Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Here With Me
Chapter 9
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They saw Hermione again for the first time since Transfiguration on their way back from the Quidditch pitch after practice that evening. She was waiting half way up the hill, watching for them, her robes and hair streaming in the wind. Harry thought she didn't look happy. A distinct shame, because otherwise in her present windblown state she was enticing as a siren to his aching eyes. He was thoroughly impatient to tell her the results of his conversation with Ron.
"Liver for dinner tonight?" Ron asked her as they drew abreast and she fell into step between them.
She sighed. "You'll wish it was that. No, it's our detentions. They've just added you in with Malfoy and Harry and me, Ron."
"Oh, so you guys break a million school rules, spend the night in the Forbidden Forest getting shot at by Centaurs and fighting off Voldemort and I get the same punishment just for calling Cho a cow at breakfast? How does that work?" he asked plaintively.
"It gets better. Our detention tonight… is with Dumbledore."
Harry and Ron exchanged looks of trepidation. "No one ever has detention with Dumbledore. Oh man, even Fred and George never had detention with Dumbledore. This is not good." Ron groaned.
"We have to be in the Headmaster's office in twenty minutes," she continued as they passed through the entrance. "You ran a long practice, Ron. We've only just got time for dinner."
"I'll see you there, then" Harry told them, edging toward the stairs. Hermione stopped him with a look.
"Harry, don't. It'll just make it worse and you really need to eat something. Ginny said neither of you made lunch."
"It's hard to work up an appetite when the whole Hall is glaring at you, waiting for you to start channeling Voldemort," he informed her.
"You've got to stop caring what they think. What difference does it make what they believe?"
"A lot!" Harry said, fuming and trying desperately not to. "It makes a huge difference, actually. What if they were all to follow Cho and try and get me expelled? I don't exactly have a loving, supportive family to go home to, remember? I've got a bunch of anti-magical bigots who want to pretend Voldemort doesn't exist. I need to be here, I need to learn everything I can from Dumbledore and McGonagall and Flitwick and Lupin and anyone else who might have the slightest clue what in the name of Merlin I'm going to do when he comes looking for me that last time, because I'm not exactly feeling prepared. If they take me away… and where do you think they'll take me, Hermione, with a direct link to the Dark Lord etched on my head? I'm looking at Azkaban now if I piss off the wrong parents. I'm not sulking or withdrawing or any of that psycho stuff, I'm not trying for anyone's pity. I'm scared. It just seems like a good survival move right now to shut up and keep my head down."
"I hate to say it," Ron said slowly. "But that actually makes a scary kind of sense."
Hermione's indignation on his part seemed to deflate like a pricked balloon and he saw this new worry take over her features. He was sure the idea could not be one that hadn't occurred to her before. She always considered problems from every possible angle. It was more likely wonder and fear that the stirrings of a self-survival plan had actually occurred to Harry.
"Go on then," she told him. "We'll meet you at the top of the stairs to Dumbledore's corridor. After detention is over though, be prepared to go tickle the pear. There's a certain house elf down there who wouldn't want to see you go hungry, either."
"Excellent idea, Hermione,' Ron chimed in, envisioning an entire second dinner with Harry.
"See you," Harry said, and watched his best friends head off into the Great Hall before trudging up the stairs to the tower alone.
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Malfoy had just reached the door to Dumbledore's office when they arrived. Harry could sense his almost reflexive resentment rise the moment he saw the faint gleam of white blond hair. The feeling was mostly unabated by the fact that he knew that without Malfoy's help in the cave he might well be dead. Knowing that he was alive because Malfoy wished it so left him feeling somehow outdone and used; that thought coupled with the knowledge that he now owed the Slytherin a wizard's debt was almost more than Harry could bear.
"Thanks for keeping it shut, Malfoy. I always knew you could be trusted," he said in greeting.
Draco raised one long dark eyebrow. Clearly he'd learned that move from Malfoy Senior rather well. "They have a right to know, don't you think? And Cho wasn't too far off the mark. You are something of a menace, although you really don't need the Dark Lord's help for that."
Harry could feel a feral growl building in his throat, articulate response at the moment quite beyond him.
