Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 14
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They came out of their apparitions at the foot of an old wooden dock jutting like an accusing finger into the heaving sea. It was thankfully deserted; no one was awaiting a new arrival. The air was heavy with fog, sea-spray and despair. Harry knew that somewhere out there in the impenetrable gray was the one place he never, ever wanted to be. Azkaban Prison.
He quickly checked side to side to make sure Ron and Hermione had both made it unscathed. Hermione was already turning away, looking for the way off the platform that led to the dock and out of the anti-apparition wards. Ron was staring out to sea just as Harry had, and as Harry watched he let out a reflexive shudder. It struck him like lightening that what he dreaded even more than Azkaban itself would be either Ron or Hermione facing it also. This was as far as he was willing to let them go defending him this time round.
Hermione reached for his hand and pointed to a series of stairs climbing up the cliff face; if they got up there they could most likely apparate out. He prodded Ron to life and pointed and they ran, wordlessly, and began climbing. He could feel his body still protesting whatever spell they had used on him; his lungs refused to fill the way they ought to and the upward progress was torture. He could feel Ron behind him pushing him onward from time to time as his feet grew heavier and heavier.
"Almost there," Hermione gasped encouragingly, and he could tell she'd noticed his weakness as well. He redoubled his efforts with a last glance back; a figure popped into existence on the platform below them. Eights steps, five steps, three steps more… There was a shout from below, more figures popped in after the first. They threw themselves over the cover of the cliff face just as a spell split the air behind them.
"Carefully, both of you," Hermione admonished them as they crawled and struggled to their feet well back from the edge, readying to apparate. Harry would have given anything to have side-alonged both of them. He could do it, but they would never allow him to. He hated the not knowing, the act of faith it took to submit himself to the process only hoping they would both appear beside him at the end of it. He envisioned the square outside Grimmauld Place, felt the sucking vortex of apparition, stepped into it and was gone.
If he never saw that dock again it would still be too soon.
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They stumbled into the square that fronted Grimmauld Place with three cracks that echoed through the late afternoon air like muggle gunfire. Harry noticed with some regret that the process that had begun only last year when they had occasionally used the house as a refuge while horcrux-hunting had continued; the neighborhood was slowly gentrifying. Gunfire was increasingly unlikely now; he hoped the expensive new cars beginning to dot the streets still backfired occasionally. They'd always flooed in before; they'd have to figure out how to bypass some of Dumbledore's carefully wrought wards before long.
He had nothing against the changes in the neighborhood either way; it was just that it was now more than ever likely to become unwelcoming to the presence of witches and wizards. It was sad how the circle continued; magical people avoiding discomfiting muggle sensibilities by staying to abandoned and crime riddled areas and then taking the unfair blame for being the cause of those very things. Vernon Dursley's spittle-driven accusation of `freak' echoed still in Harry's ears, along with the Dursley horror of anything different.
Of course, that wasn't fair either. Generations of the Black family's dark presence could have easily encouraged the neighborhood in its previous downslide, hidden or not. And for all the new muggle neighbor's evident concerns for property values, they were still equally unlikely to actually see what was right under their noses.
A quick look around revealed the way clear as far as they could see. The cost of rejuvenation was evidently a lot of hours spent in distant offices, and at this hour the neighborhood was still mostly deserted. They walked swiftly toward numbers eleven and thirteen and the battered door of number twelve seemed to shoulder its way out between the other two as if to greet them. Its black paint was considerably more worn then when Harry had first glimpsed it the summer before fifth year, and the silver serpent knocker was tarnished to a grotty green. Hermione grasped it firmly behind the head to knock; just because it was tarnished didn't mean it couldn't still bite.
"We should have gone somewhere and flooed in," Ron said nervously, echoing Harry's earlier thoughts and keeping a wary eye out behind them.
"They would have traced us through the floo network, Ron," Harry pointed out wearily. "We couldn't do that to anyone else. Even if they ultimately trace the apparition here to the square, they still can't find us in the house."
Lupin pulled open the door and ushered them hurriedly in, quickly closing it behind them. There came the rattle and clink of numerous locks and chains snicking home; an all-too-familiar sound to Harry. He knew it was as if they and the house had literally disappeared from view, and no one who hadn't been specifically given the location could find them. It was to keep him safe, not trap him. Breathe, Harry.
