Harry Potter and the Turning of the Sun
Disclaimer: All JKR's, not mine.
Summary: AU After OOTP- After Harry is thrust back in time, he has to contend with surviving the rest of his years in Hogwarts and living his new life around people that he knows will one day become Death Eaters. Can he find the balance between giving people a chance and doing what he knows is right or will he crumble under the pressure that comes with knowing the future?
A/N: Thanks for the reviews everybody. Oh, and review again!
S/N: I hope you liked the interaction between Harry and James last chapter, as they'll be interacting quite a lot during the school year. In my mind, James' already on his way to improving on a person; while he's still arrogant, he's very intelligent and shrewd, and is now just starting to listen to those around him and not be so self-absorbed.
S/N 2: While I admit that it feels rushed, this chapter was a long time coming, I think, as many of you will have your questions answered. Remember not to be too hard on Bellatrix; it's only been a week and a half, two weeks.
Chapter 26: The Seventh Year Hitch
Harry made his way out of the Great Hall after lunch the next day, heading up to his room to study for Defense Against the Dark Arts, where he had been assigned to read about the Unforgivables for the next class. "Dumbledore!" A familiar voice called out, making Harry pause where he was standing and look around to see where the voice was coming from. "What spell was it that you used against Longbottom during your duel the other day?" James Potter questioned as he walked up to Harry, having followed him out of the Great Hall. "I mean the one that made him stumble and whatnot."
Harry gave a smirk at what his father had asked, having many people inquire about the spell over the past few days—he never answered those people, though, instead deciding to keep his spell a secret for the time being. "One that I invented," Harry whispered, wondering if this was going to be his chance to finally befriend his father, the one that the Remus in the journal had suggested would come eventually when he first arrived back in time. While they had been on speaking terms for a while, he always hoped that a true friendship would blossom sooner or later and he hoped this was the opportunity for that to happen. He turned back around and continued walking up to the Ravenclaw common room, James walking right next to him all the while.
"Can you teach it to me? Is it a charm?" James asked, and then added lowly, "Because I hate the dark arts."
"It's a charm, yes," Harry repeated with a nod, not at all surprised by what his father had told him. He remembered how Sirius informed him once that one of the reasons that James disliked Snape was because of the boy's penchant for the dark arts, which James had hated with a passion. "And I can teach it to you, sure."
"Go on," James prodded, gesturing for Harry to continue. He hoped that he would be able to learn it as soon as possible, believing it to be useful in a wide variety of areas.
"You mean right now? Right here?" Harry asked surprised, stopping in the middle of the hallway as many other Ravenclaws were walking around him and up to the common room.
"Why not?" James shrugged, not seeing the harm, as Remus and Sirius came up behind them, joining the duo.
Harry moved his gaze over Sirius and Remus, trying to stop the smile that was appearing on his face. "Okay," He said, turning his attention back to his father, who fixed his glasses while he waited for Harry to continue. "It's called the Sleepy Charm, and it makes people tired and weaker. The more tired they are naturally, the more it affects them."
"Nice," Sirius muttered, knowing that it would be used wisely, and broadly, against the Slytherins. Hitting a Slytherin with one of those spells would make it that much easier to hex them, he knew, as they would be too tired to even cast a simple Shield Charm to protect themselves.
"You saw the wand movements, right?" Harry questioned them, and after seeing James' nod, he finished by saying, "The incantation is 'enervate.' It takes a while to get it, so don't feel bad if it doesn't work at first. It works best as a nonverbal."
James took out his wand and practiced the wand movements a couple of times, before looking up to Harry to get a reaffirming nod. "Thanks, Dumbledore," He said smiling, slapping Harry on the back. "We're playing quidditch tomorrow afternoon, how about you get those Ravenclaw mates of yours to form a team and play us, what do you say? Consider it repayment for the spell."
Harry blinked at the offer, having never expected it. "Ah, sure," Harry said, trying not to be too enthusiastic, though inwardly giddy at the prospect of playing quidditch with his father again. "I'll ask if they want to play later."
"Okay, see you," James replied, turning around and walking off towards what Harry knew to be the Gryffindor tower. He toyed with his wand a few more times as he walked before pocketing it, apparently satisfied with his understanding of the wand movements.
"Later, Dumbledore," Sirius nodded to Harry, while Remus waved, each heading down the same the hall as James did moments prior.
With large smile on his face, Harry turned and headed into the Ravenclaw common room, excited at the developing friendship that he and his father had—while they weren't quite friends yet, he knew they were close. He went up to his bedroom, grabbed his Defense Against the Dark Arts book, and hopped into his bed, intending on reading in the comfort of his blankets. With his book held up on his legs, he began reading the chapter that was assigned for the next class, hoping to get it done as soon as he could in order to work on Dumbledore's notes. After nearly two hours of reading, Harry finished his assignment and jumped down into his trunk, knowing that he had to spend the rest of the night in there in order to catch up on his work.
The next morning, Harry sat in his chair in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom; Professor Moonshine, meanwhile, was at her desk, staring at the students as they all took their seats. "Hello class, as a brush up before today's lecture, we should all remember that the dark charms incorporate the funny but irritating jinxes, the hurtful but ineffective hexes, and the worst of all forms of magic, the dangerous and powerful curses." Moonshine lectured, rising to her feet and walking to the front of the room where everyone could see her. "Today, we will be starting off our lessons of the history of curses by discussing the most evil of all curses, the one that spreads fear throughout the wizarding community: the Killing Curse."
"The worst of them all!" A student exclaimed, earning a nod from the professor. Nearly every student in the room had seen the horrors of the curse for themselves, having witnessed either someone kill with or be killed by the green light during the troubling times they grew up in, each affected by the war against Voldemort one way or another.
"The Killing Curse," Moonshine started slowly, planning on going into more depth about the history of the curse than many books on the subject did. She and the rest of the Defense Against the Dark Arts department had painstakingly researched the curse over the past week, spending countless of hours perusing the restricted section for the information that they needed. "Was invented by north African wizards in the early middle ages, around the year 600 or so, which is also known as the Dark Ages. Some say it was invented in order to fight against the Byzantine wizards that started to encroach into Africa, but we don't know the exact reason it was created—it could have been a flight of fancy for some dark, evil wizard for all we know. What we do know, however, is that it was and still is an extremely powerful spell that destroyed entire armies in single nights."
"It wasn't invented in Britain?" Rabastan Lestrange said, surprised by that revelation. He had thought that since it was so prevalent in the British wizarding world around them, it was the creation of a British wizard, not a wizard from some place else.
"Oh, no," Moonshine shook her head in the negative. "Most spells that we use today weren't. In fact, I'd estimate that you only have two or three spells in your entire arsenal that were actually created in Great Britain or Ireland. Admittedly, Britain has had its fair share, a tremendous amount in actuality, of great wizards and magical evolutions and inventions, but not everything magical comes from here."
"Then why do we know about it?" A female Gryffindor questioned, wondering why the spell was even known by them in the first place. "How come it didn't stay in north Africa?"
"I'll get to that," Moonshine smirked, admiring the curiosity of the class. She had anticipated many of their questions when planning her lecture, and knew that she would answer nearly every one during the lecture itself. "It was a relatively unknown spell, a secret for many centuries, and only entered the British wizarding lexicon after the Norman Invasion by William the Conqueror. William employed many Norman wizards, all of whom learned of the technique from the Moorish dark wizards south of them on the Iberian Peninsula, in exchange for land grants or other valuables. It's one of the very reasons why William was able to win: the curse was impossible to block, but the English wizards did not know that at the time since the masses had never heard of it or seen it before then. Who knew that all they had to do was pick up a muggle shield that was made of metal and they may have been protected from the curse, and maybe even stopped the invasion as a result."
