Disclaimer: Except for a few characters borrowed with permission from whydoyouneedtoknow (and, here, half the chapter—thank you very much, Anne), this is Jo Rowling's beach, and she has been kind enough to allow persons such as myself to play here. All I'm laying claim to is the design of this sand castle.
When the Wind is Southerly
by MercuryBlue
Chapter 9: Let Belief Take Hold
Uh-oh. Here he comes—
—and there he goes. That was close.
That was twice he came too close for comfort. I don't think I care to go for three.
I think I've got everything that might be important, he finally decided. The one great advantage of the spiderweb arrangement was that it was next to impossible not to find every detail connected to a particular thought, memory, or idea. He was positive he'd gotten everything attached to a certain set of interlinked thoughts; he'd checked every filament of that section of web. Twice.
So there's no point in staying around...I don't think I want to know what'll happen if he catches me...
Oh no, here he comes again—this end of who-knows-where is popular today, isn't it? The vivid-green light flashed along the spiderweb paths, turning at every intersection, almost as if circling where he looked—now might be a good time to get the hell out of Dodge—blue cord, this time, it's second-strongest if it's not strongest—
He flew along the blue cord, feeling much better now that the slimy green feeling was safely at the far end of the green cord where he couldn't actually feel it—he was out, and he was—well, alive didn't seem quite the right word, somehow, but it was the best he could think of—and he'd stolen something quite valuable on the way out, just so he could strike at least one blow personally instead of by proxy.
He slammed into a feeling of soft-warm-rose-red.
The world blurred and went black.
xXxXx
Ginny woke with a start, looking around frantically. For a moment, she'd been sure...
...no, it was just wishful thinking. There was no one else in the room but Hermione and Meghan, fast asleep, like Ginny ought to be. She'd been trying to get to sleep all day, being so horribly tired, and she must have finally managed it, but now that she was awake she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for hours.
Ms. Letha had told her that part of the problem was depression, quite understandable after seeing someone die. The fact that the dead person was both her brother's best friend and the boy she loved only made it worse.
But the other part of the problem was confounding Ms. Letha, because it looked like Ginny had been using magic like mad and exhausted herself, but of course Ginny hadn't done anything since hexing Draco Malfoy's trunk through the door of his compartment on the train. (The fireworks when he opened it at home ought to be—er, have been—something to see.) It wasn't anywhere near good enough revenge for what Lucius had put her through, and unless she got a miracle this wouldn't get (well, wouldn't have gotten) Lucius in any case, but it had made her feel better.
In any case, that had been a minor spell, six weeks before. For magical exhaustion to hit her so abruptly and completely, she must have been doing something major, six seconds before. Which of course she hadn't been.
Ginny had not told anyone—they'd all think she was crazy—about the dream-within-a-dream she'd had just after Harry—just after it happened. Something precious to her was on the far end of a rope, and the rope was slipping through her fingers, and no one else could help. If she didn't hold tight she'd lose her treasure forever. She'd grabbed on and tried to reel it in, though whatever was on the other end—or whoever had hold of whatever was on the other end—seemed determined that she not keep whatever it was. That was what had tired her out, she was sure, and that was why the tiredness hadn't gone away even a little after having a nap; all her strength went to holding on.
If she was going to be ridiculous—and since she'd woken up positive that Harry was right there next to her, ridiculousness seemed impossible to avoid—there was a distinct cinnamon aroma to the air around her, cinnamon and cloves and ginger, very like the scent she associated with Harry. Ginny herself had the rose scent of the shampoo she'd talked Mum into buying. Meghan, on one side of Ginny, smelled like the ocean, and Hermione on the other side smelled somewhat like nutmeg but mostly like homework.
Go figure.
And there was a horribly familiar rank odor edging the cinnamon...
...Tom, no...don't...you can't...I won't let you...I won't let you hurt Harry...
Hermione mumbled something in her sleep. The sound snapped Ginny out very nicely.
...okay, Ginny, you're overreacting. Severely. Somebody snitched one of the spice cookies Ms. Danger made this afternoon, that's all the cinnamon smell is. Nothing to do with Harry. And you're imagining the rest. Either that or somebody farted. Now go back to sleep. And no nightmares!
And surprisingly, she obeyed.
xXxXx
Someone was crying.
