Disclaimer: Profitless fanwork: a fix-it and renewal story for the holiday. Chag sameach and happy easter!
In addition: Several paragraphs in this story are drawn, almost word for word, from JKR's OotP, ch 35. The 'almost' is important. It's mostly the first few, but you can also tell because Rowling's prose is a bit light on contractions and long on ellipses. Also, I do not use the word truly; pet peeve.
Sentences that go on forever are not unique to me in this fandom, ok, Rowling does it toooo...
This is a springboard fic. I hope it'll be a prequel to something for me, but if anyone else wants to use it, go nuts! And let me know! Unless you take it teacher/student in any way, in which case please never ever let me know.
Harry was falling down steep stone step after steep stone step, bouncing on every tier until at least, with a crash that knocked all the breath out of his body, he landed flat on his back in the sunken pit where three pillars stood on their dais. He looked up and saw the five who had been in the Brain Room descending toward him, while six more emerged through other doorways and began leaping from bench to bench toward him. The prophecy was still miraculously unbroken in his left hand, his wand clutched tightly in his right. He backed away, looking around, trying to keep all the Death Eaters within his sights. The back of his legs hit something solid; he had reached the dais where the archway stood. He climbed backward onto it.
The Death Eaters all halted. Ten were gazing at him, the last staring at the marble pillars behind him, leaning towards them like a plotting vulture. Some of the rest were panting as hard as Harry was. One was bleeding badly; Dolohov, freed of the full Body-Bind, was leering, his wand pointing straight at Harry's face…
"Longbottom?" repeated Bellatrix, and a truly evil smile lit her gaunt face. "Why, I have had the pleasure of meeting your parents, boy..."
"I DOE YOU HAB!" roared Neville, and he fought so hard against his captor's encircling grip that the Death Eater shouted, "Someone stun him!"
"No, no, no," said Bellatrix, dreamily, but the Death Eater who'd been looking at the pillars pulled a round vial of something purple out of his robes and hurled it at Neville's head. It missed him so closely that his hair ruffled, hurtling past to smash against the farthest pillar. The air smelled, for a moment, like something floral, heavy and sweet. Harry leaned back a little to get another sniff of it before he caught himself.
All the Death Eaters turned to give the one who'd thrown the potion a variety of disgusted looks that came through their blank masks very clearly. Only Dolohov and the Death Eater holding Neville kept as they were. Lucius Malfoy put his free hand over his eyes, and ran it despairingly through his luminous hair.
"What?" asked the potion-throwing Death Eater, rather sulkily. His voice sounded quite a bit like Hagrid's, but deeper. It was almost familiar, but Harry couldn't place it. "He said to stun the brat. I'm helping."
"You missed," Malfoy pointed out, in a flat, pained tone.
"My throwing arm's rusty, all right," said the potion-throwing Death Eater, crossing his arms. "And this sort of thing was never my job, but here I am, helping. I've got more," he added, pulling another two out, "I could try again?" When Bellatrix opened her mouth, he amended, "Well, perhaps not throw it again, but—"
"Mummy's got a crucio all lined up, diddums," Bellatrix snarled, in her baby-talking sing-song. "Volunteering?"
The Death Eater with the rubbish throwing arm and the death wish tossed his head just a little, and said, in an offended tone, "You'd be using it on one of only three of us who's even attempted to make a positive contribution. One would think you didn't want to encourage service to Our L—"
He stopped, when, high above them, two more doors burst open and five more people sprinted into the room: Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley. Malfoy turned and raised his wand, but Tonks had already sent a Stunning Spell right at him. Harry did not wait to see whether it had made contact, but dived off the dais out of the way.
The Death Eaters were completely distracted by the appearance of the member of the Order, who were now raining spells down on them as they jumped from step to step toward the sunken floor. The mouthy one, though, hurled his two remaining bulbs of purple potion into the floor at the center of the pillars, and promptly cast a bubble-head charm on himself.
The heavy, sweet scent became noticeable even though everyone was fighting and dodging like mad. Slowly, all the fighting slowed, ground to a halt, as though not just the smell but the substance of spiced honey had poured into the air, suspending them.
Although his heart was pounding with the focused, hectic pulse of fighting for his life and the heart in his throat terror of being in the same really serious fight with Neville and Sirius and, what with all of the confusion, not really having either of their backs, Harry found himself calming, drifting. Drawn, with everyone else, towards the center of the dais.
