A/N - I don't own Harry Potter, I don't own "Back to the Future", and I also don't make any money from this. Thanks again to my wonderful Beta's Katia, Ragavendran and Dementor149.
Chapter 11 - Busted.
Lilly shifted the baby in her arms and knocked on the front door; Harry squirmed a little and then fell asleep again. Lilly smiled happily as she waited for someone to answer the door, he was such a good baby. He was only a few months old but he was already sleeping through the night and the signs of his intelligence were obvious already. He was already trying to roll over, even though all her books told her he was too little for that, and she was sure he would succeed very soon.
Hermione opened the front door and found Lilly, with Baby Harry in her arms, on the front step.
`Hi Lilly,' said Hermione, opening the door wider, `What can I do for you?'
`Well actually, I'm here to volunteer my services... I heard you were having some trouble brewing an antidote?'
Hermione shook her head; she should have known that Harry wouldn't come up with the idea for the Bezoar by himself.
`Yeah, I could use a hand.'
Lilly came in and Hermione quickly described what the poison had looked like and what its effects were.
`Does it sound at all familiar to you?' she asked once she'd finished her description.
Lilly shook her head, `Honestly, it doesn't... and I'm a trained Healer so I am familiar with most poisons. Do you still have any of it? We could do some tests on it to find out more.'
`Well, no, I don't.' Lilly looked amazed, as though wondering what on earth could have possessed the girl to throw it away after drinking some, so Hermione quickly hurried on making up a story as she went, `Well, I'm sure Harvey told you that I haven't been thinking clearly lately. I was actually convinced that a Bezoar might make things worse, I was having nightmares and paranoid and... Well I thought that the fumes from the potion were making it worse so I got rid of it.'
Lilly didn't know what to say, `Well...' she shrugged, `that's certainly going to make things a lot harder.'
Hermione nodded, `I've been thinking much more clearly since I had the Bezoar though, and I'm almost certain that the potion I drank must have been a new design. Whoever put it there must have come up with it themselves. So I think that the only way to find a solution is to try and re-create it first.'
Lilly smiled, `Ok, that sounds like a good idea. The first thing we need to know is what the potion was for.'
`The only thing I can think of is that it was designed specifically to cause intense physical and mental pain.' Hermione was thinking on her feet again, trying to come up with a plausible explanation. `It was in a bottle for headache potion, but when I poured it out into a glass... well it wasn't any headache potion I recognised. That's why Harvey didn't want me to take it. I thought he was being paranoid.'
Lilly put her hand reassuringly on Hermione's, `It's ok, we'll figure it out. Now show me where I can set Harry down and then we'll have a look at what you've got so far.'
The two ladies worked together very well but their results were mixed. Their first few tries did produce a potion that seemed to Hermione to be quite close in look to what the potion in the cave had been, but didn't have the reflective quality or produce the light that she remembered to emanate from the basin. Then, as the weeks passed and their attempts progressed their results grew less and less like what they were aiming for. Baby Harry was very well behaved, mostly he amused himself with his mobile of snitches and Quaffles, Hermione thought he was adorable and was often distracted by him.
It was late November before they had a breakthrough, and it happened quite by accident. Hermione was chopping some fluxweed for their latest attempt and she slipped and cut herself. Blood dripped from her hand and before it could be healed some of it landed in the cauldron.
`Are you okay, Hermiah?' asked Lilly.
But Hermione wasn't listening; she was staring at the cauldron. Or more specifically, she was staring at the potion inside of it which had turned exactly the right shade of reflective green and now seemed to glow.
Following her gaze Lilly saw the change in the potion, `Oh my goodness, Hermiah... is that it? Is that what it's supposed to look like?'
Hermione nodded excitedly and, after a short celebratory dance around the kitchen, they got started on brewing their antidote. Now that they knew what was in the poison it was a simple enough process and before the day was over the antidote was brewing.
Harry was having no such progress, he shifted uncomfortably on his broom, he really needed to look into better cushioning charms, his butt was killing him. He had thought that over the past few months Bellatrix Lestrange would have gone to her vault at least once, but he was wrong. She had either been sending someone else or she just didn't need much money to live on. Harry thought it was probably the former rather than the latter.