Luckily Ron wasn't experiencing anything of the kind. "Listen, arseho…"
"Caramel Bull's Eye!" Hermione almost shouted, wishing they hadn't outgrown her by such an unfair margin in the last few years. She pushed Harry and Ron past Malfoy toward the slowly rotating spiral staircase. Draco followed her inside and they rose to the level of Dumbledore's office to find him already seated behind his desk, writing intently on a quite long piece of parchment with an extraordinarily large, fluffy quill. He looked up and smiled upon their arrival, waving his hand toward the front of his desk. Four straight-backed wooden chairs appeared. "Won't be a moment," he told them.
They sat. Fawkes fluttered over to Harry and settled on his knee, cocking his head and nipping at the sleeve of his robes for attention. Hermione watched as Harry began to absently stroke the magnificent flame-colored bird, his mind clearly elsewhere. She reflected how much better it felt this time round with him there as well. Ron sat beside Harry and played with the ragged, unraveling cuff of his robes, slowly worrying the black thread into a ball. Malfoy was on her other side, radiating unconcern.
Dumbledore finished his thought with a flourish, capped his ink bottle and allowed the parchment to re-roll. His eyes lifted from the desk and she felt them probe their way down the row of the four before him.
"I have," he said at last, "something of a quest for you four."
"One of the enduring mysteries of Hogwarts," Dumbledore began, "Is how alive this castle is. It has been full of so much magic for so many centuries that a great deal was bound to slough off, but I myself prefer to think that it was the will of those who created it to begin with. How it was intended to be, in fact. It responds to us daily, to the staff and students alike. I believe each of you has probably experienced this differently but that you recognize my meaning none the less. It has been your home and refuge for five years now and still there is much about it you do not know. Indeed, despite my many years here, there are secrets yet it keeps from me. One in particular I am starting to feel it may be urgent to resolve."
Dumbledore rose and made his way to an old wooden stool in one corner of the office on which the sorting hat spent its days when not fulfilling its duty of sorting Hogwarts first years into their houses. He lifted the stool and brought it further out into the room, setting it closer to the four students.
"Acclaro Abditum.'
The hat seemed to startle awake and cleared its throat froggily.
"Seek me when the one who lives
Has passed the Centaur's test;
Four again must walk these halls
And wake me from my rest.
A pageless story I unfold,
Yet through me is the tale foretold,
Of what will happen,
What has been,
Fate's wheel within my circle spins.
When times are dark and evil grows,
Then truth must hide within the rose
That never dies.
Obscured from those who seek in wrath,
But waiting on the righteous path.
So seek me through these castle walls,
Search where the light of morning falls
At break of day.
Seek me in faith and you shall find
Answers hidden long from time
The hat fell silent.
Dumbledore turned to the four students. "That particular bit of verse was not only entrusted to the hat, but also inscribed upon a stone incorporated into the hallway beneath the Divination classroom. Alas, it was inadvertently erased along with some rather pointed commentary about the predictions of one of Madam Trelawney's predecessors many years ago. The inscription had apparently been there since the days of the four founders. It was most curious how it disappeared."
"Professor, you don't think… I mean, it's not talking about Harry, is it?" Hermione asked.
"That is part of what I wish you to ascertain, Miss Granger. I myself quite think it might be, and given the fact that Harry seems to have survived his recent brush with the Centaur's love of archery and lack of fondness for wizards, the time could well have come to do as we are bid and seek the answer to the riddle. It is with this that I am charging the four of you as punishment for your rather flagrant disregard of school rules for sixth year students. Instead of serving detention per se, you four are on probation. All of your privileges, including Hogsmeade visits and Holiday leave are hereby revoked until the answer to the mystery is revealed."
"Want that again?" the hat asked. "I can do it a little slower if you like."
"Yes, please!" Hermione said. She grubbed about in her bag for a quill and spare parchment.
"All privileges…surely not Quidditch!" Ron said, aghast.
"No Mr. Weasley. You may continue as Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, as long as your partners agree that progress is being made. Likewise Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy may continue as seekers for Gryffindor and Slytherin, unless it seems Miss Granger is having to, shall we say, 'carry the Quaffle' for you three."
"Why should the rest of us have to lose Hogsmeade privileges and Holidays to try and figure out some ridiculous riddle about Potter?" Malfoy complained.
