Chapter 28
This May Be It for Me
"That's right, Arthur. We need help as soon as possible."
Arthur Weasley's head shook an inch in either direction as he pondered this new dilemma, the flames in the fireplace of Minerva McGonagall's office flickering around his thinning red hair. Hermione silently sat in one of the chairs.
After she frantically informed the Headmistress of the situation, McGonagall immediately took steps to contact whomever she could. It took half an hour, but finally Arthur managed to locate a secure fireplace. Rapidly, he attempted to determine how many bodies he could direct to Hogwarts on short notice. Given the secret nature of the Order of the Phoenix, he could not immediately contact a dozen members and have them at the castle within the hour. It would take some time and needed to be managed in a way that would not blow their covers.
"How urgent is this?" Arthur asked, though he knew well enough. Report of You Know Who in the Forbidden Forest apparently attempting to breach Hogwarts' ward had to qualify as urgent.
"It's extremely urgent, Mr. Weasley," Hermione interjected, unable to restrain herself, "You Know Who wants something at Hogwarts, and he wants to kill Harry. The Order needs to act as quickly as possible." Arthur could hear the fear in her voice.
"All right," the head in the flames replied, "I'll see what I can do. It may take a . . ."
At that moment, a crack echoed in the ample office, still quite loud but clearly emanating from a distance. Arthur heard it as well as the others, causing him to freeze.
"Wait a minute, Arthur," McGonagall ordered as she rushed to open the door of a closet. Hermione saw her head and upper body disappear behind the door, only to reappear a moment later, the blood having left her face. "The wards are down. They've been breached." They all paused for a few seconds to allow the ramifications to sink in. "We're defenseless."
"Get everyone out of the castle who doesn't need to be there," Arthur ordered decisively, now understanding the true urgency of the crisis, "I'll get everyone there that we can."
McGonagall rushed out of the office to evacuate the few teachers and staff that remained at Hogwarts, leaving Hermione behind.
"Harry," she whispered to herself, trembling with fear. Realizing that she could accomplish nothing in the Headmistress' office, she ran out, deciding that she would return to the lakeshore where she expected Evan Harrington to arrive shortly.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Pacing the floor of their dormitory room, Ron fought the desire to return to the lake, swallow a mouthful of gillyweed, and try to find Harry. He knew Harry specifically instructed him not to enter the lake, but by now, Ron had accomplished the task assigned to him, contacting Evan Harrington. He HAD to do something.
Cho Chang peeked her head into the room, knocking shyly on the open door. Confined to the Gryffindor common room, Ron's return from outside shocked her. He literally jumped through the opening into the common room, sprinting past her without even a nod of acknowledgment. He returned alone, meaning that something may have happened to Harry. Finally she could bear the suspense no longer and despite her nerves, climbed the stairs to the boys' dormitory.
Her knock caused Ron to turn sharply, staring at the intruder harshly at first before relaxing when he realized what happened. Once she knew that Ron saw her, Cho stepped into the room.
"Something's happened to Harry, hasn't it?" she asked nervously. Ron did not want to bother speaking with Cho, but he could not act so rudely as to ignore her completely.
"No, he's OK, at least when I left him. I can't tell you any more."
Hardly a satisfactory explanation, but Cho knew that she lacked the standing to insist any further. At least nothing had happened to Harry yet.
"Is there anything I can do," she asked, though she knew that Ron would refuse.
"No," he answered helplessly, "There's not much any of us can do now. . . I have to go." Without another word, he brushed by the witch and descended the stairs, leaving her staring vacantly out the window.
Ron exited the castle a few minutes later, heading for the edge of the lake, where he arrived just a few minutes before Hermione. The tub of gillyweed sat there, tempting him. Hermione found him staring at it.
"You can't, Ron. Don't even think about it."
The red head did not respond nor even avert his eyes from the gillyweed.