Harry's ears perked up at the mention of William the Conqueror. He recalled how Bellatrix had mentioned the king's name when talking about the Malfoy estate, and briefly wondered if what Bellatrix and Moonshine had said were related to one another. His eyes drifted over to Bellatrix, who was lazily sitting in her chair in the center of the room, not looking like she was paying much attention. Shaking his head, he cleared his mind and turned his attention back to the professor, who had was now answering more questions from the students.
"Wizards and muggles fought together to stop the invasion?" Evan Rosier asked, a sneer appearing on his face as if the very thought of muggles and wizards interacting disgusted him.
"Oh yes," Moonshine nodded, educated to the fact that the world was a very different place before the Statute of Secrecy was adopted and wizards and muggles had to live in separate worlds as a result. "After all, the Norman invasion is probably the most well-known out of the few all out battles that involved both muggles and magical folk. William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson both employed wizards, or mages as they were called in that context, spilling a lot of magical blood for a thoroughly unmagical war. While the muggles fought with spears and swords, and shields and armor at the Battle of Hastings, on the opposite side of the battlefield, hidden from muggle view, the wizards and witches fought with wands." Moonshine sighed, as if she was disappointed with what she was lecturing. "Overall, the Norman Invasion played a quintessential part the development of today's wizarding world, at least in this country, I mean. Without it, I'm not certain we would have many of the practices that we do today."
"When you said all they had to do was pick up a muggle shield, what do you mean by that?" Derrick asked confusedly, having always known the curse to be impossible to stop—once it came at you, you were dead. "I thought you couldn't block the Killing Curse?"
Moonshine shifted where she stood, a bit uncomfortable talking about actually executing the Killing Curse. It was not something she wanted to teach, as she knew that, potentially, some of her students would find the need to actually use it in their lifetime due to the war against Voldemort—what she didn't know as clearly was which side they would be fighting on. "The Killing Curse is impossible to block by magical shields, and I mean anything formed of and by magic. If you use the Shield Charm? It'll pass right through it as if you never summoned the shield in the first place. What about shield that is conjured, like what Mr. Dumbledore did in his duel against Mr. Longbottom not a week ago? It'll pass right through it, plus that conjuring spell isn't very common as it is. It's the only known spell that has that ability, as many spells would be blocked by a conjured shield. However, the Killing Curse can be blocked by natural objects of requisite thickness and is so unconnected to your body that it constitutes a separate article. What I mean by that is a solid metal shield, held away from you? It can block it, most likely, though obviously it depends on the circumstances. A papier-mâché shield on the other hand would be incinerated and you'd be dead. And it has to be unconnected to your body, as let's say you wore metal armor like a muggle knight, it is connected to your body enough that it'll just act as an extension to it and you will die if you are touched by the curse."
"Why doesn't a conjured shield work?" A student in the center of the room asked, not really understanding why a shield couldn't do what it was supposed to do in shielding someone from danger. She could somewhat understand why a magical shield made of energy didn't protect someone, but not why a conjured shield, made of the requisite thickness, couldn't protect someone.
"That's the design of the spell," Moonshine shrugged, being like the rest of the wizards and witches the world that were incapable of ascertaining how the Killing Curse did exactly what it did. "It's a very, very, very evil spell. There are other spells that kill in application, but none of them were outright designed to destroy the person who stood in its way—spells that are still known and used today, I mean. It's right there in the etymology of the curse: Avada Kedavra, which loosely translated means 'to be destroyed now'. It is, quite simply, the most evil and powerful curse there is; it goes against nature itself. Luckily, it takes a lot of power, concentration and emotion to perform, which prevents its broad usage, in addition to its immediate sentence to Azkaban, which also acts as a deterrent."
"How does the Killing Curse actually work?" Questioned the Hufflepuff Emma Wainscott, wondering why people couldn't be healed from the curse. As a future healer she was most interested in why, with all the healing spells in the world, the damage couldn't be undone and the death 'healed.' "I mean, how do you actually die? Does it separate your soul from your body or something?"
"It's a powerful curse, and there is no reason for the death. You're alive and then you're not." Moonshine shrugged once more, wanting to instill in them that their questions were unanswerable, that no one but the ancient mathmagician that invented the spell had the answers they sought. "The effect of the curse is death, nothing else. Like the effect of the entrail expelling curse is that your entrails are expelled from your body, or like the babbling curse makes you babble endlessly—there are no causes for these curses, they just do as they are said to do, like magic does."
Eventually the class ended and Wednesday night came, which found Harry sitting in front of the desk of Albus Dumbledore once more, a common occurrence since his return to Hogwarts for his seventh year. He had spent the entire day reading Dumbledore's notes in preparation for the meeting, not wanting to disappoint the older wizard in not being able to answer his questions as he had the previous week. He wanted to be organized, to be ready to answer any question or comment Dumbledore had for him, should the older wizard have a question regarding the future. So there he sat in the familiar seat, talking quietly with the headmaster, waiting patiently for the questions to come.
"How is your research coming along?" Dumbledore sure enough inquired late in the night, as their tongues started to tire and the conversation began to run dry. "Have you found the time to read anything?"
Harry gulped down as he stared at the headmaster, suddenly nervous about what he had to ask Dumbledore. "Yes, I have, thankfully. It's going good," Harry replied, not really knowing what to say in order to find out what he needed to find out. He knew it was a tender subject, and he didn't know whether Dumbledore would answer him or not, which made him hesitant to ask the question in the first place. "Sir, I've been going over your notes and books for a while now, but I still don't understand something."
"What is that?" Dumbledore inquired, keeping his gaze on Harry interestedly.
"What a horcrux actually is," Harry answered, finally admitting to the great wizard that he was ignorant about how Voldemort's horcruxes helped him and what purpose they actually served. He knew they dealt with murder and death, though he couldn't quite figure out their place in Voldemort's schemes. "I've looked and looked but there is nothing on the matter in the library. Admittedly, I haven't gotten through every single one of your books, page for page, but I feel like not knowing it is making me fall behind a bit."
"Against my beliefs," Dumbledore started, getting to his feet and walking over to a bookshelf that was behind his desk. He reached down to the bottom shelf and picked up a large tome with a cover as black as the night sky, before coming back over to his desk and retaking his seat. "I am going to answer that question. You see, once I became headmaster, I took the only book that mentioned horcrux out of the library, for fear of where it may lead. Do you have this tome in the books I gave to you in your own time?" He asked, allowing Harry to take a peek at it from his seat.
"I think I do, actually," Harry nodded, remembering having seen the cover once before. He had tossed it to the side upon seeing it since it felt evil and dark to him, and had only briefly thumbed through its pages, reading it preliminarily, having intended on studying it last along with a few other of the more unsavory books that Dumbledore had bequeathed him. However, in that thumbing over the months, he had never once seen the book go into any depth on the subject of horcruxes; instead he had only seen tiny blurbs that alluded to death and murder but nothing more.
"Page 178 will answer your questions," Dumbledore informed him, knowing the exact page that the author went into a deep discussion about the nature of horcruxes. The technique for splitting one's soul had bee in practice as far back as ancient Greece, but it had been the great wizard Herpo the Foul that had infused that soul bit into an object and created the first horcrux two and a half thousand years ago.
