Parlor Trick: An Unnatural Gray
The interior of the large sitting room was dark, and Mrs. Weasley's efforts had failed to make it either cheery or clean. It was dismal, and gray, and just like before. Fewer cobwebs, maybe. But that's a small amendment that hardly changes the sense of the thing.
The unnatural fog that had settled even into the residential areas of London was incomprehensible to the muggles on the evening news Hermione insisted on watching. Harry and Ron expected to see the man in the too-large suit jacket begin wringing his hands in front of the computerized map. No, he didn't know when it would stop. He didn't know when they might expect a return to the usual, lighter, London gray.
Harry did. He'd been feeling it for weeks, coming. He knew better than to mention it, and he'd become quite accomplished at keeping his hands to his side instead of clutching them to his scar. He writhed in his sleep, yes, but he was behind a door and several charms before he indulged in it. His lack of control had hurt these people—his family—before, and he couldn't see it happen again. He wouldn't. If they wouldn't be pushed away bodily, he'd push them out any other way he could.
Harry wandered to the window and rubbed the sleeve of his jumper against the grimy pane in front of his eyes. He hadn't expected to see much through the fog, but every so often he still felt like trying. Just in case.
The streetlamp visible through the small alley between the building and the adjacent wall brightened and dimmed. Power surges, Harry noted. It might be time. He let his hand creep up his sleeve to touch the end of his wand. Ready or not, he muttered to himself. But those were just words: he'd never have been ready for the sodden slap of the soaked and barely conscious woman crashing through the side table next to Hermione's chair. He'd not have been ready no matter how long he had.
The trio had drawn their wands and positioned themselves around her before she started to stir. The woman's twisted form trembled once and stilled; then she raised the arm she'd flung around to protect her face as she fell. She closed her eyes hard and groaned.
She wore a coarse-woven ivory shirt that nearly wrapped twice around her thin waist. The sleeves billowed away from her arms and were bound at the wrist by tightly-wrapped strips of cloth in dark, muted colors. Her charcoal pants were heavily weathered—Harry thought they might have initially been black. Her middle was swathed in a loud purple sash wrapped from the base of her ribs to the starting swell of her slim hips. In its layers were tucked a dagger, a cutlass, and a flint. Harry almost laughed—she even had well-worn green bucket boots.
The woman groaned again and started to heave herself upright, showing the strands of coins, beads, and bones braided and knotted into her mass of sun-bleached brown hair. She raised a cloth-wrapped hand well-weighted with jeweled gold rings and yanked her hair back from her forehead. She blinked her kohl-lined eyes at them and squinted.
"Back away," Harry commanded. Hermione and Ron did, but not before giving him a look. Harry watched the woman and waited. The woman's chest heaved hard; she rolled to her side and coughed a stream of clotted blood and water onto the floor. Hermione banished the mess with an automatic twitch of her hand. The woman blinked hard at the now-clean carpet and sat up in the wreckage of the side table, clutching her ribs. Harry noted her motion had put her hand in easy reach of the hilt of her cutlass. He nearly smirked.
"Mother's love," she breathed, still holding an arm to her ribs.
"I'll say," Ron muttered. Hermione elbowed him and Harry could make out a slight lift at the corner of the woman's mouth as she watched.
"Gentlemen, Lady," the woman said. Her voice had a strong accent with a slight slur to her words. Ron's face radiated disbelief. The woman hauled herself to her feet and turned to look at the wreckage of the table. "I do apologize for the state of your furnishings." The woman began to shift away from them toward the window. "Though it pains me to take my leave to soon after making your acquaintance, pressing business draws me elsewhere." The woman had backed all the way to the panes of glass. Harry saw her fingers creep to the small handhold at the base of the window. She gave it an experimental press upward, and when it didn't move she cast her eyes around quickly.
"What pressing business?" Hermione demanded. Harry watched the hand at the woman's ribcage creep lower, toward the hilt of her cutlass. "You're a pirate; you can't have business here."