"Even if you did, you don't have any idea where he went. You'd be swimming blind. Mr. Harrington will be here soon. Let's wait for him, and then we can decide." Hermione gazed pleadingly at her friend. Ron nodded, allowing Hermione to breath a sigh of relief. She sat down next to him, neither saying another word.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Peter pulled on Narcissa Malfoy's shoulder, turning her onto her back, unnecessarily verifying her death. Lord Voldemort, on the other hand, did not give the witch a second thought, instead striding forward beyond the point where the wards held just a minute before. He knew that the lake shore lay only a few hundred yards ahead, and he meant to reach his destination as quickly as possible. The ancient trees in this part of the Forbidden Forest towered over him, preventing much ground vegetation from taking root, thus he encountered little difficulty.
Gazing into Narcissa's pale face, Peter pursed his lips tightly as the realization sunk in. He had killed. Why this should affect him so severely, he could not explain, since he had committed many terrible acts during his life, some of which led to deaths, both muggle and magical. Of course, he killed a number of muggles when escaping from Sirius Black, but he did not intend to kill them. He only wanted to escape, and their deaths provided the only means. Not the same, Peter had convinced himself, as cold-blooded murder.
Now that he had committed the murder, the tragedy of his life came fully into focus, as if the lens on a camera had not been properly adjusted before. He grew up normally, a short, pudgy, unremarkable child from a pure-blood family. At Hogwarts, he initially and wholeheartedly opposed the rise of the dark lord, buoyed on by the bravery and bravado of his three best mates, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black. But they possessed one trait that he did not. They were willing to die.
Peter lifted his eyes off the corpse and glimpsed the cape of his master among the trees some fifty yards away. I should follow him, he informed himself, but he had not yet been called. Perhaps I can wait here. No such luck.
"Come Wormtail," Voldemort called, barely audibly since he could no longer raise his voice to a shout. Setting aside his self-loathing, Peter walked forward as quickly as his stubby legs would allow, leaving the crumpled body of Narcissa Malfoy behind.
Once out of sight, two centaurs emerged from hiding to observe the woman's cadaver. Though centaurs did not suffer the death of wizards or witches, their code of conduct prevented them from leaving the body to be eaten by the forest's less civilized creatures. One of them lifted her limp body onto the back of the other, and the two slowly walked towards the edge of the forest by Hagrid's cabin. They knew that the big oaf would deal with the corpse.
By the time Peter caught up with his master, Voldemort already stood at the edge of the lake, gazing out over it. They stood at the crook where the main body of water turned into a finger reaching into the forest. From their position, they could only see the top of Hogwarts Castle far away. As customary, Peter remained silent, several paces behind the dark lord. Voldemort moved nary a muscle for ten minutes. Finally he turned towards his servant.
"Take these. I shall return within an hour." Peter received Voldemort's cloak and shoes, and watched the dark lord step otherwise fully clothed into the lake.
Suddenly, Voldemort waved his wand violently at himself and transfigured his head and neck into those of a large fish, though he retained the red slits for eyes. A second wave of his wand added webbing to his feet and hands, and he ended up with the appearance of a fish-snake combination. A second later he dove into the lake and disappeared.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Harry flicked his webbed feet casually and continued to move slowly forward, just ten feet below the surface of the lake. He knew that soon his first hour under the effects of gillywood would end, so he decided to stay near the surface, both to make the transition back to air-breathing mammal easier and to survey the bottom of the lake from altitude.
All he "remembered" from absorbing the horcrux contained in Slytherin's locket was that Hufflepuff's cup had been hidden in a craggy area, gravelly with a few boulders. No vegetation. Thus he searched for those portions of the lake devoid of greenery. From his vantage point, he could see several possible areas, and his heart sunk as he again realized how long the search could take.
While waiting, he suddenly felt a shockwave race through the water and right through his body. Immediately, he knew that Lord Voldemort had just entered the lake, and after waiting a few moments, he could sense his direction. Despite not having regained his human lungs, Harry shot to the surface and broke through like a fish jumping at a fly. For the brief moment above the water, he turned all the way around to determine his location. Just before reentering the water, he glimpsed Hogwarts Castle behind him and a good distance away. Thus he determined that Voldemort entered the water from the far end of the lake.