"Thank you," Harry said, handing the book back to Dumbledore, who placed it onto his desk and pushed it off to the side.
"Do you have any other questions regarding your research?" Dumbledore inquired, assuming that there were other things that Harry needed help with, as well.
"Just one," Harry replied, remembering the rune that he had Derrick translate for him months prior. While he knew what it meant, he did not know what it was referring to and why it was in the book in the first place, though he presumed that it was something important. "I came about a scribble in the margins of a Beetle the Bard story entitled the Tale of the Three Brothers."
Dumbledore squinted at Harry underneath his half-moon spectacles, instinctively shifting in his chair, as if Harry had said something wrong. "I know it very well," Dumbledore whispered, his voice carrying around the office. "Not one of my more favorite tales anymore, but I remember it fondly."
"This scribble was in ancient runes," Harry stated, before he was interrupted by Dumbledore.
"Right, just as the original version of the tale was written," Dumbledore noted, having personally translated an original copy of the tales written by Beedle into English one summer when he was still a student in Hogwarts.
"And when I translated it, I came up with kill inanimate, but when my friend Derrick, who is good in ancient runes, translated it, he came up with deadly objects at first and then changed it to deadly relics." Harry informed the headmaster, hoping the great wizard could answer his question and explain to him what the rune meant. "He said that it had a more holy connotation than objects allowed."
"This was in the Tale of the Three Brothers, you say?" Dumbledore asked, and after seeing Harry's nod, he grabbed a piece of parchment and a quill and began to draw a large ancient rune in the center of the page. "Did it look like this?" He questioned, flipping the piece of parchment over and allowing Harry to see the rune that he drew.
"Yes, exactly that," Harry agreed with an enthusiastic nod, recognizing it from the book. It was the exact replica of the rune that Harry had showed Derrick to translate the previous Christmas break after he had read every tale in the book more than once in an effort to truly understand their meanings.
"It means deathly hallows," Dumbledore whispered, staring down at the rune, having long since grown accustomed to its appearance. "But deadly relics or relics of death are quite good translations, so give Derrick my regards." He replied, and then adding with a grin, he said, "Kill inanimate, not so much, though."
"True wisdom is not knowing everything, but rather knowing when to reach out for help," Harry grinned back, admitting to the fact that he was absolutely awful in the subject of Ancient Runes, having only preliminary knowledge of it from when Hermione had discussed it in his own time. In fact, he knew he was awful in most subjects, which was why he dedicated so much time to the ones that he did excel at and only took five N.E.W.T.s.
"Wise words," Dumbledore agreed with a nod, appreciating the wisdom behind what Harry had said. While many people didn't ask for help, he knew that asking for help was very important in everyday life, as no one, not even him in all of his admitted wisdom and cleverness, knew every facet of magic, a fact that was overlooked by the Dark Lord and would one day lead to his demise. "Humility is a forgotten magic in its own right."
Harry stayed silent, allowing Dumbledore the last word on the subject. "What does deathly hallows mean?" He inquired, not recognizing the term from anything he had ever heard before.
"Do you recall the details of the tale?" Dumbledore questioned, raising a curious eyebrow, wanting to know if Harry knew about the three brothers and their gifts from death.
"The Tale of the Three Brothers, you mean? Yeah," Harry nodded in the affirmative. "I read it over Christmas break last year."
"Do you remember the items given to the three brothers by Death?" Dumbledore questioned quietly, trying to prod Harry along, hoping that the boy could figure it out on his own. Many people came to him for answers, for knowledge, but he preferred to give them the knowledge they needed in order to ascertain the answer for themselves, rather than answer the question himself, feeling that it was much more beneficial to them if they did the work on their own. He recalled an old muggle proverb which he held closely to his heart that summed up his feelings on the matter nicely: give a man a fish, he feeds for a day, but teach a man to fish, he feeds for a lifetime.
"Yes…" Harry replied confusedly, wondering if the conversation was going the way he thought it was.
"Those objects, the wand, the stone, and the cloak, are the deathly hallows." Dumbledore lectured him, having plotted out the history of the Deathly Hallows along with Gellert Grindelwald as a youth. While he knew the entire lineage of the Elder Wand, the wand that he himself possessed, he only knew the history of the Resurrection Stone and the Invisibility Cloak up until the early 1600s, when they were lost and all knowledge of them were untraceable as a result. "And they are real."
"Death's gifts? They're real?" Harry asked in a surprised tone, disbelieving that a being known as Death actually existed, let alone one that showed himself to mere mortals. After all, if conjuring a bridge and crossing a river was something that was so great as to beat death, then how come more wizards didn't come forward and say that Death approached them since what the three brothers had done was relatively minor? How many wizards or witches had escaped death by extinguishing flames that engulfed their homes, or disapparated from danger or something similar? Too many to count, Harry presumed, a fact that made him skeptical that Death actually came to the three brothers.
"Nearly every wizarding nation on Earth has legendary items that have great magical powers, Harry." Dumbledore informed him, referencing all of the great magical items that nations took great pride in and showed off to the world. "Like the Irish's Cauldron of Plenty, which never ran out of food after it was filled; or Germany's Goblet of Panacea, which could heal almost any wound with a drink; both, and countless of others, are legendary objects of their respective countries. In Britain, the legendary objects are those of the Deathly Hallows."
"And the three brothers?" Harry asked, wondering who they were and how they fit into all of this, outside of what the tale said of them.
"The Peverell brothers, I believe." Dumbledore recited knowingly, aware of Ignotus Peverell's tombstone in the graveyard of Godric's Hollow, the hometown of all of the Peverells. The stone slab that marked the grave was ancient, dating back to the 1200s, and would be easily overlooked if not for the symbol of the Deathly Hallows that was ingrained into the rock for all to see but only a few to understand. "Look up the Peverell brothers, and next time, we'll discuss this in more depth."
"Very well," Harry agreed in exasperation, rising to his feet and preparing to leave the office. He knew when Dumbledore was telling him to figure something out for himself in an effort to make him a better, more knowledgeable wizard, but it still annoyed him that he could never just get a straight answer. "I'll see you later, professor."
"Bye Harry," Dumbledore grinned, watching as the boy waved and exited the room, closing the door behind him as he went. Shaking his head, he got up from his seat and walked over to the fireplace, before taking a handful of powder, tossing it into the flames and stepping into the green fire, disappearing in a flash.
The next day, Harry spent his free morning in the confines of his trunk, deciding to research all of the various questions that were rampant in his mind: horcruxes, the Peverell Brothers, and the Deathly Hallows. In front of him rested the book that Dumbledore had showed him the night prior, opened to the specific page that the great wizard had pointed out to him. Entitled 'Magick Moste Evile', it was a dusty and evil book that emanated magic that Harry did not know existed, magic that was so dark that he doubted only but a few dark wizards had both the foolishness and the courage to perform the spells in the book.
Harry moved his finger down page 178, trying to find the paragraph that detailed the horcruxes. He found it at the bottom, where there was a blurb that carried onto the next page—it was a small, and unless one was looking specifically for it, it was easily missed. "A horcrux is a receptacle for a piece of soul that is split from the body of a dark wizard, which is used in an effort to attain immortality. As long as the receptacle is not irreparably harmed and the piece of soul stays contained, the dark wizard's soul is tethered to Earth and does not move on after death, allowing the wizard continued life, even after his body is destroyed." He read out loud, his stomach growing queasier with each passing word, disgusted by the process that the book outlined in creating a horcrux.
