Unofficial Portkey Archive

The Catalyst

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Chapter Fifteen: Veil Lifted

The parlor had obviously been called that only in better days. Only one window had blinds, a ragged set missing several slats, giving it the appearance of a mouthful of crooked yellowing teeth. The other window was unadorned, but so smudged that it really didn't matter. The furniture was battered, dusty, and out of date. The entire room looked like it had been suspended in time thirty years ago or more, forgotten, abandoned when better things had come along.

Forgotten and abandoned, he thought bitterly, just like me. He stood at the spindle-legged sideboard, leaving fingermarks in the dust, as he drank the vodka he'd brought with him straight from the bottle. What would Mother say? He snorted a laugh a little too soon after swallowing, and pungent fumes burned inside his nose. His mother wouldn't say anything to him, never had said anything of any kind of substance to him, acting for all the world like her scrawny little son was invisible. He might as well have been invisible; he was unmentioned, locked away, imagined into non-existence: the Squib son of an old Pure-blooded family - an embarrassment, an outrage… a freak.

And now, he was back in the old townhouse, the one his parents had used when they were in London. It was fuzzy in his memory, as he had been a very young child when they'd last taken residence there. There were too many people in London - the house was in a wealthy Wizarding section of the city, and someone might see him. His mouth twisted into a sardonic smirk of self-loathing. So they'd moved into a country manor, not too far a distance from the Malfoys, nor from the Lestranges.

His father had at least seen him, though he couldn't say whether being noticed by way of the application of rather nasty curses or a well-wielded riding crop was actually preferable to remaining unnoticed. His father seemed to think that being a Squib was something he had done on purpose, something for which he should be punished. He remembered lying on his bed in his chamber, an out-of-the-way place down a rabbit warren of corridors in the rear of the house, his eyes burning with tears, feeling the sticky blood from the welts on his back seeping into his shirt. Father seems to think that magic can be beaten into me, he had sniffed, wiping his leaky nose onto a frayed sleeve. I wish I were Muggle. At least, they don't have magic and don't care. They don't even know any better.

That thought had been a turning point. He'd made himself even scarcer around his house, not that his parents even cared. He spent time in the nearest Muggle village, remaining somewhat aloof, but watching and observing, learning and filing away that knowledge. His younger brother, as perfect a specimen of Pure-bloodedness as one could wish, got his letter to Hogwarts. They did not let him go with them to King's Cross. It became clear that his parents were involved in things that were shady, if not downright Dark. His teenage years passed in a blur of secret meetings and whispered cryptic messages overheard from around corners or beneath furniture, of his parents disappearing into the night in hooded cloaks. Once or twice, he got up in the middle of the night to find his door locked from the outside - those were the nights that the Dark Lord was actually on the premises.

One night in particular, a ridiculously muggy August evening, he'd been sleeping uneasily between sweaty sheets, but had been jolted awake by many footfalls and shouting. Doors were wrenched open and slammed shut in rapid succession, though from the sound of it, nothing was moving anywhere in his immediate vicinity. He'd peered from his window, charmed to look like a part of the wall from the outside, lest someone spot him, and saw shadowy forms, cloaks streaming behind them like black water, dashing across the grounds. Here and there, he saw flickers of moving light that might have been torches held aloft or spellfire. Cracks of Apparation were distant snaps of sound. By pressing his ear to his door, he'd heard a long, crescendoing wail that might have come from his mother's mouth.

He'd found out the next day from one of the house elves that his father had been involved in a raid, that two Aurors - brothers - had been killed. Those Aurors had also been members of the Order - what Order, he did not know, but it was something he always heard referenced with much trepidation and loathing. His father had narrowly escaped, now had to stay hidden. Fear and tension seemed to be tangible essences woven into their tapestries and built into the walls of their home. And, as September gave way to October, he'd started to hear whispers of another name more and more frequently until it was nearly frenzied… Harry Potter.

On Halloween night of that year, he'd made his move. He was nearly seventeen, practically an adult. He didn't think his parents would have normally cared about his absence, would have thought themselves well rid of him, but he'd worried that perhaps they were aware of all he knew: dates, places, names. He had made his plans carefully, secretly proud of himself for acting like the Slytherin he knew he would have been, stashing useful items here and there, removing things slowly enough where their disappearance would not be noticed.

