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HARRY POTTER AND THE JADE DRAGON
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Chapter XXIX
Reunion
All these years
I've felt this shame
My family ruined, because of me;
Now even though I know
A greater villain was to blame
My best friend died to set me free
Where now am I to go?
I thought that I
was all alone.
I did not know that someone dear
Was watching from afar.
Now though I wander far from home
My heart will always hold her near
And hope shines like a star.
The clearing
seemed very quiet, as they all sat around, Robert's still body
lying in the
middle, Jeanne and Shan sitting next to it, looking at each other.
Harry looked at Ron and Hermione, and saw from their stunned
faces that they were
thinking the same thing as he : that they hadn't heard rightly.
Shan was looking at Jeanne
in disbelief, her face pale.
Jeanne glanced at Harry and the others, looking rather tired, then turned back to Shan.
"I am your sister, Shan," she said again, "Your
father was my father, and Mrs Chen was
my mother. You had an elder sister, but you never knew, because
I left all of you long
before you were born."
She glanced at Lupin, who had seated himself next to her, and was quietly listening.
"That day in the river, when she saw me transform, Mother
said she knew at once who I
was," said Jeanne. "She told me who she was, the second
time I went to visit her. She
told me that I had a sister, ten years younger than me, whom I'd
already met.
"I spent several hours with her in the hut, that evening.
She told me everything that had
happened since that day Charles Graham came, and took me away
to live with him."
Jeanne was silent for a moment, as if thinking.
"When Charles Graham came and told our parents that Deorg
was looking for a shape-shifter,
Mother and Father didn't want to let me go. Father said that the
family could go instead to
Long-Shan, where his old friend Kung Xian-Wen was teaching at
Tian-Long. He said Tian-Long
was well-protected, because Lady Wen-Li was a powerful witch,
and that I would be safe from
Deorg there.
"But Lady Wen-Li didn't agree. When Father contacted her,
she and Master Kung Apparated
over to discuss the matter. Master Kung felt Tian-Long was safe
enough; but Lady Wen-Li said
Deorg was becoming very powerful, and that she could not guarantee
our safety there. She and
Charles Graham persuaded Father and Mother to let Charles adopt
me, and he brought me to
England, and hid me in a remote village there.
"When I was gone, Deorg came to our village, looking for
me. He was furious to find me gone,
and he would have slaughtered Father and Mother but Master Kung
came, and they managed
to escape. Lady Wen-Li asked them to stay at Tian-Long, and Father
became the Caretaker
of the Grounds there.
"As time went by, our parents gradually came to regret
adopting me out. They felt that Tian-Long
was safe after all, and that they should have brought me there
instead. Father tried to contact
Charles Graham, but was unsuccessful. Mother soon became distraught
with grief. She couldn't
forgot how terrible Deorg was, and she felt sure he would eventually
find Charles and kill his
entire family. Rumours of his awful deeds were spreading through
the land, and she became
convinced that I was dead.
"Mother swore she would never have any more children.
She said she could not bear the pain
of having another child, only to risk losing it again. And she
hated all animals, because they
reminded her of me. She couldn't bear the sight of them.
"But fate intervened, and several years later, she conceived again."
Shan was looking at Jeanne, very pale. Jeanne glanced at Harry
and the others, who were all
listening intently.
"When Shan was born, Mother vowed she would not have another
shape-shifter as a child.
She felt she had lost the ability to love. She was afraid to love,
because she was afraid of
the pain of losing a loved one again. She said many things to
Father that she didn't mean,
because she was insecure. She told him, if this child also turned
out to be a shape-shifter,
she would drown it.
"Seven years went by. Deorg was still searching for a
shape-shifter, but he couldn't find me.
Shan by then had discovered she could transform; she did it on
the sly, so that Mother
wouldn't know. But some of the villagers must have seen her, because
word spread that
the Chens' second child was a shape-shifter as well.
"One day a messenger came from Charles Graham. He said
that Deorg had heard news
that the Chens had another child who was a shape-shifter, and
that he was coming to look
for her.