If this kept up then he would never be able to follow her down to her vault and, hopefully, get a moment in which he could steal the cup without her noticing. Harry was the first to acknowledge that a large part of all his success so far had been luck, the only other time that had really worried him was when Hermione had asked him to teach the DA. You can't teach someone to be lucky after all.
It worried him again now though because weeks had turned into months, another Christmas was fast approaching and their time grew shorter. He'd loved being able to spend this time getting to know his parents and befriend them but, for him at least, it was more than that. He'd had a chance to see what Lilly would have been like as a mother to him, what James had been like as father. He'd had a chance to see what they'd all been like as a family and it wasn't something he could cope with leaving in the distant past.
He often wondered what he would be like now if his parents had been around to raise him through his childhood or if they had been there to guide him through some of the more difficult things he'd gone through as a teen. His time spent with them in the past had been fantastic and he really felt he was a different person already. He'd learnt so much from them, his father in particular, about what made love special and different from just fancying a girl. The longer he spent with Hermione the more he began to see the wisdom of his father's words. If she was just a pretty face he would have gotten bored months ago.
There was no doubt that she'd helped him to become a better wizard magically, with all the training he and Hermione had done he could probably have passed his NEWTS with ease if he took them tomorrow. But the time he'd spent with her wasn't just good for him academically and it was something he was really struggling to come to terms with. She was good for him in more ways than he'd ever thought possible, whenever he thought about going back to the future he began to see it as an end to what they now shared.
Sometimes he even thought about those stupid "it's not cheating rules", obviously it had been a joke but there had been a glimmer of truth there. For all he knew by saving his parents lives he would change himself and maybe he would change in a way that Ginny wouldn't like him any more, or he wouldn't like her. For all he knew he'd get back to the future to find that nothing was the same, he could be best friends with Neville and not Ron. He still felt that none of that made it right for him to cheat on Ginny, but he somehow felt that he was being unfaithful to both girls, that Hermione deserved his fidelity as much, or more, than Ginny did.
Spending months just sitting on a broom watching gave him plenty of time to think and mostly he spent it worrying. He worried that he wouldn't be able to save his parents, he worried that the vow would strip of his magic and the whole wizarding world would be taken over by Voldemort. Mostly he worried that it wasn't the right thing to do, meddle with time the way he was, but at the same time he knew he would never be able to not try and change things. Whoever he might become later, he knew that it was who he was now.
Tied up in these tangled thoughts as he was, Harry almost didn't notice Bellatrix Lestrange apparate onto the front steps of Gringotts bank. The only reason he did notice her was because the way she walked and flipped her long black hair around was designed to attract the attention of men and at first Harry didn't realise who he was looking at. It was only when she did another flip of her hair and he saw her face that he did realise and then he sprang into action.
After all so long being inactive it felt good to finally be doing something constructive again, he swooped down behind Bellatrix and followed her about a foot behind and a foot above. He was close enough to see everything she did and close enough to hear everything she said, but still far enough away that she wouldn't accidentally bump into him if he turned around suddenly.
She strode into the bank without a care in the world, she may as well have carried around a flashing neon sign that announced her name and had a picture of a dark mark on it. Harry saw the way that anyone who came close to her only did so inadvertently and when they realised who they were close to they shrank back in fear.
She was almost as feared as Voldemort himself and it showed in the way everyone reacted to her. Once inside the bank Harry noticed with a hint of glee that the goblins bowed to no-one. When she approached the counter of the bank the goblin there held up his hand to indicate that she needed to wait for him to finish counting the pile of Knuts in front of him. When he was done he motioned her forward.
`How can I help you today?'
`I need to check on my vault.'
The goblins eyes flicked up over her shoulder to where Harry hovered in mid-air underneath his invisibility cloak. Harry was sure that Hermione's spell prevented the cloak from slipping and giving away his position, so he could only think that the goblin could some-how sense his thoughts. He immediately tried to think of nothing at all, and when that didn't work he focused on thinking about empty air. It seemed to work because the goblin looked back at Bellatrix.
`You have your key?'
