepared to lay down my life so that Voldemort might be more easily slain, but I was cruelly intercepted on my way into battle. Your father in particular made a humungous sacrifice for the cause - he was grievously injured in the first assault on the Riddle House. That hampered his ability to fight back on the night—” Dearborn gestured at Harry's scar. The corners of Dearborn's mouth drooped downwards - an aberration on an otherwise chiseled and emotionless face. “But at least James and Lily didn't have to see my disgraceful retreat; they would have shamed me into staying and carrying on despite it all, but as it was, they were never any the wiser about what happened to me.”

“And the cup?” Harry asked, the old mantra replaying in his head - the cup, the snake, something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's, the cup, the snake…

“As I've already said to you over this meal and to myself a thousand times over these intervening years, the cup is lost. Ask the Longbottom boy - perhaps he recollects, after all, the night would have been a memorable, if tragic, affair for one as young as he,” Dearborn clenched and unclenched his hands, peering around the spice boxes for intruders on their conversation. Satisfied to find none, he said, “I don't know just why you two came to Egypt - you could be on your honeymoon for all I know - but I have my suspicions. No, I won't ask you to confirm them, but I believe you, Harry and Miss Granger—” he bowed his head deferentially to them - “are on the same quest that your father and mother and so many others undertook in those long-forgotten days. Your endeavor was successful; yes, I can see it in your eyes—but even as you celebrate the sizable victory you attained here in Egypt, do not forget that Neville Longbottom may be our only path to success. Without his testimony - or even with his testimony, I cannot say - the cup may be lost forever.”

Harry swiftly turned his attention to the untouched pasta corniche on his platter. Could Dearborn possibly know about the letter he and Hermione had found? The letter that confirmed the wand's status as a Horcrux and stated that it had been destroyed barely a week earlier? Could he guess that the note had been penned in Severus Snape's spiky handwriting and that Snape - Dumbledore's murderer, Harry reminded himself severely -- had had the gall to request a meeting with Harry?

The conversation stalled and when Harry dared look up again, Dearborn was gazing thoughtfully past them, as though steeling himself for what he would say next. “Perhaps it is time for me to reenter the arena, to offer up what little knowledge and skill I still possess that time and neglect haven't eaten away. Give me two months to get my affairs in order. Two months,” he repeated, rising from his chair, “two months and we shall meet again: away from this exotic finery, but in the homeland we all hold dear.”

* * * * *

On their last night in Egypt, Harry and Hermione wended their way down to the lush banks of the Nile. Harry slipped off his tennis shoes and waded into water up to his ankles. While he relished the cool, lapping waves -- a nice break from days of scorching heat and windborne sand -- Hermione lingered on the sandy shoal, lost in thought. She beckoned him back to the rim of the Nile and conjured a fleet of candles in little paper boats from thin air and Harry understood immediately that a belated funerary rite was in order. He climbed the bank to join her, requisitioning a row of boats for himself.

“To Hagrid,” Harry said, feeling a lump swell up in his throat.

“To Viktor,” Hermione whispered in a trembling voice.

“To - to - Dumbledore - to the Dumbledores.”

“To Auntie Muriel.”

“To Sirius.”

“To Cedric.”

“To Mum and Dad,” Harry said finally, nudging the last two candles out onto the rippling waves.

He sat back on his haunches, waiting for the string of lights to clear the bank. Then, he leaned back and huddled against Hermione, content to watch the candles bob and dip with the current. And so they paused near the cradle of civilization and mourned the deaths of its offspring.