Suddenly, Harry realized he no longer needed to worry about locating Hufflepuff's cup. Obviously Voldemort would enter this lake for one purpose only - to secure the cup. Tom Riddle would lead him right to it. The fact that he would have to confront the dark lord did not bother him in the least.
Hurry up! he grumbled to himself, wanting the transformation to occur so that he could consume the next serving of gillyweed. He continued to wait, sensing Voldemort's location. He was moving in Harry's direction.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"So Harry is in the water, Voldemort was seen in the forest, and the wards around Hogwarts have just fallen."
Hermione and Ron nodded their agreement with Evan Harrington's brief synopsis of recent events. Evan paced back and forth vigorously, running an excited hand though his sandy hair while he attempted to synthesize the information.
"We've already determined that Voldemort wants to protect the remaining horcruxes," he thought aloud, "By now, he knows that the locket is gone and presumably destroyed. Of course, he already knew about the diary, and he probably knows about the ring. Nagini is by his side, which only leaves the trophy and the cup. He can't know about the trophy, but he must be worried about it. So first he's going to collect the cup; then he'll try to enter the castle for the trophy."
"And he wants to kill Harry," Hermione emphasized, for this aspect of the crisis had taken on much greater importance to her, "He won't back down, Mr. Harrington. You should have seen him when he heard. He WANTS to fight him. What can we do?"
Evan grimaced at Hermione's words. Aurors are trained, of course, to place the cause over the individual, but in this case, he had a difficult time separating the two. In a real sense, the cause was Harry. Without him, the destruction of the remaining horcruxes became exponentially more difficult, if not impossible. But Harry could absorb them like a sponge, easy as that.
"I'm going in," he decided, "though I don't know what good it will do. By the time I find him, if I find him, it may be too late. Voldemort probably is already in there. All we can do is hope. You two need to stay out of the lake! Harry was right. You'd just be a distraction to him. He doesn't love me like he loves you, and I don't love him like you do. He and I can work together without those complications." Evan stared at them severely, and Harry's two friends looked down to their feet.
Taking off his shirt, he stuffed extra gillyweed into the pouch tied around his waist and then grabbed another handful. After wading into the lake up to his waist, he turned around to face the silent pair one last time.
"I'll do my best. Harry's luck has held so far." They watched him eat the gillyweed and dive out of sight.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Not only Harry felt the shockwave that passed through the lake when Voldemort first dove into the water. Fishes, both magical and not, swam in the opposite direction. The giant squid dove deep into the lake's most forbidding recesses. Grindylows hunkered down in their burrows, leaving their hunting for a later time. Merpeople scurried around their village, most retreating into their stone dwellings, but several elders and warriors met in their leader's residence.
Harry tread water at the surface of the lake, inhaling large quantities of air as he waited for the transformation back to his normal self to finish. He remembered Evan's instructions that he could not consume more gillyweed until he could speak, and that moment had not yet arrived. He anxiously waited, primarily to be able to continue his search, but also because he swam poorly in his human form, having never received lessons, and found treading water to be difficult, often having to give an extra kick to keep his mouth from dropping beneath the surface.
Through it all, he could feel Voldemort. Fortunately, the dark lord continued to move along the far shore of the lake, away from the Hogwarts side, coming closer to Harry's position all the time. He wondered if Voldemort could feel him.
Finally, he felt his throat develop a bulge, and Harry tested his voice, "One, two, three." Satisfied, he reached into his pouch to grab another handful of gillyweed, but before placing it into his mouth, he rotated in the water to face the castle, taking a long look at it. Despite his lack of glasses, he could see the huge structure well enough, and he thought he had never seen it look so beautiful as from this angle, just above the surface of the lake. Some movement in front of the castle, closer to the lake, caught his eye, and though he could not focus his eyes without his glasses, he could see a blur of red and a blur of brown. Ron and Hermione. Though pleased that they remained safe on the shore, he felt a lump in his throat that they were not out in the lake with him.