She flipped her hair impatiently and drew the key out from the pocket of her robes, `Of course'
The goblin nodded and led her towards the carts, Bellatrix and the goblin both climbed in and Harry hovered near by ready to fly like his life depended on it. He had never thought that his quidditch skills in chasing the snitch would be useful in the fight against Voldemort but it looked like they were about to be. When the cart took off Harry's suspicions were proven right. In all the quidditch games he'd been in he'd never flown like this before but thankfully he had in some of the torturous practices Wood had put him through.
He weaved between lines of track, curved around loops and swooped down steep inclines. He'd known that the carts moved fast but it wasn't until he followed one while on a broom that he really had any appreciation of it. Finally they reached her vault, right near the end of the track and Bellatrix climbed out. The goblin made to follow her but she cautioned him back with a finger.
`If you don't want to be flayed alive I suggest you stay here goblin.'
The goblin hesitated, as though he wanted to follow her purely for the pleasure of disobeying her order, then he looked to where Harry was floating and stayed in the cart. Harry looked at the Goblin and wondered, was it possible that he knew Harry was there? The Goblin was now looking away and Harry knew he would not get an answer to his question so he simply followed Bellatrix to her vault.
She unlocked it with the key and then performed a series of complex charms to remove whatever protections she had on the vault. Harry paid close attention to her wand movements and the words she used, if he was careful he'd have to be able to re-create what he'd seen. Once that was done she walked inside, again accompanied by Harry.
While she was sorting through piles of parchment, probably looking for the instructions to performing some obscure form of evil, Harry took the opportunity to silently summon her key from her pocket. It wiggled a little on the way out and for a moment Harry's heart stopped, terrified that he'd be caught out, but Bellatrix didn't seem to notice. As soon as the key was in his hand he silently duplicated it and sent the duplicate back to her pocket, he wanted to keep the original just in case.
Just as the key was about to enter her pocket, Bellatrix stood up, a scroll in one hand, and the key dropped to the floor with a clang. Bellatrix immediately looked down and saw her vault key gleaming innocently on the floor. She stowed the scroll in the pocket of her robes and bent down to pick up her key.
`That's odd,' she looked around her vault, a menacing glint in her eyes, and suddenly she roared, `Accio Invisibility cloak!'
Harry felt his cloak twitch but remain in place, he didn't dare breathe a sigh of relief in case she heard it, but he did silently thank Merlin that Hermione had come up with that spell for him.
Bellatrix still looked suspicious but seemed a bit relieved. Then, at last, she turned to the goblet.
Again she raised her wand over it, `Dolens Nex', a swirl of vicious green light wrapped its way around the object and back up into her wand. When it had completely dissipated she picked it up and examined it. Harry wasn't paying attention to that though; he now had all but one thing that he needed. He was going to pluck a hair from her head and when he did that he had to be ready to fly or she would catch him.
He took a deep breath to calm himself for what he was about to do, it was stupid and reckless, she'd probably change all of her protections, but he couldn't see another alternative. He was right behind her now, steadying himself for what was probably the most reckless thing he'd ever done. But he was too close, she shivered and spun around. Harry shot back up to the ceiling.
She was scanning the surrounds again, her eyes menacing, `Accio Invisibility cloak!' she roared again. Again nothing happened. She scowled, Harry could tell she was not convinced by the lack of success her spell had. She put the cup down and stormed over to the door.
Harry took his opportunity, and quickly pulled a galleon from his pocket. Using the same spell he'd duplicated her key with he duplicated the cup.
`Goblin!' Bellatrix was yelling from the open door of her vault, `I thought I told you to stay in the cart.'
Harry flew swiftly and silently down to the now unprotected cup and switched them over.
`I have stayed here Mrs Lestrange.'
She huffed and twirled around, once more facing the inside of her vault. Harry once more flew up to the ceiling of the vault, now that he had the Horcrux in his pocket he was eager to stay out of her way. She stalked back over to the plinth and picked up the cup. Harry never found out whether she realised it wasn't the true cup or not because as soon as she was away from the door he flew out of the room as fast as his broom could take him. Then he followed the track back up through the bowels of Gringotts and back up into Diagon Alley. Once in the open air, he took off over the roof tops into Muggle London, and when he had reached the relative safety of the Muggle streets he did a quick pirouette on his broom and apparated home.