"That's how he survived the Killing Curse rebounding on him," He murmured, finally understanding how Voldemort had survived that fateful Halloween night. Very few people ever realized that it wasn't just a wonder how Harry survived the Killing Curse, but also how Voldemort himself survived its rebound upon him—a normal person would have died and stayed dead after getting hit with such a curse.
Having gotten the information he needed, Harry closed the book and pushed it off to the side, a bit disgusted by the process that a wizard had to go through in order to create a horcrux. His stomach was churning and he was doing all that he could to keep from belching, unable to understand how someone could be so evil to commit the atrocity of splitting a soul and creating a horcux. It went against nature itself, as a soul was supposed to stay intact, whole, not be maimed and tortured like Voldemort had done to his own soul. Shaking his head to clear away the thoughts, he got up and walked over to the bookshelf on his right, running a finger over the spines of a few of the older volumes that were taken from Grimmauld Place.
Finding an ancient genealogy tome that the Blacks had used to keep their blood pure, he swiftly picked it off of the shelf and carried it back to the table in the center of the chamber, intent on finding out who exactly the Peverells were. He searched the chapter index and scrolled through the chapters, hoping that he could find a reference to the Peverell name. Upon reaching chapter 14, he saw that the title of the chapter was 'Extinct Male Lineage', and assuming that the Peverells were not still around since he had never heard of them before the previous night; he flipped to the chapter and began reading.
The Peverells, he found out, were an ancient family of wizards that first appeared in the eleventh century, their origins before that time being unknown. The name died out quickly, with the last known Peverell being Ignotus Peverell, who died in 1292 at the age of 79, leaving one son—that son died years later, leaving his lone daughter as an heir. He turned back a page and saw that Ignotus was one of a set of triplets born in 1212, with his two older brothers being Antioch and Cadmus, Antioch being born first, each of whom had a single daughter to carry on their lineage. Antioch and Cadmus date of deaths were not listed, though Harry assumed that they had died earlier than Ignotus as their entries were much briefer than their younger brother's.
Harry doubted that the Peverell brothers that Dumbledore had alluded to were brothers other than the Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus. There was only a two hundred or so year window that the Peverell brothers could come from, between the 1100s when the name first appeared and the late 1300s when the name died out with Ignotus' son. So with the mystery of who the Peverell brothers were solved for the time being, he briefly wondered just what made them special, what made them important. He still doubted very much that the story of the Tale of the Three Brothers was true, but since he had no idea how old Antioch and Cadmus were at the time of their death, he couldn't even guess as to how much time they had in their life to accomplish anything of great importance, actions that would warrant having a story written about them. Were they that great that they could die young and still be known years later? Or was their history inflated due to a lack of real information about them, with relatively minor accomplishments being transformed into much greater deeds over time? With a confused sigh, he closed the book and moved onto his next quest, knowing that he wouldn't come up with an answer on his own as to what the Peverells did.
He then spent the next half hour searching for a book that would have some information about the Deathly Hallows. He looked in Athelstan Prince's Treasures and Trinkets: The Complete Guide to Enchanting Curios, who simply mentioned them as myth but did not say anything else about them—although it did go into much depth about Hufflepuff's cup. Next, he searched in a book that told of the genealogies of wizarding families in the middle ages, but again, he did not come up with anything that related to the Peverells, let alone mention the Deathly Hallows. Finally, he turned to another book about famous wizards of the middle ages, hoping to find the names of the Peverells there as he presumed they had to have been known as great wizards in order to accomplish what they apparently accomplished in beating Death.
That search too came up fruitless, leaving him perplexed on where he could find more information. As such, after noticing the time, he closed his book and readied himself for class, realizing he only had about fifteen minutes before his afternoon class was to start. He headed over to the ladder and climbed upwards, throwing off the lid of his trunk as he reached the top. As Harry jumped out of his trunk, he noticed that a house elf that he did not know was staring right back at him with green eyes shaped like pears, which were wide in surprise at Harry's sudden appearance. "Beg your pardon, sir, didn't see you here, apologies." The elf bowed respectively, having not expected Harry to be in the room since he could not sense him within his trunk.
"Why are you sorry?" Harry replied, confusedly, wondering why the house elf was apologizing. "It's not a problem, really."
"Thank you, sir," The elf said, his voice squeaky and timid.
"I'm Harry, Harry Dumbledore," Harry introduced himself, reaching his hand out for the elf to shake.
Tentatively, the elf reached out his own small hand and shook Harry's own, at first slowly and then gradually more enthusiastically than most wizards would. "I knows, sir, I's known you since you first arrived at Hogwarts." He replied, turning his attention away from his work and over to Harry, who towered above him—Harry was as tall to him as Hagrid was tall to most humans.
"You have?" Harry questioned with a cocked eyebrow, wondering how the elf knew him when they had never met as far as he knew.
"Oh yes, sir," said the elf in the affirmative, nodding his head all the while. "I has been cleaning your room every day when you all are in class."
"That's you?" Harry replied in a surprised tone, astonished that he had never seen the elf before. Then again, he reasoned, elves took great pride in not being seen or heard while they did their duties—except for Dobby, who loved being around people and being free, unlike most of his brethren. "Thank you. I didn't catch your name…"
"Bustle, sir," The elf bowed deeply, as if he was a herald introducing a king.
"Your name is Bustle?" Harry repeated, raising a curious eyebrow, thinking it a strange name. He had never before heard of a house elf name like that—he had heard of Winky, Kreacher, and of course, Dobby, but never one such as Bustle.
"Yes, sir," The house elf nodded proudly, his long ears flapping through the air all the while.
"Okay then Bustle," Harry smiled, laughing slightly at the elf's antics. The elf seemed nice and happy, rather than taking himself too seriously, which was refreshing to Harry. "It's nice to meet you."
"You're a good wizard, sir," Bustle replied in a jolly tone, knowing that many wizards wouldn't have thought what Harry said, let alone actually say it out loud. "Bustle likes you."
"Thank you, Bustle, I like you too," Harry grinned, appreciating the elf's honesty. "So when did you come to Hogwarts?" Harry asked conversationally, taking a liking to the elf because he reminded him a lot of Dobby.
"When Bustle's master freed him before she died," Bustle replied, looking at Harry with his pear-like eyes, still clearly saddened by his loss. "That was ten years ago, if Bustle remembers correctly." Bustle returned to his cleaning, gesturing towards the windows where a bottle of water levitated into the air and sprayed its contents onto the glass. "Bustle likes Hogwarts, but misses his master."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Harry frowned as a great wave of empathy stole over him, aware of the pain that loss brought to a person, whether it is man or elf. He remembered how he felt immediately after Sirius' death, it was as if an icy hand had gripped his heart and squeezed tightly down on it. With time, that feeling dissipated, but the frightening sense of regret still lingered on inside of him and steered his life daily. "She was a good person to you then?"
"The best, sir," Bustle said, turning around and nodding his head vigorously. "She let Bustle see his family every Sunday and whenever else he wanted."
"And you can't do that now?" Harry questioned with a raised eyebrow, unbelieving that someone as noble as Dumbledore wouldn't allow the elf to leave one day a week if the elf so desired.
"Oh, no, sir," Bustle shook his head back and forth, not wanting Harry to think that he wasn't allowed. "Bustle can, because Master Dumbledore is a good wizard, too, just like you and Bustle's old master."