"Father had faith in his old friend Kung Xian-Wen, and
he said Tian-Long was safe, that
Deorg could not penetrate it. But the message thoroughly frightened
Mother. She wanted
to get Shan out of the country. She had a distant cousin living
in Singapore, and Mother
felt that a place so far away would surely be safe from Deorg.
She and Father spent days
arguing about it. She said she tried telling Shan how wonderful
it was in Singapore, that
she would have a better life there, but Shan didn't want to leave."
Jeanne paused, and looked rather distressed.
"Finally, Mother waited till Father was away, and then
smuggled Shan out of the country
to Singapore. While she was gone, Deorg came to Tian-Long. He
was furious to find that
he had been outwitted again. He possessed Father, and destroyed
his mind."
Shan gave a small sob, and turned to look at Robert, as if grasping at him for comfort.
Jeanne leaned forward and put an arm around her, and held her
for a while until she became
calmer.
"When Mother came home, she found that Father couldn't
recognise her any more," Jeanne
continued quietly. "He began to wander into the mountains
at night, calling for his daughter.
But - he wasn't calling for his younger daughter."
Shan looked sharply at her. Jeanne did not return the glance;
she was staring at the ground,
her face sad.
"Mother said Deorg had erased all memory of her and Shan
from Father's mind," she said.
"Instead, he placed images of me in his head, images of me
suffering terribly at the hands of
Deorg, of being tortured and eventually killed. Father was obsessed
with the idea of rescuing
me. He wandered the hills calling for Shan, but it was not Li-Shan
he was calling for."
She turned to look at Shan.
"My name is Shan too," she said. "When you were
born, you were given a similar name as
your elder sister. You were Chen Li-Shan; I was Chen Wen-Shan."
Harry looked at the two of them. So all that time, Shan had
thought the voice in the mountains
had been calling for her, but it had been Jeanne he was calling
for.
Jeanne said softly, "You thought all these years Father
went mad because of you, Shan; but it
wasn't so. It was Deorg. Deorg did this to all of us. He ruined
our family."
Her voice was bitter. She shifted her position slightly, then continued.
"Two months ago, on the morning after the day I had tea
with Septimus, Ping-Ping came
looking for me. She said that she had come to Britain especially
to find me. She brought
me to a secluded spot, and told me many things I wished I had
known before.
"She said that when Master Liu Pei fled from Tian-Long,
he went to Siberia to find Deorg,
who was an old acquaintance of his. He was aware that Deorg knew
of a potion that could
make one immune to the Devil's Curse. In return for this knowledge,
he said he would teach
Deorg how to prepare a potion that would restore him to his original
strength.
"Liu Pei brought Deorg back to Tian-Long, and smuggled
him in using the Abdovius Charm.
Deorg was still weak from his encounter with Dumbledore, and he
hid himself in the surrounding
forests. He had come because the potion he wanted required ingredients
which Liu Pei said
were available in his office at Tian-Long. The potion also required
one more ingredient : blood
from a dragon, still living.
"Ping-Ping knew all this because she had been roaming
the forest where Deorg was hiding out,
and had eavesdropped on all their conversations when Liu Pei went
to visit him. After that, she
said that she and Pong took turns to trail Deorg.
"Deorg was weak, so he couldn't possess any of the healthy
dragons. He had to find one that
was old and frail. He discovered an old male Bronzeback, which
was suitable for his purposes.
The blood was to be added to the potion not all at once, but a
little bit, every day, and it had to
be fresh. So he possessed the Bronzeback every day, destroying
its mind a little more every
time, and he drew blood out of it and then closed up the wound.
The Bronzeback soon began
to go mad; it became convinced that any living thing around it
was out to attack it. But Deorg
managed to subdue it with his mental powers. He might have succeeded
in completing the
potion, if Yang-Kang had not discovered the Bronzeback, and killed
it."
Harry saw Shan glance at him. That was our old Bronzeback, he thought, the one in the cave.
"The blood added to the potion has to come from the same
dragon. Now that the Bronzeback
was dead, Deorg was unable to complete it. He could still take
the potion, but it would only
partially restore his strength."
Jeanne's face hardened, and she hesitated, before continuing.
