Every parent leaves something behind for their children to remember them by. Lily Evans didn't know, when she left her diary behind, that it would help her son into knowing her and himself…or did she?
Disclaimer: Pfui…let's move on.
On with the fic:
Harry Potter and the Knowledge of a Mother
Chapter 16: Discerso Nubis
His heart stopped. That very second the world could have collapsed around him but it would never be able to take his mind, heart, and eyes away from the scene before him.
That laugh, that mad laugh that was driving him crazy and making his blood boil in helpless anger kept on ringing in his ears while Hermione glared at the monster that was currently holding a wand to her heart, her face a mask of terrorized defiance.
And that horrid laughter never stopped. "Ah, Harry," Voldemort began, his tone completely spiteful, "your family always did have a liking for filthy Mudbloods," he spat, laughing. "Clever little Mudblood witches, always interfering with my plans," his hand tightened around Hermione's smooth white neck. "Just like that filthy Lily Potter, isn't she Harry?" The laugh continued. "She's just like your pretty Mudblood mother," this time he actually spit on her cheek. "Disgusting!" And then he grinned, turning her to face Harry. "Have any last words to tell your boyfriend?" He asked her maliciously.
Hermione closed her eyes and gripped her wand tightly. She wouldn't cry before this monster. So let's see, what could she do in this situation. She had no chance of using her wand against him. She was in a bad position, she would have never been able to position her wand well for a good spell, it would have been useless. Besides, the cackling megalomaniac would kill her before she even got the word out. What else could she do? Cicciobello was looking at her expectantly from behind Harry's shoulder, ready to come and help her the second Voldemort was distracted, but how could he be distracted? She didn't have anything on her but the clothes on her back, a ridiculous amount of Chocolate Frogs in her left pocket, and in her right she had only…of course! Well, it wasn't safe, and it wasn't likely to work like she wanted it to, but it was her only chance.
"Harry," she began, her voice determined, yet her face a mask of true fear. "The lightning. Use the lightning, Harry."
Oh, Merlin, no! It was just like his dream. He didn't want her to die tonight. He wouldn't let her die tonight. But he couldn't do what she was asking. Voldemort was holding her too tightly, and there was too much of a chance that he might hit her instead. He knew that the spell was only made to stun, but it would only make things worse if it stunned her.
Voldemort threw his head back and laughed again. "He won't use that!" He laughed again, understanding as much as Harry what she meant. "He won't risk hitting his stupid Mudblood slut!" Again, he threw his head back and laughed.
Harry wasn't going to let her die. As images of the time spent with her filled his vision, so the knowledge that he would save her filled his mind. And at each image that filled his mind, the knowledge only became stronger. Hermione, would you read the diary out loud for me? I'd love to. She's not going to die. I should have never kissed you, but no mistake has ever felt so good or right. She's not going to die. That first kiss that they shared by the hearth while reading the diary. She's not going to die. The kiss on the cheek she'd given him at King's Cross after fourth year. She's not going to die. The time she'd helped him save Sirius. She's not going to die. The strong sounding slap across the face that she gave Malfoy. She's not going to die. The note that she had in her hand when she'd been petrified by the Basilisk. She's not going to die. The way she'd barged into his cabin looking for Trevor the first year. She's not going to die.
And then the chant became reality. She wasn't going to die. As Voldemort kept on laughing, his head thrown back overconfidently, Cicciobello launched himself with all his strength against his gut, kicking and pounding that monster's stomach. "You killed them! You killed them! You killed Mommy and Daddy!" He kept on shouting with each hit he dealt, surprising Voldemort out of his laughter.
Harry watched as Hermione took advantage of the moment and pulled something out of her pocket, aiming it at her aggressor's heart (or where the heart should have been). He invoked his barrier, "VALLUM SOBLATUM!" effectively trapping himself, Hermione, the enraged Cicciobello, and Voldemort, all in the same confining cage made of shimmering liquid light. Hermione didn't miss her opportunity. Voldemort fought to get the enraged doll away from himself and held onto her neck with ever increasing pressure, but she wasn't going to let that stop her. Her weapon was already aimed, all she needed to do was gather all the strength in her body to embed it in his chest. And before allowing the world to blur around her, she did. She reeled her arm back with all her might and hit him squarely in the middle of the chest.
Voldemort cried out in pain, letting Hermione go as he touched the item that had forcefully become part of his anatomy. A strange transparent, metallic looking four tipped star had one of its points embedded at least two inches within his chest. He laughed again, though now it sounded very painful. "This won't kill ME!" He shouted at them.