Lupin's eyes took them in with a clear mixture of worry and welcome. Harry felt himself so relieved to be free that he actually felt suddenly faint and braced himself against the welcome solidity of the hall wall, noticing as he did that he was not alone and Ron had claimed the other one. Hermione moved against him and hugged him fiercely, and he felt in her tensed shoulders the struggle not to give in to the adrenalin let-down equalizer of a good cry.
"I think the situation calls out for stiff drink," Lupin decided. "Thank Merlin you're all finally old enough I shan't feel guilty offering you one."
They choose the kitchen for its sense of security and the fact that Ron's post-stress reaction was always starvation. Lupin sent his patronus off to Tonks to assure her they had arrived safely, and assured Ron that she would tell his father as well. He poured them each a measure of Ogden's; Hermione made herself tea and honey and added hers to it. Ron raided the near-empty larder while attacking his. Harry slumped into a chair at the table.
"You and Tonks eat like fairies," Ron accused Lupin. "You've hardly any bloody food at all!"
"It was meant to be a surprise for this week end at the Burrow," Lupin told him with a sigh, "but I've moved out to live with Tonks. I asked her to marry me, actually, and believe it or not she's said yes."
Ron laughed. "I bet what she actually said was `about time, wolf man'. Congratulations."
Lupin's eyes rolled. Clearly he'd been getting rather a lot of that.
Hermione's eyes sought out Harry's over the rim of her mug. Harry knew what she was asking but he felt so tired it seemed an almost insurmountable conversation to begin. And something of a moot point as well now - what other choice did they have?
"Ron, I wanted to ask you before all of this…. I mean Remus told me he was moving out and all, but I was going to wait until after week end not to spoil the surprise. Now it just seems like the only safe thing to do, but I was going to ask before any of this happened if you'd consider living here with Hermione and me. There's more room than the flat and it would just go vacant otherwise. It seemed like a good way to give everyone some space and still stay together. If anything happens to me, it'll belong to the two of you anyway."
It had been going well enough until that last bit. He heard Hermione give a soft splutter into her tea and Ron's blue eyes went wintry as the North Sea.
"Nothing's going to happen to you, Mate. This whole thing stinks to high heaven of a set-up. Bloody Malfoy. I bet he paid off some old Death Eater debt of his Dad's with that performance today, either that or that's how he got his ruddy apprenticeship."
"It doesn't make sense that the Ministry would have been behind it at all," Harry pointed out. "They've already staked out their position; they want me visible and muzzled as a warning. If anyone did set up what happened this morning, it seems more that they wanted me kissed or put away for good. I apparently killed someone, Ron."
The enormity of it hit him for the first time. He'd killed Voldemort, but he'd always known he was going to have to do that and it had had a sense of foregone justice to it. Today he'd actually killed someone, snuffed a life for no reason other than his own carelessness and lack of control.
"I just don't understand how it happened," he heard himself continue shakily. "I… I would have sworn there wasn't anyone alive in the middle of it. I can feel that, I could have shielded just one person, there would have been time. I just wanted to get in the door and get to Hermione; I didn't want to hurt anyone. Even when the magic gets away from you it's not totally random on its own. I'm sure I could have saved her if I'd just felt anything at all..."
Despair swept over him then like a rogue wave from an otherwise flat sea, knocking him flat and drawing him back in its cold embrace. Everything he most feared about himself was washed loose from his deepest, darkest burying places in a roiling flood and floated like poison to the surface. He was death itself, a killer, murderer, he despoiled everything, brought nothing but conflict and pain and suffering wherever he went. How could he even think of loving anyone, a normal life, a future, a family, when all he'd done his whole life was draw people to their deaths? So many had died, if not at his hand then because of him. How could he think it was over? It would never be over …
There came a loud, rushing sound like water in his ears and his vision dimmed and blurred. Hands suddenly clutched at him, cold and claw-like, icy lips pushed at his ear whispering encouragements. Give in… let go… come to me now…
This time he was increasingly certain he didn't want to go. He was suffering from guilt rather than the sense of loss he'd felt when he'd thought Hermione had only kissed him out of pity, and guilt was a complex and layered emotion. He knew he'd killed someone, but he'd never wanted to, never meant to, it was an accident and oh, but he didn't want to be wherever this was. His heart ached here and the desolation was so thick it pervaded his skin and numbed and burned at the same time. He felt as if he were the rope in some terrible game of tug of war, seesawing back and forth through time and space. The freezing fingers were scrabbling for purchase now, tearing at his skin while other warmer, gentler ones held tight.
