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XIX
XIXIX "Future, Present, and Past" XIXIX
On the 30th of December, Hermione had a strange feeling that she couldn't quite sort through. She had meditated, she had tried tea leaves... hell, she had looked into a crystal ball. But the truth remained just out of her Sight, threatening and foreboding. Whatever this feeling indicated, it was big. Of that much, Hermione was certain.
She thought back to the morning of the Final Battle, when she had placed her tea cup aside without pressing for the totality of truth. She would never do that again. And she had accepted her power. She had to do this.
She had to do this.
Staring out her window at the nearly full moon, Hermione pressed three small buttons into her mouth, one after the other, and waited. She looked around her quarters. Eventually, the room around her began to take on an otherworldly quality. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes, and leaned against the window ledge, her eyes trained on the moon above her. It was a clear night. If she tried hard enough, she thought she just might be able to look into infinity.
And then she nearly did.
Some time later, Hermione came to laying on her floor, thoughts and visions echoing in her brain.
Get Remus, get Remus… Wake Up!
The candles in the wall sconces were burning low. Several had gone out. She glanced to the window; she looked about the room. She thought back over the places she'd been, the visions she had experienced and a well of dread rose up within her.
Oh God...
XIXIX
Harry was playing mind games. Again. Just as he had done, off and on, for years now. Years. The mess of his life had held him prisoner for years. But Draco was right. He had to fix it. Even if he, himself, was too far gone to be worth saving, he had to do this for Ginny.
So how could he save himself?
Though he could not quite think about it without being overcome with pain, Harry was aware that the last time he came up with a plan to save himself (go to Dumbledore), the plan had not worked (Dumbledore was mysteriously killed). He could not involve anyone else in this rescue mission.
If Dumbledore fell to it, no one else could possibly...
He clutched at his hair, pulling fistfuls of it at his temples. The pain was horrific. He never could get used to it. It seemed worse each time, always just beyond the extent of his tolerance.
He couldn't think about this. He couldn't help himself. And he couldn't tell anyone. Hell, he couldn't even intend to tell anyone as far as he knew. But what if...
The mind games he'd been playing these past years... he could think about what was happening to him as long as he only thought about it indirectly. What if...? What if he didn't try to enlist anyone's help? What if he didn't try at all, but someone managed to figure it out on their own? Could he possibly leave enough round-about hints to his plight that someone else, someone who could think about things directly, could figure out a way to save him?
Of course, I would never do this, he thought. It would never work anyway. There is no point. There is no one who could help me.
Certainly not the person who lived with him. Certainly not the person who watched his weird behavior upon his many returns after his many mysterious absences. She would never be able to figure out what was happening. And she would never be able to help him. Mala Suerte could not save him at all.
Harry was comforted as he thought of all of this, knowing in his heart that his heart did not believe his head. His heart believed he had found the answer. He need only leave enough round-about clues for Mala Suerte to figure out that something was wrong, and that Harry needed her help.
And Harry already knew how to play mind games, how to think in round-about ways. How much more difficult could it be to leave indirect hints about for his roommate?
XIXIX
"Hey, Mala," he said as casually as possible. He wouldn't want to let anything slip, after all. He had been thumbing through a novel on the couch for most of the day, waiting for her to come home from her afternoon outing with Ryan. It occurred to Harry to be curious if Mala wanted out of their living arrangement so that she could pursue other paths with her boyfriend, but he didn't ask. Not yet. If this worked (and he carefully did not think about what 'this' was), he would give her the damn house and pay for the wedding.
"Hey, Harry. Are you hungry? I can whip something up before I go."
"Go? You just got back."
Mala paused and looked in on him. He never made small talk like this. She knew something was up. He'd have to cover his tracks.
"I mean, I don't want to keep you or anything. You're free of course to do whatever you want whenever... er..." Harry shut himself up from babbling, but not before a good healthy dose of blushing. "Sorry," he said, and went back to thumbing through his book.