"Who was she?" Harry asked interestedly, not knowing how many witches that had a house elf actually treated them with respect and dignity. From his experience, only the rich pureblooded families had house elves, and all of them seemed to treat their helpers like dirt, like lesser beings than wizarding kind. It was uplifting to him to find out that there were good people out there, people who took care of those around them, rather than look at elves with disdain like the Malfoys did Dobby.
"Lycoris Black, sir," Bustle said, finally going back to his cleaning in full. He snapped his fingers and three cleaning rags appeared, swiping away the dust from the top part of the beds, as he manually folded laundry in the center of the room.
Harry shook his head at the mention of the Blacks, inwardly wondering about his luck in having a former house elf of the family be the one to clean his room, and then stared at Bustle, watching the miniature elf work for a few moments before he reached down and grabbed his bag. "It was nice meeting you, Bustle, I'll see you later. Feel free to say hi whenever you want," He suggested, throwing the bag over his shoulder and making his way over to the door.
"Will do, sir," Bustle replied, facing Harry and giving him a large smile. "Bustle is glad to meet such a good wizard, sir." Harry grinned and waved, leaving the room, skipping down the stairs two by two and entering the common room. Who is Lycoris Black, he questioned to himself as he walked out of the common room and down to his potions classroom, where he had a double session with the Gryffindors.
It was Friday night that found him eating dinner in the Great Hall, talking animatedly with Derrick, who was nervous about the coming quidditch tryouts that were to take place the next day. Harry tried to assure his friend that he had a great chance of making the team, trying to ease his nerves, but Derrick wouldn't hear it and ran out of hall without touching his food, apparently too queasy to eat. When Harry himself was finished with his food, he grabbed his bag from the ground, excused himself from the table and walked up to the library, hoping to get a bit of work done in an effort to keep his mind off of the black haired teenager that continued to plague his thoughts.
Bellatrix continued to ignore Harry, never once replying to him whether or not she would keep his secret as he had requested. He had only seen her in class, where she had turned her attention away from him when he raised an eyebrow her way. He wondered if he had done the right thing, showing her what she was to become if she continued on the path that she had started with her blood purity madness, showing her what her future had in store. He hoped that he did do the right thing, but he dared not question her about it further until she was ready to talk to him about it, if she ever was. After all, unless handled properly, he could create the very monster he was hoping to prevent.
As he arrived at his destination, his thoughts drifted over to Greta, whose birthday was soon coming, as summer turned into autumn. He knew that he had to get her a gift, so with that in mind, he briefly went over gift ideas in his mind, trying to think about one that was friendly, but not something that was expensive or serious. He walked through the stacks of magical books, searching for one that related to the Deathly Hallows as he thought about Greta's present. Eventually, he found a biography of Beedle the Bard and picked out. He brought it back to his table and decided to think about Greta's present later as he cracked open the Beedle biography and started to read, hoping to find some semblance of where Beedle had heard about the Deathly Hallows.
Stifling a yawn, Harry exited the library, having spent the entire night in there. He started walking towards the Ravenclaw common room, not expecting to see anyone as it was late, but suddenly heard someone walking near him. As he turned around the corner, there right in front of him on the far side of the hall was Bellatrix, apparently on her rounds as Head Girl. In the darkness, she had yet to see him as she was walking down the same hallway, heading straight towards him. When she neared, their eyes met, and surprisingly, she did not look away this time as she had been doing for the past couple of weeks, ever since Harry revealed his secret to her. "Hi," He said as he came to a stop in the middle of the hall, not knowing if she wanted to speak with him or not.
Bellatrix continued on towards him, silently, before she slowed her pace, seemingly deciding something. They stared at each other briefly, their eyes lingering for a moment or two, before she took a couple more steps closer. "Hi," She said in response, coming to a halt a few feet away from Harry, releasing the tension that had been mounting in Harry's chest.
Harry released the breath he was holding and raised an eyebrow, happy that she stopped ignoring him and finally responded to him. "How are you?" He asked amiably, curious as to how she had been for the past few weeks.
"I'm okay, I guess, and you?" Bellatrix replied weakly, her tone not filled with the same energy that Harry had come to know.
"Is something wrong? Listen, I'm sorry, I didn't…I shouldn't…I'm sorry." Harry gushed, shrugging his shoulders while he struggled to find words, not really knowing what to say or how to say it. He didn't exactly know why she had reacted the way she had reacted, what specifically set the course of her actions or even if he had to apologize to her in the first place, but he figured it was best that she knew he was sorry for whatever it was that he had done.
"Its not you," Bellatrix whispered as she stared down at the floor, before looking up and meeting his gaze. "Let's just forget it, okay?"
"That's fine," Harry agreed, happy that she was back to talking to him again, but knowing that she would still need more space to decompress after all that she saw. It was a lot, he knew, perhaps too much, which made it hard to understand for someone that didn't live it for themselves. "I want to talk to you, but not necessarily about it."
"Are you coming back from the library or something?" Bellatrix questioned, as she gestured for Harry to walk with her, which he willingly did. They made their way down the hall, turning a corner and heading towards the east wing of the school, where Bellatrix was assigned for her nightly rounds.
"Yeah," Harry nodded in the affirmative. "I was reading about something the other day and I wanted to see if the library had any books on the subject." He replied, hiding the fact that he was looking for information about the Peverell brothers and their connection to the Deathly Hallows.
Bellatrix cocked an eyebrow, wondering why the secrecy. "What was it?"
"Nothing," Harry smiled mysteriously, not daring to tell her about his quest to find out about the Peverells.
"Don't make me legilimens it out," Bellatrix grinned back, jokingly threatening him. Then, seeing that he had his bag, she cocked an eyebrow, recognizing how lightly it sat upon his shoulder. "That doesn't seem heavy enough to be carrying books."
"That's because its not," Harry replied, taking his bag off of his shoulder and unzipping it to reveal an invisibility cloak.
"That's not what I think it is, is it?" Bellatrix asked, as she tentatively reached out and ran a hand over the fabric, which felt a lot like silk in her palm. Gently, her forefinger and thumb glided along its edge, noticing that it moved like water, which was much different than how a normal cloak would move.
"An invisibility cloak," Harry said as he watched her toy with it, remembering how Ron had reacted when he first saw the cloak for himself—it wasn't much different than Bellatrix. "I use it to get into the restricted section in the library sometimes."
"You have one of those?" Bellatrix shrieked in surprise as she pulled her hand back like the cloak was about to bite her. She knew that invisibility cloaks were very rare and expensive, so rare in fact that she had never seen one for herself; as such, it came as a great shock to her to gaze at one thrown so unceremoniously in a bag.
"Yup," Harry laughed, as he pushed his cloak back in his bag and zipped it up, hiding it from sight. Then, looking down at his pocket watch, he realized that he only had about twenty minutes to get back to the Ravenclaw common room. "I should get going, it's almost curfew."
"So what?" Bellatrix snickered loudly; rolling her eyes at Harry's seeming lack of adventure. "You're with me, you won't get in trouble."
"I didn't realize the Head Girl had that kind of power," Harry noted, having never heard about a perk like that. The Head Girl had the right to use the prefect bathroom, to be out after hours, dock house points, and be in some restricted areas that other students couldn't, but he had no idea that they could also delegate their powers, as well.
"They didn't before right now," Bellatrix replied with a smirk, knowing that Harry would probably indeed get in trouble if someone else found him out with her, except for maybe Frank, who was on the opposite side of the castle, doing his own Head Boy duties.
"Still, I should go, I don't want either one of us in trouble." Harry muttered as he began to turn around; he stopped, though, when Bellatrix reached out and grabbed his hand, turning him back around to face her.