The grounds were protected with anti-Muggle and anti-intruder charms and hexes, but he was neither a Muggle nor an intruder. The glass of his window had charms on it to prevent it from being Vanished, but no one had ever thought to secure it from being broken with a hammer. It was crude, brutal, Muggle. It had never occurred to them. He was on the upper floor of the house, his window looking out over a bleak, neglected patio where nobody ever went. He couldn't Levitate himself down… but he could use a rope. Shortsighted, he'd thought as he scrambled down, the rough fibers scraping his hands, and arrogant, to underestimate or dismiss them. We could one day pay for pretending that they are no match for us.

He grimaced to himself as he set the square bottle down with a noisy clunk and slosh. He still, even after all these years, even after his treatment at their hands, thought in terms of us and them. He couldn't help but identify himself as a Wizard, as part of a Wizarding family, someone who should have been the heir of that family, who would have been, if Squibs could inherit.

Instead, he'd fled into the night like a common criminal, carrying only a few essentials in a leather knapsack, knowing that his younger brother, Vasiliy, would get everything that should have been his. Why? He'd thought then. Why did the gods see fit to deny me magic?

His first clue that something had happened that fateful last night of October was presented to him the next morning. He had managed to scrape together just enough Muggle money for train fare, and made it far enough away to feel safe… until he saw the owls. They were everywhere; he could clearly see messages tied to their legs. Even the Muggles were noticing. Wizards walked openly in the streets, not troubling to use Disillusionment or Notice-Me-Not charms, not even trying to blend in with Muggle clothing, slipping unobtrusively through the crowds. There was an air of excitement, even joy, and he found himself sliding closer in attempt to find out what was going on.

"…thought all hope was lost…"

"… Boy Who Lived saved us all…"

"… say he's gone for good. Somehow Harry…"

It wasn't until that evening, when he'd had the stroke of fortune to snag a discarded Daily Prophet that had been carelessly left to blow beneath a park bench, that he discovered the whole story. This Harry Potter that he'd so often heard whispered about, apparently only a baby scarcely over one year old, had defeated the Dark Lord. No one seemed to know just how. Only that the Killing Curse had been cast, Harry was not dead, and the Dark Lord was gone. A footnote at the bottom of the page added a list of Death Eaters who had been arrested. Dispassionately, he read his father's name, followed by the clinical description, "arrested for the murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewitt."

He'd vaguely wondered what that meant for Vasiliy and his mother, but couldn't bring himself to care overmuch. The fall of the Dark Lord affected him not in the slightest, and he'd moved on, staying nowhere for very long, stealing shelter in flophouses, alleyways, and empty outbuildings. The winter was long and miserable, but he vividly remembered the first warm day, where things seemed to have suddenly burst into flower, and things seemed more possible than they had only the day before.

It seemed no coincidence that he had met Eamon Moran that very evening in a Muggle pub. He'd been still underage, but his dark hair, heavy brow, and penchant to have a five o'clock shadow at noon kept him from being looked at twice, even as he ordered alcohol. The weedy looking young man with flyaway blond hair and rimless glasses sitting on the stool next to him, in contrast, had looked like he was waiting on his mum to pick him up after school. Eventually, they had picked up a conversation, and he'd been shocked to learn that the young man, Moran, was in fact more than ten years his senior and a Muggle healer - a doctor, he'd called himself - to boot.

There was something about Moran that vaguely unsettled him. Moran was articulate and intelligent, but there was something too intense in the eyes, as if he were wound just a bit too tight. But they'd struck up a rapport when Moran had bitterly mentioned a step-mother, who'd encouraged his father to ignore him, once the baby - a half-sister - had been born. The sister, he'd learned, had moved to some place called Hollywood, California, and was an up-and-coming actress, starring in her first Muggle movie. You think they care anything about my medical degree, my research articles, all the wonderful things my professors said I would do? He'd empathized with Moran, knew exactly how he'd felt with every fiber of his being.

Family, he'd snorted into his vodka that night, who needs them, anyway? Moran had laughed, and something in his face had eased up, in a way that was gratifying.

