Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Quick A/N: Many MANY thanks to all who have reviewed; I wish I could thank you individually but I have a hard enough time stealing minutes from work, my kids, my disbelieving husband and three jealous cats to write. Keep in mind a great deal of this was written at 2am to very loud music on earphones in the dark! Explains so much, doesn't it? Just know I read them when I can and appreciate them all, positive and negative. To those of you inspired or starting to write yourselves (Xstar and Magorian) Awesome! Have fun with it, wherever it takes you. More Harry & Hermione is always a good thing. On the plus side, the reason this took so long was that it came out as essentially one huge unwieldy word hurl - so here's half, and I'm proofing and tweaking the other half now - it'll be there in a day or two at most. Thanks, you guys.
To JazzyGeorgie, for always being there and listening. You really are the best. I'm sorry about losing Malfoy, but really - he had it coming. He's back, safe and sound. For awhile, anyway. Found that flipping birdy icon yet?
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 14
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Lupin assured them that he would call in the Aurors for them, but he wanted to go and check out the scene before he did.
"You'll have to have your little friend back while I go," he told them, and it took them a moment to drag their minds back to Malfoy.
He staggered out of the fireplace a few moments later, shaking off Floo powder like an offended cat. His hands were still bound and his eyes were furious.
"You," he said to Ron, narrowing them to slits. "You utter, total…"
Harry flicked his wand silently in Malfoy's direction and his lips continued to move soundlessly. It did not seem to put him off a bit; he kept right on as if they could hear every word.
"Lot he needs to get off his chest, that one," said Ron, shaking his head. He went straight to the cabinet where they housed their store of butterbeer and like supplies, and pulled out the firewhiskey bottle and three glasses.
They dropped into chairs round the table, aching for things they were too tired to pursue; Ron was ravenously hungry, Hermione badly wanted a bath and Harry badly wanted Hermione.
Ron poured three glasses and pushed two across the table to Harry and Hermione, then raised his.
"To you, Harry. Now I owe you."
Harry shook his head. "No. I remember the Shrieking Shack, Ron. I'll always remember that. And the chess match. Both of you, how many times have you saved me, one way or another? You could never owe me. It doesn't work like that." He lifted his own glass. "To friends."
"Friends, then," Ron agreed.
"Friends." Hermione raised her glass as well. Malfoy made a gagging noise as they drank.
Hermione downed half of hers in one go and sputtered. Harry made to pat her back and saw the angry spell burn running across her shoulder. He dragged himself to his feet and made his way across the kitchen while Ron goggled at her.
"Easy on there, Hermione. We've got a full bottle and the night ahead of us," he said wonderingly.
"I can see why it's called firewhiskey now," she managed. "I always thought it was the smoke, but it burns a good bit going down, doesn't it."
"Makes your mouth feel like your cat's left a dead mouse in it the next morning as well, just to warn you," Harry reminded her. He brought a bowl of water and a clean cloth back to the table with him, slopping slightly as he limped, and sat down again behind her. "My turn to take care of you," he told her, gingerly pushing her hair away over her other shoulder. "You've got quite a little burn back here. Drink up."
She felt him lay the wet towel on her shoulder to soak loose where her shirt had stuck and hastily followed his instructions, downing the second half of the glass. Ow, ow, ow.
Malfoy came and sat in Harry's abandoned chair, mouth finally still but clearly sulky and furious. They continued to ignore him; the lack of attention seemed to sap him entirely of the creativity required to escape.
"What spell did you use that actually took someone's hand off?" Ron asked, refilling her glass.
"It's not what it sounds like," she found herself saying to Malfoy. Wow, firewhiskey must work fast if she felt the need to explain herself to him. "I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened."
"I think Hermione owes a little thank you to Snape for that one," Harry muttered from behind her; he was carefully tearing the rip in her shirt larger to gain better access to the wound. Ron winced at the sound.
