Chapter Twenty-Five: The Invitation
Those faces. He knew them, he'd seen them over and over again in this strange... world? But who were they? They
were all in a room and a house he recognized, and yet did not. It was an unknown, yet comfortable, as if he were
home.
And they were all sitting around in a circle, smiling and laughing. The man and the woman and the younger boy... his family, and yet strangers. He felt happy. All of their love and attention was being devoted to the tiny toddler at the center between them. She was trying to take her first steps on her two, tiny legs.
"No, no, not that way!" he witnessed his hands of their own volition reach out and grab her beneath her arms to correct her course. There was love and tenderness and... happiness. What a strange word.
He'd no sooner come to enjoy this feeling than the scene changed, just as it always did. Happiness, then sadness. It jerked at him right from his core, sending him spiraling and plummeting until he landed on his two feet in the very yard of that house, but seemingly years later.
"You can't!" the younger boy that he'd seen many times before, that he knew, got right into the face of another, red with rage.
"And who will stop us?" the other asked smugly.
"I will!" the boy shouted.
Wands were drawn. Spells were cast. It was terrible and frightening and so much power himself, he was so very powerless to stop it.
And then she came out, ranting and raving, trying to come between them, trying to stop it. Her delicate arms were flailing above her head in protest as her wild hair trailed behind her. A flash. An explosion. Earth and rock were sent flying. When he picked himself up off the ground, he saw the other, his friend, tripping backwards before turning and running to flee. He heard the tell-tale sound of apparation, but he did not try to give chase.
"No!" he heard himself cry. The yard had been turned into a massive crater. His brother and sister lay motionless at its fringe, one injured, the other mortally. He crawled to his sister, pulling her lifeless form into his arms to cradle her head as he cried over her. "Ariana, no..."
And then the face of Death was sweeping in on him. That rotting skull, those talon like claws. He did not even flinch, welcoming its release.
Harry's eyes shot open. He threw back the sheet covering him, lifting himself from his makeshift pallet on the floor in the attic of Grimmauld Place with a purpose.
So many dreams, and with this last one, they all suddenly came together - made sense. Ariana... Dumbledore. His black robes materialized about him as he pictured the place he wished to be in his mind's eyed. A loud and forceful crack! ripped through the room. And then he stood before a large stone Gargoyle, guarding a spiraling passage beyond.
His loud arrival echoed down the hard corridor, setting off a commotion of voices. Harry looked about himself, expecting an audience, but the halls were empty. As the voices picked up, it was in the portraits that Harry found their source.
Ignoring the, "It's Harry... Harry Potter's," echoing around him, Harry turned his attention back to the statue that blocked his way - that blocked him from his answers. Harry's head tilted at the unmoving, stone beast as he considered what next. He had no patience at the moment to delay his answers any longer. Harry raised his wand.
"Tally-cats!" one called from the nearest portrait. Some turned on the the speaker, shouting him down and denouncing him for giving out the password, but most just stared at Harry with that wondrous gaze. That entire portrait was filled with admirers, in fact, the next several in line were all filling fast.
"Thanks," Harry said, turning to the glowing figure of Sir Cadogan, his chin held high, honored to have been of service to the Great Harry Potter. "Tally-cats," there was no more time to waste. By grinding stone, the statue turned away, revealing the winding staircase beyond.
"Come in," the Headmistress beckoned, lifting her eyes above her spectacles as she sat busy at her desk. Expecting a mutual professor, McGonagall gasped when she witnessed the raven haired boy enter. "Harry..?"
"Morning, Professor," he said, glancing up to the empty portrait above her desk. McGonagall did not miss it. "I..." Harry stalled. He'd been in such a rush, he'd yet to think of an excuse for his sudden, unannounced arrival.
McGonagall dropped the quill she had been using and leaned back in her chair with a long sigh. "It is good to see-"
"Where is he?" Harry cut her off, being perhaps a little too forward. Perhaps a lot too forward. McGonagall frowned.
