3

The Power Unknown

Minerva McGonagall's body burned in the boiling whirlpool and only with momentous resolve she kept from screaming. Though it was a mere heartbeat later when the scalding pain became unbearable and she cried out. The fiery water gave her no quarter for her beaten declaration and continued to rage at her body. Soon her mind shut itself against the agony, granting her the mercy of temporary oblivion.

By good fortune, or Dumbledore's design, the journey was short, and she was expelled on cold stone, steaming from the passage. Her hand still clasped her charge, when she finally regained consciousness. She coughed out her waterlogged lungs, looking around hazily, and found she had arrived at her destination.

The dying woman lay in front of towering iron double doors, with a strange device of an eclipse embossed on the center. Pathetically, the once Headmistress crawled to the door. She placed the tip of her wand on the device, barely able to hold it with her cooked flesh, and muttered words Dumbledore's portrait had coached her. The doors opened laboriously, grinding over unused grooves in the stone floor. The device of the eclipse split, the sun rolling fully on to the opening door on the left and the moon taking its place on the right door. She shut her eyes, wary of witnessing the capricious power within the room, lest she provoke it.

With her last vestiges of strength she blindly levitated the body of the young wizard into the room. The spell held until her hand surrendered, and the body fell as the wand clattered to the stone floor. Her lips formed words that she hoped the boy could hear: redeem me.

The perpetually locked room in the department of mysteries shuddered at the alien presence. The substance Albus Dumbledore spoke of sought out the prisoner in the body. It touched the prisoner, curious at how he resonated with its own nature. The power's tentative probe released the bounded soul, and this time the tremor was felt far above. The many officious wizards and witches ordered their underlings to find the source of the disturbance. The maintenance staff was harassed by frenzied paper airplanes, but they would never know what came to pass in the bowels of the building.

The enigmatic substance hung suspended in the air, looking like glittering liquid gold, swirling as if it were being spun by wind. It caressed the nexus of white light within the body and surrounded it, enveloping the light in its cold embrace. The white light began to pulse within the magical cocoon, and with each beat it took the color of the power that had released it.

Cognizance of his self and surroundings returned to him guardedly, as if the very state of awareness was somehow dubious. Unexplainable images streamed to his erewhile inert mind and he resented their demand for him to awake. It seemed he had crossed his eyes and had a double vision; though, instead of two of the same he saw two separate streams.

In one, he could see sparkling liquid whirling around lazily in the air. It would touch him, he could not tell where, only that he felt something cold yet comfortable make contact then withdraw. Simultaneously, in the second, images of the back streets from his primary school to Privet Drive jockeyed for his attention. He felt an extreme urgency to go to the street in his sight, even though it felt as if he was already there.

His vision returned to the golden liquid. He tried to move in an attempt to gather where he was, but his body did not respond, he could not sense anything. As if the whirling liquid understood his plight it surrounded him standing him upright. He saw a door and lurched towards it, awkward on his broken and stony legs. The whirling liquid stayed with him, forming a full body crutch, directing his appendages as it interpreted his need, for the body no longer obeyed him.

He wondered idly if this was death, and he was plagued by memories of his past life. He now saw a familiar memory, of an oft occurring event from his childhood. He was getting close to home on Privet Drive and his cousin, with his friends, was ahead of him. It was always a delicate balance, to keep enough distance to remain unnoticed by the aggressive group, and close enough to be on Dudley's heels when they entered the house. He even felt the anxiety this after school challenge used to bring him; Aunt Petunia always punished tardiness.

Roughly, he tore his mind's eye from this vision, back to the unfamiliar place he was in. Passing through the heavy doors he saw his teacher prone on the floor, burned and obviously dead. His vision doubled again, and he saw the faces and distantly heard the voices of his despised relatives. Grief for the death of the woman merged with his confusion at the persistent desire to reach the place in the memory, and he was left frustrated.

Feeling surreal and disconnected, he saw a tome lying by his teacher and her wand. Both items floated up before him, seemingly, of their own volition. He looked at his teacher knowing he should destroy her body, to save her from being raised an inferi, but his hand did not respond to take the wand floating before him. Suddenly, her body combusted and he yelled, though no sound escaped his dead lips. In seconds the body was reduced to ashes, yet he had not felt the heat the furious fire should have emitted, must have emitted.

The dual vision returned and he saw Vernon Dursley bearing down on him, looking much larger than usual, and yelling. The urge to be in the memory became painful, while his rational side rejected the feeling as absurd. A thought penetrated his confusion, frightening him at the prospect of it being true. Was a part of him too afraid to move on, and he was being pulled into his memories because of it? Would the unfamiliar coward in him reduce him to a ghost? The searing pain began making him hysterical, as the two instincts warred within him; one to sooth the relentless need to reach the place in his vision and the other warning against it.

An acute blow blanked all thought and hysteria, the smarting pain on his face confirmed that the man in his memory had struck him. He stared up at Vernon, stunned by the physical sensation more than the fact that he had been hit, and so he was unprepared for the backhand which sent him sprawling. His mind's eye doubled to the ashes of his teacher, while Vernon walked up to him.

For the sake of immediate preservation he ignored his disbelief at the memory attacking him, and forced himself to escape the corpulent man. He had reached the back door when Petunia Dursley caught the back of his collar. Frantically, he scratched at her bony fingers. She let him go with a shriek of pain, and he glimpsed two long red lesions on her arm, before he bolted out the door. He heard the door slam behind him and of sudden he was back in the unfamiliar place, where a wand and tome were floating in front of him.

