Chapter 55
ELEPHANT
I can't let him catch me. As Professor Snape had warned Professor Daine's Defense Against the Dark Arts class so long, long ago, the magician with the dark purposes gibbering at Harry's back would not be gentle.
As he rounded a corner, a recollection tumbled off the top of his armful. He slowed to pick it up—until he heard the Dark Lord's snarls gaining on him. Gritting his teeth, he resumed top speed. Behind him, the stray thought whimpered as the intruder fell upon it, ripping it to pieces and working it into a new form. I'll never recall it.
With the memory re-arranger briefly occupied, Harry darted up halls, down stairs, and around twisting passageways, searching for a way to put it off his track. At last, he spied a chute the size of a fox's hole. He jumped. Down, down, he slid. But just when he thought he'd found the perfect escape, he hit bottom. Instead of safety, he'd chosen a trap. From the passage above, he could hear the creature's rumbling coming closer. He hunkered down, paralyzed with dread. He couldn't climb back up now. His only hope was that the beast would pass him by. For a moment, silence. Then he heard a horrible snuffling. He shrank as small as he could, careful not to make a sound. Then the racket of stone fracturing and crumbling reverberated in his ears. Fear seized him. The monster was widening the shaft to get at him.
Frantically, Harry began scrabbling with one hand at the wooden hatch beneath him, clasping his remembrances with the other. Just when he was about to give up, he heard a crack. He kicked the wood hard with his boot—once, twice, three times—until the trapdoor splintered and he tumbled down to the floor below.
Still clinging to his memories, Harry set off running again.
I can't keep this up. The monster won't stop until it's caught me. Snape's dictum on shielding one's thoughts from an evil wizard came back to him. It takes a certain amount of cunning. Mere bravery won't cut it.
Racing blindly through a subterranean tunnel, Harry began juggling the cradled memories—creating duplicates as Snape had described in his long-ago lecture. He didn't have a Grand Master's potion of choice to fortify him, but he did have his many years of practice using his imagination to keep sane under the Dursleys' stairs. As his burden doubled, he began panting. Now to hide the originals where the Dark Lord wouldn't find them.
Harry whipped around a bend, lunged down another alleyway, and cut into an out-of-the-way nook. Hastily, he sorted out the most essential events: Wilhelm's attack in the Forbidden Forest; Voldemort's new façade; the faces of the eleven witches and wizards supporting him; the interrupted rite of the Dark Mark; Snape's offer to kill Dumbledore; the word that had done the deed; and Wilhelm's plunge of the knife. The duplicates, Harry kicked back into the open. He did the same with his memories of the five tests in his face-off with Wilhelm: one set he would surrender, one he'd protect.
An earth-shattering noise from the way he'd come jolted him to a stop. The intruder had smashed through the shaft. For an instant, Harry couldn't breathe. When he heard the snarling and snuffling growing fainter, he took a gulp of air. The monster was going the other way—at least for now. He began divvying up originals and copies at double speed: his conferences via Djinn ball, his search of his cell, Voldemort's tea party. He was just tossing his last duplicate onto the sacrifice pile—Crookshank's savoring of the cooking smells in the Granger's kitchen—when he heard the fiend coming his way.
Steeling himself against his fear, Harry backed out of the alcove.
Pink Elephant, he said. His Patronus of Memory, created to offset Professor Daine's gentle spell, materialized before him. The pachyderm fastened its determined gray eyes upon him, nodded, then settled down over the original memories as gently as a mother hen brooding over her chicks.
Hold fast, Harry told him. Then he scrambled to pick up the spares, stuffing them into his robes, his pants, his shoes and hiding one in his Lockit Pocket for good measure. He had to dupe the Dark Lord into believing that these were the memories he treasured. As his Djinn ball instruction sheet had taught him to do with Hermione, he needed to create a plausible alternative.
As Harry resumed jogging down the passage one last time, he could feel his muscles trembling. If his tired legs could just manage another zigzag or two before the memory re-arranger caught up with him, he'd be all right. He tripped and crashed into the wall. Tears came to his eyes, and he let them. Exhausted, he stumbled a few more yards. An eerie howl of victory told him the beast had sighted him. As it bounded forward, he dragged himself a couple more steps. When he felt hot breath on the nape of his neck, he knew he could go no further. He fell to his knees, hunched over his recollections.
No! he shouted with his last ounce of strength. They're mine!
The vicious tentacles slid over Harry's shoulders, under his armpits, and around his sides, wrestling his memories from his grasp. He balled up as tightly as he could, yet still the octopus arms insinuated themselves into the folds of his robes, inside his socks, and into his Lockit Pocket.
No! Harry cried, over and over until the repetition sounded despairing in his own ears. One by one, the happenings of the last two days were dragged from him until his perception of them was at the mercy of the Dark Lord.
The first image to go was that of Wilhelm—erased from the Forbidden Forest, from the broom ride, from the maze. For an instant, Harry couldn't picture who had captured him. Then he had it again: Peter Pettigrew. Harry scowled, recalling the moment his parents' betrayer had slung him over the handle of his broom.