"I presume you are asking of Albus?" she raised a brow at him. Harry did not respond, but looked on coldly. "I do not know, Harry."
It was Harry's turn to scowl as he soon lost his patience and began to pace back and forth amidst her office. The dreams... what did they mean? He was so close, and of course Dumbledore would be absent at a time like this.
"Perhaps, Mr Potter, you would like to have a seat?" McGonagall asked him. Harry simply glanced at the offered chair before ignoring it. Continuing his pacing, McGonagall went on to insist with her stern, schoolmaster demeanor. Harry, despite all that he had become, found himself seated.
"Harry..." McGonagall tried to begin carefully. "May I ask what brings you here today?"
Silence. Harry just stared back at her. McGonagall's frown deepened.
"Very well, Mr Potter. I will not, how does the saying go, beat around the bush with you. I am the one who informed Mr Weasley and Ms Granger of your return," she admitted, in hopes of goading him on.
Still, nothing from Harry.
"I know, to a lesser extent, what happened to you in India..." McGonagall baited him, but Harry did not give. No sign or hint of any emotion at all.
"I want to help you, Harry," she pleaded with him.
"You can summon Dumbledore for me," Harry said flatly.
"To what end, might I ask?"
Nothing. Cold, stone face. McGonagall stood up and walked to her window, looking out over the grounds below.
"I will not pretend to understand what you're feeling, Harry. What you've been through... but I can still imagine," her lips pulled down. "I have not earned all these gray hairs for naught," she glanced back to him over her shoulder, offering him a short smile. "But what I do know, Harry, is that your friends are important. Why won't you let them help you?"
Harry's lips pursed with anger, but he swallowed it. "They're not safe around me. No one is," he did not mean to admit this, but it just slipped. McGonagall nodded, still looking out the window.
"And you think you can keep them safe by pushing them away?"
"Yes." Harry bit his tongue. He did not feel like having this conversation.
"That's not true, Harry," McGonagall said softly, motherly.
"It is too!" Harry suddenly found himself up out of his seat, standing with his chest heaving. He may not want to have this conversation, but a years worth, hell, seven years worth of pent up emotion came flooding out of him. "Look what happened to all those around me! Remus, Tonks, Dumbledore, Snape, Moody, Fred!" he shouted at her. "The list goes on!" Koca, Pita... he did not add the latest unfortunates to have met him. "Look at what I have done to the Weasleys, to Hermione! I'm a god damn curse!" He was furious.
McGonagall turned to face him, presenting a calm facade. "That is not true, Harry, and don't you believe it for one instant."
Harry threw his hands up with exacerbation. It absolutely was true.
"Then tell me Harry, what would have happened had you never been born? You think Voldemort would have just stopped? Given up without a Harry Potter to antagonize him so?"
Harry's eyes narrowed in on her.
"Do you think the Weasleys would have just buckled, gone along with him, their entire family left unharmed? Do you think Hermione, born of muggles, would have been spared had you not been her friend? Remus, Tonks, Dumbledore, Snape, their deaths were not your fault Harry, no ones' were. They rest solely at the feet of Voldemort."
Harry balled his fists. He did not believe a word of it, but then... he had no response.
"Believe what you will Harry, but had you done before what you are doing now and just pushed everyone away, we would have lost a lot more than we did. We would have lost everyone. You saved us Harry. You saved us all."
"Shut up!" Harry raged, quite forgetting to whom exactly he was speaking so. He did not want to hear any of this savior crap, not now, not ever again.
McGonagall, for her part, did not flinch at his tirade or disrespect, but went on. "So now there is someone else after the Boy-Who-Lived, and instead of turning to anyone for help, you're trying to settle this all on your own?"
Harry was caught off guard. "What..?"
McGonagall betrayed nothing. "I have only managed to put together just bits and pieces, Harry, but, as you are cursed and all," she threw his own words back at him, "it is not difficult to surmise. You think Dumbledore has answers for you?"
