Chapter 25: The Ties that Bind
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction and no copyright is intended. Everything that you recognise from the Harry Potter Universe belongs to J.K. Rowling.
Author's Note: Thank you for the new favourites, follows, and reviews!
I really did intend to publish this chapter and the last one together (I didn't want to be the writer that left things on cliff hangers) but the wait between the chapter 23 and chapter 24 was long enough already in my opinion, so I published chapter 24 as soon as I finished it. What I wasn't expecting was even longer wait between chapter 24 and chapter 25. Life gets in the way, I'm afraid.
Ai Star; Uh Oh indeed!
beaniebun; Sorry for the drastic escalation in action – but I kind of planned it that way, to lull everyone in a false sense of security. I have always enjoyed when my favourite authors ripped the rug out from underneath me.
InfinityMars; Not too much, I hope? There's only one more chapter of the gang's fifth year before I go into the summer and their sixth year so I kind of wanted to tie up some loose ends and give the plot a nudge ahead. It didn't seemed rushed, did it? I'd love your feedback! :)
She screamed. She cried. She halfway hoped that he would hear her – that the sound of her needing him would wrench open his eyes.
She did not care that everyone was watching, she snotted and shook at her body's mercy. The weight of the world was on her shoulders, and the weight of her mentor was in her arms.
Giles heavy shoulders no longer held any protection. His lips didn't offer any more wisdom or a hard-earned smile. He looked less real than a doll. And yet Katherine couldn't fathom ever putting him down, his clothes were still warm.
A cry from the crowd ripped Katherine from her own rumination.
Voldemort watched, head tilted, with something akin to sympathy. But it was twisted with contempt. His wand hung patiently at his side, dangerously so. The green that had emanated from its tip felt as if it covered her – marking her for death, marking her as its next victim.
She had to get away, she was the only one that had a semblance of a hint as to where Giles had hidden the prophecy. She only had moments before Voldemort would round on her again, so, still violently twitching, she let Giles' shoulders slip down her thighs to rest at her knees.
With a shaking hand on Giles cheek for the first time, death breaking down the barrier of propriety, Katherine stumbled to her feet and in the direction of the Forbidden Forest.
Gasps erupted from the crowd as she got away, albeit uncoordinatedly in her pained state. But she went fast, just trying to not fall down.
Without looking back, Katherine knew that Voldemort was following.
An unnatural roar made her look back just as she sprinted into the tree line. Voldemort's silhouette was completely black against a line of fire that he had cast along the line of the Forest – the trees like torches.
No one was getting in or out until he took it down.
Katherine turned back to watch where she was going, vaulting over large exposed tree roots and dodging branches.
The sound of a great WHOOSH of wind in the distance prompted Katherine to turn back. The impenetrable flames had parted. A blur of red hair was illuminated by the flickering flames.
"Lily!" a voice shouted, "No!"
Before the gap disappeared, another body penetrated the barrier. And then another.
Dodging branches and clearing fallen trees and large roots, the three gained on Katherine and Voldemort.
Stumbling into a clearing, further into the forest than Katherine had ever gone before, Katherine's legs suddenly locked together. She barely had time to put her hands out, to stop her face from meeting an exposed root. Still, she landed hard.
"Crucio!"
Katherine convulsed onto her side. Vomit rose hot and quick; unable to be stopped, Katherine's breakfast spilled onto the forest floor. Tears mingled with the vomit on her chin, her skin too warm to inhabit any longer.
She looked up. The pulsing of grief in her ears unbalanced her, even as she lay clutching cold dirt and roots.
Voldemort shifted side to side as if on tilting earth.
Katherine's eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head.
She felt, even in her disorientation, that the centre of Voldemort's attention was a very dangerous place to be. His green eyes held more darkness than Katherine had ever seen in any brown pair.
"I've heard so much about you," said Voldemort, slowing stepping toward her, "But nothing prepared me for seeing you for the first time in twelve years…"
Katherine eyed the distance between them warily.
He suddenly smiled.
"I'm not as bad as everyone says, you know?"
"You killed my parents," she said it as briskly as the reminder ricocheted through her brain, "You're a murderer, Tom."