As soon as he got there he jumped off his broom and pulled off the cloak ready to run into the house and show Hermione his prize but he didn't get that far, in fact he didn't even break out into the run he had planned at all. In his excitement over the acquisition of the last Horcrux he had failed to even look around the garden, much less carefully check to make sure he couldn't be seen as he usually did when he arrived home, and he didn't notice that Hermione was in the garden working and that James was standing right next to her.
They both stared at him with open mouths, `Err, Hi,' Harry said trying to switch from excited to casual as quickly as possible.
`Did you just apparate while on a broomstick and under an invisibility cloak?' asked James incredulously
`Um,' Harry cast about in his mind for another explanation of how he'd just appeared in mid air while jumping off a broomstick and came up blank, `Yeah, I did'
`Did you know it's supposed to be impossible to apparate while on a broomstick?' asked James next.
`No... Good thing I didn't or I probably would never have tried it,' answered Harry as nonchalantly as possible. His mind was racing, he knew what James would ask him next and he only hoped that he didn't want to take a closer look at the cloak.
James nodded, `So, why were you Apparating while on a broom and under an invisibility cloak then?'
Harry shrugged and tried to be casual, `Well... I... `
`It was my idea,' blurted Hermione, looking panicked, `I get so worried about him when he goes out... there are so many dangerous people around ... `
James looked between them with one eyebrow raised. He was clearly suspicious, and Harry didn't blame him one bit, but he let it slide, `fair enough, well I just came by to make sure you and Hermiah would be spending Christmas with us again this year.'
Harry nodded, `Yeah absolutely. We'd love to.'
`Well, I better be going then. I'll see you later.'
Harry and Hermione said their goodbyes and when he was gone at last they both breathed a sigh of relief. Hermione checked to see if James was out of earshot and then turned to Harry with a scowl on her face. Harry knew he was about to get a telling off for his carelessness, so he cut her off.
`I got it,' he blurted quickly before she could launch into a well deserved tirade.
His tactic worked and Hermione's mouth, which she had opened to tell him off, now gaped open.
`Oh, my goodness, Harry, that's fabulous!' she exclaimed bouncing into his arms for a hug.
Harry nearly told her that it was why he'd been so careless but he didn't want to turn the conversation back there and swallowed the words just in time, substituting them instead with `do you want to go and destroy it now?'
`Yes! Of course!' and she half dragged, half led Harry to the home made boiler she'd constructed for just that purpose.
`Hermione slow down, you're going to pull my arm out of my socket.'
From his hiding place James watched the exchange curiously, he knew they were up to something and he wanted to know what. He was sure it wasn't something that was in anyway going to be dangerous to either he or Lilly, there was nothing wrong with the magic of either of the two people he was watching. He had to think of them that way now because clearly their names were not Harvey and Hermiah.
He watched as the two teens made their way over to the furnace, which he suddenly realised he'd never seen in use, and climbed up on top of it.
`Maybe we shouldn't sit on top of it this time,' the girl said when they got to the top, `Remember how hot it got last time.'
The young man nodded, `I'll get my broom.'
The girl looked nervous, `I don't know Harry, do you think this will be safe to do from a broomstick?'
The boy looked incredulous, `Hermione, I was the youngest seeker in a century and apparently it's impossible to apparate from a broomstick, but I've been doing it everyday for about a year now. I think we'll be safe to just cast a couple of spells.'
`All right,' she waved a finger threateningly in his face, `but if you drop me Harry James Potter I will be very angry with you.'
James froze, his first thought was that it couldn't be true but the next was that he was stupid not to have seen it sooner. He had Lilly's eyes, his name "Harvey Porter" was so close to what they'd named their son and Harvey always seemed so uncomfortable around their baby. Then there was the odd way that he and Lilly had trusted him so completely, so quickly, despite so many things that should have aroused their suspicions. He was so deep in thought that he nearly missed what the pair was saying next.
`Voldemort really does have a lot to answer for doesn't he,' the girl, Hermione, was saying now, `that's two priceless artefacts we've had to destroy now because of him.' She was holding cup but they were too far away from him for James to see it clearly.
`I think he's destroyed some things far more priceless than Hufflepuff's cup, Ravenclaw's diadem or Slytherins locket.'