"No, it's fine," she said, coming in to sit with him. She looked at him frankly. "Are you okay? I don't mean to pry, of course, it's just since St. Mungo's you've been acting..."
'Like a lunatic,' he thought.
"...differently. It's just, if there's something I can get for you for your recovery, or something I can do... I mean, Harry I basically owe you my life with how you've kept my dad's house for me. I don't want you to feel like you've been a burden or anything when I take care of you. There's really nothing I wouldn't happily do. Just name it and it's done."
She smiled at him cheerfully and Harry revised in his head all the many, many, numerous wonderful things he was going to do for Mala if he ever got his life sorted out. And he would make sure to befriend her properly — get to know her and let her get to know him. He was wistful at the thought of it. But right now, he needed to focus.
"Well, there is one thing," he said.
She nodded purposefully.
"Name it."
"I want you to... to have this information." He handed her a parchment he'd prepared that morning. "It's contact information... apparation and floo destinations, names and relationships of all the people I've been close to."
Mala's smile faltered. He'd counted on that. She would think he was giving her the information of who to contact in the unfortunate incidence of his untimely death. Which would serve his purpose, if he was purposefully misleading her into thinking that's why he was giving it to her. Because there is no other reason for me to give her this information, he thought to himself.
"Harry, I..."
"Draco you met in the hospital. Also, I have a twin. A magical twin. If something happens to me and she manages to survive it, she has the right to know the details. And I also have another bondmate. His name is Severus Snape and he's a real piece of work. He scares most people to death, but I want to stress this to you, if you go to him about me, there is absolutely nothing he wouldn't do... he would move heaven and earth for me."
Harry paused to smile fondly on this, reminiscing on a time he could place himself firmly in the care of this torrent of unconditional affection.
Later. This could work. He could have it back again...
"And he's good with financial arrangements. He worked with Draco trying to get his inheritance straightened out. Anyway, he'll make sure the house is put in your name. Also, you met Hermione. She's brilliant and she knows absolutely everything about me... well, everything up until a few years ago. Any facts or information that's missing if... something happens... well, Hermione can put it together. She could figure out anything."
"Harry," she tried again, but he held up his hand to stop her. She looked pained, but he had to finish this if it were going to work.
"Remus is unavailable at the full moon. But he's like a father to me. And he, too, would do anything... anything at all." He took a deep breath. He knew she believed this was in case of his death, but he had to cement that idea firmly in her mind (while also, hopefully, peaking her curiosity so that she might contact anyone on this list even before his untimely death.
"I just... St. Mungo's really scared me, you know? I like to fancy myself invulnerable, but I'm clearly not. And there's a lot of things in my life I don't have any control over. I never know where I'm going to be or what I'm going to be doing. And sometimes bad things happen and I don't know why."
He was careful to keep his words vague enough that he could say them without the pain ripping through his head and scattering his thoughts. But he knew that she would catch his references, or at least that she would think she was catching his references. He only hoped it made her curious enough to do a little sneaking about with this contact list he was giving her.
"Just... if something happens," he phrased it this way so that she could infer that he meant his death, or anything else she wanted to infer it to mean, "you can contact these people and they'll help take care of things. Okay?"
Mala nodded soberly. She looked a little pale and he thought her eyes looked a little on the red-rimmed side. He would give them a year-long honeymoon to anywhere in the world they wanted to go.
"I'll take care of it," she said. "I'll... Harry, can I ask you a question?"
Feeling extraordinarily indebted to her, and rather fond of her as well, Harry agreed to something he had previously avoided like the plague. Questions. It was a terrible mistake, but in this very moment, his guard was down and he didn't realize exactly how dangerous was this game he was playing.
"Sure."
"Don't you want me to just contact them now? I mean, it's obvious that you love them, and you're clearly struggling with something. I really think your friends could help you with whatever it is that's going on."