"Name calling," said Voldemort, tilting his head, "So fearsome."
Katherine tried and failed to push herself up, her words coming out as shaky as her arms, "I'm sixteen, I'm not trying to be fearsome."
Voldemort paused, eyeing her.
"It need not be this way," Voldemort crouched beside her, his eyes creasing in feigned care, "I can make everything better."
He flourished his wand harmlessly in the vague direction of Hogsmeade.
"This arising war is a tragic waste of magical blood," Voldemort sighed, "But it is necessary to prove that I am right."
Katherine sniffed, turning her nose up and away in a way that she hoped would make Greengrass look warm and inviting. She let indignity overcome her whilst under his murderous gaze, she was at least going to deserve the killing curse on the tip of his tongue.
Voldemort became deathly still, his eyes narrowing at her briefly.
"You look very much like your mother."
The words, much to Katherine's regret, lit a well of gratification in her chest. She smothered it with the reminder that the man was the one to have murdered her mother. She gritted her teeth and turned back to him defiantly, uncaring of the triumphant glint in his eyes.
"You don't know a thing about my parents!" her voice wobbled more than anticipated.
Voldemort's smile slowly faded as he observed her where she heaved in angry breaths.
Neither did she, he could have argued.
But he didn't.
Voldemort went still, his eyes sliding to watch his right periphery. His wand was raised not a second later, the corners of his lips too.
"I'm going to have to stop you right there." said Voldemort, a wispy white barrier springing up around him and Katherine.
Lily, James, and Sirius were illuminated in the light of the spell; all red hair, glasses, and rippling neck. The barrier rippled as they tested it with their own wands, but it didn't weaken.
"I woke up this morning,"
Voldemort paced along the cylinder of light separating he and Katherine from her friends, before he stopped in front of the three Hogwarts students, his gaze cool.
"…thinking of a public execution…" Voldemort turned back to Katherine, grim faced, and raised his wand, "But I will settle for this."
The determination… the capable steadiness of his hand… he could kill her – would kill her. And she wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.
"No! Not Katherine!" Lily sprung forward, colliding with the barrier and thumping her hands wildly, "Please!"
Her words, however feeble and pleading, made Voldemort pause, at least.
James and Sirius held steadfast either side of Lily; wands raised and brows stern.
Voldemort took a turn of direction due to it, though, that made Katherine long to stare down the length of his wand again – he crouched beside her, green eyes to green eyes, and they shared breaths.
"Inspiring loyalty with the effectiveness that only beauty can harness…" Voldemort trailed his wand down Katherine's cheek, his eyes blazing a trail behind it.
She couldn't suppress a shiver.
Voldemort pursed his lips, eyes glazed.
"I will admit, I had forgotten the power of it."
Two shadows towered together in her periphery, "What's that nutter saying?"
"Felix Giles pretended to steal the prophecy for me from under the nose of the order of the phoenix," Voldemort's voice was suddenly vicious and hissing, "I know that they do not have it,"
Voldemort leant back on his haunches and smiled cruelly down at Katherine.
"But I am sure that your mother and father's friend could not have helped letting something slip to you," Voldemort stood, towering over Katherine once more, "I'll give you one chance to tell me what you know."
The prophecy, Katherine remembered, Dumbledore had said it was in the Department of Mysteries under guard. The article in the prophet about something going missing, realised Katherine, was about the prophecy!
Katherine made up her mind as she stared down the length of Voldemort's wand, "I don't know anything."
Voldemort's eyes crinkled and his jaw ticked.
"That's an understatement,"
He flicked his wrist, "Avada –"
Katherine's arms crossed in front of her face, a reaction she couldn't control any more than the spell leaving Voldemort's wand.
Or so she thought.
Her hands somehow found Voldemort's shins through his robes, and then there was a scream.
This time, it wasn't hers.
A wand dropped onto the leaf litter in front of Katherine, and then Voldemort followed. His robes had been burnt away. Below his knee his legs had turned to coals; his flesh crumbled and burnt.
Looking from her hands to the disintegrating Dark Lord, Katherine realised that he hadn't touched her at all that day. Recognising the power her touch seemed to have over the writhing wizard, Katherine pressed them against his chest.