But the only reply that he got were Hermione and Harry's voices shouting simultaneously, "DISCERSO NUBIS!"
Maybe the Holostar that Hermione had used against him wouldn't have killed him, and Cicciobello's weak blows hardly fazed him, but the two strong electrifying pillars of luminous electricity that hit the Holostar and channelled through his body thanks to it did…kill him.
Hermione was the first to notice. "Harry," she whispered, her voice raspy from the tight hold that Voldemort had on it just seconds prior. "Harry, he's not breathing," she croaked.
Cicciobello flew over to him. He nudged the corpse with his foot. No answer. He punched it. No answer. He began to thrash and showered the dead snake like he had before. "You deserved it, you deserved it, you murdered, you killed Mommy and Daddy!" Cicciobello was crying again. Not the lone tear that they had seen earlier, but an endless river of sorrow in mourning of the family that he'd lost so long ago without knowing.
"NO!" they head someone shout from the somewhere outside of the barrier. Nothing could be seen across the thick wall of light, so Harry brought it down to see what was going on outside their confinement. Sirius, enraged and desperate, was trying to hold on to a fat agitated mouse with both hands, trying to keep him from escaping.
Yet, the mouse did.
It slipped right between Sirius' big hands and scurried about the wet grass. Harry tried to go after it, but the rain had made his clothes as heavy as lead, the water dripping from his messy hair and onto his glasses and the lack of light made it impossible to see, and the popping sounds of the Aurors apparating in were distracting. Desperately he called to them, "THE MOUSE! CATCH THAT MOUSE!" But the Aurors couldn't hear him, or if they did, they ignored him, deeming the capture of Death Eaters a more pressing issue.
He felt his hopes of clearing Sirius' name shatter upon noticing that Wormtail had nearly reached the passage of the Whomping Willow. There he was again. Escaping much like he had almost four years earlier. And right when he thought there was no chance, he saw a small bundle fly faster than his Firebold toward the tree, swoop down to the ground, where it struggled.
Come on, Cicciobello, get him! Harry pleaded in him mind, hoping against hope that the doll would catch the man responsible for their parents' deaths. And just as he thought that, Cicciobello raised himself in the air once more, holding a mouse in his hand that looked like it had been tied with its own tail.
"I caught him!" The doll shouted. Somehow, Harry didn't find it strange at all to hear the pure loathing in Cicciobello's high pitched voice, rather than his usual taunting banter. After all Ciccio knew what had truly happened. Knew that Peter was the reason that Lily and James had not been alive the moment that he'd come out of the time capsule once again.
But before Harry could sigh in relief, he heard Hermione shriek sharply behind him. "HARRY!" He whirled around, his wet heavy robes hitting his legs painfully, to see Hermione's horrified face as she watched Voldemort's dead body. Out of its mouth a thick, black tar like substance was gurgling out, spilling on the wet grass like ink out of a tipped bottle. Obviously, Voldemort had taken precautions, expecting something of the sort this night. And he watched in pure terror as the substance began to lift itself in the air, floating like vapor cloud, though looking like the world's thickest wad of tar.
Instinctively, Harry raised his wand, poising it for attack. He didn't know what he intended to do exactly. Maybe immobilize it, though he wasn't sure if that would work on a floating ball of tar. Or maybe petrify it, but he had no idea if that would work either.
In any case, before he even managed to enunciate the first word of a hex or spell, he was suddenly taken over by the most blinding pain he'd ever experienced in his entire life. He felt all the bones in his body snap, break and shatter, his skin and muscles splitting open in several points. His own screams were deafening him.
As he doubled over in the atrocious torment of his life possibly coming to an end, he saw Voldemort's tar fly high, higher than his barrier had, and disappear into the dark of night, and then, his vision went black, the effect of three Ciciatus spells placed on him at once by enraged Death Eaters.
In the night, even over the sound of the rain, the pained screams could be heard for miles.
°*°
Where was he? All he could see were blurry outlines and black night. Around him there were sounds of pain and despair.
Where was he?
He was lying on something soft. Was he dead?
Next to him, he could hear someone crying. A girl. She was trying to be quiet, but it seemed that her pain was too great. He wanted to speak to her, comfort her, make her laugh and forget her sorrows, but his mouth wasn't responding to his commands. He tried several times, yet his mouth hadn't opened at all. It felt as though it had been closed shut.