"I had no idea that it could do that!" she said indignantly. "I didn't choose it for that; I didn't consciously choose it at all. I just saw Ron lying there with Pettigrew pointing a wand at him and I yelled for you without thinking, and then you got hit… "
Harry snorted. Hermione knew he was remembering her stubborn dislike of the Half Blood Prince's potions text. She had come down hard on him for using the spell against Malfoy when he had only read the author's handwritten note `for enemies.' She'd known what she was using and what it did, or thought she had. In her moment of panic she had reached for the worst thing she could think of short of an unforgivable and Harry's shock and self-disgust at the wounds it had produced the one time he used it had stood out clearly in her mind. Whatever side he was on, she knew what Snape was capable of and she knew the spell was his. She should have known that anything he designed would amplify the emotions of the caster.
She looked down; Harry was straddling the back of her chair as he worked behind her and she could see his torn and bloodied knees on either side of her. She lifted her eyes to Ron in time to see him blink and it hit her, suddenly and quite hard, how differently this whole day could have ended. She downed another mouthful from her glass. It didn't even make her eyes water this time.
"That was…"
"Only the beginning," Harry said tiredly, wringing out the cloth. Clearly their minds were running their usual parallel course.
"Harry, what if there was a hor… a thingie in the house? Will we know somehow if it was destroyed? How do we keep from chasing something that isn't there?" Ron asked with a sideways glance at Malfoy.
Harry cast a Muffliato. "Who's forgetting they're a wizard now?" he asked with a grin as Malfoy's expression grew, if possible, more annoyed.
"We don't know if there was one there to start with, but I seriously doubt it," he continued. "If I really am one, and it's looking more and more that way after what happened with the wand, then there shouldn't have been anything but an empty object he intended to use that night still there. If it had been anything recognizable or valuable the Ministry would have found it when they went through the house. That's sort of all I was hoping to find out, just to see if there was anything there and maybe eliminate possibilities for the final one we're missing. It was always a long shot anyway. He certainly wouldn't have gone back and put something there; that house can't have had good memories for him."
Ron nodded and then asked, "but why were the Death Eaters there? If they weren't guarding something, how did they know we were coming?"
"I'm hoping that they were waiting, that they'd warded the house and were just waiting for someone to trigger it. Because the alternative is that they knew we were coming, and no one knew but us. And the only one of us I don't trust right about now," Harry said regretfully, "is me."
"But you don't think… you haven't felt him in your scar since…" Hermione reached for her glass again.
"Before today? Not since that night, no."
"Wait a minute, your scar's been going off and you never said? Harry that's always meant something before." Ron protested.
"It hasn't been going off all the time. There was one incident, he was furious."
"Yeah, but that's the sort of thing we should be telling Lupin or my Dad, they need to check those times to see if it lines up with any of the stuff that's going on they can't place," Ron said. "Dad was just saying the other day that there are all these…"
"Ron," Harry cut in.
"What?"
"It was me, okay? He was furious with me, because I was very, very happy, if you get my drift. I don't think either of us were expecting the connection at that particular moment. And I haven't had a twitch since until today. He's blocked me out because he knows it goes both ways."
Ron's expression was one of confusion; he appeared to be thinking hard.
"Oh for goodness sake, Ron, Voldemort knew when Harry er, achieved, um…" Hermione started, before realizing that her vocabulary with Ron thus far hadn't contained any of the necessary verbage and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to change that fact. How weird. "You know…"
Harry snorted again. "She's trying to tell you I was The Boy Who Got Off at the time."
"No way," Ron's eyes grew wide. Hermione watched Malfoy's interest shifting round the three of them, speculating, and almost laughed aloud. She'd actually like to hear what he thought they were talking about this time.
"He was so not happy for me. I can only imagine what it was like to actually be around him. If I were Wormtail I'd have volunteered to hang out in Godric's Hollow as long as it took for someone to show up, too. But it hasn't happened since under the same ah, circumstances, so I think, I hope, anyway, that it was a one-off."
"I'm impressed you actually tried it again, mate." Ron said with a low whistle. "That would put me right off."
"Nah," Harry said, ducking his head behind her. "You would. Worth it, this one."
Worth it, this one. She was torn between wanting to kiss him and slap him but she got the chance to do neither; he had finished washing out the burn and pulled the last bit of blackened fabric from the edge.
It stung fiercely and she clutched at the edge of the table. "Sorry, love. Almost done," he told her, quickly reaching for his wand. "Just another minute." He muttered a healing charm and she felt the cut warm and tighten… only to slowly return to the burning sensation again.