"Pirate?" The woman threw her head back in an exaggerated laugh, showing two gold teeth on opposite sides of her wide grin. "Am I, Lady?" The woman's hand made contact with her sword hilt, and in an instant too fast for any of the three to get off a spell she had used the hilt to smash through the frame of the window. With it thus weakened, she put her shoulder against it and tumbled out into the alley. Harry followed her without thinking; he could hear Ron land behind him.
It was a mistake. At the end of the alley, beneath the dimmed streetlight, stood two masked Death Eaters. A green jet of light shot toward the woman; she dodged with a practiced speed. Harry and Ron fired and blocked, hardly taking time to think. The woman dashed out of Harry's sight and he decided not to worry about it, considering. Just on having that thought he managed to stun and disarm the man attacking him; he turned to check on Ron. He was shocked. Ron was disarmed and on the ground, bleeding from a badly-broken arm. The bulky man in front of him spat insults Harry could only barely hear.
Then he heard the woman. She'd come in behind the Death Eater with her cutlass drawn. Its edge shone blue—magic, then? She leaned in to speak in the man's ear.
"Now, that's not very nice." Her voice was a growl. The Death Eater started to give the killing curse, but the woman brought her cutlass hilt down on the side of his head. Harry could hear the moist crack of the man's now-broken neck just before he sank to the ground. The woman ground her heel against the man's slack fingers, breaking his wand. She gave him a final malevolent look before striding over to the other Death Eater. She picked up his stunned form and wandlessly released Harry's spells. The man struggled.
She whipped the mask from his face. Harry didn't recognize him. He was heavy-set and pale with stringy brown hair just past his jaw. The woman seemed to know him at once. She brought her face close to his and hissed at him. "Tell your master I've returned to settle our accounts." She dropped the man onto his back and he landed hard. Harry kept his wand on the man as he seemed to fade into swirls of smoke, then was gone.
"Never has been one to clean up his messes," the woman mused. She walked over to the dead dark wizard and mumbled a few words before crossing herself. She straightened the man's head on his neck and crossed his arms over his chest. Once she finished she seemed to realize Ron and Harry were still there. Ron stood cradling the ruins of his arm against his chest, and Harry stood just in front of him with his wand firmly in his grasp. She cast a look back to them before saying a complex incantation, waving her hands in an absurd pattern, and watching as the body disintegrated.
"Are you going to let me at that arm, luv?" The woman walked toward them, palms raised. "I assume you can't heal it yourself, as you haven't."
"Who are you?" Harry demanded.
"Captain Renee LeBleu at your service, gentlemen," the woman gave a dramatic bow just in time for the street light to surge back up to full power. She peered at Harry. "Will you be healing that arm, then?"
"No," Ron said forcefully.
"Really, mate," the woman scoffed. She strode forward. Harry shot a stunner at her, which she blocked. She returned one his direction and put a leg-locking jinx on Ron. "No respect for your elders." She took Ron's arm and pulled it gently away from his body. He hissed as the already congealing blood pulled his shirt along with the wounded skin. The woman's hands glowed gold, and she placed them just over the worst of the wound. The skin closed, and the arm began to straighten. She put his arm back against his chest and backed away before releasing them.
Nearly the moment she finished, Fawkes landed on her shoulder. Harry and Ron gaped. "That's a summons, mates," the woman said. "The Lady's already there." The two barely had time to look puzzled before the woman put a hand on their shoulders and apparated all of them.
Harry's first impression was of an impossible tangle of rope. Then the odd smell hit. It was tar mixed with ocean water and something else. Harry peered upward, listening to the snap of the sails. Sails? Who had sails anymore? He looked back down to the deck, where Ron was experimentally moving the fingers of his healed arm. He gave Harry a quick thumbs up.
"Ron! Harry!" Hermione's near sob of relief tore through the dark, but Harry couldn't quite locate it until he saw her. She walked in front of two disreputable-looking men who followed her at a distance but kept her firmly in sight.
"Mister Gibbs! Welcome our guests in my cabin, if you please!" Captain LeBleu shouted down to the deck. Harry could see her at the wheel with Fawkes still perched on her shoulder. The stouter of the two men behind Hermione stood up straighter. He must be Gibbs, Harry thought. He looked over at Ron, who nodded.