After one last try, he managed to get his lips to slit open (though he thought he'd lost at least one layer of skin with that move) and made a strangled sound. Strangled as it may have been, the girl next to him heard him. Her head snapped up. Quickly, moving as though she thought that if she didn't hurry it would disappear, she pulled out her wand and made light come out of its tip. "Harry," he heard her whisper in fervent wonder.
As wonderful as her soft, pleading voice was to his ringing ears, he wasn't able to suppress a pained groan at the effect the sudden light had on his eyes. How long had he been gone? His eyes, his voice, his body, they all felt as though they'd never been used before.
"Oh, sorry," he heard her whisper, as she lowered the intensity of the light and dropped her wand on a nightstand next to him. "Madame Pomfrey said it would hurt," she said apologetically. He felt her hand behind his neck. "Here," she whispered, placing something against his lips. A glass filled with a drink. "It tastes horribly, but it will make you feel better." Actually, his taste buds were as numb as the rest of him, mind included, but once the thick substance made its way past his throat, he felt his senses come back to him.
Along with his memories.
The first thing he recognized, once his eyes were able to focus enough for him to see, was who was standing before him. "Hermione," he whispered, his spirits rising far faster than should have been possible. She had been crying, and a lot, judging by the dark color that circled her eyes. She was also covered in bandages, the most noticeable around her neck, which brought him to his next recognition. He was in the Hospital Wing.
And that inevitably brought him to the recognition of why they were there. The battle. It was all so fuzzy in his mind that he wasn't sure if it was real, or if he'd dreamed it. "What happened?" He asked her. All he remembered was Voldemort laughing, thunder, rain, wind, Sirius screaming, Warmtail running, and then Hermione screaming for him. After that, it was all a blank.
"Three Death Eater hit you with Cruciatus, all at one time, right before the Aurors got to them," she told him, after a moment's pause. "You're lucky you're alive, Harry. You have no idea what you'd looked like then. Madame Pomfrey had to completely reconstruct your spinal cord, and the rest of your limbs, and your skin…oh, Harry, you were so lucky you didn't get any cerebral damage!" She was trying to hold back tears again.
"Why didn't they use the killing curse?" That would have been a quicker way for them to get rid of him.
"They did," Hermione whispered, and at Harry's raised eyebrows she continued. "Cicciobello…he threw Wormtail at me, so that he could intercept the spell before it reached you…he took four hits."
Oh, Merlin! "How is he?"
Hermione smiled reassuringly. "A little banged up, but Professor Flitwick and Lupin are putting him back into shape," that was a relief. He would have never thought that the doll would help them that much. But Lily had obviously known. Otherwise she wouldn't have placed him in the time capsule.
"How long have I been out?" It felt like he'd slept a hundred years.
She sniffed again. "Another hour and it would have been exactly four days," another sniffle had followed her answer.
"What about Wormtail? Did the Aurors get him? And Sirius?" If Wormtail had escaped again, Sirius would be given the Dementor's kiss!
"Well, at first the Aurors captured him, and they were trying to take him back to Azkaban to give him the kiss. They thought he was a Death Eater," oh, Merlin, no! "But Dumbledore convinced them to interrogate both Sirius and Wormtail-after they restored him to his true form-under the effects of Veritaserum," Harry's eyes swelled with hope. "We can't see them, they're both in custody with the Ministry, but there will be a hearing in May, and there are very good chances that Sirius' name will be cleared."
Harry smiled, and thought back to other parts of the battle that hadn't been clear on him. "Hermione, what about Snape?" He remembered that the Potions master had been sent face first into the mud by one of his very own house members.
Her face darkened. "He's not doing to well," she told him. "Millicent Bullstrode hit him in the back, shattering two of his vertebrae, and he laid unconscious face down in the mud until the Aurors came. If they'd come a second later, he would have died from lack of oxygen. His lungs were filled with mud, and his face was already swollen when they pulled him out. Madame Pomfrey said that he was almost as hard to save as you were."
Harry nodded. "It was better for him that way," Hermione knew what he meant. "At least he didn't have to choose sides this way." However, Harry didn't think that the teacher would have been happy about that.
"Hermione, what about Ron?" Harry had lost sight of him, nearly the same second that the rain had begun to fall.
"Oh, he's fine," Hermione waved him off, "though he's still trying to impress Krista with these completely fictional tales of what happened. It's as though he doesn't even remember that she was there," she laughed. "Although now he spends most of his time trying to keep Malfoy away from Ginny. He won't accept the fact that Draco saved her life. Poor Krista has to petrify him each time he sees Malfoy," it was good to hear her giggle, but a dark thought made its way into Harry's mind.