"Not that one, obviously." He tried Curatio and then Finite Incantatem in case it was an active hex that caused the wound to reopen. Neither worked even as well as the first he had tried; the cut remained, not bleeding badly but not healing either. "I'm just rubbish at healing charms, I always have been. Ron, maybe you should…"
Malfoy began to move agitatedly, gesturing. All he could do was watch; the muffliato had kept him from being able to make out their conversation, but he seemed to have something to say about Hermione's injury. Harry watched him warily a moment then flicked his wand in his direction again.
"Please make me not regret this," he said.
"Snape was working on transforming one of his own old spells while I was with him," Malfoy said hoarsely, shaking his head as if to rid his ears of the buzzing from the conversation-muffling spell. "I recognized the incantation because it was what you yelled at me in that creepy bathroom in Hogwarts."
"The one that sort of cut off the unforgivable you were tossing Harry's way?" Ron jumped in. "I heard you were playing with your Dad's favorite curse. There's a reason he's in Azkaban, you know."
Hermione saw Harry's head lift, and one green eye fix on Malfoy. "Sectumsempra? Was that it?"
Malfoy nodded, his eyes calculating. "That's the one. He was reworking it to open gashes that would be hard to close, too complicated to heal easily, especially in the middle of a battle. The Dark Lord wants you weakened now, not dead."
"There's irony for you," Hermione grimaced. "I suppose I deserve this after using…"
"No!" Harry cut in sharply. "You don't. Don't say that." He thought for a moment then called for Fawkes, sleeping on his perch in the sitting room, past infant stage now but not by much.
Sure enough, the sudden midair pop in response deposited a quite young phoenix onto Harry's shoulder.
"Hermione needs you," he told the little bird, showing it the stubbornly resistant wound.
Fawkes trilled something and cocked his head at Harry. Hermione saw both Ron and Malfoy eyeing Harry as if he'd lost his mind and turned herself.
It seemed the two were having something of a battle of wills without a word; she'd seen that look on Harry's face before. Fiercely, stubbornly determined that he was right, damn it, and no one was going to convince him otherwise. The funny thing was that the young phoenix wore almost exactly the same expression.
Harry finally seemed to clue in that they were all watching him and flushed slightly. "Excuse us a minute," he said, and rose stiffly, limping away to the other room with an equally determined-looking phoenix clinging to his forearm.
"What the hell is that all about? He's finally completely lost his mind, has he?" Malfoy asked. "It wouldn't be quite so hard to lure people to join your side if he wasn't so…. Potterish, you know."
"He's under a lot of strain," said Ron defensively.
"There's nothing wrong with Harry. Phoenixes are highly intelligent magical creatures and that one must have spent well over a hundred years with Dumbledore." Hermione pointed out. "Magical creatures by their very nature have personalities and ideas of their own. You can't treat them like… beasts, or anything. There has to be give and take."
"Well, if that bird spent as long as that with Dumbledore, Potter ought to be used to taking whatever it gives," Malfoy sneered. "He's been the old man's puppet ever since he was born."
Hermione saw Ron's eyes start to narrow; she considered refilling his glass but was torn as to whether that might just make it worse. As soon as she decided it probably would he reached out and poured it for himself.
"How the hell would you know, Malfoy," he said, his voice sounding to Hermione almost a full octave lower than usual. "What do you really know about him anyway? Only what your Daddy and his Dark Lord told you, and it seems to me you've had plenty of time just lately to see what chronic liars and manipulators they are. You were more of a puppet than he's ever been until Dumbledore cut your strings for you."
"Shut up, Weasley. If I ever wanted your opinion, I'd ask you for it. And I'm not interested in Potter's hard luck story. Dumbledore's a Muggle-lover, he was always going to raise his little weapon the same way. The so-called savior of the Wizarding world and he's barely a wizard himself."
Ron choked on the sip he had so foolishly attempted while Malfoy was speaking; Hermione had known nothing good would come from that.
"You shut up, Malfoy. You're sitting in his bloody kitchen and he's the only reason we haven't turned you in to the Ministry or sent you back to Snape. You think you've got balls the size of bludgers, but I'm telling you for the last time if you don't change your tune I'm sure Fred or George left a bat round somewhere we could make use of," he blazed. "We've all had rotten enough day without your crap on top of it."