There were sounds then through the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his ears. Screams. He recognized one; his mum crying `Harry!' The same scream he heard whenever there were Dementors around, the one they extracted from somewhere within him. Another voice he almost recognized but didn't, cursing and pleading at once, and a voice he knew well that spoke to everything within him saying almost the same things.
`Stay with me Harry. Don't go. Stay here with me, Harry! Please…' Hermione. And Lupin, and Ron as well, calling him. Then who was…
`… Give in. You want this, you made it happen. This is where you belong. Let go. Let go damn you! Come to me!'
`Please, no,' he thought, and it was as if he had quite suddenly hit the end of his leash on life and it held strong. The cold fingers were ripped away and he landed hard on the floor of Grimmauld Place, soaked in sweat and shaking, gasping desperately for breath. He opened his eyes, slowly.
Hermione and Lupin each had hold of one of his arms; Ron held down his legs. They were breathing almost as hard as he was. Even Lupin appeared stunned.
"What the bloody hell was that, Harry?" Ron quaked out. "That was the scariest damn thing I've every seen, you almost… you were almost gone… "
Harry rolled his head to toward Hermione. He'd knocked his glasses askew, but he could see the grasping claw like hands had actually left their marks on his skin. Wherever he'd almost been had been as real as here was now, and everything he'd felt had somehow happened. His eyes strayed on to hers, so worried but still so warm. For all he was sweating, he felt profoundly cold; he wished he could crawl inside their depths, curl up in her loving gaze and sleep for twenty years. He tried to reach toward her but his limbs were heavy and leaden.
He heard Remus' voice, as if from a long way away. "I've never seen anything quite like it, but it reeks of dark magic. Do either of you know if this has this ever happened before?"
Hermione told him about the first time. She described it as a pale shadow of what had just happened, and Harry thought she couldn't have been more right. The sound of her voice was mesmerizing; where would he be now if it were not for her strength to call him back? Where had he been headed?
He began to struggle upright then, beginning to feel both frightened and terribly pissed off. It was on the tip of his tongue, on the very edge of his consciousness who it was that was doing this. He knew somehow, but could not put the thought together or formulate the words. He felt certain that was part of the spell, and it made him feel violated and furious, as if he'd been gagged in plain sight and no one even noticed.
"I know who it is; I just can't… think it. Or say it. I'm sure of it, but it won't… there's always something in the way!" he snarled, frustrated almost beyond words. Ron quickly let go of his legs and Remus helped him sit up.
"That's not an uncommon component of dark magic, Harry. What good is a truly wretched curse if the person you're hexing can say what it is or who did it?" Remus told him.
"Elspeth's scanned me so many bloody times…"
"But does she think there's something there? She hasn't given up, has she? So she must. Spell damage often isn't a science so much as an art, Harry. There's a lot of guesswork and intuition involved. New spells are created every day, and variations on spells, and plain old spells with odd effects because of the way they were cast, or because they combined with other spells. It takes time. This new episode was obviously stronger than the last. Perhaps it will give her more to go on. I've truly never seen anything quite like it. You literally almost disappeared. My hands sunk right through you like… sand."
Lupin had been Harry's best Dark Arts Professor ever. To see him stumped and rattled was disturbing to say the least.
"We need to find a way to tell Elspeth it happened again. And I wish we could get her to look at these cuts as well. Unless your body psychosomatically produced them itself someone actually had hold of you somehow," Hermione said thoughtfully. "It all depends on how the curse works, I guess."
"I showed her how to find us," Harry admitted, more than a little defensively because they'd never discussed it and he knew he probably shouldn't have without their permission. "Before we apparated from the Ministry. I trust her, and if her ruse didn't work she might need a safe place for herself and Emily as well. She's put an awful lot on the line for me."
He was relieved when Hermione and Ron both nodded approvingly; if Lupin was discomfited he hid it well.
Hermione stood up and took his hand in her own. "Come and get cleaned up. I'll try and heal those cuts and if they aren't too bad we'll leave one bandaged in case we can get Elspeth to look at it. I want to do a little research in the Black family book collection. They seem to have something on every creepy curse around; it's just a matter of thickening your skin up enough that you don't feel the desperate need to wash after every single page you look at."
He allowed himself to be led toward the stairs quite gratefully. The thought of getting cleaned and warm and into a bed was beyond enticing. The thought of doing it all with her was the only thing that made him remotely glad to be alive.
Well, okay. He did get at least a little pleasure out of walking past the scorch marks that were once Walburga Black.