"Stay with me." She said, taking a step closer to him, now just a foot or so away. She stared back up at him, daring him to leave with her gaze, though Harry had no intention of turning away.
They stood face to face for a moment, each not backing up from the other. Harry looked down into her violet eyes, his hand still in hers, and gulped down the ball that was in his throat. Instinctively, they both started moving closer and closer to one another, as if drawn by some cosmic force. And then, before he knew it, he felt his face moving towards hers as his free hand moved up to cup the right side of her face. With his eyes closed, he brought his lips up to hers, and they began to kiss, at first softly and then progressively more passionately.
Their lips explored each other's, their hot breath rushing against the other's cheek. "I'm not going to become one of your goody goodies like you, you know," Bellatrix gasped, pulling away from him for a brief moment.
"I would never ask you to," Harry replied, backing her up against the wall and kissing her once more; she passionately returned the kiss, hungrily tasting his lips. "Just don't become the woman who haunted my dreams." He said, closing his eyes once more and continuing to kiss her.
After a few more moments of passion, she pulled away and straightened her robes, giving him a small smile as she started to walk down the hall as if nothing had happened. Harry followed next to her, silently watching as she went about her duties, apparently taking her status as Head Girl seriously, waiting for her to say something. "I guess you can ask the question I know you're dying to ask," Bellatrix whispered, giving him a sideways glance as they slowly rounded a corner into another hallway. There was a tense atmosphere between them, something that had never existed before Harry told her the truth, or more accurately, before they had kissed.
Harry looked over to her, biting his lip in apprehension, uncertain on what to do. "You sure?" He asked, recalling how she didn't want to discuss it just moments prior. "I thought you didn't want to talk about it?"
"I'd rather get it out of the way, if I'm being honest," Bellatrix whispered, not wanting to push off the awkward conversations any longer. She had a lot of questions for him, and she assumed he had a lot of questions for her, ones that she didn't know if she'd be able to answer.
"Why did you start talking to me again? Why did you stop in the first place? Was it everything that I showed you or something specific?" Harry asked in a rush, wanting to know why she had ignored him all this time. "It wasn't because I used the Cruciatus on you, was it?" He asked, fearfully, knowing that using such a curse on someone could be devastating to the inherent trust between the pair.
"It wasn't the Cruciatus or even really the fact that you're a time traveler," Bellatrix said with a shake of her head, having long since accepted that using the Unforgivables were sometimes forgivable, even if they were used against her. "Although, I'm still not quite sure I get that just yet. Believing it and getting it are two very different things, I reckon."
"Understandable," Harry admitted, seeing how fantastical the story was—traveling back in time a day is almost unbelievable, let alone twenty-one years.
"It wasn't even the fact that you showed my own future, apparently doing horrible things that deserved a life imprisonment in Azkaban, things that I have no idea about why or where or how they happened," Bellatrix said, her voice rising in tone as she grew nearer and nearer to telling him the reason why she had ignored him. "Or that I was a Death Eater."
"Then what?" Harry inquired with a confused look on his face; he didn't know what else there was for her to ignore him as she had named most of the things he expected her to say.
"It was the fact that you knew me," Bellatrix answered simply. "The fact that I was older when you first met me, that the first time I met you wasn't the first time you met me. It…kind of pulls the carpet right out from under you. It was the fact that everything I know, or knew about you, probably wasn't true."
Harry furrowed his brow in thought, trying to figure out what she meant by that exactly. Did she mean that she wanted him to admit that he was a time traveler the first day he saw her? Surely, she couldn't be saying that, could she? "And what changed?" He asked quickly, wanting to know what caused her to start talking to him again.
"Honestly?" Bellatrix said, looking over to him with a small smile playing on her pink lips. "I promised myself that I wouldn't do this until I knew it was right for me, but…I've never felt anything like this for a boy, and there was no point in fighting it—that doesn't mean I'm not confused and more than a tad angry at you, because I am, but ignoring you wasn't helping me."
"It wasn't helping me, either." Harry smiled, a great happiness rising inside of him at the knowledge that Bellatrix had feelings for him, however miniscule. While it was true that he had feelings for Cho and they had shared a kiss under the mistletoe, he never knew whether Cho actually liked him for him or only liked him because of his name and the fact that he could talk about Cedric's death. This, however, was different, Bellatrix was different—she didn't know about his fame, nor did she care for him to regale her with tales of danger. Instead, she liked him because they had a connection, one based on being able to make the other laugh and smile.
"I have lots of questions for you," Bellatrix whispered as numerous thoughts popped into her mind, wonderings that had been plaguing her mind since he first revealed to her the truth about his time traveling.
"Ask away," Harry nodded, being willing to answer whatever it is she wanted to ask since she herself answered his questions just moments ago. "And, just so you know, the only thing that was a lie was my name and my parentage, that's it. Everything else, everything, was the truth, I promise you."
Bellatrix stopped walking as she heard footsteps coming from down the hall, a pensive expression on her face as she tried to think about who it could be. "Not here," She finally shook her head, before grabbing his hand and rushing him the opposite way from the footsteps, and then up to the seventh floor. She quickly walked back and forth in front of the troll tapestry, following Harry's lead from two weeks prior. When the wooden door appeared on the wall with a pop, they both walked over to it and headed inside, Harry wondering what exactly she asked for. "What the…?" Bellatrix questioned with wide, confused eyes, as she looked around the room, surprised by what met her. "What is this place?"
"What did you ask for?" Harry asked, his gaze moving around the room, trying to figure out what had happened. The Room of Requirement was very different from anything he had ever experienced before, being much larger and more detailed than his last few uses of the room had been.
"That we needed a place to hide and talk," Bellatrix said, looking over at Harry, who stood a few feet away from her. Upon seeing his face, she raised a questioning eyebrow, wondering what he knew. "What is it?"
"You have to be specific," Harry informed her, shaking his head disappointedly. "You have to really think about what you want, because if you give generalities like this, you don't get what you want, apparently."
"Still," Bellatrix whispered, as she took a few steps forward and grabbed a book off of a pile of books that was next to the doorway. She looked down at the book in her hands, noticing that it seemed to be hundreds of years old, much older than most books in the library were, and then tossed it off to the side. "What is this place?"
"Don't know," Harry replied with a shrug, interested in what they had stumbled upon.
The room was the size of a large cathedral, with high arching windows that were sending shafts of moonlight down upon a city of towering walls. These walls, which were as tall as most ceilings, were composed of objects of varying ages and uses, ranging from old tea kettles to dark arts books, from instruments made from the finest silver to clothes patched together from dirtied rags. There were thousands and thousands of books, which were all seemingly banned; damaged, broken-down furniture that were missing legs; and robes gnawed by the passage of time. There were winged catapults and Fanged Frisbees, chipped bottles of congealed potions and corked bottles of shimmering substances, tapestries whose colors had been faded with age, as well as rusting swords, bloodstained axes, and mountains of hats, jewels, and cloaks.
They moved further into the room, walking through the thin alleys that were created between the towers of objects, noticing that the room was filled with a random assortment of things from history, ranging in age from medieval times to relatively recent times. The went deeper into the reaches of the treasure trove, passing an enormous stuffed troll, broken cupboards, and cages filled with skeletons that had five legs, remnants of a long since dead animals. "This place has a lot of junk," Bellatrix said, sneering at the sight of the skeletons, disgusted at the thought of the dead animal. She moved forward towards a chest of riches, and picked up a large silver ring that was missing its stone. She dared not put it on her finger, not knowing what it could or would do to her if she did, but she stared at it interestedly, admiring its beauty.