It was so much like the Imperius curse, which Harry had learned to throw off in his fourth year, that Harry dug his heels in against its sweet promises of comfort. Moody grabbed him. He seemed to be fighting it, too, and, catching Harry's eye, started shouting, "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" over and over. He nodded fiercely and Harry, taking a deep breath, joined in, forming each word clearly in his mind to crowd out the siren scent.
The pillars blazed when everyone but Harry, Moody, and the suicidal Death Eater was between them, their marble shining milkily in the stony gloom. The large chamber filled with light so white it was golden; so white it was blue.
When it faded, and Harry had blinked his eyes clear everyone on the dais but Neville, Kingsley, and Tonks had collapsed. Kingsley and Tonks started stunning, petrifying, and tying up Death Eaters. They weren't piled as high Harry would have thought; some of them looked… little.
As the eleventh Death Eater unhurriedly unchained himself, Moody asked, grinning, "All right there, Odysseus?"
"Silence, Phoenician scum," the Death Eater replied in a menacing tone, flipping Moody a jaunty two-fingered salute, "don't you know I have you at my mercy." He and the Aurors went to check on the other adults, pulling off masks and checking reflexes and pulses.
"Thank bleeding Christ," the Death Eater said when they were done, his voice suddenly not almost but one hundred percent familiar. He pulled off his mask and hood in one motion, sat down on the steps, and put his head between his knees, clenching shaking hands into his dark, limp hair. It wasn't as though Harry hadn't suspected it before, but he couldn't help staring anyway. He wasn't as flabbergasted as Neville, at least.
"Up and at 'em, sir, we've got cursed kids in the other room," Tonks said cheerfully.
"Can't I have my heart attack first?" Snape complained, getting to his feet and shaking his hands out, dour and grumpy and perfectly steady again.
"Don't be such a drama queen, Snape," Kingsley advised, also cheerfully, giving him a slap on the back that sent him, stumbling and glaring over his shoulder, towards the door. "You have it tonight at the pub, with the rest of us."
"Like hell I will, you oversized infant," Snape said, and the two of them bickered their way out the door without a backwards glance.
"Are Sirius and Remus okay?!" Harry demanded in chorus with Neville, the moment Snape was gone. They were both nearly vibrating with wanting to go check for themselves, but, well, it was Moody; they'd never get away with it. "What was that?" Neville added, and Harry asked, "How come it didn't get Neville and Tonks and Kingsley?"
"Good boys," Moody said gruffly, approving their restraint with a smile that was, due to his face, crooked. "Well, Longbottom, it's a bit of a mystery, like a lot of things around here. Not my department, see, thank Merlin. And, Potter, I reckon those three haven't been battered about like the rest of us. Lupin's a bit—well, anyway, yes, to be expected, poor sod. Just let me and Tonks here separate them out, and then you can check them for yourselves. Can't wake 'em up until the rest are properly restrained, though."
Harry asked, "What was that?" as the Aurors carefully levitated Sirius and Lupin up against the wall nearest them. He ran to Sirius, checking him carefully.
He seemed to be all right. Actually, he looked really good, all the trouble and thinness that had haunted his face gone with his consciousness. There weren't any bags under his eyes, and sleep had smoothed the lines around them out. He seemed to have got rid of that awful moustache since the last time Harry had seen him, too, and his hair was longer. It made him look years and years younger.
When, with a sigh of relief, Harry turned to Remus, he met Neville's drop-jawed expression. Looking down, saw what 'years and years younger' really looked like. Lupin was as lost in his threadbare robes and ancient cardigan as Harry had ever been in Dudley's old clothes, a dark-blond little boy too small even to be a first-year.
"Wh—what are those?" Neville stammered, staring at the pillars.
"They're called the Pillars of Mercy," Kingsley said, coming back into the room with Hermione cradled in his arms like the cover of a bodice-ripper. Ron floated unconscious before them, his head fallen back and sucker-marks all over his exposed skin. "On account of being considered a sentence less cruel than Azkaban, beheadings, and burnings at the stake."
Snape followed, carrying Luna like an oversized toddler with her head tucked into his neck, her wavy blonde hair falling everywhere. Ginny came last, leaning on an obviously transfigured crutch for support. He said to her, "Make yourself useful and transfigure some cots, Weasley."
Then he said to the boys, "Make yourselves useful and don't get in her way."
Naturally they ignored him, rushing to make pillows and pallets out of pieces of bench while Ginny turned other pieces into bed frames. Neville whispered, "Do you think he was joking or are we just not getting in your way?"