The words were incoherent and mostly indistinct, being sobbed out between bursts of tears, but the gist of it seemed to be something linking the words "Harry" and "dead" in such a way as to make the adjective apply to the noun.
I feel remarkably not dead, he thought. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I'm alive, but I don't think I'm dead.
The crying cut off abruptly.
"Harry?" said a tiny, trembling voice.
A familiar voice.
"Ginny?" he asked after two or three failed attempts to get his mouth to work right. Not quite who I was hoping for, but good enough.
What do you mean, 'good enough'? said a voice in his head that sounded rather like an indignant Ginny.
"Harry, are you all right?" Ginny's voice said aloud.
"Mostly." Having finally managed to convince his eyes that yes, he really would prefer them open, he glanced around. There was a great deal of blue with random blotches of white, there was a bright green around the periphery of his vision, and upwards and to the right there was some brown-spotted pale peach topped with vivid red. "Seen my glasses?"
The requested item appeared on his nose. The blurs of color resolved themselves into sky, clouds, grass, and Ginny. "Thanks." He shoved himself upright and took a good look at her. "Why were you crying?"
She flung herself forward. He had only the briefest glimpse of more tears shining in her eyes before she was hugging him the way a drowning person would hug a life raft. He froze—what was he supposed to do now?
Hugging back might be a start, said that voice that sounded like Ginny, only it couldn't be, because her head was on his shoulder and he'd be able to feel her mouth moving. Hugging back seemed like good advice nonetheless, so he worked his arms out of her death grip to put them around her and squeeze.
"I thought you were dead," Ginny mumbled into his shoulder. "I thought you were dead."
"Mum and Dad are making themselves conspicuous by their absence," he pointed out. "If I was dead, they'd be the first people I'd see. So I don't think I'm dead yet."
"But that sword went right through you—"
"So did a basilisk fang, if I recall," he reminded her. "That didn't kill me either."
"But this time there wasn't a phoenix there—oh God, Harry, I was so scared—"
A feeling of remembered fear swept over him. Fear of his own death—but when had that ever scared him?
"Don't be," he advised. "I don't die easy." Which brought him round to the important part of the conversation. "Trouble is, neither does Voldemort."
She sucked in a breath, but apparently decided not to waste it 'correcting' him.
He loosened her grip on him, enough to push her far enough back that he could look her in the eyes. "Ginny, you have to listen to me, and you have to remember what I say."
"What? Why?"
He was getting a distinct feeling of confusion, which didn't make sense because he knew exactly what he was talking about—more was the pity; it wasn't at all pleasant—and of curiosity, which made no sense either, for the same reason.
"I need you to get a message to Sirius Black," he said, and her chocolate eyes went round. "He's the only person I know who might be able to pull this off—you might want to take notes, this is kinda important and we can't miss anything—"
A roll of parchment, unrolled about a foot, a pot of ink, and a quill materialized within easy reach of her right hand. She dipped the quill and held it over the parchment, ready to write.
xXxXx
Aletha rolled out of bed—off the couch, whatever—at a quarter till eight. She followed her nose into the kitchen, where she discovered Alexander expertly flipping chocolate chip pancakes. The sight was a bit incongruous, as the boy wasn't much taller than the stove. "Don't let those near my daughter," she ordered, yawning. "If she gets any sugar in her system this early, she's hyper all day."
"She's hyper all day anyway," Alex pointed out. The tone of voice was missing the—she couldn't think of the right word, but its absence was connected with the slumped shoulders and dragging step, and had to do with the total lack of smart remarks there'd been yesterday. According to Danger, if Alex wasn't smarting off at people, either the apocalypse was coming or his personal apocalypse had already come.
"True," Aletha agreed, though 'hyper' wasn't exactly the word she'd use. The word she would use was escaping her at the moment, but words remained unimportant until after caffeine.
Ron had wandered in, presumably attracted by the smell of pancakes, and he, Alex, and Aletha were beginning to eat when there came a tapping at the window. Ron looked over. "That's not the newspaper."
Mad rush to the window.
"It's not Harry's writing," Ron said when he'd got a good look at the parchment scrap tied to the post owl's leg.
"Not Sirius's either," Aletha added, reading over the short note. Then she smacked herself on the forehead. "Of course not, his writing wrist is broken."