Harry's eyes ran over the pile of jewels in front of which Bellatrix was standing, wondering who would leave such precious objects and abandon them like they appeared to have been. The pile had countless of chipped gems, cracked jewelry, and what seemed to be a dusty gold crown and a tarnished silver tiara sitting on top of the pile, each encrusted with what used to be fine jewels. Regardless of their banged up nature, all of the jewelry and precious metals had incredible value even in the magical world, as wizarding folk could not conjure them without each disappearing within hours. "I guess other people needing a place to hide, too." Harry said, realizing just what the room was: both the hiding place and the lost and found of Hogwarts.
"I wonder how many old books are in this place," She whispered, seeing pillars upon pillars of books in the distance, like a muggle skyline of the tallest, most wonderful skyscrapers the world had to offer.
"Thousands," Harry shrugged, unable to even guess the count more specifically than a vague number. After all, Hogwarts had been around for a thousand years, with thousands of students roaming about the halls each decade, and if each left just a single book, it would be too numerous to count, and that was just a conservative estimate in Harry's opinion. "Do you want to talk?"
"Ah, sure," Bellatrix replied, prying her eyes away from the room and back to Harry. She headed back towards the entrance of the room, gesturing for Harry to follow her, walking through the alley of junk until they reached the door. They exited the room, the door disappearing as soon as they left and the wall turning back to a blank face of stone as if nothing had been there in the first place. Trying again, Bellatrix walked back and forth in front of the troll tapestry, all the while thinking about the same room they had when Harry had first summoned the room, the one with the couches, chairs, coffee table, and fireplace. Sure enough, after her third pass, a door popped up on the stone wall once more, granting them access to the hidden room.
The chamber was basically the same as when Harry had created it, except perhaps decorated with darker tones to more suit Bellatrix's preferences. The walls were blank and colored in a deep green, the floors made of a dark mahogany wood and the couches were of black leather, though they looked just as comfortable as cloth couches would. Overall, Harry noted, the room gave him great insight into Bellatrix's tastes, and he immediately saw that she liked earthly tones, rather than the bright colors that others preferred, ones that brightened the mood of many.
"So you were saying before…" Harry said, starting the conversation as he got comfortable in one of the couches. He sat across from her, keeping his distance, not really knowing what to expect about what she was going to say. While he didn't think he was about to hear something bad, he was cognizant of the fact that she had admitted that she was angry at him, leaving a decent possibility of him being yelled at.
"It wasn't the Cruciatus Curse that you used on me, or even what I did in your memories that made me ignore you." Bellatrix started, slipping her shoes off and bringing her legs up onto the couch, sitting with them crossed in front of her. "It was actually the fact that you knew me, it made me question things."
Harry looked down at her shoes on the floor in front of her, leather loafers, and gave a small smile at them, glad that she felt comfortable enough to do that. "Like what?" He questioned, drawing his attention back to her face.
"Neither here nor there anymore," Bellatrix whispered, shaking her head, not admitting to him what it made her question. "It was just a lot to take in, and I was kind of thinking about it and if I would have said hello to you or even notice your existence, it would have been like a distraction."
"I'm glad you told me this," Harry replied, not prodding into the questions that she was asking herself any further, knowing that they were probably deeply personal issues. If she wanted to tell him, he knew that she would eventually, and as such, he didn't need to badger her about it. "I've missed you."
Bellatrix gazed at the fire for a moment, before looking up at him, her brows furrowed. "Can I ask you something?"
"Certainly," Harry nodded; allowing her to ask whatever it was that was on her mind. There was very little he would hide about himself from her, having already revealed to her his deepest, darkest secrets.
"Why did you decide to show them to me, the memories I mean?" She questioned in a voice that Harry couldn't quite place.
"I felt that you needed to see them if we were going to try and, I don't know, explore whatever it is that we're feeling for each other." Harry answered honestly, feeling that it was best to be blunt with her, rather than hide anything. "I didn't want to get close to you and have this lie hidden inside of me."
Bellatrix stayed silent for a few moments, seemingly accepting that answer. "So do you know everything that is going to happen?" She finally questioned softy. "What happens to me? What happens to my family? What happens in the war?"
"Not the war, no," Harry shook his head in the negative, not knowing what actually did happen during Voldemort's first rise to power. He had never researched it during his own time, and the adults that had lived through it were hesitant to discuss it with anyone, let alone someone as young as he was.
"But I thought you said you beat the Dark Lord, that you defeated him." Bellatrix said, more of a statement than a question. If he had defeated the Dark Lord as a baby, then how could he come back years later? She had no idea how one could escape death like Voldemort had seemed to accomplish, and from her understanding of magic, it was impossible: once someone was dead, they were dead for good.
"I did," Harry nodded in agreement. "But he came back. He just announced his return to the public a month before I came back in time. He had been hiding from the Ministry before that."
"How is that possible, I thought you said you killed him as a baby?" She asked in a perplexed tone, confused by what had happened between Harry and the Dark Lord in the past—or from her point of view, the future.
"No, he lived on as something…not a ghost, but not a spirit." Harry answered, furrowing his brow in an effort to best explain what happened. He didn't' want to tell her about horcruxes, so he tried to stay as vague as he could be in his answer. "I'm not really sure what he was, all I know is that he lived on."
"That last memory, the one with those globes, the Dark Lord was alive at that time?" Bellatrix inquired, trying to see if she had the correct story. "Why did he not just come and get what I…what they were trying to get himself?"
"Voldemort was in hiding…" Harry answered, ignoring that she was going to say I.
"Stop saying his name!" Bellatrix hissed, her eyes shifting about, as if Voldemort was going to appear.
"Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself." Harry replied dryly, paraphrasing the mantra that Dumbledore had lectured to him all those years ago when he sat in his bed in the infirmary ward at the end of his first year after having stopped Voldemort from procuring the Philosopher's Stone. "I do not fear Voldemort. I detest him, I think he is a coward, I'm disgusted by him, and I pity him, but I do not fear him."
"Whatever, go on." Bellatrix gestured with her hands as she rolled her eyes.
Harry grinned at her reluctance to the say the name, not taking it as anything but fear of the dark wizard, rather than respect for him. "He was in hiding, people didn't know he was back and they were attributing everything to Sirius, so why would he show himself and ruin the willful ignorance of the Ministry?"
"What does Sirius have to do with this again?" Bellatrix questioned, raising an eyebrow, not remembering why Sirius was lumped in with the Death Eaters. She had grown up with him, seeing him at least once a week when they were children, and he was nothing like the rest of the Blacks—he liked muggle clothes and muggle technology, a far fry from the purist mentality of the rest of the family and even further away from the ideology for the Death Eaters.
"He was known as Voldemort's most powerful Death Eater, his most dangerous servant at the time." Harry answered with a slight scowl, disliking how his godfather was ever portrayed as anything but the noble and reckless good wizard that he was. "It was all bollocks, of course, he was framed for a crime that he did not commit and sentenced to life in Azkaban, but he escaped after thirteen years or so. Of course, as fate would have it, through a series of events, Voldemort came back about two years later, and because the Ministry couldn't find him, they attributed all of the evil that Voldemort was doing to Sirius instead. He was an easy scapegoat for them."
"So it seems," Bellatrix whispered, trying to figure out the story from the bits and pieces that Harry supplied her. "The connection that you had, the one that you needed occlumency to sever, it was to the Dark Lord, wasn't it?"