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The shower both faintly revived and pained him; he felt more aware but he was also more aware of the stinging of the new wounds that marked his skin. He examined his hands closely as the water streamed over the rest of him. They were as good as healed now, the long thin line of scar tissue that ran from the callous at the base of his middle finger down the center of both palms was entirely closed, no longer angry or even raised but beginning to blur softly into the rest of his skin.
One set of wounds healing, another opened. Would it ever just stop? He had the distinct sense that the threats closing in on him now were unrelated to each other but that all were exploiting the same weakness in his defenses. If he was so ruddy powerful, why was he letting everyone push him around? He'd been too strung out just trying to get through it all… it was time to take the dragon by the tail. If he could actually control all this instead of it controlling him, they'd bloody well have to leave him alone then… Even Scrimgeour. Harry had a brief, fulfilling fantasy of blowing the walls of Scrimgeour's office in the Ministry out over Muggle London and Percy Weasley clinging to one like a magic carpet, sailing through the air and squealing like the rat he was.
The water abruptly turned off and a towel was thrust in at him.
"You've gone from the getting clean part to the getting revenge part," Hermione told him wisely.
He shook his head like a dog, unwittingly dousing her, then buried his face in the towel. "How did you know that?" he asked from its folds. "That's not fair."
"You were in there long enough," she said. He felt another towel beginning to dry him elsewhere and realized with a jolt that just because his face was covered didn't mean hers was. How strange was it that he was both stirred and yet still so hesitant about his nakedness in front of her after what they'd done together? Old habits died hard; for all she was the only one he could imagine sharing his life with that way, there was still an instinctual twelve-year-old in his response to her. He lowered the towel and met her eyes and felt yet another treacherous response, the results of which had to be clearly evident to her even through the towel she was drying his stomach with.
"You know, you're really quite nice when you're all cleaned up, Harry," she said, and her lips curled at the corners in such an utterly familiar Hermione-ish way that he was overcome. He reached without thought to touch those small curves that hid so much of the humor behind her seriousness. The gentle swell of them beneath his fingers drove him relentlessly on to the need to feel them for himself with his own lips. And as so often happens, one thing led to another; the little curl disappeared but he didn't mind because it sort of had to for her to be able to kiss him back like that. Her arms slipped round his waist and made their way up his back, drawing him closer, and he became acutely aware of the wetness of his skin soaking her clothes.
Their lips parted and she took a step back, the dark wet patches of her tee shirt clinging now to her skin. He heard himself let slip a small, wanting sound, watching her. Her eyes strayed down him like a caress and he almost stopped breathing, he was so aware of her now that he literally ached with it. Harry knew himself not to be hugely concerned with who started things; his whole life felt like nothing but a reaction to events beyond his control sometimes, and he was used to responding rather than initiating. All he knew was at this moment he was almost overcome with the heady rush of being free and able still to feel her and touch her, and he was more than ever convinced he would do anything to keep it that way. That he could see in her eyes that very same resolve translated itself throughout his nervous system into a kind of desire more intense than anything he had ever experienced before.
He'd have picked her up if he'd thought he could have gotten her back to his room without knocking her out cold on the doorframe; he might be deep in the throes of wanting her but he wasn't completely stupid yet, or at least not under any illusions about his natural abilities in that scenario. If he was going to sweep her off her feet she'd likely have to be lying down first.
"Mine's closer," she said, just the right bit breathlessly, as if sharing his exact thought. They careened down the hall, knocking shoulders and laughing and slamming the door like they could shut the world away. He did the locking and silencing spells while she climbed on the bed and perched, awaiting him. Her second bit of wandless magic ever claimed the towel he'd wrapped round his waist halfway to the bed.
"Oh, right, Miss `we're supposed to use our magic responsibly, not for pranks and stunts,'" he teased, but when he reached the bed her eyes were serious and the touch of her fingers trembling on his arms as she urged him on in his climb up.
"I never understood," she told him softly. "I never thought that I could feel like this. I thought it was for other people, not ones who lost themselves in books and proved themselves by memorizing instead of doing. You changed that about me in everything else; I ended up doing more magic with you last year than most witches my age will read about in a lifetime. I just never understood that you could change the way I feel about everything else as well."
He wished, desperately, that he could do even half the things for her she evidently gave him credit for.