"Yes..." Harry said, again caught off guard. "I mean no... I don't know..." Harry sank back into his seat, bent over while rubbing at the scar across his forehead. "I don't understand any of it." He was depleted. Everything, of these last few months, of this last year, all suddenly caught up with him.
"Why don't you try me, Harry? Tell me."
"No," Harry groaned behind his hands. McGonagall walked around her desk to confront him.
"You do not have to, Harry," she spoke tenderly, with love. "And I cannot force you. But that does not mean I cannot still help you."
Harry glanced up to her from behind his hands.
"From what I've gathered, you are attempting to train yourself like a mad man..." Harry's eyes grew suspicious. "Do not accuse Kreacher, he has kept your secret to the extent that he can, but I am a witch after all, and a rather clever one at that," she smirked at him. "You are preparing for something. The one after you, the one you faced in India?"
Harry did not respond. What was he doing? He didn't really know. He didn't really have a plan. Plans... they were never really his forte. Hermione...
"I think that is very prudent of you, Harry, but why don't you come back here. Come back for your last term. Prepare properly."
Harry screwed his face at her, as if that were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.
"Please," she intoned, "hear me out before you right it off. I do not deny it, Harry, you are well beyond your years, but if you think this threat you now face is as grave as it is, and if India was any sign... well, I just want to help you prepare, and there is only so much one may learn from training on their own."
McGonagall paused for a moment, letting her words sink in.
"I am prepared to offer you a... special arrangement, if you will. I do not expect you to return as a regular student. For just such an instance, if you will return, I have prepared a specific curriculum for you. You will return as a graduate student, so to speak. Your secrecy, and your privacy, if that is what you wish to uphold, will be respected. No one has to know you're here. You will be given your own dorm. I have blocked time with each of the professors within the core curriculum: Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, and of course, Defense against the Dark Arts, to tutor you privately, and I myself will help conduct some of your lessons."
Harry just stared at her.
"Harry..." she was more pleading this time. "I would give all I have if I could change things for you... give you a normal life you've never known, never enjoyed... but of course I cannot. We do not control the roads that are laid before us, but we can choose the paths we take. You do not have to be alone in this. You can have all the power in the world, but if you do not know what to do with it... if you truly wish to protect those close to you, then this is the path. Finish your education and then, whether you wish to have an army behind you or not, you will be ready for all of the obstacles that are laid out there for you... for him, should you face him again."
Harry's gaze dropped to the floor, his thoughts jumbled within a tumultuous storm. McGonagall had said a lot, but Harry zeroed in on the last of what she revealed, "him." What did she know? What could she know? Not even he knew anything of him...
"What if he comes for me here?" Harry murmured, seeing those black, beady eyes of death standing over him victoriously, Hogwarts burning in the background.
"Then he is more foolish than you think."
Harry's eyes shot up to hers. The question was there on his tongue, but he bit it back. "What do you know about any of this?"
"I don't even know what day it is... when's the term start?" he asked, and even managed, as gloomy as it was, to chuckle a little at this admission.
"The Hogwarts Express leaves from King's Cross in the morning," McGonagall said.
. . . .
Her office quiet and still once more, the Headmistress stared at the door Harry had used only minutes ago to take his leave. As she held her quill paused atop the letter she had started drafting, she could feel all the eyes of the previous headmasters weighing down upon her, all but the two she needed most.
Should she have told him more? Told him all? "All in time..." she answered herself aloud. "When he's ready," she heard Albus's voice in her head. McGonagall blinked away the tears swelling up her eyes as she thought of all he'd been forced to face, and that which still haunted him today... The Ghosts of the Past.
Her quill scribbled angrily once more across the old parchment before her.
It is done. He has agreed. The plan moves forward.
McGonagall stood, folding up the short letter and sealing it in its envelope. Her Masked Owl awaited dutifully atop the mantle for its charge.
"Albus..." her eyes turned up to the empty portrait, just as Harry's had before, searching him out, "I need you now more than ever."
She hesitantly sent her owl with the attached letter on its way, wholly unsure if this was indeed the right path, but what other was there?