"Aye!" the man shouted toward the helm, then turned his attention to the three of them. "All right you lot, follow me." He walked in the direction of a doorway just opposite the helm. Ron shrugged in Harry's direction; Hermione rolled her eyes at them. The three followed Gibbs into the cabin. "I'd say Captain's expectin' a storm, lads—and miss—or she'd not have put you here. So stay here if you don't want to meet Old Hob."
"We will, thank you," Hermione said politely. Harry was glad she'd taken charge of that one, because he had no idea what the man was talking about. Ron looked even more puzzled, and a little put out. Once the man left, Harry thought, he'd have a look around the cabin and ask Hermione what she knew.
The man strode out and closed the door tight behind him, but didn't lock it. The three put their heads together. Hermione's eyes had widened when Ron and Harry told her the woman's name. Apparently she was a pirate captain from the golden age of piracy—whatever that was—in the Spanish Main of the seventeenth century. Ron raised the small objection that she'd be wearing a skirt if she were really that old, but Hermione just rolled her eyes at him.
Hermione told them she'd been taken out of their rooms as she'd been trying to floo Hogwarts. Mr. Gibbs had simply reached through and grabbed her, she said. She hardly thought a floo could work that way, and suspected it had something to do with the time travel it took for an entire pirate ship and crew to be outside London in the twentieth century. Ron blustered some about the "grabbing" aspect of Hermione's arrival, but she swore Gibbs had just turned her over to a woman named Anamaria, who'd put her in a small room below deck.
Hermione was extremely alarmed by Harry's version of the fight in the street outside their apartment. After Ron's account she was even more ruffled, and she spent some time pacing the room. She'd run her hands through her hair enough to expand it significantly before she ceased motion and said: "What 'master' do you think she meant?"
"Voldemort," Harry said automatically. "Has to be."
"But wouldn't we have known she was coming if she was on our side?" Ron turned from his inspection of the papers strewn on the map table.
"Voldemort didn't even exist in her time, Harry," Hermione reasoned. "No, she's got to have some other agenda."
"I have, haven't I?" The captain's voice from the doorway caused all of them to flinch. "Well reasoned, Lady." The woman put her hands together in an attitude of prayer. Hermione looked puzzled. "Let's have it, then. What's my agenda?"
"You're going to turn us over to the Death Eaters." Ron accused.
"Wrong." The captain turned to him. "Nothing in it for me. Try again."
"In it for you?" Harry muttered.
"Pirate." The woman gestured to herself as though that ought to have been self-evident.
"You said you were settling a score. You're getting revenge." Harry squinted at her. "Aren't you?"
"Revenge won't keep the crew in rum, mate." The captain shook her head, and the beads in her hair clicked lightly. "Try again."
"Those weren't usual Death Eaters." Hermione had let her eyes go unfocused as she so often did when unraveling puzzles. "You know what they are."
"And if you knew, you would have the heart of the thing." The captain tilted her head respectfully toward Hermione. "You two ought to listen to the Lady; she has sense enough for all of you." The captain walked over to a chest partly concealed under the map table and drew out a bottle. She took a long swig from it and passed it to Harry. He looked at it a moment, then took a drink. It burned like hell, but he controlled his shock long enough to hand it to Ron.
"Those were not Death Eaters," the captain began. "They were pirates. A cursed crew that took too many lives with their gold, and they're paying it back. All of it." She took a seat on a stool near the map table and pitched her heels up on the edge of the maps. She leaned back against the woodwork behind her to tell her story. "But you see, they can't just atone each as his own man. No. They've got to settle each man's score before any can die."
"But you killed that wizard," Ron protested.
"Did you see him die?" She raised an eyebrow at him. Ron and Harry looked at each other for a moment before responding.
"Yes," they said, almost in unison.
"You didn't. You saw him disappear. He wasn't dead." Harry and Ron's brows wrinkled; Hermione looked excited. "By now he'll be back to his berth, whole and bloodthirsty as ever."
"This is the curse of the mutineers, isn't it?" Hermione interrupted, her eyes bright with anticipation.
"Aye," The captain said quietly. "But there's trouble in it for you as much as for them." She paused to receive the bottle back from Harry. She took a long swallow and drew the back of her hand across her mouth. "Your Harry is the direct descendant of one of the crew—the one they rashly killed before they knew they needed his soul."
