Chapter 79: Harry and the Resurrection
Harry and Ron spent much of their holiday dodging Percy. With Mrs. Weasley and the twins more at odds than usual (though a bit of bellowing had been normal for as long as Harry had known them), Percy looked more than ever to Ron as a possible ally. He seemed to think that Ron's being made prefect had revealed hitherto unexplored depths of Ron's character and he even had a special gift for Ron: an OWL review book. Harry knew that some of the students at school had them, but they were prohibitively expensive and in short supply.
"It'll make Hermione happy," Harry said to Ron as Ron turned the book over in his hands after Percy finally left them alone. Hermione had coveted this particular review book but had been unable to do more than cast longing glances at the groups of Ravenclaws and Slytherins huddled around the few copies at Hogwarts. (Harry knew that the Slytherin copy belonged to Draco Malfoy; he didn't know or care who owned the Ravenclaw copy.)
"Yeah, if she doesn't decide to stay in Bulgaria with Krum forever," said Ron darkly.
"Hermione wouldn't miss her OWLs for Viktor Krum or anyone else," Harry declared, and they set the book aside.
When it was finally time for Easter dinner, everyone seemed to have said (or shouted) everything they wanted to say to everyone else already. They ate the food Mrs. Weasley prepared— it was as delicious as always— almost complete in silence.
Harry's eyes strayed occasionally to his bag, which he had hidden near the Burrow's front door. When Sirius arrived, there would be no time wasted scrambling up to Ron's room near the attic. Waiting to come face-to-face with Voldemort felt surprisingly like waiting for the final Quidditch match of the season. He just wanted things to get underway so he could have some modicum of control, whether real or perceived, over what was going on.
Besides, he wanted to keep Sirius and Mrs. Weasley from coming face-to-face if it was at all possible. Harry wouldn't be able to confront Voldemort at all if he first died in the crossfire between his godfather and his best friend's mother.
And so as soon as Harry glimpsed Sirius approaching through the Burrow's front window, he jumped up from the table and grabbed his bag, calling thank you over his shoulder.
But it was not to be.
Mrs. Weasley stood up, too, and followed Harry to the door. "Sirius Black," she thundered. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of the Howler Mrs. Weasley had once sent to Hogwarts after Harry and Ron had borrowed and destroyed Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia.
Sirius casually draped one arm around Harry's shoulders. "Yes, Molly?" he asked pleasantly. Far too pleasantly. Harry could feel that Sirius' body was tense against his own.
"How dare you loan over 1000 galleons to two underaged children without telling their parents? You have ruined my sons' lives—"
The twins appeared in the doorway behind their mother.
"Our lives aren't ruined, Mum."
"We would have found a way to open the shop with or without the loan—"
Mrs. Weasley ignored them. "What did you expect to get in exchange?" she demanded.
"I asked them to make certain there was no one hiding under an invisibility cloak in their box at the World Cup two summers ago. They did, and they received the money they earned."
Harry wouldn't have thought it possible for Mrs. Weasley to get even more angry, but he would have been wrong. "You deliberately sent them after a Death Eater! They were children! How dare you risk their lives? How dare you use them to do your dirty work and circumvent the Ministry? How dare you continue to hold that loan over their heads?"
Sirius glanced over Mrs. Weasley's head at the twins. "Fred, George, consider the money a gift. You and I have no further business with one another."
Mrs. Weasley rounded on the twins. "Go back inside, both of you." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and the twins, looking more frightened than Harry had ever seen them, obeyed.
"All right, Harry," said Sirius as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. "Ready to Apparate?"
"Yeah," said Harry.
"No," said Mrs. Weasley. "Harry, do not leave. Why don't you go inside and wait with the others?"
Sirius tightened his grip on Harry's shoulder. "I think you can say whatever you have to say in front of Harry. If it concerns him, he deserves to know."
Mrs. Weasley's eyes narrowed. "All right, where are you taking him?"
"To my house for the night. I just wanted to spend some time with him before we went back to school. All that end-of-term busyness, you know, I probably won't hear from him again until after he's finished the OWLs and won the Quidditch Cup." Sirius lied with such practiced ease that Harry almost believed him.
"Harry, dear?" asked Mrs. Weasley. "Do you feel safe going home with Sirius?"
"Well, yeah," said Harry stupidly. He didn't like what Mrs. Weasley was implying about Sirius, but it was nice to know that she worried about him.
"Harry has had so many kind things to say to Arthur and the children and me since he's been here," said Mrs. Weasley. "It's almost as if he was saying goodbye, as if he expected to do something dangerous. It reminded me of Fabian and Gideon in those last two years."
"I was just trying to be polite," Harry lied quickly. He, like Sirius, had spent his whole life learning how to lie when necessary.
"And you have always been ever so polite," said Mrs. Weasley. "No thanks to your godfather, of course, who wasn't around to raise you—"
"What did you say?" asked Sirius dangerously. The false air of calm evaporated.
"I said that you weren't a very good godfather to Harry while you were in Azkaban! I notice that you haven't even taken formal guardianship of him since you've been out. I think it would be better if Harry stayed here and returned to Hogwarts with Ron and the others tomorrow."