Mala only had the best intentions when she said this. But Harry had struggled to create this conversation in such a way that he would not have to think about any of those things. He had been trying to help himself while simultaneously protecting her from himself. But Mala Suerte unwittingly brought everything to the forefront of Harry's mind. And whatever was causing the mess in his life clamped down on his consciousness and took over everything.
Harry felt the single most horrific pain slice through his head. When he came to, he was laying on the couch drenched in blood. In his right hand, he held a quill. On his chest was a piece of parchment, soggied and reddened and sticking to the slick ooze that covered him. He glanced around in the befuddlement he always experienced when he came to after 'leaving'. Then he peeled the parchment off of his chest and read it.
Harry Potter, you killed Mala Suerte Radinavich.
Harry heaved, leaned over the side of the couch and vomited. The letter was written in his own handwriting.
He stumbled to his feet and looked around the room. Not only was Mala dead, she was ripped apart in a manner Harry had not seen since his sixth year when he had a vision of Severus being tortured by Voldemort with his entrails strung about the Death Eater hideout. Her hollowed body was limp on the floor in a pool of guts and blood and death. Harry fell to his knees and pulled her corpse into his arms.
"Jesus, no. Mala, oh god. Merlin. Fucking hell. Bloody fucking hell, what have I done?! No. No! Oh, god forgive me. Mala, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
He sat on his knees, rocking her corpse for an eternity, sobbing into her lifeless body. He had done this to her. And it didn't matter if he had had no control over the exact actions that had killed her. He knew he had done this to her because he had tried to enlist her help in saving him from the mess... from whatever it was that was controlling him. He had known he was playing with her life when he gave her the contacts list. He had just thought he could play it safe. And in the end, he hadn't thought she would actually die if his plan didn't work. He had been so naive.
Eventually, Harry went back to the letter he had written to himself. He read it silently, his heart thudding in his chest. He was murderer. He would always be a murderer.
You killed her because you were trying to save yourself. Just like you killed Dumbledore. Just like you will kill anyone you go to for help. You cannot stop yourself from doing this. You must obey the plan that has been laid out for you, or everyone in your life will suffer.
No one is safe from me.
As soon as Harry read the final word, he blacked out again. This time, when he came to he was in his bed, in a clean set of clothes. All traces of Mala's blood had been removed from his person. He stood and stumbled into the living room, searching for her body so he could bury her properly. But she was gone. There was no blood. There were no signs that she had ever been there.
Harry noticed immediately that something else was different about the house, but it took him awhile to place exactly what was wrong. Mala's personal items were gone. There were no pictures, no trinkets, no knicknacks. He ran into her bedroom to find it no more personal than a guest room. Mala Suerte had been erased from his home.
Harry tore out of the house and apparated directly to the pub in the village where Ryan worked. Ryan, at least, had to know that Mala was dead. Even though Harry knew he could not tell him what had really happened (lest he wind up killing Ryan too), he had to let him know so that he could mourn his lost love. It was only right.
He slammed into the pub. The bartender and customers all turned to look at him. The bartender was not Ryan. He was not someone that Harry recognized.
"Where's Ryan?" he panted.
The bartender shook his head, and then motioned for Harry to come closer. Once Harry was standing directly before him, the bartender spoke in low tones so the other customers could not hear their conversation.
"You a friend of his?"
"Yeah."
The bartender shook his head again and sighed. "Good kid, Ryan. Never caused any problems. No conflicts, no arguments. I can hardly believe it myself."
Harry tried hard not to choke. "Believe what?"
"He got into a scuffle last night, just as he was leaving the bar."
"Last night," Harry repeated blankly. He wondered what day it was. Had he lost a day in all of this? He saw a newspaper lying uselessly on an abandoned table and summoned it to himself. He had lost a day. It was December 30th.
"Poor bastard took a bad Obliviate. I think the spell malfunctioned. I can't imagine anyone would end a fight trying to erase the other guy's complete effin' memory."