"What's going to happen to the school, Hermione?" Her expression darkened considerably.
"I'm not sure," she replied honestly. "It been since the battle that Dumbledore had been going between Aurors for interrogations, and questionings with Ministry officials. Nobody really knows what to do since Fudge and half of his staff were fighting with the Death Eaters, but I'm afraid the school-" she was interrupted by an ancient, welcomed voice.
"Will have to close for a short time, I'm afraid," Dumbledore's voice came from the foot of Harry's bed.
"What? Why?" Harry nearly screeched. He knew that something of the sort would have to be done, but he would have never expected the Headmaster to allow it.
"Because at this moment the Ministry is afraid that the school is not a safe place," Dumbledore replied, "and we will close for no longer than a month, to give us time to take better precautions, and strengthen our protection." His tone was final.
"Miss Granger, as you are from a Muggle family, Mr Weasley and I deemed it safer for you and your parents to stay at the Burrow until your return," he told her. "Your parents have already been informed, and will be waiting for you there in two days, when all the students will be sent back to their homes," as though catching Harry's question he added. "You, Harry, will have to go back to your uncle's home. They have been informed as well." And with that he left.
He wished he'd died in the battle. But Voldemort was still out there, and Dumbledore had said that the only safe place for him would have been with his uncles. He trusted Dumbledore, and so he would suffer for that one month. He was glad that there had been no deaths during the battle. Death, however, seemed a much better option than going to live with his uncles for a month.
Harry hadn't noticed, hiding in the dark shadows of a corner, a black bubble of tar, watching his every move, tailing him everywhere, and waiting anxiously for his night of power, to be able to get sweet revenge. The time was near, and he would not lose Harry until it was time to kill him.
And Harry was far too numb to feel the burning above his right brow, trying to warn him of impending doom.
°*°
A week. It had been a week since Hermione had gone to stay with the Weasleys, and, though enjoyable a stay as it was turning out to be-especially for her parents-she found herself becoming more and more anxious by the day. There was something bothering her. And now, she was finally going to find out why.
She'd been trying to look deeper into it for months, but, no matter where she looked, the writings of Vatis Divinus had been banned from every bookstore, library, or referring index. Coincidentally, just the previous night, when Molly Weasley asked what had been wrong, and Hermione had explained, the woman laughed, and told her that she had one of his books from when she was young and fixated with Divinations. The last one he'd written before he was called a heretic prophet.
And now she understood why.
Anyone who didn't know and love Harry Potter, and believed truly in him, would have thought that the author of such unlikely events was a raving lunatic-well, he was, but that was besides the point-his writing were considered purely fictional. Molly had lost interest before reaching the fiftieth page, but Hermione read on, and the more she read, the more terrified she became.
She'd finished the tome, read over it once more, and then did a third quick read through to make sure that she'd understood everything correctly. She had. Throughout the entire reading, the necklace that Harry had given her as a Christmas present was glowing so brightly within its carvings that she'd been forced to wear it inside her sweater so that it wouldn't blind her.
What she'd read had promised nothing good, and at the moment she was frantically looking over star charts, cross referencing between seven different charts, hoping against hope that they would still have time.
And then it became clear. Like the morning mist giving way under the sun. Its clarity was scary.
Suddenly she leapt to her feet, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Mr Weasley," no answer "MR WEASLEY!"
The shocked, terrified, worried, balding man ran to her. "Yes, what is it, Hermione dear, what happened?"
"Mr Weasley, we have to contact Dumbledore right away," she pleaded, "we need to tell him to go to Privet Drive and meet us there!"
Arthur Weasley was confused beyond his years. "Why? What's going on?" His voice was becoming as panicked as hers.
"It's Harry!" She told him urgently. "He's in danger, and something awful will happen to him if we don't call Dumbledore, and we don't go help him right away!"
He didn't ask questions, or stall a second longer. He didn't know how she knew, and he didn't care. He ran to make arrangements.
To be continued.
Author's notes: So, did that surprise you? Did any of you guys think that I would actually kill either Harry or Hermione? Well, you never know, I'm not done yet ^_^. I was particularly pleased with Cicciobello's humanity in this chapter and the last, but that could just be me. Anyway, comment, critisisms, flames welcome at Robbygal@hotmail.com or simply leave a review.
Thanks for reading.
Pearl