His Djinn ball. He'd thought he'd had it with him, but no—he'd left it on his bed at Hogwarts. Stupid boy. At least he'd been brave, challenging Voldemort to a contest for the Muggle girl. No, that had been wishful thinking. Challenge He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? As if. He'd been too cowardly.
But no, it wasn't He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named he'd been afraid of—it had been the Death Eaters. He could see all eleven of them lined up before him. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Avery—this time the Ministry of Magic would have to believe his accusations of their disloyalty since Professor Daine would be backing him up. No, wait a minute. He'd been mistaken. Only four Death Eaters had held him and Professor Daine prisoner—the three LeStranges, fugitives from Azkaban, and Pettigrew. That gang was dangerous, all right—so long as they concocted plots to return to their former glory—but all of their schemes were in vain. None of their former compatriots had rallied to their cause. Their Dark Lord had not returned. How could he have been so silly as to think he had?
Harry's awareness of the castle of his mind faded into a blue void. As he drifted along, the images came clearer and clearer: the broken down cottage on the Northumberland coast where the villains had holed up, the Muggle girl they'd kidnapped to be their servant, Professor Daine standing courageously against their threats. He remembered everything in vivid detail—even the hours he'd spent cowering in the corner, sniveling and whining not to be hurt.
And then had come his salvation. Harry took a deep breath, picturing that glorious moment when Professor Severus Snape (Twelve Substantive Consummate Omnifarious Wizarding Levels with Honors, Certified Public Concoctionist, Grand Master Apotropaist, Head of Slytherin House, Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry) had blasted in the door to the cottage. "Get back, you devils," his savior had proclaimed. "You shall not have them."
Harry giggled. He'd never seen four thugs take to their brooms so fast. They'd fled through the back door even as Professor Snape zapped away the Petrificus Spell that bound him and Professor Daine. The Muggle he'd kept under the Imperius Spell—for her own good, at least until she'd been returned safely home.
Which was exactly what Professor Snape and Professor Daine were in the middle of working out now.
Harry blinked, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight streaming down on the snow-laden village square where he stood patiently listening to his elders confer over how to handle the return of his fellow captive.
Professor Snape shot him an assessing look.
"You seem confused," Professor Daine offered kindly. "You must have dozed off just before Severus Apparated us."
"From—from the cottage?" Harry asked doubtfully, straightening his glasses.
"Yes, the cottage." She smiled. "And once we see this poor girl back to her door, Severus will Apparate us back to Hogwarts."
The young Muggle stood docilely between them, her eyes vacant.
"Very well, then," Professor Snape murmured to Professor Daine. "You win. Leaving two days completely blank would be traumatizing. Lost on the moors, it is." With that, he bent down to the girl's ear and began to weave the tale. The child had wandered off—something she was never, ever to do again. She'd spotted a hare and foolishly run after it. Before she'd realized it, she'd gone astray. If she hadn't found that cow shed stocked with hay to sleep in during the cold snowy night, she surely would have frozen to death.
Even to Harry, the professor's alternative sounded eminently plausible. Of course, you'd have to be a susceptible Muggle to actually fall for memory rearrangement like that. Every now and then, Professor Daine interjected a detail—a moment of ingenuity, finding alder berries to eat; a feat of bravery, lobbing rocks at a marten; an instance of wonder, gazing up at the stars. As the adventure drew to a close with finding a trail, coming out on the highway, and finally making her way to her own village, the girl began to smile for the first time since Harry had seen her.
Professor Daine patted the child on the back and whispered, "Get along, now. Your Mama's waiting for you."
The Muggle began walking. Then she caught sight of her front hedge and broke into a gallop. As she called out to her mother, the door swept open and a middle aged housewife shrieked with joy and rushed outside. She hoisted her daughter over the gate, bundled her into her arms, and started to cry.
Professor Snape turned away from the happy reunion. Without further ado, he gripped Harry's shoulder and Professor Daine's, muttered a spell, and whisked them away. This time, Harry was aware of tumbling along the channels of inter-dimensional space that magical folk used to Apparate. Crackling noises and twinkling lights whizzed past. Just when he was about to be sick to his stomach, he and the professors popped onto the porch between the two marble dragons.
Hogwarts. Relief swept through him. It was good to be back. What a story he had to tell. As he beamed at the valiant Professor Snape striding off to open the door, gratitude overwhelmed him. His uncle was a true hero.
Without warning, something thwacked Harry's back. Looking over his shoulder, he saw no one. Then he became aware of a presence created by his mind: a pink elephant. The undulating trunk slapped him on one cheek and then the other. Snap out of it! the pachyderm trumpeted.
And then Harry remembered. Every last horrendous, sickening, heartbreaking detail. Professor Dumbledore is dead! he wailed to himself. He turned to face the steps that led to the bleak, ice-encrusted gardens so that Snape wouldn't see his misery.
"Come in from the cold," said the rotten, degenerate, reprehensible villain. "I have bad news."
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