Voldemort's eyes bulged and a hiss broke through his teeth.
Katherine moved her hands; one to his neck and the other to his forehead.
A cry from the wizard reverberated through Katherine's fingertips, and she hesitated.
The damage, however, was done. Voldemort's eyes glistened, his mouth frozen open and expelling smoke. He had gone still.
For a second, Katherine had her hands upon another body that day. This one, though, burned. It burned until it collapsed to ash in front of her.
Four were left, one still crouched.
Katherine wiped her ashy hands on her stocking covered knees, "You shouldn't have come after me."
Sirius stepped forward, lifted a hand, as if to rest on her shoulder, but then hesitated.
"I – we couldn't just sit there while you were in danger." said Sirius, his hand falling back to his side.
James ruffled his hair, turning and squinting back through the blackened trees and smouldering roots, "We should go back."
'What for?' rolled around Katherine's tongue, but didn't escape. Giles was dead. Exams were done. The train would arrive to take them all home in only a few days, and Katherine had nowhere to go. She didn't dare say the words in the face of the three people who risked their lives to save hers. How could she tell them it was all for nought?
On the walk back, an untold heaviness sat inside her.
Marlene replaced James and Sirius, without a word, when they reached Hogsmeade once more. Worry and exasperation clear on her face, the girl still blocked the crowded scene in the town square.
Katherine still saw the tweed robes flapping where they were gathered on the ground.
The three girls walked in continued silence up to and through the castle.
Katherine heard the curiosity in their steps, a half-second slower than hers, even if they didn't ask where they were blindly following their friend to.
The three only stopped when they had trespassed through the dark arts classroom to Giles' office and personal chambers.
"I've got to find it," said Katherine, unable to meet their eyes, "The prophecy."
Lily and Marlene exchanged a look.
"If Dumbledore couldn't find it, what hope do a couple of kids have?" asked Marlene, lifting and lowering her hands in an exasperated motion, "And what would you do with it?"
Katherine shrugged, her eyes having anchored on a photograph on Giles desk – too far away from her to make anything out of it.
"Destroy it," said Katherine, and then she spoke so quietly she wasn't sure if she wanted to be heard, "No one else is going to die for me."
"You don't even know where it is!" said Lily, stepping forward and trying to catch Katherine's eyes and hands.
Katherine shook off Lily's hands and turned to survey Giles' desk, "He must have hidden it somewhere with meaning to him…"
Lily's chest heaved more slowly, and then one last time in a sigh; her teeth catching her bottom lip and the desk catching her eyes.
"Look around his desk," said Lily, striding across the room to the mentioned piece of furniture, gingerly lifting a piece of parchment, "He has to stare at it for hours on end a day..."
"I love snooping as much as the next girl," said Marlene, slowly by the desk and eyeing it, "But it's not as if he's going to write down an address."
Katherine, out of selfish curiosity, picked up the photograph first. Only to find her parents, Giles, and Rory Hawthorne, the Deputy Head Auror, smiling up at her from outside a heartstring tugging house.
With shaking hands, the back of the frame popped out and there was familiar cursive on the back. 'Number 7 Geranium Lane'. Though it wasn't Giles' writing as Katherine had come to know it from the blackboard.
Katherine showed the photograph, both sides, to Lily and Marlene.
Lily's lips twisted with wry resign, her neck twisting so that she could blink at her curly-haired friend.
"You were saying?" asked Lily.
Marlene looked as if she had many a thing to say.
Katherine, however, was beating down the pulsing feeling in her neck with a gulp.
Her voice still cracked, however, when she put down the photograph and said, "Let's go."
"Katherine, no – wait!" Lily's oxfords tapped after Katherine, "It might not be safe."
"Nothing's safe anymore! He's dead, Lily!"
Katherine and Lily stared at each other, wide-eyed. Neither had expected it, even Katherine, and she was the one to erupt.
"He's dead –" The repetition, the affirmation, wobbled Katherine's voice and lowered her head, "–and it's my fault…"
"Katherine…" Lily's voice was honey-soft, and her hand around Katherine's was just as so, "It… it's not…"
"I see it in your eyes – you know it's true," Katherine shook her head, and gripped Lily's hand back tighter, "This whole year… all the danger you've been put in…it wouldn't have happened without me,"
Katherine let go of Lily's hand, it slack in the owner's shock.