"What?" Ron blurted. "His soul?"
"Not quite that. Each man must have a share of his power drained, commensurate with his crimes. All live a cursed existence until then." She paused. "You might be thinking, Lady, that the man they killed can't be dead if that's the truth." Hermione nodded. "That's not exactly it. A man can be scattered so thoroughly his body can no longer hold his soul. The flesh lives."
"Merlin!" Ron swore.
"They ripped him apart?" Hermione breathed. "Oh, Harry." Harry just looked from one face to another for a moment.
"What does this have to do with me?" Harry asked.
"A man's descendents can pay as well as he can. They want your payment, Harry, and they'll follow you until they get it." The captain took another long swallow from the bottle.
"Harry, they can't." Hermione blurted. He knew she hadn't meant to say it, but he could feel a flare of annoyance at her comment anyway. It wasn't concern for him, no, it was concern for him dying before he saved the world. Wasn't that always the case.
"Yeah, I know." He muttered. Hermione looked guilty, and Ron wouldn't look at him at all. The captain's gaze bore into his own, then he felt a succession of images and feelings enter his mind. He felt a moment's panic, but heard her voice in his head telling him why she was showing him what she was.
She'd silently narrated everything she knew about the mutineers' ship, their cave of swag, and the place they used to sacrifice pieces of their souls. She also, very briefly, showed him a man much like his father and much like himself. He was tall, wiry, and had uncontrollable black hair flying around his face. A red scarf on his head kept the braids and dreadlocks out of his eyes as he perched along the bowsprit of a ship, grinning fiercely into a strong wind.
"That was him, Harry. Good man." The captain broke eye contact with him, withdrawing the stream of images.
"He was a killer," Harry said, revolted.
"He put to sea with killers, luv," she said quietly. "The curse is an equal share just as the haul was, but the killing wasn't. Potter kept to the code." She looked stonily at Ron and Hermione. "Your bird told me what Harry means for your world. I won't see him die."
"What's in it for you?" Ron's ears were reddening. The captain grinned, showing her glinting gold teeth.
"It ought to be clear, boy." She purred, leering at Harry. Harry shifted uncomfortably and Hermione blushed. If Ron's eyes could've bulged from shock, they would have. The captain let out a laugh much like the one she'd startled them with in their apartment. "Easy, mate. Just a bit of fun."
"You're cursed as well," Hermione said. "Aren't you?"
"Aye. We are; all of us. When they come too close to a member of old Potter's family, we get summoned to stop them—no matter the time or place." She paused to look at Harry directly. "You might be saying to yourself: won't she give me over to them just to stop her own curse?" Harry nodded. "I won't. If you die, their curse rebounds onto us. And they've got it worse than we have, the poor blighters."
"There must be a way to break it," Ron insisted.
"Ron's right," Hermione said. "There must be some way to kill them without—without using Harry's soul."
"Thanks for that," Harry snapped. The three of them looked at the captain expectantly. She got to her feet and handed Harry the half-empty bottle.
"You'll need this more than I will, luv," she said quietly. To the others she said: "Aye, there's a way. There's little more I can tell you, but know this: everything you need to know to find the answer is on this ship." Hermione stood and walked over to the papers on the map table, immediately beginning to sort them into thematic piles. Ron looked at her in disbelief.
The captain walked toward the cabin door, her gait rolling with the increasing pitching of the ship. She paused a few steps from the door and leaned back around to speak to them, raising one finger as she did. "And mates, we've got a storm on her way. Best you stay here, not overboard. Savvy?" The three made noises of agreement and the captain opened the door, letting in the starting blasts of wind. Harry stepped toward her as she turned to leave. She cast a glance back over her shoulder and winked at him, grinning.
You might be thinking: "Pirates? What kind of trumped up madness is this?"
If that's what you're thinking, you'll hate the rest of the story. So ease up, purists. It's all in good fun;no one's going to put an eye out.
And while I'm disclaiming: Everything you recognize from HP and POTC belongs to JKR and Disney. Not to me. SIGH.