She pulled her tee shirt up over her head, shrugging to loosen the wet spots. He met her lips when they reappeared through the neck of it and started in on the button of her jeans. It didn't take them long to equalize the clothing imbalance between them and then she was sliding down and urging him over her and his senses were reeling with the lovely silken warmth of her beneath him. He was taken by the contrast on the involuntary natures of their movements (her legs parting beneath him, his own helpless urge to thrust in response) and the specifics of their endearments to each other, the sounds and words that made this coupling theirs alone. Neither of them were particularly vocal, but her soft `hmm's and `oh's and `Harry's were all the encouragement he needed and he loved the way her fingers stroked and explored him in a gentle blending of her own enjoyment and his.
He slowed the pace of their relentless progress toward undoing each other as much as he could, fighting himself every inch of the way. Her hands stroked up his sides and over his shoulders then to frame his face, guiding his eyes to hers.
"I want to see you," she whispered and he smiled at her, puzzled but obedient.
"When you're there," she explained with a slow, blushing grin. "I love the way you, um, let go."
Oh. Oh. He felt his own answering flush and nodded his understanding, shifting his weight from his forearms up onto his elbows so that he could touch her as well, stroking through her hair. She turned her face into his hand and he thought he'd never get tired of watching her lovely seriousness swept aside by the tide of her feelings; he just couldn't quite shift the concept to himself. She was beautiful, he was more often than not sweating and dripping and biting back some utterly animal howl.
"You first, then," he prompted her.
His movements were nothing more than long, slow undulations; she began to meet each one with an exquisite little shimmy at his deepest point and he began in turn to hold himself just there an extra moment for her each time before backing off and rocking in again. Their breathing deepened as one and her spine curled up hard beneath him, arching her deeper. She bit her lower lip in concentration, still watching him fiercely. He couldn't help but groan in response and joined his lips to hers, working her lip free again and offering his own instead. She bit it gently, playfully, and released him, pushing his head back up. He was close now, but she felt close as well, the shimmy more determined and far less controlled. He knew his own command of the situation was beginning to slip and his movements sped up, still slower than the frantic heaving of his ribs as he fought to control his breathing but much more like the acceleration of a rivers' currant toward a waterfall; irreversible.
"Hermione," he heard himself beg, but for what he couldn't have said; she'd given him everything. But then she gave him one thing more; her hands still holding his eyes level to hers she quavered, "Oh, Harry." Her pupils widened slightly as she moved up harder against him, soft and warm and curved in all the right places as if she were made to fit only him in that moment. Her eyelids fluttered with the determined effort not to close, while all the rest of her closed around him in unspeakably lovely ways.
He knew that determination so well, that fiercely unstoppable will. It was as if she were proving to him in her own way that if only they could manage this, to bring each other to this most naked and vulnerable point and not lose themselves in themselves but share it together, they would stay that way always. He knew she believed it, even if he could not. It was her way of coping; Harry had learned her bargains well over the last year, he'd watched her push herself harder at her books and deeper into her magic to convince herself they'd all survive. She'd pushed him as well, and he was fairly certain that without her and Ron he'd be dead at this very moment he now felt most alive… so maybe she was right.
Whether or not he believed it, he'd made her a promise and he'd die before he didn't keep it. Fighting every instinct to cry out, to close his eyes, to bury his face in the soft oblivion her neck, he managed by the very end of his nerves to hold on to her gaze and let her see everything she could make him feel in his own eyes even as the evidence of it wracked them both. Her gaze of wholly satiated hunger was burnt into his mind; he knew that he'd never forget it as long as he lived.
They rode it out together, skin to skin and chests heaving, still joined. Her fingers combed absently through his shaggy hair, stroking tenderly behind his ears. Happy.
"Harry," she whispered, "did you… hear anything, towards the end there?"
He'd actually thought he'd heard something louder than the thundering of his own heart, but he wasn't entirely sure it could have even been possible.
"Way to go, you two," Ron's voice came cheerfully from the hall. "Never mind, Harry, Lupin says Number Thirteen's been needing a new back roof for ages. Now they'll have no excuse not to fix up. Mind holding off a bit while I have a shower though? The plumbing here's wonky enough on its own."
Harry could feel Hermione begin to shake with helpless laughter beneath him.
Bloody double hell with a backwards twist.
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The Daily Prophet, July 31, 1998
Boy-Who-Lived Loses Control of Magic during Street Brawl: Damages Flourish and Blotts Diagon Alley Store and Kills Witch (143)!
"Notice their priorities," Hermione pointed out. "Harry, brawl, bookstore, and oh yes, a dead witch."
Hermione, Lupin, Tonks and Ron had gathered for breakfast and a bit of strategizing.