"Maybe both?" Ginny suggested.
They settled Hermione first. She really didn't look good. Snape stood over her, scowling down with his wand running over her. He said, "Everyone go away. Not you, Shacklebolt."
"Come on, you lot, help me with Ron, here," Tonks said, and they moved away reluctantly from the wizards consulting frowningly over their friend. Ron didn't look good either, but Hermione was quite the wrong color altogether.
"But what are those things?" Harry persisted as they lifted Ron up and Tonks checked him over.
"One of the things we used to use before Azkaban was really secure," Tonks said absently. "They're for… well, you know, sometimes… I mean, not that it's not a person's fault when they do horrible things, but sometimes you know that they used to be okay and then something broke them, you know? People break in all kinds of ways. Sometimes they get stronger, sometimes they break down." Neville swallowed, and she gave him a brisk pat on the arm. "Sometimes they go, er… awful. One way or another. If someone's like that, the Pillars will take them back to the time before they were ruined."
"Why haven't my parents been brought here?" Neville demanded, eyes wide and starting to go determined.
Tonks blinked. After a moment, she said, slowly, "Don't suppose anyone thought of it. It's really old, and it's not supposed to be a treatment, right? They used to use it instead of executions. Don't even know if it would work in cases like that," she said, meeting his eyes with a bracing kindness.
"But it'd be worth a try, wouldn't it?!"
Tonks ruffled up his hair, and said, "Reckon it would. Talk to Kingsley later; if anyone can talk the right people into it, it's him."
"Not Professor Dumbledore?"
"Ha!" Tonks laughed. "Not after catching this lot. Not the way Fudge's been insisting everything's peaches-and-cream. He'll have enough of Dumbledore's crow to eat to last him all year."
Neville nodded, tightly, and Harry clasped him on the arm to get a wavery smile. Then Harry looked back at Sirius and Remus, bit his lip. "Is Remus still a werewolf, d'you think?"
"Dunno that, either, Harry," she said, looking up briefly from Ron to give him a sympathetic smile. "Sorry. We haven't used it in centuries; Auror training didn't cover it in any kind of detail."
He nodded, and asked, "What did Snape do?"
"Professor Snape," Tonks corrected him, like everyone did. "He threw enough Come-Hither potion at those pillars to lure a whole wing of dragons with head colds into a rubbish tip full of rotten eggs, even in a room this size. Dunno how you kept out, Harry."
"It felt like Imperius," Harry said. "That doesn't work on me very well. And Moody helped. What's wrong with Ron?"
"He'll keep," Tonks reassured them, and they went to take care of Luna.
"He almost hit me," Neville commented, glazing a little as the realization clocked him. Harry was pretty sure it was a recurring nightmare of his.
"Not in a million years," Tonks laughed. "Ol' S—I mean, Professor Snape was his team's reserve Chaser, didn't you know? Mum said the only reason he wasn't on the main team was they couldn't bribe him enough to take all that time off his studies."
"He said he was rusty, though," Harry said. Besides, Snape had tried to throw that jar of cockroaches at him, earlier in the year, and he'd missed then, too.
Tonks made a pfft noise. Then Luna made a little noise that was quite different, and they all bent to their business again.
"Will she live?" Snape asked from behind them suddenly, making Neville jump. There was no sign of his Death Eater outfit. After the filmy robe, his knife-crisp white collar and cuffs and heavy black wool and ten thousand black buttons were almost comforting. His lips were thinner than usual as he looked down at Luna, and Harry stared as he realized Snape was worried about her.
"She's just stunned, and hit her head," Tonks answered him. "I hope Moody's gotten hold of a healer, though. Didn't like the look of those other two."
"The Headmaster should be here momentarily; he's fetching Madame Pomfrey," Snape replied. He glanced at all the collapsed Death Eaters, looking unspeakably tired, and, turning, called, "Moody."
"What?" Moody was casting a series of increasingly paranoid spells on a seriously beautiful, heavy-eyed woman with thick, dark hair. The air around her was even starting to look funny. Maybe that was why she didn't look as slender around the middle as Harry would have expected.
"I can neutralize or recruit the Malfoy resources if you let me fetch Narcissa right now and keep your mouth shut."
Moody's eyebrows rose. "Oh, you can, can you?"
Snape's eyes passed over the woman, then fixed wearily on Lucius Malfoy's pale hair, spilling down the steps. Harry couldn't see Draco's dad's face. "Oh, yes."