The pain ripped through his mind and he knew he could not resist the need anymore. However, now the stream of his memories was absent. The pain built up, while he furiously searched for the dual sight, to tell him the place he was called, all qualms forgotten.

Once again, the liquescent power helped the one to entice it from its somnolent dispassion, and magically jettisoned the masked wreck from the underground ministry. Its work done, the power returned to the caliginous depths of the room it resided in, viciously anticipating what was to come next. The doors shut behind with the device returning to its locked position of an eclipse.

The desperation and anguish had fallen away when he saw the gray sky approach. He dearly wished his body still had feeling so he could revel in the speed with which he had been launched to the heavens. With anxious anticipation he awaited the path of after life to reveal it self, relieved the invasive visions and compulsion to fuse with them had abated.

His ascent slowed as he went higher than he had ever been on broom or winged beast. Then his vision tipped and he was headed toward the earth instead of the skies – the anxiety returned. He was falling to the earth like a streaking cloaked missile, pointed where the power had aimed him. Flashes of Wisteria Walk interrupted the site of clouds tearing by him.

Unable to comprehend what was happening to him, except the intimate and inevitable encounter with the distant earth below, he reacted in the most expectant way and screamed, invoking heaven, hell, and Merlin's balls. Within seconds the lay of the land became distinct, until he could make out the forms of people. The place where he would impact, as he judged it, was strangely familiar. His vision doubled showing him the park by Privet Drive, and once more the puce face of his loathed uncle. He cursed the inequity of it all, that that was the final face he would see as he died a second time. To add to his disappointment, both his visions now showed him the man. Though, oddly, in one sight the man seemed to be looking into the sky. Vernon Dursley's face steadily became larger until he saw a set of piggy eyes widen in fear and then…

Vernon Dursley saw his nephew, by marriage (he would never claim him otherwise), fall to his knees and moan in pain holding his head. Grimacing at the scene the boy was making in the middle of the park, where he had given the brat chase to, he lunged to knock him out. That is, until a sense of foreboding froze him in educating the child. He looked to the sky where the freak was looking to, knowing instinctively his ominous feeling had something to do with his unnaturalness. Vernon saw the flash of a red lily on silver before the masked missile impacted, crushing his face through his body into the pristine snow beneath.

For a moment the man's face could be seen, after it had been brutally ejected through his posterior, before the rest of the obese body collapsed over it, dressing the face in indistinguishable innards. Far away, in London, the ministry of magic felt another tremor caused by the exultation that exuded from the hidden room. The maintenance staff quietly slipped away from the building, rightly anticipating a visit from the excitable minister.

He breathed deeply and felt cool air in his warm sticky throat. He smiled at the familiarity of his physical body. He enjoyed the sensation as it was something that finally made sense; hands move, lungs function, snow felt cold and wet. The moment of clarity was short lived, for he made the mistake of opening his eyes, and seeing his messed body lying on top of the ruptured remains of Vernon Dursley.

Feeling oncoming vertigo, he timorously patted his face and torso. Confirming he was, by this highly discerning measure, all there. Reaching up he pulled on his hair, to check if his head was still on his shoulders, when he could see the back of it lying face down no more than three yards from him. Satisfied that he had his body he stood, and at once noticed the lack of height. For a fleeting moment he was perplexed, before deciding this was the least bizarre of all that had happened. A wand and tome appeared out of thin air and distracted him. However, this time he was able to claim them, and childlike hands obeyed his command to catch the wand and book. The wand found its place in a deep pocket and the book went under the oversize sweater he was wearing.

Ignoring the disturbing feeling of being in a child body, he approached his uncle's remains, keeping his nose firmly pinched against the foul smells. He could not help but smile, death had been confusing as hell so far, but it had been spectacular as well. Witnessing his bully uncle sundered by himself shooting down from the atmosphere was an excellent consolation. If this truly was the next great adventure, then it was off to a brilliant start, even though he was disturbed by the presence of the Dursleys.

The sound of excited children brought him out of his musing, and he ran to the hedge that formed the boundary of the park. Alarmed at being found at the incriminating site, he rushed back and pulled on his rightful body, trying to hide it. Even with his heels dug into the ground he could not budge it. Shrill laughter of some annoying prepubescent child served as a warning siren and he apparated away, taking both his bodies with him.

He apparated as far as he could, his mind focused solely on avoiding discovery. Curiously, he appeared in a familiar cave where his godfather had found refuge once. Finally, the scared boy breathed in relief, and lay flat on his back trying to gather what exactly had happened, and why he inhabited a body other than his own. He did not see the words that were crawling from the dead forearm of his rightful body to the child arm he had now.

The physical sensations around him and the absence of fantastic heavenly or hellish scenery, told him that death perhaps truly was the next great adventure. Without the promise of reunion with his loved ones, but more persecution from his hated relatives. A half hour passed in which the boy wizard calmed his turbid thoughts. Night was approaching and the fading light behooved him into movement.

He wiped his face with his hands, hoping that simple act would clarify his puzzling situation. The action did not deliver on his hope, but did bring his attention to the glowing rune on his wrist. Curious, as he always was, he touched it with his forefinger, and was at once rewarded by the apparition of a cat leaping out of his arm. He cried, startled, and stumbled back into the unmoving cave wall he was already up against. The ghostly cat regarded him haughtily, before transforming into his old teacher Minerva McGonagall.