Harry was still asleep; exhausted and dead to the world. She was rather proud of herself for that. It was his birthday after all; he deserved a good lie in even if she'd had to wear him out to achieve it. She brought a cushion in for her chair from the front room and dared any one of them to mention it with her eyes. No one had said a word so far.
"Maybe she was the one behind it all," Ron said slowly. "Maybe she was working with Draco."
"Sophismata Cullen was never the most innocent of bystanders," Remus agreed. "I can't see her spending much time in a book store unless she was paid to, or there to steal something. But she was hardly the sort to mastermind anything like this. And why would she?"
"They don't even mention Malfoy by name. I can't believe it! They've got me and Harry `engaging in a disgraceful display of public hex-slinging with a fellow Hogwarts graduate.' He didn't bloody graduate, he was hiding from his own shadow most of seventh year!" Ron protested, reading over Hermione's shoulder now.
"The entire front page is nothing but lies," Hermione said calmly. "Why should the bit about Malfoy be any different? What I'd like to see is what Luna's father put in the Quibbler. We should make a list of people we need to contact safely and figure out how to do it. I'd like Elspeth to look at Harry…"
"He said he told her how to find us," Ron pointed out.
"True, but I'd bet she's following up on what happened and covering her tracks, She may not try and make contact for awhile yet, but I'd really like her to know what happened to him yesterday. And we need to get in touch with Luna," she continued.
She noticed Ron carefully trying not to look too eager in his agreement.
"They don't mention Harry's done a runner," Tonks said, munching her toast, her elbows crunching in crumbs. "I wonder how they're going to hide the fact they've lost him?"
The fireplace flared to life and Mrs. Weasley's head appeared in the flames.
"Remus," she said pleasantly, carefully ignoring her own son and Hermione. "And Tonks! I've got a whole basket of fresh hen eggs for you. Do you have a moment? Can Arthur and I come through?"
"Of course, Molly, of course," Remus said heartily, entirely unlike himself.
The thought of Umbridge's hand in the flames at Hogwarts, groping for Sirius, rose unbidden from Hermione's memory. `How are we going to live like this?' she wondered. `Jumping at every shadow. This can't go on. We're right back to where we started.'
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley stepped easily through the swirling flames and Lupin rose to greet them, moving to close the flue and the floo connection with it behind them when Ginny abruptly burst through after them.
"I'm tired of being treated like a little kid and left behind!" she turned round and flared at her parents. "I'm almost as old as they were when you let them go off with Harry last year!" Her outstretched and accusing finger was pointing at Ron and Hermione when she saw Tonks. "Oh, hello, Tonks," she said brightly. "Professor Lupin! I thought you'd moved?"
Lupin banged shut the flue with a glare as Tonks waved helplessly.
Molly turned on her daughter.
"Ginny, you know very well the reasons behind all that. And it's meant to be a secret they're here, not broadcast over the entire floo network! Oh, Ron! Thank goodness you're alright. Have you eaten? And Hermione, dear…"
Mrs. Weasley enveloped her in a hug and she realized with a sinking feeling that despite the fact she felt as if she'd been with Harry for ages it was really a matter of days. None of the Weasleys knew yet that things had changed between the three of them, nor were they likely to be particularly thrilled when they found out.
"Where's Harry?" asked Ginny. "I want to wish him a happy birthday."
"He's still asleep," Hermione said hurriedly. Naked as the day he was born and in my room… What was it he'd said last night after they'd blown that bit of next doors' roof off? That again, times two.
Ginny's eyes gleamed. "Time to wake up the birthday boy, then."
"He's really tired," Ron told her hurriedly. "Sound asleep."
Hermione knew Ron had no idea of Harry's exact condition, but she rather imagined he'd guessed. She could tell that he wasn't in any rush for Ginny to find out because that would mean he'd have to know as well.
"They used a stasis spell on him," she said, feeling rather guilty for pulling out a valid physical excuse for his exhaustion she'd chosen to ignore altogether herself. "They just left him lying on the floor of the interview room, they hadn't even got round to finding someone willing to risk coping with him when we got there."
"However did you get that off and get him out of there?" Arthur asked anxiously.
"His spell damage witch was with us. She took it off, and then Harry umm, totally pretended to take her hostage and we snuck out the back to the platform where they apparate you to Azkaban," Ron admitted.
"You went to Azkaban!" Molly all but shrieked.
"Just the boat dock, Mum. We turned right around and ran up the cliff to get clear of the anti-apparition field and came straight here. Honest."