Hermione's eyes reappeared in his mind. Floating in the middle of the lake, for some reason, made them easier to interpret. Love filled those eyes. Not just worry and anxiety; Harry had seen those expressions before. No. The difference in those eyes was love. And Harry realized that he felt it too. From the moment they first embraced in the back room of her parents' dental office, he felt a difference in them, but with everything happening all at once, he could not sort it out in his mind. Suddenly, seeing her blurry image from the middle of the freezing lake sorted his mind perfectly. The lump in his throat grew, as he worried about her on the shore, worrying about him.
"I'm coming back," he said aloud, as if speaking to her, and he quickly stuffed the new handful of gillyweed into his mouth. The uncomfortably cold water suddenly felt fine, and Harry dove back in, pausing briefly to gauge Voldemort's current location, and more importantly his direction. Harry shot off as fast as he could, aiming at a spot ahead of Voldemort, attempting to cut off the angle.
This is it, he thought, I'm ready.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
Swimming as rapidly as his webbed feet and hands would take him, Evan aimed for a portion of the lake that Harry and he had not covered yesterday. That improved his odds a little, but the lake seemed so vast when in the middle of it. Something seemed strange as he sliced through the water, different from yesterday, yet he could see nothing specific.
Of course, there's nothing, he realized, no fish, not even the tiny minnows that occupied almost all parts of the lake the day before. He turned his head back and forth as he sped along, when instinctively he banked hard to the left. His peripheral vision caught movement of some sort, and his body automatically followed. Sure enough, in a few seconds, he could note something moving far ahead. It did not seem like a large fish or move like a giant squid. No, it had to be Harry or Voldemort. One way or the other, Evan intended to follow it.
What he would do when he found whichever of them it may be, he had not decided. Though a talented auror, he knew better than to believe that he could defeat Lord Voldemort in a duel. The goal, he reminded himself, was to allow Harry to obtain the horcrux and to escape alive and hopefully unharmed. In this war, Evan was expendable so long as he served his purpose.
This may be it for me, he realized as he swam after the moving figure. He held back as far as he could while still able to track the movement in the distance, staying low to the lake floor. He thought of his mother and father, his third girlfriend (the only one that he almost married), and, to his surprise, Michelle Goldsmith. Maybe she was the one, he mused, Now I may never know.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
How did I ever get to this point? Peter asked himself. Realizing that his master would take an hour or so to return, he sat down near the lake, leaning his back against the trunk of a large tree. I used to be a decent person. James and Sirius used to earn detentions, but Peter tended more along the lines of Remus, generally not causing problems unless dragged along by the others. He received a few detentions that way, and they were worth every minute.
I threw it all away, he reminded himself, The only friends I ever had. He had convinced himself that it all occurred due to his lack of courage. The sorting hat must have made a mistake, he often argued with himself; he should have been sorted into Slytherin. But as he meditated with his eyes closed, almost asleep, he knew the real reason. He cared about himself first, not his friends. They sacrificed themselves for others; Peter sacrificed them for himself.
A second later, he found himself six feet off the ground with a gigantic hand squeezing the life out of his neck.
"CAUGHT YEH, YEH RUDDY COWARD," boomed Hagrid's voice, nearly snapping Peter's neck with his massive right hand, "Don' even think o' turnin' into a rat, o' I'll crush every bone in yer bloody body. Yeh deserve no less."
Unable to breathe, Peter could not respond, and the half giant carried him off through the forest at breakneck speed as if he were a duck he had just shot out of the sky.
"HOW DARE YEH SHOW YER FACE 'ROUND HERE," Hagrid bellowed, beside himself with rage, "WHY DON' I JUS' FINISH YEH OFF RIGHT HERE AND NOW? WHY DON' I JUS' FEED YEH TO THE SPIDERS?"
Given his current predicament, those options did not seem so undesirable to Peter, who finally regained enough composure to reach for his wand. He did not find it and realized to his dismay that it must have fallen when Hagrid first grabbed him. Perhaps he could apparate, he thought, but Hagrid seemed to read his mind.
"AND DON' YEH THINK 'BOUT APPARATIN', YEH RAT, 'CAUSE IF YEH SO MUCH AS TURN AN INCH, I'LL CRACK YER NECK AND PULL YER HEAD OFF." Given the intense pressure on his neck, Peter did not doubt Hagrid's sincerity.