He took another slug of liquor, and shook his head as it burned its way down his throat. Now Moran was dead. It seemed somehow unreal and very long ago that they had ever been friends. My fault, he thought regretfully, I should have known he was crazy. Should have known that anyone who would care about me at all would be crazy.

It had almost worked though. Together, the two of them had very nearly accomplished what no one else ever had, what no one else had ever even tried: a fusion of Muggle science and magic - pushing the boundaries of what was possible, of what even merited consideration. They'd crunched theory together: he had gotten crash courses in Muggle medicine, anatomy, neurology, genetics. He couldn't have done any of the heavy lifting, intellectually, but he knew enough to grasp concepts, to be conversant. In turn, he had revealed the magical world to Moran. He'd known it was technically illegal, but what could they have done to him? He was doing no spells that could be detected, couldn't even make it into St. Mungo's or Diagon Alley without help. At first, Moran had thought he was pulling an elaborate con, but he'd eventually been convinced.

They'd worked for years, and he'd barely noticed the upheaval that surrounded the world he was not allowed to be a part of. Harry Potter was rediscovered, left for Hogwarts; his father escaped from prison, the Dark Lord was rising again. He'd found Vasiliy not too long after he saw the Prophet article about the Azkaban breakout, threatened to go to the Ministry with everything he knew: where their father was hiding, the defenses around their manor, the names of other involved Death Eaters. Vasiliy had been pale and frightened, but acquiesced in the name of family pride, Owling him enormous sums of both Muggle and Wizarding money over the next several years.

Then the unthinkable happened: Harry Potter, now seventeen, actually defeated Lord Voldemort. His name was plastered all over the Prophet, along with those of his two closest friends, Weasley and that Mudblood Granger. They'd been hospitalized due to their injuries in the Battle at Hogwarts, and a large majority of the surviving Death Eaters, including his father, who was suffering from the aftereffects of Obliviation, had been returned to Azkaban. Vasiliy was officially named the Head of the family, and his mother went into seclusion, though the threat of Azkaban still loomed over both of them.

He'd been mulling all these events over in his mind, when Moran found him, brimming with such excitement that he could hardly speak. I think I can do it. The latest combination is very promising. He'd stopped Moran immediately, demanded to have it administered at once. It's not quite that easy, Moran had added. An adult system is too stable, not dynamic enough. We need a child's system, to use like an incubator, and then - and then once it has matured and stabilized, we can remove it and insert it into a non-magical person. All we need is a child; a baby would be ideal.

Oh, is that all? His voice had been derisive. And just where are we going to get a baby - people tend to raise a fuss when those go missing.

The glint in Moran's grey eyes had been vaguely disturbing. We're going to grow our own. We Muggles do it all the time. We just need two viable candidates for mother and father. No Purebloods. The magic within the parents needs to be genetically strong, hearty. You know how much higher the magical indices were for the Half-Bloods and Muggle-Born. Yes, he knew. They had ended up with scientific proof that would send the whole Pureblood superiority movement straight into the bin - if anyone would have ever believed the work of a Squib and Muggle, that is.

He'd dropped his eyes to the papers, skimmed over the sea of print, until two names seemed to jump out at him, as though all of this had been predestined. Harry Potter. Hermione Granger. He'd looked back up at Moran and grinned. Why the hell not?

Why the hell not indeed, he shook his head. That had been before everything had started going wrong. The procedure had worked, beyond their wildest dreams. Her magic had been successfully removed, modified, and replaced; and she was powerful. It seemed that they had thought of every contingency.

Almost every contingency.

He lowered the vodka bottle again, but missed the edge of the sideboard this time. The bottle tilted - his not-entirely-sober reflexes were not up to the task - and crashed to the floor. Vodka splashed across his boots, as the glass cracked in several places. He cursed under his breath.

A knock, sounding distant but surprisingly loud, arrested whatever cleaning attempts he might have made before they started. Less than a handful of people even knew where he was since the Aurors had raided the lab, and he was unafraid that he could be connected to it.