"I'm afraid it's simply a matter of bad timing, Mr. Malfoy. The riddle specifically names four walking the halls, and you happen to have chosen the wrong time to…"
"To do what? Save your potty little hero? Without me he'd be the Boy Who Choked on His Own Vomit right now." Malfoy cut in angrily.
"To walk away from what you started, perhaps?" Dumbledore completed.
Malfoy's jaw clicked shut so hard Harry and Ron winced.
"If you are sincere in your aims, Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore told him with a faint smile, "It is time, as I believe they say, to put up or shut up. Figuring out this ridiculous riddle might very well save your own life and the lives of many others if it proves of use in understanding Mr. Potters' predicament. And now may I suggest you adjourn yourselves to discuss how you propose to solve this mystery? I find 'Hogwarts, A History' to be an excellent starting place for many a question. I believe it to be one of your favorites as well, Miss Granger."
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They left Dumbledore's office and headed disbelievingly toward the library.
Ron groaned. "This is the single most heinous detention plot in the entire history of detention!"
"Fascinating, though…" Hermione mused. "Although how we're going to manage it…"
"Far be it from me to agree with Weasley, but this is ludicrous," Malfoy snarled. "I'm not doing it."
"And how are you going to manage that?" Harry asked with a small surge of pleasure. Malfoy's misery somehow made the sheer barmyness of what Dumbledore was asking almost tolerable.
"Yeah, Malfoy. Somehow I don't think Daddy's going to be coming to your rescue anytime soon. He should be slithering into Azkaban right about now, shouldn't he?" Ron taunted.
"All they got him on was the unregistered animagus thing. Hardly much of a crime to be caught slithering into Hagrid's. Merlin knows how you could even spot him with the rest of the wildlife in there. It'll be a simple slap on the wrist if there's enough gold in the palm. Don't think you're shut of him yet. You're right though - if he sees me before I see him, helping won't describe what takes place."
Ron stopped dead and Hermione suddenly found herself bouncing off him. Only Harry's steadying hand kept her from careening back into Malfoy. "You can't honestly mean he's getting off? Ron exclaimed. "He was trying to kill me!"
"Says who?" Malfoy sneered.
"Says himself! He told Harry!"
"'So the snake says to the parselmouth…' That's a pub joke, Weasley, not testimony."
"Unbelievable!"
"Believe it. Your Ministry of Magic at work. Who's afraid of Voldemort with Fudge around? Is evil really so much worse than total incompetence?"
"Yes," Harry said. "It is. Fairly large difference, actually."
"How very Gryffindor of you, Potter."
"I don't know about you," Harry told him, suddenly weary, "but I reckon this thing isn't going to get done by arguing about it."
"Harry's right," Hermione said. "Let's go to the library and at least draw up a plan of attack. We can split up the research and the foot work between us and then each of us can fit it in around our own schedules when we have time. We'll arrange a time to meet and compare what we've found out."
"Do that," Malfoy said, moving off in the direction of the dungeons. "Fascinating though I'm sure it will be, I have a somewhat pressing previous engagement." He stared at Ron rather pointedly and Harry felt suddenly ill, wondering if it was to do with Ginny. He had been studiously avoiding thinking about that particular complication, at a complete and utter loss how to begin to deal with it.
"Dumbledore said we should do it together,' Hermione pointed out stubbornly.
"Then do it together," Draco told her. "Since when has your 'together' ever included Slytherin? I'm sure as brave and brainless Gryffindors you'll manage well enough on your own. Let me guess; Granger will do the boring poring through forgotten tomes in the library while Potter and Weasley sneak around the castle at night looking for previously unnoticed circular objects and trying to evade Filch and Mrs. Norris. Call me when you get to the part you actually need wits for."
He stalked off.
Three fingers spontaneously raised in formation behind his retreating back.
"Bloody git," Ron grumbled, turning toward the library.
"Selfish prick's more like it," Harry followed him.
"If we weren't already in more trouble than I ever thought possible," Hermione groused, joining them, "I'd hex his little wizard right off."
Ron and Harry each felt small, protective shudders within their own anatomies. When they reached the library Harry carefully held the doors open for her and Ron allowed her to enter first.