"His memory?"
"Couldn't even remember his own name, I tell you. It's no way to end a fight, I don't care what you were fighting over. I think the wizard responsible screwed it up and ran for it. I just can't believe someone would do that on purpose. Not to Ryan, of all people."
"Christ." Harry ran a hand over his face. He Obliviated Ryan too. Likely so the man would never come looking for Mala. At least he was alive, but what sort of life was that if he couldn't even remember his own name?
"Do you happen to know his girlfriend?" asked the bartender.
Harry looked up sharply.
"We saw her around some," he continued, "but no one's even sure of what her name is. Anyway, if you could tell her..."
Harry nodded absently even as he was turning away and walking out the door. No one at the bar even knew her name. Harry was pretty sure she didn't have friends here other than Ryan. Her family was dead or estranged. There was no one left to mourn her passing. No one left to notice she was gone. No one left to come asking questions if she didn't turn up for awhile.
I did this to her, thought Harry. And he thought back to the final line of the letter he had written to himself. No one is safe from me.
XIXIX
The Ministry of Magic was closed for the holidays, a fact which a certain team of Aurors had every intention of exploiting. They had been planning the break-in for close to two months, working out every detail and contingency and determining exactly the moment they would lose the ability to abort the mission and walk away without a sentence in Azkaban or worse should they get caught. That exact moment was when Tonks and Kingsley entered the Minister's office looking for incriminating information regarding Dumbledore's death, the faked reports of his magitopsy, or Moody's disappearance. At that same moment, Ginny and Draco would be entering the Department of Mysteries to look for evidence that the Unspeakables had had something to do with the anomolies in the Hogwarts wards over the years leading up to Dumbledore's death.
Of course, Ginny and Draco had every intention of also trying to find out what Ron had been researching before his death while they were there. They were determined to find out if he had gotten into something dangerous that had caused the Department of Mysteries to decide he needed to be disappeared. It wasn't part of the Auror teams' unofficial investigation, but Ginny and Draco had both vowed to find out what had happened to Ron, and they weren't about to pass up this opportunity to snoop through the closed office.
They flooed into the atrium. Tonks had managed to discover the codes that would allow her to erase the records of their floo activity for the night, but only if she could get into the Floo Administrator's office within the next fifteen minutes before the record was automatically recorded to the archives. The four broke into their two separate teams as they hurried across the atrium to the elevators.
"Good luck," whispered Kingsley as he and Tonks stepped into the first elevator that arrived. Draco and Ginny nodded at him. The second elevator was only moments behind.
Knowing that time would be short, Draco and Ginny swept into the Department of Mysteries with a steadfast resolve of determination. There would be no time now to second guess. Now, they must do.
Inside the circular room with the doors, Ginny said, "Which is the door to the filing office?"
A door to their left swung open. Draco raised his eyebrows and hurried through. They found themselves in a typical-looking shared office, scattered with desks and filing cabinets.
"I'll take left," said Ginny, and headed directly to the nearest filing cabinet. She wrenched the top drawer open and immediately began thumbing through. Draco went right and shuffled through the desk nearest the door. They systematically searched their way across the room. Draco got stalled at one cabinet toward the back. It was heavily warded, locked up so tight it took him nearly ten minutes and every trick he knew just to get the top drawer open. When he finally heard a satisfying click, he turned to look over his shoulder with a grin. Ginny was standing at a desk at the far wall.
"Find anything?" he asked.
"This was Ron's desk," she said flatly. "It looks like they've been sorting through his research." She was rifling through the drawers. "Some of it's missing, but a lot of it is still here."
"Anything good?"
"Dark creatures... magical creatures... all the same stuff he'd been on about since his seventh year."
"Grab whatever you can," said Draco, turning back to the filing cabinet he was at. He looked inside the previously heavily warded drawer and froze at the synchronicity. He called out, "Magical creatures, you said?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Anything on control magic?"