Letha, Remus,
I'll meet you by Dervish and Banges in Hogsmeade as soon as you can get there. Just you two, unless Letha doesn't think she can fix this wrist. We'll talk then.
Sirius
"I," Alex said, reading over Aletha's arm. "I'll meet you. He says I."
"Then Harry's—then he really is—"
Ron sounded like he desperately wanted someone to say he was wrong. Aletha felt much the same. She hadn't seen Harry since he was a tiny child on his first birthday, barely managing to stay on his feet while clinging to a chair, but she'd loved him then, and loved him no less now. And it was obvious that Ron and Hermione loved Harry too, in the way friends loved each other. The only thing Aletha could think of that was keeping their collective sanity intact was the thread of hope Remus had pointed out, and that seemed about to break.
"Maybe not," Aletha said, but it didn't sound very convincing, even to herself. "There are all sorts of reasons why Harry might not be able to write...remember, we can't be sure he's dead till we've seen his body..."
"Didn't Mr. Lupin say that enough yesterday?" Ron grumbled.
"It's still true," Aletha pointed out. And speaking of Remus—"everything Sirius was accused of doing, Peter did..."—"Expecto Patronum!"
Find Remus, she thought at the silver figure of a winged horse, while Ron and Alex gawked. Bring him here. Important message.
The horse took flight, taking only two heartbeats to vanish from sight.
"What was that?" Alex asked.
"Patronus Charm," Aletha explained. "Used for spooking dementors and lethifolds and for delivering simple messages, most often either something involving charades or something along the lines of 'I need you here now'. Everyone has a different Patronus—mine may not be the only one that takes the form of a flying horse, but it's certainly the only one with scars on its leg that match the scars on mine. The spell takes a lot of power and is difficult enough under ordinary conditions, but it's mostly used for spooking dementors and lethifolds, both of which tend to induce a state of panic, which makes the spell even harder to do."
Ding-dong!
"Go get that."
Alex ran off, returning a few moments later with Remus behind. "What's this about a message?"
Aletha pointed at the note on the table. "Sorry to drag you away from your honeymoon."
"I'll make it up to her later."
Aletha smirked. "I'm sure you will."
Half an hour later, all the girls were downstairs, Meghan with instructions to Floo over to the Ministry at nine on the dot to deliver the note to Madam Bones. Ginny had put in a request to go with Remus and Aletha to talk to Sirius, though she wouldn't give a reason, and when it was denied had returned immediately to bed. Remus had gone back to Little Whinging and fetched Danger back to Crozer Street; Danger had immediately set Alex to scrubbing out the powder room, while she herself sat in on Hermione's homework help session with Ron.
"Ready?" Remus asked Aletha.
"No. Let's go anyway."
"Somehow I knew you'd say that."
Pop. Pop.
And they were standing in front of the Three Broomsticks. The village didn't seem to have changed much since she'd last seen it, Aletha reflected. Which was both surprising and not, as she'd last seen it most of twenty years earlier.
It wasn't far to Dervish and Banges, and it was a pleasant walk, which gave Aletha time to reflect on her internal conflict; she had never quite managed to convince her heart that Sirius was guilty, but her head had been pretty damn sure he was, and had been that way for most of twelve years. She'd only met him eleven years before Lily and James died, and a good large proportion of that time had been spent screaming her lungs off at him.
She was excited, and she was terrified. Part of her wanted to run straight to Sirius and kiss him senseless; part of her wanted to run away screaming.
And as Remus stopped outside the joke shop, all of her was confused. Where was Sirius?
"There," said Remus quietly, pointing. "In the alley."
"Remus, at the risk of being obvious, that's a dog." The skinny black mutt sat patiently in a shadow, probably waiting for its owner. Strange how it seemed to be looking straight at her...
"Yes, but it's also who we're here to see. Trust me on this."
Aletha frowned. "This makes no sense. When was he transfigured? Did Harry do it? And why? A glamour charm isn't perfect, but at least then he'd still be human."
"He was first transfigured when he was fifteen. Harry didn't do it, but James had something to do with it. And why would be because of me." Remus had his eyes on the ground, and his voice was barely audible. "Peter wasn't the only one."
"Peter wasn't...oh."
It makes sense, I suppose. Animagi would be able to play with a werewolf even in his transformed state. And it certainly fits with the arrogant little shits they all used to be, doing something that most adult wizards never try because it's too much trouble. Worse, they pulled it off without anyone ending up with an Anubis head.
