Disclaimer: I own only what is not recognizable as a JKR masterpiece…basically nothing.
Okay, I'm really sorry for the long delay, but for 3 weeks I couldn't get to my computer, and for the remaining time I couldn't get to it anyway because it broke down, couldn't really access it yet. I'm going to cut this short because I really don't have time (have to work in like two minutes), just wanted to asnwer someone who pointed out that Iridis sounds like a Naruto character. I've already said in a previous chapter that I based her characteristics off a lot of Anime/Manga characters that I liked, but the most influential one was definitely the Huyga clan's `White Eye' (I use the spelling that the Italian version of the manga uses, it's not a mistake so don't call me on that, and I don't remember the name of the ability at the moment, Japanese isn't my forte). Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Keep `em coming, I thrive on them. My betas are currently on chap 7 so that should be out within the week.
And now, on with the fic.
Harry Potter and the Bite of No Mortibus
By Pearl Drop Angel
Chapter 6: The Theft
"My Lord?" a small terrified voice called into the dark of the room he had stepped into. There was no light at all within it, only a thin thread of glow from the outside hallway managing to seep through the crack of the door that he had purposefully forgotten to close. The mousy man tried to search the room for a form-any form whatsoever-that might be outlined by that sliver of light, yet the room was pitch black. With the exception, of course, of two thin slivers of glowing red that had turned to face him.
His master was watching him.
"Yes, Wormtail," the hissed whisper belied a certain malicious excitement that made the servant shiver in fear.
"The positive outcome of the mission has been confirmed," Wormtail managed to inform without stuttering. The room seemed to ripple with the Master's excitement as he wheezed a chuckle.
"M-my Lord?" the servant asked again, this time not managing to hide his fear. He was aware that the question he wanted to ask might anger his master, but, as was often the case with him, his curiosity dared more than he.
"Speak, Wormtail," annoyance seeped through his hiss at having his calculated victory interrupted by his snivelling, lowly serf.
He swallowed in fear of his master's response, but went on nonetheless, knowing that he would enrage him more in taking back his word. "W-Why not kill her?"
His Lord seemed to laugh at him, though, enjoying remembering his true plan. "To destroy the boy."
Before he could stop himself Wormtail phrased his next question, "How?", and quivered at the thought of possibly angering his Master.
But the Dark Lord was in far too good of a mood to let lowly Wormtail bother him, and he emanated a strong sense of triumph as he spoke the words.
"By making her one of us."
And then his horrid laughter filled the room, and the mind of the boy that had unwillingly witnessed the exchange in his dreams.
°*°*°
Slowly, he opened his eyes as his troubled slumber left him. The world around him was blurry, and of course it would be. He didn't have his glasses on.
He had no wish to place them on either.
He had no wish to see that the bright colorful room that he slept in, the same one he'd shared with Ron such a short while earlier, would no longer look the way it did before. It would hold no joy for him, no feel of home.
His home had been Hogwarts, but Voldemort had taken that away from him as well, turning into the place that represented the most awful loss yet. He felt his body quaking at the mere thought.
Her fall-he refused to call her dead!-had affected him so differently from Sirius'.
His fall had made him numb, or better yet, he had made himself numb as to not be aware of the emptyness that he felt at the possibility of never seeing him again. Hermione's-hers was in way the same. Much as he hated to admit it, despite the fact that he loved his godfather and had truly wished to one day live with him, Harry was not that close to Sirius, they had not truly gotten to know each other. They'd never really had the time. After he and Hermione helped Sirius escape, Harry's correspondence with him had been sparse and rather to the point because, after all, Sirius was on the run.
And then Gimmauld Place. Harry had really enjoyed his summer and Christmas with Sirius there. It was like finally having a family. That had been the reason for why Harry had made himself go numb, so that he wouldn't have to feel the bitterness that came with losing the one thing that he'd desired his whole life right after finding it. And avoiding feeling the guilt as well.
But with Hermione, it was all so different.