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Harry was dozing over his Charms essay, head propped on his hand and quill stalled halfway across the page when Colin Creevey suddenly appeared at their table.
"Hi, Harry! How are you? How's sixth year? I can't wait 'til the Quidditch match, you guys are going to sink Ravenclaw! I took some pictures of you practicing today and I bet they're going to come out super! Oh, and you need to go to the Potions classroom straight away. Snape wants you."
Had he ever had that much energy? The kid was at least third year by now, shouldn't he be mellowing out a bit? "Thanks, Colin."
"What do you think Snape wants? I know he really has it in for you, everybody knows how many points he gets off you. Detention's over but he had a cauldron of something really foul going, I hope you don't have to scrub cauldrons after that! Well, good luck, Harry!"
Ron watched Colin's departing back. "That's not good. What does Snape want with you at this hour? With a foul potion on the fire no less. Want some company, Harry?"
Harry shook his head. "Thanks. I knew one of them was going to send for me, I was just hoping it wasn't going to be Snape. They're not going to just let me go sleep in the dorm even though what happened last night wasn't my fault. I'm probably going to regret begging Madam Pomfrey not to tie me up in the Hospital wing; it's got to be better than whatever Snape is brewing if it's for me. If they let me I'll see you back here later."
He gathered his books into his satchel and circled the table to crouch down beside Hermione's chair so that their eyes were level. "I was hoping to get some time to ourselves to tell you," he said softly, "but Ron and I talked while we were dodging lunch today. He's okay with everything. Well, he said he'd kick my arse if I wasn't good to you, but I don't think there's any need to worry about that. I wanted you to know so you didn't feel like we'd left it hanging or anything." He grinned sheepishly. "Well, that, and because I think it means I get to kiss you before I go face Snape."
"I guess we'd better," Hermione agreed with a grin of her own, "because if you'll be ingesting any of this foul potion, don't expect me to be sharing the taste when you get back."
Ron made gagging and sicking-up noises and eventually started throwing parchment spitballs at them, but Harry found his farewell entirely satisfactory.
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Harry made his way toward the dungeons, encountering only Peeves and Hufflepuff prefect Ernie Macmillan in a pitched battle involving a Hufflepuff first year. The girl seemed to have missed her curfew because she was afraid to leave the lavatory Peeves had chased her into. It struck Harry how very young she seemed, marveling that Hermione had been just that age when the she had encountered the troll in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. He smiled encouragingly at her as he passed while Macmillan attempted to scourgify the stinksap Peeves had hit her with and lure her out. Unfortunately she took one look at Harry, wailed in terror and retreated back into the depths of the girls' loo. Peeves snickered.
"Thanks, Potter." Ernie snarled in frustration. "Nothing better to do tonight than frighten the first years?"
"Sorry," Harry muttered, and continued quickly down towards Snape's classroom, thoroughly depressed.
Whatever Snape was brewing, it smelt, as Colin reported, foul. Harry followed the scent hoping against hope it was something Snape made up as a favor to Filch for cleaning up dungbomb incidents.
"Ah, Potter." Snape said happily, crushing that illusion.
"You wanted me?" Harry replied cautiously.
"Hardly," Snape told him, beckoning him forward none the less. "The Headmaster instructed me to make up this potion so you wouldn't have to spend the night out with the werewolves, not that you've minded that before. I'm simply doing as I was told. You might try it sometime."
"What is it?"
"I believe the correct response to my prior statement to be 'Thank you, Professor Snape.'
Harry thought back to his discovery at the Burrow, focused his thoughts and hurled them at Snape with all his might and without a word. 'You must be joking, you sniveling, shrivel-hearted git. I'd as soon take tea with Voldemort as drink a drop of anything from you.'
He saw Snape's eyes round.
"Excuse me, Professor," he said meekly aloud. "Why thank you." Why, indeed.
He felt Snape's mind reach out, saw the wand twitching in his fingers half hidden by the fold of his robes. Harry concentrated hard and thrust back with everything he had. Snape fell back a step, expression disbelieving now.