Moody thought about it for a moment, jaw working a little as he stared thoughtfully right through Snape's head. "Suppose you might be able to at that," he allowed finally. "Be about it, then."
With a nod, Snape set about disassembling a bench and setting it on fire with a fine disregard for Ministry property. When he was done, he took out another vial and tossed its powder onto the flames, turning them green. Soon, he was holding out his hand and helping the slight, ivory form of Narcissa Malfoy step onto the cool stones. She turned slowly, taking in the entirety of the room, and by the time Harry could see her face again, it had gone quite white.
Snape led her gently to an intact bench and sat down with her. They talked for a long time. By the time they'd done, Hermione, Ron, Sirius, and Remus had been taken back to Hogwarts. Madame Pomfrey was still clucking over Luna, and even Moody seemed to feel that the Death Eaters were properly secure. Harry, Neville, and Ginny were huddled by Dumbledore, who had fixed Ginny's ankle and their assorted cuts and bruises with a reassuring, twinkly lack of fuss.
Finally, Mrs. Malfoy stood. "I want to see him," she said, her voice still low, but audible.
"He's too little for you to kick in the face in front of people," Snape said, dry. Harry, Ginny, and Neville looked at each other, blinking apprehensively. Who exactly was it she wanted to see?
"I want to see him," she repeated, and Snape led her over to her husband. The three of them let out a collective sigh of relief. Realizing Ginny had got in front of him and Neville somehow, Harry squeezed her shoulder in thanks. Ginny blushed, and gave him a friendly Quidditch-punch in the arm. She edged back between them again, draping her arms around their shoulders.
Mrs. Malfoy knelt down and touched the spill of pale hair lightly, staying there for a long moment. Then she stood, and, turning to Dumbledore, said, "My husband is dead, and I'll be adopting this boy and taking him home with me. You'll expedite it, and protection for my family."
"The process can be reversed, if you wish," Dumbledore said mildly, not arguing.
She nodded, understanding, but said, "Those are my terms."
"And your sister?"
Mrs. Malfoy looked at the beautiful, dark-haired woman for a long time. Her face was almost unreadable, but Harry felt it was a little bit sad, and as tired as Snape had looked. She said slowly, "I… if she can… maybe this time…" She turned to Snape and appealed, "Severus…"
"She wasn't mad at that age," Snape said, as though it was difficult, coming to stand next to her, "but she was quite, quite devoted."
"But if you help her like you helped me, and if you can…" she gulped, and said, "If you can, if He's already lost by the time she… I mean, if it's settled, if she knows there's nothing she can do and she has something else to care about…"
"Well, perhaps we needn't make any irrevocable decisions just yet," Dumbledore said. He didn't sound dubious, although Snape was looking like he had a painful headache, Kingsley's eyebrows were deeply skeptical, and Tonks had both hands plastered over Moody's mouth. "Perhaps it would be best, under the circumstances, to simply keep her suspended for a time. Let us say, then that I shall do what I can?" Mrs. Malfoy nodded, very still and still very pale, and he said, "Then we have a bargain."
She nodded again, holding his gaze solemnly, and then turned to Snape. She took his hands (he looked edgy) and said, in a fierce, low voice, "You've freed me, Severus."
Ginny said, under her breath, "Oh, no, ew, ew, ew…"
Snape went from skittish to outright alarmed. He opened his mouth, but she went on (much to Ginny's evident relief) "You're the best friend I've ever had. I don't know I can ever repay you."
As she threw her arms around him, Ginny groaned and pulled Harry and Neville into a human shield in front of her, burying her eyes in their shoulders. Snape tried again to make a reply, but she interrupted, brightly, "Ah! I know how," and fell heavily into the space between the pillars, bringing him down with her in one enormous, undignified squawk of flapping black robes and shimmering ivory dressing gown.
When the light had faded again, Mrs Malfoy was gathering a white-headed little boy about Lupin's current age into her arms. He was bundled in expensive cloth that had been really well tailored for someone much larger. Even unsmiling, Draco's mother looked happier than Harry had ever seen anyone look who hadn't just won a Quidditch match. She sailed serenely back towards the green flames with presumably-her-husband, nodding pleasantly to Moody and Kingsley and Dumbledore and her niece, no difference between them.
When everyone had finished staring at the fire where she'd been, they rushed to the outskirts of the dais, looking down at the pillars' most recent transformee.
"Huh," said Tonks. "You'd have thought he'd be wee."
"Check his arm," suggested Moody.
Dumbledore said, "Hmm," and speculatively stroked his beard.