She had always been near him, she had been the one constant in his life, the one rock that he could cling to when he thought he was drowning. More so than with Ron. The redhead simply did not understand Harry the way Hermione did.
Hermione took care of him, kept him sane, even if he was only realizing that now.
She had been his family.
His true family.
What a family was supposed to truly be. Someone he could fight with knowing that once they'd made up it would be as thought the row had never occurred. Someone who understood him, and supported his choices even when they were wrong. Someone who loved him and cared for his for who he truly was, not because of what he was or why he was what he was. Someone who accepted him without expecting anything from him.
Someone who appreciated him, and wasn't upset if he didn't appreciate her back.
He felt his eyes mist over with something more than the lack of eyesight.
He'd never appreciated her.
He'd never thanked her for always believing in him and his choices.
He'd never told her how much it truly mattered to him to have her by his side.
He had never even realized it himself.
He fought back a sniffle.
That was what was truly different between her fall and Sirius'. With his Godfather, Harry had managed to make himself numb enough to not feel the true burden of the loss. With Hermione that was impossible. He was too tied to her. He had been too dependent on her and he'd never even realized it.
He could never forget the pain of watching her hit the floor in her overwhelming spasms. Never get over the guilt of knowing that he could have stopped it with a simple letter to Dumbledore and hadn't.
He heard a sound coming from the portrait of Phineas Nigellus, like a cloak swishing and then a sigh. It meant that he was there and waiting for Harry to speak to him. But Harry didn't want to speak to anyone that could judge him. Nor did he want to speak. It would only dislodge the lump in his throat and allow the sobs through.
No, it was better to leave.
Not allowing the portrait time to stop him, Harry leapt from his frumped bedsheets and walked to the door, leaving his glasses behind.
He could only see a few inches from his face and kept on bumping into things in the hallway. He hardly noticed. The pain of his bare feet hitting the corner of a door was nothing compared to the knot that he felt in his chest, making it hard for him to breath. It felt like a part of his heart was missing.
Relying on instinct, he quickly reached Buckbeak's room. That's where he stayed most of his awake hours. The rest he spent in bed reliving both falls in his dreams.
The only time that had occurred had been that one night (how long ago? How long had he been here anyway? Did it matter? No.) when his dreams had been filtered by a whispered conversation between Voldemort and the man responsible for the loss of his parents, Wormtail.
He tried not to think of it too much. When Wormtail had asked why they weren't killing `her', Harry dared to hope that they were speaking of Hermione. But they couldn't be. They had already killed her, hadn't they? It made him hope that maybe the whole thing had been just another set up. But it couldn't be. He'd felt her. He'd felt the life leaving her body, felt the warmth of her flesh dissipating, felt her heartbeat becoming weaker and then stopping all together.
And then they'd spoken of breaking a boy. Wasn't Harry the only boy that Voldemort would want to destroy? Then again that had already been accomplished.
He'd done what he had to. He wrote to Dumbledore telling him what he'd seen and then went on to trying to forget it. He could almost hear Hermione explaining that it was just his subconscious trying to make him think that there was a way that she was alive.
But his scar had hurt, didn't that mean that it was real?
Then again, didn't it mean that Voldemort was feeding him another illusion?
Not knowing what to think anymore he stepped into the room, not caring of the smell or the stuffiness. He didn't bother bowing to Buckbeak, the hippogriff was already used to him as he'd been there quite frequently since his return to Grimmauld Place.
Buckbeak was lying in a corner, his head on his front legs. He'd looked asleep, but he raised his head in greeting to his only real visitor.
With a sigh, Harry walked up to him, and sat down with his back resting against the beast's side, his head against its neck.
He was used to the smell of animal, he probably smelled like one himself now in any case, but the pile of dead rats in the corner of the room had terrified him the first time he'd walked in.
It had made him think if Sirius, of Hermione, and even of Cedric. And of what they would one day become. And he'd found himself bawling in the door way. Thinking back on it, he was surprised that Buckbeak hadn't attacked him for the display that would have angered most hippogriffs, but then again, the creature probably felt something akin to what Harry did. After all, Sirius had been his only real companion, and now he was gone.