"At the same time, he knew that Mother was living alone
in the hut. He bore a grudge against
our family, and he decided to take what revenge he could. He was
too weak to do anything
to me or Shan, but Mother was old and frail, so every day, he
drew a bit of her life force out
of her, draining the life out of her."
Harry was startled.
"That means Deorg had you and Shan there - right underneath
his nose, and he couldn't possess
either of you."
Jeanne nodded.
"He didn't want Shan anyway, because she was only a partial
shape-shifter, and could not
transform into a beast. A dragon would have been difficult for
him to control."
Harry was silent. All that time Jeanne had been staying at
the hut, Deorg could have just
been a short distance away, and none of them had known.
"Deorg must have possessed Mother whenever I left the
hut for my lessons with Master
Kung," said Jeanne. "He could easily erase her memory
after that, and she'd never know
that he'd been there. He must have learned from her that she'd
told me she wanted me to
have the jade cups. He probably removed them from the cupboard
one day, when I wasn't
around.
"When Mother died, Deorg found it pointless to stay around
Tian-Long, since his ally Liu
Pei was gone. He consumed the partially completed potion, and
left Long-Shan. Ping-Ping
said she didn't know where he had gone. He must have come back
to Kamchatka, where
his old fortress had been, and waited there until he regained
his strength."
Jeanne looked around, a bleak expression on her face. For the
first time, Harry noticed the
ruins of what must have been Deorg's fortress, nearby. Deorg must
have enchanted the place,
for although it was winter, it was not as cold as it should have
been, given the harsh winter
conditions that usually prevailed in Kamchatka.
Shan was looking at Jeanne.
"Why didn't you tell me all this before?" she said slowly.
"I wanted to," said Jeanne, "but you weren't ready to hear it yet. You know that, Shan."
She reached out, and took Shan's hands in hers.
"I waited a long time to tell you, and I'm telling you
now," she said gently, looking into Shan's
face. "On the day Mother died, she was clear-minded. She
wanted to see you, Shan. She said
she was sorry for the way she had treated you, that if she could
live her life over again, she
would do everything differently. Just before she died, she said
to tell you not to grieve. She said
that she loved you, and that she was proud of you. She died at
peace, without any bitterness,
because life had been good to her in the end - she now knew that
both her daughters were alive
and well."
Shan looked at Jeanne for one long moment. Then, she slowly
stood up. Jeanne got to her feet
as well. Shan's face was pale; she opened her mouth to say something,
then changed her mind.
Jeanne held out her arms. Shan hesitated, then came forward; Jeanne
took her into her arms,
and held her close.
As Harry watched the two of them together, it suddenly hit
him : Shan had never reminded him
of Cho Chang. That odd, familiar feeling he'd initially had, whenever
he saw her he now
realised that it had been Jeanne, not Cho, whom she had reminded
him of, all along. He had
been fooled by the short hair and the glasses. There it was, the
same features, the same manner
Looking at them now, he wondered how he could have missed
the similarity.
Lupin had gone over to Jeanne and put his arm around her. Hermione
got up, and wiped away
the tears on her cheeks.
"Come on," she said softly to Ron and Harry, moving
past them, "We ought to leave them alone,
for a while."
She turned and made her way toward the ruined fortress, Ron
following. Harry looked again at
the three of them, standing there, and then something else caught
his eye.
The pale, smoky figures of a man and woman were standing nearby,
watching them. Harry
thought he recognised the woman. Even as he looked at them, a
movement nearby made him
turn, and he saw a similar smoky figure rising from Robert's body.
The man and woman came over to Robert. Shan's parents, thought
Harry. They had come for
Robert, because he had avenged them. He looked at Lupin and Jeanne.
Both were facing the
ghostly figures, but neither seemed to be able to see them.
Robert's shadow stood, looking at Shan for one long moment,
then turned and went toward
the man and woman. They took his hands, and then turned and began
walking away, their
figures fading even as they did so. Paler and paler they became,
till at last they faded away
altogether.
Harry turned to follow Ron and Hermione, intending to tell
them what he'd just seen. But even
as he started walking, the images began fading from his mind.
Like wisps of smoke, they seemed
to fly up and out of his memory, so that by the time he caught
up with the others, they had vanished
from his mind forever, and he was never again able to recall that
he had seen them.
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