The girl instantly looked contrite, `I know Harry but we'll think of a way to fix that, I know we will.'
`He didn't just kill my parents Hermione.'
Again James was stunned, Voldemort had killed them? How had Harry survived? Did it have something to do with that odd scar on his forehead? How much longer did he have left? He was tempted to run straight home and spend however much life he had left kissing his wife and holding his son but he knew that he needed to stay and learn as much as he could. The topic of conversation had moved on however and now the two teens were on Harry's broomstick hovering just over the old boiler.
The girl threw the cup into the boiler with a loud clang and pointed her wand at the lid, `Ready?'
Harry nodded his wand also pointed at the lid. The girl fired off her spell `Hostilis Incendia!' and a second later his son fired off a second, different spell silently. A roar of flames filled the old boiler but they were visible for only a second before the second spell slammed the lid shut. The roaring of the flames could be heard for a few more seconds and then, just as suddenly as it had started, the noise died away.
`Well that's two down and two to go.' Harry said looking pointedly at Hermione.
`Only if you're referring to the locket and Nagini,' countered Hermione, James got the impression this was something the young couple had discussed before on several occasions.
`You know that I'm not.'
`Well you're wrong then, the only one left is the locket and we agreed to leave that til the last minute so there isn't anything we can do about it now.'
`When did you get so sure of that?' asked Harry, grabbing hold of her arm.
She stepped closer to him, `I found a spell that will tell us for sure.'
`You did?'
She nodded
`Have I ever told you that you are as brilliant as you are beautiful?' asked Harry looking at her in awe.
`Are you calling me stupid?' she asked grinning slightly
Harry raised an eyebrow, `You know I'm not.'
`Well, I thought I was being stupid for even considering looking at this particular book, but sometimes you find a useful spell in the oddest places... it was in a book on divination.'
`I'm amazed that you even considered it,' replied Harry.
`So was I really, but it makes sense, what we need to do is read your soul and eventually I realised that would be considered a branch of divination. I thought it might be worth at least looking into.' She shrugged, `as it turns out I was right.'
`As usual.'
`This spell is quite silly really; basically it's like a horoscope for your soul. You cast it on a person; it reads their soul and turns a band of light around their body particular colour. The colour it turns is supposed to tell you all about their unique soul identity. It seems ridiculous to me, but, I thought that if any two people are going to have different soul colours it would be you and Voldemort, right?'
`I should hope so.'
`Right, so if I cast this spell on you and it works and gives me only one colour then you're not a Horcrux,'
`Or it's a crummy spell.'
`Or it's a crummy spell,' Hermione agreed.
`And if I am a Horcrux?' He asked
`If you are a Horcrux, well...I'm not sure but it should do something weird. It may not work at all, or it may give us two different colours. The only way I would accept it as a conclusive result either way is if you get one single solid colour or if you get two single solid colours, anything else and I would keep looking for another spell.'
`Alright, shall we do this then?'
James was waiting for the result with bated breath, he didn't know what a Horcrux was but if it had something to do with Voldemort's soul being inside his son then it had to be bad and he wanted to know about it. Unfortunately his curiosity was not satisfied straight away.
`We should go inside first, we wouldn't want our neighbours to inadvertently see this from their window or something, and we shouldn't have even discussed this out here. I don't know what's gotten into us; we're being very careless today.'
Harry nodded and followed Hermione into the house leaving James in the garden unable to hear the rest of their conversation. He might not be able to hear what they said but he could still see what they did. He stole quietly and carefully up to the nearest window and peaked inside, still hidden by his disillusionment charm. He watched the girl point her wand at the young man who was apparently his son and saw as two distinct bands of colour appeared around him one red, over his heart, and the other black over his head. James didn't need to hide his cry of dismay; it was covered by Hermione's similar much louder cry as she flung herself into Harry's arms.
James couldn't watch any longer, he walked home in a daze, shocked at what he had learnt in the past half hour. When he got inside Lilly was sitting on the living room floor playing with their son. Seeing them like that together was more than James could take, he sat down on the floor, gathered them both in his arms and tried not to cry.
`James,' said Lilly sounding alarmed, `What on earth is the matter?'
`Lilly, do you know what a Horcrux is?'
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