That had been the reason why Harry found himself spending so much time with Buckbeak. He seemed to understand. And he didn't judge him or think him insane or blame him for anything-but maybe that was only because hippogriffs didn't speak.
In any case, those times in which Harry found himself sobbing out of sheer desperation and helplessness and mourning, Buckbeak seemed to mourn with him as well. And Harry found himself talking, of anything that came to mind. Anything at all, ranging from his guilt at never appreciating Hermione for the person that she was and all she'd done for him, to stories of his adventures with his friends, or recallings of some of the things Dudley used to do to him.
He'd spend hours in there, only coming out to try and eat a bite of the meals that Mrs Weasley prepared for him and that he could barely touch.
Thankfully, she didn't know how to behave around him, so, for the most part, she left him alone, and he was grateful for it.
However, just as he thought that, Mrs Weasley knocked on the door that he'd left slightly ajar, and peeked her head in.
"Harry?" she asked apprehensively.
"Yes?" That lump in his throat was likely to remain there for the rest of his life.
"Dumbledore sent you an Owl…and a newspaper," she sounded very flustered as she spoke of the second. "I left them on the kitchen table for you."
"Thank you," he replied, letting her know that the conversation was over. Quietly, she left.
Harry didn't want to follow her. He didn't want to leave the safety of Buckbeak's comfort, nor to read that Dumbledore requested his return for classes. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but classes were bound to have began by now. He'd hoped the Headmaster would allow him to return in his own time.
But maybe there was something else.
Maybe something had happened. He'd sent a newspaper after all.
With a sigh and a pat to Buckbeak's neck, he stood, walking briskly back to his room for his glasses, and stumbling his way down to the kitchen, not wanting to wear the spectacles until he was required to.
Mrs Weasley was busy trying to look busy at the kitchen sink, while a letter sat quietly on top of a folded newspaper on the table in front of the hearth.
Dreading what it might say, he adjusted his wire rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and sat down in the seat in front of what Dumbledore had sent him.
With a defeated sigh, he took the envelope in hand, recognizing the ancient Headmaster's intricate flourish branding Harry's name in the front. Heaving another sigh, he tore it open and pulled out a single sheet of parchment.
--Harry-It read.
I know that you do not yet wish to return to Hogwarts, and I will not force you to, but I would advice you to take the option into consideration while you read today's edition of the Sunday Prophet.
Several things have happened, Harry, and, when compared to that vision that you told me of, they require your presence here.
Please think of it.
--Albus-
Dumbledore had never signed his first name, at least not when addressing Harry. Harry stared at the message for a long time, not sure he'd truly registered what he'd read. Did Voldemort attack some poor unsuspecting village? It seemed unlikely, as his scar hadn't hurt in the slightest besides that one time in which he'd had the vision that Dumbledore had mentioned. Did Fudge make some other hairbrained decision that could only help Voldemort? If he did, Harry felt like it wouldn't have affected him all that much.
With yet another sigh, he picked up the Sunday Prophet.
"It's Sunday?" He asked aloud. A week had passed then. It had been a Saturday when Dumbledore had sent him here. The paper told him that today was, in fact, Sunday the eighth.
Picking up the paper he unfolded it to read the front page and, after a glance at it, dropped it as though the pages scorched him. There, black on white, was a moving picture of none other than Hermione, smiling at him.
He recognized the picture as one that Colin Creevey took at the beginning of fifth year after finding out that she had been made Prefect-her badge was in plain sight.
The lump in Harry's throat grew twice its size.
She looked so happy there. And here he was, a full year later, trying to push the tears back as he watched her smile nervously back at him.
Why was her picture in the paper today? What happened should have already been old news, or at least not front page news.
Than he read the heading.
The Mistery disappearance of Hermione Granger!