"No... there's a Dark magic book—it's heavily marked; it must have been important to him—but it's on the history of Dark creatures experimentation... and a whole mess of stuff about Tremor Moles. 'Mione said he'd gone to the Burrow the day before he disappeared looking for information about the Tremor Moles."
Draco nodded. "Which brings us back to Harry." He held up a file with Harry's name on it. He thumbed it open and the contents began to pour onto the floor. The thin file had concealed within in years of reports and information.
Ginny shrunk and pocketed as much as she thought necessary from Ron's desk, then headed over to Draco. He was just shoving the last of the papers back into the file when Ginny peered into the top drawer.
"Oh Merlin," she choked, reaching in. Draco stood up hastily to see his partner pull a small gold locket out of the drawer. On the front was the Flamel family crest. Above that was fused a diamond and emerald set. Two thin tendrils of gold were worked down the sides.
"I know that locket," Draco whispered. "Harry was never without it. He wouldn't even take it off in the shower."
"Nicolas and Perenelle gave it to him for protection. Why is it in a filing cabinet in the Department of Mysteries?"
"In a filing cabinet filled with information about controlling magical creatures?" Draco added.
"Controlling magical creatures," Ginny repeated. "And Tremor Moles from Ron. Oh Gods."
"Harry's magic is part snake. Tremor Moles could control him."
"They've been experimenting on my twin," Ginny rasped. "Ron found something and they... I'm gonna be sick."
Her knees went weak, but Draco caught her around the waist. "Oh, no you don't. You want to find out what they're doing, what they've done... you hold it together and keep searching. We won't get another chance, Ginny. Get it together."
She nodded, straightening herself. She gulped loudly, and Draco tried to imagine that she that she was just swallowing nerves and not the contents of her stomach. They went back to the filing cabinet, shrinking and confiscating anything and everything with Harry's name on it or any mention of control or magical creatures. Then Draco went to work on opening the second drawer.
While he worked on the wards, Ginny glanced through one of the last reports she had pulled out. It was dated two years back, and signed...
"This is signed by Angela Diamond."
Draco looked up. "Isn't that—?"
"The bitch who recruited Ron. Did she use him to get to Harry? Or did she notice Ron because she was already working on Harry? Holy Hera, Draco, this one's signed by Fudge!"
"Oh shit! Shit, shit, shit..."
Draco broke into a sweat as something tripped in the wards on the filing cabinet, waving his wand in a fevered attempt to break through before he set them off completely. But it was too late. In the next moment, a deafening alarm split through the room. It seemed to echo throughout the whole building.
Ginny and Draco stared at each other in horror.
In the next moment, Draco was on his feet, shoving against his partner as they ran to the door.
"Ginny, go!" he shouted, but they both knew it was too late.
They were caught.
XIXIX
Get Remus, get Remus, get Remus...
Hermione stumbled out of her quarters and bolted through the halls of Durmstrang. She reached Remus' door and began pounding against it, frantic and terrified. A moment later (though it seemed much longer to Hermione), Remus opened the door. He was still in his robes, though it was late. His eyes were tinged with yellow and he had the haunted, prowling look that typified the night preceding the full moon.
"We have to go help them," Hermione panted. "If we don't get them out of there, they're dead."
"Who?" he asked.
"We have to go, now!" and she turned to rush off down the hall.
Remus didn't hesitate. He drew his wand and followed the Seer out into the night.
XIXIX
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A/N: So, yay! I wrote a novel in November with National Novel Writing Month (www . nanowrimo . org). My super-happy goal is to finish Ties That Bind during my winter break. I love it, but I'm tired of carrying it with me. So please hit the review button down below and offer a bit of moral support in that. More exciting things ahead. Sev (finally) makes another appearance next chapter, and... well, exciting stuff.
And sorry about killing Mala Suerte. I did love that girl, but, well, given her name she really couldn't have a happy ending.