"Stay if you like, I'm going." said Katherine, turning to the green glowing fireplace and fumbling around for the floo powder.
Marlene's stubby fingers reached into pot of green powder alongside Katherine's, "Not without me, you're not."
"Or me," Lily stepped forward, smiling valiantly, "Don't look so shocked, we're your friends, Katherine."
Her face cracked, alongside her heart, something warm oozing out it and through the room.
Linking arms, the three girls threw their floo powder into the grate.
"Number Seven Geranium Lane!"
The sound of a crackling fireplace licked at Katherine's ears. Looking around she saw that, although abandoned, the house had been perfectly preserved inside.
"This is where it happened…" said Marlene as she twirled around with a slack mouth.
The firelight barely skimmed the surface of her truffle gaze; black in the scarce light.
Lily hadn't moved from beside Katherine, the flames still licking at the back of their robes.
Katherine didn't know if she too felt weighed by the ghost of the event that led to Katherine's roundabout return to the house.
"This is where –"
"He killed them." said Katherine, something heavy on her chest; choking her words on their escape into the air her parents once breathed.
She turned back to the mantle where a handful of photographs were framed.
There was one of her parents on their wedding day. They were swaying slightly as they stood arm in arm, smiling at the camera and then at one another.
With a start, Katherine thought that she was looking at a slightly older version of herself once more. She and her mother seemed within centimetres of each other in height. Their faces were both oval, with the same nose. The same slender hands. The same elbows. But there were glaring mistakes.
Katherine looked around at the living room the woman in the photograph had painstakingly organised and tended to and ached at the thought of leaving it so soon.
A 'Transfiguration Today' magazine was open on an end table, right where it had been left all of those years ago. The broom by the fireplace had a polishing kit open beside it, abandoned mid-thought. There were dishes in the dish rack, two mugs and a sippy cup.
Katherine half expected her parents to run down the stairs and inform her that it had all been a terrible mistake; that they were alive. But they wouldn't.
That was the horrible thing about death, Katherine mused, it was so very quick… and so very permanent.
"What's a prophecy look like, you reckon?" asked Marlene squinting into cabinets and along bookshelves.
Lily shrugged, careful not to even graze along any furniture, "Orb-like, faintly glowing –"
Marlene had stopped by a cabinet.
"Whispering?"
Lily nodded, turning around, "Yeah, how'd you –"
Marlene pointed inside a glass cabinet.
"If this isn't it, I'll lick my cauldron clean."
Among a tastefully organised row of childhood mementos from the short four years she spent with her parents, was an orb; faintly glowing, whispering, and swirling with promise.
Lily swatted Marlene's hand from the air as it reached for the cabinet's handle, "Maybe…maybe Katherine should take it, in case it reacts if someone it's not about touches it."
Katherine gulped, but pulled the handle, the glass glinting as it swung open.
"How do I read it?" asked Katherine, tentatively moving a lock of her baby hair aside along with a mould of her hand and foot prints.
"I assume it would just…give off some recorded message or something at your touch…" Lily trailed off, shrugging.
"How do you know about this stuff?" asked Marlene, turning to Lily with a frown.
Lily smiled, blinking once, "I read."
Katherine took a breath to steel herself, and reached in.
"Okay…here goes –"
A raspy-voiced Professor Brown promptly filled her mind and ears as soon as her fingers clutched the orb.
"…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... Born when the sun burns in Aquarius ... A Tuesday will bring forth a girl with power the Dark Lord knows not ... And he will meet his match…"
Katherine hadn't pondered what would happen upon hearing her fate. A reignited purpose. Enlightenment, perhaps. Fainting, however, wasn't even in the realm of possibility. But it robbed her of consciousness, her magical core pulsing at the words ebbed around the edges of her increasingly blurry vision.
She could hear Lily and Marlene's exclamations of shock, and felt hands beneath her instead of the floor, but the words of her prophecy circled her mind like a drain.
Author's Note: Thank you for reading! :)