He swung the heavy door wide; it creaked ponderously and the sun glinted weakly off of the dusty bronze door knocker shaped like a dragon. Rhunya stood there - he never could remember her surname - looking ill at ease, shifting from foot to foot in rundown leather shoes. She was magical, he thought suddenly to himself, from a poor family - little wonder she was uncomfortable standing at the door of the Dolohov family townhouse. He ushered her inside quickly.

"They've got her, sir. Just like Dr. Moran predicted." She thrust a crumpled newspaper at him with a trembling arm.

Moran had become surprisingly proficient with regards to the subtleties of Wizarding culture. He seemed able to quickly deduce how a Wizard's reaction would differ from a Muggle's in a given situation. When their experiment began to show signs of failure, he had come up with a back-up plan, something grand and glorious, something that would ensure that the Wizarding world would finally notice him, Casimir Dolohov, the elder son, who should have been the heir.

Vasiliy would be so proud, Moran had said, nudging him in the ribs with a skinny elbow, that manic light fiery in his pale eyes.

But now, Moran was dead. She had killed him. Even so, he had seen no reason to divert from the plan. He had always hated the Wizarding world, hated it and longed for it simultaneously, in an instinctive way that he could not begin to plumb the depths of.

He didn't realize how long he'd been standing there, in the front entry, lost in thought, until Rhunya stammered tentatively, "What - what are we going to do now?"

He looked at the blaring headline on the front page of the morning edition of the Daily Prophet. "Potter/Granger Love Child Revealed! Weasley Family Incensed! Engagement Cancelled!" It was accompanied by moving photos of a young girl on a swing and an adult couple standing to the side, watching her. The picture was grainy and not of the highest quality, but the two adults were clearly holding hands.

"We do nothing," he barked at her roughly. Her tremulous demeanor was grating on his nerves. Small wonder that she had been shunted off to care for the child. "It's only a matter of time now."

His mouth curled into a tight, cruel smile, his hooded eyes making him look all the more menacing, as he studied the picture once again. The aura of happiness exuding from her parents was all but palpable, even from the bad photograph. How he hated them! How he hated all Wizards, with their careless, golden power, the arrogance of their entitlement and talent!

They would be sorry. The entire Wizarding world would mourn. He would ensure it.

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Harry had sat quietly through extremely strained and awkward small talk with Ron, before the gangly Auror trainee finally took his leave to head back to the Ministry. Healer Desai had taken Eleanor for a few more tests, leaving with Auror Falworth, who was intent on heading back to "their" conference room in the children's ward to go over some other witness statements from the playground. Finally, a cadre of mediwitches had come in, replenished some potions, performed a myriad of charms, and measured every source of magical output that it was possible to measure. Or so it seemed to Harry anyway.

When they were gone, it was just Harry and Hermione alone in the oppressive, strangely loaded silence of the private ward.

"Are you okay?" She asked him quietly.

"You heard the mediwitches. I'm going to be just fine. As soon as we talk to Healer Fellowes, I can go home." She eyed him sideways, gauging whether or not he was being deliberately obtuse or not.

"I meant, about Ginny." Her smile was gentle, but her eyes were direct.

"I - I - " His voice rasped loudly in the room, but his gaze held more of confusion than of pain. "I feel like I must have done something wrong… but I don't know what."

She said it was beautiful. Ron's words rang in her head, bolstered her confidence. It was true. It was real. It was not unrequited. Even if Harry did not yet realize it.

"I… think…" she began, drawing the words out slowly. "That - maybe - we were trying so hard to do what everyone expected of us… after the War. That we were so grateful that this was something…normal and fun, as opposed to everything else that had been expected of us. And we - we just continued in - in these… patterns." She looked up at Harry then, and reflexively drew a sharp intake of air as their eyes met. Her skin felt like she had been hit with a low-yield Stinging Hex. "Because it was the path of least resistance, bec - because it was… easy."

Between what was right and what was easy… Harry's teasing echo of their late Headmaster now resounded in her mind.

"It doesn't seem like the last few days with Ron have been what you would call easy…" The light-heartedness was present, though faint, and there was something behind his eyes, embers giving them brilliant light, of a hope yet unspoken that made her heart accelerate its rhythm.

"The easy part never stays easy… you end up just having to do things over again the - the right way." She let out a little self-deprecating laugh, and momentarily dropped her gaze. When she looked back up at him, he was watching her with a guarded, measured look, as if he were compiling evidence and preparing to come to a conclusion.