"Have you heard any word, Arthur, about the official Ministry take on things? The paper doesn't even mention that they've lost him." Remus pointed out. "I'm sure they're looking, it would just be beneficial to know where they plan to start."
"There's been a meeting called for the Muggle Relations Sector this morning at ten," Mr. Weasley told him. "I'm sure that will be top of the agenda somehow. I just hope they don't blow things completely out of proportion and get the Muggles involved, the way they did with Sirius."
"They're two peas from the same pod, Harry and Sirius. He's not likely to be any happier chained to this house than Snuffles was, and he's not even got a dog form to go for walkies," Tonks said glumly.
"Well, I think there's been enough doom and gloom," Ginny protested. "They're safe now, and it's Harry's birthday after all. We should do something to mark it."
"Ginny!" Hermione had a stroke of genius, inspired entirely by her devout wish not to have to explain either Harry's present location or the reason for his boneless state. "You know what we really need to do that would be a huge help to Harry? We want to get in touch with Luna and her father and see how much of the truth the Quibbler's willing to put out there and how quickly they can do it. She told us they were already working on a story when she came by Ron and Harry's flat. You're great friends with Luna; it'd be perfectly natural for you to visit her. Nobody would suspect a thing. Do you think you could arrange a meeting with them?"
Ginny's smile blossomed at the suggestion. "Of course I can…"
"We'll both go," Mrs. Weasley said. "I don't want you wandering about Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron by yourself, not today. I'm sure we can set something up, but…"
She was interrupted by a determined pounding at the front door. A deadly quiet stole over the kitchen as they all looked from one to the other uncertainly. They all knew well the safeguards of the house, how could it be possible? Remus and Tonks led the way to the entrance hall, wands drawn.
Hermione saw Harry halfway down the stairs. He'd managed to find jeans and what appeared to be clean socks and a t shirt, but his hair still flopped into his eyes in front and stuck up defiantly in back. "It's Elspeth," he rasped out, his voice still heavy with sleep.
The remains of the black eye did nothing to dispel what she hoped was only her guilty conscience noticing his very… well-used appearance. He must surely have been awake already and in the midst of getting dressed when the knocking began to have come this quickly. Why he seemed so certain it was Elspeth she couldn't be sure, but he clearly was.
Tonks waved her wand across the door, temporarily rendering it murkily transparent in what Hermione trusted to be a one-way effect. There wasn't a sign of anyone about, but the knocking eerily resumed.
"Disillusioned," Harry insisted from the stairs.
Tonks, Lupin and Mr. Weasley fanned out reluctantly around the door, wands drawn, and Lupin unlocked, unbolted and unchained it. A gust of wind seemed to blow in when he finally managed to open it, and swirled round to blow it shut again. Hermione saw an Elspeth sized-shape remain hesitantly chameleon-like against it as she took in the number of people in the hallway.
"It's alright, Elspeth" she reassured quickly. "These are Ron's Mum and Dad, and his sister Ginny. All clear."
The shape filled in with Elspeth's chestnut hair and worried hazel eyes. She wore a long non-descript grayish cloak with a hood despite the July heat.
"I'd meant to wait until next week to contact you," she said, her eyes ranging around the hall until they found Harry's. She seemed relieved at the sight of him and relaxed slightly. "Things are more complex than we'd thought when I last spoke with you, and I thought you should know."
"Elspeth Hawktalon," she said, almost as an afterthought but warmly none the less, and extended her hand to the Weasleys. Arthur and Molly both shook it with pleased smiles; Ginny was not quite ready to make up her mind about a new interloper that seemed already to know Harry, and settled on a half smile.
Harry made his way down the rest of the stairs and smiled and nodded almost shyly to the Weasleys. Mrs. Weasley engulfed him in a motherly hug, pushed him back to get a good look at him and smothered him again almost tearfully. "How can they possibly think you'd do such a thing?" she asked.
"Because it seems like I did," he said, a trace of yesterday's misery rising in his voice again, and all Hermione's protective hackles rose as well.
Elspeth reminded Hermione then why she'd liked her straight away.
"Don't be stupid," she said sharply, drawing his attention back. "Of course you didn't. First of all, you wouldn't. Second of all, I saw her body, Harry. She had a bruise that looked like she'd seen the business end of a bludger bat right between the eyes, and it was way too far along to have just happened in the accident. She was more than likely dead before you let loose, that's why you didn't sense her there."
"Really?" Harry asked; hope clearly dawning in his eyes as he drifted gently away from Mrs. Weasley's embrace.