Even Hermione winced at that image.
Harry and Fawkes reappeared from the next room and made their way back behind Hermione. They seemed to have reached some kind of agreement; the little phoenix was back on his shoulder near his ear again and Harry's expression, while mutinous, was also resigned.
He dropped back into his chair and took a hasty gulp from his glass without lifting his head or meeting any of their eyes, even hers. Ron and Malfoy were glaring at each other, as if each were somehow waiting for Harry to take their side and complete their point. She turned in time to see Fawkes make his way along his arm closer to her back and cock his head over her aching shoulder.
The pain vanished. She could feel a wonderful seeping warmth and a sort of tingle as the phoenix tear dripped and Harry gently drew his finger from one end to the other, spreading the healing liquid. She had a sudden flash of being on the roof the day Fawkes had appeared, how he had healed the stubborn spell wound on Harry's arm and Harry had moved at the last minute so that a tear had fallen on her own hand and she could feel for herself the power of its magic even on her healthy skin.
"Snape knows you have Fawkes now," she said slowly. He could and would, she knew, perfect whatever he was teaching the Death Eaters with that in mind; he could let his imagination run wild on ways to weaken Harry while pleasing Voldemort and still being able to claim loyalty to the Order. Somehow, he always managed to have it both ways.
Harry cast the Muffliato over Malfoy again and drew Hermione to him, eyes meeting Ron's over her shoulder.
"There is some very strange stuff going on with me just now," he said evenly. "I don't want to scare you guys and I don't feel like it's all bad necessarily, but that wand's changed things somehow…. and it's as if it set something else off inside me in response to it as well. Whatever it is, Ron, promise me that if I do anything not right that you'll stun the crap out of me and take me to Lupin."
"What do you mean, not right?" asked Ron hesitantly. "How not right?"
"I don't know. That's the problem," he admitted.
Hermione pushed off his chest and sat up. "Fawkes made you tell us. You made a….a deal with him, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "He did. He would have healed you anyway, Hermione, honestly. It was me that he…"
"Why didn't you just tell us?" she asked him fiercely.
"I was going to, if it got bad enough. It's confusing, sometimes I feel fine and then out of nowhere I can sort of feel other stuff that's not me. Just little traces and flashes, but it's like it's, I don't know, floating around, looking for a way out. Or a way in. Then I feel fine again. But Fawkes can feel it, too."
Hermione thought he sounded both resigned and slightly frightened and knew that their worst fears had been realized. Harry was starting to feel the effect of the soul fragment from within the wand inside him. He'd had one fragment with him from the night he became the Boy-Who-Lived. If Dumbledore was correct in his theories he had absorbed a second when he had destroyed the diary and the spectral form it had been trying to create by drawing strength from Ginny Weasley four years ago. The third was starting to tip the balance, to make him aware and uncomfortable with the malevolence he carried. And that only accounted for three of Voldemort's magical seven.
"Harry, give me that frog card."
She reached around him, groping the back pockets of his jeans and hearing Ron's faux- scandalized `Hermione!' and Malfoy's snicker.
"Not that that's not very nice, Hermione, but what are you… holy hell, it's in my robes!" Harry yelped as she moved on to the front ones. "Over there!"
She jumped up and stalked across the kitchen to where Harry and Ron had dumped their robes in a heap of crumpled black, reeking of smoke. She found the special envelope she had derived for him with several variants of impervious charms to protect it. She pulled out the card, unsurprised to find the frame vacant.
"Albus Dumbledore!" she called commandingly.
"Hermione!" the old wizard greeted her jovially from the card several moments later. "How goes it? Harry alright I trust?"
Perfect. Fine. Starting to feel a little full of Voldemort, mind you…
"Talk horcruxes with me," she said grimly.
"Of course, my dear girl," the portrait agreed with her. "Although, as I am gone and quite deliberately avoided their study until I realized Voldemort's fascination with them just before I died, there is probably little I can illuminate for you."
Hermione walked the card back over to the table so that the boys could hear their conversation.
"Goodness, is that Mr. Malfoy I see over there?" Dumbledore asked; his eyes hopeful.