"Perceptive," Harry said, not going into anymore detail, not really knowing anything more about it himself. While Dumbledore had said he had ideas on the matter, he had yet to voice them to Harry, which left Harry just as ignorant as Bellatrix. "Voldemort was who I was trying to keep out, yes."
Bellatrix flinched at the name again, but did not voice her displeasure this time. "You say you don't fear him, but if not the Dark Lord, then what do you fear?"
"Dementors," Harry answered simply, knowing that if were to come across a boggart, it would take the form of a dementor.
"That explains the unnatural ability to summon a patronus that you have," Bellatrix noted, realizing that he probably learned how to summon a patronus in the first place in order to be able to overcome his biggest fear. After all, if there was a spell that could stop your biggest fear, who wouldn't learn it as quickly as they could?
"I still have yet to see your corporeal patronus, you know," Harry murmured, wondering what her patronus would look like. The last he witnessed of her technique, her patronus was nothing more than an incorporeal shield of silver mist that looked like dust in the air, one that would be easily overpowered by the effects of a dementor.
"You'll be waiting a long time then because I don't have one," Bellatrix answered with a shrug. "I've tried many times; all I can get is a misty shield."
"Maybe you need the real thing attacking you in order to get it corporeal," Harry informed her, believing that to be the case, recalling that he himself only first summoned a corporeal patronus when his life was in danger and he had the confidence of already knowing he could do it. "I'm sure it'll come."
Bellatrix nodded skeptically, not really believing that she ever would be able to produce a corporeal patronus, but not revealing her concerns. "What about the Death Eaters?"
"What about them?" Harry asked, wondering what she wanted to specifically know. He had a general idea of the identity of many of the Death Eaters, but he had limited knowledge to their actions and what they exactly did. "I know who most of them are, and I know what some of them have done, but not much."
"I see," Bellatrix nodded in understanding, biting her lip. "And who are they?" She asked, more to see what Harry knew than for her personal knowledge, having a few friends and acquaintances who were loyal Death Eaters, each of them old family friends that had known since childhood.
"Most of your friends," Harry replied, frowning in apprehension. He didn't like the direction the conversation was going, where it treaded on talking about Bellatrix's deeds as a Death Eater, something he did not want to discuss. "Let's not talk about that."
"Now I know why you hate Rodolphus," Belaltrix muttered with a small smile, recalling the dislike each one had with the other before Rodolphus was expelled from Hogwarts. The expulsion hadn't really affected Rodolphus all that much, as his father had gotten him another wand that same day and he had joined the Death Eaters immediately. Sure, while Rabastan had to take on the public face of the family outside of his father since Rodolphus had been disgraced, practically, it did not change anything in the wizard's life.
"That, and he's just an berk," Harry replied, making Bellatrix snort in laughter.
They both went silent for a moment, Bellatrix thinking of something else to ask and Harry waiting for her to voice her inquiry. "That scar that you had on your forehead in the memories," Bellatrix started, watching as Harry instinctively reached to it on the left side of his forehead. "Do you still have it? Where did you get it from?"
Harry jumped from his couch and stood in front of Bellatrix, before taking the witch's hand and bringing it up to his forehead; gently, he ran her fingers over the small, jagged lightning bolt-like scar that was hidden by Dumbledore's magic, allowing her to feel it for herself. He flinched at the contact, but it did not hurt him as it usually would, the sensation having dulled since he traveled back in time. "Yes, I still have it. It's from the curse that Voldemort used on me as a child, the one that rebounded onto him and defeated him."
"Which was?" Bellatrix prodded, trying to learn as much as she could. She had the basic idea of Harry's past: the Dark Lord had attacked him for some reason, and somehow, as a baby, he was able to defeat the dark wizard for a time, until Voldemort returned years later.
"The Killing Curse," Harry answered, to the great surprise of Bellatrix, who stared back at him with a shocked look on her face, understanding the implications of what he had said—he survived the Killing Curse. She had no idea how such a thing was possible, having always been told that the Killing Curse was entirely unblockable, except for hiding behind a physical object. Hadn't Professor Moonshine said that not a week prior in her Defense Against the Dark Arts class?
They spent the next half an hour talking, Harry answering whatever questions Bellatrix had, and Bellatrix trying to learn more about the future. While Harry did not reveal much outside of her own future, and even that was at a minimum, Bellatrix seemed okay with the answers she received, accepting that Harry couldn't and wouldn't tell her everything. As eleven o'clock came, they exited out of the Room of Requirement to bid goodnight and go their separate ways for the rest of the evening. "I have one last question," Bellatrix said, earning Harry's attention as he looked back at her with his blue and green eyes. "Why am I, I don't know, so different in your time?"
"I don't want to talk about that, Bellatrix," Harry whispered, knowing that it was a touchy subject that could elicit negative emotions. "I don't want to offend you or make you mad."
"You won't, I promise." Bellatrix affirmed him, knowing that she would be able to control her emotions and not take offense to whatever he said. Truthfully, she wanted to understand why she ranted when she was being thrown into Azkaban, rather than use her cunning to escape the punishment that came on her.
"Are you sure?" Harry questioned slowly, wanting her to be absolutely certain that she desired to hear the answer for herself.
"Yes," Bellatrix reassured him with a simple nod. She was confident that she could handle anything he told her, even if it was offensive in most other contexts.
I think you're a completely different person, Harry thought to himself with a small smile, noting the various differences he had noticed between the Bellatrix he knew from his own time and the one that was standing in front of him. "Well," Harry started slowly, trying to choose the words that would get his point across without offending her. "You once bragged to me that you were trained in the dark arts by Voldemort himself, which I think may have twisted your mind a bit. Add in your already, and I'm being honest here, considerable madness, plus the years wasting away in Azkaban, and boom, a crazy Bellatrix."
Bellatrix stayed silent for a moment, going over everything that he had said, before looking up at Harry and twisting her face into a playful scowl. "Think I'm mad, do you?" Bellatrix growled, pulling her wand out from her robes and holding it tightly in her right hand, pointing it towards him in a threatening manner.
"Ah," Harry murmured, shifting his eyes back and forth, looking for a place to go and a hide. "Yes?" He said, quickly turning around and running down the dark hall, letting out a loud laugh as Bellatrix sent a jinx his way.
Eventually, they were standing at the main stairway, each knowing that the other was going the opposite way. "You were right in showing me those memories; you just didn't do it with any tact. At all." Bellatrix informed him, understanding why he opened up to her about the future, but wishing he would have prepared her a bit more for it than he had.
"Did it the wrong way?" Harry grinned, agreeing that she was probably correct in the assessment of how he went about it. He knew that he was impulsive and he often flew by the seat of his pants, each of which were traits that he had been trying to stop since the night of Sirius death two years prior, but had yet to full master his brash nature. "I'll try it differently the next time I go back in time."
"Please do," Bellatrix murmured, taking a few steps down the stairs. "Goodnight, Dumbledore." She whispered, before turning around and making her way down to the dungeons below.
"Sweet dreams, Black." Harry said softly, watching her go. He gave a small smile, as he stared at the spot she just occupied, before throwing on his invisibility cloak and heading to his room.
A/N: Once again, if I get 30 reviews, I'll upload a new chapter next week. The next chapter will be a 'bridge' chapter, which will span the time between this chapter and the Christmas chapter and indeed be entitled "The Months Pass" or something akin, with me still being on schedule for the Christmas chapter to be up on Christmas day so long as you all review.