Harry blinked at the words in front of him. `Disappearance'? How could they call it that? Not knowing what to think, Harry read on.
All of Hogwarts-and the whole of the Wizarding World-is still mourning the sudden death of Hermione Granger, who perished at the hands-or rather teeth-of You-Know-Who's pet snake, just last week within the walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry right after having saved the life of a first year student.
She was well known by her peers for her studious demeanor and sense of responsibility, qualities that earned her a Prefect position in her fifth and sixth years-even if, unfortunately, she will never fulfill the last as the oppurtunity was taken from her-and one of the highest scores in OWL testing of the last several years, while she was also famous for being one of Harry Potter's closest friends and possible romantic interest.
She had also narrowly escaped death just only over two months ago in a terrible encounter with some Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic, with her friend Harry Potter and four other students from her school.
Her death, however, is shrouded in mystery.
For one, the bite that she had received under the eyes of her aforementioned best friend, Harry Potter, and several of the school paintings, had been given to her by You-Know-Who's pet snake, Nagini, which just so happens to be an enormous constrictor (which species has yet to be specified). It is a well reknown fact that snakes of such sizes are not poisonous (if they are it is not in large or fatal amounts), when they indend to kill, they do so by literally squeezing the life out of their victims.
Madame Pomfrey, who is known as the school nurse but is in truth a fully fledged and schooled mediwitch, also declared Miss Granger's death as highly suspicious in the fact that the poison within the snake's fangs was unlike any other natural venom-within reptiles or any other animal or plant-and looked to have been created. It might have been a new type of potion brewed by You-Know-Who or one of his Death Eaters.
This deadly concuction killed the poor girl within seconds.
And, as though this was not enough, other strange occurances have been reported, starting from an owl post from the Grangers, Hermione's parents, to Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, complaining of the fact that their daughter's corpse had not been returned to them yet. This was three days ago.
Miss Granger's body was supposed to reach them long before then, as it had been sent, under the watchful eye of three Aurors, just after her death was certified, in the first hours of the second day of the month.
That, however, is not all. After the Grangers' report, Dumbledore requested that the Ministry of Magic send a search party, not only for Miss Granger's missing body, but for the Aurors that were guarding her as well.
The Aurors were found, twelve miles into the woods beyond the village of Hogsmead, all three of them dead at the hands of the killing curse.
Miss Granger's remains were nowhere to be found.
Where might her corpse have been taken, and what would someone want do with it? These two questions are plaguing the minds of the Aurors, who have determined to find the Granger girl, not only to answer their own curiosity, but to at least return her to her grieving parents.
The Grangers, after consulting with Albus Dumbledore, have decided not to hold the memorial service until she is returned to them.
As of yet, however, the mystery remains unsolved.
For the longest time, Harry could only blink at what he'd read.
Then, slowly, what he'd read began to sink in. Nagini's attack on Hermione was different from Arthur Weasley's because of the venom that had been implanted in his teeth. It was different from the one used for the Weasley patron. Did that mean that he had been attacked with some potion implanted in Nagini's incisors.
Hermione's…body (he refused to call her a corpse) had been stolen, and the Aurors who were guarding her killed, all three of them.
And then there was that vision. The one where Wormtail was asking Voldemort why they weren't going to kill `her'.
And Dumbledore was asking him to return to Hogwarts.
Something began to swell within him, implanting impossible thoughts in his mind. Hope. He was beginning to hope. He knew it was not smart, that it could very possibly just turn the knife within the wound, but he needed his questions answered.
He had to go back to Hogwarts.
Without a word to Mrs Weasley, and without bothering to take off his glasses again, he made a dash for his room, where he threw the few clothes he'd worn over the period of his stay in his trunk, along with the photo album that Hermione had `upgraded' for him, and locked it. Those had been the only things he'd removed from it in any case. Grabbing his wand from the bedside table, he went to say goodbye to Buckbeak.