"He's got a muffling charm on him. He can see you but he can't make out what you're saying. Just because he couldn't work up the nerve to actually murder you doesn't seem like a reason to trust him." Harry told him.
Dumbledore sighed, and nodded regretfully.
"Seven Horcruxes. Seven soul fragments. Harry and Voldemort have one each. That leaves us with five," Hermione counted off.
"Ah, but the horcrux within the ring was destroyed. The soul fragment was not simply released to be reabsorbed, I assure you it was quite decimated." Dumbledore's portrait told her. "As was my hand."
"So we are working with six active soul fragments, then. Not counting Harry and Voldemort would make it a total of four."
"In so far as we have been able to determine, yes." Dumbledore agreed.
"The locket, which we have. The diary, which was released and absorbed by Harry. Ravenclaw's wand, which was released and absorbed by Harry. And one more, perhaps the Hufflepuff Cup, or something of Gryffindors'."
"Indeed."
"So the race for the last horcrux is on."
"Hermione, remember. You three are attempting to destroy the horcruxes. Voldemort is not. He is more interested in killing Harry and putting the prophecy he believes so detrimental to his cause behind him. I do not believe he wishes to reincorporate his soul, only to keep the fragments safe to protect his immortality."
"And what more twisted way to do it," Hermione said angrily, "than to have some of them safely inside Harry! Inside a younger, less powerful wizard no one else would wish to kill?"
"My dear Miss Granger," said the card in surprise.
"You told Harry once that Voldemort underestimated the strength of an intact soul. Here's a question for you. At what point did you figure the fragments inside Harry would stop being fragments and find each other?"
"Who can say? You are working on the very frontiers of magic as we know it here, and…"
"I knew it! This is not an experiment! This is Harry's life. Harry's one life. Has it not occurred to you that if we put too much of Voldemort's soul in Harry he becomes more Voldemort than Harry? If the pieces of the soul can unite in him Voldemort might have more control than Harry himself and ….
"And what is new? What has changed since the last time we had this discussion?" Dumbledore asked sharply. "Other than perhaps your feelings for Harry? Are innocent people not still dying? Is Voldemort not still at large?"
Hermione froze. She had never spoken to the Headmaster that way in life, nor had he ever said such things to her. His voice was terrible and there was no twinkle in those resolute blue eyes.
"You said you sought to find a way to help him, Hermione. This is not it. Raging at a Chocolate Frog Card only helps those you fight against. What is done, is done. I can only give you ideas, directions in which to look. Ask yourself why he has been able to cope with the fragments so far. Is one truly contained within the scar, or is it just an indicator of what lies inside? Why has Voldemort's connection to Harry grown stronger yet left him still unable to withstand possessing him in the Department of Mysteries? Is there any difference, any significance amongst the fragments in relation to those who died in the process to make them? Wizard or Muggle, blood relation or stranger? And lastly, most importantly, how can Harry's own soul withstand the assault within? If what you feel for Harry is more than sentimentality and teenaged hormones, Miss Granger, I believe you already know one answer to that question. Do not doubt him."
"Don't," Harry's voice shook, there was a fire in his eyes that made Dumbledore's most thought-provoking twinkle seem like a birthday candle beside a torch. "Don't ever speak to her like that again. You LEFT us. You're on to your next great adventure. You battled your dark wizard and made your choices. You made all mine for me long after you should have because you couldn't let go. You told me that night after Sirius died that you yourself feared the uses he could put me to, the possibility he would try and possess me. You'd already guessed about the horcruxes then, hadn't you? You told me then you thought you saw his shadow stir behind my eyes and you tried to protect me by distancing yourself from me. You excused yourself for neglecting to tell me about the prophecy by saying that you `cared more for my life then for others that might be lost, and who could blame you?' You said, `What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future' if in the here and now I was alive and well and happy. Well how is it any different for her? Loving me has always cost more than it should. Look what it took from my parents, and Sirius. At least you got to chose. She's right to be frightened and angry. I should never have let myself, never…"
He had stood up in his fury, towering over the small card in her hand as Dumbledore had towered over Harry in life. His eyes seemed unable to contain the swell of emotions and raw churning magic surging inside him; she saw within them all she had known so long was there, all she had reached out for.
And then, without a sound, he was gone.
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