"Hermione… do you think - " His eyes seemed to blaze with a sudden intensity, and her mouth got very dry.

"We're back!" A sing-song voice from the doorway startled them both. Healer Desai looked fairly cheerful upon cursory inspection, but Hermione could see something serious in her eyes. She knows something, the Healer-in-training thought.

"Eleanor!" Harry's jubilant voice all but invited Eleanor to come sit by him in the bed, but Healer Desai kept a gentle hand on one of the girl's shoulders.

"Let's not get too close to your father, just yet, Eleanor.

Hermione raised her wand, and Summoned a chair from the far end of the room, lengthening the legs en route, so that it sat closer to the same level as the hospital bed. She sat down on it, and patted her lap.

"You can come sit with me, sweetheart." Her tongue almost tripped over the unfamiliar endearment, and she hoped it sounded normal to everyone else. Eleanor's sad eyes brightened a bit, and she climbed up in Hermione's lap without hesitation, leaning back against her shoulder, and crossing Hermione's arms in front of her like a seat belt. Hermione breathed in the sweet scent of her daughter's clean hair, and felt her eyes prickle with tears. My daughter. It was so much easier to view Eleanor clinically when she did it through her Harry-filter - how could she ease the way for Harry - what did Harry need her to do, to think, to say?

Harry's right, she thought dully, as she recalled his words to her at the field testing pitch. And you haven't thought about it at all either - don't try and tell me you have. You've squashed it all into a corner of your mind, so you can poke it with a stick and take notes on it like some third party observer.

She lifted her eyes to look over Eleanor's shoulder at Harry. He was regarding her as though he knew exactly what was running through her mind. She wondered wryly whether Eleanor's telepathy was really that much of an anomaly.

"Father cannot see what people think inside their heads," Eleanor said solemnly from her lap, still facing Harry. He snorted a suppressed laugh, and Hermione felt her cheeks flush. She leaned her cheek against the top of Eleanor's head, and slanted a look at him through her eyelashes. The look on his face made her face reheat and her heart flutter-thump inside her chest.

She said it was beautiful. The yearning look on Harry's face was beautiful. Hermione felt her throat close up with the sudden swell of emotion. Oh my God, we're going to do this - we're going to be a family…

"So, what did you find, Healer Desai?" Harry asked, in a mostly normal way, after clearing his throat roughly.

"I've got some of the Healers over the Research Department looking over the results, but I think we've found out why Eleanor affects Harry, but not anyone else." Harry and Hermione both nodded attentively, their expressions those of expectant inquiry. "Her magical signature is almost identical to her father's."

"That's impossible," Hermione blurted.

"It's highly unlikely," Desai corrected her, directing her explanation to the layperson in the room. "You know that Muggles have researched how some traits in a child come from the mother and some from the father?"

"Genes, right. Pretty common knowledge in the Muggle world. I'm following you."

"Something similar applies to magical signatures. A child's signature is almost always unique, but can contain elements from both parents, in varying amounts. Sometimes, it will be more like one parent than the other, and sometimes it can even have elements from ancestors further back. Of course, if one parent is Magical and one is not, or if neither are Magical, then…" The Healer stopped, and waved one hand in dismissal. " - but that's much more complicated, and not really relevant here. In any case, her signature is enough like yours to be remarkable, and is almost certainly not naturally occurring."

"So, someone made hers like mine?" Harry concluded, casting a guarded look at his daughter, who appeared to be nodding off in Hermione's lap.

"Not necessarily. Her signature may have looked a good bit like yours on its own. And when it was manipulated, it ended up looking even more so."

"Why?"

"Magical research has found that there are certain… configurations… in a magical signature that are found more often in individuals who are magically powerful." It was Hermione who spoke this time, her calm voice trickling into the room like cool water. "It could explain why you and Voldemort chose brother wands, for instance. Your signatures could bear at least some sort of resemblance to each other's."

"So her signature looks like mine… what does that imply?"