"Really?" Lupin asked thoughtfully. "That puts rather a new light on things. There's no surprise there was no sign of anything like that in the Prophet's coverage, the question will be if it shows up in the Ministry reports."
"Department of Magical Mortality," Mr. Weasley said excitedly. "My cousin Barnabus works in there. Not very high up the pecking order, but he might well hear something."
"Really," affirmed Elspeth. "And much as I'm not thrilled with what's going on in the Ministry of Magic at the moment, I'm starting to get a feeling that there's someone else altogether that wants Harry out of the way somewhere in particular. Someone who's using the fear Voldemort built up in the current administration against Harry and the Minister both. I had a talk with Draco Malfoy this morning…"
Ron made a sound like an unfriendly dog in the back of his throat.
Elspeth grinned at him. "My sentiments exactly, but he does have some bright points other Malfoys have been known to lack entirely. Like an actual functioning self-preservation instinct. Very handy when you're extorting information. It didn't take much to get him to give me a name I hadn't heard in a long time as the one who first contacted him. Caradoc Bulstrode.
Caradoc was apparently fast friends with Draco's grandfather back in the day. His whole generation got shouldered aside as too old and too set in their own ways to suit Voldemort. Voldemort wasn't the sort to respect his elders no matter how dark or powerful they were, but that's something of a mistake when your elders can live on for two hundred years. He killed off a good few and others fled, but some very dark wizards occasionally cooperated with Scrimgeour when he was an Auror under Fudge. They were the ones who truly believed the blood prejudice Voldemort more or less mouthed for his own purposes and Voldemort himself was an abomination to them - the uber powerful half-blood. Harry's no different, they truly don't care if you are honest as the day or dark as the night; if you're not a pure blood you have no business wielding magic. Your very existence kills their argument, Harry, and they know it.
Draco says he was in Diagon Alley to meet with Caradoc and his granddaughter Millicent that day, but that they never spoke directly of you and he had no instructions to meet you, talk to you or fight with you. According to him the fight is all your fault and he was just as surprised as anyone else when Flourish and Blotts blew up. Which according to him means not really surprised at all, because after all, you were there. He's not your biggest fan, by the way."
"Tell me something I don't know," Harry groaned. This time Hermione noticed he was drifting rather less than gently away from Ginny. In fact he had the look of one who'd just been…felt up!
Keep your hands off him, Ginny Weasley. You may not know it yet, but that arse is mine!
"Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said sweetly. "Harry hasn't eaten breakfast yet."
<o><o><o><o>
The change of venue to the kitchen improved things immeasurably from Hermione's perspective. Harry sat next to Elspeth to continue their conversation. Tonks and Lupin sat across from them, and Hermione swiftly outmaneuvered Ginny for the seat on his other side. Mr. Weasley left for his meeting and Mrs. Weasley settled in happily to cooking the eggs. Ron settled to Hermione's left and Ginny sat across the table with a face like thunder.
Lupin seemed to take to Elspeth right away, and apparently agreed that several different forces might well be at work in Harry's situation. He knew a little of Bulstrode's past and reported that Caradoc had likely long outlived most of his friends. "He'd be an easy target for the right person to put into motion," Remus informed them. "He's old, lonely and very bitter. I can easily see his problem with Harry, but he's more the type to blather on about it in an old wizard's club than go after Harry himself."
Elspeth seemed to think Draco believed that Caradoc had manipulated him without his knowledge and was in turn probably being manipulated by someone else, but he had no idea who that was, or had refused to reveal it to her. Yet.
"So who am I really supposed to be looking out for?" Harry asked. "Because everyone's starting to tick me off now."
"I'm beginning to think that's the point, Harry," Elspeth told him with a worried frown. "It's as if someone wants you to blow. Every threat here has to do with the issue of your magical ability, but the reasons are all over the map. I truly disagree with Scrimgeour's position but I think he's concerned for a reason, and all those reasons are being engineered by others. Some hate you for being half blood, some resent you for being powerful or not playing their games, some of them - like Umbridge, for example - have grudges. The only bit that's missing is someone actually trying to avenge Voldemort. And if you ask me, in a situation like this it's what's missing you have to worry about."
The logic of that blossomed in Hermione's consciousness and took root. There had to be a way through this. It was exactly like a chess game; she needed to lay out the board by identifying all the pieces, and then maybe the pattern would come clear to Ron. They needed to play to their strengths now, because Hermione had a feeling that Harry was just about to give in to his.
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