When a half giant walks quickly, he can cover a lot of territory in a short time, and before Peter fully appreciated his dilemma, he passed Hagrid's cabin and moved up the steep slope to Hogwarts.. He saw several people rushing quickly towards the front gate, apparently fleeing the grounds. In the other direction, he saw several wizards rushing up the hill towards the castle, no doubt in an attempt to protect it. At first he failed to recognize any of them, but gradually he recognized the gait of an old friend.
Remus Lupin and the other Order members with him could not help but notice the huge man storming up the hill with his hand wrapped around the neck of a man. Motioning the others to continue on, Remus veered off to meet Hagrid. Underestimating the half giant's speed, Remus soon determined that he needed to jog to catch up.
"Hagrid," he called from a distance, "Slow up a second. Who do you have?"
Peter's feet spun in the air as Hagrid turned towards the voice, not having noticed the men before. He quickly recognized Remus and came to a stop to allow the werewolf to catch up. At fifty yards, Remus thought he recognized the prisoner, and at thirty yards he knew. Slowly he covered the final steps, no longer paying Hagrid any attention. His eyes bored into the eyes of the man who used to be his best friend.
"The centaurs told me that a man that came with Yeh Know Who sat by the lake, so I went over to look. Saw this rat sleepin' against a tree."
Remus barely heard Hagrid's loud words. Rage filled him from head to toe at the sight of the man. The man who betrayed their best friends, who sent another best friend to Azkaban for a crime that he in fact committed, who served a master of pure evil. Quickly he removed his wand and flicked it twice, silently placing spells on Peter to prevent apparation and conversion into an animagus form. Remus knew that normally apparation in Hogwarts was impossible, but given recent events, he could not be sure. He stepped forward again to stare directly at his old friend.
"We're going to take you up to the castle, Peter," he hissed threateningly, "We're going to question you and find out what we can. Then I'm going to kill . . . you . . . with . . . my . . . own . . . two . . . hands." He slowed down his speech to ensure that Peter believed every word.
Peter realized that for all intents and purposes, his life had ended. Miraculously he had escaped Sirius and Remus a few years before in the Shrieking Shack. Miracles do not repeat themselves. Though frightened, Peter found himself surprisingly calm. At least he not longer had to answer to the dark lord. I am a murderer now, he thought, I deserve to die. Remus turned away, renewing his climb to the castle, and Hagrid followed suit, his huge stride soon moving him ahead.
"Take him to the dungeon, Hagrid," Remus ordered, "I'll check it to make sure he can't escape."
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
After five minutes of swimming, the sensation Harry felt started to confuse him. He seemed to feel two pulls on him, not just one. Before long he understood. He felt the horcrux as well as Voldemort. Maybe he could arrive first.
Turning to the left, he kicked his webbed feet and thrust his hands back, diving directly for the pull of the horcrux. Voldemort now felt it too, but he could not feel Harry, not having the advantage of his scar. Two hundred yards behind, Evan could see the entire scene unfold. Voldemort, whom he had been following, came from the right at an even pace. Harry, whom he had just spotted, dove down at twice the speed from the left, both headed for the same spot, an uneven rocky area with a few large boulders.
Back on the shore, Ron paced incessantly, driving Hermione crazy. She sat on the boulder, alternately searching over the surface of the lake for a sign of Harry and watching Ron's nervous movements. Neither spoke a word for nearly an hour. Finally Ron could stand it no further.
"I'm going in," he abruptly informed her, "I can't stay here any longer. I'll go mad." By the time he finished speaking, he had ripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes and socks, and grabbed a handful of gillyweed.
"It's too late, Ron!" Hermione shouted, jumping to her feet, "You'll never find him!"
Ron did not answer because gillyweed filled his mouth. Seconds later, the gills formed in his neck, and he dove into the water. Hermione stood a foot from the lake's edge, watching him disappear.
A moment later, she flung her own sandals away and grabbed a handful of gillyweed.