The hippogriff seemed taken aback by his sudden agitation, not understanding where it was coming from, but Harry knew that his friend understood that he had to leave. Buckbeak nuzzled him, almost as though he was wishing him luck, and gently pushing him out the door, giving him the strength to go back to the place he'd had to run away from. With a small smile of apology toward his friend, Harry walked into the kitchen.
And the sight that greeted him enraged him like nothing else before in his life.
An upset Mrs Weasley was threatening a house elf with her wooden spoon.
Not just any house elf either. It was Kreacher.
The Weasley matron was chasing him around the kitchen, but Kreacher kept on popping out of one spot and into another, just out of the woman's reach, before popping somewhere else. The house elf was holding the Sunday Prophet in his hands.
Harry was seeing red.
And Keacher was speaking, his high pitched voice filling the kitchen from all sides.
"Ooh, ickle Mudblood got a big bad bite! Yes, Miss! And now they has her, yes! Mistress would like this. But Mistress is not here. Filthy wolf tears her away! But Mudblood pays! Mudblood dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!" and he kept on shouting the word as he popped away with each declaration.
Than it was quiet, and Harry saw that Kreacher had popped onto the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, still clutching the Prophet. "Filthy, dirty, icle Mudblood dead, and Kreacher is here. Kreacher is not dead," he seemed to whisper more to himself than for anything else.
So that's what it was all about. Kreacher's bitterness at never being able to have his head exposed besides his ancestors. And now, he was degrading the one person that had wanted to show him kindness. "If you want to die, go ahead, we won't stop you." He didn't know what he was saying, it was as thought there was someone else speaking through him, as though the guilt that he felt for Sirius had molded into the hatred that he felt for the house elf and his part in Sirius' fall and formed a new being that spoke through him. He'd wanted to scream at him, lash out and throw things like he'd done in Dumbledore's office. He would have never expected this malevolent, vendictive, quietly seething anger to come from him.
Kreacher looked scared and put off, as his eyes searched frantically around the room. Mrs Weasley looked terrified. "The Potter boy speaks to Kreacher, but what does he say? Kreacher is not listening to dirty half blood Potter, no," he began to whimper.
"You're afraid," Harry hissed at him angrily. Kreacher, for the first time the boy could remember, looked at him. "You keep on saying on how much you want to join your honored ancestors, but you're afraid." He accused. "But guess what? Nobody is going to do it for you. Nobody is going to make it easy for you. You have no more Masters, so the choice is up to you, but you're terrified."
Kreacher was whimpering under his gaze.
"You are disgusting," Harry said as he walked toward Mrs Weasley, who looked like she had no idea in the world of what to think. Honestly, neither did Harry, he didn't know where it had come from, but it had to get out of him, and he didn't regret it.
And that was a scary thought.
"I'm going back to Hogwarts," he told the woman who had been a surrogate mother for him. She nodded, her wooden spoon still in place. Not knowing what else to say after his terrifying desplay he tried an awkward "Thank you."
And that seemed to do it. She lowered her spoon and drew Harry in the shelter of her motherly embrace. When she let go there were no words. There weren't any, and if there were, neither of them knew what they were.
So, wordlessly, Harry took hold of hid trunk, grabbed a hanful of Floo Powder and made for Dumbledore's office. And as he stepped out of the hearth and into Dumbledore's chamber of wonders, he felt a hope gurgle within him and rising. Rising to the point that it would not be supressed, it embedded itself in his mind, and he could not remove it no matter how he tried.
There was a thought that struck him like lightning.
The near certainty that Hermione might be alive.
To be continued.
Okay, you know the drill, whatever critisism you have, positive or not, I'll take it because I need it (it's starting to get chilly here so even flames are welcome). Contact me at Robbygal@hotmail.com or simply leave a review.
Oh, and if you don't like what Harry said to Kreacher, I'm sorry, it wasn't meant to be that evil, he was supposed to just be really angry, but these characters have a will of their own which I do not have the power to stop, but, since it works better for my future plot it will stay as it is. Sorry if that bothers you.
Thanks
Love
Pearl
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