"You can say what you like about your own children. I won't have anything to do with them anymore. But you do not decide where Harry goes and when. You are not Harry's mother—"
"I'm as good as!"
As much as Harry was touched that Mrs. Weasley considered him a member of her family, he was fast losing patience with her mollycoddling. He and Sirius needed to meet up with Dumbledore and Snape. "Let's go," he said to Sirius. "Goodbye," he added to Mrs. Weasley. He wanted to tell her that the things she had said about Sirius were unfair… that it wasn't Sirius' fault he'd been sent to Azkaban for a crime he hadn't committed… that it wasn't Sirius' fault that Harry wasn't allowed to leave the Dursleys… that Sirius certainly wasn't encouraging Harry to do anything dangerous that Harry hadn't already decided to do. But he didn't want his last words to Mrs. Weasley to be an argument. So instead he tightened his grip on Sirius and whispered. "Just Disapparate, please."
Sirius raised his wand and turned to look once more at Mrs. Weasley. "I did think I was doing you a favor, you know. Fred and George's business will keep them in London. They won't be inspired to flee to the far corners of the earth to escape you like your older sons did."
Then Sirius Disapparated before Harry could see how Mrs. Weasley responded.
They arrived at the edge of Hogwarts grounds, and Sirius wordlessly removed Harry's bag from Harry's arm and tossed it over his own shoulder.
"It's not too late to change your mind," said Sirius roughly as they walked toward the castle. "You can go right back to the Burrow and let Molly protect you from the world for as long as you'd like."
"No, thank you," said Harry.
Sirius looked at him and laughed. "I'm sorry about that. I know it hasn't been the kind of day you envisioned."
"I'm sorry, too," said Harry. "She— she was wrong about you. She was out of order to say that about Azkaban."
"It's nothing I haven't thought about myself. If I had kept my temper that night— if I had explained what we tried to do, what Pettigrew did— if I hadn't gone off on my own to try to capture him when I couldn't even see straight—"
"You didn't deserve it, though. You didn't deserve what happened."
"No," said Sirius so softly that Harry barely heard him. "Nor did you. You don't deserve this, either."
"I'm glad I can do something. Not being able to do anything is the hardest sometimes, right?"
"Right." Sirius sighed, and he suddenly looked very, very old.
Harry didn't want to leave him.
He didn't want to leave any of them.
Dumbledore and Snape were waiting for them in the Headmaster's office. Both of them looked very tense.
"Are you ready, Harry?" asked Dumbledore.
"Yes, Sir."
"Good." Dumbledore pointed at a plastic toy boat which sat on the corner of his desk. "That is a Portkey. In a few minutes, it will take you and Professor Snape to Albania."
"A few minutes?" asked Harry. After waiting for this moment for hours, days, weeks, a few minutes seemed far too little.
"Just Harry and Snape?" asked Sirius at the same time. His hand tightened on Harry again. "We can't send them in there alone."
"To the contrary, that is the only way we can send them. Lord Voldemort has set up protections that will not allow the rest of us to draw near him without his knowing."
"So what if he knows?"
"If he knows, he will realize that Severus has betrayed him. We need him to believe that Severus is his man until he becomes mortal."
"And when he does become mortal? He'll murder Harry and then start amassing power all over again. He'll make a new set of Horcruxes."
"We will not give him time to do that."
"How? Is Sniv— Severus going to kill him?"
Snape glared at Sirius. "If an ignorant fool like you who spent most of his life in Azkaban instead of continuing his study of magic is capable of eliminating Bellatrix Lestrange, I think I'm capable of at least as much."
"After you've cut off your own arm to make the resurrection potion?" Sirius demanded.
"Be careful, Black, I'll start to believe you're concerned," sneered Snape. "As I am not as much of a whinging coward as your friend Pettigrew, the Dark Lord has been convinced that it is to his benefit to allow me to keep most of my flesh intact."
"You have to cut off a body part to resurrect him?" Harry asked, slightly annoyed that they all seemed to know exactly how this had happened last time but hadn't seen fit to tell him.
"Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy," Snape intoned the way he always did when he couldn't believe that his students hadn't memorized the list of potion ingredients at first sight. "I'm going to tie you up and take your blood. Do try to make the struggle look believable so the Dark Lord doesn't suspect that you are not his greatest enemy."
"I asked Severus and Sirius not to tell you the details earlier, Harry, because I did not want you to dwell on them." Dumbledore was looking not at Harry but at an enormous pocket watch. "Ninety seconds."
"Not today," objected Sirius. "Not until we have a way to bring a dozen good wands—"
"Today," Snape returned. "You do not have any useful ability in this matter, and you do not get to vote on when the resurrection will take place."
"Today," Harry repeated. They could not come so far only to stop now. He removed Sirius' arm from around his shoulders, then thought better of it and hugged Sirius as hard as he could. "Take care of Lupin and Tonks," he whispered in Sirius' ear. Sirius needed to remember that someone was on his side, someone believed that they were doing the right thing, someone would still need him if Harry never came back.