"They've amplified her magic, made her artificially more powerful. A side effect of that, whether intentional or not, is that your signatures are so similar that her magic spills over to yours, as if there were - some kind of conduit between you, as if her magic senses yours as an extension of itself. We aren't - wizards aren't meant to channel those levels of magic. It's dangerous, possibly unsustainable. It's why your system nearly overloaded - the sheer magnitude of her magic overwhelmed you, a completely separate person." There was worry in the Healer's dark eyes.

"What - what does that mean?" There was fear mirrored in Harry's face, and Hermione reached out to take his hand in hers. He hesitated momentarily, as if afraid that Hermione herself would close the circuit between him and the sleeping child in her lap, but as her fingers slid through his and nothing happened, he visibly relaxed.

"We don't know yet. We do know that for now, the suppression bracelet seems to be doing its job. I would recommend that you try to refrain from touching her, for your own safety, until we know more."

"Could you take it out of me?" Eleanor spoke, snapping her eyes open so suddenly that Hermione wondered if she'd been feigning sleep, even though she'd felt the limp, lolling weight in her arms.

"Take what out of you?"

"The magic. The part that is hurting Father. If it is hurting him, then I do not want it. Would you - would you and Mother still love me, if I - if I was a … a Skib?" Her voice lowered to a whisper on the last word, as if she were heralding something awful.

"Eleanor, we would love you no matter - " But Harry cut off Hermione's soothing reassurances.

"Where did you hear that word?"

"Harry, really…" Hermione tried to remonstrate.

"Where did you hear that word?"

"Sir thought it once. In his head. Skibs are magical people with broken magic. He had broken magic, and it made him mad and sad. He hates being a Skib, and he hates Wizards. And he was scared of me."

"Who is Sir?" Hermione asked gently.

"A man. Everyone called him Sir. Except Dr. Mo. Dr. Mo called him Caz. He had scary eyes. Like this." She cupped her hands along her brow, and peered out from under them with hooded eyes. "All the things they did to Muddles, they were to fix his magic." She ducked her head, until it was almost buried in Hermione's chest. "I was supposed to fix him. Dr. Mo said so. Dr. Mo tried to turn it down. But then it made him die."

"What made him die?" Hermione sounded equal parts horrified and saddened.

"Tried to turn what down?" Harry's words overlapped and collided with Hermione's.

"The magic," Eleanor whispered. Hermione opened her mouth to ask for clarification, but realized with shock that their daughter was answering both questions. One look at the pallor of Harry's wide-eyed face was enough to know that he had come to the same conclusion.

"Can we take her home?" Harry asked, after a somewhat awkward stretch of silence.

"Healer Fellowes still needs to check you and approve your discharge," Healer Desai told him.

"Is she - is she okay?" He ventured, hoping that Desai would take a circumspect cue from him, and that Eleanor wasn't paying too close attention. She raised her wand slightly, and the barest flick was the only movement. "Her levels are fine. And we can do this as an extra precaution." She swirled her wand tip in a circle, conjuring up a plain metal bracelet, much like the one already adorning Eleanor's wrist. She cast a medical charm that caused the jewelry to briefly glow orange, and then sent it soaring over Harry's bed where Hermione caught it neatly.

"This will monitor her magical levels. An alarm will sound if they get too elevated." Hermione took up the explanation, as she slid the bracelet onto Eleanor's other arm.

"Right now, they're just on the high end of normal. Nothing to worry about." Shravana added.

"Do you hear that, Eleanor? Nothing to worry about." Hermione kissed the girl's temple, as Eleanor twisted in her lap to face her more fully. "We're going to figure this out. Your father and I used to be quite good at solving problems." She flicked a teasing glance over at Harry. "And we're all in this together, you know. Because we're a family."

Eleanor turned all the way around in Hermione's lap so quickly that Hermione grabbed at her, afraid that she was going to fall. Instead, nearly on her knees, Eleanor locked her arms around Hermione's neck, burying her face in the junction between neck and shoulder, hugging her fiercely.

"I love you," the little girl mumbled, her words nearly lost in the crush. Hermione cast a damp, somewhat bewildered glance at Harry, who was watching them, and had apparently somehow made out just what Eleanor had said.

For the half-smile that had always been able to warm her heart and make her insides a little jumpy was on his face, and he mouthed,

So do I.

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