The dog was sitting slightly off-center, Aletha noticed. Favoring its left front paw. As she looked, it shifted its weight unguardedly, landed a little too hard on that paw, and whimpered. Its big gray eyes met hers, soulful beyond even the usual capacities of dogs.
"All right, I'm convinced," she said. "Now how do we pull this off? I don't want him walking on that more than he has to, and I don't know if glamour charms last through transformations."
"They don't."
Aletha let one eyebrow ascend. "You sound so certain. I think I may want to hear this later."
"As long as later is the operative word." Remus peered down the street. "How about this? You slip over there and block him, get him to transform and Disillusion him. I'll Disillusion you from here, and you can do whatever you have to do by touch—can you?"
"If not, I can cancel a spot part of the Disillusionment. What then, oh fearless leader?"
Remus gave her a sideways look but otherwise declined comment on the name. "Once his wrist is healed, then he can retransform and you can cancel the Disillusion on you both. We'll stroll out to the fields and have a nice little chat there."
"All right. On my way." Aletha started across the street, nodding to the few passers-by, and ducked into the alley where the large black dog waited. "Good morning," she said to it, crouching down and putting her hands on her hips, spreading her robes wide. The dog's eyes tracked her wand warily. "Would you mind proving to me that talking to animals isn't pointless?"
Too quickly for her eyes to follow, the dog's form blurred and a skeletally thin man crouched where it had been. His face began to break into a familiar smile just as Aletha's Disillusionment hit.
Good. Good. Not too much at once. Aletha breathed deeply, willing her heart to slow—it had raced into Firebolt-quality speeds at the sight of Sirius's face. He looks awful, worse than I could have imagined. Maybe he should try a beard again...
She hauled her mind back from its gamboling as her own body turned the color of the alley walls. "Wrist, please," she said briskly.
"Where do I put it?" asked a hoarse voice, with only the vaguest undertone of laughter in it. That scared her worse than his face; Sirius unable to joke was Sirius worse than she had ever seen him.
"Just hold it out. I'll find it." Aletha watched carefully for movement in the air, and found the outline of a hand and wrist. She lifted her own left hand, a little too fast, and jarred Sirius's. He hissed in pain.
"I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly.
"No, it's all right." He sounded like he was chewing his lip. "It didn't hurt much."
Aletha set her teeth against the floods of remembered pain in his voice and raised her hand again, more slowly this time. Soon she cupped a warm (but thin, so thin) wrist in her hand, and her wand traced over it. The break was easy to find, easier to mend, even for a half-baked Healer whose training was older than her child. Sirius inhaled sharply.
"Did that hurt?" Aletha asked.
"No. It's...that it doesn't hurt." Sirius's wrist flexed in her grasp as he tested it. "I was just getting used to favoring it."
"Does it feel normal again?"
"Yes."
"No pain?"
"None."
"You think you could use it normally?"
"Yeah." Sirius's voice was starting to hold a trace of suspicion.
Well-placed, but too late. "Good." Aletha gave the wrist a sharp tug.
A moment later, she was lying on the ground, sharp edges digging into her in several places they shouldn't. She allotted those one sympathy wince, plus a half-wince for the bruises she'd likely have tomorrow, before turning to more important matters, like the breath currently hot against her cheek. Breath came from one of two places, and she was very interested in one of them...
Sirius must have had the same idea, as he met her halfway.
xXxXx
Across the street, Remus pretended to be examining his fingernails.
Under normal circumstances, I'd tell them to get a room, but this is about as far from normal as I think is possible to get.
xXxXx
Aletha broke off the kiss regretfully after what she was sure had been a full minute. "Later," she said firmly as Sirius grumbled inarticulately. "Now."
"Make up your mind."
"I wasn't finished. Now, we're going to stroll out of the village and have a little talk. And I suggest you do it at more of a run."
"Er, why?"
"Because a moving target is harder to hit." Aletha disengaged and drew her wand, checked around the corner to make sure that only Remus was in sight, then canceled the Disillusionment on them both, keeping her eyes away from Sirius as it took effect. "You get five seconds' head start. Go."
A black blur dashed past her. Remus jumped, swore loudly enough that Aletha heard him, and fired a hex after the fleeing dog. Aletha caught his eye and waved him off.