"Why the open door policy for the Dark Lord, then, Potter?" he sneered, but shakily. "You can't tell me that you can achieve that sort of effect and still be overtaken by someone not even in your physical presence? You're inviting him in, aren't you. Thinking you can handle it all yourself…"
"No!" Harry shouted, suddenly furious. Exactly, he was quite sure, as Snape intended. "No. I hate it. I hate him ever being inside of me. You have no idea what you're talking about. You think you know everything, but you don't. It's this bloody scar; nothing I ever learn is enough to stop it."
"Draco told me that you told Granger that you imagined the Dark Lord that night, that you used his altered physical nature to slow your own heart to try to reduce the spread of the Centaur's poison," Snape hissed. "Not such a bad idea in concept, except for the fact of exactly who you were attempting to use, you Gryffindor half wit! What were you expecting?"
"Not that!" Harry hissed back. "Hermione was there. I would never have endangered… I didn't know!"
"You didn't think!" Snape snapped. "You never do! You're just like…"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like my Dad. Well, maybe I'm not exactly like him. I didn't like what I saw in that pensieve. I wasn't proud of what he did, I even asked Remus and Sir… Sirius about it. They pointed out that he was just a boy. Just a fifteen year old boy. It doesn't make it right, but can't you ever get past it? Sirius said he was trying to impress my mother, for Merlin's sake. Haven't you ever loved anyone, ever done something stupid because of it? It was a moment in time, not what any of you really were. It's only stuck that way because Voldemort killed them and killed any chance to change any of it with them! How do you really know that he might not have brought me to school himself or seen you at a Quidditch match one day and said 'Severus, good to see you, listen, I'm sorry I was such a total prat to you sixth year?' How?" Harry asked, anguished.
Snape did not answer, but ladled some of the potion into a glass tumbler and set it down on the table before him, then picked up a second tumbler and filled it as well.
"This potions' ingredients should yield an effect never documented before, quite probably because no would normally wish for such a result. You will sleep only with the permission of one other, dream only with their permission, wake only with their permission. If anyone attempts to enter or take over your dreaming mind you will be forced into a stupefied state from which you can only be freed by the dream keeper. The Dark Lord could possibly possess you, but you would be immobilized, unable to be of any use to him."
"There's a vision of hell right there. And I would agree to that because… you think I'm a complete idiot?"
"No. Because you want to remain at Hogwarts and this potion is quite probably the only way you may be allowed to do that. This potion, and a great deal of convincing of the Ministry by Dumbledore. Yes, Potter, the Dark Lord could indeed run rampant in you while you are immobilized but you would be beyond moving and injuring anyone else. You claim to have been able to cast him off when you are awake, and if your little display before was any measure it is certainly quite possible. Your dream keeper would have only to wake you up and then release you from the body bind when you signal it to be safe."
"I'd have to drink that every night?"
Snape sighed. "You really have no sense of potions, do you? No, this is a variant of an enchantment potion. You drink it the first time and name your dream keeper. The first dose is followed with a second in which your dream keeper has added some essence. Have Weasley spit in it. From that moment until the enchanting effect is neutralized your keeper controls your sleeping and waking states with a simple spell."
Harry hated the very idea of it. He didn't want to be controlled by or dependent on anyone. He trusted Ron, would entrust him with his life, but still…
"There has to be another way," he said.
"Far better minds then yours have been working on this issue ever since you brought it on yourself, Potter. For now, it's this or face expulsion from Hogwarts until the Dark Lord is vanquished. Your choice."
"Professor Dumbledore okayed this?"
Snape sighed. "Potter, why else would I waste my time with it?"
Because you never answered my question? Because you'd enjoy the sight of me writhing to death with the world's foulest smelling potion foaming out of my mouth? Because you're a…
"A what?" snarled Snape.
Oops. He'd really have to learn to keep track of some of the new stuff he was learning this year.
"I can't just do this. I have to ask Ron's permission first. What if he doesn't want the responsibility? I couldn't trust just anyone with this. Can I at least ask him first?"
Snape produced a tray and set the two tumblers on it along with a small piece of parchment. "This note has the exact spells for your dream keeper to use, whomever you should chose. I will be chatting with the fat lady from exactly midnight until approximately three minutes after the hour. Return the tray to me with both glasses empty or I shall have to rouse Professor McGonagall and make other arrangements for you tonight. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said dully, and took the tray.
This was starting to feel like the longest damn day of his life.
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