Harry thought suddenly of the night he'd awoken from a dream about being forced to kill Cedric only to find himself in Sirius' embrace. I love you, Sirius had chanted. Love you, love you, love you.
Harry had been disconcerted and embarrassed and had sent Sirius out of the room without saying much of anything in return.
He'd had his last chance with Hermione and the Weasleys. He wouldn't get a last chance with Lupin. This was his last chance with Sirius as Dumbledore's watch ticked loudly behind them.
"I love you," he told Sirius. Then he broke off the hug and nodded at Snape. The two of them gripped the toy boat, and Dumbledore's office vanished in a swirl of color.
Harry knew that travel by Portkey often resulted in the traveler being slammed into the ground. But he wouldn't give Voldemort the satisfaction of approaching with dirt on his knees. He wouldn't even give Snape the satisfaction of tumbling to the ground, no matter that Snape was on their side.
Harry stayed standing and walked along with Snape through a sort of forest clearing.
And then, without warning, Harry's scar exploded with pain. It was agony such as he had never felt in all his life; his wand slipped from his fingers as he put his hands over his face; his knees buckled; he was on the ground and he could see nothing at all; his head was about to split open.
Meanwhile Snape conjured tight cords around Harry, tying him from neck to ankles around a tree. It happened so quickly that Harry barely had time to struggle as Snape had instructed him to do.
With practiced skill, Snape produced a stone cauldron. Harry had never seen such a cauldron before. It reminded him more of a Pensieve than the ordinary pewter cauldrons they used in class or even the gold cauldron that technically belonged to him but was mostly used by Fred and George to brew specialized potions for their joke shop. It had a great stone belly large enough for a grown man to sit in.
Presently crackling flames sprang to life beneath the cauldron; the liquid in the cauldron seemed to heat very fast. The surface began not only to bubble, but to send out fiery sparks. Soon the whole surface was alight with sparks. It might have been encrusted with diamonds.
Snape vanished, then, and returned with a bundle of robes, which he set beside the cauldron. The thing inside the robes immediately clawed its way out of them. It had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scary-looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face— no child alive had ever had a face like that— flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes.
"It is ready, My Lord," said Snape to the thing.
"Now, Severus," said a high, cold voice. The thing raised its thin arms and put them around Snape's neck. Snape lifted it as if nothing about the whole situation were out of the ordinary. Indeed, Snape looked calmer and more at ease than he often looked during an ordinary Defense lesson. There were certainly no signs of the distress and agitation he'd shown when Dumbledore had told him that the plan, all along, had been for Harry to die.
Snape lowered the creature into the cauldron; there was a hiss, and it vanished below the surface.
Harry's scar burned almost past endurance, but still he could hear Snape's voice.
"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!" A fine trickle of dust appeared out of nowhere and fell softly into the cauldron. Harry didn't like to think from whence Snape and Voldemort had retrieved that dust. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue.
Next, Snape produced a shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. "Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your lord!" He tucked his wand away and stretched his left arm over the cauldron. With his right hand, he swung the dagger upward and sliced a long chunk of flesh from his forearm.
Harry had never seen so much blood. He thought for a moment that Snape must faint from the pain, must bleed to death before him, and that he, Harry, would be alone with Voldemort. He would not submit to the killing curse after all, he decided, and he began to struggle against his bonds.
Snape, though, seemed unperturbed by the blood streaming from his arm. He swept toward Harry with the dagger in his hand. Harry writhed against the ropes, but to no avail. His blood was soon mixing with Snape's own, though Snape had not cut Harry so deeply as he had cut himself.
"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken. You will resurrect your foe."
The potion had turned red with the addition of Snape's flesh; now, as Snape poured Harry's blood into the cauldron, the liquid was suddenly a blinding white.
Snape casually bound his arm with a wordless spell as the cauldron continued to simmer. It sent its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness.
Nothing happened for so long that Harry began to think that nothing would happen. Perhaps Snape's flesh had not worked because he was not truly Voldemort's servant? Perhaps Harry's blood had not worked because it had not truly been forcibly taken? But the potion had changed color with each addition…
Then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry.
And then the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rose slowly from inside the cauldron.
"Robe me," said the high, cold, voice from behind the steam. Harry could only assume that Snape obeyed. "You have done well, Severus. You are, indeed, my most loyal servant."
The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry. "Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."
Snape didn't move. He was waiting.
Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still titled to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes and wanted it to happen now, quickly, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear—
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.
To be continued.
Auxiliary Disclaimer: The resurrection sequence is adapted from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The last four paragraphs are from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, slightly modified.
Recommendation:
For Lack of a Bezoar by BolshevikMuppet99. It is story number 13108396 on this site.
Summary: Canon Divergence from HBP. When Harry fails to save Ron's life in Slughorn's office, he and Hermione are thrust into a search for answers. But the path is thornier than either of them could have possibly imagined.
Well, as long as we're on a roll with teenagers dying, here's an interesting canon divergence point. Coldly vengeful Harry isn't normally my thing, but if anything would drive him in that direction, I think Ron's death would be it. Mind the M rating; 35,000 words; complete.