"Let him get a bit ahead," she said, crossing the street to join him. "It wouldn't be fair, otherwise. Two on one."
"Point. Congratulations, by the way. Sixty-three seconds."
Aletha grinned. "Thank you." Her jinx flew between them, and a yelp from down the street told her that her aim had been good. "Let's go hex an old friend."
"I could get into that."
xXxXx
Sirius rolled over and whined pitifully as Remus and Aletha jogged up to him in the grassy field. His eyes were red and running, his nose was twice the size it should have been and bright blue, his tail was singed, and his ears were wiggling each to a different beat.
"Creative," said Remus, indicating the ears. "Nice work."
"Thank you, and the same to you with the nose. A good color for him."
Sirius growled.
"Yes, all right, here," said Remus, darting his wand at Sirius and restoring him to normal—or as normal as he can look while he's still a dog."Now would you mind telling us what's going on, and where Harry is?"
Sirius changed back to human. Aletha wasn't sure what hurt her more, his painful thinness or the haunted, hopeless look in his eyes. The man she'd loved had prided himself on his reckless courage...
Yes, and how often did you shout at him for it and tell him to grow up?
"Harry's gone," Sirius said in a monotone. "Not dead, but we might wish he was. Voldemort took him."
Aletha jumped and shuddered. "Do not do that."
"Live with it or leave," Sirius said, his voice still toneless. "I'm not playing stupid word games because you're too tender to hear a name."
"What do you mean, took him?" Remus interjected. "How can Voldemort have taken anything? Unless he's suddenly reappeared from nowhere..."
"You saw him, Moony. Inside Harry's head. He's still around." Sirius laughed, raspingly, desperately. "And he's still inside Harry's head. Only it's his head now. He took Harry over. He's using Harry's body." The laughs sounded unnervingly like sobs. "Just when I found my godson, he went and tried to kill me...green eyes with red lights below, should we stop or should we go..."
Aletha caught Sirius's wildly waving hand and pulled on it as she had in the alley, catapulting him into her arms once more, though now she merely held him. Her mind was spinning. Snakeface, using Harry's body? Dear God, that means...
"We can't kill one without the other," Sirius sang off-key into her chest.
Aletha met Remus's eyes and was obliquely comforted to find the same mixture of horror and confusion there that she harbored herself. And, growing by the second, determination.
"That's not true," she said firmly, sliding a hand down to Sirius's face and tilting his head back to look into his eyes. "We won't let it be."
"It's not a question of letting. You didn't see him." Sirius seemed to have sobered a little as he pulled away. "Letha, it's him in that body now. Harry's gone. There is no more Harry Potter. There's just a body that used to belong to him and now belongs to..."
"That's an assumption," Remus cut Sirius off. "And I, for one, am not willing to trust in assumptions at the present time."
Sirius sighed. "Aw, shit. How come you always have to be so logical, Moony?"
"I wish I'd been logical a lot longer ago," Remus said quietly. "But we can't change the past with wishing. What we can change is the future." He paused. "It might be just as well for you to stay undercover at the moment. The Ministry dislikes being wrong. If you can't produce Harry, they're likely to claim that you murdered him."
"And they certainly won't believe the truth," Aletha said. "So undercover it is. I don't think you'll have much trouble with a disguise. Do you have a home base of some sort?"
"A cave up in the mountains. It's about a half-hour's walk. Near where we used to have Marauder picnics."
"Can we Apparate there and collect your things, and Harry's?" Remus asked, standing up. "If Voldemort knows where it is, you shouldn't stay."
"He thinks he killed me, but all right." Sirius looked wistful. "Just when I had it all prettied up, too."
"You think you have it bad, I'm sleeping on my own couch," Aletha said. "Which leaves open the question of where you're going to be sleeping."
"Floor," said Sirius nonchalantly. "Hit it with a few Softening Charms and it'll be fine. Better than where I've been even without them."
Aletha nodded absently. Her mind was busily working on the exact number of Softening Charms needed to create a patch of floor big enough for two and the logistics of getting everyone else out of the house for a few hours.
A/N: Reviews are good. Flames are bad. Praise is nice. Constructive criticism is preferred. Questions are welcomed. Proper grammar is appreciated. Email addresses are required if you want a reply. Clear enough?
